A Buck Forty-Seven Extra: Another Betrayal

I pay my taxes. I need to say that upfront. 

And I don't have tax lawyers to cut corners for me. I just have an accountant, rely on him largely because I'm lazy and easily confused. I pay for it, but as in other things, one can and should pay for peace of mind.

So I had to catch up on the prerequisite paperwork, and I drove over to the credit union to check out how much interest my account had acquired last year. The amount was earth-shattering: $1.47.

Yup. A buck forty-seven. That's all it earned. That from a savings account of more than $3,000 (Not my only one). For the whole year.

Three thousand bucks, you would think, would be worth putting in the bank and letting it grow a little. You should be anticipating something like a new nest egg, you know?

Our parents told us to save money for a rainy day. Put it away and it'll be there, and more, if you just leave it alone.

Well, I left it alone. I even added to it. And got a buck forty-seven for my trouble.

I don't think my parents were kidding, nor being cruel, when they suggested that I be frugal. I think it was one of the most sincere things they ever said, along with eating vegetables. not breaking curfew and, of course, no sex before marriage. One of those things that, with deferred gratification, I'd be happy with upon later reflection.

But it turned out to be nonsense. My later reflection tells me that I was a complete fool. I should have taken that money and blown it on, well, anything.

So how to put money away and earn something with it? Well, there are stocks and bonds. You take your chances and you roll the dice.

But if that's the only real way you can earn money by putting it away, what does that say about our way of life? Seems to me the reason our generation was told to put money into a savings account so that it could earn money sloooooowly, is that the previous generation, that of our parents, went through some awful economic times in the 1930s. 

Banks failed by the thousands, many because of wildcat panic, which led to people taking their money out of banks when there was no real reason to do so other than believing it was a good idea because everybody else did; economic hysteria. Anticipation of poverty is, to some extent, poverty itself.

FDR stepped in and assured everyone that the banks were sound by first of all, declaring a four-day bank holiday (in his inaugural address), checking their books, and keeping the best ones open. That assured the average Joe that he could take his money out from underneath his mattress or out of his closet and put it back in. That gave the banks the underpinning to make more loans, which gave people confidence to take out those loans to open new businesses and buy property. It happened slowly, but it happened.

The second thing, the one that lasted and still lasts, is to get a heavily Democratic Congress to establish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC, an acronym that's as American as Campbell's soup or Colgate toothpaste. It ensured that, up to $25,000 for an individual account and $50,000 for a joint account, monies deposited in banks were guaranteed to be paid to the claimant simply by walking up to the nearest teller and doing so, no questions asked. It also assured people that, if the bank failed, they'd get their money back. The amount is now $100,000 for individuals and $200,000 for joint accounts.

Slowly, once again, people responded. And the FSLIC for savings and loan accounts was also established, if people wanted to go that route. And they began to save, with assurance that interest would be compounded and they would make money if they would so much as let some of it go and establish a regular process of putting something aside.

The crucial thing about that is that people who weren't rich grew a new attitude, supported by government guarantee. But markets are strange things, and interest rates for loans have dived in recent years. You can borrow money quite cheaply right now, but that's partly because banks significantly dropped the percentages of interest they paid out in savings accounts. 

It's down to practically nothing now. See above. It says something very sad about the state of our culture as reflected in our economic welfare. It's a betrayal.

Saving conservatively, with assured dollars making money slowly but definitively, is now gone. People put their money in banks so they don't lose it, not so much as to gain much of anything. The culture now screams to take risks. It's working. For now.

It's working well enough that another Democratic Congress, put in place marginally by anxiety over the pandemic, is now borrowing money like wildfire to rebuild an infrastructure that's sorely needed it for an entire generation now. Bridges, roads, airports and ports are in very rough shape. They represent the very arteries of our commerce. We have to hold our collective breath, though, because should the economy tank, we would plunge into despair again.

After saving some jobs and businesses and schools and the like, we're adding on to that gamble with another $3 trillion. At one dollar per second, it would take over 32 years to count out one billion dollars, or one-three thousandth of three trillion, in case your mind wasn't already blown quite enough.

To help pay for that, our government will raise taxes, yes, but also issue bonds with a slower, lower but steady rate of return, and hope that people will buy them, probably at reduced rates. And that separate gamble will assume that the value of those bonds will only grow and people will be able to redeem them at listed value, and more, in the time alloted while we're unable to access it. 

But for that to happen, people will also need to adapt the very attitudes that our parents did, and that we did--confidence in government and patience--until it all went badly south. Hence yet another gamble; it has to return more than a buck forty-seven, and I have to think it will.

But that assumes that people will settle for the assurance that's been missing for some time now, that making the quick buck in the market isn't always the best way to develop the underpinning of sound economic progress.

So I'm not going to report such a pathetic return on my taxes. I wish I could, but that would mean a far different, far stronger economy than the one we have, and a far better outlook.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Stunningly the Same: The Aftermath of Another Shooting

The script has been written long ago. The names are different, but that's about all.

The gunfire goes off and innocent people die, die terribly, die quickly and slowly, die with one question on their minds: Why?

Someone has taken cellphone films of the confusion and fear spreading like wildfire. It gets up on television to show, once again, what this awfulness does.

The jolt stuns. Then the ever-repeated ritual begins.

The person, if he's still alive (and it's always a 'he'), is taken into custody. He may say much, he may say nothing. 

This bastard shot a cop who leaves seven kids. He once rescued a mother duck and 11 ducklings. He gave up a cloud-based job to help the community. I want to hear the ridiculous excuse for human life explain this. I want to hear the pathetic, disgusting whining he could possibly do to try to justify this.

Mental problems, they're saying now. Possible paranoia. Thought people were chasing him. Just the kind of guy you'd want to give an AR-15.

Less than a week ago, some other young man had a sex addiction (he says) in Atlanta and took the lives of eight people so that he would feel better. I wonder how many superhero movies he's seen. He won't be seeing many more.

Over the holidays, someone blew himself up in his RV in Nashville. He said he didn't want to hurt anybody. Fortunately, he succeeded, though the easier thing would have been to take himself out without the explosion. But he wanted to be remembered, I'll bet. Does anyone remember his name now?

No one will. Partly because we don't want to remember people who want to do bad things. Partly because so much more badness has already been piled upon it. Compared with the past week, looks like small potatoes.

They released his name. Arab. That'll help.

The next day, as per ritual, the authorities line up and say the things they have to say about how terrible this is, how awful the act of telling the families, how hard the law enforcement will work so that the accused is held accountable. Pretty soon, they'll just be able to play a tape of the generic comments.

Someone says, "Enough is enough." And it goes on.

Someone else says, "This cannot be the new normal." But it is.

Joe Biden says it's time to make "common sense" adjustments to our gun laws. He said that after some fool gunned down 20 first graders in 2012. 90 percent of the country thinks so, too. Nothing happened. Call me when something happens now.

Because this is how it's getting to be: Generic. Vanilla. Numbed.

We are all now at risk. Going into a supermarket, walking into a school, being in church, watching a movie in a place designed for that, is now a dice shake. You never know. There is no safety, only good luck. And bad.

The only alternative, the only one that makes sense, is to require all to be in public with sidearms, whether they're loaded or not; just display it to remind someone that their latest temper tantrum might easily be their last, to wear it as a requirement of entering grocery stores and movie houses and baseball stadiums and churches. Hey, we managed masks, didn't we?

The right to bear arms is not balanced, after all, with the responsibility to use it well or appropriately. Like free speech, everyone claims it but nobody wants to be burdened with the judgment required to make it meaningful.

The guy who walked into a supermarket in Boulder knew, absolutely knew, that nobody else would have a weapon on them, even though that state's law allows it, because it's a pathetic minority for whom that's even an issue and an even smaller pathetic minority who would do such a thing. Remember also that one of the two craziest Republicans presently in Congress, someone who entered the chamber with a weapon after January 6, is from that same state.

And people like me write about it and that's just about all we can do, because Antonin Scalia lived in his ivory tower where the misuse of weaponry was not even worth the trouble to mention it, even though several massacres had already happened. So he and four other justices turned the Second Amendment on its head, completely reversing its original meaning, and we're stuck with it now, stuck with this public health problem as bad as the viral epidemic we have a much better chance of beating.

We're also stuck with cleaning up another horrible mess, of feeling empty and angry and helpless, as funerals are being arranged en masse.  Days and days of follow-up reports will drag us along, reminding us of the insanity, of lives cut off needlessly, of relatives and friends who remember them.

Thousands more people are gathering at the southern border now, wanting to see if the new president will allow them into the country. I would warn them away, and not because I don't respect their common humanity. It's because I do.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Catholics and Gay Marriage: Not A Match Made in Heaven

Pope Francis had such promise. He tried to break barriers. He's still trying.

Back in March, he met with an imam of the Shi'ite sect of Islam in Iraq. Just going to Iraq was an act of courage. It's still not a very safe place. We can give him credit for that ecumenism.

But gay marriage? Still too far to go. He says priests can't bless that sacrament if two people of the same gender wish to partake. He still calls it "sinful."

So if some Catholics are gay--and some are--they can't get married in their church. Because he says so. Not a match made in heaven, I guess.

It's nice to have someone at the top to make policy and, after all, Francis was elected by a slew of Cardinals like other popes before him and installed for life. But it's the height of pretentiousness to say that he's God's vicar on earth.

Granted, he's succeeded in a line rather interrupted here and there, but a line it is, going back to St. Peter, who was handed the governance of the Catholic Church by Jesus of Nazareth himself, or so the Christian bible says, after Jesus was to have risen from the dead and just before ascending, or at least disappearing, into heaven, if there is one. Or so is the belief.

If that's true and everyone naturally respected that, there would have been no Reformation, no split of the Christian church. Everyone who believes in Christianity would naturally be Roman Catholic.

But the church corrupted itself, selling dispensation for sins before the sinners actually committed the offenses, guaranteeing forgiveness as a bank account from which people could successfully draw while making plans to undermine others in prearranged justifiability. There was something really cockeyed about that, and Martin Luther, among others, blew the whistle.

The Church was neither above punishment for those who would challenge the existing order of thought, especially in regard to science, which as we know rearranged the universe in a way that begged a new place for God to exist--and thus left open God's existence at all.'

Copernicus was the first, putting the sun at the center of the solar system, which blew up the religious teaching that God was just beyond the sky with heavenly noises going off all around him (and it had to be a him). Then Galileo said he could prove that everything in the sky was moving, including all the stars and planets, without figuring out, for the moment, what kept them from crashing into each other. It implied a randomness that was understandably unsettling.

It possibly presaged the end of the world because who knew at what moment some planet would come crashing into ours and stop the collections at Sunday Mass? So they made him recant so they could say he did and the truth, according to them, would remain 'official'. But he got up from his knees and said, albeit quietly, but it moves.

So he was put under house arrest for the rest of his life and buried in an unmarked grave. There. That would be fair warning for those seeking the truth.

Pope Francis can't do that anymore. We've gotten beyond making the church the vehicle of civil government. Sinners can run countries, whether they want to admit it or not. We just had one who wouldn't admit it, and now have another who admits it very quickly.

So if people love each other and want to actually codify that through marriage, whether straight or not, the state can now guarantee that through legal action. Pope Francis can, if he wants, declare such an act sinful, but nobody has to listen to him.

So the only solution to this Catholic dilemma, it seems to me, is for gay people to not be Catholic anymore. The pope can therefore keep his neighborhood clean of riff-raff, driving it toward other sects.

If that's what he wants, he will succeed. I can't believe that all gay Catholics will now remain. There are other Christian sects who can receive them, and they aren't bothered a bit. I stopped listening a long time ago. My decision to become Presbyterian looks better by the day.

Funny thing: Not long ago, the pope wrote a book called The Name of God Is Mercy. Now, what did he mean by that? Did he mean that he felt sorry for those claiming to be gay, but still declares them sinners although God forgives them nonetheless? 

Isn't intolerance a sin, by the way? Or are there certain things that cannot be tolerated, which there are? And is gayness one of those things, along with murder and deception and theft and (especially) sexually abusing young kids?

I've been on this planet a while, but there are questions I'll never be able to answer. What hurts the world, though, should not be tolerated. If it doesn't hurt the world, it should be allowed. 

I don't see how gay marriage hurts the world. We aren't being overrun by it or anything; at least nine out of ten people are straight anyhow. An official, legal declaration that two people love each other, regardless of derivation, can't be a bad thing.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Afraid of Stepping Out? How Come?

It's been a year now. The 'hoax' has been exposed as real. The president who predicted it would go away soon is no longer in office, partly because he did so. 530,000 have died just here alone. The other 330 million of us, more or less, had our lives twisted and narrowed and damn near shelved.

It's a tragedy we'll never completely live down. So I suppose I should have expected it. It's the era to be concerned about everything.

On the NBC Nightly News the other day, I saw a report about people worried about how to act and what to do now that they've received their vaccine shots. As in: Now that I've been cooped up so long, what's going to happen when I go back out into the world?

That's everyone's question. So somebody's worried about this? Really? Granted, it's a little more serious than Potato Head or Dr. Seuss.

Yes, it will be a different world. It won't be as crowded, at least not at first. Hopefully, because nowhere near enough people have been vaccinated to this point to achieve herd immunity. Plus, there's a variant virus out there, apparently, so the immunity that people have gained might be amended and reduced. We may all need a booster at some point.

So yes, one should still wear a mask. And yes, one should not be real eager to mingle with a whole lot of people yet--unless they all have had two shots and waited two weeks.

But if they do--well, maybe it's time to take some limited risks. Yes, you can spread Covid yourself, but you have to have it first. If you mingle only with people who have had the shots and have bothered to wait, though, the odds of that aren't very great, either. I think that in its continued warnings to all, the Center for Disease Control is being very cautious to regain some credibility that it noticeably lost under the last, awful president. But our world will become freer and more enjoyable very soon.

It's a new, hidden benefit of being retired: We got up near the front of the line. Someone cared about us first, or close to it. Who'd a-thunk it?

On the other hand, if I should jump in the car and drive endlessly, using only an empty tank as a limitation, where would I go? And would I enjoy myself if/when I got there? Should I go back to Texas, where I once lived and I still have a few friends, except they've opened everything up and I don't think that's very smart? Does that make any sense?

More to the point: Should I care right now? Is getting out there the point at this point? And there's still a relative paucity of traffic, though lots of people are used to driving much faster with much less interference out there, so there's that. I'm reminded of Gordon Lightfoot:

Carefree Highway, got to see you, my old friend;

Carefree Highway, we've seen better days--

From the morning after blues, from my head down to my shoes:

Carefree Highway, let me slip away,

Slip away on you.

The morning after blues, after we've all shared the blues, is arriving; it's out there on the horizon. Still very early morning, but you can see it now. It's brighter, and not just because Daylight Savings Time's restarting.

I'm going to die someday, but not now, not from this. That much I know. That's all I need to know. It's a relief and a challenge; it's now back out there after the whole world's lost a year somehow. Humanity got pulled off the road and slapped around.

But it's not whether you get knocked down, said Vince Lombardi, it's how many times you get back up. So, let's get back up.

I'm ready, from my head down to my shoes. I made it. Just a few days to wait now. Then I'll get back out on the road. I'll drive over to someone's place and say, "Got to see you, my old friend. We've seen better days."

Yes, but we can see them again. We'll see better days. We've see a few already. Millions won't, and that's tragic. But life's for the living, both the noun and the gerund. The oximeter read 99 and 50 this morning; 99 percent oxygen intake (it can't get to 100), and 50 beats per minute. The walking worked. For an old man like me, I'll take it. Thousands of businesses have been boarded up, but millions of people will be unleashed again through miracles of science and the determination of the human spirit.

I bought some ice cream. I'm not supposed to eat ice cream. I don't care. I'm going to eat some damn ice cream. Not a lot, not pounds and pounds, but I'm going to know what feeling good feels like again, what spoiling myself feels like again.

I did a lot of writing and doubled down on this blog, which I'd already started before this strange and revealing time. I wrote a lot more of them than I thought I would. But it got me out of bed in the morning, which is when I like to write the most. (And again, thanks for reading it)

It helped me establish a rhythm to the days, which on the one hand blurred them together, on the other hand made them go a bit faster. It kept me, too, from being bitter about that. The time is lost; it can't be retrieved. And the number of my days left, while unknown, are far less than others'.

I have a lot of books and didn't finish the supply, but I cut into it significantly. I wouldn't have done it had I not understood that (1) going outside very much would be dangerous and (2) the rest of the known world was in the very same predicament. That's a benefit, though marginal and measured, from this odd time.

I read lots of magazines, too. I'm starting to suffer fatigue. That supply is piling up and I'm falling behind. I'm starting not to care. Is it also because the country has arrested itself, albeit perhaps temporarily, from its existential crisis? What if it has another one? Do we have enough energy to survive that, too?

I might have watched more sports but in fact, I cared about them less than before, finding them less compelling without the crowds to support home teams. To me, the staging of those events seemed almost desperate and needy. I used to write about them a lot, about their larger effects. Now I wonder if I was fooling myself, whether I was one of many who tried to put a larger meaning into what's simply someone else's success at making money.

My escapes feel better when they're voluntary. I felt less rewarded and more played with by the performers of their endeavors. It made me feel no better by the fact that their salaries didn't diminish one bit, at least not per game. Perhaps some needed perspective will be brought to it all, that sports on TV are about the money and not much else.

I hungered for live symphonies, concerts, theater and museums. The liveliness of the Sunday New York Times was challenged by the lack of Broadway productions; its theater section focused instead on people and history. Some of that worked, but it got tired, too.

Some of our favorite businesses, like the pancake house a block away, went under and won't return. Some will come back like magic. Some will take a while. It'll be like lawn mowers; some will kick in right away, some will take a couple of pulls. Life is a series of adjustments, anyhow; some forced upon us, some we've arranged.

Yet, we were stronger than we thought. Two major, simultaneous devastations--one to our democracy, one to our culture, and they continue though we rally against both--and we came horribly close to buckling beneath each of them. We stared into the precipice and pulled ourselves back. This time. Recovery isn't, and won't be, instantaneous. 

I fought my way through depression and loneliness. It's one thing to get on the phone and Zoom people; it's quite another to see people and their faces, to laugh while they laugh. We were surrounded in cellophane with no way out. The virus kidnapped us all, the living and the dead. It stole enormous quantities of joy. The lack of fulfillment stifled, smothered, and prevented accomplishments planned and unplanned.

We gritted my way through this. We stared it down. We endured and cut very few corners, took very few knowing chances, at least the ones of us who were smart. I'm proud of it, and you should be, too; it's been a while since we've lived with this kind of discipline. But it was like a huge desert, shouting into an empty valley without an echo. I'm going to find an oasis or two.

I'm going to find some friends and family I haven't seen, those who have also had two shots, maybe even drive up by surprise. Even for five minutes, even one high-five, masked for protection if they haven't done the two-and-two yet. What will they do, turn me away? It's time we got back together. It's way past time. But I'm not going to let the Covid thief steal anything else.

Time to live again. Let's get started. With some caution, of course, but less of it as we go.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Two shots plus ten days. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Harry: A Prince Without the Title

In all the hubbub surrounding Harry and Meghan, this much has to be concluded: the guy's got guts.

Endowed with plenty of money by his mother, the late Princess Diana, he's stood up to the stodgy racism of at least some members of his family and told them to shove it. He married the woman he loved and he really does love her genuinely.

When's the last time you saw some guy with a life of privilege and a bushelful of money coming every year just for getting out of bed, abandon that life and move to the other side of the world to not only start all over again but also to literally distance himself from that income source? And all very selflessly, for his wife?

He didn't have to do so. He didn't have to do anything besides whatever conventions being in the British royal family dictated. But he and his wife would have to endure insults and pain and putdowns. They'd have to be reminded, again and again, about their "place."

Harry would deal with that in a new and shocking but bold way: He would determine his own place, thank you very much. He did a genuinely American thing: He struck out on his own, family in tow. Coming back to Los Angeles, where his wife first gained her fame, he made sure his wife was fulfilled and might have another chance to work in film or television (she remains attractive). 

It leads me to ask: Does the guy have a job? Will he seek one? I'm guessing yes. What are his skills?

Then again, How much do they matter? An employer could do worse. His personal integrity can't be questioned. He is a hallmark of stability and security. Just ask Meghan.

This wouldn't matter, indeed she wouldn't matter, if she weren't American, and has an accompanying fascination because of the TV star life she gave up, at least temporarily. That makes their kids half-American. Like Churchill.

Harry might have given up inherited prestige, but it was prestige that would be dolled out on someone else's schedule, and someone else's measurement. Regardless of his devotion, there's no way he and his family would ever come first. 

Beyond that, the racism and condescension they have already endured would follow and eat away at them. You don't carry that around with you without cost. Why feel bad if you don't need to? 

We all make compromises with life because nothing goes exactly as envisioned for anyone. The question is how much and to what degree. Harry obviously concluded: Uh-uh. Not going to put up with this.

The Crown blew a big opportunity. An heir or connection to the throne that has a darker skin tone might just make that monarchy easier to connect with--and easier to justify through the ages, as the country's clientele changes at roughly the same rate. Did anybody bother to consider that, or even to suggest it? Has that entered anyone's conversation in Buckingham Palace?

Apparently not. Harry's not saying the monarchy doesn't matter. He's just saying it doesn't matter that much. Not enough to swallow him and his family up. The Revolution's starting to look better by the minute. He's certainly fighting his own revolution.

I sense a deep well of independence within Harry. It's something that his mother developed, too. Her husband withdrew and stayed at arm's length from her, partly because he thought of himself as compelled to marry her and fit her into a slot that she never fully accepted.

In the end, Harry saw his family being fitted into another kind of slot, but a slot nonetheless. Money makes it easier, of course, but at some point, a person must take a stand and declare an identity.

It's an impressive and admirable stance he's taken: He'd be a prince without the title. I wish him and his family well. He's a man's man, filled with respect and love and boldness and pride and all that good stuff, as American as John Wayne. And strength, for sure. It takes that to stand up to your family and avoid the trappings of birth order and habit and history. He's not the only one who knows that.

This may all fall apart, of course. They may not get the success they seek. And they're probably not done with racism. But they have each other and their two kids now. It will do.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Seven days since Shot Two. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Ron Johnson: Absurdity in A Suit

Here's a challenging question: Has too much been said about Ron Johnson, or not nearly enough? He beats them all. He really does.

To that effect: Will he be missed? If so, why?

Trying to grab headlines (and getting them), the Wisconsin Senator is now doubling down on a conspiracy theory that's so ridiculous it's right up there with Flat Earth and pigs flying.

Senator Absurdity in A Suit now says that the January 6 insurrectionists weren't right-wingers at all. They were members of antifa, an organization that is actually unclear and unspecified, a throw-all-of-them-into-the-same-basket group who were dressed like supporters of the former president. 

And, of course, carrying flags and signs and wearing MAGA caps and carrying weapons and killing guards. All of that. All of that to protest the formality of an election that their side won (credit to Tom Zigan on Facebook).

They had us all fooled, those crafty devils. All, that is, except Ron Johnson. He's got it all figured out.

He had the election figured out, too. As long as he shouted "irregularities," he was on the safe side of The Big Lie. He had to hold hearings where he got Ken Starr, he of the holy moral hypocritical high ground, to declare that something was amiss but just within the states whose election returns that the previous president wanted to challenge.

Have you noticed that nobody challenged close election results that the Republicans won? As if there could be nothing wrong with those numbers, as in North Carolina, Florida or Texas.

Someday soon, someone's going to have to reprint all the ridiculous things Ron Johnson's ever said while Senator from Wisconsin. I won't start here. That would take resources I don't have. Like a year, maybe. Suffice it to say that there is not enough room anywhere to note his entire awfulness.

But he's been in the Senate two full terms now, which also tells you something about where Wisconsin's gone in that time, in fact before that time. The Tea Party movement ushered him in--Wisconsin becoming an important annex of that unenviable group--and he's trying to continue riding that wave even though it's running out of surf pretty fast.

Can someone tell me one good thing he's done? He might say that he's gotten government out of the way for the good people of Wisconsin. For what reason? To what end? 

On the other hand, Tony Evers is governor because someone happened to find 40,000 Democratic ballots after midnight on election night in 2018; Johnson did beat the very competent and respected Russ Feingold not once but twice; and Biden only won the state by about 20,000. So there's that.

In terms of statewide elections, Wisconsin's stubbornly hanging on to moderate-to-liberal status. It has needed, and got, (a genuinely) conservative, libertarian crossover to rule that the presidential election results were legal and well-counted. But it got into that position only when a more liberal justice was elected that spring and replaced a reactionary curmudgeon, giving the good guys a 4-3 edge.

Without that crossover, Wisconsin would have been thrown into chaos. The three remaining reactionary (not conservative, reactionary; big difference) judges were quite committed to declaring the election sufficiently rigged, even though nobody had any definitive proof of it, even though nothing of the sort had ever happened in Wisconsin, even though the chair of the election vote count openly invited any citizen of the state to come on in and watch it.

It was that close. It shouldn't have been, but Wisconsin is also afflicted with a mental malady that's truly scary. After all, it produced Ron Johnson and may keep him still. If he runs again, I will be working to try to unseat him. You can count on that. Time's up for his incompetence, goofiness, and addiction to cultism. Now he's just making up more lies to gloss over the Big One.

He's no longer just a clown show. He's genuinely annoying and ridiculous. He has proven himself thoroughly undeserving of what Wisconsin hoped for him.

To prove his stodgy absurdity, Johnson made Senate clerks read the entire recovery bill which passed anyhow. He delayed the debate on the bill by about ten hours. It's the newly-minted Republican mantra that this recovery bill isn't needed, that the economy is coming back on its own; all we have to do is wait a little bit. 

Yeah, (yawn) that's the same old wine in a brand new bottle (regards to Loggins and Messina). Although over 700,000 jobs returned last month, over 700,000 also applied for unemployment for the first time, too. That's added on to those still unemployed by this persistent pandemic--persistent partly because some people who stubbornly vote Republican despite all indications that it hasn't done them any good also won't put on any masks, despite all indications that it would.

So the final bailout amount won't be quite as much as first proposed, which is what the Senate is for, after all. But the reduced amount should put something of a muzzle on Republican insistence that the economy will recover on its own. With unemployment benefits scheduled to run dry in just eight days, that isn't much time for the American economic engine to kick back into noticeable gear.

Johnson has hinted that he might want to quit after this term. He can't do so a minute too soon. He is an embarrassment to this state and, in fact, to the Senate itself. He is not thoughtful or reflective, as Senators grow to be. He is reactionary and reckless with his commentary. He is slavishly loyal to a defeated and disgraced president (who, granted, refuses to be disgraced).

He will save himself the trouble of raising millions to be defeated. That's the scary part: Wisconsin Republicans have people with prestigious names waiting to throw their hats into the ring. This display of incompetence has been plenty for us to absorb; we may get another one disguised as legitimacy. 

That won't make it easy at all on the several competent Democrats who seem to be lining up for a shot at this vital position. One of them would join Tammy Baldwin, who has been there to hold up what's left of Wisconsin's reputation for wise, measured liberalism.

But for now, I'll be satisfied if he retreats quietly, parties with other Wisconsin millionaires, and leaves the rest of us alone. There's enough credibility to rebuild.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Six days after Shot Two. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Read Across America: An NEA Invention

I saw it and stopped. I had to pinch myself. I had to ask, Is this really happening?

I read somewhere that Dr. Seuss' contributions to Read Across America Day, which is normally March 2 (his birthday or the first Monday afterwards if March 2 is on a weekend), is being diminished. To an extent, that makes sense.

Dr. Seuss was not, in any sense, politically correct. He was immensely creative and concocted some terrific stories for elementary (mostly) kids to absorb. He'll be remembered perpetually for having done so, and should be.

But some of his images were, and are, offensively stereotypical of non-white folks from other lands. For decades, they had been brushed over and ignored amidst the so-called 'greater good' of getting stuff to kids to read and enjoy as fun. But they branded some people badly and with unhesitating condescension.

Six Seuss books are apparently going to be excluded from any promotion of Read Across America Day. But that's not what's all that remarkable: In this far more 'woke' age, political correctness finally caught up with Dr. Seuss. Many of his books are a terrific celebration of creativity, but some can potentially be damaging and reinforce deeply held stereotypes that we should be guiding children beyond.

Nope, though important, that's not what gave me pause. It was the fact that someone besides the National Education Association was doing the announcing of it.

That meant something really important: That RAA was out there and being absorbed and a thoroughly accepted part of our culture. That's been a journey of about a quarter-century.

Read Across America, you see, was invented by the National Education Association. Nobody else. Just us.

It was created out of a need to show people that, as a union, we were as interested in kids than we were in ourselves. The rap against teachers' unions is that they only care about themselves, that they come first and the kids second. Sometimes, that has to be true. That's why contracts are encouraged and drawn up. That's why organizing persists: Because without it, teachers and support staff get walked on and get guilt rained down on us if we don't act like we're someone's whipping posts. Organizing, and demanding a contract, is an act of both resistance and self-respect. If you don't have that, it's more difficult to get it in a classroom. The job's tough enough the way it is.

But if someone bothers to get beyond that, they'll be assured that the reason we're in the profession is that we like kids and want the best for them. Nothing about being in a union betrays that. Burned-out people teaching and bussing and cooking for them isn't the best way to achieve educational success. That's why lines must be drawn to define an educator's tasks so they can come back the next day ready to do them again with the energy it takes to do them well. Contracts do that. They guarantee a cross-current of respect.

The NEA came up with Read Across America as what is now an ironclad educational endorsement. Because who doesn't need to read something to do their job? And don't millions of people just simply love to read, love to take some time during the day and immerse themselves in a story? Needing to read in school is obvious; what we wanted to show is lots and lots of non-educators reading, too.

So we set out and did so. We nudged famous people and got TV networks and local talk-show hosts to buy in. It was hard, taxing and challenging work just to get people to set aside the stereotype they'd established of us, and we spent millions of dollars on it: Stovepipe hats (for the Cat in the Hat, which endures), magnets, pens, stickers, and of course millions of Dr. Seuss books. Members of the Executive Committee, like Yours Truly, have been carted to schools throughout the nation--North Carolina, Utah, Colorado, Texas and other Gulf States in the aftermath of hurricanes, for instance--and we read Seuss stories (I selected Horton Hears A Who, the message of which, I hope, resonated: "A person's a person, no matter how small.") to them as well as other authors. 

We read them to classrooms and whole school populations. I introduced myself as Mister Mark--you may have seen that elsewhere--and acted out the story, with a squeaky voice like the Whos must have had in Whoville (I mean, they are really little people. They couldn't have sounded like James Earl Jones.). It was great fun. 

And, just as importantly, it reached our own members in their classrooms, where many of them took that ball and ran with it--which is also what we were hoping would happen--to promote our non-profit brand. We had an engine we needed to start up: The members maintained it for us.

At the top of the NEA food chain, RAA was often regarded as necessary hype, not really connected to our goals and strivings. Nobody else on the Executive Committee, at least when I was there, can look me in the face and say otherwise; I'm quite sure many state affiliate presidents felt the same way. I know a number of us were convinced the whole thing would soon fade.

But every year, the stories would resonate. Every year, the NEA Board, filled with classroom teachers not on leave, would approach the growing commitment and recharge it with enthusiasm. Besides, the school visits were waiting.

But we jumped the gun of the main issue: Dr. Seuss' own prejudices and the unavoidable context of his early work. Read Across America had gained some steam and several years of operation when it was discovered that some of his political cartoons during World War II were very patriotic, but extremely (and understandably) inconsiderate to some of our enemies.

The Asian-American Caucus caught it first, early in this century, and staff went about trying to find some kind of ameliorating comments, somewhere in Seuss' memoirs or other writings, that would in some way give off a that-was-then-this-is-now attitude toward the very racist and negative stereotypes he portrayed against the Japanese in World War II. But none could be found. This problem was folded into the treatment of Japanese-Americans, which was horrendous since they were carted off to internment camps, justice for which was addressed some 43 years later with a fairly token payment of reparations. So there also was that insult, piled on and passed along.

NEA leadership addressed the issue, but what could be done outside of shutting the whole thing down? That was impossible: too much money, time and bother had already been spent, and the guilt factor toward robbing the little ones of their stovepipe hats had moved in. So we dealt with it as we usually do, as the country usually does: with alternative choices allowed by states that might be uncomfortable with a national program. Thus, the California Education Association, the center of Asian-American membership at that time, did not feature Dr. Seuss in any celebration of reading. Other states followed. Nobody insisted that it be otherwise. And so we went on. (Yup, the NEA is rife with inside intrigue. Like internal politics? Step right this way.)

As has been true elsewhere with other things that the NEA and its affiliates have initiated, that influence spread. The NEA has de-emphasized reliance on Dr. Seuss to promote reading, too. Guess what? It did nothing to limit the spread of Dr. Seuss books or interest in reading for kids.

And the other day, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which oversees his estate, decided after consulting with a panel of experts which included educators (I do not have the names, but I'm guessing NEA members were in there somewhere; we are everywhere) that six books had harmful stereotypes and thus publication of them would no longer take place. Random House Children's Books, which controls the publishing, is respecting the decision.

That still leaves an awful lot of books that will be read by millions of kids, including the classic The Cat in the Hat. I recommend The Butter Battle Book, as anti-war a work as anything else I've ever seen. It has the rare quality of transcending age groups. The analogy is telling and unchallengeable. You'll shake your head at humankind's stupidity. It is especially cogent in today's polarized world.

(No, the Democratic Party had nothing to do with the cancellations, and neither did President Biden. Any rumors to that extent and conclusion are wrong, being spread by people who need to smear the "cancel culture" because they have nothing else they can control. Besides, those six books can now be collectors' items--wait and see.)

I concur with a letter writer to the New York Times the other day, Ray Kosarin: "Dr. Seuss is neither villain nor saint, and is not being 'cancelled.' His stewards are entitled to manage his work and impact. The artist's racial stereotypes, we thankfully understand now, were wrong--but also prevailed in his time. Because Dr. Seuss made enduring work, it endured to be scrutinized with enduring eyes. So we may celebrate Dr. Seuss' gifts and quell the damage of his failings."

And he lives on, thanks to the NEA and others who continue to see quality, however flawed, where it exists. The Whos in Whoville like it, too.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Day Two after a second vaccine shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

March 4: So What Was Supposed to Happen?

It's March 4, and something was supposed to happen. Something really big.

The previous president was supposed to re-take office. Okay, we're waiting.

We're waiting for anything that Q-Anon believes to become anything close to being true. We wait for Godot. So do they, except they don't understand that.

The kidnapping ring--Remember that?--that is supposed to be comprised of Democrats, among others (It's sure a mystery to me), hasn't surfaced. It's done about as much as that guy learned when he charged into a Washington, DC pizza restaurant five years ago, gun in hand, convinced that Hillary Clinton, President Obama and (of course) George Soros (What a wicked man!) were at the bottom of it, eating the kids' bodies and drinking their blood. 

The guy thought the kids were being hidden in the basement. But not only were there no kids, there wasn't even any basement. That didn't stop a whole national movement from developing, members of which partly responsible for raiding the Capitol on January 6. Once the curse of hysteria hits you, it's tough to shake it.

They must be hiding the kids really, really well. Maybe if they pray real hard, they will emerge.

Not that kidnappings don't happen. They do, and human trafficking is no joke; it happens in every county in America. But we've learned to watch Q-Anon people direct their energy in the entirely wrong direction.

Being steadfast, angry, and misdirected helps nobody. Being stupid makes it worse. Being stupid and dangerous makes them people to be avoided. Make no mistake: Being stupid is an intentional act. It is intentionally ignoring the facts and preferring not to use reason, the one thing that separates us from other primates. It's preferring to make up a more comfortable world that you can dominate, that you can pretend exists and does so only in your own head.

Someone made up the nonsense that since 1871, the U.S. secretly became not a government, but a corporation now run from London. Thus, every president since Grant, who was president at the time, is not legitimate. So to replace Biden with Trump on the date when the inauguration originally took place--changed to January 20 by constitutional amendment--is a concoction that's all their own. Don't ask me where any logic was inserted; I just work here.

None of this makes sense, of course, because none of it is true. Just like the election being rigged, which they cling to, in the end, as legitimizing their raid on the Capitol and claims that the previous president is still supposed to be in power. A number of them have already stood very humbly in front of a judge and pretended to be remorseful. 

I don't believe it for a second. They are as insincere as the awful man they wish to interpose back into the presidency. All they want is for another chance to invade the Capitol and take it by force. The more we know about that portentous day, the more that becomes evident.

There are other "signs," as they put it. Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet. When the previous president made his farewell speech, there were apparently 17 flags behind him. On the first day of Joe Biden's first term, he apparently signed 17 executive orders. This is apparently a signal that Q-Anon is somehow legitimate, that they have a point, that their wills will be done.

Santa Claus is more legitimate. So is the Easter Bunny. So is Brigadoon, once every hundred years.

This would be simply ludicrous and ridiculous, the stuff of selling elixir, but they also say that executions will begin on March 5, tomorrow. And, of course, Democrats must be executed.

These people aren't just crazy. They have weapons. They are dangerous. And they're already having an effect beyond January 6: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held two votes last night and cancelled business today. 

That's right: The House has had to stand down because of these awful, crazy, stupid people. That means they have won. If they have held up the business of the American people for only a day, they are walking, talking, breathing menaces to the republic and should be treated as such. The law will catch up to some of them, but not all, and they will take that as an inspiration to try again.

This is sad business, but security must be beefed up around the Capitol and remain so. It will no longer be the inviting place it used to be. March 4 will pass, but the danger will not. The compromise to our democracy is now a living thing, a crawling, writhing, ugly percolation. It will take longer than a day to stare it down.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Two vaccine shots now. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

And They Can Refuse Covid Shots? How Come?

Maybe I'm too simple-minded. I've been accused of it. But I don't get it.

I read in the Sunday New York Times that U.S. soldiers can refuse Covid shots. At least one-third of them are doing so.

Word is that, in a profession in which you get very few choices, if any, once given the chance to actually choose whether or not to get shots, they're exercising their options and saying no.

Some are saying no simply because they can. Some are saying no because, as fellow practitioners of social media, they've been sucked into the rabbit hole of believing that it's a hoax. And some think they're too young to catch Covid, that that's mainly for old folks like me.

Now, the last time I checked, these are the people who volunteered to defend me. To stand in the breech and take on the first and last attacks from whatever enemies are out there, and yeah, we've got a few.

For that, they have my perpetual admiration and support, especially because almost none of them, by now, have been drafted, that having ended nearly half a century ago. They want to do this.

So do they get the privilege of choosing whether to get vaccine shots? I say, no. I say, ridiculous. I ask, who's in charge of that silly policy?

Joe Biden, I guess. Joe, I voted for you. There was little choice, I know. The absurd alternative spoke for itself and is still doing so. But this policy makes absolutely no sense.

If there's any chance that our soldiers, sailors and airpeople will get sick, wouldn't you put the vaccine in their arms first, without the luxury of choice? Historically--and you can look this up--the largest toll of casualties in every single war was, until very recently, from disease. Put people from different areas together, even for good reasons, and they'll pick up germs and viruses nobody knew anybody else has. And some will die from it, maybe even a lot of them.

An aircraft carrier, the Theodore Roosevelt, became filled with Covid infectees, and its commander was fired over the controversy. We were lucky. It was overseas, and the damage was minimal. How can we pretend it can't get worse?

Even if they don't die, they'll get sick. Someone show me where getting sick from Covid isn't a real bad deal anyhow, doesn't shelve you for a considerable time, and might not even come back after you thought it was over. Can we afford to have the people designated to the defense of the realm in danger of getting that sick as long as we know about it ahead of time?

I thought about that anew after hearing about the Iranian counterattack after our previous president presided over the killing of their top military guy, Qasim Soleimani, early last year. The Iranians told the world they'd retaliate, and they sure did.

On top of shooting down a Ukrainian airliner by mistake--bad idea--they attacked an American air base in Iraq. Attacked by launching 27 ballistic missiles. Fortunately, nobody was killed, heaven knows how our folks escaped that fate. Lots of them suffered brain injuries and PTSD.

But one of the survivors, interviewed by "60 Minutes," told of how they were trying to get into large foxholes just as fast as their legs could carry them. And nobody bothered to count how many people were in there with them because nobody wanted to go back out and gamble because capacity had been reached.

So a whole bunch more people were in with each other, the guy said, maybe 40 squeezed together where 10 represented capacity. Nice, but nobody's going to draw straws when explosions are going off so intensely as to lift people off their feet, not to mention potentially killing them.

This was in early 2020, when Covid wasn't a threat yet, so nobody got sick. But if one-third or more can refuse now, and such an above scenario certainly isn't beyond imagination, we're cavorting with disaster.

And someone wants to risk this now? We have more aircraft carriers and warships, too. What if this plague infests the whole crew? We'd have the series "The Last Ship" in a switcheroo: Not the only ship with uninfected people, but infected people in an impossibly undockable situation. And what if its assignment has particularly crucial timing?

The military has said that soldiers would have to get vaccinated in an emergency. And there would be enough to go around at a moment's notice? Would the missile attack on the base in Iraq qualify, in which case they're in enough trouble to start with?

Yes, we're starting to turn the corner on vaccines, and yes, the numbers of infected. are starting to drop. But they're still happening. Military members are still going home on furlough, and they can bring the virus back with them. Until this is totally tamped down, we should ensure that the people who protect us are, in fact, protected themselves.

Texas has completely re-opened its businesses, as has Mississippi. Those governors are making a mistake, wanting to take credit for economic recovery though thinking people will see the difference. Thinking people should also re-think the policy of leaving it up to the soldiers whether or not they want to get vaccinated. 

There is plenty of vaccine to go around now. Certainly, soldiers are high-priority people and should go to there front of the line. Let's get smart about this.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. I now have two vaccine shots. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

What's Biden Thinking? Why Doesn't He Take MBS Out Back?

You have to wonder what Joe Biden's thinking. On paper, it looks pretty obvious.

As in: Why doesn't he take Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to the woodshed for ordering the murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi? Why is he just sanctioning the perpetrators of this vicious, disgusting crime?

Khashoggi, a native of Saudi Arabia and officially still a citizen, who reported for The Washington Post, wrote some very critical things about the lack of human rights in his native country. MBS, as he is called, is the ruling 'boss' of his land since the real king, Salman, is 85 and is not sure where he is anymore. (Yes, I know: Biden is 78 and would be 86 if he should win two terms. And Ronald Reagan's mind was slipping away from him for at least the last year and a half, or so, of his second term. Scary. But I digress.)

So MBS is free to treat criticizers as he wishes and as he can get away with. When Khashoggi was at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, getting legal permission to get married, MBS's men planned a fatal ambush for him. They strangled him, then cut his body into several pieces with a chainsaw. They have not been found.

We know this. There's a report released this past week that says so (Though media revealed much of it already). Unfortunately, this despicable crime and devastation of free press was committed in October, 2018, during the term of our last president. He let MBS off the hook. I think part of him liked what happened to serve as a warning to the "enemies of the state," which is what he calls press that reports facts he doesn't want people to know.

It's impossible to know whether our previous, awful president would actually do this to certain journalists. But that's the point: He has no moral or ethical standards whatsoever. His inaction is its own statement. He's never commented upon the obvious depravity, either.

Biden's aware of all this. And he has acted. But he's done it with indirect subtleness, not with an iron fist. Why not? I can think of a few reasons:

• Iran. Saudi Arabia remains our best ally (though a rogue one) against an ever-menacing Iran, which is gaining in power and the manacles upon which have been released by our previous president, who stupidly cancelled the nuclear development agreement we had with it. He did so so he could justify attacking Iran in the future, which would please
• Israel. Though that country has also put on quite an aggressive face lately, Biden must utilize Saudi Arabia as a land base from which to potentially launch a counterstrike should Iran ever attack Israel. Please remember: We will never abandon Israel. Never. (I said this from my first year of teaching in 1973. I've never been more sure of anything.)
• Oil. We still need it, although the more electric cars we manage to sell our own people, the less that will be true, our own expanding oil independence notwithstanding (and will be limited because of the cutting off of the pipeline through Canada and what will soon--I predict--be curtailing of the drilling in Alaska). Are you watching the pump prices go up lately? That's partly because the OPEC countries, of which Saudi Arabia is its leading member, has cut back on supply. They aren't dumb.
• Iraq. Granted, we don't have a lot of people there anymore, but we still get them killed every so often. Should Saudi Arabia diminish itself as a bulwark against a hostile Iran, the latter would find it far easier to dominate the region. Iran and Iraq fought a ferocious war in the 1980s, not that long ago, in which millions on both sides were killed. Iraq's not strong enough to go through that again, and the United States is directly responsible for that. The effects of that mistaken policy and invasion sadly endure.
• People forget that tomorrow's another day. Embarrassing an ally is tricky business, especially two and a half years down the river. We had to bite down hard in World War II when we needed the Soviet Union, which never hesitated to imprison, exile, and execute millions of its own citizens for resisting its collectivization policy in the 1930s, to take on Hitler's Germany from the east while we planned and eventually implemented squeezing the Nazis from the west and south. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Nobody likes that, either. But it remains true.

Those who say that we should apply morality to our foreign policy aren't necessarily wrong. But they do look at the world through lens that need to be clarified. Acting nobly should be its own reward, but also would have its own consequences. Please remember that, in the end, every nation acts in its own self-interest and its own self-preservation first. And Joe Biden doesn't want to risk destruction and death of his own people if he doesn't have to.

Remember that the last president to commit us to a human rights measuring stick upon our foreign policy got burned badly, through circumstances he originally wasn't connected to. But you inherit results when you take over from someone else, and that baggage matters to those affected. Jimmy Carter got shackled by Iran when it took hostages in 1978; it was retribution for our CIA putting the Shah, who had just been overthrown, back onto the throne in 1953. It cost Carter a second term, and brought on Reagan, the conjured cult around whom, in my view, remains and ruined this country.

Note that the previous president took out an important Iranian military figure, Qasem Soleimani, early last year. The Iranian counterattack on our air base in Iraq was devastating, taking out much of it, and by all accounts (If you watched "60 Minutes" last Sunday, you know), it's a miracle that none of our people were killed--though many still suffer from brain injuries suffered because of it (Note, too, that the previous president got to the mike quickly after the attack and, upon learning of no fatalities, said "All is well," which the soldiers on the ground there would have a definite problem with.). 

The incident belied what would be our posture of dominance and retribution. It did nothing for those who would like to conclude that "we showed them." The Iranians rained 27 ballistic missiles on our people there. It means they have plenty more. It means that, despite the dirt that it naturally wears, Saudi Arabia must stay in our orbit. We can't evoke counterpoise with aircraft carriers alone.

It's a different, more dicey world out there now. To punish MBS simply and decisively with sanctions, for instance, would send a message that's now disproportionate and inappropriate: It used to be that whatever the United States did was justifiable due to its overarching military and economic power. In reaching deep into the tank and very demonstrably so, the previous president has proven that not to be the case. Should Joe Biden have acted similarly, it would have made the previous president look like a prophet and, to some, an even more twisted genius than they think.

There's nothing positive about any of that, either politically or internationally. The resonance of any policy takes place in the future, anyhow. And that has its own surprises.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. My second vaccine's tomorrow. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark