I read the piece about the Bush Tax Cuts in the New York Times (link: and you're saying to yourself, 'hmm, he usually quotes the New York Post or Fox News' - there's not everything in the New York Times I disagree with, and this one's pretty good) and how Obama's deal with the Republicans on keeping the current tax brackets and plus an added bonus of cutting the payroll tax by 200 basis points, or 2%. President Obama could well have left everything as it is, or even hiked taxes to the levels he feels people should pay (not what people are willing to or afford to pay). I'm not sure what the result would have been, but if there were no extra revenue (or a sharp decline in revenue), then the government would have hiked them even further, engaging in a vicious cycle of tax hikes and revenue drops.
I'm not going to pretend that I don't like what happened. I'm middle class and I'm not going to complain. The Republicans tried every way to Sunday to get something moving, and it took the near shutdown of the government (well, that and Election 2010) to get Obama to at least concede that raising taxes is not the way to return to prosperity.
The comments, on the other hand? Save for one or two good comments, either Obama is the second coming of Bush, Obama should have had more cojones, the Republicans are the Party of No, the rich get away scot free with this, and so on. Oh, and a smattering of how he's a one term president. Childish, insecure, ignorant, arrogant, get-the-venom out stuff.
My thought is that there are still a ton of people who hate George W Bush and what he stood for. I'm also not going to pretend I didn't like him. Unlike Obama, who I feel surrounds himself with czars, bureaucrats, nanny-staters and the-bus-doesn't-stop-there radicals, Dubya was a steadfast and principled man. Often he was wrong as he was right. He too let himself be led by the nose by his advisors, but when he was correct, damn, you had to respect his tenacity, even though you were marching through the streets demanding he be dragged to the Hague in front of the World Court.
It leads me to a good question: some people can't stand others being happy, prosperous, and self-sufficient AND self-reliant. There's a streak of Puritanism that permeates through certain social circles that happiness and wealth is a sin, one that must be atoned for with brutal acts of contrition. But within that streak is a rank hypocrisy: it's OK for you to be happy, but not for someone else, and even if you die trying, you're going to prevent someone from their dreams.
It's a toxic stew of jealousy, resentment, and selfishness that rots the soul. It's the basis of moral panics that end up hurting people more than they help because the person trying to control the panic ends up overcompensating and snowballing unintended consequences.
Take for example the "obesity crisis." If a person is slightly overweight, the most simple way of doing so is to eat less and exercise more, not to tax items sky-high because someone (Michelle Obama? Mayor Mike Bloomberg? Deval Patrick?) is afraid that it might lead to being obesity. If you're exercising and eating right, the occasional donut won't kill you, nor will the daily cruller resign you to the pits of a fat camp. And, those extra tax revenues because you're slapping a dollar on a soda may be a smokescreen for trying to fatten (pun intended) the state coffers. True, morbid and gross obesity exists, but trying to eradicate it by controlling food, and in turn trying to control people, is the ultimate fools' errand.
The same thing goes for taxes. If you're a successful employee and make your company the best it is, why in heaven should you be penalized for it through high taxes? That's the whole gist about keeping the Bush Tax Cuts - if there are people so resentful and jealous of others success that short of running them over with your car or hiring a hit man to liquidate them your feeling is that the money must be taken away from them "for the greater good" (a healthy, steaming pile of total, absolute, pious, self-serving bullshit), those people should be given something to do that will keep them away from the editorial pages.
How about helping the people who should get a lift up from the depths of trash TV and shady lawyers? No one's going to be Oprah right away, and there will be weeks of your bank account being very lean, but it's better than handouts and bailouts. And happiness and success does come, so long as you work hard and you're patient - and anyone who tries to get in your way should be avoided at all costs.
There are people who still take their anger, guilt, bitterness, and disappointment on others because they cannot control things. It is a religion all its own, and it makes Puritanism look downright hedonistic. The ones who try to kill happiness have never been successful anyway - because happiness and success always seem to win, don't they?
UPDATE: Despite the House not deigning to vote on it and Bernie Sanders (S-VT) deciding it would be a great idea to read from the telephone book as a way to filibuster (maybe he did, maybe he didn't), this tax deal will go through with a lot of noses held, because if it doesn't, the Party of No will have a D next to it.
UPDATE #2: China is in a hefty snit because the Nobel Prize committee awarded Liu Xiabao the Peace Prize in absentia. The three signs I take out of this are (a) even farthest of the far left are demanding his release from Chinese prison, (b) it takes away the spotlight and attention from a like-minded Canberra Julian of W_______s, and (c) China must be really shit-scared of losing its power to ramp up the manipulation to sub-light speed, all because a dissident had a manifesto that wasn't one endorsed by a German aristocrat with money guilt.
12/08/2010
10/21/2010
Juan Williams pulls back the PC curtain and freaks out the narrow minds of NPR
Juan Williams deserves a TON of credit for telling the truth about National Public Radio.
Williams committed the simple sin of saying out loud what the rest of the elitist, fully white, upper middle and upper class editorial boards of NPR wouldn't dare say in public, but probably do well behind closed doors. (Even more telling is that Williams was the only black correspondent.)
Who will this brouhaha hurt the most? At the very least, moderate Muslims who have been yearning to break free from the stereotype of fundamentalist militancy have been pushed back into a corner - the ones who want to prove that the abaya, hijab or burqa, or the four fingers of beard the men must wear, is no way linked to the more malignant strains of Islamic worship - and assure them that while their religion is Islam, their nationality is American. Thanks to NPR's firing of Williams, that conversation gets drowned out by clueless upper-class twits.
But the real hurt that will come will be on NPR itself. When free speech is determined by an unelected upper echelon of white elitists, and that money comes from public taxpayers, a new Congress will be loathe to fund an entity whose primary focus is to make sure the right words come out of the right mouths, and any word not in the Approved Vocabulary of NPR will be grounds for immediate termination. Congress defunding NPR would force it to pledge even more from its listeners, and if you don't have the money, your license to broadcast gets ripped up and tossed out in the trash.
Williams should keep on talking about his now-ex-colleagues, how they love to insult those who aren't like them, and then tell the public to avoid donating a thin rusting penny to their organization because they are malignant narcissisists who only care about their own ideology and not giving a complete story. Oh, and donations from well-heeled, like-minded people.
Williams did everyone - including Muslims - a favor by pulling back the curtain on the narrow minds of NPR, who proved to the nation that the antidote to curtailing free speech is even more free speech - and that political correctness is worse than any nuclear weapon on the planet.
Williams committed the simple sin of saying out loud what the rest of the elitist, fully white, upper middle and upper class editorial boards of NPR wouldn't dare say in public, but probably do well behind closed doors. (Even more telling is that Williams was the only black correspondent.)
Who will this brouhaha hurt the most? At the very least, moderate Muslims who have been yearning to break free from the stereotype of fundamentalist militancy have been pushed back into a corner - the ones who want to prove that the abaya, hijab or burqa, or the four fingers of beard the men must wear, is no way linked to the more malignant strains of Islamic worship - and assure them that while their religion is Islam, their nationality is American. Thanks to NPR's firing of Williams, that conversation gets drowned out by clueless upper-class twits.
But the real hurt that will come will be on NPR itself. When free speech is determined by an unelected upper echelon of white elitists, and that money comes from public taxpayers, a new Congress will be loathe to fund an entity whose primary focus is to make sure the right words come out of the right mouths, and any word not in the Approved Vocabulary of NPR will be grounds for immediate termination. Congress defunding NPR would force it to pledge even more from its listeners, and if you don't have the money, your license to broadcast gets ripped up and tossed out in the trash.
Williams should keep on talking about his now-ex-colleagues, how they love to insult those who aren't like them, and then tell the public to avoid donating a thin rusting penny to their organization because they are malignant narcissisists who only care about their own ideology and not giving a complete story. Oh, and donations from well-heeled, like-minded people.
Williams did everyone - including Muslims - a favor by pulling back the curtain on the narrow minds of NPR, who proved to the nation that the antidote to curtailing free speech is even more free speech - and that political correctness is worse than any nuclear weapon on the planet.
10/02/2010
Yes, character destruction HAS become a spectator sport
Thanks to the Internet and a 24-hour gossip culture, destroying character and lives has become a huge spectator sport.
Tyler Clementi didn't have to take his own life because his sexuality was not like others. He could have taken the hard-core militant activist route, enlisting the hardest and most in-your-face groups like Queer Nation and ACT-UP to protest Rutgers 24-7, giving the nightly news cycle fresh meat for months upon end, and only after Rutgers acquiesed to their demands, the matter would have died down. But Clementi didn't pursue that avenue, because he didn't want to bring attention to his sexuality and plight that his roommate was recording his trysts: He ended up bringing attention to himself anyway by ending his life because he just couldn't take the ridicule anymore.
His roommate recorded the most private of his activities, and that alone merits the strongest punishment one can mete out, namely imprisonment and a very stiff fine. But tangentially, others will feed off this unnecessary suicide for their own ends and desires.
And it isn't just gay teenagers that feel the ridicule and scorn of the mediocre. If you're the wrong race, possess smarts that go beyond which dress to wear, which libation to drink, which social group to socialize with, you might as well be from Siberia.
I endured the same character-destroying ridicule all throughout Boston Latin Academy. The eighties were a ripe time, fueled by teenage movies that emphasized being popular über alles and shifting those who didn't fit the grand scheme of cliquey things into a social Siberia. It diminished, certainly as we all grew and headed towards our senior year, but it's the viciousness and disdain that still leaves fresh scars. It's the reason I never went to either of my semi-formals, proms and none of my reunions. It's the reason why I dumped 10-12 people off of my Facebook friends list when Phoebe Prince took her own life in February.
Solving the problem of bullying in all its forms is not simple. Neither passive so-called "tolerance and understanding" nor reactionary zero tolerance is the answer. The answer comes somewhere in the middle, beginning with the bullied standing up to their tormentors, parents making sure they monitor their children and getting involved when bullying starts, teachers intervening without retribution from their superiors, and administrators not hiding behind law and political correctness.
Tyler Clementi didn't have to take his own life because his sexuality was not like others. He could have taken the hard-core militant activist route, enlisting the hardest and most in-your-face groups like Queer Nation and ACT-UP to protest Rutgers 24-7, giving the nightly news cycle fresh meat for months upon end, and only after Rutgers acquiesed to their demands, the matter would have died down. But Clementi didn't pursue that avenue, because he didn't want to bring attention to his sexuality and plight that his roommate was recording his trysts: He ended up bringing attention to himself anyway by ending his life because he just couldn't take the ridicule anymore.
His roommate recorded the most private of his activities, and that alone merits the strongest punishment one can mete out, namely imprisonment and a very stiff fine. But tangentially, others will feed off this unnecessary suicide for their own ends and desires.
In the coming days the pundits will pontificate, the politicians will politic and the advocates will advocate -- all trying to twist and turn the private hurts of Tyler into whatever fits their agenda.
And it isn't just gay teenagers that feel the ridicule and scorn of the mediocre. If you're the wrong race, possess smarts that go beyond which dress to wear, which libation to drink, which social group to socialize with, you might as well be from Siberia.
I endured the same character-destroying ridicule all throughout Boston Latin Academy. The eighties were a ripe time, fueled by teenage movies that emphasized being popular über alles and shifting those who didn't fit the grand scheme of cliquey things into a social Siberia. It diminished, certainly as we all grew and headed towards our senior year, but it's the viciousness and disdain that still leaves fresh scars. It's the reason I never went to either of my semi-formals, proms and none of my reunions. It's the reason why I dumped 10-12 people off of my Facebook friends list when Phoebe Prince took her own life in February.
Solving the problem of bullying in all its forms is not simple. Neither passive so-called "tolerance and understanding" nor reactionary zero tolerance is the answer. The answer comes somewhere in the middle, beginning with the bullied standing up to their tormentors, parents making sure they monitor their children and getting involved when bullying starts, teachers intervening without retribution from their superiors, and administrators not hiding behind law and political correctness.
9/26/2010
"Waiting for Superman" Kryptonite to teacher's unions
And the entire irony is that the person who produced the environmental bete noir An Inconvenient Truth produced "Waiting for Superman", and the unions are furious about the movie exposing the results of putting themselves ahead of the kids, and are even more furious when more successful charter schools - which have none of the union interference that the failing public schools have - are actually educating the kids, rather than making them pawns when battling with the school board.
The name of the movie should be renamed An Inconvenient Education. It's the kids who are inconvenienced in the end because the teacher's unions are too greedy.
The name of the movie should be renamed An Inconvenient Education. It's the kids who are inconvenienced in the end because the teacher's unions are too greedy.
9/18/2010
A good argument for keeping the Bush tax levels
NPR (yes, that NPR) has a clear and consistent argument regarding extending the 2001-2003 tax structure. Dan Kennedy of Media Nation loves it too, and it is a well-written and well-informed article.
Here is where the debate lies...many people can try to define "rich" but it's impossible to define it in dollar terms. Back in the 1970s, earning $35,000 was a small fortune because the minimum wage was $1.60. Today, earning $35,000 isn't much, especially where the minimum wage is $7.50 an hour. In order to earn what you earned in the 1970s, you'd have to make at least $100,000 a year. So for Congress to define "rich" is an exercise in futility.
Also, the famous canard of "high income earners pay most of the taxes" or "low income earners pay no taxes at all" are both false. The government finds ways to take money no matter what your earnings and taxation level.
High income earners, despite paying a high amount of taxes, have the ability to reduce them through retirement account disbursements, investing, donations, writeoffs, and spending, so that when their tax bill does come around, they will either pay far less than they expected (and they have the ability to do so) or get a refund.
The low income earners, despite receiving credits and appearing not to pay income taxes, pay a huge amount of consumption taxes - that is, the government will dilute the credits that they gave to the low-income earners anyway through sales, sin (alcohol, tobacco), property, utility (fuel, electricity) and excise taxes, plus fees that function as taxes, like license renewal and registration.
In my opinion, the best thing to do is to execute class warfare card through the media. The media is equally guilty of misinformation to the public; they do no service by trying to gin up anger between one sector of the public and the other. In fact, the public relations the media is trying to do for the government is obnoxious and wrongheaded - they should shut up and do the research first (like NPR did) before they go on camera. It will save them a lot of embarassment later on.
Here is where the debate lies...many people can try to define "rich" but it's impossible to define it in dollar terms. Back in the 1970s, earning $35,000 was a small fortune because the minimum wage was $1.60. Today, earning $35,000 isn't much, especially where the minimum wage is $7.50 an hour. In order to earn what you earned in the 1970s, you'd have to make at least $100,000 a year. So for Congress to define "rich" is an exercise in futility.
Also, the famous canard of "high income earners pay most of the taxes" or "low income earners pay no taxes at all" are both false. The government finds ways to take money no matter what your earnings and taxation level.
High income earners, despite paying a high amount of taxes, have the ability to reduce them through retirement account disbursements, investing, donations, writeoffs, and spending, so that when their tax bill does come around, they will either pay far less than they expected (and they have the ability to do so) or get a refund.
The low income earners, despite receiving credits and appearing not to pay income taxes, pay a huge amount of consumption taxes - that is, the government will dilute the credits that they gave to the low-income earners anyway through sales, sin (alcohol, tobacco), property, utility (fuel, electricity) and excise taxes, plus fees that function as taxes, like license renewal and registration.
In my opinion, the best thing to do is to execute class warfare card through the media. The media is equally guilty of misinformation to the public; they do no service by trying to gin up anger between one sector of the public and the other. In fact, the public relations the media is trying to do for the government is obnoxious and wrongheaded - they should shut up and do the research first (like NPR did) before they go on camera. It will save them a lot of embarassment later on.
9/14/2010
Better start learning the meaning of "closed door" in Grove Hall
The residents of Mattapan love the new 60 foot articulated buses on the Route 28 bus. I rode them on the Route 39 when they first came out and they're really, really nice.
The residents of Grove Hall? They do too, but not their so-called "community leaders" to bitch about not being "consulted." One of the comments from the boston.com site is quite telling...
What the T should do is introduce a neat little concept called "closed door" service. Routes 14, 19, 23, 28 and 45 go through that area. Since the "community leaders" are pissed they weren't able to extort all sorts of things from the T, the T should turn around and state that those route will not stop to discharge passengers nor to pick up passengers. All routes will just go right through Grove Hall without stopping. If it means a quarter mile to half mile walk to Grove Hall, in the blazing sun or during a hefty blizzard, that's the way it has to be.
They will, however, get more than an angry earful from passengers who rely on the T, who worked so hard for improvements, and now have to go out of their way just because the pigheaded, egotistical, hamfisted, loudmouthed control freaks killed service in their area, and the T will not lift a finger to return it to normal. Then these so-called "community leaders" will be seen for who they truly are: obstructionists who are too selfish to let their residents have what they truly deserve, because improvements would dilute their power and ego to infinitesimally small irrelevance.
The residents of Grove Hall? They do too, but not their so-called "community leaders" to bitch about not being "consulted." One of the comments from the boston.com site is quite telling...
Yet despite all of this, these community groups act as though they're being victimized. Like the State is coming in to destroy their neighborhoods. They killed the #28X [Route 28X would have been a Silver Line-style BRT route running down the median of Blue Hill Avenue. -ed]. Now they're completely apoplectic over the fact the T didn't kiss their feet and beg them to allow larger buses to offer better service to what is arguably a community long-underserved by mass transit. This is literally the least the T can do to help them, and still the community groups are trying to fight them to do less. They'd rather see the rest of their community get nothing, than have their "authority" undermined.
It appears to be about ego, control and the need to assert both.
What the T should do is introduce a neat little concept called "closed door" service. Routes 14, 19, 23, 28 and 45 go through that area. Since the "community leaders" are pissed they weren't able to extort all sorts of things from the T, the T should turn around and state that those route will not stop to discharge passengers nor to pick up passengers. All routes will just go right through Grove Hall without stopping. If it means a quarter mile to half mile walk to Grove Hall, in the blazing sun or during a hefty blizzard, that's the way it has to be.
They will, however, get more than an angry earful from passengers who rely on the T, who worked so hard for improvements, and now have to go out of their way just because the pigheaded, egotistical, hamfisted, loudmouthed control freaks killed service in their area, and the T will not lift a finger to return it to normal. Then these so-called "community leaders" will be seen for who they truly are: obstructionists who are too selfish to let their residents have what they truly deserve, because improvements would dilute their power and ego to infinitesimally small irrelevance.
8/01/2010
Puritanism - still alive and well in Massachusetts
I was reading an article this morning in the Boston Globe magazine from Tom Keane regarding Massachusetts' efforts to control alcohol. Among the interesting snippets:
This is because of the former Blue Laws that the Puritans put down in the 1620's because most of the Puritans were supposed to have their eyes and ears with God at all times, and not engage in frivolity such as liquor consumption. Many of the Blue Laws have been struck down, but only since the mid 1980s. Liquor stores have only been allowed to open on Sundays since 2005 or so.
This brings me to the debate of the soon-to-be-dead gambling bill. I've been wavering between being for it and being against it, but now I'm solidly against it. Governor Deval Patrick should not only veto the bill, he should be commended for it at the risk of losing his support from unions and others.
This is because Puritanism is still alive and well in Massachusetts.
We have way too many finger waggers, nags, wrist wringers and such who feel that any kind of fun should be eliminated or strictly controlled in the wake of some kind of fake moral enlightenment. Liquor and alcohol is a great example: keeping such a "vice" away through high price and scarcity makes the ones who are disturbed by its effects (even when people drink responsibly) soothes whatever guilt and bias they might have towards this vice. The same is true with cigarettes, food, and gasoline - self-styled moralists figure that the unwashed masses are not "enlightened" enough and must have these items made difficult to procure for "the greater good."
(In my honest opinion, the greater good would love to give these self-styled moralists a nice hard slap in the face, followed by a nice hard boot to where God split ya.)
If the Legislature were a more honest, less self-interested group, they would have expanded the bill to include as many resort casinos and slot parlors as they would allow without the worry of some group screaming that Massachusetts' moral fiber would decay at a ridiculous rate. There would be no scare tactics of prostitution or people wasting their entire paychecks on slots or children being abandoned in their cars. The Legislators would have no problem with the money coming in and distribute it evenly, rather than try to corner the money for their own town, city or ward.
Even if the casino bill passed, I can imagine the kind of "gambling" we'd get if it went through - it would be regulated just as tightly and stiffly as alcohol is today, along with a mix of gimmicks such as environmental standards, limits on play, money and alcohol consumption, no ATM machines or ATM machines with very high access fees, and bans on any kind of comps, credit and the like.
When Puritanism dances with Curley-style parochialism, what you get are political hacks, self-styled moral activists, and others killing something that may or may not have had promise, but no one dared to try because they were afraid they'd offend the wrong people. The writer of the article sums everything up nicely, and you can easily substitute "gambling" for "alcohol":
It would certainly prove that we cut all the laws of Puritanism but six, who were forced into service as pallbearers.
Alcoholic beverages sold for off-premise consumption can only be sold in licensed package stores. No one is allowed to own more than three stores that sell alcohol. State law puts sharp quotas on the number of liquor stores, bars, and restaurants permitted in every town, a formula carefully based on population. Holiday and Sunday sales are limited. In fact, we’re not even permitted to have happy hours. Free drinks and discounted prices are flatly illegal.
This is because of the former Blue Laws that the Puritans put down in the 1620's because most of the Puritans were supposed to have their eyes and ears with God at all times, and not engage in frivolity such as liquor consumption. Many of the Blue Laws have been struck down, but only since the mid 1980s. Liquor stores have only been allowed to open on Sundays since 2005 or so.
This brings me to the debate of the soon-to-be-dead gambling bill. I've been wavering between being for it and being against it, but now I'm solidly against it. Governor Deval Patrick should not only veto the bill, he should be commended for it at the risk of losing his support from unions and others.
This is because Puritanism is still alive and well in Massachusetts.
We have way too many finger waggers, nags, wrist wringers and such who feel that any kind of fun should be eliminated or strictly controlled in the wake of some kind of fake moral enlightenment. Liquor and alcohol is a great example: keeping such a "vice" away through high price and scarcity makes the ones who are disturbed by its effects (even when people drink responsibly) soothes whatever guilt and bias they might have towards this vice. The same is true with cigarettes, food, and gasoline - self-styled moralists figure that the unwashed masses are not "enlightened" enough and must have these items made difficult to procure for "the greater good."
(In my honest opinion, the greater good would love to give these self-styled moralists a nice hard slap in the face, followed by a nice hard boot to where God split ya.)
If the Legislature were a more honest, less self-interested group, they would have expanded the bill to include as many resort casinos and slot parlors as they would allow without the worry of some group screaming that Massachusetts' moral fiber would decay at a ridiculous rate. There would be no scare tactics of prostitution or people wasting their entire paychecks on slots or children being abandoned in their cars. The Legislators would have no problem with the money coming in and distribute it evenly, rather than try to corner the money for their own town, city or ward.
Even if the casino bill passed, I can imagine the kind of "gambling" we'd get if it went through - it would be regulated just as tightly and stiffly as alcohol is today, along with a mix of gimmicks such as environmental standards, limits on play, money and alcohol consumption, no ATM machines or ATM machines with very high access fees, and bans on any kind of comps, credit and the like.
When Puritanism dances with Curley-style parochialism, what you get are political hacks, self-styled moral activists, and others killing something that may or may not have had promise, but no one dared to try because they were afraid they'd offend the wrong people. The writer of the article sums everything up nicely, and you can easily substitute "gambling" for "alcohol":
What we really need is a culture that celebrates the wise use of alcohol rather than a body of laws whose aim is to make us feel guilty.
It would certainly prove that we cut all the laws of Puritanism but six, who were forced into service as pallbearers.
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