Most Came Home

 Veteran's Day 2021 Remembrance

(or, WHY I HAVE A SNOTTY BABY SISTER) 

 (Originally “Most Came Home” published in The Brazil Times November 11, 2009) 

  

Veteran’s Day is set aside to give due honor to those men and woman who faithfully served in the United States military, did their duty, and then came home. 

My father, Warrant Office Philip H Lewis, came home.  There was only one “i” in Philip, not two.  He was insistent on that after he came home. 

 

Philip H Lewis was not a warrior.  Although not belonging to any religions group which would have made him a legal pacifist, he did not want to go war because he did not want to kill.  Being a little older and having two children, he was not sent a draft notice until the third year of WWII.  He and my mother had something of a code worked out.  She called him at work one day and told him he had received a letter in the mail (she didn’t say what or from whom).  He went out and enlisted in the Merchant Marine.  Only many years after his death was the service of these in harms way sailors recognized. 

 

My mother told the family “war story” many times.   

 

Daddy was sent to Boston for training as a radio specialist (to his dying day he was a Morse code expert).  Orders came for him to go to San Francisco and report to a certain ship [that’s how the military works – if he’d been in Frisco they would have sent him to Boston]. 

 

In those days everyone went by train.  The hubs were Chicago and St. Louis; all passengers had to go though one or the other.  Philip Lewis had orders and tickets to transfer trains in Chicago.  We lived in St. Louis.  He got someone (maybe God knows who) to swap tickets with him so he could stop over in St. Louis. 

 

As mother told the story, because of that stop-over daddy was just a little late getting to California.  Wars and ships wait for no man, and another Radio Officer with almost exactly the same name took the ship my dad was scheduled to take. 

 

He came home and like most of “the greatest generation” went to work every day, did his best to love his family and rear we three children to honor God and country.  He did this through years of bearing with unbearable pain, suffering at the hands of many physicians, and dying young of heart problems easily detected and treated today. 

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In the process of coming home Philip H Lewis instilled whatever little good there is in me.  My father was the greatest single influence in my life.  Anything I may have actually done right in rearing our five children is due to my wanting to be like him.   

 

After the war somehow my parents learned the ship my father would have taken went down in the Pacific with loss of all hands.  In the goodness of divine Providence and military red tape I owe my being to a veteran whom I would never know.  Lewis H Phillip did not come home. 

Tax Triade

 

theDaddy’s Taxes Tirade!!!

CAVEAT: Much of the following tirade combines thoughts and writings previously expressed in one form or another. And, yes, I do have some new observations at the end. No, no one will be quoting anything I say 50 years hence. As with observations which preceded, no one will pay any attention whatsoever. Not worried, though. Being a mere man who writes to find out what I’m thinking, I am used to both being listened to when wrong and ignored when right.

WINE & ROSES

“A Billion here, a Billion there, after a while you’re talking about real money.”

The Good Life

Me and Kay have a fairly good life in a town with the unlikely name Brazil, in Clay County Indiana USA. There probably are those who appreciate living here as much as I. But, it is unlikely anyone appreciates it more. Maybe that’s because I spent so much of my life in an impersonal big city, while most folks here had the advantage of always calling this home and may be unaware of said advantage. Overall I kinda like the country (and the county) in which we live and think the price imposed by taxes seems something of a bargain. A bargain enhanced by monthly checks from Social Security and medical bills paid by Medicare, and by not making enough money to be taxed since retiring.

At No Cost To Us

Of course we’re not the only ones to live the good life courtesy the largesse of America. I mean, there seems to be no limit to how much our government spends on welfare of we the people.

In last year alone we’ve also benefited from:

• Every person breathing – and few who weren’t – got $2,000 to spend on anything their little black hearts desired.

• Over 250-million virus vaccinations were produced, distributed, administered, and paid for.

In the coming year our kids and grandkids can look forward to promised:

• Payment of childcare expenses so our woman folk can stop worrying about being mothers 24/7 and get back to bringing home some money.$300 per month free money just for having a kid. Money which can be spent at will on “cigarettes, whiskey, and wild wild women”. Wish we still had some kids at home so I could get me some….never mind.

All at no cost to us. Is America a great country, or what?

NOBLESSE OBLIGE?

“Taxes are the price you pay to live in a civilized society.”

Paying The Piper

Would you believe spending money leads to needing more money? Who knew? If you’re a government there are three tried-n-true need-money options: Stop spending so much money, raise income by raising taxes, or borrow some more money and let your grandkids worry about paying it back.

• Cutting expense has been advocated by every presidential candidate since Richard Nixon. None have cut federal expenditure. All left increased spending in their wake.

• The Republicans never want to raise taxes because rich folk are their main supporters. Democrats, on the other hand have no rich donors to placate, just don’t want their voters taxed. Neither Party, though, is anxious to be identified with this need-money solution.

• Borrowing is always easiest thing to do. It’s not really money [see previous tirade on Fairydust Funds]. And, it can be hidden until some future generation must cut their expense and/or raise their taxes!

Now or tomorrow or some distant moon, however, every government goes back to raising taxes. I like the idea of somehow taxing the grandkids – so I won’t have to listen to our kids gripe about paying taxes.

Have I Got This Right?

Let me see if I’ve got this modern taxation thing right. The government prints the money. They do this very well and frown on anyone else doing it. We have to use their currency which they issue to us, even though its value consists solely in how well we trust the issuer. Then, every time money passes from one hand to the next for “value received” the government wants back some of the money which they themselves printed. For example, if the kid who cuts your grass earns more than $400 in any calendar year, the government wants back part of the money it printed. If they don’t get it, the kid goes to fed’s Pen at Leavenworth Kansas. Have we got this correct so far?

Can’t Take It With You

In The Shawshank Redemption actor Morgan Freeman’s character says, “I don’t have to do anything but stay black and die.” He forgot to mention taxes. As Benjamin Franklin somewhat more succinctly put it, “… in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Of course while it is still appointed unto man once to die, you actually don’t have to pay taxes. They say Kansas is lovely in the spring when grass needs cutting, anyhow.

Whose Idea Was This?

As I understand history, taxes began as simply the stronger taking from the weaker. Thus a weaker merchant traveling across some stronger person’s territory would be subject to having all his goods taken. The problem which soon developed was that if you take all a person has with which to earn his living, that person will not return later due to having been put out of business. Once the goods of the merchant were consumed there would be nothing left to the stronger to live on, making him weaker. Thus began the system which we call “taxation.” The idea of taxes being to extort just enough to leave the poor saps an incentive to make more money and come back next year. From the earner’s perspective if it took less to pay the “toll” than move to another land, the merchant would simply pay the extortion and go about his business.

Enter The ‘Bean Counters’

Somewhere lost in history this extortion developed into government sanctioned taxation. Naturally, with government intervention came exact formulas for determining how much could be extorted to maintain the stronger while keeping the weaker coming back. However, this formula was deliberately kept decipherable only by the bureaucrat who had developed their own systems for taking from the weak. The merchant’s goal, of course, became to so deceive the tax collector as to pay the least possible tax. Soon enough it came to be the more one spent on tax experts (who learned how to hide beans) the less one actually paid in tax.

Gobbledygook

For practical purposes current tax laws all derive from the original provisions of Revenue Code of 1954 (as revised). In those days the country assumed as ‘given truth’ it was in nation’s best interest for a man and woman to marry and she quit working full-time in order to raise kids. This was rewarded in the Tax Code [and, as it turns out, punished the woman for working full-time]. If her husband died there was provision for widow to find a new man, she had two years. Also, we old folk were rewarded for getting old and voting Republican. Punished by the Code were those who remained single, or who tried to file without their ‘spouse’. Unfortunately, in making tax laws on those basic assumptions Congress failed to repeal the “Law of Unintended Consequences” and/or anticipate the vicissitudes of politics.

In America we perpetuate the ancient traditions of prestidigitation by electing representatives to travel to Washington. There they can go to great lengths to insure tax regulations are re-complicated on a regular basis. This guarantees none of the weaker (that is, poorer) among us will ever really understand why some specific amount is to be extorted (paid). The Republicans make changes which affect the rich, the Democrats those which may effect the poor. Henry Bloch, founder of H & R Block, once said something to the effect that H& R would be out of business in five years if Congress stopped changing the tax laws. Can’t wait to see what will happen next.

In case you don’t remember 1954 (I was 11), the world has changed while Congress was ‘busy doing other things’. Sticking to 1954 ‘givens’ as their base so many changes have been made it takes a super computer to track to how to pay taxes. And so, as the lady said, here we are.

In 10,000 years of human history nobody has come up with a better system. I for one am open to suggestions.

SWEEP BACK TIDE WITH BROOM!

“Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible…"

According to 12^th century legend King Canute the Great proposed sweeping back the tide with a broom. One assumes his success would be the same if he attempted to sweep back the IRS. As promised, here are the inane ideas of one mere man as to what he’d do if there is ever an opening for a tax law sweeper-backer.

In interest of full disclosure, none of this has been researched, real life numbers have not been run, and I am totally unprepared and/or unwilling to defend anything herein:

Suggestion #1

No corporate tax. Rather, all corporations would be ‘pass through’ entries whose profits or loss would pass direct to shareholder. That is, if my one share of Bluwraps Unlimited earns $100 for year, I include $100 as income for year – whether I got the 100 bucks or not. There would be no ‘tax credits’ – ‘phantom deductions’ – or other loopholes.

Suggestion #2

A true “Flat Tax” on personal income: ‘Here’s what I got, here’s your tribute (I mean taxes)’. No deductions, no credits, no rebates. Hey, after all, it’s all just fairydust money the government printed.

Suggestion #3

This true “Flat Tax” would be the only tax. That is, eliminate sales tax, property tax, etc. and the bureaucracies needed to construct regulations for collecting them.

King Canute I’m Not

If you should quite naively think any of these suggestions might ever be considered by any politician with ability to do anything about it, see opening caveat.

Just a tirade for some future generation...

Most Dangerous Words

Are These the

Most Dangerous Words

Ever Spoken?

On April 2, 1919 then President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed America must enter World War I because, 

“The world must be made safe for democracy”.

Those words would change the world, because they changed America.

After 20-years of expenditure of men, materials, and very much money, President Joe Biden announced final withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. Thus ends one of a long line of American ‘interventions’. They say this ‘Afghan war’ thing began in 2001. It did not. It began in 1919.

One-hundred years and now seventeen Presidents later, Wilson’s mantra morphed into something like “Make every other country a democracy just like ours – whether they need it or not”. Not even God knows how many have died from wars entered in a quest to enforce this mantra on the world.

Whatever you or I may think of other forms of government around the world, is it really somehow our obligation to enforce ‘democracy’ on them because Wilson said it would make us “safe”? If it is our obligation, at what cost and enforced on whom?

In Afghanistan the British, then the Russians, then America tried to end the fighting and create ‘democracy’ in a Muslim land. Could democracy even be inflicted on a land where religion is everything, its priests supreme, with a 2,000 year history of killing each other? A lot of people tried, a lot of people died.

In this want-a-be historian’s observation, if the Army of the United States of America stood guard for another thousand years, when the last soldier left Afghanistan’s people would go back to killing each other for reasons long lost.

“The world must be made safe for democracy.” Are these the most dangerous words ever spoken? Is there one testimony of history showing more wars or deaths or money will solve anything?

Just asking for some future generation

Harry & Game of Life

HARRY and

the Game of Life

From 1945 to 1969 Harry Caray was play-by-play guy on KMOX Radio for the St Louis Cardinals baseball team. Those broadcasts reached millions who would never see major league baseball games in person. In 1953 ‘loser’ Browns left St Louis and the Cardinals took over as only home team. From then on, at least for we growing up in 1950’s learning baseball from him, Harry Caray was baseball.

Harry had two catch-phrases everyone waited for him to shout: “Holy Cow!” and “It might be, it could be, it is!” Mostly this meant something good was happening for the home team. But, Harry needed very thick glasses and in the days before he could watch play on TV monitors sometimes the ‘it might be’ was a fly-ball out to left-fielder.

Harry’s positive sound every Spring filled us with belief this would be The Year! He made us forget Cardinals were a fifth place team composed of Stan ‘the Man’ Musial and 23 other guys. Because we had Harry for our cheerleader we could ignore they’d lose as many as they’d win!

Met him once when driving cab in St Louis. If you had even once heard his voice you would have known who it was in the back seat without looking. I thanked him for all those springs when the sound of his voice gave us hope of a new season, of a new opportunity, of a new beginning.

His greatest contribution, though, may have gone unnoticed. Harry, Gabby Street before him, and Jack Buck who followed taught true team supporters how to appreciate and respond to the competition of sport and of life.

• You cheered for your guys, even when they failed seven times out of ten. You booed bad behavior by any man without regard to team loyalty, cheered valor found in any man on the field of play.

• Because it was a ‘family game’ true fans did not throw stuff, nor start fights, nor use language inappropriate for women and children (well, not often, anyhow).

• It was okay to ‘hate’ them; but the other team was the competition, not the enemy. You respected them as men just as you would your own team members. Sometimes they won because they just played the game better. Okay, yeah, some of them might have thrown an occasional spitball, so there’s that.

• When the umpire makes his final call, the last appeal adjudged, it is accepted. Arguing, denying, does not change the outcome. There would always be another competition, another chance to prove our team the better.

• The game wasn’t over until it was over; but, when it was over you accept the results. The final score was kept by ‘honest brokers’ who kept an honest count.

On January 20 2021 a new home team with its new man and new promises took over in the city of Washington. Promises, this time, of a pennant, of new dreams, of new wins with few if any losses. This time it would be spring again. This time it would be different. This time it would be better than before.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve grown old and too jaded by years of watching the home team have as many losses as wins; too wearied by too many lessons left unlearned, or ignored. Somehow it doesn't feel like the spring of my youth. Where’s Harry Caray when we need him?

End-Time Prophesy

 

END-TIME PROPHESY?

“Repent! The End is near!”

Film at 11

Adapted from Brazil Times blog of August 22 2014

The “Repent!” part is always useful (“he who is without sin” and all that).

The “End is near!” part? Well, maybe.

Years ago there was a program on TV about Biblical prophecy and how it might work out in the real world. In an interview with a Greenpeace spokesman he said, ‘whether there were prophecy or not, whether there even was a God or not, man himself would consume and destroy the earth by his own hand.’

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If you are one who braves watching TV news, chances are you’re aware there is a lot of ‘end is near’ stuff going around...

Pandemics, plagues, and pestilence;

rebellions, wars, and rumors of wars;

active super-volcanoes on all continents;

more earthquakes than anytime on record;

whispers in dark corners of economic collapse;

would-be potentates and pretenders rise and fall;

false prophets deceiving even the very elect of God.

As this is being re-written story of the hour is a pandemic attacking every nation on earth to some degree. I’ve heard enough on TV to think the rest of this story is yet to be told. Sooner or later Christian evangelical types will get another go-around of how all this fits into the newest interpretation of End Time Prophecy. Maybe I’ve become jaded, though, by all the go-around which has gone-around before about how current events portend the future event.

In the 1950’s my older brother had a recording of a big-name evangelist of our denomination detailing the events which were to unfold. Memory includes conflict between America and Russia over Israel, leading (once again) to the war-to-end-all-wars. He confidently predicted the End would come in his lifetime. I Googled him, he died in 2004.

I always worry about Bible scholars who pin the Second Coming of Christ on some specific, physical, historically documented event happening before He returns. For me, basing any interpretation on something which ain’t happened yet is a position which ought be defended. Such a position seems to go against the general thought of Scripture and historical Christian scholarship; these generally propose all has been fulfilled and we ought to be ready every second (even if neither FOX nor CNN cover it).

There was a time in my life when there was a certain level of expectation I’d teach on ‘End Time Prophecy’. “Teach” should be read as expecting me to endorse whatever teaching was popular at that moment.

Never one to accept the acceptable, I came up with guidelines which I -- and apparently I alone -- thought useful:

• The Bible, Old & New Testaments, as we have received it in English translations is directed solely to edification and instruction of the believer. If the reader does not class their self as such, I have written on more interesting topics which you are encouraged to pursue.

• Starting with assumption of the veracity of Scripture, which I do, then there is only one way to know when a prophecy has been fulfilled – when the Book says so. If it says, “this is in fulfillment of the prophesy…”, then you know it is fulfillment of that prophecy.

• Whatever the signs of the End really are, written and historical records indicate the Clergy will miss or misinterpret said signs. From Pharisees of Jesus day and throughout history, the Clergy always seem to be looking at stuff with “preconceived” conceptions. Being of the Clergy at one time in my life, I chose to not perpetuate possible misinterpretations.

• My very limited understanding of the written word leads me to suspect there is a very deliberate and impenetrable spiritual fog surrounding the whole subject. As it says, “now we know in part”.

• Best guess is that when all is said and done everyone will be surprised by how bad were our best guesses, and how many current events we failed to recognize as part of a bigger picture.+

So, maybe a closer look as we watch TV is in order. Somebody might be trying to tell us something, even if it’s only Greenpeace. Just saying.

THE DOLE

 

GOING ON THE DOLE

During the Great Depression (1929-1939) direct relief cash payments (often called “the Dole”) went to those in immediate and desperate need. However, work relief, that is, work on government projects in exchange for relief payments, was initiated in order to allow unemployed workers the dignity of working for a wage, however small. (Wikipedia).

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When I was seventeen my father owned a TV repair business for a short time. It became my first clerical job. For the record, it is then he taught me about being in business, honestly. His selling the business and returning to working in interstate commerce meant I was eligible for Unemployment Compensation. My paternal grandmother was, shall we say, ‘dismayed’. “You’ll be the first member of our family going on the Dole”.

This was the attitude of people who reared families during the Depression. It was, at very best, a disgrace to have to take money from the government. I suppose in her mind only ‘poor white trash’ took the dole. Prevalent in America was a strong work ethic and sense of sacrifice for the common good. This attitude was both a strength and problem President Franklin Roosevelt faced when he came to office in 1932 at the depth of the Depression. There was little work to be had, plenty of sacrifice to be called for.

FDR’s solution was to attack on several fronts. One attack was to create jobs with something called Works Projects Administration (WPA). What a family friend called the “working poor army”. Among WPA projects thousands of men worked for room and board plus about $50 a month – part of which must be sent home. Out of WPA came an amazing amount of infrastructure progress. In this town it meant paved roads and a water system of which we still use part.

All, or at least a significant number of FDR’s projects ended with the beginning of World War II. But, Roosevelt had enabled the nation to survive. It took about eight years, but Roosevelt put people without hope to work, encouraged and financed arts, retained in America a sense of worth. And, it kept my grandparents off the dreaded “dole”. The outcome of all this was what Tom Brokaw coined “the greatest generation” – my father’s.

On the TV machine today we are informed $2800 ‘economic stimulus’ will soon be deposited automatically into our bank account. Those who desperately need this money will quickly see it disappear. Those of us who could easily live without it will get money which we neither needed nor earned. Guess the economy will be helped, this week. But, do find myself wondering if my grandmother might think of all this as America “going on the Dole”?

MINIMUM WAGE

THE MINIMUM SOLUTION

Expenses rise to meet and exceed income,

no matter what the income comes to be.

(paraphrased from “Law and the Profits” by E. Northcote Parkinson)

If the Raise the Wage Act of 2021 (S. 53, as introduced on January 26, 2021) is enacted at end of March 2021, it would raise Federal minimum wage in annual increments.  The wage would jump to $9.50 this year and reach $15 per hour by June 2025. (Wikipedia)

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The subject, may I say controversy, of minimum wage has come up again. As of this writing Congress is still debating (okay, fighting) over the matter. Talk is that if it is raised to $15/hour it will end poverty on earth forever, so some such argument.

In this uneducated, not-an-economist observation of little over 60 years, raising the minimum wage has never solved anything. Maybe he who is ignorant of history is solving the wrong problem? Or, maybe old men just get stuck in the past.

In the fifth grade (why do I remember these things?) our teacher explained the “wage-price spiral”. Apparently if wages go up, prices go up; if prices go up, wages go up. Who knew?

When I turned 16 a minimum wage of $1.15 per hour was paid this high school kid with no experience in anything. It had only recently been raised from $1 per hour. This raise, Congress assured, would solve the poverty problem on earth forever. About this time someone introduced me to McDonald's hamburgers, they were fifteen-cents – another nickle for cheese.

The last raise mandated by Congress was from $6.55 to $7.25 effective July 24, 2009. This increase of $.70 would certainly be the solution! At that time Computer Central had one employee to whom we were paying minimum wage, a 15 year old high school student who started his first job with us on a work-study program. We also had another employee who had been with us for a while. Our son Nathan insisted that to be fair the experienced employee should receive an equal raise. If you do the math, this was a total increase of $200 a month.

Employee #1 – $.70 X 20 hours X 52 weeks = $728

Employee #4 – $.70 X 40 hours X 52 weeks = $1456

Additional employer taxes (est) @ 10% = 216

Now, do the math with 1,000 employees or more.

We, as did almost every other business in America, raised our rates in order to stay in business. When was the last time a McD’s burger was fifteen-cents? For the record, Nathan did not take a raise.

In the sure and certain knowledge few will read my ramblings, and even fewer agree with anything I say, may I respectfully suggest raising wages leads to price increases.  If I have to raise what I pay you, I also will have to raise what it cost others to live. It’s only a matter of time before you’ll need more income. Why not have wages follow prices, instead of Congress arbitrarily pre-ordaining the rise in wages and thereafter prices?

Here’s the thing. I get Social Security. Each year it may or not be increased a small percentage because cost of living has or has not gone up. What if we’d do this with minimum wage, raises following cost of living? That is, minimum wages follow, but do not force prices up.

According to my fifth grade teacher if prices don’t go up, wages don’t go up; if wages don’t go up, prices don’t go up. Who knows, maybe my idea could break the wage-price cycle long enough to end poverty on earth forever!