In Defense of the Top 1%

I am not rich. I am not poor. I am middle class. Neither upper or lower middle class, I am simply middle middle class. As an academic librarian, higher education's social worker, I have no reason to believe that I will ever elevate myself beyond my middle middle class standing. I have no talent, no non-librarian marketable skills, no gift for the entrepreneurial. I have more than what I need in life and a lot less than what I want from it. I am one of those "mass of men" whom Thoreau described as living a life of "quiet desperation." That being said, I don't think it's right to punish the rich for being rich.

Democrats believe otherwise. They think it's good - even noble and righteous - to punish the wealthy, in this case, by not extending their tax cuts, tax cuts Dems think every other American should retain. It is selfish and un-American to deny one group of individuals the same benefit being doled out to the majority. Liberals would normally claim such a situation discriminatory and would rant until blue in the face about the injustice of it all, but since the rich tend to be conservatives they are now more than happy to uphold the injustice of it all. Discriminating against the top 1-2% of our society is still discrimination, and it is hypocrisy like that which drove me away from the Democratic Party.

The rich are an easy target because we envy them. We know we will never be their financial equals, and so out of spite we look for ways to get back at them. I don't know anyone in this country, however, who wouldn't trade places financially with someone making over $300,000 a year. That's what we all work for, isn't it? To make money? And yet some insist on punishing those who just happen to be better than the rest of us at making money. It's not the fault of the wealthy if you pursued a career in a field our society doesn't appreciate enough to allow you to make over 300K. Blame your fellow riff-raff for that! Also keep in mind as the Dems salivate over sticking it to the wealthy that in a lot of instances, we, the oh-so-downtrodden, helped to make the rich get rich by buying their products, going to their concerts and games, eating at their restaurants, and enjoying their movies. It's not only bankers and Wall Street CEOs who we would punish. You explain to Oprah, Tom Brady, Regis, George Clooney, and Lady Gaga why they should pay more in taxes because we like what they do.

The idle and the incompetent don't become rich, and so it is that somewhere in the history of every wealthy family is someone who worked very hard to EARN a fortune. I thought that the ethos behind the American Dream was that if you worked hard enough, opportunity and fortune would follow, and yet here we are on the verge of punishing a small minority of people for accomplishing that dream. Sure, there are some whose fortunes were made bilking, cheating and swindling others, but to judge all wealthy people by those few is no different than proclaiming all poor people deadbeats who prefer living off welfare to having a job simply because there a few who are just like that! This idea that "working Americans" are everybody but the wealthy and thus more deserving of tax breaks is laughable. The rich work, too, sometimes harder than you and me, sometimes not, but they work nonetheless and shouldn't punished for it.

BTW, it should be noted that the same small group of Americans that the Dems want to punish for making money is the same small group that donates almost $2 billion more than the rest of us combined to assist those in need. Perhaps it is just because they have more money to give to the less fortunate but there's nothing saying that they have to donate anything at all, and yet they do. (see Table 9, page 12).

I will never be rich. Mine will most likely always be a life of financial mediocrity, resigned to entertaining but never living out fantasies of a more affluent lifestyle. I'll never have a yacht, London flat, private airplane, swimming pool, or gardener. I'll never be able to afford to travel to Venice before it sinks. And I'm not going to hold it against those that do have those things and can visit Venice (especially if they take me with!). Tax cuts for everyone or tax cuts for no one.

A Death Sentence

Over the past several days, HomeAgain, our pets' microchip company, has sent out "Lost Pet in Your Area" email alerts featuring at least three cats who went missing. Each cat had been declawed. Short of finding their way home or being found those three cats don't really have a chance. Since they have no front claws they can't climb trees or fences to escape dogs and they can't really defend themselves against other cats. Their ability to catch mice, insects and other animals that might help keep them alive is severely diminished. Add to that the fact that overnight temperatures in the Atlanta area have been in the 20's with highs during the days being in the 40's, and their prospects look grim.

People who get their cats declawed don't value their cats. Or, rather, they value their sofas and lounge chairs more than their cats. There's no knowing if any of the lost cats were declawed by their current or previous owners, but somewhere along the line someone thought so little of their cat's life that they paid money to surgically remove the cat's first line of defense. Anyone with an iota of common sense knows cats are the ultimate escape artists, and no conscientious owner would have placed their cat in the situation now facing those three lost cats.

As I type this my right index finger is throbbing from a nice gash Jackson inflicted on me last night. Despite routinely clipping his front claws since he was a kitten there's no way to count the number of scratches my hands, arms, knees and legs have endured over the past 11+ years. The other weekend Ida had to once again cut fraying threads from a $400 chair that Lucy likes to sleep on - being too fat to jump up on the chair, Lucy claws her way to the top. In fact, we don't have a single piece of furniture that doesn't bear the tell-tale evidence that a fully-clawed cat lives in our house. Of course, it all could have been avoided had we each had our cats declawed, but we never placed our material things or our own inconvenience over the well-being of our cats. The value our cats bring to our lives far exceeds the cost of every piece of furniture in the house and every tube of Neosporin we've had to buy. I can always get another sofa or chair; the cats, on the other hand, can't be replaced.

I feel sad for the owners of those cats - losing a pet is heart-wrenching. But I feel more for the cats. Cats are tough, resourceful animals, and though lost, cold and completely out of their element those three cats would normally have a fighting chance. However, thanks to people, they don't have any front claws, and so the odds are now against them. People who have their cats declawed are cruel, irresponsible, and selfish.

Any Volunteers?

USA Today recently reported on how charitable Americans are with their time and money. Not surprisingly financial donations are down; however, the number of people volunteering is trending upwards. A long-time financial contributor myself and but usually a step or two behind the trendy, I'm happy to say that I, too, can now be counted among the volunteers.

In October I started volunteering at a cat shelter, Furkids. In some ways it was a selfish decision. I finally came to accept the reality that I am never going to be a humanitarian, a Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Duke or Sloan, and that the only thing my name will likely adorn will be a grave stone, a very grand one, mind you, but a grave stone nonetheless. Humbled by this epiphany, I began thinking of how I could make a difference in the world, and naturally cats came to mind. I toyed with the idea of helping people, like supporting literacy efforts and teaching immigrants conversational English, but helping people is why we have churches, right? So, cats won the day.

It's a no-kill, cage-less shelter with about eleven good-sized rooms where the cats hangout on elaborate cat trees and shelves, and I would estimate that there's well over 100 cats total. I'm generally assigned a room or two to clean litter boxes, refresh water and food bowls and sweep and mop the room. It doesn't leave a lot of time for socializing (industry speak for petting) the cats, which was my true desire when I started but I'm OK with that. The world needs its ditch diggers and this shelter needs its litter scoopers.

This isn't my first volunteer gig. When we lived in Ithaca, Ida and I both volunteered at the Cortland County SPCA doing pretty much what I do now except the cats were all in cages. I got sucked into running for and winning a seat on the Board of Directors, thinking that I would be even better positioned to do some good. Man, was I an idiot. Small town politics usurped every meeting, and frustrated that we hadn't done a thing to help the animals, I stepped down and never looked back. I'll do most anything for cats...except work with small-minded people. If I win the lottery, I'll start my own shelter and/or a ranch where disabled and disadvantaged kids can ride horses and care for other farm animals. Until then, I'm satisfied with the grunt work of keeping the cat rooms clean.

Lest you think I care for animals more than I do people...oh, wait...I do care for animals more than I do people! But I'm not completely lacking in compassion for my own. This year I donated to the Haiti relief efforts, helped Ida serve dinner at a Ronald McDonald house, collected and redeemed yogurt tops to fight breast cancer, and for the past three holiday seasons I've donated to the Atlanta Food Bank and Heifer International. This year through Heifer I gave the gift of honey bees. It's not nearly enough to get a building wing, street corner, or elementary school named after me (they'd probably spell my name wrong anyway), but that's alright. I can only do what I can do and hope it makes a difference to someone...or something.

Here kitty, kitty, kitty...

T, as in Tango...

In the spirit of giving thanks, you should count your blessings if you have an ordinary name. Based on 41 years experience, I can say that having a name that, according to the Social Security Administration, is not in the top 1000 male names for any year of recorded births is more a burden than an asset. Clearly there are times when a unique name has its benefits, like when people google you they don't get millions of hits (mine yields 774) and Facebook searches usually don't result in over 400 possible friends. My name, then, makes me easy to find. Those benefits, however, are out numbered by the hassle that comes with not being a Steve, Mark, David, John or Bill.

For instance, I have never known the pleasure of finding my name on any merchandise. I challenge you to find (and document) a "Thad" key chain or license plate. If I want my name on something, it has to be custom made. People also seem to have difficulty pronouncing my name. My 10th grade biology teacher called me "Tad" the entire school year. I tried to correct her in the beginning, but eventually gave up. I mean, it's not that difficult a name to pronounce: TH + AD = Thad. Phonics, people, phonics. Non-native English speakers are exempt from my annoyance since "TH" is not always pronounced "TH" in their native tongue. I also have to deal with the apparent difficulty of spelling my name correctly. The following are real-life variations I've experienced:

Phat
Phad
Shad
That
Pat
Matt
Tsat
Thaderic
Chad

It's as though no one wants to believe that you spell my name, T-H-A-D, so somehow P-H-A-T makes more sense to them. As a result, it has long since become habit for me to immediately spell my name upon uttering it, even when meeting people in person: "Hi, I'm Thad, T-H-A-D." To save restaurant hosts and hostesses the trouble, I often give them a different name and hope that I remember that I am now "George." I also always wonder about those who ask about my name, "Is it short for Thaddeus?" Sigh. I wonder if those same people ask, "Oh, is 'John' short for 'Johnathon'?" I once started a new job at a restaurant where a cook was disappointed that I was white. THAD, he explained, is "a brother's name" and I think he was tired of working with a bunch of white guys.

It's not like THAD is that unusual of a name. A few more notable THAD's than myself include:

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen (think BP oil spill)
Sen. Thad Cochran
Thad Jones (jazz musician)
Thaddeus Stevens
THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense)
Thads (a missionary group)

I don't begrudge my parents for naming me as they did; in truth, I've come to like my name quite a bit, despite the hassles. Once it sinks in to their brains, most people remember my name even if they don't remember me, and I'll be eternally thankful they didn't name me, SUE.

Back on the Chain Gang

Sometimes when I take Boo to the park there's a prison work crew picking up trash, blowing leaves, emptying trash cans and doing various other jobs to keep the place clean. It's a sight I like to see, and I think it's too bad prison work crews aren't used more often. In fact, I don't understand why I don't see one every day.

Prisoners are a dime a dozen. According to the Dept. of Justice, there were over 1,613,656 prisoners at the end of 2009. That's more than the populations of some our mid-major cities. Clearly there's no lack of orange jumpsuits behind bars, so why don't we put them to work doing those jobs us non-felons won't do?

Liberals argue that prison work crews are dehumanizing, a form of cruel and unusual punishment. I, on the other hand, contend that they represent one of the better rehabilitation methods. Work builds character and the harder the work, the stronger the character. If you're in prison you're probably lacking in character and could use a little boost, so a little hard work might do some good. More work crews would also give more prisoners something better to do with their time than sit around and stew and fight and kill each other. Military leaders of old knew the value of keeping a standing army busy by building walls, digging trenches, cutting downs trees and so forth because the work helped to maintain discipline. Working out in the open in full view of the public and cleaning up after said public also brings with it a certain amount of humility that any good felon could use. People who have committed crimes for which they are imprisoned should feel a sense of shame, and they don't get that hanging with the peeps in Cell Block C. Besides, work crews could be a good deterrent of juvenile crime - no adolescent I know wants to be seen picking up trash on the side of the road. The law is not for breaking and if you break it, you pay for it.

Always eager to show how tough they are on crime, conservatives argue against work crews because they think letting criminals out for any reason is being soft and somehow jeopardizes pubic safety ("Will someone please think of the children?!"). I argue that given the amount of money tax payers invest in corrections, you would think conservatives would be more willing to get something out of it, like clean roadsides and parks and new hiking trails and roads. Many of those services conservatives like to cut funding for can easily be taken care of by prisoners that tax payers are paying for anyway. Have drug offenders and other non-violent criminals do city jobs while those more inclined to violence can work the swamps, mountains and deserts. And if an offender escapes while fixing a trail in the Catskills? Most criminals are not survivalists and would succumb to Mother Nature.

I'm not advocating that we abuse or exploit our prison population by forcing them to work in unsafe conditions. Even the most loathsome of criminals has inherent rights and they must be respected. Still, that doesn't mean that they can't help the society they wronged by doing it some good.

To Read or Not to Read

Here's another stereotypical librarian characteristic that doesn't suit me: I don't love to read. I'm not the person you want to ask to recommend a good book or a favorite author, and if you ask me, "Have you ever read...," the answer will most likely be in the negative. It's not that I don't read or that I haven't read. I mean, I do have a degree in English Literature and you can't really get one of those without reading a lot of books and poems and plays. I'm not big into articles either. I used to read The Economist from cover to cover, but I partially did that out of obligation: I didn't want the paper the articles are printed on to go to waste. So now I subscribe to the online version and occasionally read it when I remember how much I'm paying for it.

Reading takes time and I don't have a lot of free time. There's always something that needs to be done, whether it's scooping litter boxes, battling the lawn, walking the dog, spying on neighbors, cleaning up hairballs or vacuuming. Reading is a luxury, and it's just not in my nature to sit idly by and read when stuff needs to be done. Reading is not for the industrious at heart. Yes, the implication here is that reading is for the lazy. There's an old saying in food service: "Got time to lean, you got time to clean." If you've got time to read, you've got time to be more productive. Chop, chop!

Also, I read non-fiction almost exclusively and that takes time and mental effort. With fiction, you don't have to think very much and can just breeze through a book. I recently broke and read "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," finishing it in about two weeks time, which is good for me. Non-fiction, however, demands your attention, requires you to don a thinking cap. I've been making my way through a biography on Elizabeth I since January or so. Fascinating stuff, really, but the chapters are long, the text dense, and the pictures are too few in number. I love the challenge of non-fiction, but I generally only finish two or three a year. Next on my list: The First World War. Thrilling, eh?

My reading also requires a monastery-like quiet. Since the books I read require me to think, I need to concentrate and music or conversations impede on my ability to do just that. I can't go to Borders or even a library because my mind will hone in on that one voice or song on the other side of the building and it will eat at my brain, like that worm in the Wrath of Khan. Ironically, screaming children don't bother me when I'm reading. I tune them out quite well, perhaps because 1) they aren't mine, and thus not my responsibility, and 2) I don't understand what they are screaming. To me, it's all one long but loud stream of gibberish. Apparently, I can deal with gibberish. But not fiction.

So ends this entry, because, like reading, if you have time to write about yourself, you have time to take the dog for a walk. Oh, and here's my Amazon wish list if you want to get me something this holiday season. Granted, I won't finish it until 2015, but don't let that stop you.

The Sounds of Silence

If there's a stereotypical librarian characteristic that I possess, it would be a predilection for quietness. Despite my best efforts, noise in all it's insidious forms is unavoidable, and so for people like me moments of silence are rare and to be savored. Imagine, then, my surprise at my own unease when for the first time in almost two years the quiet of morning was not broken by a barking dog.

I think Chico had bionic hearing because he heard everything. You literally couldn't open a window, empty the dishwasher or step on a leaf without eliciting a loud series of barks from the other side of the fence. The barking was tolerable but annoying, especially in the morning when the world is supposed to be quiet and calm. Morning is my time, and Chico's booming barks caused a disturbance in my Force. That first post-Chico morning was unsettling, though, because the barking, I came to realize, had become part of the morning, and then suddenly it was gone. I had come to expect it, and I miss it.

I miss the neighbor kids, too. Where once there was high-pitched Spanglish echoing off the trees there is now silence. Their front yard is destitute of bikes, candy wrappers, and empty juice boxes. The house is empty and impersonal. Honestly, I didn't think I would miss Louis and Uriel (everyone calls him Pollo or Chicken). Many times their physical presence and the noise they made intruded upon me. Who knows how many episodes of "PTI" I missed so that they could play our Wii! Still, I miss hearing one or more kids yell, "Mr. Thad, can we play?" as I pull into the driveway. Granted, I usually said "No" or told them to wait and ask Ida, but I miss it just the same.

Those left behind usually have it harder than those who leave. Those who leave have some sort of adventure to look forward to, whether it be new house, job or life, while those left behind are stuck with the same house, job and life, minus you. I've done my share of leaving. Since 1994, I've lived in five different states, with 4.5 years being the longest I stayed put in one place. February 2011 will mark about five years in Atlanta, my longest tenure anywhere since graduating from high school. So, I'm not used to being the one who is left behind. It kind of sucks.

It sucked for Chico, too. He was abandoned without food or water. He never did get much attention, but suddenly no one was there for him at all. We fed him, gave him water, and called Animal Control, who in turn posted notices on a door no one was going to be opening soon. Word got out and one night the neighbors returned with a small bag of snacks for Chico, and then they left again. A week after he was abandoned, Chico was gone, supposedly taken by our former neighbors to Animal Control. I haven't seen him on their list of available dogs and suspect I never will.

We don't know who will be our new neighbors, and there is a certain amount of dread lingering over that unknown. What if they have a dog that barks just as much, if not more than, Chico? Maybe they'll be renters who don't look after the property or perhaps they'll be young folk who blare their music well into the night. Or worse, graduate students. Then again, maybe they'll be nice people. It's been two weeks since the family left and one week since Chico disappeared, and I'm getting used to the silence, although I imagine it won't last for long. It never does.