Body Heat
It is election morning, finally, praise God, this weight will be lifted from us, and we can get on with the rest of the disaster.
I also praise early voting, since I did not have to get up early to do my civic duty and stand in line at the Culpepper Garden’s assisted-living polling station. Despite the heat of emotion, it is cold and dark when the polls open.
Instead, I got to make the coffee and listen to the last harumphings from the campaign trail. I said months ago that it is going to be Obama, and I am not changing my prediction today, despite the media’s attempt to whip up emotions and turn-out. If I wind up holding a “Dewey Beats Truman” copy of the Washington Post tomorrow, so be it.
You have to call it the way you see it.
A good pal sent me a mock political ad that he saw in his hometown of Key West. They are pretty relaxed down there, in a way that would be quite impossible in this tightly-buttoned company town. The poster shows a lean fellow named Brock, pictured in jogging shorts with a Marlboro, walking down a pier into the sunset. The words announced that he was uniquely qualified for the Presidency, since he is a distance runner who still smokes and enjoys hot dogs.
Naturally, it resonated.
I recall being in good enough shape that I wanted a cigarette while I was jogging. Once I ran from the Navy housing at McGrew Point in Pearl Harbor out to Officer’s Beach at the air station at Barber's Point to meet the family. I took my lighter and smokes in a plastic baggie. I had a scheme at the time to hook a little ashtray to the waistband of my shorts for convenience.
I had no problem with the duality of it all. It was not long after the release of the film Body Heat in 1981. At the time it was as much a sensation as Sharon Stone’s leg crossing scene in Basic Instinct, which is supposed to be the most-paused video moment in movie history.
William Hurt played the ambivalent drifting patsy to the incredibly sexy Kathleen Turner. She is a bit of a porker these days, no offense, and after all, who am I to throw glass bricks at the inevitable effects of gravity?
In the film, Hurt would go for a jog and have a Marlboro at the conclusion, walking up the pier in the sweltering heat, waiting for something to happen in that endless summer. It did, eventually- Kathleen murdered Richard Crenna, her lawyer husband, and framed poor William. At the end, she is having a cool drink at poolside, and Bill is wondering how to get Marlboros in jail.
It is a bit like we all are feeling after this endless race to the White House. I am glad I voted early, and do not have any obligation whatsoever today except to show up at the office and simulate work.
All I have to do is wonder about where to come up with the extra cash to pay for the Change that is coming.
I have lit up more than one Marlboro on that, sweating out the last summer. Tax year 2008 looks like the last one we will have to get our stuff straight. It is probably the last one where I will get the amount of money I have become used to distributing to other people myself. The new Administration seems intent on taking out the middleman, and do it without me.
Under the current tax scheme, the maximum income tax bracket is 35%- and I was in 34% last year, as I recall. When the rates return to the pre-Bush level. Of course, that is the minimum that can happen, and will occur without intervention, since they expire in 2010. Hence a vow of “no new taxes” is ironically and cynically true. They will be the same old taxes, though that is likely only the start.
Without Congress or the President doing a thing, the rate will return to 39.5%- or, as a function of what I make, another $11,000 a year. Plus lifting the cap on social security taxes will amount to another $5,000- or having to go to the couch to look for loose change to make an additional payment of $1,250 a month direct to Uncle Sugar.
Mind you, that is without any tinkering or innovation on the part of the Congress, or bold action by the new President. I have already heard some wild stuff being proposed, including eliminating the 401k and forcing a new mandatory government-managed scheme on an electorate ready for Change.
Shoot, I am going to need some loose change.
When the bright-eyed social democrats captured the UK in the 1960s, they were comfortable in establishing maximum tax rates in the 90% range- enough to make tax fugitives of earnest proletarians from Liverpool, like George, John, Paul and Ringo, who otherwise would have been lockstep in solidarity with Labour about socking it to the rich.
I don't know how it is going to be here. Even if nothing big is done, it is going to be a challenge to us working rich, who live check-to-check.
Our little band of brothers and sisters have been pretty lucky. In addition to already being snout-down at the public trough for the military pension, I could just jettison the paradigm and convert to complete hog.
The new GI bill would kill a couple years to early social security, get me a down-at-the-heels doctorate or perhaps get a law license to do some shystering on my own account. That might be fun. I feel sorry for the rest of you poor fish who have to keep working, no matter what.
That is the sort of belt-tightening I can get behind, since it does not mean working harder for less take home pay, which I gather is the new definition of patriotism.
I don't know. We'll see what the young man from Chicago needs us to do. The best case is that I have to pay a 10% surcharge for Change. It could be much more. Much much more.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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