Romney's Paycheck

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Occupy the Constitution! (updated)

First off, I'd like to take a moment of silence for the Occupy Wall Street movement. They've gone disco.



Meanwhile, though, let’s consider a fascinating legal issue that has come up with the Occupy movement.

See, the problem with the 99% bringing the problem of economic disparity to light, is that, by the nature of the election process, in order to be a politician, you are all but required to be a member of the 1%.

This is the reason that it’s so difficult to get a tax increase for the rich through Congress: they are the rich!

This also means that many of them are predisposed to oppose discussion of income disparity or the economic realities of life in America today. Nobody likes talking about their own sins, when it’s easier to point at other people and scream “Heretic!” So, for example, Mayor Bloomberg of New York (net worth: $18.1 billion) isn’t particularly interested in stopping police brutality against protestors. (If anything, he’s enabling it.)

In Texas, they’ve decided that there is only a limited amount of free speech available in Austin at any one time.



Now, consider that for a minute. If one protest group starts yelling, and leaves after 2 hours and 55 minutes, and another group, unrelated to them and with no knowledge of the previous group, spontaneously showed up in the same neighborhood, they would not be allowed to speak without breaking the law.

It seems to me that this case would be a slam-dunk for any civil rights lawyer. Just take a video camera and show someone showing up after the time limit has expired and not being allowed to speak. Admittedly, the Texas Supreme Court would uphold the police actions, because that’s how Texas works; but it would continue up through the US Supreme Court, and nobody claiming to be a Constitutional scholar could let this pass.

(In a fascinating twist, the Trophy Wife, usually far more optimistic than I've ever been, is feeling more cynical than I do on the subject, and thinks that the Roberts Supreme Court – combined average net worth $47,272,584 – might not be interested in supporting free speech in this case.)

Funny how this issue never came up for the Tea Party protests...
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(Update, 12/3/11)
And in a story broken yesterday by my second least-favorite news source, the Huffington Post (and wildly underreported by other news sources as I write this), the UN has noticed many of the same things:

The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded -- sometimes violently -- by local authorities.

Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. "special rapporteur" for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.

"I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order," he said Thursday. "But on the other hand I also believe that the state -- in this case the federal state -- has an obligation to protect and promote human rights."
...
In moments of crisis, governments often default to a forceful response instead of a dialogue, he said -- but that's a mistake.

"Citizens have the right to dissent with the authorities, and there's no need to use public force to silence that dissension," he said.

Personally, I didn't know that "Frank" was a popular Guatemalan name, but considering Guatemala during the 80s and 90s (and for that matter, the previous decades, when they helped develop the term "banana republic"), they know something about the suppression of human rights.

Of course, who approves of the way the American police are dealing with protesters? Mostly tyrants with their own economic protesters, like Mubarak.

Proud of yourself yet, Washington?

A quick thought on economics

Conservatives keep trying to claim that we can't increase taxes on rich people, because Obama shouldn't tax "job creators."

Can we have a moratorium on the use of the term "job creators" for rich people? Because, at the moment, they are verifiably not creating any fucking jobs. That's like calling somebody a "stamp collector" when they don't buy, sell, or keep any stamps. It's just stupid.

In fact, I'll go one step further. I'll support a tax cut for anybody who creates new jobs, in America, which are held by American citizens. Now, this has to be a net jobs increase - if you fire fifty thousand people, and then hire forty thousand, you don't get congratulated for creating forty thousand jobs - you get yelled at for losing ten thousand.

(Also, any jobs you ship overseas? Yeah, that counts as a job loss.)

And by the way, that whole idea that "lower taxes equal more jobs"? It's stupid. Reagan experienced job growth while he was in office. But only after he raised taxes. Three times.

So, can we have a little honesty up in this bitch? For once?

Texas, Taxes, and Divils to Adore for Deities

"'Spreading the wealth' punishes success," [Rick Perry] said during his announcement speech on Saturday, "while setting America on {a} course to greater dependency on government." ("Texas Tax System Heavily Burdens Poor Residents.)

Please just think about that for a moment. "'Spreading the wealth' punishes success ...." We wouldn't want to go and punish success, would we! Do any of these godbotherers ever read a single word of the bible they bandy about and hide behind? Never mind who the right-wingers' Jesus would bomb, what would the more authentic figure – I mean that long-haired radical proto-hippy fellow from the gospels, with his open contempt for wealth and penchant for hanging out with sinners and speaking up for fallen women -- say about such a philosophy?

"Good master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" asked a ruler of the day.

And wouldn't you know it, that impertinent socialist peacenik said, "sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me." (Luke 18:18-22, KJB).

We are told that the ruler who had asked the question walked away sorrowfully. For Lo, giving away one's wealth to the rabble punisheth success.

Well, pardners, it kinda sounds like Jesus didn't have much patience with what we now call "the gospel of prosperity," and I doubt that he would appreciate its being applied at the secular level to sock it to the poor in taxes for the benefit of the rich. Verily I say unto you, too many of our modern "Christians" are surely hypocrites. I believe the Jesus of the gospels would more than blush to call them followers – yessir, I reckon he'd vomit right down in his ten-gallon hat, if he'd worn one. But commies don't wear cowboy hats, so it's silly of me to conjure it up. Well, I think I remember seeing a picture of "Gorby" wearing a cowboy hat once, and if memory serves, Karl Marx considered emigrating to Texas in the mid-1840's. Even so, I apologize.

I'm more than happy to give the Guv'nuh some refining and wiggling room and of course the snippet I referenced isn't his entire announcement (easily Googled), but as far as I am concerned, those who emphasize a principle of worldly success over the well-being of their fellows, and call themselves Christians, are in fact devotees of Mammon. And in case any of us have forgotten the Ten Commandments as handed down to Charlton Heston by God Almighty in 1956, let's recall that one of them has to do with it being a very big no-no to worship idols in place of the Lord of Hosts:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. . . . . (Exodus 20:4-5; for all the details about what you mustn't do, see Exodus 20:2-17, and Deuteronomy 5:6-21.)

Yet, the suggestion coming out of Texas seems to be that it's downright irresponsible to take a little silver from even the most impressive of personal Mammon-hoards and toss it in the public coffers for dispensation to the needy, lest the industry of the successful be dispraised and neglected and unrighteousness spread amongst the poor like wildfire in droughty woods. It smacks of idol-worship and forbidden self-sufficiency to me.

Mammon, as Milton points out in Paradise Lost, is almost admirable for his enthusiasm amongst the fallen rebel host in his determination to wrest the necessary riches from Hell's landscape and start building a rival, divided empire. He counsels infernal self-reliance: let us "seek / Our own good from ourselves, and from our own / Live to ourselves" (2.252-54). But even he was a collectivist by Republican standards, from the sound of it. Well, whatever the case, it would apparently be un-Christian to get in the way of excessive attachment to one of the most deplorable of pagan "Divils to adore for deities."

Yes, "divils." Don't you just love Milton's spelling? Even more cheerful is the thought that he and his contemporaries might have pronounced it that way, too.

The French confection

Bob Greene made me laugh this morning, writing about the magazine ad for a Hermès suitcase priced at $27,100. He thought at first it was a joke until the Hermès store in Naples Florida told him that it wasn't even their most expensive bag, which of course is diamond encrusted. This one isn't. It's trimmed in "Evercalf" leather which I suspect to be much like the "rich Corinthian" leather of Chrysler Cordoba fame, which means most of the cost -- at least $27,000 of it -- is in the trademarked name for a perfectly ordinary material. Otherwise it's just a canvas bag, or "officer canvas" as they call it, which means you may have to salute it if you're wearing a Hermès hat.

Why? Greene keeps asking, although I know and you know exactly why anyone would actually buy one at a time when more Americans are cramming their things into shopping carts and Hefty bags and wandering the streets. It's precisely because it cost $27,100 and you can't afford to toss that kind of money away on nonsense, hand stitched or not.

It's not the sort of bag most people would really notice, except that it doesn't have the silly handle and wheels that make our airports seem like farmyards full of goat carts, but then it's designed for another purpose, it's designed both to remind you and to help you forget that there are people -- millions of people trying to support families on one Hermès suitcase a year.

Hey, don't get angry. It's your money and you're taxed enough already. Under Reagan's tax structure you'd have had to make do with Louis Vuitton or perish the thought, Hartmann, so the country owes it to you and you needed to buy it now, before that Marxist in the White House restores the tax rates of that prince of Capitalism -- right?

Boycot Whole Foods

My liberal butt just got whacked, my liberal brain ransacked. John Mackey, president of Whole Foods, is pushing against public options in health care reform. He thinks that private programs, which currently leave 46 million people uninsured, are the way to go. He thinks that high health care deductibles for people, regardless of their income, will go a long way to solving the health care crisis.

Sorry Mr. Mackey. How many employees working for Whole Foods can afford a $2,500 deductible?

Thirty years ago, as a young mother, I had to leave a job because the inadequate health insurance at my job failed to pay for necessary services for my three year old disabled daughter. A public option would have enabled me to continue employment uninterrupted.

Now, I am fortunate to be more comfortable financially. I would be willing to pay more in taxes to support a public option health care plan. What truly bothers me is paying more to a private plan that has high deductibles, low coverages and uses MY MONEY to pay a few people at the top.

I can speak with my food store choices, and until you and your company can gain empathy for the 46 million uninsured Americans and the many more underinsured Americans whose insurance premiums pad the pockets of wealthy health insurance execs my food dollars will go elsewhere.

Dinosaurs don't pay taxes

In a way, we might look at the vast, seemingly endless and profoundly deep ignorance of Americans as a resource. Certainly many people make a good living from it. People who have less than an intelligent 4 year old's grasp of reality are willing to spend money to have their pathetic fantasies upheld in places like Dinosaur Adventure Land where you can view fake animals in a fake surroundings made to resemble fake history and pretend that the most certain things can be less certain than baseless conjecture.

Yes, I'm talking about Florida where for decades fake was like a second name for the state and sleazy roadside attractions and amusement parks made it a Mecca for kitsch enthusiasts and carloads full of rubes and hicks percolating down from Dixie. Much of it is still here, like the Weeki Wachee Mermaids and alligator wrestling and Lion Country Safari but as far as I know nobody is claiming that the mermaids are real or the lions were dropped off in Florida by Noah on his way to Turkey.

The fake history park in Florida flaunts things on their website like the idea that "the more is known about DNA the more difficult it is to escape the conclusion that all things have a personal creator." Of course there's no way around calling this a complete lie and if there is anything ineluctable about what's taught in Dinosaur Adventure Land is that nothing they say has any basis in fact whatever. Evolution as the origin of species and indeed as the origin of life from natural algorithms and natural law is not on its way out, isn't "just a theory" that Science is moving away from in the light of new data. Of course, the age of the Earth and of the universe is very accurately known and sorry, our planet is more than 4 billion years old and no man ever saw a trilobite or a Gorgonopsid or a Sauropod.

It's more than possible to escape the conclusion that existence of living organisms demands the existence of a deity and all their miracles and all the attempts to demonstrate otherwise have been shown to be fallacious and fraudulent. Yet, the Creationists persist in marketing their perverted epistemology demanding that unwillingness or inability to understand opens a window into understanding -- as though ignorance and stupidity were virtues. Wisdom through ignorance certainly winds through Christianity's bowels like a tapeworm but particularly through the kind of cartoonish fundamentalism sold like tawdry talismans at a flea market to tourists in T shirts.

It must be apparent that I view this kind of militant superstition as a cancer threatening any progress in learning and perhaps the safety of civilization itself and so you won't be surprised that I have to smile a bit to hear that an amusement park built on lies and the mockery of truth is in big trouble with the IRS for not paying employee withholding taxes and is due to be seized. Hardly surprising is it, that people who make a living telling lies and attacking the truth are dishonest?

Hardly surprising either that Kent Hovind, who founded the park and a ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, simply to profit by lying, would forget that Jesus told his followers to pay their taxes: “Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ” or "Render unto Caesar. . ." Matthew 22:21

Hovind's position was that since he and his brothers in dishonesty worked for God, they didn't owe any taxes to the Government at all. I don't know what Jesus' position on obstruction of justice or last minute, back-dated, illegal transfers of property to avoid seizure was, but of course anything Jesus is supposed to have said is "just a theory" right? The argument was persuasive enough to get him 10 years in the slammer. For once Jesus and the Law -- and I -- seem to agree.

Hot Florida nights, men in tights

Yes, despite the rain which delayed the fireworks, it was a great 4th of July in beautiful Stuart Florida. We watched the spectacle, sponsored by a local car dealer famous for bilking the elderly, aboard a friend's Hattaras and trying, as usual, to avoid talking about politics. As crazy as it was a year ago, it's crazier now that the last few decades of Republican policy and economic theory have been wilfully forgotten and new memories forged about the way we were.

In nearby West Palm Beach, not far from the homes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, politicians and propagandists were out working the crowds of tea flavoured idiots, some dressed in items of late 18th century attire.

"Yes, we do need change, you can start by giving me my money back!"

yelled Joyce Kaufman, of AM station 850-WFTL.

"I don't care which side of the aisle you're on, if you're taking money away from my children, you've got to go"

said GOP Congressional candidate Edward Lynch who lost the 2008 race to a Democrat. Of course he cares about little else, but who knows whether he really believes our current predicament derives from the expensive attempts of the current administration to keep our economy alive long enough to recover and not from the decades of "debt doesn't matter' and "upper bracket tax cuts boost the economy" and "freedom isn't free?"

"yes, I had doubts about George Bush, but this guy. . ." was a common theme, as though any of the people clinging to it actually did anything to question the years of borrowing, revenue cutting, removal of oversight, deregulation, expense bloating and war mongering, the newly legalized scams and frauds and schemes and practices that havecharacterized those on that "side of the aisle." In fact most of these people would have deported you, if they could have, simply for questioning the Right Wing Religion.

To me, it's like yelling about dental bills when you haven't brushed your teeth or seen a dentist for 20 years. It's like complaining about how the repair bills are putting you into debt when you let the Sex Pistols crash at your house for years and left your checkbook and credit cards and key to the liquor cabinet on the kitchen table. It's your own damn fault and many of us predicted this collapse years ago to a chorus of your jeers and accusations.

Sure the dentist may be too expensive or the contractor may not be the best, but when you let it all go to hell, when you wouldn't listen to any advice, it's your fault and wearing three-cornered hats, knee length pants and tights in the 90 degree heat isn't going to get "your" money back after you spent it on a useless war that cost nearly as much as WW II and on gifts to the richest men and corporations in the world.

Down the drain

Maybe we shouldn't have been wasting our time last night, listening to McCain and Obama accusing each other of being big spenders when we should have gone straight to the one expert who seems to agree with John's tax proposal. I don't mean some PhD economist or tax law expert or even a CPA; I'm talking of course, about Joe the Plumber, the fellow whose concerns about Obama's tax proposal has made him one of the most well known men -- and certainly the best known plumber on the planet at the moment. If that notoriety alone doesn't translate into financial success for Joe, it will be only because he'd rather not be in a higher tax bracket.

According to Joe Wurtzelberger, a progressive tax structure is Robin Hood socialism and John McCain seems to agree. I particularly liked his oily sneer when he repeated his "spread the wealth around" formula, but I wonder how that meshes with the spreading around of wealth inherent in supply side economics. It's only the direction of the trickle that differs after all, not the redistribution.

Of course Joe seems to have misunderstand what the differences are, and who can blame him? Like all of us he's been bombarded with ugly stereotypes of tax and spend liberals all his life and to be fair, it's complicated, but Joe is wrong. If he buys a business that grosses more than $250,000, he will not be propelled into a higher tax bracket by that fact alone. Surely Joe understands the difference between gross and net and knows about all the expenses and other deductions available. It's very unlikely that the business would net that much and therefore be subject to a tax increase of any kind. It's not very nice of his "Buddy" John not to have explained that to his "best buddy."

For one thing Obama's plan offers additional benefits like a tax credit for new employees and the elimination of Capital Gains for small businesses. Even if the business is wildly successful, and with all this notoriety, it may well be, the increase would be 3%. He would be better off in Obama's America than he would have been in Ronald Reagan's or John McCain's.

Very much to Mr. Wurtzelbacher's credit, he's not endorsing anyone yet. After all, his future and my future depend on a lot more than a 3% potential tax hike that's very unlikely to affect him. A new and deep recession may make it all moot if McCain's leadership is not much better than George Bush's.

All in all, the scenario is not what Joe fears it would be, it is not what John McCain misrepresents it to be and it's very very far from anything one could honestly describe as "spreading the wealth around" even if it's said without the squint and sneer and rubbing of hands. But then we're talking about John McCain's claims about his tax policy and not about honesty and to quote another plumber and funny guy I used to know - that shit don't flush.

Preaching to the Choir

Election dialog is of most value when we are spreading the word as opposed to preaching to the choir. There are web sites that the average public posts to and those sites feed information to many people. I believe we need to flood those sites with our opinions. Brief statements, simply stated, that point out the obvious.

For example, the home page on AOL had an article about Biden's comments concerning taxing the rich. http://news.aol.com/elections/article/biden-calls-taxes-patriotic-for-rich/179323 Following the article was a straw poll containing two questions. One question asked if the rich should be taxed more heavily than the rest of us. 55% of the respondants answered yes. Yet, the second question asked whose economic policies were supported more. Over 60% said McCain. Hello? At the end of the survey is an opportunity to blog a response. I did so. We need to bombard these straw polls and respond to educate consumers.