R. Loeffelbein's LINKS TO LAUGHS: Best Golf Joke Ever

      I shared the best golf joke ever with readers of my 1998 book Offbeat Golf - still available incidentally from Santa Monica (California) Press - but, even if you did read it there, don't stop me, because I want to enjoy it again anyhow. Because it is THE classic "hustle"!
     It involves two very well-known gentlemen, Stevie Wonder and Tiger Woods. I can't speak for the veracity of the story, but that is of little consequence.
     Stevie and Tiger meet in a restaurant where they are both having dinner. Tiger politely asks Stevie, "How's the singing career going?"
     Stevie replies, "Not too bad. How's your golf?"
     Tiger also replies, "Not too bad. I've had some problems with my swing, but I think I've got that going right now."
     Keeping the conversation going, Stevie says, "I always find that when my golf swing goes wrong I need to stop playing for a while and not think about it. Then, the next time I play, it seems to be all right."
     Surprised, Tiger asks, "You play golf?"
     Stevie answers, "Oh, sure. I've been playing for years."
     Tiger asks, "But you're blind. How can you  play golf if you can't see?"
     Stevie says, "I have my caddy stand in the middle of the fairway and call to me. I listen for the sound of his voice and play the ball toward him. Then, when I get to where the ball has landed, the caddy moves further down the fairway or to the green and again I play the ball toward the voice."
     "But how do you putt?" Tiger wants to know.
     'Well," explains Stevie, "I have my caddy lean down in front of the hole and call to me, with his head on the ground, and I just play the ball toward his voice."
     Woods, curious how this works, asks, "What's your handicap?"
     "Well, I'm a scratch golfer," Stevie says.
     Tiger, more amazed than ever, says, "We've got to play a round sometime."
     Stevie replies, "Well, people don't take me seriously, so I only play for money, never for less than $1,000 a hole."
     Tiger grins as if that is a joke, and replies, "I'm for that. When would you like to ;play?"
     "Pick a night!" says Stevie.









   

From the Mouths of Babes

     I did a stint as a teacher and it always amazed me what came out of the mouths of these babes.
     Take the youngster who had spent the week before Christmas studying Christmas cards.  "Don't men ever go to Heaven?" she asked.
     "Of course," I assured her. "Why?"
     "Because I never see any angels with whiskers on these cards."
     Thinking fast, my female teaching assistant replied, "That's because men who do go to heaven get there by a close shave."
     Logic would not have been half as good an answer.
     Logic, in adult-posted signs, is often lost on kids too. Like my sister's youngster who, in seeing a sign in a store proclaiming, "Watch Batteries Installed -$5", asked, "Who would pay to watch batteries installed?"
     "Charistmas' is often kicked off in our community by Santa arriving at the town square riding a fire engine. But what engaged three youngsters standing near me was the Dalmation dog sitting on the front seat of the engine. They began discussing what his duties might be.
     "They use him to keep the crowds back," guessed one.
     "No, he's just for good luck, voiced another.
     "No, they use the dogs," the third child said firmly, "to find the fire hydrants."
     The fire truck also visits schools to hype fire safety programs and one teacher themed a class lesson on duties of firemen. One student thought the main job was rescuing people. The teacher asked him to put that job into a proper sentence.
     "The fireman came back down the ladder pregnant," was his effort.
     Somewhat nonplussed, the teacher asked if he knew what 'pregnant' meant.
     "Sure," returned the boy, it means 'carrying a child'."
     Puberty is another word that puzzles kids. When my sister's girl asked her what it meant, sis told her to look it up and then they would talk about it. Upon her return she announced, "Puberty si the earliest age at which a girl is able to bear children".
     So what do you think about that?" asked sis.
     "I'm not sure," her daughter replied. "I've always been able to bear children. It's adults I can't bear!"
     The problem of which comes first, Christmas or New Year's Day, seems to perplex some kids. One I heard resolved it this way: "Christmas just barely sneaks in the nick of time before every new year. We try to hurry it up along about Halloween."
     Another input reported, "I observed New Year's Day last year and what I observed was that New Year's Day comes quite late at night."
     The group's final comment was, "A good reason for New Year's Eve is to tell the year to get ready to end. When a year or anything else gets to a good ending place, it should know enough to stop there and end."
     The group also discussed New Year's resolutions. The one I remember best was stated this way: I resolved to always be honest because it is more important to be honest than rich and famous and happy." As he thought about that, he added, "Or at least any one of these...by itself...in most cases."
   
   

THE WHATCHAMA COLUMN: The Problem of Naming Children

     There is always a problem in naming a child. Parents may want a strong sounding name. Or an aesthetically pretty one their child will like through life. Or a unique one. A pair of amateaur actors I know wanted one that would not likely be typecast if he also should become, as hoped, a thespian. They could consider the name George Spelvin, which is rather famous in theater parlance, though not apt to be typecasted. In the list of actors on a stage play program sometimes this name appears, even though there is no character by that name. That's because it is the name credited to an actor who plays a second role.
     Naming a child includes anticipating also how other children will cruelly twist it to make fun of it. I've always liked my name, Robert, though hardly anyone other than mom has ever called me anything but its nickname, Bob. But then there is some benefit in that too since Bob may be spelled the same forward, backward or upside down. But my last name, Loeffelbein, which is Austrian-German, was a problem. It means "spoon-leg" I've been told, and goes back to the time - pre eating utensils - my antecedents made spoons from the bone legs of animals. It's spelling and pronunciation is difficult, so children shortened it to "Lift-a-bean" and "Laff-a-vine". When I became a teacher I had to get rid of that problem, so I would go to the blackboard (before whiteboards were invented) and print "Loeffel rhymes with awful; bein with fine; Loeffel-bein, awful fine!" That worked pretty well, at least within my hearing..
     Actually Robert is a Celtic name meaning "Bright in fame", even though my antecedents were not Celts, but Austrian (via the Black Sea area of Russia), Welsh (via a young sailor who jumped ship on the Eastern seaboard and lived with the Indians), German (via immigration) and Old English (or maybe French, since Staples, my mother's maiden name, was a very often traded name among the gentry early on in both those countries).
     When I was a youngster Robert was a very popular name in America. You could yell, "Hey, Bob" (or even "Hey, Roberta" or "Hey, Bobbi") in any crowd and several people would answer. But that's in the past. At age 91 I have outlived all the Roberts and Robertas I knew through school and new ones, according to new-born lists I have seen, have been few and far between.
     The Social Security Administration's website provides a list of the top 1,000 baby names for each year, dating back to 1880, for both states and country. Tope names that year were John and Mary.
     For an example of the change, here is the list of the most popular names for boys and girls born in the U.S. in 2013. John was then 28th and Mary was 123rd.
     For the boys, Jacob was listed for the 14th straight year at number one. It is easy to pronounce, easy to spell, is solid and manly, and is a Biblical name, always in style. Next came Mason, Ethan, Noah, William and Lian (who cracked the top ten for the first time). Following those were Jayden, Michael, Alexander and Aiden. Daniel slipped from the top ten for the first time since 1998, to 11th. Some of the "strong" names making the longer list were King, Messiah and Major.
     Americans have long given their children aggrandizing names, like Noble and General. Both were on the list for much of the 20th century, though not cracking the top 100.
     For the girls, Sophia was number one for the second year in a row, followed by Emma, Isabella, Olivia, Ava, Emily, Abigail, Mia, Madison and Elizabeth.
     Some parents refuse to give "expectation" or grandiose or "purity" names for fear of putting undue pressure on their children. Chastity was in the top 1,000 for more than two decades before dropping off the list in 1994. Justice was listed in 1880, fell off the list for more than 100 years, then reappeared in 1992 and climbed to number 518 in 2012.
   The 2014 favorite baby names were Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Isabella and Ava for girls. Boys names were Noah, Liam, Mason, Jacob and William. Emma has been ranked among the top three baby names since 2003, reaching number one in 2008 and was second in 2013. In 2013 20,799 newborn girls were named Emma. Charlotte, at number ten, cracked the top ten  list for the first time, probably because both Chelsea Clinton and Britain's Prince William and wife Kate named their new babies Charlotte.
     Showing how a celebrity name can effect the list, a popular Mexican singer and a character on a Mexican telenovella shown in the USA, both named Aranza, caused a jump over 3,625 names to number 607.
     Several countries have passed legislation to stop such a naming hodge-podge. Iceland has a naming committee that consults the National Register of Persons to determine if a name is acceptable. Parents who want to use a name off-list, they must apply for approval and pay a fee, and the name must contain only letters in the Icelandic alphabet.
     In Germany parents are banned by law from using last names or the names of objects and products as first names. A child's first name must clearly indicate his or her gender and must be approved by the office of vital statistics in the borning region.
     In New Zealand the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act of 1995 prohibits parents fromchosing a name that "might cause offense to a reasonable person; is unreasonably long or is, includes, or resembles an official title or rank". "Adolf Hitler" and "Yeah Detroit", for instances, have been rejected.
     If Danish parents prefer a name not on their list of 7,000 pre-approved baby names, they must get permission from local church and government officials. Up to 20% of 1,100 names reviewed annually, including creative spellings of common first or last names are rejected.
     Such regulation would never pass in the U.S. where a Phoenix girl was given the middle name of Joan of Arc, and a female singer named Pink spells her name with an exclamation point replacing the i. And I shudder to think what some adults, who have taken unique names for themselves, may name their future offspring. David Montenegro, running for office in Rochester, NH, for example, changed his name to "human" (yes, with small h). He lost his race 181-30 to non-believers. And elsewhere Jeffrey Drew Wilschke changed his name to the more catchy and memorable Beezow Doo-Doo Zippity-Bop-Bop (and became the punch line for late night talk show hosts across the country).

Sources: The Gamily Digest, "The One-in--Million Baby Name Book" by Jennifer Moss, along with her Babynames.com Website, and "The Baby Name Wizard" by Laura Watterberg and her Babynamewizard.com Website.)

Things You Probably Didn't Know About Our Presidents

     All the U.S. presidents have been written about ad infinitum, yet there are things we still don't usually know about them individually. These are usually little things that kept them recognizably human while they toiled in a job that transcends "difficult". Here are some things you probably didn't know about some of them.

Each of the first ten U.S. presidents - from Washington to Tyler - lived to be at least 70 years old, this in a time when the average male life expectancy was under 40 years of age!

Military service used to be almost a requirement for winning public office. Twenty-seven of  44 presidents served in the military.

Vice Presidents have become President 14 times - five via election, four via assassinations, four via natural deaths, one via resignation.

Grover Cleveland, who won the 1884 election when hardly anyone thought he had a chance, once hanged a man, personally. That was when he was sheriff of Erie County in New York state, and was called upon to execute a murderer.

Biggest losers in presidential campaigns have been Norman Thomas and Eugene V. Debs. Both were nominated by the American Socialist Party but lost: Debs in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920; Thomas in 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944 and 1948.

In the 1912 campaign then-President William Howard Taft came in third, behind Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. This is the only time an incumbent President finished third in his re-election campaign. He did beat Debs (see above).

John Adams, later becoming President, sent a letter to Abigail Smith (who was later to become his wife) cataloguing her "Faults, Imperfections, Defects..."  Among them: She wasn't a good card player. She was prudish. She blushed too often.

President Andrew Jackson, who had some real enemies, was the first president in an assassination attempt. In 1835 Richard Lawrence fired a couple shots at him, but missed. Lawrence was declared insane. (Some said he was insane to shoot and some said he was insane to miss.)

There are 25 counties and 24 cities named for Abraham Lincoln, as well as nearly 600 schools and a room in the White House. He has also been depicted on U.S. coinage, currency and postage stamps.

Lincoln used a top hat to carry letters, bills and notes in for quick reference.

The first President to visit all 50 states while in office was Richard Nixon.

Calvin Coolidge stayed fit by riding a mechanical horse.

George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson all were avid player of marbles.

Thomas Jefferson was an inventor. The most unusual of his inventions? An indoor weather vane.

James Garfield could write Greek with one hand while writing Latin with the other hand.

Andrew Johnson kept pet white mice.

William Taft had an oversize bathtub built in the White House. Other Presidents have installed a bowling lane, a golf putting range, a swimming pool and a gym.  

Gerald Ford had pro football offers from the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions.

Ronald Reagn is reported to have saved 77 swimmers' lives as a lifeguard.

Riddles Keep the Brain Active

     Keeping one's brain active is one way to help keep us from getting old and senile. Thinking riddles through to conclusions can, thus, be useful. 

     Reader's Digest Magazine, over a period of time, has printed the following ones in a question-and answer format. They haven't listed originator names, so I can't give individual credits where due. 

     As you read the questions don't overthink. Keep common logic in mind;

Question 1: I am the beginning of the end of time and space. I am essential to creation, and I surround every place. Who am I?

Q2: Yellow I look, and massive I weigh; 

       In the morning I come to brighten mom's day. What am I?

Q3: A word I know contains six letters. Subtract the last letter and only twelve remain. What is the word?

Q4: What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a head but never weeps, has a bed but never sleeps?

Q5: A red house is made of red bricks and has a red wooden door and a red roof. A yellow house is made of yellow bricks and has a yellow wooden door and a yellow roof. What is a green house made of?

Q6: I multiply, but never breed; live on air, but never breathe; devour much, but never eat. I'm often measured by my heat. What am I?

ANSWERS:

1. The letter "e".

2. A school bus.

3. Dozens.

4. A river.

5. Glass.

6. Fire.

Taxes: The Golden Fleece (or The Pain In Our Assets)

A taxpayer is a person who has the government on his payroll!
Such taxation is actually a fine for doing well, a fine for reckless thriving, one might joke. It‘s a government program to handicap the hired. It‘s feeding the hand that bites you.
     Ronald Reagan, when president in March 1981, also joked about it. “Taxation is the process of plucking the feathers without killing the bird,“ he said, changing it from the original quote by Jean Baptiste Colbert, circa 1665: “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”
Yet, in the United States on May 20, 1895, direct taxes, like the income tax, were declared unconstitutional! Remember that Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing. Unfortunately, that is the closest our country has come to being even ever since.
“The truth is that the government is penniless,” once explained Willard E. Rockwell. “Before it can spend, it must take from the people. A great many of us seem to have lost sight of the fact that the government owns absolutely nothing. If it promises to give you something, it must first take it from you.”
Though direct taxes were ruled out by the Constitution, Congress in 1862 - to help pay for costs of the Civil War - passed a law that taxed peoples’ income. It went as high as 10% on large incomes, was reduced by a higher exemption in 1867, was greatly diminished in 1969, and abandoned in 1872. In 1894, under the Wilson Tariff Law, a tax of 2% was imposed on incomes above $4,000, but was soon found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
     In 1913 the Sixteenth Amendment - officially proposed in 1909 by President Taft - made the income tax permanent. But every taxpayer had a personal exemption of $3,000, plus an additional $1,000 if married. The normal tax was 1%! The peak was 7% on incomes of a half-million dollars.
Only five states levied income taxes: Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Oklahoma. Income, total property and tax payment figures were posted for public inspection. If taxes were not paid within ten days of notice, collectors could seize and sell delinquent properties. Collectors received a commission on their total collections.  
     Times change. In 1911 there had been no tax after your income, but by 1978 there was no income after your tax, one pundit noted.

Then Came the Deluge

     As the workload grew, the IRS in 1952 was completely restructured. Instead of centralizing everything in Washington, DC, they deployed forces, dividing the country into seven independent administrative  regions. It set up ten service centers - each to take on about the same number of returns - with district offices in 58 cities, plus field offices in smaller towns.
The heart of the operation, the $20 million digital data processor attended by 357 humans, was housed in the National Computer Center in Martinsburg, WV. This monster - actually three different kinds of computers - posted tax returns in .03 seconds, 9300 per hour! At the same time it started building master files on individuals and businesses on reels of high-speed electronic tape.
The Tax Foundation, a non-profit research organization, in April 1976 set up “Tax Freedom Day” for May 1, announcing it as “the day when the average taxpayer has finally finished working just to pay taxes”. In explanation, the foundation stated that the average U.S. taxpayer (at that time) worked the first four months of the year just to support federal, state and local governments. April 15 is now considered the date when millions of Americans feel bled, white and blue.
As Congress kept tinkering with the tax laws, the tax forms got longer and murkier. In 1863 the tax form took ten lines. In 1987 Ohio Representative Delbert Latta hotly debated the version of tax reform, stating, “I hold in my hand 1,379 pages of tax simplification“.
Today the Internal Revenue Code fills 12 binders with 38,000 pages and runs to over 8,000 sections of exemptions, exceptions, exclusions and special provisions, and not even tax lawyers can always understand it. It was Albert Einstein who was once quoted, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is income taxes”. America may be the only country where it takes more brains to make out income tax returns than it does to make the income.
They still call it a tax return, though, just as though your money is going to make a round trip. How appropriate it is that tax month opens with April Fool’s Day and closes amid cries of “Mayday! Mayday!”.

Taxation Down(ers) Through History

The IRS and its “taxes rangers” now give you three choices: the long form, the short form and the ten year stretch, as one jokester puts it.
Income tax is not a new idea. Only the name is. It actually started back in the stone age. When a tribe’s males went hunting, they left some members behind to protect the women. When they returned they would give part of the bag - a form of tax - to those protectors.
Among latter day practitioners was Nabis, last king of the Spartans, who made selected subjects hug the “Queen” as a way of insuring tax payments. Not the real queen, but an automaton statue of her. Beneath the statue’s covering robe were carefully hidden sharp iron spikes. When the visitor was introduced to “the Queen” the automaton would lift its arms and hug him. He couldn’t escape until he promised to give the king the money he asked for.
Jesus Christ himself, according to Matt. 17:24-27, had to pay a “temple tax”. Taxes in the middle ages, in fact, sprang from church tithes. Payment of 10% tithe dates from ancient Hebraic tradition. An etching by Rembrandt in The Netherlands Museum of Taxation shows Christ holding the coin used for tribune money. This same museum has a hieroglyphic-inscribed Egyptian stone from 2100 B.C., that was hung from a sheep’s neck to indicate proof of tax payment on sheep.
Governments in search of money have taxed a wondrous array of unlikely items, like the ancient Greeks, who taxed doors that opened outward onto public sidewalks, and the ancient Romans, who taxed funerals (unburied bodies actually) and togas, both depending upon their elegance.
Funerals continued to be tax jewels, with some unremembered 19th century Englishman actually tracing 156 separate and distinct taxes on a funeral. In the U.S. some folks in power in Colima, CA, just in 1996 were considering boosting revenue by targeting those least likely to complain, the town’s one million dead. The plan was to charge $5 per grave every year for eternity.
Since early times, salt (salarium) was subjected to taxation. Mined from works on the banks of the Tiber, it became the first mineral to provide Rome with revenue. The word “salary” comes from Roman military personnel being paid money to purchase salt.
Businessmen who wore beards were taxed in Russia by Peter the Great. Men who refused to pay had their beards sheared by government agents. Wigs have also been taxed at times, in Europe and New York. And one early Turkish ruler taxed hosts who invited him to dinner. This was called “tooth money” because it was ostensibly to compensate him for the wear the meal put on his teeth.
The Dutch taxed windows during the 17th century, which resulted in a style or architecture free of windows, light and air. Early American householders were taxed for each door in their houses, which is one reason Victorian homes had no closets. Their loophole was moveable clothes closets called armoirs, since no tax was levied on furniture doors. The French taxed fireplaces. Intended to tax the wealthy, it resulted only in lots of cold homes.
The British claim they invented the “income” tax in 1799, resulting in the London Common Council blasting the House of Commons for “a most partial, cruel and oppressive measure”. England dropped the tax for a time, then revived it in 1842.
In 1874 it included taxing horses. One Cheshire farmer found his loophole by riding a tax-free cow.
Poland started taxing hitch-hikers. A hiker bought a license - $6 for 2500 miles - and received a batch of coupons which he gave to drivers who gave him rides. The drivers used the coupons to enter a national lottery.
Until 1830 wallpaper in rolls was not permitted in England - because it could be taxed at a higher rate if sold in small sheets. The French once taxed newspapers also, by number of pages. So printers found a loophole, publishing huge one-page folding papers.
When they also tried to tax Cognac, in the 16th century, merchants hit on the expedient of distilling the wine to reduce volume. (Consumers were expected to add water.) But consumers rapidly acquired a taste for the undiluted “brandwijn” (burned wine). Louis XIV vainly tried to suppress the practice, doubling, then tripling the taxes, but the practice of distillation spread. England renamed it Brandy.

New Uses for the Old Idea

Working tax ideas don’t fade away. As humorist Art Buchwald joked, “Tax reform is merely taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that haven’t been  taxed before.”
Pennsylvania farmers, soon after passage of the first internal revenue act in 1791- forerunner of the income tax - staged the “Whiskey Rebellion” , to protest taxes on spirits. Others resented the taxing on sugar, snuff, slaves, houses and land - one collector being reported tarred and feathered when he tried to do his job.
One of the newest considerations was proposed by city officials in Kent, WA. They announced January 1, 1991 they were considering charging businesses and homes a monthly fee - $2 per employee, up to $2 per household - for use of city streets, thus declaring its city streets a public utility.
The most negative example, though, may have been a “tax on heroism”, as announced  in a United Press International release. Robert Ardema of Muskegan, MI, retired from the U.S. Air Force and included in his retirement pay was an extra $28 per month. This was awarded, along with the Soldier’s Medal for Valor, during WWII. He had rescued a pilot from a burning plane at a New Guinea air base. Ardema didn’t think that $28 should be taxed, so registered complaints to the IRS, the military and veterans’ groups. But he lost.
Showing how precise the IRS can be was noted in a Life Magazine clip. Minnesota state auditor Mark Dayton, 45-year old heir to a department store fortune, voluntarily slashed his $65,000/year salary to $1, in order to save jobs in his department. When he opened his annual pay report he discovered he actually received only 81 cents. The state had taken 10 cents in taxes and nine cents in other deductions.
The IRS broke its rule not to make a refund under $1 again when a Chicago taxpayer listed his occupation as “slave”. The revenue director explained, “He might need the nine cents due him.”
The Department of Internal Revenue once even taxed women according to the size of their waistlines. It happened when a young women’s junior college held a dance, with admissions varying depending on the size of a coed’s waist measurement. At the time there was a 20% tax on such affairs, so a Revenue agent had to determine the average waistline to figure the average admission price on which he could collect the tax. He ultimately set 24 inches as a fair average.
Famed satirist Jonathan Swift once proposed a somewhat similar tax to be levied on female beauty. When a listener objected, asking, “How could we ever make women pay enough to make such a tax levy worthwhile?” Swift laughed, “Let every woman be permitted to assess her own charms - then she’ll be generous enough.”
Such a tax, in a round-about way, actually exists. Dancer-film actress Betta St. John once complained movie stars, models and other performers should be granted a tax write-off on the theory that they, like machinery, depreciate in value with time. Because they have a limited period of years in which to earn money, they shouldn’t be taxed the same as doctors and businessmen, she contended.
A Carmel, CA, attorney followed this up by asking the Federal Court of Appeals in San Francisco to allow him and his wife to claim depreciation allowances on their bodies because they are getting older. The court took the matter “under advisement”, stating “The couple is in the wrong forum. They should go to Congress.”
Another man, a tax attorney and former five-year IRS employee who helped write the “Your Federal Income Tax“ guide, sued the government when his tax deduction for “brain deterioration” was disallowed. He estimated it cost him $15,000 to educate his brain. “The Labor Department’s statistics state that a person’s normal working life is 40 years,” he explained, “and the tax commission has also ruled that the normal retirement age is 65. So I logically interpret IRS regulations to mean that the cost of formulating my brain into a capital asset can be depreciated over a period of 40 years.” He didn’t win either.

Games People Play

The IRS deals with a lot of varied tax concerns, as might be expected. Included in the “gains that people play” was a family of Quakers in Whittier, CA, who once refused to pay 72.6% of their assessed income tax. That was the amount they figured would be used for military spending, which their religion abhorred.              And a storekeeper in Albany, NY, listed “Food for kittens that catch mice in the store” on his tax return. Agents thought a bit and allowed it as a business expense.
One Californian did his own tax returns and deducted $309 as “income tax costs”, figuring his 61.8 hours of preparation time at $5 per hour. The IRS disallowed, while admitting such cost would be allowed if done by a professional tax preparer. The man refused to accept the decision and appealed to the Tax Court, claiming this meant he was in “involuntary servitude” for the federal government, a practice clearly outlawed  by the 13th Amendment’s anti-slavery statue. But the Tax Court decided the time used to prepare a tax return was “a necessary corollary to the requirement that a return be filed”.
Even erotica has gotten write-offs, however, when placed right. Some years back the Indiana University’s Institute for Sex Research  announced in Playboy Magazine that the U.S. government would allow one to deduct the actual appraised value of your contributions to “social science”. And the price on pornography runs high. One film collection was appraised at $3,500, while a gifted 10-inch Mexican phallic icon fetched a $1,200 write-off.
An embezzler beat the system when a Federal judge in Milwaukee, WI, ruled he need not pay income tax on the money he stole.
In a 1977 interview Gary Mason of Rexford, ID, bragged he hadn’t paid income taxes since 1969, though every year he religiously filed a return. He just didn’t include any income figures. He dealt only in cash, never dealing with any bank or other institution where a paper trail might be left to follow. He cited the 4th Amendment, outlawing warrantless searches and seizures of private papers and effects in his fight. He admitted to being a member of a small group of like-minded tax protestors, centered largely in the West, some of whom have been prosecuted, some sent to jail, but some having never been discovered to be taken to court.
Leonard Barris, who tried to beat the system in an opposite way, wasn’t lucky. The IRS caught him trying to cheat the federal government out of over $350,000 in tax refunds, by filing 83 tax returns.
Agreed, it is every American’s duty to support the government, just not necessarily in the style to which it has become accustomed.  
     Occasionally protesters let their minds be known. One taxpayer sent payment in pennies inside a jar of honey. Another enclosed razor blades, another sent torn parts of an old shirt, another, when his medical deductions were questioned, mailed in his contact lenses and false teeth.
After all is said and done, where but in Washington, DC, could you get 500 Congressmen, 400 lobbyists, 300 economists and 200 computers working on a plan to simplify taxes? Especially when past reports have shown the locale with the highest rate of tax evasion to be Washington, DC!

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Need a Perfect "Squelch"?

     It takes a quick thinker to bring forth a "squelch" in time of need. The "squelch", of course, is the put-down of someone commenting unfavorably on you or whatever you happen to be doing. They are especially handy for performers dealing with audience hecklers.
     For example, I remember a stand-up comedian who told me once that he had a surefire way of squelching a drunk during his nightclub act. He would signal for an off-stage phone to ring, then pretend to answer it, then turn to the heckler and say, "Pardon me,sir, it's your doctor. He says your spare mouth is ready!"
     Singer Bobby Vincent once scored by telling a loud talker during his monologue, 'You, sir, could never be a donor in a brain transplant."
     Old-time comedian Milton Berle was a master at this art. He once quieted a ringside woman with a loud voice by pointing her out and remarking, "You did the same thing to me in 1946. I never forget a dress."
     I personally experienced my first squelch as a youngster at home. I had expressed some disinterest in doing some chores I had been assigned. by my mother. So my dad added, "We think it's a very good idea, and so do I." It was an interesting way for him to announce that mom ran the household and to correct my mistake in thinking I had a say in the matter.
     Perhaps the commonest form of squelch is the mere sneering answer to a dumb question. A lady I knew got tired of people asking if she was pregnant. So she started answering with, "No, I'm just carrying it around for a friend." Her husband was just as quick-witted. He was talking about a fishing trip with a friend when a third party joined them, asking, " Did you catch some fish?" His repartee: "No, they gave themselves up."
     Those aren't zingers, of course, but they get the idea across. Just as one-time artist Georgia O'Keeffe did during what she considered a time consuming interview. The interviewer asked what she was working on at the moment. "Nothing," she snapped in resentment against interference with her work, "because I'm talking to you."
     What is interesting to me is that you can't tell a good squelcher from appearances. Take the farmer, dirtied from working all day, who dropped tiredly into a chair at a local diner. After being served, he quietly bowed his head and said grace. One of a group of young roisterers at another table loudly asked him, "Hey, pop, does everyone do that where you come from?" The old man looked sadly at him and replied, "Nope, son, the pigs don't."
     Then there was a professor of anatomy who (I've been told) told racy stories during class, which caused consternation among some of the coeds. A group of them got together and decided they would get up and leave the room en mass the next time he did that. Someone squaled on them, however.
     So, next class, halfway through his lecture, he began, "They say there is quite a shortage of prostitutes in France___", at which those girls got up and started for the door.
     "Young ladies,"called the professor, "the next plane doesn't leave until tomorrow afternoon."
     One-time cartoonist Al Capp was well paid to tour college campuses and talk to aspiring artists, where occasionally some wanna-be artist would make denigrating remarks about cartoonists not being real artists.
One such went so far as to use an obscenity in his exclamation, to which Capp replied, "All right, you've told us your name. Now what is your question?"
     Now we get to my two favorites, the first attributed to one-time British prime minister Winson Churchill. Of one contemporary his summation was, "There, but for the grace of God, goes God."
     Whitney Young, Jr., when executive of the National Urban League some years ago, arrived at New York 's Kennedy Airport and went in search of a Skycap to handle his luggage. When he found one, a black man, he asked, "Are you free?"
     "No, I'm not," was the reply, "but I'm working on it."