The Gala

Ok, I have steadfastly refused all of the baubles that society throws at you for attaining a certain age. AARP has probably sent me a couple dozen congratulatory letters since I turned 55 years old, extolling the virtues of their parasitic lobbying organization. I have thrown all of them directly in the trash, all of them unopened. I have accepted no senior discounts for anything. I have never hit from the senior tees. No bluebird specials have been indulged. However...with the passage of enough years comes the roll of lovable curmudgeon, and I can assure you all...I am up for that challenge. In light of this truth, a few observations about the events of the past 24 hours...

Last night's Teacher of the Year Gala, held at the Columbia Convention Center, was fully funded by BMW, a big South Carolina employer who has chosen to engage the public by generously supporting K-12 education. The winner receives the use of a beautiful new car, which was displayed ostentatiously in the hall. There was an open bar, the attire was formal. Despite what was billed as a celebration of the 81 finest teachers(out of over 50,000)of 2017 throughout the State, I've seen more celebratory proceedings at a county board of supervisors meeting. Actually, that's a lie, since wild horses couldn't drag me to a board of supervisors meeting, so I have no first hand knowledge of what their meetings are like. But I have a working imagination and something tells me I'm not far off.

I loved meeting Kaitlin's principal. Seriously cool guy. The other people at our table were nice. But, once the proceedings began, it was like watching paint dry while wearing sandpaper underwear. I made three trips to the bathroom to prevent boredom-induced spontaneous combustion. There was a local news anchor personality with a sing song voice doing the MC honors. She did the very best she could with a program which seemed put together by the same committee that gave us C-SPAN. There was a very old heiress type who made a presentation. There was an interview conducted between some suit and last year's Teacher of the Year along with this year's Supervisior of the Year. This was done while we were finally allowed to eat, so the acoustics were horrible. Of course the Supervisor of the Year helped out by pointing his hand held mic at the back wall while speaking.

Then the featured speaker took the stage, and impressive man who held both a PhD in Medicine from Harvard Medical school as well as a Doctorate from MIT. Oh, and he was an astronaut. I assume that the point of his presentation was to highlight the fact that this amazingly accomplished man was a product of South Carolina public schools. Instead, there were pictures of weightless men and women floating around the inside of the Space Shuttle, and a slide that showed us just how tiny Earth is compared to the rest of the Universe....which was all great, but the dude didn't seem even slightly interested in the subject at hand, i.e.. the education of South Carolinian students by the capable people filling his audience.

Maybe I'm asking too much. But, if I had been in charge of planning this gala, there would have been loud music, at least one high school dance troop, couple of clowns, a paid comic, several blooper reels from past galas and somebody, anybody capable of inspiration.

...which I suppose is exactly why I'm never in charge of this sort of thing.

An Eerie Dream

I had a crazy dream last night. It was one of those terribly realistic dreams where you remember every detail when you wake up. It felt like the dream ended precisely at the moment when my eyes opened and I was suddenly wide awake. It felt so real that I immediately grabbed my cell phone to check the news and confirm it to be true. I dreamed that Tiger Woods had killed himself.

To my great relief I discovered that it was just a dream. Tiger is alive and well. But, when I first woke up, I would have bet the house that he was dead.

In the dream, I was at my office when my phone rang. I let it go to voice mail since I was with a client at the time. But then it rang again...and again. Somebody was really trying to get in touch with me. So, I apologized to my client, explaining that I had to answer the call. As soon I picked up the phone, in that dream sequence sort of way, my client disappeared and the friend who was calling appeared at my office window to inform me that Tiger Woods had committed suicide and it was all over the news. I thanked him(?) for the heads up, then hung up and started searching the Internet. Sure enough, there were stories about Tiger's tragic end everywhere, including pictures of the paramedics at the scene. There was a huge story in Golf Digest. I read well written paragraphs, some adoring and some critical. I scanned through the comments sections of these stories and saw the same, some lamenting his loss, others talking about reaping what you sow. Everything I read felt so authentic.

I've never been a huge Tiger fan. He's great. Golf is more fun to watch when he's playing. But, I never much cared for him. He seemed too robotic, too cold blooded killer for my taste. Listening to his press interviews after his latest win always left me cold. It's like he expected to win, so what's the big deal? When he backed his Buick into that fire hydrant in 2009, I must admit to the uncharitable thought that ran through my mind...Maybe this will wipe that smugness off his face...a terrible thing to think at the time and a thought that I am ashamed to have had. Since that epic failure, times have been hard for Tiger. He just recently endured his eighth back surgery and in all likelihood is finished as a professional golfer. He will be lucky to be able to walk without pain, let alone swing a golf club. Add to this the loss of his marriage, and Tiger Woods is actually the sort of person where a suicide attempt would be believable, I suppose. But after this astonishingly real dream, I wish the man every success in the world.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I'll be working from home this morning waiting on the Guirkin Man. Spring AC checkup scheduled and the upstairs unit not functioning properly...which is no dream. Trust me on this...if my wife has to endure even one night of no AC in 90 degree heat, my life will become a nightmare!!!

Educrats

Short week. Headed to SC to see oldest receive award at fancy gala👩🏼‍🏫🎩. Much to do next 2 days.

Ten years from now, the above sentence will be what the written word will have devolved to thanks to Twitter and texting. Adjectives and adverbs will have been completely replaced with emojis by 2025. 😫

But seriously, this will be a short week. I will have two days of manic activity at the office so I can spend the rest of the week visiting with my daughter down in Columbia. Funny story. Last year, she won the Teacher of the Year award for her school, then followed that up with a TOY award for her district. Pam and I attended the awards banquet where that second honor was bestowed and it came as a shock to all of us. It was quite an honor to win such an award after only four years in the teacher business. A year has passed. Her duties as TOY have been quite extensive, and oddly, they have just begun. You see, in the education business, everything is counterintuitive. Educrats are a breed apart. Apparently, when you win a TOY award, your "term" lasts for three years. The first year you're essentially a TOY in training. This entails adding roughly three hours a day to your normal ten hour work day doing education-y things which have nothing to do with teaching. The second year, you actually serve as the TOY, which as far as I can tell involves making several unpaid speeches and serving on a dozen unpaid committees. Finally, year three arrives and with it the coveted title, Teacher of the Year Emeritas, another unpaid position, whereby you help train the poor sap who has been selected as that year's TOY. As you can see, this title is quite the honor, and quite the boon for the district central office since it's like they gain a new part time unpaid employee for three years! I say unpaid, when actually that isn't true. I am told that this weekend Kaitlin will finally receive her TOY stipend...a check for a thousand dollars, which by my rough calculations works out to about $3.14 an hour for the extra work she has inherited since her big "win." When she recently learned that she had fallen just short of being a finalist for State Teacher of the Year, screams of delight could be heard all the way up here in Short Pump!

Be this as it may, I am still super proud of my daughter and her husband, and am grateful to get the chance to spend a few days with them. Lucy will be coming with us. Since the awards gala will be held at a fancy hotel in downtown Columbia, the educrats are actually putting them up for the night...so Pam and I will serve as dog sitters Wednesday night. Then on Thursday night, she has some other function to attend with Jon, so we will have a pizza and hang out with the dogs again. The rest of the weekend will be an educrat-free environment which will involve lots of fun stuff and good food.

Waves

It has been my experience in this life that bad news tends to arrive in waves. Disturbances in life always bring friends along. Trouble seems to travel in packs.  One bad thing seems to usher in the next bad thing in rapid succession, then after the tumult has passed, order is restored and life returns to happy normalcy. I could sit around for days contemplating why this is so, pondering the randomness of life, but that way lies something close to madness. There are just things that you shouldn't spend a lot of time thinking about. Why does the sun rise in the east and set in the west? See, I wouldn't spend much time worrying about that one. It just doesn't matter. Well, neither does the entire subject of the vicissitudes of life.

And yet, sometimes, when you're in the midst of a bit of a losing streak, thinking can overcome you. For me it's been a combination of big changes in my profession which are far beyond my control, stupid unforced errors involving bill paying, and a variety of stress-induced physical ailments. The third problem is directly linked to the first and largely beyond my ability to control. But, what in the name of Warren Buffet was I thinking this month paying my bills? This is the wave thing I was talking about. Bad stuff comes in waves!

So, for what seems like an eternity, I have had two separate and distinct Verizon accounts, one which covers all of the family cell phone usage, and a second which pays for my cable service and land line. (As an aside, the last time I made or received a call on this land line thing was probably when my kids were still in high school...). Now, I have tried on several occasions to get the fine people at Verizon to combine these two bills into one for my convenience, but have been met with a stone wall of yarns, tall tales, and prevarications about why this thing I ask is impossible. Apparently, these two different divisions of the Verizon colossus are separated by a Chinese firewall, the likes of which no man has ever been allowed to see. When talking to Verizon, it's almost impossible to get either one to even acknowledge the other. It's like every time the subject of the other Verizon organization comes
up, somebody lowers the cone of silence over our conversation...

Anyway, I put up with this largely because we have always had good luck with them. Our cable almost never doesn't work and our cell phone coverage and service is impeccable. But, this month when it was time to pay Verizon number 1, I did so via my nifty Wells Fargo bill pay app. Two weeks later, when Verizon number 2 was due I duly paid the bill...but inadvertently applied it to Verizon number 1's slot in the app, no doubt causing squeals of delight over at Verizon Wireless, but sending the guys at Verizon Communications to crank up the old email alert system accusing me of being a deadbeat customer. Alert!!! Alert!!! Your account is past due!! Immediate action must be taken!! Then, to make matters worse, I completely forgot about an automatic deduction that comes out every month on the exact same day...I just forgot! Of course, there wasn't enough money in the account, so my overdraft protection kicked in. But it was so stupid. Are you kidding me? That deduction comes out the same day every month, and I have never once forgotten....until April, 2017.

I mean, it's an easy fix and all, but this is the sort of thing that can send you into despair when it comes on the heals of other problematic stuff. It's like, what, have I forgotten how to be an adult all of a sudden? What is wrong with me??

A Painful Awareness

The Bible warns of the corrosive properties of envy. Webster defines it this way...a painful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage. My Mother, who always provided me with the real world working definition of sin, described it as the classless inability to rejoice in a friend's good fortune. Either way...envy=bad.

So, let me be clear that it isn't envy which motivates me to write what follows, more like a desire for some good old fashioned consistency.

When I learned that former President Obama had signed a deal to give a speech to Wall Street banker, Cantor Fitzgerald, for the tidy sum of $400,000, my first thought was, man-o-man are the Clinton's gonna be pissed. That's dang near twice what they make for a thirty minute speech!! My second thought was, wonder what Bernie Sanders will have to say about this? But then, my less knee jerk response was more contemplative. I marveled at how quickly the tide turns in this life.

All of my adult life the Democratic Party has railed against the monied interests. Forget my life, the Democratic Party has been demonizing the rich since Andrew Jackson. Wall Street fat cats have been the single favorite punching bag for these people. It's as reliable as death, taxes, and Spurs win!! Actually, that's fine as far as it goes...monied interests can be a troublesome bunch, and sometimes Wall Street fat cats have indeed been a pox on this Republic. But watching career politicians eagarly cashing checks from the very people who they made their reputations trashing is the stuff of grim irony. Not to worry though...I hear that Elizabeth Warren is "concerned," and I'm sure she will remain so right up to the very minute she cashes her first speech check.

President Obama has done quite well since becoming President, having made 15 million from the sale of his three books. Even now he and wife Michelle are about to sign what is rumored to be a 60 million dollar book deal.  Add to this not one, but two $400,000 speech fees, the second from an adoring A&E network crowd, and suddenly the befuddled observer has to wonder about these words
from the former community organizer:

"I mean, I do think that at some point you've made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you're providing a good product or providing a service."

I will assume that the President is now in the service business, and I am confident that as soon as he gets to that point...he'll let us all know where exactly it is.

Until then, I congratulate the President for proving that the American Dream is still alive and well.

Get Ready For the Lying Olympics

I am so fired up right now. I haven't been this excited since Christmas morning, 1964. Seriously, the next several weeks are going to be awesome...Trump just released his tax reform plans, and you know what that means. "Let loose the dog's of hypocrisy," someone will shout, and the full flowering of literally everything that is wrong with Washington DC will be laid bare before our very eyes and ears. You're going to need a scorecard to keep up with all the flip flops, prevarications, disingenuousness and flat out whoppers on display everywhere across the political spectrum. I've prepared a cheat sheet to make it easier for you...

Republicans 

When you hear one of these people downplay the negative impacts of deficits and the National Debt, you are being scammed. When Obama was in the WH, the skyrocketing national debt was a travesty.

Whenever you hear any Republican say that a giant infrastructure spending plan will add some multiple of value for every dollar spent, you are being scammed, since when any Democrat said the same thing over the past twenty years they screamed that the spending multiplier was a myth.

Democrats

When you hear a Democrat professing grave concern about ballooning debt and out of control deficits, you are being scammed, since over my entire lifetime they have exhaustively proven that they couldn't possibly care less about debt, or deficits.

No matter what is actually in Trump's tax plan, it will be excoriated as a giveaway to the rich. Even if it could be proven that 99.9% of the tax cuts were going to the poor, it wouldn't matter. It's a giveaway to the rich if even one rich guy gets one dime of tax relief. You could look it up.

In other words, our politicians have absolutely no credibility on this issue, but that won't stop them from catawauling back and forth debating tax policy. It will be infuriating to watch, but I won't be able to avoid it since it will be everywhere. By the time it filters down to social media, it will be even more garbled and partisan than ever. Rich vs. poor. Blue state vs. Red state.

I know what you're thinking, ok Smarty-pants, what's your plan?? Well, for starters, I'm just a private citizen so therefore, it's not my job to have a plan. But since you asked...

A flat tax would do quite nicely, thank you. The rate could be negotiable...15, 17%? Exempt the first 30,000 or so of income to protect the poor from having to actually pay federal income tax. To prevent the rich and connected from weaseling out of their obligations by paying an army of accountants to hide their income, eliminate all deductions. After all, that's what a flat tax is...a flat rate for everyone,  with no deductions. But Doug, but Doug, some rich people would end up paying less!! So what? Many more would end up paying a lot more since carried interest wouldn't be available as a tax dodge, and they could no longer have their McMansion subsidized by the rest of us. But Doug, but Doug, a flat tax would lower revenue to the government!! So what? I've had MY revenue lowered by the government plenty of times and guess what...I adjusted. So will they. By the way, I've done the math, and I would wind up paying more under a flat tax with no deductions, than I do now...and I'm still for it!

Before you start ripping a flat tax, ask yourself this question. If by instituting one you could, as a bonus, do away with all of this infuriating weasel language coming out of Washington for the next couple of months, wouldn't that alone make it worth doing??

Ann Coulter and Free Speech

The First Amendment, specifically free speech, is taking a beating lately. It is a striking reality of our times that in an era of proliferating free speech delivery systems (the one I'm using right now being unimaginable twenty years ago), the old fashioned, retail variety is getting hammered. Witness the unseemly spectacle unfolding at Berkeley.

Writing a blogpost defending the likes of Ann Coulter is much like kissing your sister, appropriate at times, but highly unsatisfying. In the early days of her ascendancy, I liked her books and even bought a few. She was fresh and provocative and the women had a flair for the biting phrase. She had a swashbuckling style which appealed to the bomb-throwing cynic in me. But, with each passing year she has been transformed into something outlandish, a cartoon character committed to nothing higher than being noticed. Her views have taken on a nastier, more brutish tone, and I have soured on her schtick. Of course, it's possible that she hasn't  changed at all, but rather I have changed over the years. Nevertheless, Ann Coulter has the right to speak at a tax-payer funded institution of alleged higher learning if she is invited.

There are people out there who hold views which I find infuriating and unconscionable. There are people who, when given the chance, disparage my country with the vilest slanders imaginable. According to these sort of people, my country is the focus of evil in the world. America, in their telling is a lying bully, roaming around the world sowing discord. We are responsible for all of the world's problem because of our capitalism, our consumerism, our power. They give us and our 240 year history no credit for anything positive, in fact, have created cottage industries out of revising the history of this nation to turn every good thing we have ever accomplished as a people into something unrecognizable. Diabolical motives are assigned to every positive development. The Founders? Nothing more than rich, slave-holding men with white privilege trying to enrich themselves. The Bill of Rights? An overhyped, veiled attempt to restrict the power of the government. Fighting a Civil War to end slavery? Nothing noble about that, just a bunch of money grubbing oligarchs trying to expand their markets. Democracy? Nothing more than a bourgeois obstacle to be overcome in the long arduous journey towards the utopia which will be the worldwide victory of the Proletariat and the glorious future of Communism.

People who believe these things stand at lecterns every single day in Universities all over this country. Many of them enjoy tenure. No matter how far out of the "mainstream" of contemporary thought they might be, their positions are secure, their right to spread their views unchallenged.

But, somebody invite Ann Coulter to speak to a couple hundred people, and all hell breaks loose.

Here's the thing. When I was in college, occasionally I would have to sit through a lecture given by a Marxist. I would listen. It was uncomfortable. I objected to most of what was said, but I listened. Mostly because I had no choice. I was a captive audience, because he was my Professor. I am aware of no requirement that anyone at Berkeley has to attend Ms. Coulter' speech. If  Angela Davis had been invited to campus when I was there, wild horses couldn't have dragged me to hear her. But, it never would have occurred to me back in 1980 to try to prohibit Angela Davis from speaking. This is what I don't understand about the modern University experience. If someone with whom you disagree gets invited to speak, you have to make an ass out of yourself by shouting him down? What's so liberal about that value? That's just acting like a spoiled child.

Here's my suggestion for the leftist radicals at Berkeley....let the woman speak. Then go back to class and be comforted by the next lecture in your America As Cultural Rapist class.