Trump Chumps and Trump Champs The Rich Get Richer

James Comey got his just desserts for the wrong reasons yesterday.
That, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I have to say about that.

Well, almost all I have to say:  I have to say firing is more than that pathetic scum bag of an FBI director deserves; President Obama, bless his soul, should have fired Comey the first time Comey injected himself into the Presidential election with his remarks about how incompetent Hillary Clinton was.

Grackle got no boss. Comey, however, did.

But the American Health Care Act.  Really, this time the Republican talent for naming seemed to have failed them. It should have been The Great American Really Terrific Health Care and Tax Relief Act Which Is Way Better than Obamacare Act.


But I quibble.

Yeah, I know. I'm with you.

Warren Buffet noted that he paid--I don't know, 4 million dollars in income tax--and on line 62 of his return--Who knew there was a line 62? Who even reads his own return?--there was a charge of $40,000 for his share to pay for Obamacare. He was happy to pay it, he said.


But what that meant was the new All American Republican Act, which does away with line 62 is simply a tax break voted through by the Republican House of Representatives for themselves. Line 62 tells you the rich really were paying for the health insurance of the poor, just as Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz said and they don't want to pay for the poor, not one bit.

So here's something to consider:  I do not have the official government numbers on this, so I am relying on Professor Google, but far as I can see, there are about 500,000 physicians actually engaged in patient care as the greatest part of their job in this country of 300 million people. (This does not include nurse practitioners, radiology techs, other ancillary personnel engaged in the care of the American public.) But, just for starters, 500,000 doctors caring for patients.


There are somewhere on the order of 10 to 30 times that number (5 to 15 million) people who work in, or are substantially supported by the American health insurance industry. This includes the CEO of Aetna and the CEO of Blue Cross all the way down to the humble billing clerk in a doctor's office who does nothing but submit bills and keep track of payments, to the people you talk to on the phone about why the company refuses to pay for your hip replacement, to the actuaries who deny you coverage because you once visited an emergency room when you had an allergic reaction to penicillin so now you have a "pre-existing condition" which means they don't want to insure you, to the marketers who devise the ad campaigns, to the health insurance lobbyists.

I'm all for free markets, except when I'm not.

See the distinction: Health insurance is not health care.


If we had Medicare for all, all these people would lose their jobs. No longer necessary. Fifteen million people made obsolete.

A friend once rejected my argument we should legalize drugs the way they've done in the Netherlands and Portugal and treat drug addiction as a public health problem. "Oh, you can't do that," she said, "The entire economy of the inner city in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Detroit would collapse overnight. Lot of people make their living on drugs."
This is a variant of the old saw we said at the cancer hospital: More people make their livings off cancer than die from it.

Trouble is, the healthy rich people have to pay for the sick, poor people. Not fair!

And the same is true of our health insurance industry: Apart from the employment it provides, the jobs, the money, the sustenance to the economy, it is a worthless part of our national life. We only tolerate it because we are afraid of what would happen to all those people who pay for their homes and automobiles and restaurant meals with the money that comes in through the companies.

I love my Medicare.

So there you have democracy in action: We pride ourselves here in the USA on our courage to engage in capitalism, where the markets drive decisions ruthlessly and out of that the most efficiency is generated. But, in fact, in the health insurance and health care economies, we cling to a system of dreadful inefficiency which, if markets really prevailed, would collapse just as soon as Medicare for all got put into place and all the customers voted with their feet to flock to it.

French Voters Finally Prove They Are Smarter than US

My one and only visit to Paris, there were intimations the French are not what I had thought through long, agonizing exposure to the French language in American schools. (In fact, the only French teacher I ever had who I liked was Algerian, which probably says something--I don't know what.)

But today the French scored higher on the national IQ test we call general election than the folks from the American heartland. 

As a matter of fact, they are looking a bit smarter today than their arrogant British neighbors on the other side of the Chunnel. 

As Paul Krugman noted some days ago, the French have cradle-to-grave high quality healthcare, job security, great wine, wonderful bread, and the only reason they are not as productive as American workers, overall, is they have so much vacation time which means the calculation of worker productivity skews toward Americans who tend to work closer to 50 weeks a year, as opposed to 39 or whatever the French work. When they are actually at work, they work quite effectively. But having a lot of vacation in an economy which works well may not be such a bad thing.


The French do smoke too much. That they have to work on. 
But they have decided to go forth boldly into the world, rather than quake and wail behind walls.

Actually, the New York Times had a great article today about the futility of building a wall along the Mexican border, which has many aspects to it, but can be summarized in a single word called, "TUNNEL." And, apparently, efforts by Americans to shore up the wall have created a golden opportunity for Mexican drug cartels, which have combined muscling in on the illegal crossing trade while combining it with transporting cocaine and meth, so building a wall has in fact helped with cross border trade, just not the kind you can tax.

We take our pleasures where we can nowadays. 
The Republican house passes a tax cut bill they called the American Health Care Act and it was almost worth it just to read Yvonne Abraham of the Boston Globe disembowel the whole frat boy crew. "All Smiles As American Healthcare Flatlines," is a masterpiece. Apparently, they were playing the Rocky theme in the House during the vote.  It really brought out the best in Ms. Abraham. 
We've had worse Sundays. 

The Efficacy of Hate

Here's a fascinating factoid: Did you know that there are more Jews living in Alabama, USA than in Poland? (In fact three times the number in Alabama.) More Jews in New Hampshire than in Poland?

Grief and History

Or, how's this: There are more Jews living in Colorado than in Germany? And more in Arizona than in Germany?


Or, Missouri has more Jews than Ukraine.


Or, Maryland has more Jews than Russia, by about 100,000 souls.

Wowser.


I suppose it should be no surprise, when you think about what happened to Jews between 1935 and 1945 in Germany, Poland, Ukraine and, of course, Russia has a long history before and after of killing or otherwise being unkind to Jews.
So Poland has 3,200 Jews; Ukraine has 63,000; Germany 99,695 and Russia 186,000.


Before the Holocaust Poland had 3.5 million Jews, near as I can tell from Professor Google. Afterwards, 3,200, a reduction of 99.9%.
Germany had only 525,000, (reduced by about 80%) and Ukraine had almost a million (down 95%) .
Each of the countries surrounding Germany (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria) had more than Germany itself. But when German troops stormed over the border, the slaughter of Jews followed the Wehrmacht troops, as special Jew killing brigades rounded up Jews for slaughter. I haven't figured the reduction in their Jewish population.


So, when Hitler and his merry gang of murderers conceived of "The Final Solution," well, they got pretty close to finality. They did not quite exterminate every last Jew within their boundaries, but apparently, they came pretty close.


And these reductions have been durable: They've held up for 70 years.


You have to say this  was a government program which achieved its stated goals.

Hank Greenberg

I suppose none of this is surprising, really. If you were a Jew living in Germany, Poland or Ukraine where the local folks so enthusiastically joined in rounding up Jews and killing them, even if you managed to escape that dragnet, would you want to hang around, living among these people?  Would you not try to hop the next train, boat or horse to get as far away from these nasties as you could?



There are some curiosities in the numbers:  There are 465,000 Jews in France. France cooperated with the Nazis when the Nazis occupied France and sent thousands off to die in the concentration camps. But, apparently, at least that core stayed on after the war. More recently, with a rise in anti Semitic attacks in France, Jews have been crossing the Channel to live in Britain, which has only 269,000 Jews, which is fewer Jews than Massachusetts or Illinois or Maryland.

Why so few Jews in Britain?  The Brits  weren't collaborating with the Nazis during those years, not hardly. Quite the opposite. But the gentile anti Semitism of the Brits may be unsettling in its own way. It goes back to Dickens and Shakespeare--Oliver Twist and the Merchant of Venice.


Here's one nugget: Texas, which is one of our three  big mega states, has only 160,000 Jews. The other big ones (California, New York) have more than a million each.  So maybe Jews have got the vibe from Texas not a good place to be, if you're a Jew.


Most Southern states have few Jews, but Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, North Carolina have as many or more than Poland.


And those four states have the Ku Klux Klan.


I guess this goes to show that government programs can be effective.  If you want to get rid of people you hate, you can do it. First, you publicly announce your animus. Then you quietly execute the implications of that attitude. And then you simply allow people to vote with their feet.


If Donald Trump wants to rid the United States of those brown skinned rapists from Mexico and Latin America, he's at least taken the first step.


Have Russia, Poland, Ukraine or Germany regretted the loss of the Jews?
Well, maybe some folks there regret it.
Is their loss our gain?

I would think so.  For one thing, Hank Greenberg did a lot for the Detroit Tigers, in a city where Henry Ford wrote the screed, "The International Jew." 

Oh, and then there was Einstein, who luckily was working for us. 
If that atomic bomb had been dropped on Washington rather than Hiroshima, our lives might be significantly different.

We'll take him and give you a high draft choice

I know I'd miss the Hispanics I know. For that matter, I'd miss the Chinese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese--you name it. I can think of immigrant groups up and down the line and I keep thinking: I'd miss every single one of these groups, and it's not just that I love Thai food. They each add something. And they'd miss each other.


If it weren't for the Jews, who would eat in Chinese restaurants on Christmas day?

When Blue Is Not Enough

With liberal principles in peril, with a call to racism having galvanized an opposition, with antipathy between parties boiling over from emotional cauldrons, we have in this country reached a place where we have been before, but more so,  in the past.

We cannot compare our current state to that of 1860, when racism and sectional hatred, when conflict between rural America and the industrialized urban centers found a coalescing and animating cause: Slavery.  Slavery and its defense encapsulated all the inchoate animosities between rural/ urban,  north/south, educated/uneducated, a social order of landed aristocracy versus an urban order of commercial meritocracy. 

Glamorous and Ineffective 

Though we have not reached the same level of conflict by several orders of magnitude in the early part of the 21st century, we have come to the point where mid 20th century arrangements and attitudes have ceased to function. Bill Bradley in today's New York Times describes how he worked across the aisle with Republicans to pass the 1986 tax reform law which lowered the top tax bracket to 38% by closing loop holes for a whole variety of special interests.  He describes laws being passed in the Senate by a vote of 97-3, something which is today unimaginable. 

The fact is in today's environment, there is no virtue in accommodation, no reason to extol comity. 

When Democrats look to our leaders in Congress and the Senate, we have to ask ourselves: Do we have in these people the leaders we need?

The right color, not the Right Stuff

In 1860, many leaders were called to the colors.  Ambrose Burnside, Benjamin Butler, George McClellan put themselves forward to lead Union forces into the field. But they were dreadfully inadequate leaders and the Union cause nearly collapsed under their leadership, or lack of it.

General Benjamin Butler, Right Colors. Wrong Stuff.

Meanwhile, the South fielded generals of great daring and pugnacity--Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and they nearly won the day. Wearing the blue was not enough. What was important was that the men who wore the blue could win. 

The Union generals who showed promise were each flawed in his own way:  Sherman was depressive, self doubting and thought to be prone to nervous breakdown. Grant was said to be a drunk, often drunk on duty. 

Drank the right whiskey

But Lincoln said, "Tell me what whiskey Grant drinks. I want to send a bottle to every one of my generals. He fights."

Facing the Southern armies standing between the Union forces and Richmond, Grant's generals kept coming to him with warnings about what would happen if they moved in one direction or thrust in  another against Lee, how Lee would counter, how he would outflank them. 

"Don't come to me with your fears about what Lee might do to you," Grant told them. "Go back to camp and think about what you are going to do to Lee." 

More fight in the dog

The Union generals, Grant and Sheridan were small men, but they proved it was not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.  

And, eventually, Sherman proved to have plenty of fight in him. He had spent much of his life in the South, in Louisiana, but when he determined the way to end the war was to bring the war to the people who supported it, he fastened on that strategy with resolve.

"I will make the people of Georgia howl," he said. 

Fierce when aroused

When asked about his troops burning down homes, scorching fields, destroying railroads, he said, famously, "War is not popularity seeking. War is all hell."

And he brought that hell to those who sustained the South and its army.

I'm not yet convinced Carol Shea Porter or Maggie Hassan have that kind of toughness, or that fire in the belly. 

Bernie Sanders does.

We need leaders with that quality now. 

Loathe Your Fellow Man: From Hillbilly to Koch

Flipping back and forth between "Hillbilly Elegy" (J.D. Vance)  and "Dark Money" (Jane Mayer), I've had the sensation of flipping between two sides of the same coin.

Andrew Mellon

Admittedly, I'm only 3/4 of the way through Elegy but it's hard to understand why this has got such notice--its depiction of the personalities and values of backwoods Kentucky people has been done so often and better it cannot be any fresh insight, but coming out, as it did, in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, there must have been a swell of interest among readers and the educated about what could those ignorant, toothless people have been thinking when they voted for Trump. So Vance benefited from timing.

J.D. Vance

Elegy does detail with some clear eyed clarity the nature of these People of Walmart who have never held a job in their lives, or if they have only briefly when they did not show up for work, on time, at all or went off on hour long "breaks" when they were supposed to be working and then went on welfare, and spit venom at all the welfare cheats who were living off taxes on the wages of hard working people like themselves.
I certainly could see that at my office, as two women sat out front, reveling in Mr. Trump's victory, talking about how all the free loaders were going to get theirs now, as they let the phones go unanswered, wandered off to the kitchen for 40 minute "coffee breaks" and never bestirred themselves to solve a single problem for any patient but simply told the patient whatever the patient wanted it wasn't their job to provide an answer.  "Call back later," or "Call back Monday," was their favorite phrase, these hard working ladies who were so incensed at the welfare queens.

Hillbilly voters

What Vance documents in excruciating detail is how thoroughly incapable of productivity people from his hillbilly culture are. They are incapable of, not just work, but of creating functional families. His first real experience of learning basic values of discipline, persistence, effort came when he joined the Marines, where he acquired in 13 weeks of boot camp what should have been provided over the 18 years his family got drunk, pregnant, fought and crashed their cars. 

It doesn't seem to occur to him or to anyone in his sect the Marines are supported by the American taxpayer.

On the other side of the coin, the portrait of the venomous Koch brothers, who hold not just Hillbilly's in contempt but all mankind in contempt. This is one of those "You have no idea" experiences. The John Birch Society hardly compares to the Kochs' foundations.  They hate Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the EPA, the FDA, Congress, the IRS--even the FBI and the CIA, those institutions which protect their own wealth.

Richard Mellon Scaite

When Donald Trump's minions, Mnuchin and Cohn stepped out in front of the cameras to announce the new tax "plan" they blandly reported the only two deductions which the new tax code would retain were "charitable" deductions and interest on home mortgages.   
The home mortgage thing was pretty obvious--if you are trying to please the four home set, you don't want to gore that ox, and a lot industries will get behind that one, not just banking, but home builders, furniture manufacturers, the trades which electrify and add plumbing to the homes.  

Charles Koch

But the charitable deduction--oh, that's the way the 1% shields his wealth from the IRS--they can put the money into charitable trusts, still control it, and advertise their beneficence to the people. You can hardly walk past a public building in New York and not see David Koch's name engraved--from the Lincoln Center on down.

David Koch

On the few occasions I've been invited to mix with the ultra wealthy, I was struck by how fundamentally unhappy they looked.  Talking to the great grand daughter of one of the wealthiest men to have ever lived, an heiress who was cooking up the fish we had caught in a stream on her estate which was, in square miles, just a little smaller than the county I live in in New Hampshire, I could not miss the melancholy. 

This is America, not England

That twenty minutes we spent chatting by the water, as she put the fish on a grill, and I asked her about her childhood, we were just two people talking. She must have been forty something and I was 24, and she told me about learning to shoot and to fish and to cook fish.  She actually brightened, remembering all that.
She never asked me any questions about me.  
I thought at the time, she must have been conditioned to not ask about other people because that would open up the door to them asking questions about herself and her family. But, actually, later she seemed willing enough to talk about some aspects of her family and later she actually showed us a large parchment of her enormous family tree.
Eventually, I decided, she may simply not have had much interest in other people. She had two daughters and she was engaged with them, much as any mother. 
But she had that weekend four 20 something medical students her husband had invited up to the estate, and she seemed only passingly interested in any of them, as if they were passing loons, landing on her water, splashing about, amusing but not really worth much thought.

That may be the real sadness of Koch level wealth--the self absorption.
One of the greatest gifts medical school gave me was permission to ask people about themselves and that was never a natural thing for me. It actually requires a certain nerve, and some people are better at it than others. But if you ask people persistently enough, and unwind the onion layers delicately enough, you can experience one of the most satisfying rewards of human existence--you can actually see something, someone, new. 
Discovery is the ultimate joy.

But the sadness and the alienation of the Koch, upper one percent of the upper one per cent  personality is their own personal burden--the downstream results of their malevolence, not merely indifference, but real antipathy, the ultimate alienation toward their fellow man becomes a concern for us all.

That Dastardly, Dreaded, Darth Vader Death Tax!

Mr. Cohn and Mr. Mnuchin stood before the press corps this morning and sung their happy song about President Trump's grand opulent plan (GOP) for "massive" tax cuts for the rich, uh, no wait, for everybody.

Just don't ask me about details. It's all good. Believe me.

Taxes are a lot about math, and big numbers, so I'm not sure, but if I've got this right: Taxes are how the government gets money into it's bank account, the inflow, the income.  And then spending is about how the money goes out of that account. Did I get that right?


If I'm right about that, then they are talking about cutting down on the government in-come.


But, wait: It's all good, because even though we are not going to have as much income from taxes, we actually will have more income from taxes because everyone in the nation will be making so much more money when we unleash the energies of the economic horses with the tax cuts, so the government will actually make more money. 
So, the tax cuts will mean people actually pay more taxes, but they won't mind.
Got that?
Well, they'll pay more taxes because they'll make more money they'll be in higher tax brackets, but that won't bother anyone because there will only be three brackets which is so much simpler than five tax brackets and we all want simplicity.


Actually, wouldn't one tax bracket be even simpler?
So why do we have brackets at all?
Oh, I remember now, it's about making the people who benefit the most from the economy pay more than those who do not.

Brought the highest bracket down to 65% Is that what you want now?

So Mr. Mnuchin said the government would make more money with lower taxes and he said John F. Kennedy, a DEMOCRAT, showed how well this works.
Of course, Professor Google informs me what JFK did was to bring a post World War II tax system from a 90% top bracket down to 65%, as he noted that the idea of that system was to restrain economic growth and consumer demand  during a time of war when there were rations on consumer goods and high  levels of government expenditures. So the historical citation and analogy from the Republicans is, to say the least, a bit problematic.
So everyone wants to know how this will affect his own taxes and someone asked, well what income would be in the lowest 12% bracket and how much do I have to make before I go to the 22% bracket? Those are details. Minutiae, Mr. Mnuchin said. Don't bother Mnuchin with minutiae. We'll let you know. You'll be happy. I promise.


But both Mr. Cohn and Mr. Mnuchin wanted to say the best thing about this new tax plan--well, not really a plan but an outline of wish list items--is it would eliminate the dreaded DEATH TAX. 
When asked whether the Death Tax would be phased out or cut outright, Mr. Cohn said it would be immediately phased out, which is to say it would be suddenly slowly eliminated. Wow, these Republicans have a way with words!

Would you buy a used car from this man?

Mr. Mnuchin added that the death tax is double taxation, that you pay taxes on the money you earn during life and once again at death. And that it wrecks the lives of small farmers who are trying to pass their farms and estates on to their families.


This all seemed very nasty, so I consulted Professor Google who referred me to Chye-Ching Huang from the "Center on Budget and Policy Priorities" who says what Mr. Mnuchin and Cohn are promulgating here is a batch of standard myths (also known as untruths, or lies) about the "death tax" :


1. The "death tax" is not really a death tax since everybody dies but only 2 of 1,000 estates pay any estate tax at all. So if only death and taxes are certain in life, well the tax at death is one tax which is not a certainty, as it  is true for only 0.2% of the population.

2. The double taxation thing is not true because large estates mostly consist of "unrealized" capital gains that have never been taxed and this is the only time and the only way the government has of taxing these gains. "Unrealized gains." Don't you love tax language? Anyway even those estates over $11 million which are taxed are not taxed at the full 50% much of the time.

3. Another myth: The death tax really doesn't add that much to the government's income. It's just a nuisance for the rich folks who have to pay it.


Actually, truth: the number is in the billions. And as a Republican Senator (Everett Dirkson) once noted, a billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

4. Another myth: The estate/death tax unfairly punishes success:
Actually, it affects only those most able to pay as any "progressive" tax system does. The rich (most successful) are asked to pay more, from those to whom the most is given. Or, as some would say, those who have taken (seized) the most from the system are asked to pay back some of that.

5. Yet another myth: The small family farms are destroyed, liquidated as families scramble to pay a 50% tax.
 Actually, only a handful of small family-owned farms and businesses owe any estate tax at all, and virtually none have been liquidated to pay the tax.

So, there you have it. The song and dance, and the stubborn truth.
Aw, but the song and dance were so much more fun.




The very best thing about this new fantasy of making taxes painless and fair and only something someone else pays is that the announcement in front of a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt and the bison head and deer buck (the one with antlers)  head on the walls behind the President. 
I thought the stuff heads looked more magisterial and trustworthy than the two  human stiffs standing behind the President.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cNlM-xK2HM


I liked the Bison head the most. The Bugaboo Steak House used to have a bison head like that on the wall, and periodically, it would turn toward the diners and ask how they liked their meals. 
I took five wrestlers to Bugaboo after a wrestling match and one of these kids was from deep in the inner city, Anacostia in Washington, DC and he was the only Black in the entire place and he was looking pretty uneasy and he had never been to a steakhouse before and when the bison turned to him and asked how he was liking his meal he jumped out of his chair. 
He gathered himself up and sat down and looked around the table at his four team mates who were mercifully understanding about this being a new experience and one of them said, "Feel like you're the Brother from Another Planet, don't you?"
"If that thing says another word to me," the kid said, "You can send my plate out to the car, 'cause that's where I'll be."
Everyone laughed and I guess you can say we all had a bonding moment.
Which is more than I can say about that press conference.

Charles Kesler: Alive and Well and Living in Fantasyland

If all we had to do was wish to make our fondest dreams come true...we might discover we are professors at some university.


"Yet President Trump cannot simply ignore the modern conservative movement. For one thing, its two great successes, victory in the Cold War and reigniting economic growth (through Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts, spending policies and regulatory reforms), have made plausible his own visions of post-Cold War foreign policy and a resurgent economy."


--Charles Kesler

He also believes in Unicorns, Trickle Down and zombies

Charles Kesler, a Harvard man, who now teaches at the Claremont College System in California, writing about where Donald Trump fits into the history of thought in American society lets loose a fond delusion embraced and fondled by American conservatives--that America "beat" the Soviet Union in the cold war, that Americans caused the collapse of the Soviet Union and that American conservatives deserve all the credit for that amazing victory.

If you believe in it, it is true

Ye gads.


In this dreamscape, Ronald Reagan spent so much on the arms race the Soviets simply could not keep up, and they bankrupted themselves and exploded trying to keep up with us.


Another fond memory of the land that never was is that Reagan's tax cuts triggered a huge surge in the economy and we lived happily ever after with low taxes and unleashed private sector investments until the Democrats somehow ruined it all.  Nowhere mentioned in this scenario is tax cuts did not result in an economic boom which resulted in more income to the federal government, but instead the national debt and deficits tripled, and the trickle down, voodoo economics were a complete failure. (Sam Brownback, having forgotten all about this, tried to reprise Reaganomics in Kansas and bankrupted his state almost instantly, having forgotten real history was doomed to repeat it.) Oh, no, just say it is so and it is so:  Reagan cut taxes and we've never had it so good. As Lloyd Benson once pointed out: "Give me a check book and let me write all the checks I want and I'll give you the illusion of prosperity."


It's all right there in a passing sentence in Professor Kesler's New York Times piece about Donald Trump.


Mr. Kesler is said to be something of a Lincoln scholar.  I guess history is all one long argument, and you can imagine Lincoln or any other historical figure is whatever you'd like to believe, and somewhere you can find somebody who's written something to support that belief.

Claremont Colleges Campus

But the fact is political scientists, professors like Kesler, actually are not like engineers or doctors or air plane pilots. Engineers, doctors and air plane pilots deal in hard truths, the sort of facts and truths that mean if you don't get it right the bridge collapses, the patient dies or the air plane crashes.
With men like Kesler they can get it all wrong and nobody can prove they were wrong. There is no reckoning, no box score or death or destruction.  They can simply profess, collect their pay checks and go off for a conference in the Rockies or at Davos and the dream lives on.