2016 Jan 15^th

Today marks the first anniversary of the “Henry’s Daily Detritus” blog. The very first entry in this noble effort was Jan 15^th 2015. (To distinguish the new entries from the old, the date will now carry the year.) The initial entry had to do with the Keystone XL Pipeline, a source of great controversy a year ago. George Will, whose column I addressed, claimed that while the jobs created by the pipeline would be temporary, all jobs were temporary. The blog pointed out that he had been writing his column for forty years and that gig hardly seemed temporary; the blog then came out in favor of the pipeline because it would be less dangerous than moving the sludge by truck or rail. None of that is relevant any longer.

The next entry was about the Blue Angels performance at the Cherry Festival. Since TC bears only a token cost for their appearances and since the performance increases the attendance and the local merchant’s gross, the performances will naturally continue. Their appearances are still a controversial topic but even if their noise makes babies cry, dogs howl and some veterans and elders leave town, they will continue to perform and make money for the local merchants. Isn’t that what this festival is all about?

All right enough nostalgia, the circus performed last night, let’s check that out!

Poor Cruz decided to complain about “New York Values” and Donald Trump, talking about a completely different set of New York Values did a dipsy-doodle and left poor Cruz in a very bad way. Cruz may be a fine formal college debater but Trump plays on another level, poor Cruz.

Then there was his belligerence, Governor Christie; he began by deriding the President’s discussion of the economy’s improvement as measured by the much lowered unemployment rate, now just above 5 percent. Oh no, not at all says Christie. The rate is much higher than that because once someone has tried and tried to get a job and failed, they stop looking and are no longer counted as unemployed. But then what about the drop in this index from its high in 2009 of over 9 percent to today’s rate of a little over 5 percent. Was the 2009 index not subject to those same problems? Unfortunately no one asked Christie about that. (Bernie Sanders has been claiming the same thing.)

Then Christie tells us about his plan to “save” Social Security. The government, he says, has effectively stolen the money people have put into this program so benefits will have to be cut. They will drop for people with incomes over 80 thousand a year and be cut still more for higher income people. The fact is that if your wages are over 237 thousand a year your FICA tax is just half the rate of someone earning half as much. If we applied the FICA tax rate to all income, not just earned income as is done now, we would not have to deny anyone full benefits and the system would be solvent indefinitely. Of course that plan would raise the tax paid by the wealthy and for Christie that’s an unthinkable solution.