(The following was published in Archives News, Vol. 20, No. 3, Fall, 2010, by the “Friends of the Virginia State Archives,” Richmond, Virginia. Since then, the differentiation between law and equity has been abolished in Va.)
One of the many unique qualities that are manifest in Virginia to this day is the distinction in Virginia circuit (general trial) courts between “law” and “equity,” a holdover from the English legal system. To this day, the Rules of the Supreme Court of Virginia have separate parts dedicated to law and equity procedures. In Virginia, law procedure usually allows recovery of money damages, while equity procedure allows specific relief, like injunctions.
Equity procedure in Virginia is derivative of that created around 1345 CE with the help of the early (Catholic) church in England, well before the establishment of the Anglican Church in 1534 CE. At the time, procedures in the “law” courts (controlled by the Crown) were archaic and convoluted. The only remedies usually available were the liquidation of all claims in those courts to money damages, and litigants were frequently and permanently thrown out for the most minor, technical errors in the initial papers pleading the case. Thus, there developed a strong need for some sort of “legal” relief that was unobtainable in the secular law courts.
The Lord Chancellor in England, therefore, set up a series of courts presided over by local “chancellors” to allow dissatisfied and frustrated litigants to move for relief they could not get in the law courts, like divorce and annulment of marriage, injunctions and, perhaps most importantly, specific performance of contractual obligations. However, a person could not come into the “chancery” courts unless and until he (or she?) had “clean hands,” meaning he could not get equity relief if he had also done wrong.
Obviously, the church already controlled most aspects of marriage and dissolution. Divorce procedure in Virginia is controlled by the equity rules to this day. Other types of equity (or chancery—the terms are interchangeable) relief in Virginia are the issuance of injunctions to compel or stop a particular behavior or action; restitution, to “restore” a legally injured or damaged person to the status he or she had before the injury or loss; and specific performance of contracts, especially contracts for the sale and/or purchase of real estate. As real estate is considered legally unique, it can be the subject of an equity procedure to compel its purchase or sale by a defaulting party. There may also be money damages available at law.
Today in Virginia, the circuit courts operate seamlessly as both law and equity courts. Unlike earlier times, law and equity relief can now be requested together in the same initiating papers (the pleadings), but they must be pleaded in separate “counts” (numbered paragraphs) within the pleadings. Different rules apply to stop law “actions” (statutes of limitation) and equity “causes” (doctrine of “laches”). Statutes of limitation are created by the legislature and are absolute, whereas the doctrine of laches is applied by the judges (who are sometimes still called “chancellors”) somewhat more flexibly. A standard of “fairness” is usually under consideration in such matters.
The initiating pleading in a law action is called a “Motion for Judgment,” while the initiating pleading in an equity cause is called a “Bill of Complaint.” The initiating parties are called “Plaintiffs” in law actions and “Complainants” in equity causes. The parties sued are called “Defendants” in law actions and “Respondents” in equity causes. These distinctions for the parties are not rigidly enforced.
It is the burden of the initiating party to know what kind of relief should be requested and to plead it correctly. There are still means of dismissal for incorrectly pleading a case, but it has gotten easier over time. I understand practically all other states (other than Virginia) have removed these lingering distinctions between law and equity.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
WASHINGTON & LEE COUNTRY CLUB
Memoir (short) of my years at Washington & Lee University School of Law
This may be updated from time to time.
I—The Founding
I spent the 4-year period from 1969 through 1973 trying to matriculate through and graduate from the School of Law at Washington & Lee University, a very old, small school in Lexington, Virginia. George Washington had endowed "Liberty Hall Academy" with a substantial gift of Patowmack Co. stock, and the school was renamed "Washington College." Robert E. Lee became the President after the Civil War and lured over the law school being then independently operated in Lexington by John Randolph Tucker, Some time after Lee's death in 1870, Washington College was re-named Washington & Lee University (W&L).
II—Special (law) Ed
It took me a year longer than most to get out of W&L because I was having such a good time my first year I mostly forgot to study. Thankfully, the Dean and my professors did not give up on me, though they had ample provocation to do so. It took a long time, but I was grateful to have finally figured out that I needed to worry less about THE "right answer" and focus more on the "right question." That was what was totally different about the study of law. There was no need, actually, to worry about the "right answer." I also learned that the judge will always tell you what the "right answer" is!
III—Phi Delta Phi
I had previously attended Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, graduating in 1968. For almost 3 years while at R-MC, I was desperately regretting never having joined a fraternity, but during my last year, it fell into perspective, and now I am truly grateful I did not subject myself nor submit to that nonsense. Nevertheless, during my 2d year at W&L, I wound up as the president of Phi Delta Phi, a legal "fraternity," and I was elected only because I knew how to organize a party! (Some things never change.) The Dean of the Law School was also a member, and he reproached me one day because we never sponsored any thoughtful or cultural or academic activities. I had to break it to him that my fellow student members would never stand for it! We were just a bunch of dissolute party animals!
IV—Lee Chapel
Lee Chapel sits in the lower front part of the campus opposite to and facing the Colonnade on top of the hill, and the Lee Family Crypt is in the basement wherein "Marse Robert" Lee and the rest of his family are entombed. On the main floor at the front of the chapel interior is the "famous" marble sculpture by Edward Valentine of Robert E. Lee seemingly on his deathbed, but instead only in recumbent pose sleeping on a campaign cot during some arduous military procedure. As a friend of mine has observed, when one enters Lee “Chapel,” it is not clear who or what one is supposed to worship!
For years, the skeleton of Robert E. Lee's horse, "Traveller," was on display in the basement of the Chapel, later to be interred (see below). Charlie McDowell, who grew up in Lexington and who recently died, was the long-time Washington correspondent for the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, and he had been at W&L in the late 1940's with such luminaries as Pat Robertson and Roger Mudd, among others. I heard him speak one day at a gathering of lawyers, and he regaled us with some tales of his student days. He told us of the time when some fellow students were guides at Lee Chapel, and they would lead the tourists past the Valentine statue down the stairs to the Family Crypt and the display of Traveller's skeleton. One of the students was a Biology major, and he proceeded to fetch a skeleton of a small foal from the biology lab and set it up next to Traveller's skeleton. Then as the tourists were paraded past, they would be told that the larger skeleton was, of course, Traveller, and the small one was Traveller as a young foal! No one missed a beat!
V—The solemn burial of Traveller
During my last year at W&L, I was walking across campus one mild spring day in my typical attire of shorts, T-shirt, pathetic scraggly beard, long-ish hair and sandals, and I saw a cluster of folks fully dressed in dark, somber colors gathered by the side of Lee Chapel (see above).
I approached the edge of the crowd and, pacing back and forth, craned my neck to get a better view of what was going on. Some therein glared back at me for my insufficiently mournful attire (and attitude). What I saw was the priest from the Episcopal church on the campus corner in full vestments conducting the Episcopal Service for the Dead over the freshly interred bones of Traveller, which had been buried in a hole by the side of Lee Chapel and over which there had been placed an engraved granite slab reciting the pertinent data. Said mourners were gathered round respectfully. As I said, Traveller's skeleton had been on display in the basement of Lee Chapel for several years but it had finally gotten too moldy or brittle to remain so.
The thing that struck me most profoundly is that I had no idea Traveller was an Episcopalian!
VI—Zollman's Pavilion
In 2003, on the occasion of our class's 30th Reunion, we were trundled out to "Zollman's Pavilion" for a picnic lunch, the Pavilion being nothing more than a rough, corrugated tin shed with concrete floor sitting on the banks of Buffalo Creek, about 6 miles south of Lexington. It seems that W&L had engaged the Pavilion at which to host wistful alumni events.
Now, the true history of Zollman's Pavilion is that it had been the site of some of the wildest, most Bacchanalian parties ever held under the auspices of students at W&L or the adjacent military college, Virginia Military Institute, complete with live music and plastic garbage cans full of "Purple Jesus" (a homemade concoction of grape Hi-C, other fruit juices, oranges, lemons, limes, cherries AND grain alcohol) with a substantially intoxicated group of attendees present. My dim recollections are that it almost ALWAYS rained whenever there was an event at Zollman's, and there were always several cars stuck either in the mud at Zollman's or in the ditches along the road leading down to Zollman's. So, the prevailing ethic was to help remove said vehicles from said ditches before the gendarmes arrived to create more problems for the inebriated students who had driven into said ditches. (My, how times have changed!)
Well, at our 30th Reunion at Zollman's, held on a most inapt sunny afternoon, a period of time passed to allow our box-lunches to digest and our alcohol-dimmed memories to revive and squeeze us in their nostalgic bear-hug. Some "suit" working for W&L rather clumsily attempted to put the "touch" on us alums for donations of money, figuring that we would be unable to resist such a warm, fuzzy, nostalgia-addled pitch. I was rather annoyed by this blatant attempt to work me over, so I got up and promptly left. I should have known things were somehow not right when I had failed to see any cars in ditches while driving down to Zollman's that day!
VII—Cheap eats and hibachis
One of the most memorable things about my days at W&L were how inexpensive things were back then. Gasoline sold for less than 35c per gallon! One could purchase ground beef for 59c a pound or less! One could purchase a WHOLE CASE of (rotgut) beer for under $5, not just a six-pack! And, we consumed Gallo "Hearty Burgundy" by the half-gallon which also was pretty cheap back then, under $5 as I recall.
We could buy and grill huge slabs of beef on hibachis and wind up feeding four of us for less than $5 a meal. I never see hibachis anymore. A hibachi was a small cast-iron charcoal brazier with two (usually) wood-handled grills about 10" x 10" each, clamped onto the back of the hibachi and cantilevered over the coals. Most of us had them because they were small enough to move into our small apartments after the fire had gone out. Our student-apartment rent was $55 per month, INCLUSIVE of all utilities! We had it made. Law-school tuition was less than $1200 a semester. Recent graduates who got really good starting salaries would brag about getting $10,000 a year! As a sole practitioner (I was self-employed my entire professional career), I earned $5200 my first year--$100 a week!
We never had it so good.
VIII—"The Peoples' Food Restaurant"
In the early 1970's there was a social mood extant that was quite different from the usual rigid coat-&-tie demeanor of times then past at W&L (now desperately in revival). Admittedly, W&L was not a hotbed of radical activity as were some other campuses at the time, but there was plenty of dope to smoke and lots of apparent hippies about. Clean-shaven faces and preppy attire had given substantial way to leather, sandals, tie-dye, long hair and beards. The founding chapter of the venerable "Old South" fraternity, Kappa Alpha, had reputedly lost its charter for awhile allegedly because some rather annoyed alumni had stopped by after a football game, expecting to sing some frat songs around the piano and had discovered instead large posters of Jimi Hendrix, "Che" Guevara and Janis Joplin illuminated by ultraviolet blacklights glowing through a pervasive fog of cannabis.
I had lost (or found?) my own way during those days. I became fond of John Waters's nasty movies like the then-recently-screened Pink Flamingos," and I had developed a liking for the warped humor of the "Firesign Theatre" available only on vinyl records, best enjoyed with a lot of dope. CD's and iPods were a long ways off. We did not even have cassette tapes yet, but I had a LearJet 8-track in my car!
"Head" shops were openly trading their wares back then, including cigarette rolling papers and machines, fancy bongs and pipes, posters and provocative bumper stickers, peace-sign jewelry, leather bags and other goods frequently associated with the smoking of marijuana. I never saw anything associated with the use of cocaine or any other drug at the time.
A group of "hippies" had taken over the run-down "White Column Inn" on Main Street in Lexington and opened "The Peoples' Food Restaurant," offering whole-grain homemade breads, sprouts and so forth. Their signature sandwich was the "Peoples' Special," a fried-egg-and-melted-cheese concoction with sliced raw onion and alfalfa sprouts on homemade-mayo-slathered homemade gritty whole-wheat bread. It was absolutely wonderful! I consumed several of them and have also made my own since, washed down liberally with good beer (not the rotgut we used to buy for less than $5 a case!)
IX—"Rockbridge Red"
It might be considered disingenuous if I did not mention one of the most pervasive influences in my life during my time in Lexington, and that was the massive “lids” of marijuana (“dope”) that had been apparently grown locally and was sold only to students by one of my fellow law students during my time there.
The product was a beautiful home-grown material that was reddish-gold in color, thus its name, “Rockbridge Red.” One could buy a massive handful in a plastic baggie for $15! That is an amazingly low price, and today’s costs are mind-boggling because my market sense was set in those times and under those circumstances. I have not purchased any marijuana in about 30 years, and I don’t really smoke it much anymore. Neither do most of the scores of people who once did. (So much for its allegedly addictive qualities, per the DEA.) But my memories are fond ones.
AND, “Rockbridge Red” would get one really stoned. It wasn’t lethal, but it was a “magic carpet ride”! The purveyor must have grown a huge amount of it, because it was available for a very long time. He would come to school and always seemed to have plenty of “lids” in his bookbag. He was also a very good student and later became a prosecutor after graduation. I shall avoid any further identifying information so that he shall remain protected, wherever he may be. I have not seen him in years.
As I indicated, I knew a lot of people who were smoking “Rockbridge Red” back then, folks who became prominent doctors, teachers, preachers, lawyers and judges and who probably don’t smoke dope today and haven’t in years. But it was the thing to do back then for a lot of us, and it made life very interesting. For me, I know for a fact it made me smarter, because it opened up channels in my mind that I did not know were there before. I came to look at things much differently thereafter, much more expansively and ecumenically, and I am grateful for that enlightenment. The skeptics can kiss my ass.
I am sure there were some who overdid and “overdosed,” but they must have been few and far between. I have never witnessed a drug any more innocuous than marijuana, whereas cocaine and legal alcohol are extremely dangerous. The only thing that criminalization of marijuana does is ruin lives—it cannot and does not discourage any of us who want to smoke dope. All it does is send some peaceful offenders to confinement, after-the-fact, for engaging in something (possession of dope) that harms ABSOLUTELY no one else. Those who don’t want to smoke it are obviously not deterred by the law but by their own preferences. If there were a MEDICAL issue regarding the consumption of dope, then why is it treated as a criminal act instead of as a medical problem? And, why are all the competent studies and examinations contrary to those politically-driven conclusions?
Marijuana was outlawed in the 1930’s for two main reasons: alcohol had been legalized again, so otherwise-unemployed still-busters had a job in the Depression. Secondly, marijuana was often used by black musicians back then, so there was a suggestion that it would make white kids act and think like “Nigras.” Fast-forward to the 1970’s, and hippies and other “inappropriate” people are enjoying marijuana and mocking Richard Nixon, thus fueling the hostilities of most law-enforcement officers, prosecutors, etc., most of whom still viscerally hate hippies, love politicians who are “tough on crime,” and who lobby hard for intensifying the criminal consequences of associating with dope. Thus, the absurd “War On Drugs” was born and lives to this day, now enforced by President Barack Obama, like his predecessor Bill Clinton, a former dope smoker. A lot of vile energy and bad karma have been expended on enforcement of the laws criminalizing marijuana.
But, a lot of us (now in our sixties) have smoked it anyway, and fortunately we were never caught. Too many hapless folks were caught, however, and their lives were ruined. TO THIS DAY, easily 40 years later, one can still get more time in prison for selling dope than for killing one’s wife or boss.
No, my law grades were not the highest by a long shot. Many exemplary law students did not smoke dope. Many of them were and are raving dorks. But most of my friends and I did smoke dope, and we are not dummies, either.
This may be updated from time to time.
I—The Founding
I spent the 4-year period from 1969 through 1973 trying to matriculate through and graduate from the School of Law at Washington & Lee University, a very old, small school in Lexington, Virginia. George Washington had endowed "Liberty Hall Academy" with a substantial gift of Patowmack Co. stock, and the school was renamed "Washington College." Robert E. Lee became the President after the Civil War and lured over the law school being then independently operated in Lexington by John Randolph Tucker, Some time after Lee's death in 1870, Washington College was re-named Washington & Lee University (W&L).
II—Special (law) Ed
It took me a year longer than most to get out of W&L because I was having such a good time my first year I mostly forgot to study. Thankfully, the Dean and my professors did not give up on me, though they had ample provocation to do so. It took a long time, but I was grateful to have finally figured out that I needed to worry less about THE "right answer" and focus more on the "right question." That was what was totally different about the study of law. There was no need, actually, to worry about the "right answer." I also learned that the judge will always tell you what the "right answer" is!
III—Phi Delta Phi
I had previously attended Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, graduating in 1968. For almost 3 years while at R-MC, I was desperately regretting never having joined a fraternity, but during my last year, it fell into perspective, and now I am truly grateful I did not subject myself nor submit to that nonsense. Nevertheless, during my 2d year at W&L, I wound up as the president of Phi Delta Phi, a legal "fraternity," and I was elected only because I knew how to organize a party! (Some things never change.) The Dean of the Law School was also a member, and he reproached me one day because we never sponsored any thoughtful or cultural or academic activities. I had to break it to him that my fellow student members would never stand for it! We were just a bunch of dissolute party animals!
IV—Lee Chapel
Lee Chapel sits in the lower front part of the campus opposite to and facing the Colonnade on top of the hill, and the Lee Family Crypt is in the basement wherein "Marse Robert" Lee and the rest of his family are entombed. On the main floor at the front of the chapel interior is the "famous" marble sculpture by Edward Valentine of Robert E. Lee seemingly on his deathbed, but instead only in recumbent pose sleeping on a campaign cot during some arduous military procedure. As a friend of mine has observed, when one enters Lee “Chapel,” it is not clear who or what one is supposed to worship!
For years, the skeleton of Robert E. Lee's horse, "Traveller," was on display in the basement of the Chapel, later to be interred (see below). Charlie McDowell, who grew up in Lexington and who recently died, was the long-time Washington correspondent for the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, and he had been at W&L in the late 1940's with such luminaries as Pat Robertson and Roger Mudd, among others. I heard him speak one day at a gathering of lawyers, and he regaled us with some tales of his student days. He told us of the time when some fellow students were guides at Lee Chapel, and they would lead the tourists past the Valentine statue down the stairs to the Family Crypt and the display of Traveller's skeleton. One of the students was a Biology major, and he proceeded to fetch a skeleton of a small foal from the biology lab and set it up next to Traveller's skeleton. Then as the tourists were paraded past, they would be told that the larger skeleton was, of course, Traveller, and the small one was Traveller as a young foal! No one missed a beat!
V—The solemn burial of Traveller
During my last year at W&L, I was walking across campus one mild spring day in my typical attire of shorts, T-shirt, pathetic scraggly beard, long-ish hair and sandals, and I saw a cluster of folks fully dressed in dark, somber colors gathered by the side of Lee Chapel (see above).
I approached the edge of the crowd and, pacing back and forth, craned my neck to get a better view of what was going on. Some therein glared back at me for my insufficiently mournful attire (and attitude). What I saw was the priest from the Episcopal church on the campus corner in full vestments conducting the Episcopal Service for the Dead over the freshly interred bones of Traveller, which had been buried in a hole by the side of Lee Chapel and over which there had been placed an engraved granite slab reciting the pertinent data. Said mourners were gathered round respectfully. As I said, Traveller's skeleton had been on display in the basement of Lee Chapel for several years but it had finally gotten too moldy or brittle to remain so.
The thing that struck me most profoundly is that I had no idea Traveller was an Episcopalian!
VI—Zollman's Pavilion
In 2003, on the occasion of our class's 30th Reunion, we were trundled out to "Zollman's Pavilion" for a picnic lunch, the Pavilion being nothing more than a rough, corrugated tin shed with concrete floor sitting on the banks of Buffalo Creek, about 6 miles south of Lexington. It seems that W&L had engaged the Pavilion at which to host wistful alumni events.
Now, the true history of Zollman's Pavilion is that it had been the site of some of the wildest, most Bacchanalian parties ever held under the auspices of students at W&L or the adjacent military college, Virginia Military Institute, complete with live music and plastic garbage cans full of "Purple Jesus" (a homemade concoction of grape Hi-C, other fruit juices, oranges, lemons, limes, cherries AND grain alcohol) with a substantially intoxicated group of attendees present. My dim recollections are that it almost ALWAYS rained whenever there was an event at Zollman's, and there were always several cars stuck either in the mud at Zollman's or in the ditches along the road leading down to Zollman's. So, the prevailing ethic was to help remove said vehicles from said ditches before the gendarmes arrived to create more problems for the inebriated students who had driven into said ditches. (My, how times have changed!)
Well, at our 30th Reunion at Zollman's, held on a most inapt sunny afternoon, a period of time passed to allow our box-lunches to digest and our alcohol-dimmed memories to revive and squeeze us in their nostalgic bear-hug. Some "suit" working for W&L rather clumsily attempted to put the "touch" on us alums for donations of money, figuring that we would be unable to resist such a warm, fuzzy, nostalgia-addled pitch. I was rather annoyed by this blatant attempt to work me over, so I got up and promptly left. I should have known things were somehow not right when I had failed to see any cars in ditches while driving down to Zollman's that day!
VII—Cheap eats and hibachis
One of the most memorable things about my days at W&L were how inexpensive things were back then. Gasoline sold for less than 35c per gallon! One could purchase ground beef for 59c a pound or less! One could purchase a WHOLE CASE of (rotgut) beer for under $5, not just a six-pack! And, we consumed Gallo "Hearty Burgundy" by the half-gallon which also was pretty cheap back then, under $5 as I recall.
We could buy and grill huge slabs of beef on hibachis and wind up feeding four of us for less than $5 a meal. I never see hibachis anymore. A hibachi was a small cast-iron charcoal brazier with two (usually) wood-handled grills about 10" x 10" each, clamped onto the back of the hibachi and cantilevered over the coals. Most of us had them because they were small enough to move into our small apartments after the fire had gone out. Our student-apartment rent was $55 per month, INCLUSIVE of all utilities! We had it made. Law-school tuition was less than $1200 a semester. Recent graduates who got really good starting salaries would brag about getting $10,000 a year! As a sole practitioner (I was self-employed my entire professional career), I earned $5200 my first year--$100 a week!
We never had it so good.
VIII—"The Peoples' Food Restaurant"
In the early 1970's there was a social mood extant that was quite different from the usual rigid coat-&-tie demeanor of times then past at W&L (now desperately in revival). Admittedly, W&L was not a hotbed of radical activity as were some other campuses at the time, but there was plenty of dope to smoke and lots of apparent hippies about. Clean-shaven faces and preppy attire had given substantial way to leather, sandals, tie-dye, long hair and beards. The founding chapter of the venerable "Old South" fraternity, Kappa Alpha, had reputedly lost its charter for awhile allegedly because some rather annoyed alumni had stopped by after a football game, expecting to sing some frat songs around the piano and had discovered instead large posters of Jimi Hendrix, "Che" Guevara and Janis Joplin illuminated by ultraviolet blacklights glowing through a pervasive fog of cannabis.
I had lost (or found?) my own way during those days. I became fond of John Waters's nasty movies like the then-recently-screened Pink Flamingos," and I had developed a liking for the warped humor of the "Firesign Theatre" available only on vinyl records, best enjoyed with a lot of dope. CD's and iPods were a long ways off. We did not even have cassette tapes yet, but I had a LearJet 8-track in my car!
"Head" shops were openly trading their wares back then, including cigarette rolling papers and machines, fancy bongs and pipes, posters and provocative bumper stickers, peace-sign jewelry, leather bags and other goods frequently associated with the smoking of marijuana. I never saw anything associated with the use of cocaine or any other drug at the time.
A group of "hippies" had taken over the run-down "White Column Inn" on Main Street in Lexington and opened "The Peoples' Food Restaurant," offering whole-grain homemade breads, sprouts and so forth. Their signature sandwich was the "Peoples' Special," a fried-egg-and-melted-cheese concoction with sliced raw onion and alfalfa sprouts on homemade-mayo-slathered homemade gritty whole-wheat bread. It was absolutely wonderful! I consumed several of them and have also made my own since, washed down liberally with good beer (not the rotgut we used to buy for less than $5 a case!)
IX—"Rockbridge Red"
It might be considered disingenuous if I did not mention one of the most pervasive influences in my life during my time in Lexington, and that was the massive “lids” of marijuana (“dope”) that had been apparently grown locally and was sold only to students by one of my fellow law students during my time there.
The product was a beautiful home-grown material that was reddish-gold in color, thus its name, “Rockbridge Red.” One could buy a massive handful in a plastic baggie for $15! That is an amazingly low price, and today’s costs are mind-boggling because my market sense was set in those times and under those circumstances. I have not purchased any marijuana in about 30 years, and I don’t really smoke it much anymore. Neither do most of the scores of people who once did. (So much for its allegedly addictive qualities, per the DEA.) But my memories are fond ones.
AND, “Rockbridge Red” would get one really stoned. It wasn’t lethal, but it was a “magic carpet ride”! The purveyor must have grown a huge amount of it, because it was available for a very long time. He would come to school and always seemed to have plenty of “lids” in his bookbag. He was also a very good student and later became a prosecutor after graduation. I shall avoid any further identifying information so that he shall remain protected, wherever he may be. I have not seen him in years.
As I indicated, I knew a lot of people who were smoking “Rockbridge Red” back then, folks who became prominent doctors, teachers, preachers, lawyers and judges and who probably don’t smoke dope today and haven’t in years. But it was the thing to do back then for a lot of us, and it made life very interesting. For me, I know for a fact it made me smarter, because it opened up channels in my mind that I did not know were there before. I came to look at things much differently thereafter, much more expansively and ecumenically, and I am grateful for that enlightenment. The skeptics can kiss my ass.
I am sure there were some who overdid and “overdosed,” but they must have been few and far between. I have never witnessed a drug any more innocuous than marijuana, whereas cocaine and legal alcohol are extremely dangerous. The only thing that criminalization of marijuana does is ruin lives—it cannot and does not discourage any of us who want to smoke dope. All it does is send some peaceful offenders to confinement, after-the-fact, for engaging in something (possession of dope) that harms ABSOLUTELY no one else. Those who don’t want to smoke it are obviously not deterred by the law but by their own preferences. If there were a MEDICAL issue regarding the consumption of dope, then why is it treated as a criminal act instead of as a medical problem? And, why are all the competent studies and examinations contrary to those politically-driven conclusions?
Marijuana was outlawed in the 1930’s for two main reasons: alcohol had been legalized again, so otherwise-unemployed still-busters had a job in the Depression. Secondly, marijuana was often used by black musicians back then, so there was a suggestion that it would make white kids act and think like “Nigras.” Fast-forward to the 1970’s, and hippies and other “inappropriate” people are enjoying marijuana and mocking Richard Nixon, thus fueling the hostilities of most law-enforcement officers, prosecutors, etc., most of whom still viscerally hate hippies, love politicians who are “tough on crime,” and who lobby hard for intensifying the criminal consequences of associating with dope. Thus, the absurd “War On Drugs” was born and lives to this day, now enforced by President Barack Obama, like his predecessor Bill Clinton, a former dope smoker. A lot of vile energy and bad karma have been expended on enforcement of the laws criminalizing marijuana.
But, a lot of us (now in our sixties) have smoked it anyway, and fortunately we were never caught. Too many hapless folks were caught, however, and their lives were ruined. TO THIS DAY, easily 40 years later, one can still get more time in prison for selling dope than for killing one’s wife or boss.
No, my law grades were not the highest by a long shot. Many exemplary law students did not smoke dope. Many of them were and are raving dorks. But most of my friends and I did smoke dope, and we are not dummies, either.
X—(In)security (2019)
One of the most memorable alumni experiences I’ve had since graduating is comparing the ubiquitous uniformed security now at W&L with the casual “windbreaker” security of the sole “enforcer” of my time on campus. “Murph” was the only “security” officer on the entire campus back then, a nice, even-tempered, unarmed guy who walked around campus in his windbreaker, carrying a flashlight and handing out parking tickets to those of us who wantonly made things difficult for others by leaving our cars in absurd places. I knew “Murph” (as we all did), and he was always so very pleasant.
Fast forward to our 10th Reunion in 1983, and our class is gathering in the blazingly-lit gym that Friday night with all the other folks for a communal gab-fest and light meal. Imagine my shock and disappointment to walk in and see a bunch of stern-faced, bullet-headed, private-force gendarmerie in light-blue shirts with badges and heavy utility belts with truncheons and other multiple devices thereon, standing at "parade rest" all around some sort of mezzanine, staring down at us lawless peons on the gym floor below with nary a smile cracking anyone’s face! They stared at us the whole time we were reuniting and “conviviating”! It was most unsettling and yet another reminder that we were not in Kansas anymore! Perhaps they were worried we were all gonna break down and “moon” them at the same time, or something!
Ever since, I have had the growing suspicion that I simply do not belong at W&L anymore. It has been “gentrifying” with a vengeance! Way too prissy for me! My reunion every 5 years or so has been less and less a gathering of friends and more and more a fundraising opportunity for the “development office” that finally snatched the organization of reunions away from the “alumni office.” It had gotten so unpleasant I did not attend my 45th Reunion last year, and I seriously doubt if I will bother to attend my 50th Reunion in 2023.
Perhaps I am just weary of hearing and telling the same stories over and over again!
XI—Freddie Goodhart (added in 2024)
What can I possibly say about Freddie Goodhart?
He died just about six years ago. Hard to believe it’s been so long. He was such an important part of my life, yet my brain is obviously fading. That’s what “old age” will do. Fade everything.
Freddie was 88 when he died—he looked 58. He always looked much younger than his years, and he would do just about anything not deadly, so it was easy to treat him as a contemporary.
Frederick Phillips McCormick-Goodhart. That was his real name. But he was anything but a patrician. Freddie had dual British/American citizenships. His father was a British diplomat who introduced him to Winston Churchill during the Second World War on the HMS Dreadnought out in the Chesapeake Bay, when Freddie was only 15 or so. It was the only time that Churchill, then the Prime Minister of Great Britain, visited the US during World War II. I think Freddie’s mother was a native of Baltimore. Freddie’s father was descended in a collateral line from Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaper and hailed from Raphine, Virginia, just a few miles north of Lexington.
But Freddie was a car freak and a “killer” banjo player. He’d owned a junkyard and knew cars backwards and forwards. I still have a 1941 Buick convertible Freddie bought from the original owner, who lived out near Warm Springs and commuted in that Buick to and from the Pentagon every week during World War II, up and down US Route 220.
Half of damned-near everything I own I bought from Freddie who, when I met him in the Fall of 1969 in my first year of law school, was running a “second-hand shop” on Jefferson Street in Lexington. I was immediately attracted to him, like a moth to flame. In the spring of 1970, I bought that 1941 Buick for $250 from a professor to whom the car had been sold. It was broke down in Freddie’s front yard. The top had rotted off and a plywood board was balanced on the top frame, held in place by a spare tire. Thanks to a great mechanic at the local Chevrolet dealer, I finally got that car running and drove it, sans top, all that following winter while my wife-to-be drove my “good” car. At least it had a roof and windows and a heater.
What we WILL do for love! My pith helmet came in handy! I stayed pretty dry that winter and was not sick for a single day!
Freddie was a “Buick” man. He knew Buick “Straight-Eight” engines better than anyone. He convinced me I should buy that broke-down 1941 convertible, even though he had a running 1937 Buick sedan he would have sold me. He liked to put an old-timey metal soda-acid fire extinguisher canister on the Buick exhaust pipe in place of the muffler. It made a really nice, throaty rumble. Freddie had a beautiful 1937 black Buick convertible with stick shift, running boards, a rumble seat and fender skirts. He had a “Remember Pearl Harbor” emblem bolted to the top of the license plate. He also had a late 1920’s air-cooled “Franklin” sedan that was prominently featured at his wedding.
EVERYBODY has stories about Freddie. Stories about Freddie are what exhaust fumes are to Diesel trucks! Ubiquitous. Freddie and I would travel around and play music together on occasion. I was originally a saxophone player, but I later took up the blues harmonica. Freddie could play ANYTHING on the banjo and did. But bluegrass music was his primary interest, and he was well-known for his craft in music circles. He could play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” as good as Earl Scruggs.
I have a small collection of “Lucky Strike” tobacco memorabilia. Freddie had an UNOPENED pack of “Lucky Strike Green” cigarettes in his store, and I wanted it. Freddie agreed to swap me his pack of Luckies for an unopened pack of “Piedmont” cigarettes that I had. Even. So we swapped, and I still have the Luckies. A few months later, I asked him if he still had the Piedmonts because I wanted to buy them back. He did not have them, so I asked what he got for them. He sheepishly admitted he got nothing for them because he was having a nicotine fit one day at the shop, tore open the pack and smoked ALL of the Piedmonts! I was stunned. HOW could he do such a thing? But, that was just Freddie being Freddie. There was NOTHING that Freddie had that was not for sale, so long as his price was met. His long-suffering wife was resigned to all that. Freddie sometimes even sold HER stuff, if he could do a “deal”!
I stay in touch with Freddie’s widow and his oldest daughter, married for years to a Lexington architect. He had seven children with his late first wife (whom I did not know) and two more with his second wife. They are all very nice people. I attended Freddie’s second wedding in the summer of 1970 while working near my wife-to-be up in NY State, near Rochester. I came down to Lexington for the wedding and am proud to have been there. All of them are among my closest friends, though we don’t see much of each other anymore.
In my last year of law school, “Jim Beam” distillery released a commemorative ceramic flask for their bourbon whiskey, a handsome big red cardinal sitting on a dogwood branch. Freddie was convinced that flask was going to be a “collector’s item.” I was in Freddie’s shop one day, and he handed me a wad of cash and told me to go up to the ABC store about a half-block away and buy him a dozen of the “Jim Beam” flasks. I bought two of them for myself, and delivered the bottles and the change to Freddie. Well, we failed to predict that “Jim Beam” would release THOUSANDS of those flasks, so there was never any “collectible” value to them, whatsoever! I think Freddie eventually sold most of those whiskey bottles. We drank all the whiskey.
Freddie Goodhart was, indeed, a very important part of most of my life. I met many fine people who were friends of Freddie. He seemed to have friends all over the world. I spent many hours in his shop, a wonderful place to waste valuable time. I spent many days and nights in his home or on Martha’s Vineyard, enjoying the company of Freddie, his wife and his kids. Many of my law-school mates rented rooms at his farm. I met my first wife-to-be in his living room at one of the many parties there. I took some great road trips with Freddie, up and down the East Coast, playing music, scanning shop inventories along the way, “swapping lies,” discussing “cars,” dropping in on friends, and doing a lot of laughing.
I shall dearly miss him the rest of my days.
FOOL'S GOLD
(c) 2010 Soowee
All rights reserved.
Barack Obama's Administration and the Chair of the Federal Reserve continue to pursue the sort of "supply-side"/"free-market capitalism" nonsense that has slowly but surely screwed the US and world economies into the dirt over the past 30 years or so. The latest example was reported by the NY Times this October 4, 2010 expressing shock and dismay that US corporations have borrowed, at little or no cost, monies "intended" to help the economy recover then bank the money rather than to spend or "invest" it, thereby reaping big profits on mere savings.
Well, Duh!
What in the world should anyone expect a fairly well-educated managerial group to do? OF COURSE they are going to bank the money rather than to spend it (or "invest" it at risk). That is merely sound business practice, unless otherwise required to do something different, which they were not.
This demonstrates a fundamental flaw in the widespread expectation that, somehow, inanimate corporations should manifest altruism and helpful deeds for the "good of the country." This absurd expectation has driven a lot of really stupid policy among both sanctimonious Democrats and protective Republicans. The flip side of this nonsense is the assumption that government oversight of large corporations is somehow unnecessary and debilitating to economic growth. As both of these concepts rest upon the assumption that corporations respond to the "marketplace" (they control) and ARE (or ought to be) inherently altruistic, neither the "socialists" nor the "good capitalists" will disparage that assumption, as it serves the warped viewpoints and vested interests of each side in the debate. And so, because the debate is always absurdly dominated by merely two sides, nothing changes.
I would propose that voters and thinkers (not that they should be considered as separate functions) stop moralizing and fantasizing and then recognize that corporations are NOT inherently altruistic, but that they are (and should be) purely profit-driven entities. Acceptance of that reality would serve to clear up a lot of nonsense that otherwise gets blathered about.
And, because they are purely profit-driven entities, any altruistic influences must come from a governmental structure exclusively dedicated to (1) protecting true competition in the markets, (2) protecting the taxpayers' "investments" in corporate America, and (3) eliminating needless meddling in small businesses. These policies are exactly inverse now. No government--state or federal--protects competition, they protect big business FROM competition. In fact, the states are utterly unequipped to properly monitor the activities of big corporations. Their legislators are easily bought and paid for. And, governments meddle needlessly in small (mostly local) businesses because they must appear to be doing something, and they suffer from misdirected focus and resources which should properly drive oversight of big corporations instead. The laissez-faire "itch," if it must be scratched, should benefit local businesses instead.
The low/no-interest loans made by the Fed to the banks and/or the large corporations should have been made with more strings attached, if made at all, and the extent of that is very much doubtful. Had some of those dollars been instead directly spent by the US government in the rehabilitation of infrastructure, public health and education, the "return on investment" would be manifest in the form of more jobs, EVEN IF the deficit would have been enlarged, which is the problem anyway. President Obama and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke decided, instead, to follow the usual supply-side/top-down model of economic recovery by shoveling practically all of the taxpayers' money out to the large so-called "Wall Street" firms, expecting it to eventually "trickle down" to the benefit of the vast unwashed masses. Right.
President Obama wonders why all that did not work. He wonders why jobless rates are still nosebleed-high. He can blame his own inclination to follow absurd Republican supply-side crap like the good little puppy-dog he is.
THE SOLUTIONS:
(1) Immediately cut the combined FICA tax to 10%. An unknown Republican congressman first suggested this idea, and it would leave more spending money in the pockets of workers as consumers. That, in turn, would allow those workers to spend some money DIRECTLY into local economies which, in turn, would allow local (small) businesses to post some profits and possibly hire more workers. The widely embraced fantasy that Social Security is going broke is not true. A careful reading of the Social Security Trustees' Report from last year would reveal as much. I have read some of it, and I refuse to witlessly parrot the breathless conclusions of the Trustees in their Summary as so many other "experts" have done. Pumping up the payrolls might be enough to keep Social Security IN SURPLUS, AS IT CURRENTLY IS, despite the me-too message of the Chicken-Littles running around worrying about the coming imaginary demise of Social Security.
(2) Revoke the second-home deduction for higher-income brackets and allow, instead, workers to write off apartment rents. That so-called "second-home" mortgage interest deduction has driven the purchase of beach cottages, yachts, mountain cabins, RV's and other nonsense by higher-income taxpayers, all of which qualify as "second homes." Allowing workers to write off apartment rents instead would benefit the lower-bracket taxpayers directly AND it would revive the moribund multi-family housing construction markets, which might create some construction JOBS!
(3) Redirect government regulatory focus away from smaller, local businesses toward larger businesses instead. NOT BECAUSE government is good at business, but because businesses ARE purely profit-driven, and any other influences in the marketplace (like antitrust enforcement) should come from the sector (government) responsible for exerting those influences. Let businesses do their jobs (and expect no more), and let government do its job, which is primarily protecting consumers from hazardous products and practices and monopolies. Democrats, especially, ought to get off the insane merger-&-acquisition trolley they have been seduced into riding for 30 or 40 years now. Our economy does not need less diversification wrought by mergers and acquisitions, it needs much MORE.
(4) Raise income taxes on higher brackets. Let the so-called "Bush" income-tax cuts expire. Why? Because the federal government needs the money, and the rich can afford to pay it. That is it. It has not one damned thing to do with "morality," "fair shares," or "soaking the rich." Wealthier taxpayers do not pay FICA on any salaries above $110,000 nor on dividends, interest or capital gains, capped instead at a measly 15% income-tax rate. Lower-income wage earners pay not only income taxes in excess of 20% on most wage-dollars earned PLUS 6.2% FICA directly (not deductible), and their hapless employers must pony up another 6.2% on every employee's wage or salary under about $110,000, and THAT arguably influences employers to lay off people and buy machines instead. The present REGRESSIVE income-tax structure is an abomination, where wealthier individuals and households are keeping an absolute larger PERCENTAGE (not just dollars) of gross income after taxes and ordinary living expenses than workers. The gross median household income in the US is about $65,000 annually. That is, in most cases, two adult workers per household making less than $35,000 each. That means that HALF of all American households are below that line! Why are we wringing our paws over people making as much as $250,000 annually paying more taxes? The prevailing debate is absurd beyond belief.
(5) Preserve the Estate Tax on estates of $1 Million or more. A $1 Million tax-free estate is more than enough wealth to transfer to those of us who did not earn it. There is no such thing as the cleverly-named "death tax." There is no tax for merely dying. That is ludicrous. Estate taxes are paid with our parents' stupendous wealth. We beneficiaries got our money the old-fashioned way: we inherited it! It might be appropriate to raise the exemptions for individual recipients, and it might be appropriate to lower the brackets, which now start around 45%. If the Estate Tax is preserved, those options should be explored.
(6) Divert remaining TARP and bailout funds toward infrastructure and other make-work projects. We have already seen that individual wealth accumulation does NOT stimulate job growth, as has been argued against raising taxes on wealthier individuals. Income tax brackets were a lot higher when Bill Clinton was President, and the "Bush" tax cuts did not stimulate diddly over the past 9 years or so. Investment stimulation is not what is lacking. Look at General Motors, for example. There is no shortage of capital investment in General Motors, but they are STILL struggling to sell their products. More capital investment in General Motors is NOT going to induce more people to buy their cars, if those people have no jobs and no spending money, not even if they can get zero-interest loans! The workers are NOT going to borrow money to buy stuff. Those days are OVER! What General Motors (as do other large corporations, the real estate markets, and local businesses) all need is more BUYERS with more spending money in their pockets. That is the ONLY way that real job growth is going to happen. The true remedies are bottom-up, not top-down.
(7) There may be a valid point to eliminating corporate taxation, because it is persuasively argued that taxes on all corporations become a pass-through expense, a rising tide that lifts all corporate "boats" and are passed on to consumers. Corporate-entity taxation was, at one time, regarded as a proper trade-off for the guarantee of limited liability for investors. Just ask the hapless partners who invested as such in the famous insurance company, "Lloyd's of London," when there was a capital call on all partners a few years ago for money to cover excessive claims paid. Lloyd's was not incorporated back then. Today we have "S" corporations and limited-liability companies that effectively evade the so-called "double-taxation" issue faced by with "C" corporations, where net profits earned are taxed, then paid out as dividends and taxed again to the individual recipient. But the "double-taxation" issue is a bogus issue, because most gross income received by a taxable entity is paid out in wages, salaries, loan interest or capital investments, all of which is allowed either a direct deduction or a depreciation deduction. Only non-deductible dividends are again subjected to individual income taxes, yet those other deductible expenditures are mostly taxable income to those recipients as well! A better course of action might be to examine possible income-tax-exemption of ALL businesses, regardless of form, and to tax all net receipts therefrom at full individual rates.
(8) Instead of cutting taxes on capital gains when prior investments are liquidated, it might be better to allow a sliding-scale-refundable tax credit on capital investments. Repeal of the long-term capital-gains tax rate should be considered, replacing it instead with a capital-investment incentive that would be recaptured at ordinary income-tax rates if the investment were liquidated prematurely, using a sliding scale that would penalize earlier liquidations more than later liquidations. An immediately recognizable tax credit for capital investments could completely avoid recovery by taxation if allowed to remain in place for a designated period of time, like seven years, with ordinary taxation of the entire amount of capital gains levied anytime, and recovery of the previously allowed tax credit required on a sliding-scale percentage if liquidated in the interim. Certain exemptions for liquidations mandated by such matters as health crises or payment of estate taxes could be incorporated.
There are ways to address our economic problems, but the present course of action being pursued by the Obama Administration is doomed to fail. Workers need good jobs, and this is no secret. The Obama Administration has been mining fool's gold, trying to make the old nonsense work. That is because the same Usual Suspects remain in Washington to give bogus "expert" supply-side advice to succeeding administrations, as presidents come and go. President Obama needs to find some new blood, some totally new thinking, and jettison the Usual Suspects.
All rights reserved.
Barack Obama's Administration and the Chair of the Federal Reserve continue to pursue the sort of "supply-side"/"free-market capitalism" nonsense that has slowly but surely screwed the US and world economies into the dirt over the past 30 years or so. The latest example was reported by the NY Times this October 4, 2010 expressing shock and dismay that US corporations have borrowed, at little or no cost, monies "intended" to help the economy recover then bank the money rather than to spend or "invest" it, thereby reaping big profits on mere savings.
Well, Duh!
What in the world should anyone expect a fairly well-educated managerial group to do? OF COURSE they are going to bank the money rather than to spend it (or "invest" it at risk). That is merely sound business practice, unless otherwise required to do something different, which they were not.
This demonstrates a fundamental flaw in the widespread expectation that, somehow, inanimate corporations should manifest altruism and helpful deeds for the "good of the country." This absurd expectation has driven a lot of really stupid policy among both sanctimonious Democrats and protective Republicans. The flip side of this nonsense is the assumption that government oversight of large corporations is somehow unnecessary and debilitating to economic growth. As both of these concepts rest upon the assumption that corporations respond to the "marketplace" (they control) and ARE (or ought to be) inherently altruistic, neither the "socialists" nor the "good capitalists" will disparage that assumption, as it serves the warped viewpoints and vested interests of each side in the debate. And so, because the debate is always absurdly dominated by merely two sides, nothing changes.
I would propose that voters and thinkers (not that they should be considered as separate functions) stop moralizing and fantasizing and then recognize that corporations are NOT inherently altruistic, but that they are (and should be) purely profit-driven entities. Acceptance of that reality would serve to clear up a lot of nonsense that otherwise gets blathered about.
And, because they are purely profit-driven entities, any altruistic influences must come from a governmental structure exclusively dedicated to (1) protecting true competition in the markets, (2) protecting the taxpayers' "investments" in corporate America, and (3) eliminating needless meddling in small businesses. These policies are exactly inverse now. No government--state or federal--protects competition, they protect big business FROM competition. In fact, the states are utterly unequipped to properly monitor the activities of big corporations. Their legislators are easily bought and paid for. And, governments meddle needlessly in small (mostly local) businesses because they must appear to be doing something, and they suffer from misdirected focus and resources which should properly drive oversight of big corporations instead. The laissez-faire "itch," if it must be scratched, should benefit local businesses instead.
The low/no-interest loans made by the Fed to the banks and/or the large corporations should have been made with more strings attached, if made at all, and the extent of that is very much doubtful. Had some of those dollars been instead directly spent by the US government in the rehabilitation of infrastructure, public health and education, the "return on investment" would be manifest in the form of more jobs, EVEN IF the deficit would have been enlarged, which is the problem anyway. President Obama and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke decided, instead, to follow the usual supply-side/top-down model of economic recovery by shoveling practically all of the taxpayers' money out to the large so-called "Wall Street" firms, expecting it to eventually "trickle down" to the benefit of the vast unwashed masses. Right.
President Obama wonders why all that did not work. He wonders why jobless rates are still nosebleed-high. He can blame his own inclination to follow absurd Republican supply-side crap like the good little puppy-dog he is.
THE SOLUTIONS:
(1) Immediately cut the combined FICA tax to 10%. An unknown Republican congressman first suggested this idea, and it would leave more spending money in the pockets of workers as consumers. That, in turn, would allow those workers to spend some money DIRECTLY into local economies which, in turn, would allow local (small) businesses to post some profits and possibly hire more workers. The widely embraced fantasy that Social Security is going broke is not true. A careful reading of the Social Security Trustees' Report from last year would reveal as much. I have read some of it, and I refuse to witlessly parrot the breathless conclusions of the Trustees in their Summary as so many other "experts" have done. Pumping up the payrolls might be enough to keep Social Security IN SURPLUS, AS IT CURRENTLY IS, despite the me-too message of the Chicken-Littles running around worrying about the coming imaginary demise of Social Security.
(2) Revoke the second-home deduction for higher-income brackets and allow, instead, workers to write off apartment rents. That so-called "second-home" mortgage interest deduction has driven the purchase of beach cottages, yachts, mountain cabins, RV's and other nonsense by higher-income taxpayers, all of which qualify as "second homes." Allowing workers to write off apartment rents instead would benefit the lower-bracket taxpayers directly AND it would revive the moribund multi-family housing construction markets, which might create some construction JOBS!
(3) Redirect government regulatory focus away from smaller, local businesses toward larger businesses instead. NOT BECAUSE government is good at business, but because businesses ARE purely profit-driven, and any other influences in the marketplace (like antitrust enforcement) should come from the sector (government) responsible for exerting those influences. Let businesses do their jobs (and expect no more), and let government do its job, which is primarily protecting consumers from hazardous products and practices and monopolies. Democrats, especially, ought to get off the insane merger-&-acquisition trolley they have been seduced into riding for 30 or 40 years now. Our economy does not need less diversification wrought by mergers and acquisitions, it needs much MORE.
(4) Raise income taxes on higher brackets. Let the so-called "Bush" income-tax cuts expire. Why? Because the federal government needs the money, and the rich can afford to pay it. That is it. It has not one damned thing to do with "morality," "fair shares," or "soaking the rich." Wealthier taxpayers do not pay FICA on any salaries above $110,000 nor on dividends, interest or capital gains, capped instead at a measly 15% income-tax rate. Lower-income wage earners pay not only income taxes in excess of 20% on most wage-dollars earned PLUS 6.2% FICA directly (not deductible), and their hapless employers must pony up another 6.2% on every employee's wage or salary under about $110,000, and THAT arguably influences employers to lay off people and buy machines instead. The present REGRESSIVE income-tax structure is an abomination, where wealthier individuals and households are keeping an absolute larger PERCENTAGE (not just dollars) of gross income after taxes and ordinary living expenses than workers. The gross median household income in the US is about $65,000 annually. That is, in most cases, two adult workers per household making less than $35,000 each. That means that HALF of all American households are below that line! Why are we wringing our paws over people making as much as $250,000 annually paying more taxes? The prevailing debate is absurd beyond belief.
(5) Preserve the Estate Tax on estates of $1 Million or more. A $1 Million tax-free estate is more than enough wealth to transfer to those of us who did not earn it. There is no such thing as the cleverly-named "death tax." There is no tax for merely dying. That is ludicrous. Estate taxes are paid with our parents' stupendous wealth. We beneficiaries got our money the old-fashioned way: we inherited it! It might be appropriate to raise the exemptions for individual recipients, and it might be appropriate to lower the brackets, which now start around 45%. If the Estate Tax is preserved, those options should be explored.
(6) Divert remaining TARP and bailout funds toward infrastructure and other make-work projects. We have already seen that individual wealth accumulation does NOT stimulate job growth, as has been argued against raising taxes on wealthier individuals. Income tax brackets were a lot higher when Bill Clinton was President, and the "Bush" tax cuts did not stimulate diddly over the past 9 years or so. Investment stimulation is not what is lacking. Look at General Motors, for example. There is no shortage of capital investment in General Motors, but they are STILL struggling to sell their products. More capital investment in General Motors is NOT going to induce more people to buy their cars, if those people have no jobs and no spending money, not even if they can get zero-interest loans! The workers are NOT going to borrow money to buy stuff. Those days are OVER! What General Motors (as do other large corporations, the real estate markets, and local businesses) all need is more BUYERS with more spending money in their pockets. That is the ONLY way that real job growth is going to happen. The true remedies are bottom-up, not top-down.
(7) There may be a valid point to eliminating corporate taxation, because it is persuasively argued that taxes on all corporations become a pass-through expense, a rising tide that lifts all corporate "boats" and are passed on to consumers. Corporate-entity taxation was, at one time, regarded as a proper trade-off for the guarantee of limited liability for investors. Just ask the hapless partners who invested as such in the famous insurance company, "Lloyd's of London," when there was a capital call on all partners a few years ago for money to cover excessive claims paid. Lloyd's was not incorporated back then. Today we have "S" corporations and limited-liability companies that effectively evade the so-called "double-taxation" issue faced by with "C" corporations, where net profits earned are taxed, then paid out as dividends and taxed again to the individual recipient. But the "double-taxation" issue is a bogus issue, because most gross income received by a taxable entity is paid out in wages, salaries, loan interest or capital investments, all of which is allowed either a direct deduction or a depreciation deduction. Only non-deductible dividends are again subjected to individual income taxes, yet those other deductible expenditures are mostly taxable income to those recipients as well! A better course of action might be to examine possible income-tax-exemption of ALL businesses, regardless of form, and to tax all net receipts therefrom at full individual rates.
(8) Instead of cutting taxes on capital gains when prior investments are liquidated, it might be better to allow a sliding-scale-refundable tax credit on capital investments. Repeal of the long-term capital-gains tax rate should be considered, replacing it instead with a capital-investment incentive that would be recaptured at ordinary income-tax rates if the investment were liquidated prematurely, using a sliding scale that would penalize earlier liquidations more than later liquidations. An immediately recognizable tax credit for capital investments could completely avoid recovery by taxation if allowed to remain in place for a designated period of time, like seven years, with ordinary taxation of the entire amount of capital gains levied anytime, and recovery of the previously allowed tax credit required on a sliding-scale percentage if liquidated in the interim. Certain exemptions for liquidations mandated by such matters as health crises or payment of estate taxes could be incorporated.
There are ways to address our economic problems, but the present course of action being pursued by the Obama Administration is doomed to fail. Workers need good jobs, and this is no secret. The Obama Administration has been mining fool's gold, trying to make the old nonsense work. That is because the same Usual Suspects remain in Washington to give bogus "expert" supply-side advice to succeeding administrations, as presidents come and go. President Obama needs to find some new blood, some totally new thinking, and jettison the Usual Suspects.
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