Social Security

Social Security for years had a taxable ceiling of $42,500. If you made a million dollars in any given year, your FICA liability would have been maxed at $42.5. Actually from $3,000 in (1937) to $110,100 (2012). Which means you had no FICA taxable liability above those earned amounts. Though if you considered the commensurate salary increase for the average population during that time, you would find it woefully unobliging. Truth is most people earning above that amount during their life time have no need for social security benefits. But those monies have been appropriated for other needs. The rape of the social security system in this country is tantamount to extortion and every government official that has signed off on such appropriations should be put behind bars.

Jail Time

I have three interviews for work this week and one solid commitment to myself. I will read and finish Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment by Sunday. I will set a goal for War and Peace at some later date. 

Perhaps I will have it imported to the prison cell where I will waste away on death row for having killed the guy from Reputation.com as a result of him spreading rumors about me as a convicted child molester because I likened his business plan to veiled extortion. It seems he was much more clever than I gave him credit for. He hacked into my computer and down loaded pictures of naked young girls all of which turned out to be Reputation man's younger cousins but the court would hear none of my explanations because the same pictures were being erased from the judges computer while he was in session with me. 

So that was it. My DNA was found on my computer-and everyone knows you cannot argue with DNA evidence. And the DA summed up the jury with "His fingerprints and DNA were found all over the laptop riddled with child pornography. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, you have to admit, you can not acquit."

I am headed for the Big House. 

Reputation man's twin brother winked at me as he scanned the court room for his own next victim. It made sense that since they were twins-they were a team. My attorney was yelling obscenities into the phone at his broker as he had been doing the last two weeks of my trial. I even got so bored with his reiterating rant I started to develop some obscenities of my own. 

"Call him a pig teat sucker," I whispered in his ear. 

"Call him an ass-dragging dog with worms," I echoed.

"Call him a candied-ass Captain Kirk who finally took in the shorts from Spock because, as he explained, it was only logical."

"That one got him, I think," my attorney whispered to me with a grin, "He's a Trekkie."

"Guilty as charged!" the judge said banging the gavel hard enough to make the entire room pop from their seats.

I was going to San Quentin for the better part of fifteen years with every rat bastard in the place looking to get a piece of a candy man who liked little girls in the buff-though I didn't like little girls in the buff. As a matter of fact, every time I saw little girls in the buff I had flash backs of my own daughter in the buff when she was very young and I could be guaranteed, when she was in the buff, there was shit involved somewhere. 

She was always a stickler for cleanliness, so whenever she shit herself, as far back as I can remember, she figured a way to dump the diaper and let the chips fall where they may. 

I'll never forget the first time I walked into her room after just such an episode-she was about six months old at the time. She looked directly into my eyes, stark naked, arms stretched out, both palms raised toward the ceiling glancing toward the corner of the room where her diaper lie. Not yet weaned to words, her eyes spoke, "Who'd a thunk."

Irony being as it is, my own eyes mirrored that same look when the gavel hit the block.

Brrr!

Here it is June fourth and I am clad in down and a ski-cap. It is like 48º outside. 

It reminds me why I left California fourteen years ago. This state could indeed screw up a wet dream. I had no idea, 'they', in their assumed righteousness, could manage to fuck up the weather. But they have. I cannot, for the life of me, remember ever once donning a coat, or even a sweater, in Ohio, in June. If there is a God, here, He is indeed making the brain-dead pay.

Today is election day in California and the state has given the vote to more foreigners than politicians have alibis and bankers and car manufacturers have scapegoats. These people (those whom have mastered the language but not the nuance) are still trading dirty old quarters for shiny new dimes. 

American politicians have become the world's ultimate three-card monte-fast-talking-street entrepreneurs plaguing every American tourist mecca from Hollywood Boulevard to the Jersey Boardwalk-and now, with the influx of foreigners, from Beijing to Briton, the U.S. has become the carrot for everyone of Barnum's 'suckers.'   

Currently, in San Jose, local residents surrounding Guadalupe Parkway, a refuge for local homeless, are lobbying the city council to destroy homeless "assets" ensuring they either stay in jail or are forced to move on. So much for a Christian nation. California wants you to protect their right to legal marijuana and toss the ones who can't afford the price of a joint into the pit. "Peace, brother." If I was not a lightening rod for such indiscretions, I may be one of the idiots holding vigil to destroy everything that is not me. 

We have two age-old adages we embrace, "safety in numbers" and "mob rule." Antithetical by nature, they explain the realistic-irony of the cornered rat. How ignorant the sheep, but how credible the shepherd. 

With a jaundiced eye, I see a thousand perfect worlds as presented by the least arguments to be considered. Why ninety-nine percent of us are not muttering "bullshit" under our breaths in response to anyone who proposes the "perfect solution" is indeed beyond me.

Even at fifty-eight-years-old I have yet to abandon the inherent Quixotic nature that brought me here. Compliance is not an option when responsibilities lie beyond the scope of personal well-being. 

Let us finally create a worthwhile national holiday when we celebrate the whistle-blowers and show the ultimate respect for the first person who stood to declare, "The emperor has no clothes."