Lost and Found

I hear plenty of things on the radio at my current job that are fairly depressing, but every now and then I get to laugh.

A couple days ago officers were dispatched to a store where a suspected shoplifter was being chased by store security.  Officers were still en-route to the store when this additional information was relayed to them:

"Loss prevention officers have stopped chasing the suspect, a white male, no shirt, tan shorts, last seen headed south behind (local business). They do however have the merchandise and his wallet."

I don't think it will take the detectives long to crack that case.

Fear of Creativity

"Why didn't I think of that?"

Because you're not crazy.

Well, that's a bit blunt and over the top, but it makes my point rather concisely.
Many truly gifted actors and other artists, I think, come up with the performances and ideas they do because they literally don't think quite like most of the rest of us.  Evidence of this is voluminous.  Several magazines and TV shows owe their existence to this phenomenon. Just think about how many times you've read about something someone famous has done or said outside of their professional lives and thought to yourself, "That's not normal. Why did they do that?"  I think it's for the same reason they are able to awe and amaze us in their work.  They are, well, not crazy exactly, but not exactly sane either.   I also wonder how many are self-aware in this regard, and if they are, does it matter?

All of this led me to reflect on my own bouts of creativity.  For me they frequently come at emotional high or low points. I don't think I'm at all unusual in that. There are probably a couple bazillion songs or poems that were written by someone madly in love or despair.  (Or both.)  It's just that in the past, my low days were far too deep in the shadows.  So recently when I've tried to write, my mind has had a tendency to drift toward those shadows.  Back towards a place where I must not allow myself to go.

And so the page sits empty.

But not forever. I've concluded that if I am strong enough to see the shadows and steer clear of them, I'm strong enough find a way to live and create without them.

Yes, that's means I'll be here more often.

Columbia

I was working traffic that day at the ARTCC.  It was chilling every time I glanced at the weather radar display in the control room and saw the large swath of green radar returns the falling debris created on that cloudless day.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth 

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; 

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth 

Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things 

You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung 

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, 

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung 

My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . . 

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue 

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace 

Where never lark, or ever eagle flew — 

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod 

The high untrespassed sanctity of space, 

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr  

On Strike

On strike.

Good enough for me, good enough for GE

The alternative minimum tax (or AMT) is an extra tax some people have to pay on top of the regular income tax. The original idea behind this tax was to prevent people with very high incomes from using special tax benefits to pay little or no tax. The AMT has increased its reach, however, and now applies to some people who don't have very high income or who don't claim lots of special tax benefits. Proposals to repeal or reform the AMT have languished in Congress for years, but effective action does not appear to be on the horizon. Until Congress acts, almost anyone is a potential target for this tax.  fairmark.com 

Pre-retirement, I was subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax a few times.  (I don't enjoy paying taxes any more than you do, but I recognize them as the price to pay for living in a civilized society.)  But if we are going to treat our individual citizens that way, it seems only fair to me that our corporate citizens be subject to the same system.  There were 30 corporations that paid no income tax from 2008-2010, on total profits that exceeded $160 billion.  In fact, they actually got refunds of over $10 billion. That amounts to a negative rate of 6.7%.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm happy that these companies did well.  They employ lots of people and make valuable things or provide important services.  But outside of that I'm just not aware of what enormous contribution to the greater public good General Electric made to justify us all writing checks to them totaling $4.7 billion over the past three years. Or $681 million to Wells Fargo, $951 million to Verizon, and $9 million to Mattell.  And it did come out of our pockets.

I see no reason why corporations shouldn't have to play by somewhat the same rules as the rest of us citizens do.  So let's see what a corporate AMT might look like.
We can continue with GE as our example. Let's say the trigger level for a corporate AMT was profits of $1 billion, (That's surely high enough to exempt any small business, by any definition) and the AMT rate on profits above this figure was just 2%.  On their 2010 profits of $11.7 billion, GE would owe a minimum of $214 million.

One hears the phrase "no skin in the game" from some folks when the topic of income taxes for persons with low incomes is discussed.  Stated in those terms, a corporate AMT seems more than fair to me.

Wordplay

10 words that sound like they should be the names of diseases:

Golf

Cornucopia

Claptrap

Thesaurus

Gluten

Spank

Gymnasium

Stucco

Filth

Dictation

Sunday Photos 10/23/11

All photos copyright of Tim Lundberg