deathmtn

Loaves of bread wrapped at the bakery could be bought at the grocery store and brought home to be sliced. It was an exciting time when the bakeries began to provide loaves already sliced.

Exciting, too, was the discovery that ice cream could be bought in packages at the grocery store, made possible by electric refrigeration. Before that, ice cream could be had only at the ice cream store, kept cold by means of real ice. As the packaging got better, the taste and quality improved.

In the 1920s the horse and wagon were an important part of life in Cambridge. That was how we received our daily supply of milk and cream early each morning, left on our back doorstep. If the day was very cold and we were slow in taking it in, the bottle of milk might have a stovepipe hat; the cream would rise to the top, freeze, and push the cap up. Homogenized milk had yet to be invented.

The ice man brought huge cakes of ice on his wagon. His nine-by-nine-inch card in our front window would tell him the size of the pieces we needed by its position. He would cut the piece, carry it on his back into our kitchen or pantry, and use his huge tongs to place it on top of our oaken ice chest.

The fresh fish man came on certain days, and always on Fridays. The vegetable man also had a regular schedule. But most spectacular of all was the ragman, who rode through the streets calling, “Rags, rags, any old rags.” He bought old newspaper, too, paying a few cents a pound for each.

Confidential tax records, however, reveal that Johnson’s last-minute maneuver benefited two families more than almost any others in the country — both worth billions and both among the senator’s biggest donors.

Dick and Liz Uihlein of packaging giant Uline, along with roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, together had contributed around $20 million to groups backing Johnson’s 2016 reelection campaign.

The expanded tax break Johnson muscled through netted them $215 million in deductions in 2018 alone, drastically reducing the income they owed taxes on. At that rate, the cut could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life.

But the tax break did more than just give a lucrative, and legal, perk to Johnson’s donors. In the first year after Trump signed the legislation, just 82 ultrawealthy households collectively walked away with more than $1 billion in total savings, an analysis of confidential tax records shows. Republican and Democratic tycoons alike saw their tax bills chopped by tens of millions, among them: media magnate and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg; the Bechtel family, owners of the engineering firm that bears their name; and the heirs of the late Houston pipeline billionaire Dan Duncan.

When I wrote that thing a couple of years ago, I said, “Well, I cannot net the net.” By now, I can net the net. I think it’s been, certainly not an unmitigated disaster. There are many mitigations to it, and I’m an avid user. But I think, on balance, I would say thumbs down, really.

Reading, for instance, has been in great peril for a long time now, because of television and so much visual stuff and everything. But now, even my so-called learned academic friends, I ask them all the time, and they read maybe one book a year. They just scroll through the net.

Well, you could say that’s reading too, though of a different kind and different quality.

Yeah, no, come on, David. It’s not the same thing. I’m reading very actively, so I’ve been reading this book about the relationship between Sassanid empires and the Roman empire during late antiquity, 500 pages of it. You cannot find that on the net, right?