Even though I figured the owners were still making a pretty profit, I knew that many newspapers were struggling because of the rotten economy and the migration of readers from print to online (with a mid-migration stop at the New Jersey Turnpike's Vince Lombardi Service Area).
As a recent college graduate who now works at a non-profit, I know firsthand the impact federal taxes put on my paycheck.
The top priority of the for-profits, I know from experience, is to enhance shareholder value, a euphemism for making sure Wall Street is satisfied.
"I think somebody is making an undue profit, and I know, having talked to a number of the retailers, they say it's not them, so it's got to be the refiners," said Ryan Benner, 53, a secondary school English teacher who lives in Lincoln and commutes 300 miles each week to work in rural Nebraska.
"You taught me language, and my profit on't is, I know how to curse".
We, on the other hand, cannot resist the irony that the Frenchman, who hoped to play Prospero, ended up as Caliban: "You taught me language, and my profit on't is: I know how to curse".
And if he says (as he probably will), "That's below my cost; I have to make a profit," just reply, "I know what a fair price is.
I was once secretary of the Greenwich Young Communist League and deplored profits, although I knew nothing about economics.
She was not deaf to Caliban's wounded cry: "You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse".
"Like Satan, I made myself with words," he writes, and ends his novel with Caliban's roar, "You taught me language, and my profit on it is I know how to curse".
