How I Balance the Budget

I know, I know.  I don’t blog about politics.  But the NYTimes has this nifty little gadget that lets you balance the federal budget.   So I did it.

First, let me say that I agree with Felix Salmon’s analysis of the budget tool -  that it makes it both too easy and too hard.  But it was hard to resist playing with it.

I also agree with Kevin Drum’s analysis of most deficit reduction plans -  that no proposal for balancing the budget can be serious if it doesn’t deal with the rising costs of Medicare over the long haul.  As Salmon and Drum point out, these costs will go up no matter what because ALL the baby boomers will be retired (and not paying in), they will ALL be aging and, thus needing more health care (thus taking out) and the cost of end of life care will continue to increase.   As Salmon points out, that effectively means that the NYTimes’ budget selection for controlling Medicare costs (a cap) will not, in the end, work.  Why?  Because when the rationing starts and all the Old People Who Vote In Great Numbers complain – well, you can guess what will happen.  And in fact, the amount budgeted might not be a realistic number based on those rising costs.

But, leaving aside that I think this is a pointless exercise, it was fun.  The goal is to close the budget gap in 2015 and in 2030 with a combination of increases to revenue and decreases in expenses. The 2015 budget shortfall is $418 billion and the projected 2030 budget shortfall is $1,355 billion.

On the expense side, I wanted to be sure to do the least harm to individual people whose lives aren’t as good as mine.  I’ve seen a number of people want to increase, for instance, the age at which SS and or medicare is received.  That’s probably fine for people like me who have a desk job but it isn’t ok for people who are in jobs that are hard on the body.  And people who weren’t as lucky as me to have healthcare their whole life may end up with big health problems earlier due to lack of care.  And finally, this economy sucks and the people being laid off who are over 60 aren’t going to get good jobs with healthcare again, no matter how hard they try.

On the other hand,  I think we spend way to much on our military industrial complex and we could be just as safe for less money. So those are cuts I want to make even without a budget crisis.

So, with that in mind I eliminated earmarks ($14 billion), reduced the nuclear arsenal and space spending ($38 billion), cut our US military presence in Europe and Asia and the size of our standing army ($49 billion) and reduced the number of troops in Iraq/Afghanistan to 30,000 by 2013 ($169 billion).  I decided I could enact malpractice reform ($13 billion) mostly to make conservatives happy but also so that the lawyers could wail with the doctors who make less money when I cap Medicare growth starting in 2013 ($562 billion). 

I like that series of cuts and most of them I would make anyway even if the budget was in balance.  My cuts would reduce our supply of nuclear warheads to 1,050, from 1,968, which seems to me quite enough to blow up the whole earth. My theory is that we only need enough missiles and military r&d to figure out how to protect ourselves and we can stop being the policeman for the world. And the cuts to the military personnel would only take it back to where it was pre-Iraq/Afghanistan. If it were up to me, I ‘d make it even smaller but that wasn’t an option.  Finally the sooner we get out of Iraq/Afghanistan the happier I’ll be. 

Of course the elimination of military personnel and the cuts in military spending mean that a lot of people are going to have to get non-military jobs.  So the economy had better pick up  which is why I didn’t want a lot of the additional taxes that are proposed – at least not right now.  I realize that most of those possible taxes wouldn’t affect most businesses, but it’s easier to pass MORE taxes when people are doing better.  I mostly want to go back to the Clinton era on estate taxes ($104 billion) and investment taxes ($46 billion)  and also on personal income taxes except that I’d keep the Bush level taxes for people making less than $250,000 ($115 billion).  I’d subject some income over $106,000 to the payroll taxes ($106 billion).   The big tax bonus is the $315 billion I get from from eliminating loopholes without lowering taxes.

Again, there were options I’d take that weren’t given.  If it were up to me, I’d eliminate the cap on the payroll tax entirely for individuals but cap the employer’s half.  That would probably allow for lower rates which would be better for the economy because it would put more cash in the pockets of people with lower income – and they would spend it. But they didn’t give me that option. 

So I solved the budget problem.   I balanced the budget using a 49% increase in revenue (i.e. taxes) and a 51% decrease in expenses (i.e. budget cuts). And other than raising the bar on the the payroll tax, I didn’t take anybody’s taxes up higher than they would have been in the 1990’s.   I think that makes me pretty moderate. 

Of course, I have my doubts.  I’ve never been sure how earmarks are a problem since they aren’t new budget items but rather the direction that already budgeted items are sent.  I believe that for every loophole closed another one will open.  And as I said above, I don’t think a cap on Medicare will work.  But these were my options so I took them and that’s why I thought I should budget for a surplus – in case the projections are wrong. 

Yes, I created a surplus.  It gives me some flexibility.  As I said, it might turn out that the projections are wrong – and if so we’ll still be in pretty good shape. Of course, I didn’t have to budget for a surplus.   I could take back all my reductions of military spending EXCEPT the reduction of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and still have a balanced budget. And if I put that spending back in and I went with President Obama’s more moderate estate tax plan plan  instead of President Clinton’s I would STILL solve the deficit. 

But I would rather cut unnecessary military spending and go back to the Clinton era on taxes and try to have a bigger surplus.  Why not give the kids a hopeful future?  That’s where I thought we were in 2000, before the era of  BIG spending and lower taxes kicked in and put us in this predicament.   Again. 

Now, who is going to make me King for a Day so I can do these things?   Here’s the link to my plan.

Squirrels …

 

Saw this on The Village Voice blog.  It made me think of my Grandma.  She used to like to watch the squirrels make fools of themselves:

The Long Song by Andrea Levy

The Long Song by Andrea Levy  may be my favorite novel of all that I’ve read this year and that is very unexpected.  It is the story of Miss July, who lived in Jamaica in the 1800s first as a slave and then as a free black.  I mostly think of slave novels as “difficult” because of the subject matter.  I also tend to think novels about the West Indian slaves tend to go overboard on the “voodoo” aspects.   I admit that I’m also sometimes suspicious that they are going to be preachy.  So I tend to not pick them up as a first choice.  Then I kick myself when they turn out to be wonderful as, for instance, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is wonderful.

This novel is funny.  Really. 

Levy writes Miss July as having a wonderful sense of humor and lets it come through in the most unexpected circumstances.  She doesn’t shy away from the horrors of slavery.  Miss July is the result of the casual rape of her mother by the overseer of Amity Plantation in Jamaica.  Miss July is casually taken away from her mother by the sister of the plantation owner, almost as a pet would be taken.  Miss July witnesses murder and other horrors.  She has children she must give up willingly and unwillingly.  And yet she is a survivor and her sense of humor is part of her survival instinct.

I really liked the structure of this novel.  The story is told from three points of view, although two points of view are from the same person and yet are different.  First, there is Miss July’s son, Thomas Kinsman, who is a publisher and who encourages his mother to write her story.  He provides the Introduction and also jumps in with a few editorial comments.  Then Miss July tells the story, writing in the third person.  But she also jumps in with first person interpolation, addressing us as “reader” and explaining the arguments she is having with her son.  It all works.

Another reason it works is that Miss July treats all of the people in her story, black or white, irreverently while, at the same time, taking her story very seriously.  By walking the fine line of caricature with all of her characters, Levy solves the problem of trying to explain the motivations of a large and diverse cast of characters.  They do what they do because they are who they are – it is as simple as that.

The one thing that is abundantly clear, though, is the corrupting influence of slavery.   There are no good characters because no one can be good in this environment.  Good men are corrupted.  Even Miss July is appalled and indignant to find that her “worth” is not more than the worth of the kitchen maid.

It might sound odd to say that a novel about the harshness of slavery is funny and that it works.  But over the past few years I’ve read a number of non-fiction books about life on the English Sugar Islands of the West Indies during the 18th and 19th century.  None of them captured the absurdity of the situation for all involved as well as this novel did.

Next Fall

According to the program notes, The Rep’s Studio Theatre production of Next Fall is only the second production of Geoffrey Nauffts’ play.  It opened off-Broadway in 2009 in a production put on by a group who wanted to “create theatre ‘for a generation that wanted to break out of convention and scream.’”   The production eventually moved to Broadway where it ran for half a year.  

If you can get there to see it, you should.  It is running at the Grandel Theatre in Grand Centre through November 14. 

The play, directed by Seth Green, opens in a nondescript room that might be a living room or a waiting room, where Holly and Brandon are sitting in chairs.  It isn’t clear at first how well Holly and Brandon know each other, or how they know Arlene the older woman with an almost Arkansas accent who joins them, bringing Holly coffee.  Eventually we figure out that the scene is set in a hospital and the thing the three people have in common is someone named “Luke” who has been involved in a terrible accident and is hanging onto life.  Luke is Arlene’s son and the friend of Holly and Brandon (who appear to know each other but not be close).  Eventually Butch, Luke’s dad who has the same twang as Arlene, shows up.  We figure out that he and Arlene are no longer married.  Finally, Adam arrives from the airport.  Greeted by Holly as “sweetie” and looking visibly nervous around Luke’s parents, it isn’t clear who Adam is.  

Through a series of flashbacks we learn about Luke and his relationship with Holly and Brandon and, especially, Adam.  Luke and Adam, it turns out, are in a long term relationship but Luke has never told his parents that he is gay.  

On simply that basis, this might be an interesting play.  The idea that Luke is dying but Adam isn’t even allowed in to see him because only “family” is allowed in raises all kinds of questions.   The same is true for heterosexual couples who aren’t married but, of course, they at least have the choice to marry.  Of course, they ALL have the choice of legal documents in anticipation of this type of situation and the lawyer in me wanted to scream “See?  You should have planned for this.”  But I digress.

If this was simply a play about the idea that you never know when life will throw you a curve ball and you should be sure to tell the people you love that you love them before it is too late, it would be a good premise for a play.

But this play is even more interesting.   The program notes say this about the playwright:

Geoffrey Nauffts grew up in a household with no religion or spirituality.  he was always fascinated by people who practiced religion, but more to the point, he was fascinated by people who had faith in a creator. The idea that there is a larger entity, a creator, a protector, who is omniscient, who guides us, perhaps punishes us, and hears our prayers is not a belief that he shares … [He] has chosen to write a play that explores the dynamic between a believer and a non-believer … [and] has chosen to make the main characters a gay couple.  All this allows him to investigate the nature of faith and generosity of spirit from a number of different interesting and dramatic perspectives.”

Boy did he. In the flashbacks we meet Luke, who is just a wonderful person.  He dropped out of law school to be an actor and he is a generous, open hearted person who knows the moment he meets Adam that it is love.  Adam is a funny, insecure hypochondriac who falls hard for Luke.  They eventually move in together. 

If the definition of a good relationship is one in which each party can disagree with each other with respect, this is a great relationship.  Sure, there are moments when each crosses the line and angers the other one but they are able to get past those moments by true contrition – which doesn’t mean changing their mind about their own position.

And what do they disagree about the most?  God and faith.  Adam is an agnostic or even perhaps an atheist.  A good person who lives a good life but has no real need for faith.  It would not be true to say that he has no patience with faith because he does show infinite patience with Luke who has abundant faith. 

Luke is a Christian.   But Nauffts didn’t make him just a generalized Christian, he made him an ultra-conservative type of Christian.  Luke doesn’t just pray quietly before every meal, he truly and deeply believes in heaven, hell, sin and the rapture.  He is also a true Christian in the sense that he doesn’t judge those who aren’t like him.  He is also not particularly evangelical.  He wishes that Adam would accept Jesus Christ because then Adam would go to heaven when he dies but he understands that he can’t force Adam to any kind of belief.  It is, in fact, Adam who usually brings up the”religion issue” and argues with Luke in a very patient rational way. 

Adam’s arguments make complete rational sense.  He lays out for all to see the absurdities of some of Luke’s beliefs.  But it never matters.  Luke truly believes and he never stops believing.  And we the audience believe that he will never stop believing. 

And so at the end when Adam can tell Luke’s obnoxious right wing racist homophobic “Christian” dad, who is having a hard time dealing with pulling the plug on Luke, that Luke firmly believed that he was going to a better place, we know Adam is telling a truth even if it isn’t the truth that Adam believes. 

All of this sounds intense and sad and full of argument and rage.  But this is a funny play.  There are laugh out loud moments.  Each of the characters seem very real.  Butch may be the closest to a stereotype but we are left in no doubt that he loved his son.  Arlene may be more forgiving than Butch but she is still tied into the same religious belief system.  Holly believes as Adam does but she never wants to rock the boat.  And Brandon?  Brandon is the most enigmatic of characters.  Like Luke he is a gay Christian but his quiet exterior hides a great deal more self hate than Luke.  In one scene it becomes clear that Brandon (who is only attracted to black men and, hence, not to Luke) has fallen out with Luke not because Luke hooked up with Adam but because Luke fell in love with Adam.  Brandon understands the occasional “sinful act” but he cannot condone the wrong kind of love.  

And yet even Brandon seems a bit redeemed by the end . 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the wonderful cast.  Each and every one was perfect in their role.  Susan Greenhill, as Arlene, and Colin Hanlin, as Luke, were outstanding.  It’s rare that I completely forget that a stage actor is an actor, but throughout the whole play I totally believed they were their characters.

But mostly I liked the play itself.  The contrast between the writing of this play, which is tight and directed and focused with deeply drawn characters, and the writing of High which seemed to be all over the place, was extreme.  I can see why this play moved to Broadway and had a nice run there.  It is playing in The Studio Rep because … well, probably because scenes of homosexual men showing affection for each other are still considered too much for the mainstage at the Rep.  It’s a shame, because this play is 100 times better than High. 

We’re Still Fighting the Civil War Here in Missouri

The New York Times (subs. req.) is blogging the Civil War and it’s pretty cool.  Lincoln was just elected yesterday. Today they put up a time line for 1861 that ends with the imposition of martial law in the City of St. Louis. There is a link to a Times article on the actual Order of General Halleck.  It is hard to imagine this city living under martial law, but it was. 

We’re still living with the effects of events that led up to the imposition of martial law.  In March 1861, the Missouri legislature passed the so-called “St. Louis Police Bill”,  a bill to take the police force of the City of St. Louis away from the City and give control of it to the State.  They’ve never given it back.   That’s right, after all these years, 149 years,  they still haven’t given it back.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize that St. Louis was generally a pro-Union city in the midst of a state that was Southern in its sympathies,” says Robert Archibald, president of the Missouri History Museum. “The St. Louis police department constituted the largest quasi-military organization in the state, and [the police bill] was a Civil War measure passed by people who wanted to control it as part of the Civil War.”

Yes, that’s right.  Even back then the City of St. Louis was more progressive than the rest of the state.  And even back then the rest of the state punished us for that.

Here’s what one of St. Louis’ representatives said at the time:

“It was one of the most infamous pieces of legislation ever attempted to be inflicted. Our revolutionary fathers threw off the yoke of Great Britain on the very grounds now pursued by this legislature toward St. Louis, which attempts to deprive the people of their right to representation—to appoint foreign officers to preside over them—to take away from them their rights to franchise, to pension hirelings as officers upon them, and to impose taxes to support them without that consent. This Legislature [will] yet see whether the spirit of American freemen has yet died out in the breasts of the citizens of St. Louis.”

His tirade did no good.   But taking away our police drove a wedge between St. Louis and the rest of the state that still is there.

“There continues to be a split between St. Louis and the rest of the state, and in historical terms, I suspect it has its roots in the Civil War,” Archibald says. “I think the lack of a close relationship stems more from the war than from the typical urban-rural split that you see in other states.”

You bet there is a wedge.  Bill McClellan, columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has even called for St. Louis to secede from Missouri and join Illinois, becoming “West East St. Louis”.  Tongue in cheek that might be, but still tempting.   

I bet Illinois would let us have our own police.

Music is Music

I’ve been reading Listen to This, the new book by Alex Ross, classical music critic for The New Yorker.  He describes getting his first iPod and loading all of his CDs onto it and then putting it on shuffle. 

The little machine went crashing through barriers of style in ways that changed how I listened.  One day it jumped from the furious crescendo of “Dance of the Earth,” ending Part I of The Rite of Spring, into the hot jam of Louis Armstrong‘s “West End Blues".  The first became a gigantic upbeat to the second.  On the iPod, music is freed from all fatuous self-definitions and delusions of significance.  There are no record jackets depicting bombastic Alpine scenes or celebrity conductors with a  family resemblance to Rudolf Hess.  Instead, as Berg once remarked to Gershwin, music is music.

I resisted putting very much classical music on my iPod for a long time but I eventually did it and I also often let the iPod shuffle from Grieg to Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen to Benny Goodman.  Music is music.

High

We don’t get many shows in St. Louis that are en route to New York, so when we do we feel flattered.  Which probably isn’t the right way to feel.  After all, if they are trying out a show before it hits New York what they really need is honest criticism.

On Thursday night I saw High at The Rep, written by Matthew Lombardo and directed by Rob Ruggiero and starring Kathleen Turner. It is supposedly on its way to New York.  If it makes it there I don’t think it will last.  Not because of the actors but because of the script.

A three character show, Turner plays Sister Jamison Connelly, a Catholic nun who works at a rehab center run by the Catholic Church.  Michael Beresse plays Father Michael Delpapp, the priest who is in charge of the facility and Evan Jonigkeit plays Cody Randall, a junkie serving a 30 day court ordered stay at the facility with whom Sister Connelly must work.

Matthew Lombardo is, by his own admission, a recovering drug addict.  The role of the drug addict is well written and Jonigkeit played it perfectly.  It is hard to like Cody while at the same time it is easy to see how easy it would be to enable him in his behavior.

Lombardo was also, by his own admission, born Catholic.  So was I. And in the notes for the performance he attributes his own “coming clean'” moment to a spiritual awakening when he hit rock bottom and asked God for help.    According to Lombardo, he was delivered to a nearby hospital where he began treatment. 

Not, you notice, a Catholic rehab center.  He should have stuck with what he knew.

I see the plays at The Rep in the last week of performance.  By the time I see them they have either jelled or not jelled.  My cousin (who was also raised Catholic and is a psychologist) saw this play at the beginning of the run.  I saw her after she had seen it and I asked her how she liked it.  She said she didn’t want to ruin the plot for me so she wouldn’t go into that, but she thought the play itself (the script) needed significant work before it went to New York.   Then she remarked that, despite growing up Catholic, it didn’t seem as if the writer had ever met any “real” Catholics who worked in places like these.

I have to agree with her.  I thought the script was weak.  The drug addict was the best drawn character and, as I said, Jonigkeit played him perfectly.  But the nun and the priest characters seemed forced.  I think Turner and Beresse did as well as they could with what they were given, it wasn’t their fault.  But the way the characters were written seemed outdated.  And there were so many things that he seemed to have gotten wrong.

For instance, the priest is dressed throughout most of the performance in his clerical blacks (with roman collar).  But this seems to be a facility at which he lives and we never see him in “street” clothes.  Priests do wear them at times, you know.  And at one point in the performance he gets dressed in vestments that are used only when saying mass.  There is no indication in the script that they have moved into a sacristy (the part of the church where the priest robes) or that he is preparing to say mass.  He just brings them into the room that, up until that point in the performance, has been the nun’s office, and puts them on as he talks to her.  Huh?  Why?

At one point Sister Connelly talks about how she doesn’t wear traditional nun garb with a rosary around her neck.  It isn’t against the rules to wear a rosary around your neck but most Catholics in the United States don’t.   Back in the day when nuns did dress in habits, their rosaries were usually hanging from their waists from where they could easily be detached and used in prayer.

These are things that could easily be fixed.  A bigger problem was the dialog. Lombardo tried to show that “nuns are people too” by having Sr. Connelly swear a blue streak.  But in every other way she talked as if she were out of a 1950’s movie about nuns.  Think Rosalind Russell in The Trouble with Angels.   She was unlike any nun I’ve ever met in the last 20 years.  And I’ve met a lot of nuns in my life.  A LOT of nuns. 

What it came down to was this:  it wasn’t at all clear why this character needed to be a nun.  The only reason she needed to be a nun was seemingly because she worked in a Catholic rehab center where a priest was in charge.  Having her be a nun must have seemed a good way to increase the tension when she stood up to the priest.  I have news for Lombardo:  lots of lay people work in facilities run by priests.  And there’s plenty of tension when they stand up to them.

Oh, and they don’t stand up to them by going around their backs to the archbishop about a problem that is no more than a run-of-the-mill disagreement.  They don’t even go to the archbishop for BIG disagreements.  Why?  It would be like going to the Governor because you disagreed with your boss who was the head of the highway department.  It just isn’t done. 

I can see why Lombardo wanted to have the priest character.  He was playing with stereotypes and preconceptions by making the audience have to consider their current conceptions about why a priest would be interested in helping a teenage homosexual prostitute drug addict.  The priest sex abuse scandal is always there in the background and it is somewhat useful for Lombardo’s purposes in obscuring some of what he wants to save for the end.  But there was no reason that the actual therapist had to be a nun.  It just doesn’t work and he should change that.

But finally, and most problematically, the story of the drug addict is just not that shocking.   It seemed pretty run-of-the mill to me.  Which would be fine EXCEPT that his story is supposed to shock Sister Connelly intensely. So intensely that it makes her reveal to the audience something terrible that happened in her past.

Give me a break.  Nuns don’t exist in vacuums.  They don’t get to be counselors at a rehab center because some mother superior sends them there.  They have to go to school these days.  They do internships.  They read case studies.  They are exactly like lay people who work at drug rehab centers. 

Even if this kid were her first homosexual, prostitute drug addict, there was nothing about his background or anything he did that should have shocked her.  Heck, it wouldn’t have shocked anyone who ever watched The Wire.  It certainly didn’t shock me.

And that, above all, was the fatal flaw in the script that I’m not sure can be fixed.