Out of curiosity I went there. It is a
“Price Waterhouse” site and, indeed, it is quite easy.
See the enclosed printouts. Note that once
you get “in” to your own Congressman and Senators’ names (merely by typing in
your zip code), you are invited to “Create a personalized communication to your
Members of Congress” (emphasis added).
And there, already neatly typed for you, is a five-paragraph letter to your Senators and
Congressman complaining about the “unfairness” of dividend taxation and comparing
it to the “death tax” (one of the fairest taxes ever devised by any government,
it has always seemed to me: “You can’t
take it with you”). The only thing
“personalized” about this letter is the sender’s signature:
You can’t add or subtract a word. How easy
can it be to get “personal”?
Fuck this.
I am highly offended that any of the money I have sent to your firm over the years – my
own and, much more, my clients’ – is going to support the further division of the
rich from the poor. This is our nation’s
biggest problem, and Salomon / Smith / Barney / Global / Price / Waterhouse is making it
easy for us to make it worse.
It is offensive enough to me personally to have received this crap from your firm, but what
disturbs me even more is the thought that all your ignorant customers, too, are
receiving this, and thinking, “Duh! Oh!
Yeah! Duh!
That’s double taxation! Gee!
That’s not fair! And it’s this
easy to protest? Well, hell, yeah!
I ain’t rich myself, but I WANNABE! Here, Mr.
Congressman, is my two cents’ worth!” (but actually Price Waterhouse’ and Smith
Barney’s).
It’s that kind of ignorance that leads the hoi polloi into the belief of the
righteousness of a war for oil found under other peoples’ sands, and that brings unto
us bombings of world trade centers. I
don’t care if it’s “double” taxation, or triple taxation.
All I know is that if the filthy rich do not start contributing to the health and benefit
of the world a little more – whether through taxation, philanthropy or self-denial
– there is not going to be any world left for them to rape and pillage.
Ask Osama bin Laden.
The income taxes one pays depend for the most part upon the income bracket he or she is
in, not on the source or nature of the income.
Poor people in the lowest bracket, whose only income is Social Security and dividends,
already do not have to pay tax on dividends.
It is at least disingenuous, if not outright mendacious, to say, as the Price Waterhouse
web site does, that eliminating the tax on dividends will “help senior citizens,”
with the implication that the tax preys most heavily on aged destitutes struggling to get
by. Your plea, like the ridiculous and
enormous tax cuts engineered by the favored son in the White House, is designed to aid
the well-to-do, and only the well-to-do. It
is every bit as ridiculous and mendacious as suggesting that estate and inheritance taxes
preyed on poor family farmers.
Your politics stinks. Keep it to yourselves.
Sincerely, Natty Bumppo
James S. Secrest Sr., Esq.
January 22, 2003
Attorney at Law
Scottsville, Ky.
Dear Jim:
Thanks for your letter. My current ire is
directed at the “West Group” (formerly West Publishing Company; you remember them).
I trust that you remember also the old days, when we bought law books.
I still buy books, for Kentucky statutes. But
some slicker from West convinced me several years ago to subscribe to West’s CD-ROM
service for Kentucky Decisions because, in addition to the “books” I would get
on disk, I would get a connection to “WestLaw.”
I took the cheapest route, which allowed me to connect to WestLaw only as needed, for an
additional per minute charge each time I used it (plus telephone toll; no "free" 800
number there).
But with all the cheaper and even free stuff coming out on the internet, about the end of
2001 I found even that monthly charge, by then up to about $80, exorbitant for my needs.
And I had a disk with Kentucky Decisions up through 53 SW 3d.
So I canceled.
At my age and stage of practice, I do not have to do legal research every month.
But the last time I tried, about a month ago, I couldn’t read my disk (er, that is,
my machine could not read the disk).
I was thinking, “Hmmm . . . did West use my connection one last time to go into my
computer and disable the compact disk reader for ‘its’ disks?”
No, no; nothing that invasive.
West called me last week to offer me a “Come back” package, without WestLaw but at
“half price” ($43.50 a month, which means “full price” has risen
from $80 to $87 in a year. It began at
$42.50 in 1995). I called back with
a query this morning (yes, you have to subscribe for at least a year), and then I asked why
my last disk from my previous subscription could not be read.
“Oh!” said the chirpy little woman’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Those expire.”
“Oh!” I replied, jollily. “It’s
West’s little marketing trick. Thank you
for the rip-off.”
So volumes 889 through 999 of SW 2d and volumes 1 through 53 of SW 3d, which I thought
I had “bought” (and for Christ’s sake paid enough to buy, at $80 a month),
I no longer have.
Guess what? I don’t have volumes 1 through 87
of SW (1st, not 2d, not 3d), either, and never did.
What I do have, in their place, is a nearly complete set of
“Kentucky Reports” (including Hughes, Sneed, Hardin, Bibb, T. B.
Monroe, Dana, B. Monroe, W. P. D. Bush et al*), supplemented
by a full set of “Kentucky Opinions” and
16 volumes of “Kentucky Law Reporter.”
Ancient books, these. They date to 1785,
and the oldest in my set were printed in 1869.
Some are in good shape; they may even have antique value.
No, I am not going to exhibit them on PBS’ “Road Show.”
The important thing to me is that they are books.
And I still have them. And I can still
read them.
I never did read the boilerplate contract West sent me on the CD-ROM package.
No doubt there is some fine print in it suggesting that, in effect, I was “renting”
or “leasing” the books, not “buying” them.
But that sure isn’t how they were “sold.”
Would you be interested in representing the plaintiffs in a class action against the West
Group? You’d have “difficult clients” –
mostly lawyers. Maybe all lawyers:
The libraries may just keep up their subscriptions without question.
Sincerely, Natty Bumppo
* In the old, old days, before West took over
with its “Southwes-
tern [now “South Western”] Reporter” series, and even before
the George G. Fetter Printing Co. of Louisville, Ky., and its suc-
cessors took over with numbered “Kentucky Reports,” the vol-
umes were named, not numbered, for the court reporters who
compiled them.
The New Yorker
September 11, 2002
Dear Editors:
I look forward each week to reading Hendrik Hertzberg’s editorials in Talk of the Town
for the reporting, the clarity, the keen insight, and the occasional brilliance.
“Bloomberg Butts In” (Sept. 9), unfortunately, could have been written by your
average fifth-grader.
First the reporting. Hertzberg mentions the ban
on smoking in California bars, but fails to mention the creative and massive civil disobedience
to it – not by the poor, who cannot afford lawyers (or cigarettes either, any more),
but by the Uppies.
Hertzberg calls the enormous cigarette tax “the real death tax” and dismisses its
overwhelming discrimination against the poor as helping them more than it hurts them because
it is saving their lives. This is paternalism
at its grossest. I expect to see an editorial
next week in favor of requiring waders in the Hamptons to wear water wings.
Let’s prohibit sky-diving and skiing while we’re at it.
Then Hertzberg assumes that “a smoker is simply a person who would like to quit
smoking.” He makes that assumption not just
for himself, but for all of us (“as anyone who has ever been or known one can
attest,” were his words).
I have “been one.” I quit three years
ago after 37 years as “one.” I
didn’t quit because I wanted to. I
didn’t want to. I quit because I had to.
With my childhood asthma returning, I found that I could no longer breathe and smoke too.
Would Hertzberg praise and congratulate my asthma for enriching my life?
Perhaps we should visit anthrax upon those who still can afford to smoke, to do them the favor
we are doing the poor with Hertzberg’s “real death tax.”
I don’t particularly miss smoking (I merely see myself as a different person now).
But neither do I regret having smoked all those years.
I congratulate myself only on the timing of my abstention, in conjunction with the Clintonian
and Bloombergian “death taxes.” (What
used to be called the “death taxes,” by the way, were the estate and inheritance taxes.
They never touched the poor, and they barely grazed the middle class.
Wonder who was in power when they were repealed?)
I know a lot of smokers who don’t want to quit, but are being forced to, by their
government, which is enriching itself in its process of yet another soaking of the poor for
their own good. The departed Thomases –
Paine, Doubting, and Jefferson – surely are rolling over in their graves.
The present Thomas can afford to smoke, and has the power to decide whether others can.
Sincerely, Natty Bumppo
Kentucky Educational Television
September 10, 2002
Lexington, Ky.
Dear KET:
I thought I might have been a little late with my annual contribution this year, and here
are the reasons: Kentucky magazine and your
program guide quit coming to my post office box; and you keep sending these solicitations
out throughout the year. I don’t mind
getting a reminder in the mail about the time my annual contribution is due; but when I am
continually bombarded by money-grubbing junk mail, I tend to pitch it in the nearest waste
basket (they have a huge one right at the sorting desk in our little post office).
Perhaps, I thought, that’s what happened to the real KET renewal notice (my subscriptions
to Harper’s and the New Yorker tend to lapse, from time to time, for the same reason).
Anyway, after a few months without your program guide, I researched my payables archives and
found that, indeed, I had not missed my annual contribution.
I gave you $35 in January of 2001 (check No. 2677, 1/11/01), and another $50 in December
(No. 3086, 12/11/01, with “Annual contribution” typed on the memo line).
But in my confusion, and in hope my subscription to Kentucky magazine and your program guide
would be renewed, I sent you another $50 on August 22, 2002, by check No. 3420,
dated August 21, 2002.
Then, about two weeks ago, I read in a newspaper article that your entire programming schedule
was being reconfigured; that almost everything would find a new time slot; that most of the
“Kentucky-oriented” programs would move to KET, and that most nationally oriented
programs would move to “KET-2.” This
caused some distress here, as the nationally and internationally oriented programs tend to be
our favorites; and we live in the boondocks, and we don’t get “KET-2” here
(perhaps you did not realize this, but not all intelligent people in Kentucky live in
Louisville and Lexington).
Anyway, we did not feel the pinch until my wife went to tune in her favorite program,
Nature, at 7 p.m. (Central time) Sunday evening and found, in its place, some
stupid British comedy. She ran to me in
distress. I could give her no immediate
reassurance, as my program guide subscription seemed to have been canceled.
But we do have the internet here in the boondocks, and I found by your web site that Nature
has been moved to 8 p.m. (Central time) on Saturday (and that Nova, my favorite
program, has been moved to 9 p.m. Saturday).
This was distressing news to me, but devastating news to my wife.
She is a Polish immigrant. She does not
understand much English (and certainly no British comedy.
Come to think of it, neither do I. British
comedy is rather like British food, is it not?), but she does understand animals; and she
watched Nature faithfully every Sunday evening.
In fact it is the only television program she has cared to watch most weeks.
The problems with 8 p.m. Saturday are that (1) it is past her bedtime, and (2)
Saturday night is jazz night on our public radio station.
There is no other time to listen to jazz on the radio here in the boondocks.
And my wife understands, and likes, jazz music, too.
She even likes to fall asleep to it on the radio on Saturday nights.
I do too.
Please either (a) give me my money back, or (b) send someone down here to train my wife how to
tape-record Nature every Saturday night without having to be there at the machine to push the
buttons at the time it comes on. (If I were you,
I would choose the former; it would be much easier.
Have you ever tried to teach a Polak anything?)
Sincerely, Natty Bumppo
Vertrux Office Products
September 6, 2001
Garden Grove, Calif.
Re: Taco Bell syndrome
Dear Vertrux:
I telephoned you this afternoon to place an order.
A robot advised me that all sales agents were busy, and asked me to hold the line.
I held the line for 58 seconds and was about to hang up when an apparent human being answered, saying, “Hello, this is Liz; can
you hold a moment?”
“No, I cannot! ” I yelled – to no avail: I was on hold again.
I hung up.
It has become rather clear to me that you do not want my money.
Sincerely, Natty Bumppo
P.S. If you fax or telephone me in
reply to this letter, I will file a
petition in the United States District Court for the Southern
District of Colorado to grant a furlough to the Unabomber.
Harper’s
June 17, 2001
Dear Editor:
Of all the claptrap (Letters, July) inspired by David Foster Wallace (“Tense Present,”
April), the clappiest by far (unless I have overlooked some subtle irony, as another writer
accuses Cristina Nehring of having done in her review of Adam Gopnik) was Greg Felton’s
railing over the split infinitive.
What Mr. Felton seems to fail to realize is that, although
there are reasons of style and emphasis not to split infinitives,
there is no structural reason not to split an infinitive in
English – his reference to Noam Chomsky’s canard
notwithstanding.
Chomsky’s concern over “structural ambiguity” actually
is one of style and meaning – i.e., of syntax
– not of structure.
And if Mr. Felton finds the phrase “to better understand”
ambiguous, God help him in his reading (Good heavens!
He might even need a context!).
The converse phraseology, “to understand better,” is at
least as ambiguous, if not more.
Does it mean to gain a better understanding, or does it mean to
understand the word or concept known as “better”?
The structural issue is this:
In most other languages, an infinitive is one word (e.g.,
“esse”); and
it simply cannot be split
(without destruction).
In English, mirabile dictu, it can.
One reason some famous writers reared in other languages have adopted
English for their craft is its flexibility of expression – not
for linguistic pollution, but
for nuance.
And it appears that Mr. Felton and his ilk would deny them
(and the rest of us) some of this nuance.
Nor is Mr. Felton’s argument for following the infinitive
with the adverb all that persuasive (“to go boldly”).
Who says (besides Mr. Felton) that the adverb must come
last for emphasis? One other
language with which I have some familiarity is Polish; and, in
learning it, I was instructed that word order is left largely to the
speaker or writer, depending on the emphasis desired; and that to
emphasize a word or phrase, you place it last in the clause –
or first.
The particular split infinitive “to boldly go” is, as
Mr. Felton indicated, a pet peeve of linguistic puritans
(including many a “SNOOT”).
I would agree that this awkward phrase is a bit of a malaprop, and
I would submit that its very awkwardness has given it an emphasis
beyond Mr. Felton’s wettest dreams.
My hat is off to whoever wrote it.
Sincerely, Natty Bumppo
The Courier-Journal
May 1, 2001 [published May 9, 2001]
Louisville, Ky.
Re: “Souter’s Folly”
To the Editor:
The Hon. Mr. Justice David Souter has taken a lot of flak – and
deserved, and earned – over his opinion that it is lawful, and
con-
stitutional, to arrest, and handcuff, and incarcerate,
a soccer mom,
in front of her children, for failing to buckle up.
But in all the outrage over “Souter’s Folly,” I have seen
no com-
plaints over the statute making it a crime not to wear a
seat belt.
Such “Big Brother will protect you if you
don’t protect yourself”
coercion is every bit as unreasonable
as being arrested for not do-
ing it, and just as gross an invasion of
privacy as a prohibition of
contraception or abortion.
Some have expressed dismay that the usually “liberal” Justice
Souter voted with the Supreme Court’s four Neanderthal men on
this one. But isn’t
this what “liberals” do?
Attempt to protect us
from ourselves, with “water wings”
statutes such as the seat belt
and motorcycle helmet laws?
Sincerely, Natty Bumppo
“Shareowner Services”
October 9, 2000
“Reorganization Department”
Box 64858
St. MN 55164
Re [per your “re” caption]:
Reliastar Inc/212/NATHANIEL J BUMPPO/312244
Dear “Shareowner Services”: I received a letter from you dated October 6, 2000, asking me to
mail you some stock certificates “Of Reliastar/NWNL,” and to tele-
phone 800-468-9716 or 651-450-4064 if I had questions.
I had a number of questions; so I dialed both numbers and, with
each, got a branched button menu conducted by a robot. With
some difficulty on each (easier on the second, because by then I had
learned how the game is played) I reached an option to speak with a
human being (I guessed that was what was meant by “shareowner
representative,” although I have some doubts now, after my experi-
ence) only to be left interminably on hold.
I want you to know that I do not play this game. If you want me
to ask my questions by telephone, you may call me, at the number
above, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. (Central time, as in
St. Paul, Minnesota) Monday through Friday. My telephone usually
is answered by a human being. When it is not, a voice mail device
will take your message without your having to press a single button
or dial further (you will not encounter any branched robot menus);
and a human being will return your call promptly if he is convinced
you are not a telemarketer.
I get the feeling, from your letter, that there is some issue regard-
ing some stock I may hold in the Reliastar or Northwestern National
life insurance company. If there is an issue, I, too, would like to re-
solve it. But I will not attempt to resolve it with a computer or a tel-
ephonic robot.
And I have a preliminary question before we get to those suggest-
ed by your letter: With whom am I corresponding? There is no
company name in your letterhead or in the return address on your
envelope, and your letter was not signed. This question is of no
small concern to me, as the letter asks me to mail you stock certifi-
cates that, for all I know, may have some value.
If you telephone me, please check first to make sure you are a live
human being with a voice. If you write me again, please see that the
letter is signed, by a real person, with a real name, and, if in behalf of
a corporation or other firm, with identification of that firm.
Thank you. The lines are open.
Sincerely, Natty Bumppo
J. Scott Harper, CLU/CFP
July 25, 2000
TransAmerica Life Companies
Box 27769
Austin TX 78755
Attn.:
Melissa de la Rosa
Re:
“Trendsetter Super 10” etc. term life insurance
Dear Mr. Harper / Ms. De la Rosa:
Well, thank you so much for the most interesting fax!
When I received your original solicitation a week ago, it looked
too good to be true (and, of course, it was!).
I discussed it imme-
diately with my broker (“Read the fine print,”
he said) and my
brother (“Ha! Ha!” he said.
He works for TransAmerica, by the
way).
The solicitation indicated that I, at age 60, if reasonably healthy,
could buy half a million smackers of term life for only a little over
fifteen hundred dollars a year.
Your faxed quotation, however,
indicates a premium in excess of
thirteen thousand dollars a
year.
“Hello, Earth!
Coming in to land . . . .”
Please indicate, on the form provided below (return to me;
photocopy
acceptable), the nature of the anomaly:
___ “No 60-year-old
man – not even a lifetime teetotaler
and nonsmoker – is healthy enough to qualify for the
stated premium!
Get real, Buster!”
___ classic bait & switch
___ typo.
Sincerely, Natty Bumppo
cc: FTC, SEC, e pluribus unum
WKYU-FM Public Radio
April 6, 2000
Western Kentucky University
Bowling Green KY 42101
Dear WKYU:
I was grieved to hear on your air waves Wednesday of the death
of
your announcer Bill Hanson; and so was my teen-age son, who
does
not even like classical music.
And then – within hours – your obituary turned into
another
WKYU-FM fund drive.
How crass can you get? Do
you think
it makes a difference to couch this abject request in
terms “In lieu
of flowers the family requests
. . . ”?
Can you not let the poor man rest in peace?
My God, he gave
his life to radio:
Must he give his death also?
Has it not occurred
to you that he might have been tired?
That perhaps even the reas-
on he died is that he was
tired? of fund
raising? of radio,
even?
You want some more money?
You can cancel my subscription
to your monthly program guide,
that will save you a buck.
You
may remove my name from your membership rolls.
I will rejoin,
and give again generously, when you quit fucking
whining for
more money.
Sincerely, Natty Bumppo
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