Support for the Civic Center

Ever notice how easy it is to guarantee freedom of speech if we agree with everything that is said? No one ever gets into trouble when everyone agrees with them. It’s only when the majority disagrees with what’s said that we find out just how committed we are to this guiding principle of our democracy.

Ask Big Kenny Alphin of the Big and Rich show. This group was in Pikeville recently and because of a comment Big Kenny made about mountaintop removal (MTR), the ticket sales for that show were termed “sluggish”.

Okay, a lot of people in Pike County are paying a lot more attention to what performers are saying than I am. Not only was I unaware that Big Kenny had made any comments about MTR, pro or con, I wasn’t even aware of who Big Kenny was, period.

But in an article about the show, certain members of the coal operators various associations declared this to be so. Well, I’ll take their word for it. Big Kenny insulted coal, that is, if saying that mountaintop removal is not the best way to mine coal is insulting. Because that was it and that is a pretty mild insult. Not nearly as searing as the response from a friend of coal who said these comments meant Big Kenny was a moron.

Various officials from the various coal associations did step in, they said, to insure that the Pikeville Civic Center didn’t lose money. That was mighty nice of them, wasn’t it? But the truth is, these same associations do promote over the top responses to anyone who dares oppose them in anyway whatsoever, so this may very well have led to the poor ticket sales to begin with.

Anyway, the idea was to support the Civic Center, wasn’t it? Not too many more tickets were sold, despite the fact that coal supporters encouraged people to come out and see the show, so I guess we have to accept that the people have spoken, voted with their feet, huh? That’s the accepted reason for poor ticket sales.

Of course, even if ticket sales had been far more brisk, that one show would still have left the Civic Center far short of enough money to pay its bills. The truth is, a lot of shows are well-attended but still don’t generate enough revenue.

What would generate enough revenue? Well, a lot of the big city centers sell the right to name certain venues for large sums of money. In Louisville, the Cardinals play at the Yumm Center, that name coming from a corporation that controls some big-name fast food restaurants, including Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut.

But what about Pikeville? Are there any suitors with deep enough pockets to step up and bail out this civic center? Well, there is the coal industry. It is probably the only industry in the area that would have enough money for this.

Except that coal just dropped $7 million to name the new dormitory being built for U. K. basketball players. That’s too bad, too, because we can all see by their reaction to Big Kenny that coal does support our area and the institutions built here to make our life more enjoyable. It’s just that Pikeville wasn’t as uptown as that U. K. project. Otherwise…

Fire Department woes

Two items about local first responders recently appeared in the Appalachian News-Express: The first concerned a proposed levy that would benefit local fire departments in Mingo County, WV; the second was an editorial in the Weekend Edition of the Appalachian that endorsed that proposed levy and suggested that Pike County might also benefit from a similar tax.

Now comes proof that great minds do indeed think alike. Reprinted this week is a column I wrote quite a few years back. In this and other columns, I have more than once made the same argument that was made in the Weekend edition of the Express. What I said then still goes today.

The story in Sunday’s edition of the News Express concerning the six fire departments in our area that are getting federal grant money is good news, indeed. There are few jobs as difficult as the one running a rural fire department, but when you find yourself constantly in need of funds, the job is made exponentially more difficult.

I am not at all surprised to see that several departments are using these funds to purchase new trucks. The fire truck is, after all, the most important tool in the department’s arsenal, and I’d bet that many departments are in the same boat as the one here at Feds Creek, in that their fire-fighting apparatuses are getting a bit long in the tooth, to say the least. Feds Creek’s main pumper is a 1978 model Chevrolet, and its back up is a 1978 GMC tanker.

If you want to know how much area departments are hamstrung by these older pieces of equipment, compare any 1978 car or truck to their newer counterparts, and you will see how far technology has advanced in the interim. The same thing is true of fire trucks, and anything newer would see a vast improvement in the fire protection that the departments could offer this area.

There is a Kentucky law on the books that allows fire departments to establish a subscription fee for their service areas. This fee, payable once a year, is usually $25.00 for residences, and $50.00 for businesses. The only hang-up is that the fee is not a mandatory one, like the property tax that is also widely ignored in this county, so that most departments that have instituted this fee still find themselves short of funds.

The need for fire protection, alas, is lost on most people unless it is their home that is burning; ergo the fire services are often neglected. Of course, the fee system mentioned above is an absolute bargain if the return is viable fire protection, yet many find even this pittance too much to pay, but there is a way to help fund these departments to the fullest extent possible.

Instead of the afore-mentioned subscription fee, if some well-meaning legislator from our area would propose a bill that would set a fee of $2.50 per month ($5.00 for businesses) to be added to electric bills, and then passed on to the area fire departments, no local department would have to depend on the odd federal grant to keep its financial house in order. Plus there would be the added incentive for area residents to attend each fire department’s monthly meetings to see how their contribution is used

Real capitalists love shared sacrifice

So, the watchword du jour during these uncertain economic times has been “shared sacrifice”. That ought to be pretty easily understood. It means that everyone is going to take a hit when the country’s budget problems are addressed. That should include cuts in programs that benefit the poor and middle classes, but also higher taxes for the well-heeled of the country, Grover Norquist notwithstanding.

Except that those really well-to-do, the ones the Grand Old Tea Party (GOTP) is most concerned about, really aren’t feeling the effects of the recession the way the everyone else is. Consumer sales of luxury goods (Mercedes Benz autos, designer shoes @$700.00 a pair and up, $11,000 Gucci coats and assorted watches such as Rolex, etc.) are all said to be flying off the shelf. No lay-offs in those quarters.

Meanwhile, those of lesser means are haunting the Mega-Lo Marts of the world, the various dollar stores and whatnot, and even these stores are reporting drops in earnings. Now if that doesn’t tell you what it’s really like out there, nothing will.

And the chief reason for the pain being felt by the poor and middle classes, the ones who “fight for us in Afghanistan” and “struggle to make ends meet”? According to Warren Buffet, it’s because-“…we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks”.

By the way, the information in this column comes from an op-ed piece billionaire Warren Buffet wrote for the New York Times, so even if he is one of them, this isn’t going to go over well with some of his ultra-rich buddies such as the Koch Brothers, the scions of a man who made his pile by collaborating with Joseph Stalin in the years before WW2, by showing this brutal dictator how to refine gasoline from crude oil. It’s been said that the elder Koch soon disavowed his involvement with Stalin, but there are those of us who believe his sons are recreating Stalin’s methods of taking over governments.

For those who don’t know the whole story on who Warren Buffet is, let me say that he is the CEO of a little company called Berkshire Hathaway. To get the 411, you might want to look at Wikipedia’s entry on this incredibly successful corporation. This should tell you all you need to know.

Buffet says quite plainly, in the title of his piece that we need to “stop coddling the super-rich”. And how do we coddle the billionaires among us? Buffet shows that in 1992, the top 400 earners in the county had an aggregate income of $16.9 billion dollars. Their tax rate then was 29.2%. By 2008, that income had raised, no, soared, in Buffet’s words, to $90.9 billion, while the tax rate plunged to 21.5%.

And the cries of the GOTP that a substantial raise in the tax rates of these billionaires would cost the country any chance at job growth? Buffet notes that between 1980 and 2000, there were some 40 million jobs created, but since the Bush era tax cuts were enacted, there’s been a substantial slowdown in new jobs.

To ease your minds, Buffet envisions tax increases for incomes over $1 million only, and he would include dividends and capital gains. For those who earn more than $10 million, there would be an additional increase.

Truth or Consequences

The one wild card in the negotiations in the United States Congress to keep the U. S. from defaulting on its debt was the Grand Old Tea Party (GOTP).  Their members, or the most of them, it seemed, were never hesitant in saying they would never vote to raise the debt ceiling, no matter what. 

Yes, all sorts of warnings were being sounded left and right about what might happen if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, but the GOTP never budged.  In fact, they all sounded pretty sure that these were scare tactics being used by the Democrats so they could raise the taxes on the poor, put-upon billionaires and multinational corporations of our land.  And they stood firm even when those warnings came from otherwise reliable sources such as the Wall Street Journal.

Rep. Michelle Bachman (R,-MN) was a good a speaker for the GOTP as anyone.  In one news conference she intimated that spending was more important to President Obama that getting our financial house in order and that even if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, the nation wouldn’t go into default because we could “pay the interest on the debt”.  Rep. Bachmann was joined in these sentiments by fellow members of the GOTP Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.)

Well, we might have thought that since the possibility of default was avoided by the last-minute deal reached on the 1^st of August, we wouldn’t have to worry about the dire consequences that most sober observers predicted should the nation not be able to meet its obligations, but we would have been wrong, because on August 5^th, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) downgraded the U. S.’s stellar triple-A credit rating down to double-A plus. 

You might remember S&P from its role in the financial meltdown of 2008.  They were the ones who rated Lehman Brothers as triple-A right before they went bankrupt. 

Well, if the GOTP thought there’d be no consequences by not raising the debt ceiling, we can only hope that those doubts have, by this time, been dispelled.  Because S&P gave as one of its chief reasons for downgrading the U. S.’s credit rating the political turmoil that surrounded the need to raise the debt ceiling.  They also mentioned the refusal to raise revenue, but we know how the GOTP feels about that.  They were willing to see far worse consequences, after all.

Yes S&P analysts have been cited for making a two trillion dollar mistake in adding up the U. S. debt, but even after they recognized this little faux pas, they felt they should nonetheless go ahead with their downgrade.  And as a result, one report on MSN’s web site said that financial markets around the globe had lost a total of some $2.5 trillion and that was before the New York Stock Exchange lost 635 points on Monday.  That translates to about 5.5% of its total value, by the way.

Well, this all bodes well for the future, huh?  There still are a few details, after all, to be worked out if an agreement is to be reached on how to cut the nation’s overall debt.  Still, the news wasn’t all bad.  The price of gold just reached $1700 an ounce and the nation does have all that gold stored away in Fort Knox.

The Umpire Strikes Back

There’s an old joke about an umpire who was going to officiate at a championship game.  The visiting coach dropped by and gave the umpire $5000.00 to call the game for his team.  Then came the home team coach who gave the official $10,000 to call it his way.  The umpire thought the situation over a few minutes, then returned $5000.00 to the home team coach and called the thing down the middle.

You can always tell if an umpire is doing his job, he has fans from both teams hating him.  That’s what tells me the compromise plan to avoid a default by the federal government on its financial obligations may have more going for it than you think.

This plan was passed by the House of Representatives 269-161 on Mon., Aug. 1, and will, almost without a doubt, be passed by the U. S. Senate in a Tuesday, Aug. 2 vote, then go the President Obama for his signature.   Funny, for a bill that got all that attention from Democratic and Republican leaders in both the House and Senate who were able to line up enough of their troops to pass it, almost no one likes it.

Well, it’s not like everyone sort of important didn’t give a plan named for them a go.  Trouble is the House is controlled by the Republicans who are ably assisted by the Grand Old Tea Party and the Senate and the White House are controlled by the Democrats, so when plans came out of first the House and then the Senate, the controlling group from the other chamber just naturally shot them down.

First the Grand Old Tea Partiers came up with Cut, Cap and Balance, whose centerpiece would have been an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget.  House went wild, Senate said no.  Saved President Obama from having to veto it. 

Then came the Reid plan.  House voted it down before the Senate could even schedule a vote.  Speaker John Boehner came up with a plan that was seemingly too much even for the Grand Old Tea Party.  Ol’ John did get the House to pass it, but had to then watch the Senate say no.

Well, as Lawrence O’Donnell from MS/NBC’s The Last Word has been saying for some time that the whole thing could be wrapped up in a couple of hours.  All that was needed was a one-page bill that would change the numbers on the law that sets the debt limit for the U. S.  But that would have just kicked the can a little further down the road.

What we wound up getting was an effort that required actual cooperation from the Majority Leader and Minority leaders in the Senate, from the Republican Speaker of the House and the Democratic Minority leader in the House of Representatives and President Obama.  That, by itself, is pretty remarkable.

Heck, when Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell all lobby for and vote for the same bill, something is up.  Even Rep. Gabrielle Giffords came back to the House for the first time since being shot to vote for this bill. 

Okay, as the President said, we may not like everything in it, but you gotta like seeing everyone pull together for at least once.