Teacher, my brain is full. May I be excused?

This is not The Onion - it is a cover from a catalog of courses for accountants put out by a firm in Bozeman.
This is not The Onion – it is a cover from a catalog of courses for accountants put out by a firm in Bozeman.
Phew! What a relief now to have my continuing education credits in place, and a grueling 16-hour tax conference behind me. My daughter, a non-accountant who works for a CPA firm in Montana, tells me that the people in that office all behave as if they are the exception to the rule that accountants are rigid and dull and humorless. They are not exceptions, she says.

She also says that I used to be like that when she was young. My daughter, you see, is very smart in human relations, knowing how to play her dad.

My most lasting reflection on the conference is how it focused almost entirely on the problems of the rich, and at the opportunities we have to save them a buck here or there, keeping a slice for ourselves of course. The tax law has yielded many new opportunities in that regard. There was also quite a bit on the health care law, nothing earth-shattering. As it is a room full of starched-shirt right-wing accountants, few are aware that the lower classes are now a conduit for a huge subsidy to the important classes: the corporations, their well-paid managers and employees. (I mean only the upper-tier employees.) No one in the room questions the need for health insurance companies, as worthless a societal segment as those who used to make their living bringing slaves to the new world. Some institutions we can do without.

The trade magazine for the profession is called the “Journal of Accountancy,” and not the “Progressive Magazine.”

Ah, but I am light of foot today, full of new energy, ready to clear my desk and get on with life. It’s over! My license is in place for two more years. My brain is hereby clicked to its “off” position.

7 thoughts on “Teacher, my brain is full. May I be excused?”

  1. … the problems of the rich, and at the opportunities we have to save them a buck here or there

    Oh my. The snark writes itself.

    …few are aware…

    There was your chance, dude. Jump up and start hectoring them about the conspiracies to bring down the twin towers; JFK; all of Vietnam and communism; the Boston bombings; Sandy Hook; all of the war on terror. Get some spittle flying. Talk about Newton’s Third Law; metallurgy; Benford’s Law; all that stuff. Lay it on thick. Hand out tracts. Wear a saffron robe and hand out flowers. It was a target rich environment; you could have been a star.

    as worthless a societal segment as those who used to make their living bringing slaves to the new world.

    Would that include certain people of Semitic extraction?

    And since when has vice peddling ever bothered you? Drug dealers, pimps, coyotes bringing in illegals: all condoned here.

    And “slaves to the new world”: looks like someone is adding voltage to an analogy by playing the race card. Tsk. This was all just agri-business importing an underclass to pick crops that were rotting in the fields, an underclass that becomes a net drain on the public purse and the social fabric. Deja vu all over again.

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      2. I don’t think you’ve ever read any Rand. She is pretty brutal in criticizing business: most of the businessmen in Atlas Shrugged were toadies and lackeys; making deals with the gov’t to protect their piece of the pie.

        Those who claim humanitarianism on these types of forums are pretty quick with an insult or a cruel remark. Something there about the nature of evil.

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        1. Oh, I’ve read Rand. Don’t kid yourself. It’s crappy writing with cardboard cutout characters, but she was openly wanting to exhibit her philosophy more than write a novel. Even so, so many others have done so much better work, I don’t know where she gets her traction.

          Her philosophy, which is utopian, has two (major) shortcomings: One, like Marxism, when put into practice, it leads to disaster, and two, it focuses on a false notion that the magnificent accomplishments of a few happen in a vacuum.

          Her appeal is to younger minds, and in her personal life she was cult figure. Most who read her outgrow her, as I did. And don’t forget, even as she abused her husband in life by openly having an affair as he drank himself to death, she collected his Social Security and took Medicare to help with her terminal illness, lung cancer, caused by a life of chain smoking.

          That’s a contradiction. What does Rand say about that? Oh yeah, she contradicts herself. But she says there are no contradictions, only faulty premises. So she lived her life on faulty premises?

          Not someone I would admire or emulate.

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