Build Your McMansion With Your Own Money

Yesterday, Republican lawmakers rolled out their tax reform plan. It’s a complicated, multi-faceted bill with many moving parts, about which I haven’t yet formed an opinion. But there was one particular item that caught my attention, the limitation of the home interest deduction to $500,000. 

Question: How many people do you know who have a mortgage in excess of $500,000? Not very many, I bet. Someone with a mortgage that big would be someone quite wealthy. The payment on a mortgage of say, $750,000 would run somewhere around $3500 a month. I say, more power to ‘em. If someone has done well enough to want to build a big old house in the country somewhere and borrow that kind of money to do it, God Bless. This is America. Building big old houses is kinda what we do! 

But, let me ask you another question...why should the tax payer be forced to subsidize someone’s multi-million dollar McMansion? Why is Uncle Sam in the business of helping someone build their ten bedroom dream house? Why does someone wealthy and successful enough to build that ten bedroom house need the government’s help in the first place? These questions answer themselves. No reasonable person can justify this sort of tax giveaway with a straight face...but brace yourselves, the justifications are about to begin, and they will be loud, long and bipartisan.

First of all, the Home Builders and Realtor lobby groups will be apoplectic that this particular form of corporate welfare might disappear, for reasons that should be obvious. When the tax code provides subsidies to anyone and everyone who buys your product, with no limits, that’s a pretty sweet gig. But what is going to be hilarious will be the howls of protests coming from the Uber-wealthy status-home owners...from both ends of the political spectrum...who will be impacted by the loss of this freebie. All of those California Progressives who constantly lecture the rest of us for our opposition to out of control government spending, will scream like stuck pigs if they can no longer divert millions of tax payer funds away from poverty programs in order to provide them with their mortgage interest subsidy. Millionaire conservatives who ordinarily spend all their time extolling the virtues of self reliance, will wail like spoiled children if it looks like their mortgage interest free ride might end.

Listen, anyone who reads this blog knows my views on our tax code. What the Republican Party rolled out yesterday doesn’t even come close to my preferred reforms. Still,  I can understand the basic idea for the mortgage interest deduction..in theory. Originally, the notion was...home ownership is a net positive for people and the economy for a whole host of reasons. If the government can encourage home ownership by providing tax incentives, that would also be a net positive. Fine. But, somewhere along the line, like so many other government attempts at dogoodery, it went off the rails. A tax incentive designed to encourage first time home buyers and others for whom the purchase of a home was a colossal undertaking is one thing, allowing the likes of Barbara Streisand to stick the tax payers with the bill for her California dream home and the 10 million dollar mortgage that comes with it...is something else altogether.

Far be it from me to criticize anyone’s desire to build a mansion. But, if you’re wealthy enough to do so...do it with your own money.

Hollywood’s Comeuppance

First, it was the news media. Fox News titans Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, seemingly overnight brought low by women coming forward with charges of sexual harassment. The left coast elites were publically apoplectic with outrage, and privately overjoyed that these two high profile conservative stars were getting exposed for being scumbags. But, over the past couple of weeks, the worm has turned. Now, high profile liberal stars are are being ratted out by suddenly emboldened female accusers. Mark Halperin, of NBC News, Hamilton Fish from the New Republic, Lockhart Steele from Vox, and even Michael Oreskes from the sainted NPR, find themselves under a cloud of suspicion. Apparently, piggish sexual perverts are a bipartisan lot.

Then, Hollywood found itself in the embarrassing position of having one of its premier kingmakers, exposed as a serial rapist. Harvey Weinstein went from literally being referred to as God from the stage at the Academy Awards more times than the ...actual God, to being banned for Life in less time than it normally takes for a George Clooney movie to bomb. Speaking of Clooney, his name now appears on a growing list of hot shot Hollywood A-listers being accused of sexual harassment or worse. Along with Clooney, there’s Ben Affleck, Dustin Hoffman, and Kevin Spacey. Andy Dick, and Casey Affleck are on the list too, although describing them as A-listers might be a stretch. When I say that this list is growing what I mean is that it’s growing like a wild fire in the hills of Santa Monica. Now that it suddenly appears that public opinion is squarely in the corner of the accuser in the sexual harassment business, it’s become a seller’s market. Next week this time, I’d be willing to lay odds that the list will have doubled in size. Practically since I sat down to write this, two more big wig Hollywood producer types have been forced to hire a crack team of lawyers. Chris Savino of Nickelodeon fame, along with Amazon Studios head honcho, Roy Price are now in the sexual harassment crosshairs. What in the name of Cecil B Demille is going on here??

I don’t know. I’m not sure why now, of all times, the scumbags that have always ruled Hollywood are being exposed. Make no mistake, men behaving badly isn’t exactly a news flash. Hollywood men behaving badly is practically a proverb, something that has always been. The fact that suddenly it’s all blowing up in their faces is a mystery. But, frankly, it couldn’t possibly have happened to a better group of guys! Honestly, there’s nothing in this world quite so satisfying as watching a pompous, arrogant, elitist, entitled Hollywood gasbag get their comeuppance. These stars presume to lecture the hicks out in flyover country every chance they get about everything from global warming to tax policy, from foreign policy to the 2nd amendment. To them, we are all a bunch of provincial rubes, hopelessly clinging to our guns and the square, outdated morality we inherited from our even more square and outdated parents and grandparents. They look down their perfectly sculpted, libertine noses at our quaint little monogamous lifestyles and think, Oh, how perfectly adorable. And now the empty husk of their squalid existence is being laid bare by the women they oppressed on their way up the mountain. This is the very definition of poetic justice. Pass the popcorn.

Will there ultimately be some liars among the female accusers? Absolutely. Are some of these accusers simply jumping on the bandwagon for attention? Maybe. But my trick knee tells me that most of these women are telling the truth. Men hold the power, especially in Hollywood. The sort of men who have risen to prominence in the long history of that town suggests that these accusers are probably not even telling the half of it. I say, believe the woman, no matter how many men they take down. 

I can’t wait until the Academy Awards show next year. I can’t wait for the self righteous speeches, and the political lectures. But mostly, I can’t wait to see how many men will be left to hand out Awards or even to receive any. Maybe we will have all female winners. How cool would that be?

Halloween, Then and Now

Tonight is Halloween. I hate Halloween. I hate it because it makes me feel old. It reminds me of what my Halloween nights used to be like, when Pam and I took turns walking these adorable pups around the neighborhood. Now, we sit on the front steps trying to keep Lucy contained behind us, while a parade of other people's adorable kids troop by. Most of them are the sweetest things you've ever seen, but there's always a few knuckleheads, kids who cant be bothered with actually saying, Trick or Treat!! They just stand there, with bags thrust towards us making their silent little demands. Then there's always the older teenagers, shameless leaches, who throw some lame excuse for a costume on at the last minute to horn in on the free candy action. Some dork will come up wearing a t-shirt with a giant vegetable on the front and when you ask this interloper what they're dressed as, they'll say, I'm supposed to be, like...irony. Then you smile and say, Well, ironically enough,....no candy for you, moron!

It's not really that I hate Halloween. It's more accurate to say that I miss it. I miss the days when the little ones were my little ones. Reason number 117 why I need grandchildren!!

But, there's one other thing about Halloween that gets in my craw a bit. When I was a kid, and even when my children were kids, Halloween was exclusively a kids thing. But, like so many other great things in this world that were made for kids, grownups have appeared out of nowhere to ruin everything. It seems like all of a sudden everywhere I look there are fully grown men and women running around dressed in extravagant costumes, throwing their own adult-themed Halloween parties. Men caked up with makeup and glitter, dressed like their favorite Star Wars character, women dressed as slutty versions of otherwise innocuous characters. Oh, look...its Jill from accounting dressed like what Hillary Clinton would look like if she were a hooker! Its one thing when college kids do stuff like this. That's to be expected, I suppose. But when you see some 50 year old suburbanite walking down the street, dressed like Donald Trump with an inflatable likeness of Sean Hannity with his lips attached to Trump's ample backside, well...(actually, that's a bad example since that would be hysterical).

...wait a minute, I wonder if I've got time to throw something together....

A Beautiful Paradox

When Brian McCann hit a home run in the bottom of the 8th inning to put the Astros up 12-9, I finally gave in to sleep. I had a long day ahead of me. It was midnight. Besides, I reasoned, how much more gut wrenching drama could one ball game possibly produce? This will go down as one of the dumbest rhetorical questions I have ever asked myself. How much more gut wrenching drama, you ask?

So, the Dodgers, who had already blown one 4 run lead and one 3 run lead, calmly went out in the 9th inning and scored 3 runs to tie the game. By the time the bottom of the 10th inning rolled around, and despite having already stormed back from being 4 down against Clayton Kershaw, a mortal lock for the Hall Of Fame once his career is over, and having already stormed back a second time courtesy of a 3 run homer off the bat of the Mighty Mouse Of Baseball...5’6” Jose Altuve, now in order to win this game, they would have to do it against the best closer in the game, Kenley Jansen. Enter Alex Bregman, a rookie who laced a single to center field to score a pinch runner from second to put an end to this video game style World Series game. The first time these two starting pitchers went out there in game one, the whole thing was over in 2 hours and 28 minutes. This time, the issue was decided 5 hours and 17 minutes after the first pitch. Nobody in the raucous arena they call Minute Maid Park was complaining.

If either one of these teams were my team, I would have watched every second of it, no matter how long it took. The fact that I went to bed and missed the crazy finish is something I’m not proud of, as a baseball fan. But, whatcha gonna do? This World Series has already been about as good as this game gets...and it’s not over. If the Dodgers manage somehow to pull themselves up off the mat to win Tuesday night to force a game seven...I’ll watch to the bitter end. I’m not a fan of either team, but I wouldn’t dream of missing it. It’s baseball, the most dramatic, pressurized team sport ever created, a sport where no individual player is indispensable, yet this thouroughly team game ultimately comes down to a series of individual battles...pitcher vs. hitter. It’s a paradox, but a beautiful one.

What Type Are You?

Every five years or so the geeks over at the Pew Research Center come out with their survey of American political thought or, to use their preferred phraseology...typology. This is an expensive undertaking and their methodology is strong, as it involves extensive interviews with over 5,000 of us on a wide variety of subjects. According to their findings, Americans are now divided into nine distinct camps or factions as follows:

Democrats:

16%...Solid Liberals

12%...Opportunity Democrats

14%...Disaffected Democrats

9%.....Devout and Diverse

Republicans:

13%...Core Conservatives

6%.....Country First Conservatives

12%...Market Skeptic Republicans

11%...New Era Enterprisers

If you’re doing the math, you’ll notice that these percentages do not add up to 100%. That’s because the people at Pew had a hard time coming up with a snappy name for the remaining misfits and their widely diverse views. So, they added one catch all category:

8%...Bystanders

You’ll need to read their 152 page summation to learn what constitutes each of these categories, what makes someone Devoutly Diverse, or a New Era Enterpriser I’m sure would make for fascinating reading. But, I’m more interested in this Bystander group, which from their brief description sounds like a smorgasbord of political crackpottery. They go into zero detail, unfortunately, which leaves me free to spectulate. What kind of people make up this 8% of the American population at this tumultuous time in our history? 

7%.....Those holding out for the Return of Elvis so he can take his rightful place as President of the Trilateral Commission

13%...Patriots So Thoroughly Embarassed By Politics They Have Withdrawn From The Public Square In Horror

9%.....Law Abiding, Tax Paying Citizens Who Desperately Want To Be Left Alone

16%...People Not In To Politics Because Christ Will Return Any Second Now

11%...People Who Will, like...Totally Support Whichever Candidate Who Promises To Legalize Marijuana

17%...Guns

14%...People Who Want Some Politician To Demand That Churches Go Back To Singing The Old Hymns

13%...People Who Think It Would Be Better For Everybody If The Gays Were All Forced To Move To Vermont

Why Did I Leave Maine?

The month of October is nearly over. For me, the 2017 version has been a miserable slog, made infinitely worse by the fact that it followed a sublime September spent in Maine. As I have weathered each absurd storm which has blown through our lives these past four weeks I have often asked myself, Why did you ever leave Maine? Of course, this question is only rhetorical, since it’s answer is obvious...I don’t live in Maine, I only vacation there. My house, my job, and my life is here. Still, consider the series of disasters which have befallen me and my family since I arrived back in Short Pump on September 30, 2017:

September 30...Our dishwasher flooded the kitchen, kicking off a whirlwind couple of weeks which featured loud machines running 24/7, the ripping out of hard wood flooring, a deluge of contractors and claims adjusters fighting out the details of our claim, and a promise that all will be well before Thanksgiving...if there are no complications.

October 2...One man, armed with nearly thirty weapons, unleashed a rain of fire from his hotel room on a crowd in Las Vegas gathered at a country music concert. 58 souls perished and over 500 were wounded. And now, just three weeks later, nobody, and I mean nobody, is even talking about it anymore.

October 9...A mere 60 Days after the fact, I receive the final bill from Henrico Doctor’s Hospital for my 24 hour stay in their facility. The total bill came in a ham sandwich shy of $30,000. At the bottom of the bill in cheerful green type was the happy sum of $3,450 right next to the words, Patient’s responsibility. 

October 19...I spent a delightful afternoon waging a losing battle with a bank and an out of state bureaucracy over a lost car title, which resulted in me having to pay off my son’s car in order to obtain a clear title which I will then have to transfer to his name, and send it to him via some as yet uninvented teleportation device which can insure actual delivery without getting lost by some state government employee. In the meantime, my son gets pulled over again for driving on expired tags.

October 25...My daughter’s beloved dog came down with a high fever and other troubling symptoms which required a multi-night stay at a specialty care facility. In said facility it was determined that poor Jackson had food poisoning. The good news seems to be that he will be ok. The bad news is the bill is a ridiculous amount of money, and since I don’t have their permission to reveal just how ridiculous, let me just say that what they are having to pay for Jackson’s care was only a ham sandwich less than I paid for my first semester’s tuition at Universaity of Richmond in 1977.

There you have it. In the first 26 Days since I returned from Maine, we have been hit with one thing after another. Money has been flying out of my wallet faster than starlets out of Harvey Weinstein’s hotel suite....faster than Trump types out Tweets with his tiny little fingers...faster than a post season appearance by the Washington Nationals.

Tell me again...why did I leave Maine?

A Sick Dog Is The Worst...

Meet my Grandpup, Jackson. He belongs to my daughter and her husband. He is 2 and a half, a big, clumsy, lovable English Creme Golden Retriever. Almost every week they send us pictures of this crazy dog doing some dorky thing or another. He and Lucy are great pals. To know Jackie-Jack is to love him. My daughter and her husband are smitten.

And now, he is sick.

A few days ago he suddenly became listless, uninterested in his food, and began to run a fever. Once the drooling began and the fever got worse, they took him to the Vet. Antibiotics were given and he was kept overnight for observation. No improvement. $800.

Now, several tests are being administered at an emergency center for pets where more specialized care is brought to bear. $1500.

Still no dependable diagnosis. Fever still high. Still not eating. Next steps are uncertain at this hour. $ ????

Here’s the thing. Everyone wants a dog, and why not? They are amazing animals which offer the type of loving companionship that we all desire. They are adorable. They make your life better, happier, more fulfilled. They offer hours of entertainment, unshakable loyalty, and unconditional devotion. But, they are expensive.

Heartworm medication. Flea and tick control. Shots. Checkups. More shots. Kennels. Food. Toys. Allergy shots. 

In the eleven years that we had our beloved Molly, we spend more on her ongoing care than we spent on medical bills for our two human children...combined. Molly was probably the finest dog in the history of that species, but she had a host of allergy issues that wound up costing us a small fortune. But, we paid it, gladly, because she became a cherished member of our family and I never could have denied her the best care. Of course, I could afford it. Younger couples trying to establish themselves in the world? Not so much. But, what do you do? Your beautiful, loyal friend gets sick, you look into their eyes, feel their anguish...then you pay what needs to be paid to make her well again.

When I hear people say, But, it’s just a dog, part of me,(a very small part), understands. When I was growing up, I had a long list of dogs: Roman, Prince Abbiba, Lassie, and Zach, none of which ever made a trip to a Vet. Most were outdoor dogs. Whenever they got sick, they either got over it on their own or wandered off into the woods and died. That sounds brutal to write but it’s just the way it was when I was a kid. Of course, we didn’t live in the suburbs then, and they did get rabies shots,(I think), but it was a different world. So I get it when people shrug and say, it’s just a dog. But, have you ever noticed that the people who say that sort of thing almost never have dogs? 

So, I am on pins and needles today, waiting for news from Columbia about Jackson. For Kaitlin and Jon, and us, he’s not just a dog. He’s a cherished member of our family who spreads joy and happiness to everyone he meets. Our family picture albums are chocked full of pictures of him and Lucy precisely because they are both part of what makes us a family.