My father's post from 4/28/06

My father has been a CPA pretty much for all of his working life. At 83, he is the oldest, licensed, practicing accountant in the state of Florida. He has a thorough understanding of economics and the benefit of perspective of someone who has been around for a long time. I'm lucky to have a brilliant father.

He was cleaning out computer files and came across a piece he wrote in April, 2006. It's so on target, it's scary.

WHAT IF

For some years now I’ve thought of myself as living in an era in which a bumbling, incompetent administration was creating a mess that would take generations to undo. It was only a few days ago that a thought struck me. What if they’re smarter than I’m giving them credit for? What if it’s intentional? I’ve been worrying that idea, as a dog worries a bone, ever since. There’s a reasonable case to be made for the apparently random results of a number of inexplicable decisions actually being part of a larger, long term, plan.

“Third World” is a pejorative term that we apply to nations with certain characteristics. They lack a middle class. The poor are very poor. The rich are very rich. No matter what their theoretical form of government, and despite the laws on their books, the poor have no truly guaranteed rights. The rich have rights which extend well beyond what we would consider reasonable and often well beyond those which the local law allows.

Being rich in the United States is nice. Being rich in a third world nation is heavenly. I’ve been told of a family of five living with three maids, a cook, a butler and a chauffeur on $20,000 per year. The client who talked about this also mentioned how grateful the household employees were to have such wonderful employment. A friend, an Ecuadorian developer, told me that he had the legal right to have his employees whipped if they disobeyed an order. A Brazilian friend spoke of his ranch and gave me its size in hectares. It wasn’t until I returned home and looked up the size of a hectare that I realized that it was larger than the State of Rhode Island. Being really rich is only possible in the third world.

The members of the second Bush administration are all rich; well sort of rich. They’re not as rich as their Saudi friends even if they have the same amount of accumulated wealth. They are not as rich as their Latin American counterparts. It’s not that they wouldn’t like to be. It’s that the laws of the United States, at the time that George W. Bush was elected for the first time, got in the way. If we view the actions of this government as being the work of a group of greedy men trying to turn the United States into a third world nation for the benefit of themselves and their children, all of the blunders, all of the missteps, cease to be anything of the sort. They become part of a whole. They represent a group of rational steps leading to a goal. Once I reached that conclusion, I decided to enumerate the more egregious of them to see if my theory made sense.

I decided, as I always do, to look first at taxation. The graduated income tax has always been one of the impediments to accumulating wealth. The estate tax was the means of protecting society from the danger of creating a hereditary autocracy. I found that there was nothing to really think about. The income tax is much less graduated than it was at the beginning of the Bush administration. The difference between the tax rate on dividends and that on earned income is clearly an effort to disadvantage the working individual and to benefit the more sophisticated and wealthier investor. The estate tax has rapidly been reduced in scope. It is scheduled to end in 2010. It will theoretically resume in 2011 but one of the president’s stated goals is to make its demise permanent.

I next turned to the economy. Ronald Reagan cut taxes with the stated goal of starving programs that he considered to be improper as functions of government. At no time did he suggest that the government should print money or borrow it so that the programs could continue despite the lower taxes. Congress accepted only half of the program but Reagan’s intention was clear. He was a true fiscal conservative. This administration is committed to lowering taxes while continuing or expanding expensive programs. Since the people in the administration are intelligent and conservative I concluded they have not entered this course by accident. I began casting about for a rational reason for taking a government with a fiscal surplus and turning it into one with a huge deficit. The end result of such an action has to be hyper-inflation. That’s where I found my answer. One of the characteristics of third world nations is the absence of a middle class. Argentina provided the perfect model of the way to destroy your middle class. Just create a hyper-inflation and your middle class is gone. The poor live from hand to mouth. Hyper-inflation to them is just the nuisance of having a few more zeros added to the end of their paychecks and then rushing out to spend the money before another zero appears. The rich have land and factories and commodities and items that do not lose their intrinsic value. The middle class has savings that must be spent quickly before their value disappears and securities that must be sold in an effort to maintain their way of living. When those are gone, they have joined the ranks of the poor.

I next turned to international relations; specifically to the export of jobs and the importing of “guest” workers who are happy to work for substandard wages. If you hope to live with the joys of being rich in a third world nation then the poor have to be truly poor. Think of the joys of running a household with six servants, all of whom are grateful for the job, on $20,000 per year. There’s only one way to achieve that; render the American worker redundant. How do you do it? Ship his or her job overseas and then bring in impoverished foreigners to take the jobs that are left. There is no such thing as a job that Americans don’t want to do. There are lots of jobs that Americans don’t want to do at the price that employers are willing to pay. If you look at the administration’s policies in the aggressive search for NAFTA type agreements and in the creation and encouragement of guest worker programs you realize that they are aimed at the destruction of the blue collar middle class. These are the people who have turned the United States into a First World leader. Their absence will cause our decline into mediocrity and then poverty.

Eventually I was forced to confront the Iraq war. Why would anyone want to start a war on false pretences when the results were so easily foreseen? My earliest thought was that George W. was getting even for Saddam’s effort to have his father killed. I have now concluded that I was being simplistic. I now see two reasons for the war. The first comes from a Bush quote. “I am a wartime president.” If you seriously want to be above the law, the trick is to be a wartime president. No one really knows what limits exist for a president in such a position. Get caught releasing classified information to promote a policy. “So what? I secretly declassified it.” Try doing that when you’re not a wartime president. Go on a fishing expedition in violation of Americans’ Constitutional rights? “It’s OK. They were bad guys and I’m a wartime president.”

The second reason that I could find for an otherwise incomprehensible war goes back to the economic question. If you really want to create an insurmountable deficit you need a war. There’s no other way to spend so much money so fast and without too much Congressional surveillance.

We keep hearing about passing our excesses on to our grandchildren. That’s what we are doing, but not in the form of a national debt. We are destroying our nation by exporting our factories, by leaving our national financial future in the hands of those foreign nations that own our debt and by allowing a few greedy men to turn us from a healthy democracy to a hereditary autocracy.

Being the old lady

When I was living in my first college apartment, my friend Ronny, also in his first apt, taught me to make potato soup. He said an old lady had showed him how. It was simple, basic. Perfect for my beginner cooking skills. I still use it as a base today for lots of variations, adding broccoli and dill or curry and corn. This is what we learned.

Cut up some potatoes and put them in a pot. Cover with water. Salt. Cook, covered, until soft. Take out the potatoes and cut really small. Put them back in the pot with the "potatoey water." (I don't think either of us knew the word "stock.") Add milk and butter and reheat. I usually put black pepper in it too.

I was making this soup (with sautéed onions and broccoli) and began wondering about the old lady who had taught him to make potato soup over Christmas vacation many years ago. How old was she? Younger than me? I'm 53. I bet I seem like an old lady to a nineteen year old.

Kurt was writing with a young musician from NC yesterday, probably somewhere in his 20s. We got to talking about food. He had been trying to make hummus, but couldn't get it creamy like the stuff you buy. I gave him a basic recipe, one he could use as a basis for different variations.

After he left, I pictured him, many years down the road, making roasted red pepper hummus or sundried tomato hummus, still based on a recipe I wrote on the back of a water bill in 2012.

I'd become the old lady.

Hummus

1 clove garlic

3 T tahini

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 T olive oil

salt to taste

2 cups cooked chickpeas (1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked and cooked with salt and a little garlic

powder, or adjust it to the amount of chickpeas in a can)

Process in a food processor (or blend, or mash) until creamy.

At long last

I haven't worked for anyone besides myself since June, when the Acorn Restaurant closed its doors. I found one job about a month later, with a catering company. It was a nice set-up, but something about it was a real turn off. I was not the first choice candidate, for one thing. I got called in for an interview several weeks after I applied, after the owner fired the person she did hire. She really talked badly about this person's work. I went in to work for her the next day and realized that she probably never told the previous baker what she wanted. Things had to be done exactly like she wanted even though some of the presentations were atypical. It was like everyone would know how things "should" be done. In fact, she talked badly about other business owners, other caterers, as though she made herself better by putting someone else down. And the food wasn't my style at all. I could make her recipes but I wasn't going to like them.

And she had a bunch of family working for her, which makes for weird dynamics. I called back the next morning and thanked her for offering me the position, but I didn't think the job and I were a good fit.

I continued searching but there was nothing out there. Any resumes I sent out didn't draw responses. I got serious about selling artwork and confections online. I learned about search engine optimization, shipping and presentation. Selling online is very different than going to shows, which I had done when I was younger.

I learned that I can do it. If need be, I can get by on my creativity. Not as well as I like, but I can. I went from being unemployed to being self-employed.

My next move was to put that on my resume. I wasn't unemployed. My current employment is Kickglass Enamels. It worked.

I went for an interview with a catering chef. I'd had lots of time to think about what I wanted in a job and what I didn't. I wanted to respect the menu. I wanted to like the people I spent the day with. I didn't want an arduous commute. In other words, I want to like my life, not just earn money to support the waking hours I have off each day.

I'm a lousy capitalist. Most kitchen people are. There are much easier ways to make a living, but they aren't things we want to live our lives doing.

I didn't hear from him and figured he must have found somebody with a real catering background. Mine is restaurant, which is quite different. This is new turf.

Then he called back, apologized for taking so long. He'd been doing lots of interviews. He wanted me to come back in, cook with him for a few hours. We scheduled it for the following afternoon.

I dressed the part. Black pants, clogs, chef coat, hair braided and hidden beneath a bandana. I brought my knife roll. I'd forgotten what it felt like to present myself as a professional. It reminded me that I am capable.

I met the business owner. I got the kitchen tour. I made some cheddar chive biscuits. I did florentines and rolled them into cones and cylinders. I made mistakes with their ovens, which are kind of wonky. I was able to analyze the mistakes, redo the cookies correctly. The chef worked on other things but was watching to see how I worked, how I asked questions. It seemed positive. I didn't feel pressured or nervous. After all, I had my artwork to fall back on.

He called with an offer this morning, which I accepted. I'm starting on Sunday, making things for a photo shoot in a magazine.

Working for a catering company is new to me. The hours are unpredictable. The customers are the 1%. And it's a tough job market out there. I need to do a good job.

It's been a nice run. I'm ready.

Family ring tones?

I lost my phone in November.

At first, I thought I was getting it back. I had left a message with my husband's phone number, to call if it turned up. This was no easy feat. I lost it on Legislative Plaza during a statewide Occupy weekend. The place is huge, there were people from all over the state plus any number of people on the Plaza that had nothing to do with Occupy. It's a public place, popular on weekends with skateboarders.

In a leaderless movement, finding someone to leave a number with was no easy task, but I did. Shortly after I got home, a woman called, saying she had found my phone. We arranged to meet the next day.

I drove back into Nashville, waited around for about half an hour for her to arrive and hand me a phone that wasn't mine. Okay, not what we either of us expected. I don't know if she ever found the owner of that phone. I never found mine.

I activated an old phone, which gave me back my doorbell text alert. I'd always liked it. It wasn't an option on the phone I lost. But I missed having a keyboard for texting. Ivy had a phone like my lost one that she wasn't using, so I asked her to bring it with her when she came south for Christmas.

Kendra was visiting when I heard a doorbell. "I have a text," I said, wondering where my phone was. I thought I'd left it in the bedroom, but this sounded close.

"No, I do," she said, picking up her phone.

When we went to NC, I activated Ivy's old phone, which was the same model as my lost one but with all her settings. The first call I got was from her. Her old ringtone was same one I had set. And the text alert? Yup.

Do ring tones run in families?

The SNAP challenge and the great divide

Sometime in the early to mid 70s, there was a spike in food prices. I didn't really notice at the time. We no longer lived in NYC, where mothers regularly sent children to the store to pick up a missing ingredient. I was a teenager, newly moved to the suburbs and not yet old enough to drive. I didn't shop.

One day, a classmate passed around information about a meat boycott. I told my mother, who said she had stopped buying red meat already, because the price was so high. She was a great cook. I hadn't missed it at all.

During that same period, there was an article in the paper telling readers how to get their grocery bills down to some amount per week, I don't remember what. My mom thought that sounded high so she kept track. She couldn't get our weekly bill UP to the amount that these people were trying to get down to. Our family of four included two teenagers, me and my brother.

We weren't poor. This is just how we eat. I should add that my mother did not grow up in the US.

Which brings us to SNAP, the current incarnation of food stamps. A few legislators have taken on the challenge of trying to live for a week on the equivalent of the average food stamp allotment, which is 31$ and change per person, about 1.50 per meal.

One of the legislators said he ate a lot of canned tuna and hard boiled eggs. He went to bed hungry every night. Another ate lots of peanutbutter and crackers before throwing in the towel.

Tuna? Peanutbutter? Those are rather expensive sources of protein. And while eggs are reasonable, boiled eggs are the least filling way to prepare them. Want to fill up? Fry them. Make an omelette. Saute it with vegetables and rice. Higher fat? Well yes, and that is a problem among people with limited incomes. But fatty foods fill you up.

Hopefully, they learned from their challenge. What I learned is that that people who are supposed to represent us are even more out of touch than I thought, people who apparently don't cook and eat lots of expensive foods. They are people who have never eaten rice and beans unless it was part of a fundraiser involving Latinos, people who don't cook and don't need to.

While I don't plan to do the challenge, I'm betting I have lots of meals in my repertoire that fit the bill, meals which are nutritious and taste good. I intend to post them after I do the pricing.

Like my mom, this isn't really a challenge at all.

Christmas and the forgotten child

I called Kurt as soon as I realized. I was closing the last of the wonderful boxes of confections I'd made for everyone's gifts when I remembered.

It went to voicemail. "Kurt," I said after waiting for the inevitable "To leave a callback number, press five." Has anyone ever done that? If you go to your missed calls, there's the callback number.

But I digress.

"Kurt, I forgot Aidan exists," I told his voicemail. I'd been feeling so on top of things. I'd shipped out all the orders I'd gotten from my etsy sites, had made the last of the goodies with my daughter (she shaped the marzipans this year. I usually do fruits. These were way more fun, things like sushi, mushrooms, a pizza and a garlic bulb.) I was putting together gifts and then I remembered.

There's a new generation.

It's been years since I had to shop for gifts for Kurt's family. I always make a beautiful selection of sweets, nice enough that I put the assortments up for sale on etsy this year. The nieces and nephews got money in the bottom of their tins as well. In fact, only one of them still qualifies. The rest are adults.

Except there's a 16 month old now, my oldest nephew's son. I didn't get him a gift last year, when he was 4 months old. I had never met him. I made him a quilt for his birth. A four month old doesn't notice presents and I hate shopping.

But kids? Buying stuff for kids is fun. And expected. So there I was, me, the anti-shopper, at Wal-Mart on a rainy, Dec 22 afternoon. The parking lot was jammed. I thought the store would be a disaster.

It wasn't. I didn't even buy the first thing that would work. I looked around until I found something that I thought suited him, from what I've heard. Four animals that roll, that he could push along with his little hands and make the noises himself, as he's prone to do. Cute, looked well made.

Time to start a new cycle of finding age appropriate toys each year. Cool.

We got home and Kurt asked about the pies. Wasn't I going to make pies to take with us? I've always been responsible for the pies, ever since I first joined his family and showed up at Christmas with a blueberry apple pie.

How on earth did I forget that?

So I made a pear pie and a pear cranberry pie. All is set to go. Happy Hanukah and merry Christmas.

Iraq and us

I mentioned this column to Blicktx.

There was a period of time where expressing doubt about the rightness of being in Iraq was almost patriotic blasphemy. Our country went through a few years of odd self-censorship, when the notion of war heroism stifled reason. It was a time when I couldn't say of the soldiers that I had no doubt that they would defend our right to vote or to speak freely, but that isn't why they were sent to Iraq.

Leonard Pitts wrote what I have felt for a long time about the Iraq War, but so much more eloquently than I could have.

http://www.freep.com/article/20111028/OPINION05/110280303/Leonard-Pitts-Jr-Mixed-emotions-U-S-exits-Iraq