Brooklyn

I've written about my old "home town" before. I lived in downtown Brooklyn and in Park Slope for almost eight years before moving to Manhattan and finally Connecticut. But Brooklyn was a special place for me, where I went to college, met my first wife, and had a son. To the right is a picture of Chris and me on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade in 1965.

So it was no wonder I picked up the novel Brooklyn by the Irish novelist, Colm Tóibín. It is a coming of age novel about a young Irish woman, Eilis Lacey, who immigrates to the US soon after WW II, settling in Brooklyn -- in fact near Fulton Street where I lived. There are similarities to the work of Henry James, contrasting the old world to the new, and written by a man about a female protagonist -- a remarkable novel well worth reading. One cannot help but contrast Brooklyn to James' Portrait of a Lady. Eilis having to make choices of suitors as did Isabel Archer.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street called Bartocci's, but it might as well have been the old Abraham & Straus also on Fulton Street. What Eilis is told by the bosses' daughter the first day of work embodies the essence of the American immigrant experience: "Brooklyn changes every day...New people arrive and they could be Jewish or Irish or Polish or even coloured. Our old customers are moving out to Long Island and we can't follow them, so we need new customers every week. We treat everyone the same. We welcome every single person who comes into this store. They all have money to spend...You give them a big Irish smile."

Eilis is the reluctant immigrant at first, being sent to America by her mother and sister so she could have a better life and employment which was then so difficult to find in Ireland. She knows no one there except a Priest who sponsors her. Eilis finally embraces the experience (falling, she thinks, in love with an Italian boy, never being quite sure) before she finds that she has to return to her home for a few weeks (don't want a spoiler in this brief synopsis so will leave it at that). Her old home in Ireland now seems foreign to her but over the weeks she begins to feel that she cannot leave (thinking she is now in love with someone else). It is now Brooklyn that is feeling foreign although she has put down deep emotional roots there.

The resolution is somewhat surprising but Eilis is constantly reinventing herself for whatever situation. One can imagine what it must have been like for an immigrant, especially a young woman, to make her way in a strange land after WW II. It can stand with Gish Jen’s novel about the Chinese immigrant, Typical American

Tóibín skillfully takes the reader on Eilis' journey, a truly unforgettable portrait and lovingly rendered by the author.

Home, Again

I usually write something about returning home after a summer on the boat and traveling but never got around to it this year. All hell broke loose upon our return, having to do some landscaping after another typical brutal hot Florida summer finally killed some of our original plantings, and, then (after committing to the landscaping), finding a leak around the eaves of the roof which revealed the roof underlayment was decaying (thanks, again, Florida!). While we could patch and fix for the next couple of years, ultimately the roof will need replacement. It would be only a matter of time before water encroaches the living space. So, now that new plantings are in around the house, we are starting a new roof. Bad planning.

In the process of getting four different estimates I've become an expert in roofing, underlayments, attachment methods, and tiles. Metal roofs are the vogue now in Florida, but I think they are ugly on some homes, including ours which has a Mediterranean look. So we are going with a Spanish "S" concrete title and 3M's Polyset roofing system. While the expense is substantial, the new roof will be beautiful and with hurricane protection to 150 mph.

So between landscaping, roofing estimates, the round of obligatory medical appointments, and volunteering to be the pianist during visitors' hours at a West Palm Beach rehab center, it's been a busy period. Nonetheless, there is always time for some good literature and in that regard here are two I finished at the end of the days and while waiting for appointments.

Ethan Canin's Carry Me Across the Water, is a gem, beautifully crafted with multiple converging story lines. The child of a Jewish immigrant makes his way to America with his mother, leaving behind his father who stubbornly stays, not believing what was coming, when the Nazis finally prevail in the 1930's.. His mother ultimately settles in Brooklyn, remarries the devout Hank Kleinman, from whom our protagonist August Kleinman derives his surname.

But the novel begins with Augie in his 78th year, a widower and father of three children, a man who pursued the American Dream through hard work, taking chances, and surviving WWII, the latter playing significantly in the novel. When Augie was a soldier he came across a Japanese soldier in a cave on one of the Japanese islands who has his own story, one that August becomes part of at the end. Meanwhile, after the war, August Kleinman becomes wealthy (a prevailing theme in Canin's work -- the juxtaposition of rags and riches).

Canin skillfully navigates multiple time lines, effortlessly leading the reader back and forth from Kleinman's childhood, to his long marriage to Ginger, often talking to her internally as he steers himself through those narrow cave passages when he was a GI, to his building a successful brewery in Pittsburg, and finally his declining years as he tries to make sense of his relationship to his middle child, Jimmy. During a visit with Jimmy and his wife and grandchild, he makes plans to go to Japan to find closure, for himself and for the family of the Japanese soldier. In the process, he is reconciling himself to his own mortality ("And the end is getting nearer. I know that. Don't think I can't feel it. But I don't give up. That's just Augie Kleinman. I always thought I had a secret that when the end came I would be ready for it -- that the grave would be a relief. But it turns out it's not that way.")

As with all fine pieces of literature, the characters are real, and their conflicts familiar. It is the way of life and Canin captures it poignantly.

In an earlier posting on America America by Canin, I said, "sometimes I felt I was reading a novel that was indeed designed by a teacher, but a VERY good one" (Canin teaches at the University of Iowa's writer's workshop)." Carry Me Across The Water is another example of a carefully executed piece of literature, a novella in length but packing meaning and emotion at every turn of the page.

I landed on this novel after more hilarity from the pen of Jonathan Tropper, enjoying his How to Talk to a Widower, cut out of the same mold of the others I've read by him, Everything Changes, This is Where I Leave You, and The Book of Joe. How many times can an author pretty much cover the same ground, the searching-thirty-something male adrift in a sea of Jewish family foibles and suburban females, married and unmarried and divorced or soon to be divorced, sexual predators at times. Here our protagonist is now Doug Parker who becomes a local newspaper celebrity writing a column about his status as a widower and his twin sister Claire's designs for him to snap out of his long-standing grief. Meanwhile he has to negotiate his younger sister's impending marriage, his father's erratic behavior from his stroke, a child from his deceased wife's first marriage, and his mother's matchmaking, not to mention the women who stalk him and, finally, the woman with whom he finally falls in love again.

In spite of Tropper covering well worn territory, he never seems to let it go stale and his humor never fails: "My parents may behave like they were abandoned in Greenwich and raised by WASPs, but when it comes to preparing meals, we are once again the chosen people." OR "I would come and sit on the lawn beside her grave and make halting attempts at one-sided conversation, but I just couldn't make myself believe there was anyone listening, and even if I could, talking to the grave never made any sense to me. If there's an afterlife, and they can hear you, shouldn't they be able to hear you from anywhere? What's the theory here, that talking to the dead requires range, like a cell phone, and if you go too far the call gets dropped?"

Besides the humor, there is Tropper the astute observer of human nature and of the suburban scene, reminiscent of Updike and Cheever in some ways: "...moving out to New Radford [the suburban setting someplace in Westchester] had meant becoming friendly with a different sort of man than my younger, drunker, wilder single friends back in Manhattan.....[They] were all husbands and fathers either on the cusp or already descending into the tide pool of middle age. These men were all adrift in an alien landscape of mortgages and second mortgages, marriages and second marriages, children, child support, affairs, alimony, tuition, tutors, and an endless barrage of social functions. And all of their living had to be squeezed into those few hours on the weekends when they weren't working their asses off to pay for the whole mess. I'd always assumed that the people who lived in those fancy houses in the suburbs were financially better off then I was, and only once I'd joined them did I come to understand that it's all just a much more sophisticated and elaborate way of being broke."

Furthermore, Tropper always finds a way to tug at your heart, and although he treads familiar ground, I say, bring it on.

So, our roof odyssey has begun, the ripping and banging reminding me of a giant dental procedure, and while I've made some progress with my reading list, the stack of books grows. The pictures below track the first couple days progress on the roof. If only I could read that quickly!

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Corporate Governance Gone Wild

Here is something for the Occupy Wall Street crowd to get specific about: CEO salaries have become obscene. Even new shareholder "say on pay" rules have not reversed the tide, shareholders being led by management's "recommendations" like lambs to the slaughter.

By 2009 the average CEO pay at S&P 500 companies was $9,246,697, including salary, stock and option awards, bonuses, pension and deferred compensation and other compensation (like the use of the corporate jet, when reported).

Compensation for these so called "job creators" has risen to 262 times that of an average worker by 2005, up from 24 times in 1965, about the time I entered the work force with my first job in publishing at $100 a week. If I had learned my ultimate boss earned 24 more times than myself, I think I would have understood, but 262 times? Today it takes the average S&P 500 CEO one working day to earn what his/her average employee earns in an entire year.

There are two issues that get wrapped around these facts for the Occupy Wall Street crowd. First how did salaries get so far out of balance? Then, why would a flat tax or any kind of reduced income tax at these lofty levels help the economy and create jobs?

Here is but one anecdotal example which helps address this issue, Eugene M. Isenberg's (the CEO and Chairman of Nabors Industries Ltd., a Bermuda registered drilling rig contractor) severance package of $100 million. (See the Wall Street Journal's A Very Rich Adieu for Nabors CEO)

This nifty package comes after compensation of "almost $750 million since 1992, including the value of his exercised stock options, according to Standard & Poor's ExecuComp," So that's about $850 million paid to one person over about twenty years, or about $43 million year after year after year. Meanwhile, "the Nabors stock has underperformed the S&P 500-stock index for the prior one-year, five-year and 10-year periods".

It is unclear whether the corporate jet is included in the compensation figures. "Records of Nabors-operated jets have shown frequent stops in Palm Beach, Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and New York, places where Mr. Isenberg has homes. A Nabors spokesman said previously that the company had offices in Palm Beach and Martha's Vineyard and that Mr. Isenberg is frequently in New York on business." Guess there is a need for off shore drilling offices at some of the most upscale neighborhoods in America.

This is but one example of corporate governance gone crazy, Boards rubber stamping their approval of insanely generous compensation packages for CEOs, justifying their actions based on the (wink, wink) peer review system. Hey, look at these other overpaid executives at competitors, we have to keep up with them! Meanwhile (wink, wink), Board of Director positions are in theory subject to shareholder approval, but in practice management has played a major role in selecting and retaining board members. Board compensation of S&P 500 companies is now $234k per year for a few hours work each month and frequently they serve on the Board of more than one company. This compensation package is up 10% from the prior year (how many average employees received 10% increases last year?). So reciprocal scratches of the proverbial back have to be commonplace. Shareholders and Occupy Wall Streeters, unite!

Then, is it reasonable to tax someone who "makes" $43 million a year at a higher rate than his/her average employee making (in this case) probably less than 1/500th of that salary? You bet it is. And is this executive, competent though he may be, creating more jobs because he is taxed less than he ought to be? No way. Innovators and entrepreneurs create jobs, foremost example of course being Steve Jobs, and they are not primarily motivated by compensation and are they are not deterred from their calling by taxes.

Show Us The Figures, Rick

By now Rick Perry's opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal is making some waves. In many ways I agree with you, Rick, particularly about simplifying the tax code. But that does not mean a simple graduated tax structure has to be thrown out (in favor of the regressive flat tax) and it does not mean one has to entirely do away with capital gains taxation (usually the realm of the wealthy, so that, too, is another regressive move) or does it mean that a carefully thought out, and fair, inheritance tax shouldn't be retained (concentration of wealth doesn't enhance the American dream, it erodes it). And I'm all for responsibly addressing the twin Swords of Damocles that loom in our future, Medicare and Social Security. I'm even for a balanced budget, but not via Constitutional Amendment (imagine having to raise $$ in a crisis with congressional bickering stalling the process, not to mention transitional issues).

So while I agree with many of the feel-good measures, Rick, how does your op-ed piece constitute a "plan?" Show us the figures, Rick -- how many jobs evolve from massive tax cuts and would those jobs materialize anyhow with the next business cycle? Where is the evidence? Or, is this merely an ideological belief?

And that is my problem in accepting your "plan" as a serious one. Furthermore, Rick, you were not the first Republican candidate with a flat tax agenda. Cain beat you to the Texas punch and Gingrich now says he's for an optional flat tax rate of 15%, which beats yours by five percent. By your own logic, that ought to create even more jobs! And Romney now says he's always been for a flat tax. Sounds like a game of Texas Hold 'em. Are all you Republican candidates in? -- place your bets.

There is a pioneering book of social psychology you should read, Rick: Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd; A Study of the Popular Mind. Hard to believe it was written in 1895 as your true-believer words "tax cut" could have been used by Le Bon as an example. Think of them in the context of a passage I underlined as a student: "The power of words is bound up with the images they evoke, and is quite independent of their real significance. Words whose sense is the most ill-defined are sometimes those that possess the most influence...Yet it is certain that a truly magical power is attached to those short syllables" [e.g. tax cut] "as they contained the solution to all problems. They synthesize the most diverse unconscious aspirations and the hope of their realization. Reason and arguments are incapable of combating certain words and formulas. They are uttered with solemnity...and as soon as they have been pronounced an expression of respect is visible on every countenance, and all heads bowed. By many they are considered as natural forces, as supernatural powers. They evoke grandiose and vague images in men's minds, but this very vagueness that wraps them in obscurity augments their mysterious power."

"Tax cut" is the holy grail for supply-siders -- a "mysterious power" indeed when it comes to resulting in more jobs. As Le Bon further says, those unexamined words "become vain sounds, whose principal utility is to relieve the person who employs them of the obligation of thinking." And, that seems to be the new "democracy" of the so-called "debates." As the late preeminent science fiction writer Isaac Asimov said in Newsweek (21 January 1980): “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” (Hat tip, The Big Picture)

Chauncey Gardiner Lives!

The Republican debate last night was laughable, sometimes downright embarrassing. Sound bites galore: "Everything is Obama's fault," "I'm a Christian" (choose your deity carefully), "I love family," "prosecute illegal immigrants and their employers" -- in fact electrocute them! (Who will pick Cain's apples and oranges?) "Less or even no taxes will create jobs." "9-9-9," "drill, drill, drill," "blah, blah, blah." If you can't say it, scream it over the other candidates.

Each has his/her shtick in these "debates" proclaiming a "plan" (as they like to call it), in 30 seconds or less. One cannot help of think of Jerzy Kosinski's prophetic novel, Being There, written more than 40 years ago about a simple minded gardener, Chance, who is catapulted to political fame, becoming "Chauncey Gardiner" when the media mistakes his comment, "I like to watch my garden grow" as a metaphor for the economy. That was Chauncey's "plan."

And did the CNN format remind you a little of American Idol or Dancing with the Stars? I honestly thought I'd see three judges emerge with scorecards. Text your winner America!

Let Them Eat Leftovers

Actually, this is closer to what he meant: "Let the idle poor buy the hand-me-downs of the job creators if they can't afford to pay a 9% national sales tax."

And the non-taxation of used goods is but one feature of Herman Cain's 9-9-9 catchy sounding "plan." Help, I find myself agreeing with Michele Bachmann: "the devil is in the details."

While his 9-9-9 plan is "transparent," it is also transparent that he fails to see it as a regressive tax. It sounds oh-so-fair on the surface, all individuals pay a 9 percent tax on earnings and a 9 percent national sales tax and voila, everything becomes an even playing field. One only has to run an equally simple spreadsheet to see how overwhelmingly regressive such a tax plan would be as at lower income levels, fixed expenses, such as food, shelter, transportation, insurance, health, and, of course, taxes, become 100% of one's earnings. Conversely, even with a national sales tax, very high income tax payers would have even a smaller share of their income taxed unless they spent every discretionary dollar at Tiffany's.

Even if all deductions are removed from the tax code, ones the affluent can more easily access, it is a long way from 9% to the current top 35% marginal rate. And eliminating the 15% capital gains tax is a net gain for those taxpayers. Doing away with the estate tax is another bonanza for the fabulously wealthy (no dispute on my part, though, the estate tax needs reform as outlined here).

Also if Mr. Cain is going to rely on reducing the payroll tax as a bone toss to the middle class, he is ignoring an increasingly large segment of the population -- retired folk who are living on non deferred savings accounts accumulated during their working careers (already subjected to payroll and income tax, and probably at a higher level). They don't get the offset of a reduced payroll tax and in effect this is a means of double taxing and further penalizing savers. And Mr. Cain likes to argue that the removal of the payroll tax is an offset for the average worker that would now have to pay "only" a 9% sales tax, failing to note that half of the 15.3% current payroll tax is presently paid by business.

Overzealous tax reformers advocating a flat tax, or a reduction in income tax, triumphantly use the "growth" card to fill in any revenue shortfall. "Trust me," they are saying, "reduce taxes and the economy will grow to such an extent that everyone will prosper." The "job creators" will work harder.

If, as Cain's supporters contend, the 9-9-9 plan raises as much revenue as the current flawed tax structure, then mostly it is on the backs of working stiffs. And while there are merits in simplifying the tax code, 9-9-9 is not one of them.

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Do You Hear the People Sing?

About a year ago I likened the US income distribution to a "parade," the wealthiest appearing only at the very end, demonstrating the parabolic nature of great wealth at the very extreme of the income curve. I was wondering when, finally, the middle class would wake up to this growing disparity and do something about it. Finally, the "Occupation of Wall Street" movement takes up the cause, hopefully all by non violent means.

At the time I said "to listen to the Tea Partiers, a roll back of taxes of the very wealthiest to pre-Bush rates, is an evil, evil thing. Just think of the trickle-down effect that would be lost to the little folk who stand in line for the crumbs falling from the tables of the fabulously wealthy. It is ironic that these dire warnings of the effects of a tax increase on the wealthy are carried into battle on banners hoisted by 'Joe the Plumbers' -- it shows the power of the conservative media and the most virulent impact of the Internet. It just makes no sense that the people near the middle of the parade should become pawns for the people at the very end."

It is sad that Steve Jobs should pass away at this time. I think of him not only as a visionary technology and marketing genius, but as the greatest entrepreneur the world has ever known. The grass root movements of today, such as Occupation of Wall Street, would not be possible without the mobile devices he had a key part in developing and popularizing. I feel a personal loss of his passing at such an early age, and of the same terrible disease that took my father. And I wonder, if we did have a fairer graduated tax structure, one that would have rolled back the Bush tax cuts, would he have worked any less hard? The "don't-tax-the-job-creator" crowd might so argue.

Steve Jobs worked as he did because it was his passion. Entrepreneurs work with a creative obsession that is not going to be railroaded by a higher incremental tax rate. They are the job creators, not the legions of corporate and banking types, raking it in, paying a lesser portion of their income in taxes than a dozen years ago when the US actually had a balanced budget, CEOs now being paid unspeakable multiples of the average income of workers in the same company. Are higher incremental tax rates and the closing of loopholes the only solutions to the deficit? No, but it's a beginning. And that, as well holding these people accountable for any fiscal malfeasance, is what the growing Occupation movement is all about, the middle class finally awakening to the issue of their being used as puppets by political ideologists.

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
...............Les Misérables, the musical

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