On my way to doing some research for another post I had planned for today, I saw a prompt from The Blogging Meetup. The topic was money and I knew I couldn’t pass up the chance.
Now, I came across a video from The Real News Network about the Koch Brothers (Charles and David), two of the wealthiest individuals in the world who inherited an oil fortune. The video, narrated by Danny Glover, was instructive and I came away from it knowing more about the Kochs than I did before.
On the campaign trail, Trump released a tax plan I felt was hideous and disastrous. Not only would it punish middle and lower income families by getting rid of the “head of household” deduction, but the sheer number of tax cuts for the wealthy would only add to the growing federal deficit.
But was his newer tax plan any better?
The principles of Trump’s amended tax plan were presented in a one-page document on Wednesday, April 26, 2017. The plan was discussed by former Goldman Sachs executive and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steve “Foreclosure King” Mnuchin.
I’m not calling out SunkenThought, but I am calling out a mindset. Also, I didn’t want to clog up another person’s comment section with so many words and trigger spam filters.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt during one of his “Fireside Chats,” which helped to calm the American public’s fears. By Unknown or not provided [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsI had this famous saying in my back pocket, but I was waiting for the anniversary or the next inauguration day to finally use this. However, with the type of election we have this year and after the emotions stirred within those who watched both major party conventions, what better time than now?
This is a saying I first heard as a little girl. I was told this by my mother and it was pretty easy to see it play out in real time.
What Is the Origin of This Saying?
My first stop when looking at this saying was the Phrases.org website. There’s a section called The Phrase Finder that is headed by a Gary Martin. While looking for various phrases, I finally decided to search for this one and found that this site serves as good referencing material.
On the page in question, I was lead to a reference. An Olde English book of rhymes, Five Hendreth Pointes of Good Hubandrie (1573) by Thomas Tusser, is apparently the oldest known source of the saying. A certain passage can be found in Chapter 10 (“Good husbandlie lessons), at Verse (or line?) 11:
Today, I’m taking us to church. No, not really, but…Believe it or not, the saying in its current form is a misquoted Biblical verse. This means I will be talking about the verse and other pages of the Bible in order to provide some context for the words. Regardless, I think what was written holds plenty of relevance today for just about everyone.
The Biblical Verse in Question
In my research, I found that the saying was derived from I Timothy 6:10. Admittedly, I am not really an expert on the Bible, so I went to one in order to read the entire the first Epistle (Letter) from the Apostle Paul to Timothy in order to view the full context of the letter. In short, Paul was guiding one of his disciples (Timothy) and telling him about how the latter was to act as a minister.
I would like to begin with a little story about Entertainment Tonight.
1997 Set a Bad Precedent for Cable News Networks
For those of you who don’t know what Entertainment Tonight is, it’s a news magazine that first aired in 1980’s. I watched it at one point in my life. Although it was built on gossip surrounding the stars, it was once a pretty decent program for its purpose. There were short segments on various stars but the most important thing was that there was variety. That all changed the day Jimmy Stewart died. The actor best known for the films “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” died in 1997 and there was a marked change in the way the news was reported. Much of the focus had been on Stewart’s death, and this was especially true on “Entertainment Tonight.”
From that day on, most news magazines/programs would focus their time slots more on one story. (Local news networks had been like this for years prior.) This could be seen in the mid-late part of the 2000’s when broads like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton were given too much attention for their antics. (This could even be seen on 24-hour news networks — and sports networks as well, which I will touch on in the next post.)
Us Americans generally hate the Internal Revenue Service, and rightfully so. It’s only natural to hate the prospect of our government taking from our paycheck before we get them. We hate how long and complicated the tax code is and how tough the penalties are.
In particular, I hate how Americans have to file extra tax forms. We have to do this for extra income, like personal winnings from gambling, which is taxable past certain amounts. And although I never had to deal with this, I really hate how Americans living abroad can be taxed for foreign bank accounts.
I want to delve into that last issue in this post. I briefly broached the issue of Americans and foreign banks in the first post in this series and I wanted to research it more.
Many Americans may remember a time when U.S. citizens could hide their money overseas, particularly in Swiss bank accounts. Oh wait, this still happens…for the wealthy, if they know how to do it. Some poor saps may still have dreams of being able to do that. They need to give up the dream, because they can be dinged without knowing about particular aspects of tax law as it pertains to Americans and foreign banks.
Sometimes it seems that your money may be safer in a piggy bank. At least the state won’t take this money if there is no activity for a few years — knock on wood. Image by free pictures of money via Flickr (CC by 2.0).
This post about no activity was my first blog post ever, so I will start here.
This post is brought to you by the letter E, for escheating.
How Did I Learn About Escheating?
Years back, I read a submission to the Opinion page of The San Bernardino Sun. The opinion was written by a woman whose two teenage sons were trying to save up for a car. The boys thought it would be prudent to store their money in a bank account and perhaps let it build interest. To their surprise, after three years, the bank account had been completely wiped out.
It turns out that after a certain period of no activity in a person’s bank account, a state is given the authority to raid it. In the state of California, that period is three years. The account holder does not have to be notified by the bank before the money is taken, but they may have to fill out certain forms in order to get that money back.
I decided to do some more research on this. Along the way, I learned that the process by which a state can take funds from an idle bank account is called escheating.
Shmaltz and Menudo 
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