Sunday, October 19, 2008

Plumbing the Depths

First, a little catch-up: I’ve been busy as hell.  I’d like to be posting more; hell, I’d like to be writing more.  I’ve actually been using my precious writing-time on the bus to do work lately, that’s how bad it’s gotten.  But mixed in with reading Partnership Grant applications and reassessing the evaluation protocols with my friends at the Courts and redesigning the office website and negotiating a new contract for the bargaining unit and trying to get a few more stories up on FieldReport and starting to negotiate the possibility of a for-money writing gig, and stuff, I’ve had a chance to cook up some candied pumpkin and get out to the Harvest Festival (photos forthcoming) and have a delightful supper with a bunch of bloggy folk at Dave Francisco (organized courtesy of Blogography, as for which, Thanks Dave and the cards are awesome) at a pretty cool restaurant that allowed me to be in North Beach two weekends in a row.  I’d be happy to share details if you care to ask but I’m assuming you DO NOT so let’s not bother you with that.  Instead, I want to offer you a joke, a tip, and a rant.  Yay trifecta!

I am considering starting a company to sell clothes for yuppie Israelis.  I will call it El Al Bean. 

Yes folks, that was the joke.  The hint, now, is a sort of joke on me: iPods fare poorly in water.  Even if your water bottle breaks open in your messenger bag and just gets a little moisture in the general vicinity of the ‘pod, if you need to towel it off once you discover the issue, you are basically looking at turning it back in to Apple for a 10% discount on the new ‘pod you will have to buy.  And thus it is that my bonus-upgrade replacement of my original free iPod turned into $25 off on a new ‘pod classic.  It’s very sleek and full of extra memory and nice detailing but I would rather have kept the old pod and the delicious money it cost to buy one that didn’t have bi-hydrogen oxide all over its insides.  Bah.

The rant is below, in case you are tired of Joe the Plumber.  I am too, but I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about him till I get this off my chest. 

I think America owes Joe the Plumber an apology.  All he wanted was a straight answer from a politician, and look at the infamy in which he’s now enmired.  Admittedly, it sounds as if he’d intended to push a button or two, but was that any reason to push back so hard?  And let’s face it, the question he asked was a little vague - misleading, even.  So he wants to buy a business with earnings in excess of the Obama tax-freeze ceiling - but we still don’t know if that’s net, which would exclude him, or gross, which would probably qualify him for a break.  And the answer he got - share your good fortune and let those less fortunate get a break that would have helped you buy that business years ago - was sort of complicated.  It posits alternate realities, for goodness sake.  How’s a simple plumber supposed to contend with that?  No wonder he likened that response to the works of that great philosopher, Sammy Davis Junior.  It wasn’t a racial thing - certainly not.  It was about how insensitive it is to play mind games with a hardworking shmo from the greater Toledo area.  I’m inclined to cut the guy a break, and not just because we share a hairstyle.  So as I say - we owe an apology to JTP. 

However, contrition is a two-way street, isn’t it, Joe?  I think America deserves an apology from you, too.  Turns out you’re not a plumber, at least so far as the state certification agency that has never heard of you is concerned.  And you’re not “Joe,” at least not primarily - you vote under the name Samuel J. Wu/orzelbacher.  Oh, and you’re not “independent,” as the liberal left-wing media made you out to be - you voted as a republican last time around.  And let’s be honest, you’re not even a good citizen.  Laudable though your record of casting votes may be, it’s eclipsed by your record - your court record - of failing to pay tax and having liens placed against your property.  Perhaps this helps explain why you are so concerned about this issue of taxation - it’s the albatross around your own neck.  But then, how could you not understand Obama’s advice to you, that you’ve suffered already under a regressive tax scheme that he’d take steps to fix?  It’s been reported that you’ve expressed the opinion that Obama’s plan sounds okay but you don’t trust him to keep his word about it.  It’s not a matter of fact with you, then, is it - it’s a question of trust.  Johnny Mac talks and you believe him, even though he changes his tune every week; Barry O keeps to the same line for his whole campaign but you just can’t bring yourself to credit the word of a man who’s intelligent, articulate and speaking for the disenfranchised.  That’s an apology you’d owe to Barak if the matter were just between the two of you, but since you’ve seen fit to broadcast your doubts as denials to a nation in the throes of a difficult decision, I’m going to need you to share that “I’m sorry I confused my confusion with the truth” with all of us.

But really, let’s get to the point here, Joe: values.  The red squad’s been arrogating “values voting” to itself for a generation now, as if progressives have no values.  That’s damn far from the truth but I’m not going to dwell in the past.  I’m looking to the future, Joe, just like most of us are, red, blue, and purple.  I want a future where people are responsible for themselves and where they take care of each other.  Some people will always need help; we shouldn’t begrudge them that.  And some people will have the power to make a bigger impact on society than others, and they should step up to the plate and do right by the rest of us.  Outsourced jobs, foreign investments, wasteful practices and concupiscent consumption - these are the sins of the wealthy, as reprehensible as those of tsarist Russia or the bloated and amoral Romans. 

And it’s not the past I’m talking about, Joe, it’s today, and it’s you.  When somebody - you, for example - can buy a business that nets a quarter mill per annum, that person is living the American dream.  Most of us don’t get there.  We work our asses off to keep food on the table; the roof overhead is a chancier proposition but we try, Joe - we try.  And it’s been our way to ask the most from the least among us, but you know that isn’t right.  Those who can do more ought to be expected to do more.  If you clear a quarter mill, you are by definition not hurting.  You know where your next meal’s coming from and how to cover any reasonable mortgage you’ve taken out.  You are a winner.  We congratulate you.  But we also look to you to shoulder your share of the burden of keeping this country going, locally and nationally.  You ought to be proud of the nation that made it possible for you to reach success, and in turn, you ought to make that nation proud by contributing your fair share to sustain services, resources, and the social structure. 

You didn’t get where you are all by yourself.  You rely on others every day, and those others often work just as hard as you do but see far less for it and lose more of their core “living” money to taxes than you do.  You might think it’s patriotic to serve in the armed forces, or to defend our nation against those who denigrate it, or to try to put a politician on the spot whom you suspect may be deceiving the public.  You’re right, but only partly so.  There’s more to patriotism than that.  Patriotism is about key American values, and the most important of all of those, the fountainhead of them, is to defend and uphold justice.  Without our being just, our army is defending an empty shell, and our detractors speak truth against us.  Only by being a true bulwark of justice can liberty and free enterprise be worth defending. 

In this case, Joe, paying your fair share of taxes is patriotic.  If you can’t see that, if you want to exempt yourself from the responsibility of sustaining the nation that has given you so much, then you are not just unpatriotic - you’re unamerican.  And no such person should insinuate himself in our national policy debates - such people have no place at our debates or in our considerations.  If you’re truly such a small, petty, selfish person as to pitch this kind of a fit about paying a fair share of taxes when you earn more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, you ought to turn in your passport.  I’m embarrassed to share citizenship with you.  Some things are just too much to flush.