Word: martini
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...Internal Revenue Code is 2,052 pages long. To create it took decades of late-night horse trading, millions of pages of expert testimony and billions of dollars in political contributions, often pledged after (taxdeductible) three-martini lunches. To understand it requires the services of a well- paid lawyer. To reform it demands a monumental effort of political will...
...just as complex and contorted, although perhaps a bit less egregiously unfair. "The weeds would be topped," says Rostenkowski, "but the roots would remain." Indeed, some see a minimum tax as a cynical ruse to avoid real tax reform. "Want to see a specialinterest lobbyist grin over his three-martini lunch?" scoffs a report released last week by the House Republican Conference. "Threaten him with a corporate minimum...
...sure, Treasury II, also known as President I, is still a sweeping attempt to close a slew of loopholes. Even the infamous three-martini lunch is threatened; businessmen would be able to deduct only $15 per person for lunch, and entertainment expenses like box seats at sporting events would no longer be deductible at all. By eliminating enough deductions, the Treasury can afford to reduce overall tax rates. The top federal income tax bracket would drop from 50% to 35%, with brackets of 25% and 15% for those making less...
Today their descendants worry about not getting enough of it. The business lunch, for example, was once a two-plus martini milieu in which to cut a deal or woo a client. Now trust is more often won by a show of efficiency and orders for monkfish and mineral water. Water snobbery has replaced wine snobbery as the latest noon-hour recreation. People order their eau by brand name, as they once did Scotch. The fastidious will not take it on the rocks, because ice bruises the bubbles. Only aspiring starlets drink Perrier ("designer water," sniff detractors). Evian is Hollywood...
...everyone is tapering off, of course. According to the Yankelovich poll, 26% of the population continues to drink as it always has. Marshall Lyons, 31, a Berkeley, Calif., tree surgeon, even gives nostalgic martini (stir, don't shake) parties, complete with Peggy Lee music, because, he says, "martinis have the aesthetic of cold steel. They're like contemporary graphics." Dudley's, a workingman's tavern in Atlanta, has not slacked off selling ten kegs of beer a week as it has for years. "We're a neighborhood place," says Manager Tas Cofer. "We get workers from GM, construction men, manual...