Alibi for Ignorance - New Blog

It finally happened.  Last June I gave up trying to make this a tax commentary.  There are several reasons, but mostly because it just isn't as much fun as a writing a general social-political commentary.

My new blog  - Alibi for Ignorance - is at

http://alibiforignorance.blogspot.com  HERE.

I didn't post at all in July and only once in August.  I'll get back on track with my writing starting today.  

Please bookmark my new site but don't delete the bookmark for this one just yet.  You may want to double-check something that I wrote and remind me of just how wrong I was.

See you at the new blog.

Chuck

* * * * *

I really don't want to say good-bye to any of you people.

Christa McAuliffe - American Heroine

Pennsylvania Today... You're Next

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

Back in April Pennsylvania's gov. Ed Rendell said "Budget shortfall?  We ain't got no budget shortfall."  Or something along those lines, as I noted HERE and HERE.  

And no way could it be a bil, nosirree.  Why, it was only $700 mil just two months ago.  A BIL by June 30?  Fageddaboutit.

He was kinda right, too.  It ain't gonna be a bil.  Nope, gonna be TWO BIL, is what it's gonna be.  May's tax revenue was short another $125 mil, but who coulda seen THAT coming?  Not Ed, not through his rose-colored glasses and bullet-proof windows.  On Friday he lost another $825 mil outta next year's budget in fedMed extension stimulus funds that the prez had promised.  Next year isn't looking all that good in Penn and it starts in, um, 21 days.

BTW, wasn't the stim supposed to be about the private sector and "Jobs, jobs, jobs!" (thank you NancyP) and not about propping up state and local gummints?  But I digress.

Last month Ed and his budget director told Penns that the deficit was only gonna be maybe $750 mil.  He had previously promised a surplus but chalk that up to political enthusiasm, not real-life lying.  In only 60 days the def went from $700 mil to $2.1 bil.  

What the heck do they pay those guys for?  The deficit TRIPLED in two months!  Thank God for huge pensions.  Ed's gonna need his.  Imagine how bad this woulda been if Ed hadn't been working his tail off.

So what's the cure?  The Penn legislature thinks they have the answer.  Yep, sin taxes... on cigars and chewing tobacco.  Stogies and cooze, sure thing, that oughta do it.  

But, you know, what happens if people actually cut back as a result of sin taxes?  Wouldn't that be a problem, with less revenue and all as a result?  

This from pennbpc.org, trying to spin the new taxes:  "And, the best news is that a tax on smokeless tobacco and cigars will reduce consumption by younger Pennsylvanians, lowering long term health risks and potentially saving lives."   And, um, lowering that planned revenue?  And say, are you having THAT big a problem with kids smoking all those cigars?  

Sing it again, WilleN: "Run that by me one more time."   

They are HARD pressed for "the best news" in Philly these days.

Course, ArnieS would just pee his workout shorts for that small a deficit.  His is bigger than Ed's.  Deficit, I mean.  By a factor of ten. 

Wait!  Ed!  What about a tax on taking out the garbage?  What?  And put all those cigar-smokin' kids out of work?  How will they afford their smokes and pay all those sin taxes?

* * * * *

Number one I think we should impose a fee or tax on the transportation of trash per mile.

and

We've been working our tail off and lead by that example.

both:  Ed Rendell

Back Page News

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

It was on the back page of our local rag this morning.  You can be forgiven if you overlooked it, it was just an anniversary. OTOH, it was a pretty big event back in the day.  On this date 66 years ago more than 10,000 men died for you.  In one day, on one 50-mile stretch of beach. Think about it.

The anniversary of the invasion of Normandy was still a big event back in 1994, on the 50th.  I remember the allied leaders meeting on the beaches, saluting the vets, promising everlasting gratitude for their sacrifices.  Everlasting doesn't mean much these days.  There was a smaller celebration in 2004 and not much of anything this year.  What's left to say and who is there to say it to?  

Here's what they saw when the ramps dropped:

My friend Ray, gone now, went ashore on Omaha Beach the night before.  He departed a submarine in the English Channel, then he and his men rowed their rubber rafts ashore.  He was a combat engineer, a lieutenant, and his mission was to clear some assault paths between the maze of obstacles that the Germans had placed on the beaches in anticipation of the invasion.  It wasn't his first time on Omaha Beach.  He'd been there before.  

Granted, it was too little and too late to do much but they did their best.  When they were done they dug in  at the base of the cliffs of Pont du Hoc and waited first for the shelling, then for the invasion.  While he was at the base of the cliffs he could look directly behind at scenes like this, and he could help:

Then up the cliffs he went, becoming an ad hoc infantry platoon leader for the next few weeks until he re-joined an engineer unit.  He survived the invasion and the next 11 months of war but many of his men didn't. Here's a detail from a bronze at the National D-Day Memorial.  It's what he did when he climbed the cliff.  Take a good look.  He's doing it for you.

When you look back at Omaha Beach from the Normandy American Cemetery, you get a glimpse of the task that the invading armies faced:

Looking another direction, you can see the price they paid:

Say something to someone about Normandy today.  If you can find a D-Day vet, by all means thank him.  They're hard to find, though, and they don't often make known what they did.  But say something, to a neighbor maybe, or a friend.  Make sure your kids know about it, about them, about worlds that ended and worlds that opened up that day.  It's the least you can do.  We can never repay what we owe them but we can tell their story, the story that my newspaper failed to tell.

That back page article in today's paper?  It wasn't about the invasion, not really.  It was about the crumbling cliffs at Pont du Hoc, the cliffs that Ray hid below, then scaled.  The story?  They're eroding away, as all cliffs must, and the effort being made to restore them.  That was the best the AP could do, a story that could have been written on any other day, a story about eroding cliffs.  

The real story, of course, is of eroding memories, those of the participants and our own.  When we stop remembering events of such colossal world import, who will restore US?

No D-Day editorials today, either.  It has become politically inconvenient to acknowledge American sacrifices.  I could find only one other nod to D-Day in the paper:  Charles Schultz's immortal D-Day tribute, showing a photo of Ike exhorting his 101st Airborne troops on the afternoon of the 5th.  They would jump, and die, in just a few hours.  Snoopy is there, too, as everyman and representing all of us, geared up and looking at Ike.  The simple caption:

June 6, 1944 - To Remember - 

Thank you, Ray.  Thank you to all who served and fought and suffered.  I remember who gave my children their freedom. 

* * * * * 

Teach Your Children

by Graham Nash

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

[Counter Melody To Above Verse:
Can you hear and do you care and
Cant you see we must be free to
Teach your children what you believe in.
Make a world that we can live in.]

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.   

I remember the first time I heard that song, in 1970 in Vietnam.  It still affects me the same way it did then.  Click the title and watch the video.  

* * * * * 

HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY

A COMRADE IN ARMS

KNOWN BUT TO GOD

Memorial Day - 2010

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

It is Memorial Day weekend.  There are flags on new graves again this year, graves of men and women who did not imagine themselves dead as a result of combat this time last year.  New American martyrs who last year hoisted a cold one to those who could no longer join them but with whom they are now forever joined.  Before the end of this weekend there will be newly killed Americans to remember next year.  As ever was.

I always think of Larry Swarbrick, my friend the gentle giant, on Memorial Day.  He was killed in Vietnam, in a particularly mean way, forty years ago this coming August, ambushed in some God-forsaken place called Thua Thien Province.

You didn't know him.  Most of us alive today were then yet to be born.  I know almost no one who remembers him.  But I remember.  I hope I always will.  Allow me to introduce him:

If you were there, you know.

As happens every year, some will wish me a Happy Memorial Day.  I no longer take umbrage.  They care, at least enough to know that there's something about this day that should prompt them to say, well, something.  To someone.  Maybe to anyone who once wore the uniform.  You know, the uniform that most Americans have declined to wear. 

Barack Obama:  Didn't serve.  Claimed his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz in 1945.  Problem is, Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army.  Oops.  Claimed his grandpa enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor.  Nope, he didn't.  Claimed the same grandpa "marched in Patton's army."  Nope, didn't.  Oops and oops. 

Joe Biden:  "I didn't serve in Vietnam.  I don't want to make a Blumenthal mistake here." -- Jokingly, at Walter Reed Army Hospital this past May 25.  He didn't serve anywhere else, either.  The joke was on the patients. 

Bush 43:  Served in the reserves and without note. 

Dick Cheney:  "I was otherwise occupied."

"That Bill Clinton went to great lengths to avoid the Vietnam-era draft, that he used political connections to obtain special favors, and that he made promises and commitments which he later failed to honor, are all beyond dispute."  Snopes. 

Bush 41:  Served with honor in combat in WWII. 

Reagan:  Enlisted, then commissioned, honorable stateside service in WWII. 

Jimmy Carter:  Served with honor in a boomer. 

John Kerry:  I admit to a bias against, but he served honorably in combat.  I respect him for that and I do not question the nature of his service.

Even Elvis served, and with honor, back when it was compulsory and expected of all able-bodied men. He was otherwise occupied too, and he could have avoided serving.  Unless, that is, you believe that mega-stars can't buy their way out of most anything or that Col. Tom Parker didn't really have any pull in Tennessee.

I was otherwise occupied too, but I served.  My day of honor is November 11, not Memorial Day.  You can give me a brief nod of thanks then if you must, but not this weekend.  Please, not this weekend.  This weekend is for Larry Swarbrick, for Chance Phelps, for my dad.

Memorial Day is also for Sgt. Ed Rivera, although he didn't know it.  Sgt. Rivera died last Tuesday, May 25, at Bethesda Naval Hospital, of wounds he received at some God-forsaken place called Contingency Outpost Xio Haq, Afghanistan.  The same May 25, remember, that Joe Biden was making jokes about his own non-service just a few miles away.  Biden laughing, Rivera dying.  Could anything better illustrate our remove from the suffering of men and women who are giving so much for us?

Thank you Larry, Chance, Dad, Ed.  You gave all.  I will remember you this weekend. 

* * * * * 

Civilians seldom understand that soldiers, once impressed into war, will forever take it for the ordinary state of the world, with all else illusion.  The former soldier assumes that when time weakens the dream of civilian life and its supports pull away, he will revert to the one state that will always hold his heart.  He dreams of war and remembers it in quiet times when he might otherwise devote himself to different things, and he is ruined for the peace.  What he has seen is as powerful and mysterious as death itself, and yet he has not died, and he wonders why. -- Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War

Richard "Hulk" Blumenthal vs. Jeremy "The Fighting Sailor" Boorda

 

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

You've likely heard Richard Blumenthal say that he served in Vietnam.  No?  You can watch him HERE.  It's as unequivocal as a pol's words get.  No, he did NOT serve in Vietnam.  He was a Marine reservist who wasn't called to active duty for other than training.

OMG!  Politician's LIE?  Yes, sad to say they do.  DickyB isn't the first and there are countless more to come.  They are venal and, in the main, serve only themselves.  Poor us.  In his defense his campaign says he only told that particular lie, um, four times.  On the record where he could be video'd, that is.

Jeremy Boorda was the first man to rise from the ranks to become Chief of Naval Operations, our highest Navy office.  Adm. Boorda DID serve in Vietnam, and honorably.  Problem was, he later chose to wear a "V" device (for Valor) on a couple of low-level medal bars.  He wasn't authorized to do so and when he was exposed he killed himself in disgrace.

OMG!  CNOs lie?!  Yep, same answer.  We are all weak and we all fail. 

Should DickyB take the same way out?  Well, doesn't seem he WANTS out.  Yesterday he said "I have made mistakes and I am sorry. I truly regret offending anyone.''  But I have a chance to be a freakin' senator and I'm not going to let those lies get in my way!  (OK, I made the last sentence up.)

DickyB said "in Vietnam", not "during Vietnam."  I could overlook that once.  Maybe.  But four times?  Trust me, serving in Vietnam isn't something anyone ever gets confused about, except perhaps in senility.

Disclaimer:  I served in Vietnam.  No, really.  Hmmm, Oregon has senators too, and I haven't been caught in a public lie yet.  Maybe I oughta give it a shot.  Maybe something like "Vote for Chuck - You haven't caught him lying yet and he isn't faking his insignificant medals!"  Not much of a ring, I guess.  

Shouldn't lying to further one's political agenda disqualify you from public service?  Yes it should, but only if you think honesty should be a requisite trait of US senators. 

DickyB's got a good chance, too.  His one viable opposition candidate, an actual Vietnam vet with real medals, withdrew.  Now it's Linda McMahon, CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment.  

The good:  She is a VERY successful businesswoman and WAY rich.  

The bad:  Her entire industry is based on a lie.  The word "entertainment" in the company name means "Warning:  This isn't a real sport.  We know who's gonna win."  Oh, and she doesn't have any medals.

If I was to be caught in a lie, that's who I'd want running against me.  Might not be Linda but she's the GOP's choice for now.  DickyB:  "Yeah, well, my opponent's an even BIGGER liar and, er, um... she lied to your kids!"  Did not!  Did too!  Poor us.

One of these people is going to be a senator and, thus reinforced, will immediately believe her/himself destined for the presidency.  What has America done to deserve that?  I don't know who's going to win this election but I do know who's going to lose.

Hello, loser.

* * * * * 

I have made mistakes. I regret them. And I have taken responsibility ... But this campaign must be about the people of Connecticut.   

Richard Blumenthal 

I venture to say we're going to lay the smackdown on him come November.

Linda McMahon 

With lies you may get ahead in the world - but you can never go back.

Russian Proverb

An Oops from Mike Mullen

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

[Disclaimer:  I am a life member of the DAV]

Fox News reported today, after I wrote earlier about Mike Mullen's strange remarks:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has apologized to the Disabled American Veterans for a comment he made during an address to the Council on Foundations.

During the April 26 address, Adm. Mullen said non-profit groups, and not government, should take care of veterans.

Adm. Mullen said in a statement that it was a "poor choice of words."

"The point I was trying to make -- and perhaps not so eloquently -- is that the scope of the needs confronting our troops and their families is too great and too deep to be met only through the bureaucracy. Yes, the government must provide our veterans with educational opportunities, employment assistance and quality health care. But we must also recognize there are some needs best delivered and best administered at the local level," the statement read.

The Disabled American Veterans said it is the "exclusive responsibility of the federal government because it creates disabled

veterans."

MikeyM, you blamed the skipper of the USS Cole for an unforeseeable event to which, in fact, he responded well and in accordance with his training, such as it was (and his training was your responsibility).

Let's apply the same vague standard to you, Mike.  You, who never fired a shot in anger, slimed the entire universe of disabled vets and you did it on the record.  Now it's your time to go.  Go, Mikey.  Shoo.  Get off the porch.

Pennsylvania and Turkey

  

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

It only took a month for the Pennsylvania deficit to balloon from $700 mil to a bil.  If you can believe Gov. Ed Rendell (you can't) he couldn't possibly have predicted that last month.  See our April 4 column for details, such as they are.  NOW Ed wants "spending cuts, new taxes and revenue transfers" to address the problem.  Seems his income and corp tax forecasts were off by, oh, call it $376 mil.  Now the state senate is predicting a $1.5 bil deficit by... wait for it... the end of next month.  Nope, who coulda seen THAT coming?  Not Ed, that's for sure.

Good-bye Ed.

* * * * *

Sadly (and tellingly) for me, I neglected to write my Armenian Genocide column on April 24.  I wrote one a bit earlier but that's no excuse.  Remember that one?  And the one I wrote last year?  And my brief mention on March 12?  The inevitable has happened, as it is wont to do (Ed Rendell's myopia notwithstanding).  The Turkey-Armenia talks have broken down because, to no one's surprise, the Turks won't discuss their massacre of 1,500,000 Armenians.

And so it goes.  All those little kids' skulls and tiny skeletons in the desert?  You can just forget them.  Or you can try.  

There is plenty of shame to go around.

* * * * *

I see that Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thinks that gummint shouldn't be responsible for the care and treatment of wounded and disabled American military personnel.  Say WHAT?!  Yep, here's what he had to say as quoted in a DAV press release a day or two ago:

 "I am not arguing in any way, shape or form that this should be the purview of our government because what I would like to see happen is community outreach to [servicemembers] and the government just be out of it," Mullen said.

Last November MikeyM said, regarding the Ft. Hood shootings, "We're at a point now where we really have to move forward to aid those families, the wounded and those who are suffering so much... (T)hat's really where we are putting our main effort."

That was then, this is now.  Things can change in six months, as soon as the news cows move on to graze greener pastures.

I thought Mike was a good guy until that brain fart.  Try telling the soldier with a recent TBI (traumatic brain injury) that his local docs back home will be his primary care-givers from now on.  You know, because they've seen so much of that sort of thing.  

I keep hoping to see a correction or retraction ("Sorry, I must have been drunk" would do) but nothing yet.  Failing that, it's time to call for Mike's departure, with thanks for his previously honorable service.

* * * * *

There is no cannibalism in the British navy, absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount. -- Graham Chapman (of Monty Python)