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For today’s prompt, write a dead end poem. Of course, I was thinking in terms of the challenge, but a dead end can literally mean the end of a person’s life, a dead end road, a dead end job, dead end mortgage, and so on. Take the phrase “dead end” and apply it to a noun, and the possibilities are nearly endless (except, well, there’s the whole “dead end” finality to it, I suppose). I hope it’s fun and that the blog is alive and well today.
Dead end. An easy prompt. A dreadfully easy prompt for someone who has spent their life running into walls. While I admit most walls were of my own construction — John builds the greatest walls! — some walls were built by others. One wall in particular, the United States citizen taxation walls of laws, has been a huge road block in my life. And there was only one way to get around it, so I took it. I left the American side of me behind that wall and moved forward. Thank you presidents Lincoln and Obama for being so un-American.
Perhaps these two gentlemen will eventually be seen as two of the greatest presidents. While I am not an Obama lover for many reasons, I am not a hater. He’s a smart, reasonable man, but maybe he’s too reasonable. I’d rather he did more his first term while he had control. I wish he have made even more changes: cut government, implement true universal healthcare, and get America on a path of world participation. Instead, he’s blocked financial growth. He’s implemented FATCA which has pissed off ever foreign financial institution, over 160,000 of them. Foreign banks if my words are too big.
Why do foreign banks matter?
Because now foreign banks do not wish to do business with America. FATCA poisons the waters. If you are a medium-sized company say in Hong Kong and you need financing (all companies use financing), then you need to give your banks certain documents: business plans, financial statements, cash flow, risk analysis, etc. It is now risky for banks to deal with the US. I can envision foreign bankers telling foreign businesses to ditch the American sourcing. Sell all you want; because we want their money, but if you buy from them, no money for you. Source your expertise from China or even the hated Japanese. Just don’t source from America.
I don’t know this is happening, but I do know banks around the world are shutting American citizens like myself from basic banking services, and millions of individuals and an estimated one million small businesses are scrambling to rid themselves of their American ties. I relinquished my citizenship and this last week signed a form with my bank confirming I was no longer a risk to them. No, I didn’t get a toaster.
Corporate inversions are another form of disloyalty — in the eyes of homelanders, but to me it’s common sense. If a large corporation has operations around the world — a common example is Ireland with its 12.5% corporate tax rate — they want to be able to compete; they need to be able to compete. America’s corporate tax rate is 39%, so if company X, American, makes a million dollars in profits and company Y, Irish, also makes a million dollars in profits, Company X nets $610,000 while company Y nets $875,000. That’s called unfair competition, and that’s why American multinationals are inverting to foreign ownership. They want to be taxed 39% on American operations and 12.5% on Irish operations. It’s only fair, right? Obviously there is room for cheating, and that needs to be controlled, but as it stands now, the US is the biggest tax cheater of the all. These troubles are its own fault, instituted by Lincoln in 1863 and reiterated by Obama in 2010.
Taxation without representation!
Representation is not a vote. Sorry, but a American vote means nothing to me because no elected official can impact my life: I drive Canadian roads, work for Canadian employers, use Canadian schools, use Canadian health care, use Canadian retirement vehicles, and pay Canadian taxes (as I should). What possible claim does the US have on my life as a US citizen when I use zero of its services? That’s the way the rest of the world thinks, it’s the way I think, and it’s the way any common sense person thinks. Just as the US taxes foreigners living and working in its borders.
The original law was drafted to stop Confederate sympathizers expatriating to Canada to avoid the new income tax act. It was the only logical tool at the time. But this is no longer 1863. Our world is computerized. We don’t need to tax citizens abroad, we can tax them as they leave, like Canada and some other countries do. We could give citizens a choice: be taxed on everything you own (with a much lower than $2 million limit) as you leave, or keep filing with reduced foreign income exclusions until you return from your temporary stay.
This is no a hard concept. It’s called fairness. But Americans are too wrapped up in their own aggrandizement to care. America is number one, and everything outside her borders sucks and should be leached because they are subhuman civilizations. Maybe that’s not what you as an American think, but it’s how the world sees you. The US sucks in every comparative category: healthcare, education, standard of living, satisfaction, freedom, or whatever. The only thing Americans are first in is saying they are number one.
My rant’s not over, not by a long shot, but it’s time to post a poem. Another rant about, not my dead end, but the potential dead end for America of it doesn’t get its shit together. FATCA, Corporate inversions, and more recently a ubiquitous fear of trade deals. Listen to me: if you kill all free trade deals, it will send a clear message to the world that you do not want their business. This might be an eye opener to you, but the rest of the world no longer needs American know-how. And most nations are more than willing to try and fail on their own. Obama brags of his $2 trillion trade surplus. Don’t wait until that turns into a $2 trillion trade deficit before you believe me. I might no longer be a citizen, but I care about my country.
#FATCA
Today I’m filing my 8854, what the FATCA for?
Because my fellow Americans have forgotten
life, liberty, and the illusive pursuit of happiness
were intended to be inalienable.
Taxation without representation has caused previous revolts
financial slaves of the free world
you have no right to bury your heads and hide from, the oxymoron
President Obama, the thinker
The biggest tax cheat of them all
The American People
I am angry and sad, my home nation
dying in a world of progress, more intent on building walls
than living its propaganda. Freedom.
Hate cannot defend right
A bully cannot pretend might
The myopic will never be able to write, happy endings
A blinded horse is incapable of leading the way
straight roads only with shallow ditches
a future without curves.
A nation with the least common sense and the most guns
can only lead to dead ends.
Haphazard raises so many ideas with me, I can hardly think today of anything but poetry. Though I made a nice buttered chicken curry without burning down the house. My first though was to write haphazardly, but experience has told me to feed the Muse first, get the poetic muscles moving first. So I thought of my writing routine and how haphazard it is, how haphazard it should be, to some degree. Controlled, intentional haphazardness. I wrote of a writing day.
I wanted the next poem to feel haphazard and nonsensical, but of course it needs to make sense in my head. I took a nap after my curry lunch. I was full and sleepy, but I scribbled some lines as I lie there. The opening term, The Sobriquet men, haunted my dreams. I repeated it too many times for comfort. Who knows, maybe it will become a novel some day. The poem, I think — I don’t know if I will ever be sure about this mess — is not about specific individuals, though the Trumps, Cruzes, and Boehners did come to mind as did the so called 1%, but more about an idea. I think it is about the so-called American Dream (
Canadian whiskey and made Manhattans. I had also made my own bitters with Vodka, so we had the Manhattan and Russian angles of Us Conductors covered. Round two was the same but with Angostura Bitters for comparison. Both were good, but the traditional won 4 to 0.
Café Moi 