Opinion | ||||||||||||||||||||
Mountain Views News, Pasadena Edition [Sierra Madre] Saturday, April 6, 2019 | ||||||||||||||||||||
B3 OPINION Mountain Views News Saturday, April 6, 2019 TOM PURCELL Mountain Views News PUBLISHER/ EDITOR Susan Henderson PASADENA CITY EDITOR Dean Lee EAST VALLEY EDITOR Joan Schmidt BUSINESS EDITOR LaQuetta Shamblee PRODUCTION SALES Patricia Colonello 626-355-2737 626-818-2698 WEBMASTER John Aveny DISTRIBUTION Lancelot CONTRIBUTORS Mary Lou Caldwell Kevin McGuire Chris Leclerc Bob Eklund Howard Hays Paul Carpenter Kim Clymer-Kelley Christopher Nyerges Peter Dills Rich Johnson Lori Ann Harris Rev. James Snyder Dr. Tina Paul Katie Hopkins Deanne Davis Despina Arouzman Jeff Brown Marc Garlett Keely Toten Dan Golden Rebecca Wright Hail Hamilton TAX TIME: BETTER TO LAUGH THAN CRY Tax season is upon us, which gives us a choice: Laugh or cry. I choose to laugh. Dave Barry offers useful advice for getting through this trying time: “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.” You got that right, Dave! For the sin of being self- employed, I spend hours navigating a sea of receipts, which I share with my CPA, who tells me I owe $5,000 more than I feared I would.That’s why this quote from an anonymous pro athlete resonates with me: “I want to find out who this FICA guy is and how come he’s taking so much of my money.” Officially, FICA stands for the Federal Insurance Contribution Act tax, which funds Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for some 60 million beneficiaries. Unofficially, I believe FICA is a Latin term for “hammer,” and the government uses that hammer to bludgeon the self-employed who have even modest success. Herbert Hoover presided over the stock market crash that signaled the Great Depression, but he got this one right: “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” In February, the U.S. posted the largest budget deficit in its history, adding to our already unimaginable debt. Somebody has to pick up that tab. And that “somebody” will be the young. Though polls show most millennials favor socialism, Dan Bennet offers hope that they’ll come to their senses as those massive bills come due: “There’s nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won’t cure.” Two quotes posted on the IRS website particularly agitated me: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.’’ - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Justice “The power of taxing people and their property is essential to the very existence of government.’’ - James Madison, U.S. president Hey, Ollie, I don’t mind paying taxes for a civilized society. It’s paying for the uncivilized part that grates on me. And Jimmy, I’m happy our government exists, but does it have to be so big? Three of our thinkers make great sense, though: “What the government gives, it must first take away.” - John S. Coleman “What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.” - Mark Twain “The best things in life are tax free.” - Joseph Bonkowski The great Will Rogers’ wit and wisdom is always helpful at tax time: “It costs 10 times more to govern us than it used to, and we are not governed one-tenth as good.” “The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf.” “The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” I wish you and all Americans the best of luck as you sort through receipts and curse about never-ending tax obligations. Here’s an old joke to help cheer you up: The IRS commissioner is on a D.C. sidewalk. A mugger jumps out of an alley and says, “Give me all your money!” The commissioner says, “You can’t do this to me! I run the IRS.” “In that case,” says the mugger, “give me all of MY money!” Tom Purcell, author of “Misadventures of a 1970’s Childhood,” a humorous memoir available at amazon.com, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Mountain Views News has been adjudicated as a newspaper of General Circulation for the County of Los Angeles in Court Case number GS004724: for the City of Sierra Madre; in Court Case GS005940 and for the City of Monrovia in Court Case No. GS006989 and is published every Saturday at 80 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., No. 327, Sierra Madre, California, 91024. All contents are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the publisher. All rights reserved. All submissions to this newspaper become the property of the Mountain Views News and may be published in part or whole. Opinions and views expressed by the writers printed in this paper do not necessarily express the views and opinions of the publisher or staff of the Mountain Views News. Mountain Views News is wholly owned by Grace Lorraine Publications, and reserves the right to refuse publication of advertisements and other materials submitted for publication. Letters to the editor and correspondence should be sent to: Mountain Views News 80 W. Sierra Madre Bl. #327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Phone: 626-355-2737 Fax: 626-609-3285 email: mtnviewsnews@aol.com JOHN L. MICEK WHY ARE WE SO BAD AT SCIENCE? What do most Americans know about science? If a March 28 Pew Research Center poll is to be believed - not nearly enough. And at a time when knowledge and facts are under assault as they have not been in recent memory, that’s a problem. On the upside, about eight in 10 respondents to the new Pew poll knew that increase resistance is one of the big concerns about the overuse of antibiotics.And more than three-quarters know that an “incubation period” is the time when a person has an infection - but isn’t showing any visible signs of it. But only about four in 10 people were able to correctly identify the main components of antacids. Those are “bases.” And I’ll admit, I’d forgotten that one. In general, “there are striking differences in levels of science knowledge by education, as well as by racial and ethnic group,” Pew researchers found. “Men tend to score higher than women on the science knowledge scale, but gender differences are not consistent across questions in the scale.” And here’s the finding that sticks out: Pew researchers found that “political party groups are roughly similar in their overall levels of science knowledge - although conservative Republicans tend to score higher on the scale than do their more moderate counterparts.” That matters because scientific issues of huge importance now inform our policy debate. In Pennsylvania last week, for instance, a self-described “climate contrarian” who acknowledges that human activity is heating the Earth, but who - unlike a majority of scientists - also believes the potential consequences are overblown, got a star turn before the state House’s oversight committee on environmental issues. Despite a scientific consensus to the contrary, Gregory Wrightstone, a geologist with ties to the natural gas industry, spent an hour arguing that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a good thing. Encouragingly, based on a December 2018 Morning Consult/Politico poll, more Americans find such views as Wrightstone’s total poppycock - even with that knowledge gap identified by the Pew poll. They agree that climate change is caused by human activity and they’re concerned by the consequences. More than two- thirds of respondents to the Morning Consult/Politico poll were concerned about the results of last year’s National Climate Assessment, which says climate change could cause billions of dollars in economic losses. But less than half the Republican respondents to the poll said they were worried about its findings, compared to 87 percent of Democrats and two-thirds of independents. Republican respondents to the poll were “about as likely to consider President Donald Trump” as credible on environmental matters as they were scientists. Trump, by the way, expressed skepticism on the study by the government’s own scientists. And this is where science education comes into play. While there’s a renewed push by both policymakers and educators to stress the importance of “STEM” education (or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), the data suggests we still have some catching up to do. In 2017, Pew researchers found that American students tended to fall into the middle of the international pack on math, science, and reading, according to one worldwide benchmark. Given that, it’s not surprising that the Pew poll finds that greater levels of scientific fluency correspond with greater levels of education. Americans with a post-graduate degree, for instance, got about four more questions correct than those with a high school diploma or less, Pew found. So what’s the cure? It’s on the media to fill in gaps in knowledge - seven in 10 respondents to a 2017 Pew Poll got their information from press accounts. And ditto for museums. 62 percent came across their information that way in that same 2017 poll. It’s often said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. The consequences of failing to pay heed to science are even greater. An award-winning political journalist, John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pa. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek. DICK POLMAN HEALTH CARE STUPIDITY IS A REPUBLICAN PREEXISTING CONDITION Donald Trump is celebrating his fake “complete exoneration” by pledging anew to throw 20 million people off their Obamacare coverage. Is this guy politically stupid, or what? What a gift for the Democrats, who recently scored their biggest House midterm sweep since 1974 by decimating the GOP on health care. If Trump truly intends to revive the issue in 2020 by taking yet another crack at Obamacare (which, after nine years, is more popular than ever), Democrats are only too happy to oblige him. Senate Republicans know that he’s nuts to do so. They have no appetite to launch another kill-Obamacare crusade, having failed in 2017, and having failed for nine years to come up with a replacement plan. But, as always, they’d rather quake in their boots than tell Trump the truth: That an umpteenth assault on the health law will imperil him and them in 2020. They prefer to fret in private. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, has reportedly blamed the 2018 blue wave on the Trump-GOP’s efforts to gut Obamacare - with good reason. Because voters trust the Democrats on health care by a decisive margin, health care was the top-ranked issue in the midterms, and of those voters who ranked it highest, 75 percent chose Democratic candidates. Yet Trump still seems to think he has powers of persuasion beyond his base. I’m frankly puzzled: If he couldn’t kill Obamacare when the GOP held the White House and both congressional chambers, why does he think he can kill it - and replace it with something he calls “spectacular” - when one of the chambers is Democratic? But that’s a rational question, and we live in irrational times. Trump wants Senate Republicans to craft a replacement plan, while Senate Republicans want Trump to do it. Which explains why Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff, and John Barrasso, the third-ranking Senate GOPer, were so deceptive and evasive on the Sunday shows. Mulvaney told ABC News that if Obamacare is killed, a Republican replacement plan would guarantee that everyone currently covered by health reform - including young people up to age 26, and the tens of millions of people with preexisting conditions - would be fully protected just as they are now. That is a lie. Every GOP draft proposal floated during this decade has imperiled people with preexisting conditions, by allowing insurance companies to charge them higher premiums for coverage. Meanwhile, Trump has endorsed a federal lawsuit, launched by attorney generals in 20 red states, that seeks to repeal Obamacare in its entirety - including the protections for people with preexisting conditions, a category that includes 27 percent of all non-elderly adults. So where’s the Republican replacement plan that would magically make everything OK, the plan that would provide the same protections as Obamacare but do them better? John Barrasso of Wyoming, the number three Senate Republican, was asked about that - multiple times yesterday - on “Meet the Press.” Watch him writhe, if that’s your preference (it’s not fun to carry water for Trump), but here’s the gist of how it went: Chuck Todd: “It was in 2009 that we began the debate. It’s 2019. You guys have been talking about a plan to protect preexisting conditions for 10 years. And you haven’t been able to come up with one.” So what’s your plan? Barrasso: Obamacare “has failed to keep its promises…This is on the American people’s minds.” Todd: “Should the American people expect an actual health care plan alternative from the Republican party this year?” Barrasso: “The American people should expect to not have to be burdened” by Obamacare. Todd: “A plan. Will we see a new plan from the Republican party about what their alternative is?” Barrasso: “I’ve been working on a plan since the day I got to the Senate.” Todd (with the punchline): You’ve been in the Senate for 12 years. That last exchange tells the tale. Health care is simply not what Republicans do. Their brand is to slash taxes for the rich, crater the deficit, and signal national security weakness to the Russians. It’s impossible to know whether Trump truly believes that erasing Obamacare’s protections will rebrand the GOP as “the party of health care” (his words), or whether he’s just feeling his “exoneration” oats and playing offense for a few news cycles before finding a new toy. Republicans on the ballot in 2020 had better hope it’s the latter. Mountain Views News Mission Statement The traditions of community news- papers and the concerns of our readers are this newspaper’s top priorities. We support a prosperous community of well- informed citizens. We hold in high regard the values of the exceptional quality of life in our community, including the magnificence of our natural resources. Integrity will be our guide. Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com | ||||||||||||||||||||