Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, April 15, 2017

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OPINION 

 Mountain Views News Saturday, April 15, 2017 


TOM PURCELL

PETER FUNT

Mountain Views

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THOUGHTS FOR THE HOLIDAYS

The confluence of Easter and Passover at mid-month will find many 
people, stressed more than usual by the state of world affairs and the chaos 
of domestic politics, seeking answers from their faith.

 It’s hard to imagine anyone on the world stage more gifted at articulating 
a course for humanity than Pope Francis. Beyond his responsibilities as 
leader of the Catholic Church, the Pope, at age 80, has become a beacon 
of common sense, most emphatically in his devotion to the economically 
disenfranchised.

 “The world tells us to seek success, power and money,” he observes. “God tells us to seek humility, 
service and love.”

 His words are powerful, even for those like myself who are not Catholic.

 During the four years of his Papacy he has boldly directed many of his remarks at governments and 
world leaders in addressing the needs of a troubled planet.

 Here are my favorite statements by Pope Francis:

 - “The measure of the greatness of a society is found in the way it treats those most in need, those 
who have nothing apart from their poverty.”

 - “Responsibility for the poor and the marginalized must be an essential element of any political 
decision, whether on the national or the international level.”

 - “Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. 
It is a moral obligation.”

 - “Everything is connected. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love 
for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.”

 - “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, 
political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity 
in our day.”

` - “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, 
is not Christian.”

 - “The problem of intolerance should be dealt with as a whole. Every time a minority is persecuted 
and marginalized, the good of the whole society is in danger.”

 - “Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity.”

 - “To change the world we must be good to those who cannot repay us.”

 A few weeks ago, the Pope spoke about encountering beggars on the street. “There are many 
excuses” to justify not giving them money, he noted. Perhaps it will be spent on alcohol or drugs.

 But giving something to someone in need “is always right,” he explained. And looking them in the 
eyes and touching their hands must be the way one reaches out to a person asking for help.

 Study people’s faces as you go along the street, the Pope has advised. Too many are worried, closed 
in, a smile is missing, tenderness is missing. In an era of social media, true social friendship is missing.

 And here is my favorite quote from Pope Francis. Perhaps you, too, will consider it as food for 
thought at your holiday table.

 - “You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.”

——-

 Peter Funt can be reached at www.CandidCamera.com

 Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at Amazon.com 
and CandidCamera.com. 

FOR TAX DAY – TAXING 
QUOTATIONS 

April is the most miserable month of the year — because that’s when 
I must make a massive “contribution” to the federal government. 
It consoles me, however, to learn what some of our greatest minds have to say 
about taxes. I found their quotations in Inc. Magazine:

 “We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man 
standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” 

— Winston Churchill

 “They can’t collect legal taxes from illegal money.” — Al Capone

 “I don’t know if I can live on my income or not — the government won’t let me try it.” — Bob Thaves

 Hey, Winston, progressives will never understand your point. Al, thanks to taxes, legitimate work, like 
crime, also doesn’t pay. And Bob, you couldn’t have described our silent business partner, the government, any 
better.

 Here are some more gems:

 “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” — Albert Einstein

 “Today, it takes more brains and effort to make out the income-tax form than it does to make the income.” 
— Alfred E. Neuman

 “A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right.” — Anonymous

 If Einstein failed to understand tax complexity, none of us stand a chance. Alfred E., I rely on a super-
smart CPA to help me comply with onerous tax requirements. And Anonymous nails the bizarre sense of 
punishment I experience every April for the petty crime of working hard.

 Speaking of tax pain, here’s more genius:

 “You don’t pay taxes. They take taxes.” — Chris Rock

 “Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.” — Calvin Coolidge

 “It’s income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up 
that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta.” — Dave Barry

 Chris, the government’s understanding of “contribution” is similar to its understanding of “investment;” in 
both cases, we pay. Silent “small government” Cal is my kind of president. And Dave, which brand of pencil do 
you recommend?

 I still worry about the popularity of Bernie Sanders’ socialist policies among the young. I hope they come to 
their senses and heed this advice:

 “America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.” — Laurence J. Peter

 “What the government gives it must first take away.” — John S. Coleman

 “There’s nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won’t cure.” — Dan Bennett

 The IRS — which, apparently, does have a sense of humor — posted a series of tax quotations on its website. 
Some of them are grand:

 A tax loophole “is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.” — Russell B. Long

 “I am proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is — I could be just as proud for half the 
money.” — Arthur Godfrey

 “Taxation with representation ain’t so hot, either.” — Gerald Barzan 
Russ, we’re overdue for real tax reform, and hopefully, Republicans can pull it off. Arthur, I could be just as 
proud for a quarter of the money. And Gerry, you’re spot on.

 Here are some more interesting quotes from the IRS site:

 “People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women.” — Unknown 
“Income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf.” — Will Rogers

 “Where there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of 
income.” — Plato

 Well, then. I guess tax woes have been around for a while.

 Tom Purcell is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Tom@TomPurcell.
com.


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

TOM PURCELL


DICK POLMAN


IS BILL O’REILLY TOO 

BIG TO FAIL?

Fox News, where women work at their own risk in a misogynist 
culture frozen somewhere in the 1950s, is back in crisis mode. 
Nine months after chairman and accused sexual harasser Roger 
Ailes was forced out, we’re wondering whether accused sexual 
harasser Bill O’Reilly will be forced out, too.

 Don’t hold your breath.

 I don’t write much about O’Reilly, although it was fun two years ago to recount his 
phony boasts of covering a war that was actually 1,000 miles away from his hotel. But now 
attention must be paid, because his new flap is for the highest stakes. It’s morals versus 
money.

 Advertisers are currently fleeing “The O’Reilly Factor,” indicating in press releases that 
they prefer not to be associated with an old-school male chauvinist who has cost his 
company $13 million to settle sexual harassment claims. The news about O’Reilly - who 
allegedly made sexual advances to his five female accusers, and when rebuked, hurt the 
women’s careers - broke bigly over the weekend, and more than dozen bailing sponsors 
have scrambled onto the high road.

 Mercedes-Benz is patting itself on the back: “The allegations are disturbing and, given 
the importance of women in every aspect of our business, we don’t feel this is a good 
environment in which to advertise our products right now.” Ditto clothing company 
UNTICKit: “It is important that our corporate partners reflect the same principals of 
inclusivity and equality upon which we have built our brand.” Ditto the pharmaceutical 
company Bayer, which says it “supports a safe, respectful and non-abusive environment 
for women.”

 All very noble. But let’s not get carried away, because the firms are ultimately beholden 
to the business of making money.

 These sponsors are merely shifting their ads to other Fox shows, which means that 
O’Reilly’s notoriety isn’t costing Fox News a penny. Plus, the network gets most of its 
revenue from licensing fees paid by cable and satellite operators, so it’s cushioned from 
any sponsor rebellion. And if the sponsors truly wanted to take a moral stand, they’d 
bail on Fox News entirely. After all, the network, which claims to have “zero tolerance” 
for sexual harassment, just renewed its contract with O’Reilly last year after it paid off 
female accusers. Unfortunately, the sponsors have shown no interest in cutting the cord 
completely.

 Granted, ad boycotts have worked on occasion. MSNBC nixed the simulcast of Don 
Imus’ radio show, and Glenn Beck left Fox News after sponsors fled his TV program. But 
Bill O’Reilly may be too big to fail.

 To use the mob’s terminology, O’Reilly is an earner. He makes $18 million a year, which 
is dwarfed by the bucks his show brings in: $446 million ad-revenue dollars got pumped 
into Fox coffers between 2014 and 2016. That’s likely deemed to be more important 
to Fox executives than the sex harassment stuff - like, for instance, the allegation that 
O’Reilly told one woman to buy a vibrator, and serenaded the same woman by phone 
with masturbation noises.

 By the way, O’Reilly says he has never harassed anyone, that he routinely draws accusers 
just because he’s famous, and that he and Fox have paid off the women because “I’m a 
father who cares deeply for my children...I have put to rest any controversies to spare my 
children.” In February 2016 he lost custody of his children, who said they wanted to live 
with their mother.

 Bottom line is, money talks. One Fox source told New York magazine’s Gabriel 
Sherman (the journalist with the best Fox sources), “The impact of these boycotts can be 
cosmetic. The feeling is, let’s keep our heads down and hope this blows over.”

 Which may well happen. Here’s another remark, from a different source: “We’ve seen 
this many times in the past. Some of the advertisers that left will come back, and some 
will be replaced. Life will go on.”

 That remark was uttered in 2012 by Michael Harrison, who publishes a talk radio 
magazine. He was referring to Rush Limbaugh - who, at the time, was hemorrhaging 
advertisers after he ridiculed a law student, a birth control user, as a “slut” and a 
“prostitute.” You may remember that flap. Scores of big-ticket advertisers, from Capitol 
One to Quicken Loans, said they would no longer do business with Rush. Critics gleefully 
tallied the boycotters and awaited Rush’s downfall.

 Last August, Rush inked a new contract with his overlords at Premiere Radio Networks 
- for another four years. You get my point.

 Perhaps Peggy Drexler, an author and gender scholar, is right when she says that the 
O’Reilly scandal will ultimately help women - “the more we hear about...the mistreatment 
of women in the workplace and anywhere, the more women are likely to band together to 
hasten that change” - but Rupert Murdoch and his old-boy underlings are fine with Fox’s 
toxic culture if it works for the balance sheet.

——-

 Copyright 2017 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper 
syndicate. 

 Dick Polman is the national political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia 
(newsworks.org/polman) and a “Writer in Residence” at the University of Pennsylvania. 
Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.

WHAT ’60 MINUTES’ MISSED 
ABOUT FOREIGN WORKER 
PROGRAM

Last month’s “60 Minutes” feature on the H-1B employment-
based visa brought back into national awareness the outrage about 
displacing U.S. workers with foreign-born labor and, at the risk of losing their severance, 
forcing Americans to train their overseas replacements. Dissatisfaction with the H-1B has 
been boiling over since headline-grabbing firings at Disney, Caterpillar and McDonald’s, 
among others. Then-candidate and now President Donald Trump tapped into the national 
anger about H-1Bs – 85,000 issued annually – and made reforming the visa a focal point of his 
promises to reform immigration to benefit Americans.The CBS report neglected to discuss 
one of the biggest flaws that’s existed with H-1Bs since Day 1 – rampant fraud. In a review, U.S. 
Citizenship and Immigration Services found multiple incidents of forged documents, false 
degrees, shell companies at fake locations, understated wages, and misleading information 
about job duties performed.

 When Congress created the H-1B as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, the visa’s purpose 
was to temporarily complement the American workforce. Instead, numerous H-1B loopholes 
are frequently exploited, mostly, but not exclusively, by Silicon Valley’s cheap labor addicts. 
But, in what looks like President Trump making good on his campaign promise to “end 
forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor tool,” on April 3, USCIS announced that it will 
take new and tougher measures on behalf of American workers to detect fraud, and to allow 
qualified Americans to advise the agency when they’ve been unfairly denied employment 
opportunities or unfairly displaced by an H-1B visa holder.

 USCIS’ intervention comes just as university economists have found more evidence of a 
large, untapped pool of employable domestic workers that negate the need for H-1B imports. 
Scholars cite Census Bureau data which shows that nearly half of two million college graduates 
with degrees in computers, mathematics or statistics don’t work in science, tech, engineering 
and math jobs, the STEM fields.

 The same researchers also noted that, every year, tech employers lay off thousands of 
workers who could be retrained or rehired by other companies in the same industry. More 
than 413,000 IT jobs have been cut since 2012, including more than 96,000 in 2016. In 2014, 
after several major tech firms lobbied Capitol Hill claiming a dire shortage of American 
workers, Business Week asked Facebook to identify one specific example. Facebook emailed a 
response that didn’t answer the magazine’s question, but deviously reiterated that “a skills gap 
threatens the competitiveness of the tech sector.”

 Employers who constantly lobby for H-1B visa cap increases routinely tell Congress that 
they face a labor shortage. What they really mean, according to Jennifer Hunt, a Rutgers 
University Professor of Economics, is that “there aren’t enough domestic workers to fill 
the jobs at the current wage.” Hunt stated the obvious when she added that increasing the 
prevailing wage would eventually make businesses unprofitable, untenable for employers.

 Whenever the public reads about visas, they should substitute the words “American 
jobs.” Overwhelmingly, foreign-born visa holders are hired to do the exact same job that 
an American was doing or would eagerly do, a travesty considering displacement’s effect on 
further shrinking the American middle class.

——-

 Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow. Contact 
him at joeguzzardi@capsweb.org and on Twitter @joeguzzardi19.

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