Lenny #2

The White House is still there. Famous Atlantic City sub shop.

After Alicia came to West Philadelphia High School she started chasing  Lenny.  Her father, who was estranged from her mother, was Sam Spiegel (S.P. Eagle.)  Yes the many awards winning Hollywood producer of outstanding films.  Including Bridge On The River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, On The Waterfront, etc..  Then finally, Alicia succeeded.  She corralled Lenny and they got married.  I had my doubts about the marriage because of the many things Lenny told me while she was still chasing him.  Of course they were just kids.  Well, time went by, schooling was in the past,  and  among other things Lenny became the assistant manager of a Howard's Men's Clothing store on Chestnut Street, in downtown Philadelphia..  During a trip of mine to Philadelphia, Lenny picked me up with his car and we drove to Atlantic City for a sub sandwich at the famous 'White House Sub Shop'.  60 Miles away. 
Gambling had not yet happened to Atlantic City.  We took a walk on the boardwalk and had a  long talk.  I can still hear him explaining to me something that drastically changed the way I bet on  competitive sports games. He saved me a ton of money.   For example,  Lenny explained that betting on football games with a bookmaker is just plain stupid.  He said look, when you bet on the games it includes the spread and every gambler knows winning against  the spread is tough.  The spread is the amount of points the favored team has to win by.  If the spread is say, 7 points, it means when you bet on the favorite, your team has to beat the other team (underdog) by more than 7 points.  When you bet on the 'dog', you get the 7 points.  Got it?  If the dog loses by 7, that's a tie and no money changes hands.   Ok, next you have to pay the vig.  Vig is like interest on a credit card, which, on a $100.00 bet, is $10.00.  You pay this extra amount to the bookmaker, but only if you lose.  Meaning, if you lose, on a hundred dollar bet,  you pay the bookmaker $110.00, while he only pays you $100.00, if you win.  There is no fee on the bets that you win.  
So you will understand, Lenny says, "Lets take betting on 5 games.  Say you lose 3 of them and win 2 games.  You pay the bookmaker $330.00 for the losers and he pays you $200.00 for your 2 winners.  So you lose $330.00 less the $200.00 you won, or, $130.00.  Meaning you pay the bookmaker $130.00.
Now, lets say you bet on 5 teams and the teams you bet on produces 3 winners and 2 losers.  The bookmaker in this case, pays you $300.00 for your 3 winners less the $220.00 you owe him for your 2 losing teams, or $80.00.00. ($300.00 -$220.00 = you collect, $80.00.
In other words you are betting  $130.00 to $80.00 that you can pick 3 winners out of 5 selections. . . . .
Me.  "What??   Get out of here.  $130.00 to $80.00."
Yep.  I had never looked at it that way.  Even I could see that is not too smart.  So, I made a radical change in my betting.   On football, on baseball and on basketball.  Afterwards, when a weekend TV game was scheduled and Rae asked me who we were pulling for and I told her I didn't make a bet, she couldn't believe it.  While she didn't like my betting, she kinda liked having a team to root for while the games were on the TV.  So we pretty much stopped watching the games because now there was little interest.  This only lasted  a short time.  Until I started making small bets just so I could have an interest and watch  the TV games.   And then, much later, when the kids went to college,  if  TV games included teams from Miami or the schools where the kids went, U of Florida, or University of Georgia, or George Washington Univesity, we generally watched and rooted for them.. 

My relationship and friendship with Lenny was solid.  We  had been friends for so long we trusted personal confidences in each other without even thinking about it.  Another bond was how much I loved his father.  But I lived in Ohio at the time and rarely communicated with anyone back in Philadelphia, except Jerry.  Long distance calls, cost money.  Jerry' s office had gigantic phone bills.   On one of my rare calls to Lenny, he confided that he had fallen in  love with a young lady who lived in a Philadelphia suburb and he thought he might leave Alicia.  But we had little communication and other than when I visited Philadelphia, I wasn't too much up on what was going on with him.  Jerry and I, on the other hand, talked on the phone at least once or twice a month and often more than once a week. 

His firm had a some kind of deal with AT&T so they swallowed the cost of the phone calls.  After eating our subs at the White House, Lenny and I sat on a boardwalk bench and talked for over 4 hours.  He was very hungry for a sympathetic ear.

I went back to Ohio and more time went by and then came the time, some years later, when Jerry wanted to show off.   He invited Rae and me to take advantage of his new status as a gambler,  and he got us compted (which means the casino pays for all of our expenses) at one of the big casino hotels where he gambled.  After we got settled at the hotel I called Lenny. He came to Atlantic City to visit with me and say hello to Rae. 

The two of us went for another walk on the boardwalk. We found an empty bench and he brought me up to date.  He told me he could not leave Alicia for many reasons, some he could not tell me about, but he did need someone to talk to . . . . .
Some years ago a customer,  came into the Howard store, bought some stuff,  and asked Lenny to have lunch with him.  At lunch Lenny asked him what it was about since the guy was a lawyer and he didn't have any legal business at the time.  His answer was that it was a matter involving his father in-law and that if Lenny was agreeable, he would set up a meeting, maybe a lunch, with someone else,  and he would get more details.  The new guy and Lenny met. The matter was for Lenny to act as a low level courier for a  business his father in-law had an interest in.  The home office of the company was in Israel.    It was a simple procedure, he would go on a vacation to Europe which would begin  in London and include a stop in Paris.  He would pickup an envelope in one place, like London, and drop it off in another place, say Paris.  Lenny agreed to do it. 
In addition to this stuff, other things had happened in Lenny's life since we last talked.  Like when the manager of his store moved up and Lenny was offered the manager's job.  Advice from the people he was taking the trips for was not to take it because it would interfere with the schedule of what he was doing.  What he was doing took more of his time and at that time, his father-in-law started to send money to Alicia.  The money came regularly and it kept increasing.  Much more than enough to cover his trip expenses..  
Then some other stuff happened and he became more involved travelling to more places, all under the guise of doing business. The number of trips increased and the trips were a little more time consuming, but he said he couldn't talk about it.  
And then a bombshell.  His lady friend, who did not know detailed information about what he was doing, told him he must leave Alicia or else.  This happened just before an important overseas trip and he did not realize it was actually an ultimatum that he leave Alicia.  When they parted he had told her to wait until he returned from his trip, when they would discuss it further.   And then, when he got back, he learned that she  had committed suicide.  
He started to cry.  We hugged.  The sobs were uncontrollable and lasted for a considerable time.  After he calmed down a little he said he decided to go on as if nothing had happened and he told Alicia nothing.  Then he said that was all he could tell me.  We had a another long hug and we walked back to my hotel. 
We didn't talk much after that until he got sick.  Jerry told me the doctors had discovered a brain tumor and it was inoperable.   It was a trying time for him and we reminisced on several long telephone calls but he never offered anything more on his adventures.  Those calls were the last times we spoke.  .
As kids he was a big part of my life.  We went to school together.  We had gambled together. We shot craps in alleys and alley ways, and played cards at the club and other places.  We shot pool at Bennies Pool Hall on 60th Street at Locust St..  We doubled dated and went out with girls to dances and street fairs and even on one occasion we had the same girl.  We played stickball and we went to ball games together.  We snuck into the movies together and Lenny and I were big instigators on mischief night, the night before Halloween, when we kids felt obligated to do mischief..stuff.   
One mischief stuff was, we leaned a bottle full of urine against the door of this guy who was always treating us like the guy did to kids, in the movie, Gran Torino.  The guy in the movie was played by Clint Eastwood.  With the bottle at a severe angle against his door, we put a tap on his window.  A tap is an arrangement that made a ticking sound in the house. All it was is a string of cotton, from a cotton spool to a safe place, completely hidden, across the street.  From there we jerked the cotton so it would keep up the tapping sound.  The guy kept looking out the window until finally, he opened the door . . . . 
We also took gates from the back fences and put them on the roof of their houses.  It was easy.  The gates were held in place by only 2 or 3 easy to remove bolts in the (opening) hinges.  
And Lenny was the guy who was trying to break down the outside door of a club that threw us out of their 'pay to get in' dance.  One of our guys hid in the bathroom of the club till it closed and then he opened the door and let us in.  We messed it up a little, and Tootie took the record player and some records.   We were leaving when Lenny began slamming the door backwards, trying to break it completely off.  A cop,  about half way up the block, noticed.  The cop shouted and began running towards us and he chased us.  I guess he followed me and Bobo because we were the slowest,  He followed us, me and Bobo, down an alley.  Bobo in front had led me into it from Larchwood Avenue.  The other guys went every which way.  The cop kept yelling,  he turned into the alley, behind me and Bobo,  still saying , "Stop"  and he fired his gun three times.  Boom.  Boom.  Boom.  The alley ended with about a 7 foot fence which was difficult for heavy Bobo, I pushed him up by his feet and then scooted over with one grab of the top and push with my sneakers.  The cop couldn't navigate it.  He was way too heavy.
Kids.  My memories are so clear on this kid's stuff. 
Its so hard to lose a friend.


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Three Trillion Dollars

Marty Sullivan, noted economist, working in his garage.

Marty Sullivan is the noted Chief Economist for Tax Analysts, a non-profit who specialize in tax law.  The prestigious non-profit tax information service is not in any way connected to the U.S. government.

He stated on CSPAN that big business has a bit of a problem.  During the presidential  election in 2012 we learned about the prolific use of off-shore bank accounts by businesses and wealthy people to hide what they are doing with the money they made by avoiding paying corporate taxes and on money they earned out of the country.  We need a lot more light on what they are doing.  And in language understandable to the average tax payer.  As for profits from wholly owned foreign companies, they were able to shift them to  wholly owned subsidiaries in other  (tax free) countries.   In an earlier post we brought some detail on how this kind of skullduggery is used to manipulate the tax code.. 

And now Mr. Sullivan has discovered that the amount they have successfully avoided paying tax on, has reached a staggering 3 trillion dollars.  All that money is in off-shore bank accounts and,  as you can imagine, for 3 trillion dollars, more off-shore accounts are needed all over the place.  (Vesco, where ae you?)

In other words just the amount of tax due to the U.S., from company profits, languishing in foreign banks, in some cases has now reached an amount larger that the gross national product of the country where the bank is.  An example is Ireland.  Are they running out of countries and banks?  3 trillion dollars?  Woooo, oooooh

Money stashed in Ireland exceeds their gross GDP.

There is movement by some lobbyists and congressmen,  to bring this money back to the U.S.  But to-do so, under current law, the money is subject to the tax that was avoided.    Naturally they want to bring the money back into the country but for some piddling amount.  Even a small number is staggering. 
I'm in favor of letting them pay on a sliding scale.  A trillion, the tax rate stays the same and all loopholes are closed.  Or,  1 1/2 trillion, drop the tax rate to say 30% and all loopholes are closed.  Or 2 trillion, drop the rate to 25% and all loopholes are closed.
Lets try some math here  . . .  Wait a minute, how many zeros follow the  3 (in 3 trillion)?

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