Death, and….

The big line of thunder-bumpers rolled through Arlington after I got home, followed by a cold front and night-time temperatures that hovered above freezing but at something less than cozy. When I checked the temperature this morning, it was just about dead-even with Stockholm.

I sighed, filled with regret that I cannot tell all the stories that emanate from the pastel-toned little village on the coral rock that surrounds Mile Marker 0.

My pal writes a series of eclectic tales from what he calls “My Isle Seat,” and he does the place justice, which I, as an accidental tourist, cannot. My story is mostly punctuated with “Wow, Man,” or “Intense.”

There were so many stories that oozed out of the boozy touring- the midnight relocation of Sloppy Joe’s Bar, for example, or the Hyatt Resort that was built around the bunker-like bar where the Key West city government planned secession from the Union in the wake of the Mariel Boatlift.

There was a round table in the back where treasure hunter Mel Fisher schemed to keep the treasure he finally found from the fabled Spanish galleons Nuestra Senora de Atocha and Santa Margarita that sank during a hurricane on September 6, 1622, near the Keys,
It is tempting to race down both of those narrative rabbit holes since they are dynamite theater. The secession drama that featured a one-minute war by the forces of the Conch Republic, led by the duly elected mayor, followed by unilateral surrender to the US Navy.

The people who performed the act of political theater are still around, even if Mel has passed away, and they tell the story far better than I can. There was real drama surrounding the Border Patrol check point to screen for illegal Cuban immigrants, and the ensuing 17-mile traffic backup on US 1 that stretched back down through the glades toward Key Largo from Skeeter’s Last Chance Bar at Homestead.

The notion that Monroe County was something separate from the rest of the Lower 48 was quite legitimate, even if the theater was surreal.

I have a better claim to being able to say something about Ernie the famous writer. His decade on the Island is a great tale, and I may follow up on that some time. It is intriguing to think that I have resided in Big Pink for ten years, effective this coming October, so I have an idea about the way a decade can frame a life.

An associate has observed that I labor under the delusion that I have something in common with Ernie, which is true enough, though I demure at the depth of the hallucination. I have been through many of the places Ernie liked, seen the snowy summit of Kilimanjaro and had a drink at the George V Bar in Paris that he “liberated” in the war, but there are many more that I have yet to see.

As part of the recovery process from this trip, I glanced at the tax forms that were strewn across the end of the writing table.

Yours are due in a few weeks, so there is a fair amount of interest in them. I am suffering from the delusion that I can make a business out of electronic digits- my personal version of the dot.com bust- and those are due to the government on the Ides of March.

The big companies are obligated to file along with the small fry, and are available for public comment. That is why the story in the Times this morning caught my eye. I have often wondered why there is no rebellion in this nation over the antics of our corporate citizens.
The Times reported this morning that massive General Electric- once rated as “America’s most admired company”- reported worldwide profits of over fourteen billion dollars last year. Over a third that amount was generated within the United States, but curiously, the company paid no taxes. Instead, the IRS granted GE a $3.2 tax credit.

GE’s high profile-chairman is a creative fellow named Jeffrey R. Immelt. He is so good at what he does that he was asked by the President to serve as his top economic advisor on job creation and business recovery.
The fact that he has been so successful in weathering the global economic storm is admirable, of course, but the strategy that resulted in his company’s low tax bill to Uncle Sam relies on hoarding corporate cash, sending jobs overseas and aggressive lobbying for preferential treatment by the taxation committees in Congress.

Immelt is not alone in getting a nice parking place at the White House. Mr. Obama appointed William Daley as his new chief of staff in January. He made $15.4 million last year from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., so although Mr. Daley will take a significant pay-cut this year, we can be assured that corporate America’s just concerns will have a clear voice in the Oval Office.

Let’s take a moment to talk about the class war language that so polarizes the political debate. The Right has been remarkably successful in convincing the middle class that tax cuts for the upper income wage earners is the right thing to do. It is an attractive if somewhat counter-intuitive argument that really works out best for the Immelts and Daleys of the world, and plays to the notion that we all could get there if things just broke a little different. It is the American Dream.

Here is an example of that line, which is quite startling. The conservative attorney and tax policy writer John Hindraker at Power Line is circulating this chart to show the inequity of the US tax code as measured against other (and much more socialist) nations:

I know from personal calculations that the number is just about right, since my planning factor is to divide my income in half when it comes to calculating disposable income, and I love my mortgage tax break and the alimony I get to write off at tax time.
But of course figures lie, and liars figure. The chart refers to the top ten percent of wage-earners, and that is where the big lie resides.

The Left has never been very successful in convincing the middle class that higher taxes were a good idea. The “top ten percent” actually translates to those people making more than $113,000 dollars a year. That is to say, a couple of school teachers in Fairfax County easily qualify as the oppressed Plutocrats. For 2008, the top one percent bracket starts out a little south of $400K, and you can rapidly see where that goes swiftly into the stratosphere.

According to Wikipedia, the number of U.S. households with a net worth over $5 million, not including first homes, is right around 840,000. I don’t know if that is a fair number to use for someone who is rich.

Being a millionaire is not what it used to be, after all, and I am never going to get there. But more than $5 million seems to be a lot. If the U.S. population in 2009 stood at 305 million, that means right around a quarter of one percent of us are on easy street.

I don’t have any idea about what is fair and what isn’t. It is just the way it is as we come to tax time, and if GE and the Wall Street guys like the White House Chief of Staff can basically buy tax policy, I guess it should come as no surprise that things are the way it is.

I need to figure out how to live like Ernie Hemingway. I would like to see the places he did. Maybe do a book about it.

I’d like to see his Spain, of course, but I have a certain hankering to drop out of the ten percent and go see the bars in Old Havana. I hear they will once again be open for business to thirsty Americans. A recent change in policy means that US citizens can travel legally to Cuba now, if there is a legitimate humanitarian reason. I am not sure what the tax rates are for expats there, but Ernie might have been on to something.

I will have to draft a cable to the State Department to see if permission to travel includes critical literary research.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com