My First Time - A Vote was Purchased

We went to the beautiful old Washington County Courthouse in Jonesborough, Tennessee's oldest town, to get copies of some recorded papers printed.  Walking up the foot cupped steps, passed the brass plaque with the Ten Commandments, and into that ageless old building smell, we were happy to find the office on the first floor.

When we registered to vote, we had to get up to the third floor where the corridors were narrow enough to be designed by a submarine engineer.  The first floor office is off of the main lobby.

Upon entering the cramped Register of Deeds office, I noticed the lady at the desk had an "Elect Teresa  Bowman, Register of Deeds" t-shirt on.  Upon looking around, I saw that all but one of the ladies in the office had the same t-shirt.

The first thought was that this was certainly probably illegal, but I soon returned to the business of the day, asking the lady in the t-shirt if she would be so kind as to look up everything they had on Hickory Lake Homes.  It being the one without any hickory trees and about 20 minutes from any lake.

Upon moving here and spending over 30 hours on the phone with CenturyLink to get the Internet straightened out, I learned to keep calling back until I got a southern American woman's voice.  They are compelled to flow with their nature and help people.

In a southern voice so kind that she could have named any price, she told me that the copies would be 25 cents each.

'Okay.  So, Teresa, she's the one, huh?"

"Yes she is.  That's me, and I would appreciate your vote."

I felt a bit embarrassed about not seeing the t-shirt resemblance, but she did look a few years older (and a little heavier) in person.

At this time a male suit walked in asking in a no-nonsense voice about audit papers.  Teresa told us to please excuse her.  She was the only one there that could help this guy, and told us Peggy would help us - she knows just what to do.

Peggy, younger, with a properly supportive t-shirt got to our recordings and printed them out.

"How much is all that," I asked. Looked like about 75 pages.

"Oh, that's all right, Sweetie.  Just vote for us in the April primary."

I kept my voice down, turned my head a bit and squinted,  "It's my first time, you know.  Having my vote bought."

Looking at me askance, she said, "Ya'll ain't from around here, are ya'll?"

Giving me that southern eye-bat wink that always shakes up my balance, she said, "It may take a little getting used to, but you'uns will learn to love this mountaineer heritage we have around here.  Scotch-Irish, you know.

"I can tell about people ...  Ya'll gonna be one of us soon."

Picking up our papers, we walked out unable to stop laughing about how we could not wait to come back to the Washington County Courthouse and tried to think of some reason for doing that.

The Happiness of Astronomers

Astronomers are the happiest people on earth.  Their sense of wonder and curiosity animates a permanent smile on their faces as they spend endless hours and money simply raptured in the pointless pursuit of more questions.

A Fish Doesn't Know he's Wet

Probably true.  But he does know when he is dry.



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I brought up the following Facebook comment at our table at the diner this morning:

 "I don't find much relevance for capitalist
 philosophy with the business owners that I know."

Vacant looks turned into vigorous facial expressions and discussions followed.  The fish/wet thing came up with the question of whether the fish considers water a philosophy.

This led to a philosophical discussion of air and it would be necessary to have a philosophy of it if you wanted to breathe.

When I mentioned bartering some were quick to add that trade with chickens is trade with a different store of value, and therefore, capitalism.

That deteriorated into one man's vague college memory about when they used chess pieces for money.

"Yep, I brung a queen in to git a bag of tobackah and some rollin' papers, and the clerklady gave a rook and two pawns in change."

Then some tried hard to be serious.

"If it ain't using capitalism, they must be state run, state owned, or state regulated.  That's the difference."

"Mebee they's got slaves instead of paid labor employees."

"If the owners control the production and they get an income from their labor, the relevance is in every aspect of their lives, whether they find it or wish to ignore it, they are immersed in it."

The topics then drifted into food, the weather, and what to do with the rest of our lives.

Jacob mentioned if it ain't raining he was going out for fish tonight.

Stock Buybacks

I often find myself thinking about a junior high Earth Science teacher, who in 1961 was so embarrassed that President Kennedy had to step in front of the nation and show Americans where Vietnam was and what it looked like, that he was compelled to action the very next school day.

An imposing figure, boxer, adventurer, weight lifter, and mountain climber, his furiosity over the situation got our attention when he said, "This atrocity will not stand as long as I have the control to do a small part to alleviate the situation. This being Earth Science, I have decided that you will learn the earth.

"Every river, every country, every mountain range, every state, province, continent, ocean, major lake, desert, plateau, and whatever I can't think of right now will be burned into your American brain.

"I fear the day that a future president will have to stand in from of America with a map of the United States and show them where South Dakota is.

"For this semester you will be immersed in maps: first with the names of all the natural and political features, then tested with blank maps you will be instructed to fill in."

And we did.

I wonder if JFK felt like apologizing for being so elementary.

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The study and learning of our economic system would also seem to be important, but judging by people's comments on social media, very few Americans have the slightest clue how our economy and money systems work, and why they work so well. Many of these commenters consider a corporation's main purpose to be at odds with the vague concept of the Common Good, which has a variety of definitions in the minds of the beholders that are all far from common. Without discussing the unfortunate mistake of thinking that our system itself is wrong, and therefore whatever the main actors in our system (corporations) do to advance their purpose is wrong, I'll be Mr. Prentiss. On the fact that the system is the best, most efficient, fairest, and most commonly good that man can come up with, consider the following: The purpose of a pure corporation is to grow wealth and profits, and, as a result, to maximize shareholders' wealth by paying dividends and increasing the stock price. it is a wonder that the tax reform has motivated so many corporations to reward their employees rather than plow the money into wealth growing activities. After a short lesson on the very basic concepts of corporations and stock prices, I'll

try to answer that. Shareholder wealth is the appropriate goal of a business firm in a capitalist society. In a capitalist society, there is private ownership of goods and services by individuals, and to survive it must show a stream of increasing profits. Those individuals own the means of production to make money. The profits from the businesses in the economy accrue to the shareholders. When business managers try to maximize the wealth of their firm, they are actually trying to increase their stock price. As the stock price increases, the stockholders' wealth increases. As the stock price goes up, the market cap of the firm increases and the net worth of the stockholder increases.

Profits and a good outlook toward the future economic climate does this every day, but... A fast and effective way to increase shareholder wealth is a stock buyback. The company goes into the stock marketplace and purchases its own stock, driving up demand for the stock, and decreasing its supply. (I can almost see you, Mr. President.) This makes the price go up. Kind of basic, but either misunderstood, or considered an evil system because some people believe that all income should be equally distributed, and the wealth in a system like this is distributed unevenly, as is all wealth, everywhere, under all economic systems. So why would a corporation, if pure to its tenets, use tax reform to increase the wealth of its employees? It doesn't make sense in a linear, scientific corporate definition way, but may become clear with addition of the human nature variable. The motives to reward employees are as varied as the people who run these corporations. Some may think it is being socially responsible and think that is a pure and noble pursuit, but for the most part, they are directly bowing the first and foremost purposes of the organization - to survive and grow shareholder wealth.

And it follows that loyal, qualified, long term employees with high morale will help the corporation achieve its goals, work hard to advance themselves and the company.

Whatever the reasons, as a person who appreciates how near perfect our system works as it parallels the currents of human nature, I am comforted to see how surprised the critics were when so many corporations have been and will continue to generously reward employees with the tax reform money.

As an additional note to those who philosophize failure, the corporate tax reform has no expiration date and you can't buy your own stock forever. They will have to do something else with all that money very soon.