DEMOLITION

I have been trying to think of a way to express my feelings about the end of my marriage almost 11 years ago, when my ex-wife left me and moved to Oklahoma.  I have been almost literally paralyzed with fear, terror, loneliness, embarrassment, shame, guilt.  I cannot begin to adequately describe the overwhelming burden of her wish to utterly leave me behind.  But she was absolutely justified in so doing, since I was a perfect asshole.

I have recently watched a movie with Jake Gyllenhaal entitled Demolition, about a young man whose wife is killed in an automobile accident, and who learns from his in-laws that the dead wife (whose absence he severely mourns) was having a torrid affair with some other guy and was pregnant with his child.  It has inspired me to finally put down in writing what I have carried with me for the past 11 years.

I don’t think my ex-wife was having an affair, but she had obviously concluded that any further time spent with me was a waste.  According to an online article I read a few months ago, she now has a “boyfriend,” and that revelation has been such a crushing burden that I can barely breathe, thinking about it.  One would hope that after 11 years such stuff would be of no consequence, but I have been unable to shake the significance of her departure from my life.

In reflecting on the theme of the movie, Demolition, I have come to some conclusions.  The loss of a loved one is a profound event that can crush the soul of most any human being.  There are no “guidelines” or “manual” that can provide a neat way of coping with such loss, and there is no “right way” to overcome the effects of such grief.  Each and every person is different, and he or she is on his/her own when such an event happens.  Nobody else can help at all.

The loss of a loved one, especially a lover, must be the worst there is.  If the loss is by death, then there is the likely amelioration of “certainty” whereby the loss is utterly unplanned, unintentional, irreversible and finite.  When the loss is by divorce, the “losing” party has the same kind of loss, but it is aggravated by the knowledge that the departing person is still alive and CHOSE to leave; CHOSE to reject the “losing” party and is still very much alive, living elsewhere and CHOOSING to make love to another person on a regular basis.

That sort of rejection and loss is suffocating.  Right this very moment I am barely able to breathe as I write these words.  The feelings of worthlessness and stupidity cannot even be described.  Interestingly, if my ex-wife was to show up on my doorstep and ask to return, I am not sure I would agree!  Eleven years is a very long time to live alone, and I have changed, not necessarily for the better, but I am somewhat settled in my aloneness.  I would be afraid to let someone--anyone--into my life now.

It is not only the absence of the affections of the other that are at stake, but also the rejection itself is a major problem.  If the person whom I adored most and trusted most has rejected the essence of who I am, how can I possibly get beyond that determination?  How can I possibly respect and “like” myself ever again?  I was so integrated with her judgment and intelligence that the condemnation is inescapable, as if I am condemning myself, over and over again.  I cannot hide from my own disgust!

The self-loathing is, therefore, a major problem.  As I write this, I am feeling it very intensely, but I keep hoping that it will eventually lift and disappear.  When my ex-wife first left, I thought that since I had been through this before (it was my second failed marriage) I would know better how to handle it, but I find that it is much worse, since my first wife and I mutually chose to part.  My second wife’s departure was entirely ex parte--entirely her choice.  She would sometimes get out of our bed late at night and go into the bedroom across the hall, apparently planning her “escape.”  I would get up to use the toilet but never suspected a thing.  I thought she was just suffering insomnia and working on an architectural problem she had with her work.  Silly me!

As I write this I have no idea what to do from here on.  It really is “one day at a time.”  I keep desperately hoping for some sort of relief.  I keep desperately hoping for some sort of breakthrough.  But I am 11 years older now than I was when she left, and I am now a truly “older” person.  I am nearer the end of my life, and making plans for the future is almost irrelevant.

I am a curious person, however, so I have to persevere and see what happens.

JUST SAY "NO" TO LOCAL PROFFERS

(The following was published in The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch on 12/21/16 as "Correspondent of the Day.")

I enjoyed your Monday article about legislative restrictions for local proffers, which are unconstitutional and should be entirely banned.

Proffers imposed by multiple jurisdictions become a "pass-through" cost because buyers cannot "shop around" to avoid them.  Developers must bear the onerous up-front burden of proffers, but ultimately they are passed on to buyers as an "entry fee" for the "privilege" of living in such communities.  No one should have to pay an "entry fee" to live anywhere in this country they wish.  Most existing owners did not suffer any proffers; neither should new owners.  If SOME of the buyers of the newly developed properties happen to be older locals seeking to "downsize" by moving to a smaller house or townhouse, why should those people have to pay such an "entry fee" to stay where they already are?

There is a very real cash squeeze being felt by local jurisdictions as the land tax yields smaller or stagnant revenues due to dropping or stagnant property values in many places.  It is past time for localities to shift to a local income tax instead, but that won't likely be allowed by the Virginia General Assembly anytime in the foreseeable future.  Many large rural tracts of land are owned by relatively few folks with substantial incomes getting subsidies of artificially lowered land taxes (the so-called "land-use tax") that fictionally depreciates the actual market value of their lands.  Meanwhile, local government budgeting is a "zero-sum game" since they cannot print their own money.  Those who do not qualify for those subsidies, like ordinary residential owners and cash-strapped businesses, must make up the revenue differences created by those unwarranted subsidies out of their own pockets.  

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUMP AND GODZILLA? (Joke)

The difference between Donald Trump and Godzilla?

One is a huge, ill-tempered reptile with small forelegs, orange skin, and weird orange scales on his head who goes around stomping on innocent people, bellowing and baring his teeth a lot; the other is just a Japanese movie dinosaur!

TO THE TELLER OF A LAME JOKE (Poem)

© 1968, 2016

I lift my long and leaden limb.

THIS, I say, I'll give to him.

And so, without a moment's warning

(It's the same at night or morning),

If we don’t laugh (until we choke)

Because he told a bad, lame joke,

For all his efforts, he'll only get

A broken breeze for his weak wit!

BAD-NEWS BORK

This ran in the Charlottesville (Va.) Daily Progress Oct. 4, 1987

Bork Bad News For Individual Rights

U.S. Constitution, Amendment IX: 

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Magnetized to my refrigerator is a "Ziggy" cartoon by Tom Wilson in which Ziggy is again on the psychiatrist's couch with a worried countenance. The shrink says to him, "You're cured, Ziggy. ... The American Psychiatric Association no longer considers fear of the government to be paranoid behavior!"  Small comfort, indeed, with appointment of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court at stake.

Bork is probably not unfit or unqualified to serve on the court, but we shouldn't want him up there, and it is appropriate for those senators who so agree to exercise their constitutionally granted political power to deny consent to his nomination.  Bork, who seems to be a smart and witty fellow, also appears to have a frightening and dangerously skewed view of the balance between the rights of individuals and the powers of government (and its bureaucrats) that predictably and inexorably encroach on our rights more and more each day.  All of this is said notwithstanding his apparent "conversions" during or shortly prior to his appearance on the witness stand.  A distinction is noted here between "rights" and "powers," not mine originally. I refer to the somewhat esoteric yet clarifying legal philosophy of John Wesley Hohfeld.  He said that under our system of laws, it is necessary to distinguish between rights held by persons, against which the state has no authority to act, and limited powers held by the state, which specifically are granted by the Constitution or reasonably inferred.  People have rights, but governments, state or federal do not.  Governments must have the specific power to act; otherwise, the people are supposed to be immune from governmental meddling.

The history of the Constitution and the shared philosophy of our nation's Founders extolling the "Natural Rights of Man," espoused by John Locke and others (including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison), must lead us to the inescapable conclusion that limited powers flow from the people to the government, not that rights flow from the government to the people. Bork seems to reverse these principles by ignoring the concurrent principle of the immunity of individuals from the tyranny of the majority.

It should not be necessary, nor is it seemly, that individuals must go to the politicians or the courts, hat in hand, to beg for their rights.  Jefferson said that the "Natural Rights of Man" are not some dispensation gratuitously given to us by our all-powerful, benevolent government, subject to deprivation upon the whim of the majority.  Unfortunately, it is fairly clear that Bork's view of the balance between powers and rights follows a statist belief in a benign government, a term I view as oxymoronic.

Bork is widely regarded as a "conservative" of towering intellect who supposedly will bring to the Supreme Court a "strict constructionist" doctrine asserting that judges are to interpret, not make, law. His railings against "judicial legislation" are clearly what moved Ronald Reagan to nominate him.  Conversely, much of the criticism of Bork is nothing more than Mickey Mouse carping that, in my view, misses the mark and will serve to enhance his chances of confirmation, as was the case with William Rehnquist's nomination for chief justice.  The only two charges against Rehnquist that had any merit were the allegations of minority voter intimidation and his failure to recuse himself from hearing a case as a justice (in which he cast a decisive vote) in which he had participated as a Justice Department lawyer.  One would not, however, have known much about these serious issues for all of the smoke that was blown out over the irrelevant nitpickings against Mr. Rehnquist by his opponents, much the same people who are not taking potshots at Bork.

Attorney General Edwin Meese III (a.k.a. "Officer Ed") is fond of frequently citing Alexander Hamilton's opposition to the Bill of Rights as authority for the assertion that individual rights were not unanimously recognized by the Founders. As with so many legal issues, the "Sage of Wedtech" has been serving up the baloney again.  In fact, Hamilton's opposition was not out of hostility to the concept of individual liberty but was instead born out of the fear that reactionary statists such as Meese, Reagan and Bork would claim, as they have, that the failure specifically to enumerate a right would allow the inference that the right does not exist.  Thus, following the "Borkian" analysis of individual rights, "if it ain't written, it ain't."  On the witness stand recently, Bork attempted to recant some of his more extreme past positions in what appeared to be a new-found libertarian attitude.  I was shocked, therefore, to hear that he was claiming to renounce past-held "libertarian" views.  If his past utterances are "libertarian," then excuse me while I find a new philosophy or at least a new label.

As the man said: That dog won't hunt. The Ninth Amendment, which admittedly has not been given much attention by the Supreme Court in its decisions, was adopted by the Founders specifically to allay Hamilton's fears over enumeration.  That's in the history books, all you strict constructionists out there in Original-Intent Land.  Bork's amnesia as to the Ninth Amendment, calls into question his much-vaunted intellectualism.  That's not a very high intellectual tower, by my measurement.

If Bork wins confirmation, it will be the bottom of  the Ninth for individual rights and civil liberties.  One who has such contempt as Bork seems to have for "due process" and especially for "equal protection" of the laws; who quibbles over the right of a married couple to be free from state interference in the bedroom; who presumes to tell women that the states may reduce them to second- (or third-) class citizens and may control their bodies if male-dominant legislatures so decree; who finds "intellectual" stimulation in contemplating abandonment of "one person, one vote"; who espouses a bizarre theory that the power of the legislature to meddle with the rights of the individual exceeds the power to meddle with a state-created corporation, and who insists that the Constitution must be interpreted today in light of the mores of 200 years ago, when slavery and indentured servitude were accepted and women were not recognized as citizens —that person may be technically "qualified" to sit on the court, but I would exercise my political prerogative were I a senator to keep him on the D.C. Court of Appeals. None of this is about right of privacy; it's about necessary limitations on governmental power.

And to Ronald Reagan and "Officer Ed" Meese, I close with a quote from Mick Jagger: "You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need." We don't need Robert Bork, not his wit nor his brand of intellect, on the U.S. Supreme Court, where he might judicially legislate the Ninth Amendment out of existence.

[The writer] is a lawyer and member of the Virginia State Bar since 1973. He received his law degree from Washington & Lee University in 1973 and his bachelor's degree from Randolph-Macon College in 1968.

VIRGINIA NO-SHOWS, 2016

Many people routinely complain about the "politicians," about their votes not counting, and about there being no choice in elections.  Most people are politically trapped in the "binary box," feeling forced to choose between a Democrat or a Republican, which this year boils down to choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for President.  There are other choices available, but they are summarily disregarded because of the absurd perception that they simply "cannot win."  That is certainly consistent with the political myopia of the simple-minded.  Most people will likely be voting "negatively" this year, to prevent a particular candidate from winning, rather than voting FOR someone to win.

As for the notion that the votes "don't count," consider the following:

In Virginia elections for the past three years, the registered voter participation rates were:

2013--Governor, 43%

57% = WORTHLESS TWITS

2014--US Senator, 40%

60% = WORTHLESS TWITS

2015--Genl. Assy., 28%

72% = WORTHLESS TWITS

(Might a majority actually show up this 2016 to vote for Prez?)

That is an average no-show rate of 65% over the 3 years!  That is appalling--almost 2 out of 3, and people DARE to whine that their votes don't count, often uttered as an excuse for not voting!  In 2013, Terry McAuliffe beat Cuccinelli by about 49% to 48%.  Considering that he won with 49% of the 43% who showed up: barely 21%, that is a ratio of about 1:4, which means that every person who voted FOR McAuliffe controlled the outcome for almost 4 other registered voters--not quite another one who voted for Cuccinelli and the three idiots who just stayed home!  The McAuliffe votes COUNTED, BIG-TIME!  Consider that if Cuccinelli had mobilized just a few thousand more votes, he would have won!

Most journalists and office-holders just let the nonvoters off the hook, ALL THE TIME!  They blame EVERYTHING ELSE for the low participation rate but the no-shows themselves!  This just sticks in my craw!  We should bring back public whippings for the morons who DON'T vote!  Just beat the crap out of them until they beg for their mommies!  How dare any of them complain about the "politicians" they had no role in choosing?

We truly get the govt. we DESERVE!

Back during the "Bush" years, a friend had a bumper sticker on his car that was the best I'd ever seen: "If you are not absolutely appalled, then you haven't been paying attention!"

[UPDATE 12/26/18: The Va. turnout for the 2016 presidential election was about 72%.  The registered-voter turnout for the 2017 Va. gubernatorial election was 47.6%.  The Va. turnout for 2018 was 59.5%.]

NATO

In the summer of 2016, Donald Trump impugned the validity of NATO and suggested that if Russia attacked the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) he would take no action against Russia.  It was imprudent for Trump to say out loud what is probably a reality, but I believe that NATO has outlived its usefulness, and it is now a serious delusion that we insist on perpetuating instead of getting rid of it.  I am weary of the lip service we keep giving to Europeans that we stand ready to engage in combat for their sakes!  NATO should have been disbanded when the Berlin Wall came down!  Instead, stupidly expanding NATO into eastern Europe upon our instigation gave Putin the pretext he needed to do his territorial acquisitions.  It was a colossal diplomatic blunder, typical of guys who think with their Cold-War penises instead of their brains!  

Robin Williams once made the joke that "God gave Man two brains: one in his head and the other in his dick, but only enough blood to run one at a time!"  I fail to see that any of that action in eastern Europe is worth anyone in this country dying for or getting his/her genitals shot off, and at the risk of starting a much deadlier conflict!  I do not mean to suggest that we should turn our backs on what is happening in eastern Europe, but formal alliances imply things that I don't believe are realistic, and NATO is a Cold-War anachronism that should have been buried long ago!

INSTEAD, Clinton, Bush and Obama provocatively expanded NATO right up to Russia's back door, so now they have that pretext (THAT WE HANDED TO THEM ON A SILVER PLATTER) for accreting territory, like the Crimea and eastern Ukraine, for starters!  We bluster with tough talk, but the US isn't gonna do a thing except some more tough talk and maybe some sort of silly sanctions that will be honored in the breach by most of Russia's neighbors.  We rattle our sabers and talk tough, but that has rendered our credibility to zilch!  We are more than a day late and a dollar short in eastern Europe!  Then we go bomb somebody to show how tough we are!  The innocent "Collateral Damage" is meaningless to us!  THAT'S why the "wogs" hate our guts!  American foreign "policy" for the past 50 years has been to either provoke stupid pseudo-wars with tiny opponents we can supposedly conquer (but never do) or to swagger around, speak loudly and carry a meaningless stick!

NATO is just another provocative albatross around our necks, a set of potential broken-to-be promises.  I doubt very seriously if the US has any business threatening combat over Russia seizing whatever it may.  Not that I agree with their recent behavior, but in time they may come to rue the burden themselves.  Putin won't live forever, and there is no certainty that his successor(s) will pursue the same course of action as he.

I realize that anybody (but Trump) who dares impugn the necessity of NATO becomes a wounded political target.  But that's what SPINE is all about!  Once again we succumb to Conventional Wisdom because our Fearless Leaders don't have the courage to call out the sanctified fossils!  It's EXACTLY like our eternal blind support for Israel or those charities (like "March of Dimes") that NEVER DIE, despite their original raison d'ȇtre (like polio) being cured.  I well remember those cards handed out in elementary school to fill up with dimes in the cut-out slots, so polio could be "cured"!  I remember the photos of the kids in those dreadful "iron lungs" for the rest of their miserable lives!  I probably filled up 8-10 of those cards!  Now those money-grubbers at MoD have embraced BIRTH DEFECTS as their cause!   Clever footwork!  Charities are Big Money these days!

So much for Obama's (false) HOPE and (chump) CHANGE!  The sad fact is that Obama, for all his promises in 2008, is a willing prisoner of Conventional Wisdom!  I think that is what annoys me about him the most!  He truly inherited a mess, but he did almost NOTHING original to fix it!  He almost immediately bought into the usual (though utterly discredited) "Supply-Side" and Security-State nonsense, doubled down in central Asia, maintained the status quo, and never demonstrated the courage to REALLY try to change much of anything.  I think Hillary and her rutting husband (the "Blowjob-in-Chief"!) are EXACTLY the same.

DRAFTING

(The following was published as "Correspondent of the Day" in the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch on July 8, 2016:)

Although I am not a City taxpayer, I have business interests in the City of Richmond which are indirectly affected by the merchants' real-estate tax load.  So, I am interested in what is happening therein.

Your June 30 article about the contretemps over the present and future real-estate tax burden for Stone Brewing Co. raises issues that tend to support Donald Trump's complaint about inferior government negotiation of trade deals: that "our" negotiators cannot manage to address seemingly simple concerns adroitly.

The essence of the City dispute is the implicit taxable value of the real estate occupied by Stone Brewing and the resultant assessed-tax burden.  That multi-million-dollar brewery and restaurant were built via $23 Million in revenue bonds, guaranteed by and to be redeemed at taxpayer expense.  Stone Brewing gets to buy the property at the end of its 25-year lease for a "nominal" $25,000.00, so it understandably wants to be taxed only on the $25,000.00 valuation.  This could cost City taxpayers as much as $9.1 Million over the life of the lease.  They have been left on the hook for any deficiency by the City's Economic Development Authority, according to your article.  Those "wizards" who negotiated that nonsense are reduced to quibbling over the meaning of "nominal."  Apparently, Stone Brewing pays no rents for the property other than properly-assessed taxes.  This utterly avoidable issue defies common sense.  It demonstrates the folly of having communities compete with each other for "economic development" at taxpayer expense.

Why could not that obvious issue have been simply and effectively addressed in plain language at the outset?  What idiot wrote up that lease?  Someone or some entity needs to be held fully accountable to all City taxpayers.

WHIMPER, NO BANG

An item published at the Phys.org Website last year suggests that there may have been no "beginning" (nor "end") to our Universe, as there was no singular "Big Bang" but perhaps several "bangs" that kept spewing matter and energy outward, thus driving the known continuing expansion of the Universe, now attributed to a sort of anti-gravity "dark energy":

http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html

I feel vindicated, since I have been suggesting as much for years!  The singular "Big Bang" theory seems to serve the earnest hopes and wishes of those who insist that there is a anthropomorphic, self-conscious being-force ("God") that created the Universe.  I think an eternal, infinite Universe, driven ever outward by multiple "bangs" tends to contradict such notions.  I am not here denying the existence of a Creation Force; I am merely doubting its humanoid nature!

Many physicists have concluded, on the basis of only what "background radiation" our instruments can CURRENTLY measure, that THE "Big Bang" occurred some 14 Billion years ago, but there may be reason to think that the Universe is at least a TRILLION years old or perhaps is infinite.  Recorded history has demonstrated, time and again, that our understandings (and the resultant age predictions) keep going farther and farther back as more sensitive instruments are developed.  In other words, we've come a long way, Baby, from Galileo's telescope (at least until the "experts" screwed it up by confusing metric and English measurements, as with the initial mis-focus of the Hubble telescope)!  And, we are definitely a long way from the estimate in the Hebrew Torah that the "Garden of Eden" story had its conclusive creational say about 8500 years ago!

It has simply made no sense to me that the Universe should have a presumed age, before which, simply, no TIME even existed!  I can grasp the notion of a sort of "black hole" singularity where all matter and energy and time itself are compressed into a single, finite point which then explodes, spewing creation outward.  Consider the sheer size and complexity of the Universe: billions and billions of galaxies in the night sky, our Milky Way galaxy, a medium-sized galaxy with millions if not billions of stars and solar systems, being 100,000 light-years across (a single light-year is 5.8 TRILLION miles)!  It is naïvely presumptuous to assert that NOTHING existed before "time" and "existence" itself were created with a sole "Big Bang"!

OF COURSE I cannot "prove" any of this, but I think it is healthy to doubt the Conventional Wisdom on this issue.  Others have certainly made a persuasive mathematical case for the "multiple bangs" theory!

This also ties into my latest "theory" of gravity, that gravity is not a force that PULLS matter together but is, in fact, a manifestation that astronomical bodies will expand AWAY from each other by the force of "dark energy" UNLESS they get too close to one another, in which case the all-surrounding "dark energy" PUSHES them together!  If we assume that such dark energy is as "efficient" as possible (most energies are), then it's a lot easier to push one bigger, conjoined body away from all the others than to push two separate, smaller bodies.  That dark energy favors convenient "gravitational" collisions, much as electrical energy searches for multiple juicy grounds (i.e., the cows standing under a tree) during an electrical storm!

(I really like exploding things!)

FISCAL, NOT MONETARY!

(The following was sent to Congressman David Brat, (R-7th Virginia) June 9, 2016:)


Dear Rep. Brat:

Here are some observations I sent to a friend recently that sum up my strong views about the current and chronic WORLD economic crisis.  You promote yourself as the only economist in the Congress.  Everything that has been tried so far, including the Fed's utter foolishness with short-term interest rates (now near zero) has not worked for the vast majority of Americans, many of whom remain unemployed or in substandard employment.  It is important to remember that MOST American workers have been employed by small, usually local businesses, not the big industrial firms.

With the aging and dying of us Baby Boomers, the huge DEMAND engine that was present for over 60 years has radically dwindled, and we have been suffering a DEMAND-side crisis, not a SUPPLY-side crisis, for at least 9 years.

I know you are a Republican and may be wedded to the dominant but thoroughly discredited economic theories, but I also think you are smart enough to consider a radically different view of the situation, thus:

Greed and selfishness ARE universal.  However, they are not synonymous with "self-interest."  The INCOME-tax cuts of 2001 and made permanent for most people (UP TO $700K TAXABLE joint incomes) by Barack Obama and Congress about 2 years ago were absolutely the WRONG thing to have done, because capital investment was already quite healthy and did not need "stimulation," which was the primary justification.  (We are awash in cash now!  Where are all those "investments" and jobs?)  Most businesses, even the large ones, are self-interested in their reliance on paying customers, and if the majority of people in this country and around the world are deprived of spending money, then sooner or later the businesses will have to lay off employees (as they have done) who will then have NO spending money, thus triggering more layoffs!  When those INCOME-tax cuts were made permanent, the FICA PAYROLL tax was increased back to a combined 12.4% on workers and lower-salaried people and their employers.  The really wealthy (and their employers) do NOT pay FICA on their larger salaries, nor on PASSIVE incomes like dividends, interest and capital gains.  It is levied only on lower EARNED incomes.  FICA is also levied on GROSS wages and salaries and allows for no deductions and no exemptions, nor is it deductible from taxable income.  Thus, it is paid by lower-income folks with PRE-TAX dollars.

Now the wizards are trying to cut Social Security benefits and/or raise FICA PAYROLL taxes to fix a Chicken-Little "crisis" in Social Security, so that FICA revenues may thereafter be surreptitiously diverted to alleviate the horrible deficits caused by inadequate INCOME-tax revenues, NOT Baby-Boomer SS claims.  Collected FICA revenues are reportedly down as well, indicating shrinking payrolls despite the falsely inflated "jobs reports."   (Also, SS benefits derive from revenues already taxed, yet they are being doubly taxed again for higher-income recipients!)

Note the significant difference between TAXABLE incomes and GROSS incomes, the former reflecting exclusions, exemptions and deductions.  Many of those in the lower half of the American income structure cannot afford to buy a home, so they most likely are forced to use the measly Standard Deduction instead of larger itemized deductions.  Most of them also spend 100% of their net incomes (no savings) into their local economies, which wealthier folks don't do.

In 2014, the GROSS household median (midpoint) was under $53K.  80% of all US households were under $113K annual gross.  At least 63% of American households were under $75K gross annually.  The top 5% of households earned more than $262K gross annually.  The true "middle class" has no spending money!  Relatively flat recent retail sales is proof!

So, economic self-interest more likely relies on getting paying customers, not cutting taxes for investors.  The cut taxes and resultant deficits have eroded the real purchasing power of the masses, shifting net wealth from the masses to the relatively few and under-taxed wealthy who could easily AFFORD to pay more taxes to reduce those deficits.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics finally admitted that their numbers do not reflect the recently enlarged group of former workers who have simply quit looking for work in desperation.  Those folks are no longer counted as "unemployed."  The BLS "jobs reports" do not report NET jobs added but only GROSS jobs added, meaning they don't reflect the substantial layoffs that have also occurred.  They also cannot accurately account for "under-employment," which is rampant.  Retail sales is a much more accurate measure of true economic health than is the "jobs report," and retail sales are still suffering.

The fact of the high numbers in the Dow Jones averages do not matter to at least 60% of American households.  I think the true "middle class" has no dog in the Dow fight.

Contrary to the blather of Milton Friedman and most others, there is NO SUCH THING as a "free market."  If so, then monopoly and price-fixing would be legal.  It is a massive delusion believed in the repetition of it.  The American and world economies function much more as a manifestation of "fair-market mercantilism" (buying and selling) than "free-market capitalism."  "Capitalism" is merely a very useful tool for accomplishing the capital funding of businesses.  It cannot be a legitimate end unto itself, because no business, no matter how well-capitalized, will survive w/o paying customers.  GM and Chrysler are obviously well-capitalized (no small thanks to the American taxpayer), but their cars still SUCK!

I think Bernie is wrong about some things, but his thinking is much closer to the reality for most people than is Milton Friedman's.  Speaking of "wrong," we've had about 34 years of Friedman's brand of "free-market capitalism" and the true world economy is in the toilet.  It is going to stay there until the masses get some jobs and some spending money.


PS--The Fed has cut short-term interest rates practically to zero, yet no widespread prosperity is manifest.  That "supply-side" claptrap is meaningless for the majority of households routinely deprived of borrowed money, and most consumers are no longer going to borrow and spend.  Those days are so over.  Our economic problems are FISCAL, not MONETARY, so Congress needs to get busy!