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A way of life

Monday, May 6, 2013

It seems that the folks in Burkesville, Kentucky feel unfairly put upon. Some people don’t understand why they feel perfectly comfortable giving real guns to five year olds, or why they can’t see how a parent that leaves such a loaded gun available for said five year old to shoot his 2 year old sister might have some responsibility for said shooting. Certainly more responsibility, I would argue, than the five year old, who may go to his grave with a load of guilt for an act of which he only dimly understood the consequences.

After all, they say, giving guns to kids is part of their “way of life” and therefore we should give them a free pass. All over the world this excuse is used to defend the inexcusably stupid, barbaric, or unjust. Everything from cannibalism, to slavery to female genital mutilation can be explained away by resort to this argument. Back in the days of American slavery it was the South’s excuse for holding millions in bondage. An alternative phraseology is “part of our culture”. If one uses “culture” as a defense one need not justify the behavior to either god or man; it is because it is.

Here in America we are supposed to back off whenever anyone uses this lame excuse for stupidity or bigotry. The Southland has raised this sort of thing to an art form, not surprising, since they’ve had lots of practice, in that they’ve been been using it for hundreds of years to justify everything from slavery to lynchings to segregated proms.

For some reason, we folks in the North don’t get to make this excuse – nor have we sought to. I’m not sure why that is; certainly we do some stupid things up here, but when we’re criticized we tend to try to justify our position by argument; sometimes reasonable, sometimes not, but the idea that we are privileged to behave stupidly because we’ve always behaved stupidly doesn’t have much traction here. I’m not saying we’re morally superior; we’ve just been trained. The Southern States have played the victim so long that we all sort of concede their right to do so; we here in the North are supposed to soak up criticism and keep our mouths shut even when the criticism is unfair.

On this specific issue, my mind remains boggled. When I was a very young boy, Davy Crockett (who came from Tennessee which is pretty much the same as Kentucky, or was when Davy was born on that mountaintop) was my hero. I knew every word to his theme song, and I was prepared to believe almost any good thing about him, but even then I knew that he didn’t actually kill him a bar when he was only three, and I was only four at the time. I had toy guns (never gave them to my kids) and it never crossed my mind that I had any business having a real one. I don’t know what I’d have done if my father had handed one to me back then. But it wasn’t part of my parents way of life to give me the means to easily kill before I even understood the reality and finality of death. I guess I just had a deprived childhood, but then I got to grow up without the burden of guilt I would have had for killing one of my siblings.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, May 3, 2013

I saw Iggy Pop on the Colbert Show this week, and it occurred to me that I’d never put him in this feature. Truth to tell I was only dimly aware of his existence back in the day, though I knew he was in the same basic camp as Lou Reed and David Bowie. So, I figured, put him up, which led to the next question. Put up what? I really have no idea what the creme de la creme of Iggy’s oeuvre might be. Well, much to my surprise, but probably not to the cognizanti, I discovered that he and Bowie wrote China Girl together, and he recorded it first.

I can’t quite figure the shirtless thing, which is still part of his act now that he’s well into his sixties (seventies?). I guess sticking to it gave him some incentive to keep his abs in shape.

My wife insisted, as we checked Iggy’s version out, that Bowie’s was better, so here’s your chance to compare. Actually, I’m putting up two versions by Bowie. They’re quite different one from the other.

You might want to advance the second version to somewhere around the two minute mark.

Great song.

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Red Sox feeling put upon

Thursday, May 2, 2013

I’m a die hard Sox fan, but I’m realistic enough to know that there’s a lot of willful suspension of disbelief necessary to root for any sports team. At the bottom, they are just businesses.

One of my pet peeves is the avidity with which our governments at every level dole out subsidies and outright grants to corporations. On a local level, as I’ve often complained, it’s especially irritating when businesses that really have no ability to engage in the typical pay-us-or-we’ll-leave blackmail demand and get tribute in one form or another. Sports teams are among the worst offenders when it comes to getting undeserved subsidies, and in many cases they can use the blackmail gambit, but in the case of the Sox-not so much. The Sox have the highest average ticket prices in baseball, and are pretty much minting money. Does anyone for a minute think they’ll leave Boston or the friendly confines of Fenway Park? In any rational world they’d have zero leverage to put the squeeze on the fair city of Boston. But this is not a rational world or, at any rate, a rational country, for none of these considerations have stopped the Sox from demanding their fair share of the milk from the public teat or seem likely to prevent Boston from caving to their demands:

Before Fenway games, thousands of Sox fans flock to temporary concession stands outside the gates to buy beer and frankfurters. Meanwhile, scores of attendees take their $165 seats atop the stadium’s iconic left-field wall, the Green Monster.

Both locations — the Yawkey Way food stands and the air space over Lansdowne Street — are owned by the city, but used by the Sox under a 10-year-old licensing agreement.

Since 2003, the team has made tens of millions of dollars on the sales, while paying a tiny fraction in license fees. Now, with the deal set to expire at the end of this season, the club is pushing to make the lucrative arrangement permanent, according to a November letter from the Sox to the Boston Redevelopment Authority that the Globe obtained through a public records request.

In the letter, the Red Sox argue that the low license fee is reasonable because John W. Henry’s ownership group has paid $56.7 million in property, sales, and meals taxes since buying the team in 2002.

So, that’s reasonable. The Sox deserve what I calculate to be a 2500% return on their investment. Their rent is $156,000.00; their revenues about $5,000,000.00. Even if we assume that other expenses bring their costs to a million, that gives them a 400 percent return, something they richly deserve because they pay their taxes, which, barring evidence to the contrary, we must assume are assessed at the same rate as that imposed on the merchants in Kenmore Square that are not benefitting from any subsidy.

But, wait, the fact that they pay taxes is not the only reason the Sox have for demanding that we transfer our money to them:

In the letter, the Red Sox pushed for a permanent extension of the current terms, arguing that a higher fee would represent an “unwarranted, punitive burden” on an ownership group that has never sought public financing for Fenway Park renovations or for a new stadium.

Over the last two decades, Red Sox vice president David S. Friedman noted in the letter to Meade, 22 of 30 Major League clubs have built new ballparks with at least some public dollars.

“In light of the universal practice regarding public support for baseball stadium development, it is certainly appropriate for us to arrive at a permanent extension of our current rights and practices,” Friedman wrote.

We’ve heard a lot about curbing entitlements. Here’s a new one that’s not likely to be the subject of Pete Peterson’s complaints. The Sox are entitled to unwarranted and unneeded public subsidies because other teams have managed to put the squeeze on other cities. It’s enough to make my heart bleed. The owners of my beloved Red Sox are being subjected to a “punitive burden” because they may have to pay a reasonable price for the right to control a public space. Sure, they’ll still be making tons of money, but a few of those tons will go back to the city that is enabling them to make all those other tons of money. John Henry might not be able to get a new yacht this year! How can we subject our rich people to this sort of thing when we have still not wrung the last penny from our elderly, our poor, and our infirm? Is there no justice?

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Comments

Thursday, May 2, 2013

I now compose most of my posts on my Ipad, and I use an app with the original name of “Posts” to do so. It is the best app I’ve found for the purpose, but I was distressed to find out yesterday that, for reasons that I certainly can’t fathom, it defaults to a “no comments allowed” post, which you have to manually override. Since I was unaware of that fact, I haven’t overridden the setting. The result is that comments have been allowed only on those rare posts that I compose on my computer. Those are primarily the Friday Night Music posts, because it’s easier to do that on a computer.

So I apologize to anyone, should any such exist, that have tried to comment and been barred from doing so. The bright side is that I can tell myself that, were it not for this misapprehension on my part, I would have gotten hundreds of comments in the last few months (not counting the spam comments, that still come through). Whose to say I’m delusional.

In any event, going forward, comments should be open for anyone caring to say anthing.

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Gunplay

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Unbelievable. Well, unfortunately, not unbelievable:

BURKESVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Authorities in southern Kentucky say a 2-year-old girl has been accidentally shot and killed by her 5-year-old brother, who was playing with a .22-caliber rifle he received as a gift.

Kentucky State Police said the toddler was shot just after 1 p.m. CDT Tuesday in Cumberland County and was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.

Cumberland County Coroner Gary White told the Lexington Herald-Leader that the children’s mother was at home at the time.

White told the newspaper that the boy received the rifle made for youths last year and is used to shooting it. He said the gun was kept in a corner and the family didn’t realize a shell was left inside it.

White said the shooting will be ruled accidental.

Yes, you read that right. Someone gave this kid a real gun.

No criminal charges will be filed.

Now, I’m just a small town New England lawyer, and I don’t practice criminal law. That puts me at a double disadvantage, I guess, since we have this concept called “reason” up here, which makes it hard for me to understand the thought processes of the Southerner. But even in my ignorance of the criminal law, I know there’s a crime called “risk of injury to a minor”, and my reason tells me that there may be at least three people who have committed a crime here. That would be the idiot who gave the gun to this child and the parents (if they weren’t the gift givers) who allowed him to have it. For good measure we might add the corporation that manufacturers a “rifle made for youths”.

Postscript:  A later article at TPM states that charges are still being considered, but it looks unlikely that there will be any charges.

In light of this shooting, I got a kick out of this story from the rational state on New York. I mean, the guy probably deserves to be charged, but what a contrast.

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who dresses up as Cookie Monster in Times Square turned down a plea deal in a New York City case accusing him of shoving a 2-year-old after his mother refused to tip him.
Osvaldo Quiroz-Lopez is charged with endangering the welfare of a child.

Maybe he should have shot the kid instead.

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Not so fast-the Dems could blow this one too

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Ted Cruz, the man who makes his fellow senators look good, is apparently thinking of running for President, and at least one blogger at Daily Kos is licking his (or her) chops:

Cruz is a perfect candidate for the right: He’s as crazy as Michele Bachmann, but instead of degrees from Winona State University and the Marshall-Wythe School of Law, he’s got degrees from Princeton and Harvard. He’s managed to fuse the religious fundamentalism of Rick Santorum with the economic libertarianism of Rand Paul. And his last name is Cruz, so Reince Priebus thinks he’s got huge crossover appeal to Latinos.

I’m rooting for him to run in a big way. Cruz could never win a general election, but the delusional right won’t realize that fact until it’s too late. (Remember, even after the polls closed and states were called, these guys thought Mitt Romney was going to win.)

But even though Cruz would be another Goldwater, he presses every conservative button, so it would be a mistake to discount his capacity to win the nomination. And even though he talks a good game about standing up to “the establishment,” the establishment seems to be warming up to him: The New York State Republican Party just invited him to be their headline speaker at their annual dinner later this month even though he voted against Hurricane Sandy relief aid as one of his first acts in the Senate.

Cruz’s real liability won’t show up until the general election: He’s just too extreme for the country. But in a GOP primary without an experienced establishment favorite like Mitt Romney, that’s an asset.

(via Daily Kos: Calgary Cruz 2016!)

This is all theoretically sound, but we must be cautious. It completely discounts the astounding ability of the Democrats to throw away every political advantage that comes their way. (Witness their ham-handed response to the cynical Republican FAA ploy, and who knows how many of them will sign on to Obama’s idea to cut social security in the name of pretending to do something about a debt problem that does not presently exist) Sometimes they’ve succeeded in spite of themselves, as in 2012, but occasional past performance is no guarantee of future performance. You can’t consistently win elections by relying on people to vote for the saner of two evils. Sooner or later they’ll figure they have nothing to lose by going with the crazy guy.

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A bullet dodged?

Monday, April 29, 2013

I am not a football fan, and I pay almost zero attention to the sport, even during the height of the season. Yet even I became aware of the threat to the future of our country posed by one Tim Tebow, an insufferable Christian. He was welcome to all the football success in the world (though even I knew he was overhyped in Colorado), except for the sneaking suspicion I had that he was looking to eventually parlay his football success into a right wing political career.

So I must plead guilty to feeling no small amount of schadenfreude today at the news that Mr. Tebow has been consigned to the ash heap of football history at the tender young age of 25. No doubt he’ll find a career in the tv ministry or something, but I’m hoping that his road to political advancement has been made a good deal rockier by his new status as a total loser. Who knows, maybe he’ll be able to blame his failure on those New York City folks, and get himself elected to the Senate from Alabama or some other stupid state, but we have at least some cause to hope that we’ve heard the last of him.

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Friday Night Bonus Video

Friday, April 26, 2013

Stephen Colbert destroys Reinhart and Rogoff, in two parts:

Part Two:

What a strange world we live in. The comedians are the only ones who tell us the truth.

If you’ve been following this controversy you may know that the New York Times has given the duo two columns today in which to defend themselves and attack the people who exposed their errors. When I read one of their columns this morning I knew it was bull when they said that they had found an “association” between high debt and low growth. Their paper has been used for years to argue that high debt causes low growth, which is another thing altogether, and they have done nothing to disabuse anyone of the notion. Read Dean Baker’s reaction here for a more informed takedown.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, April 26, 2013

I don’t live in Boston, but I’ve been a Sox fan all my life, so I’ve certainly had my heart broken there a lot and I feel like in some small way that it’s my fuckin’ city too. So, in case you haven’t seen them, here’s the folks in Boston affirming their resilience. I mean where else can you get 30,000 people to do a reasonably good job singing an unsingable song?

Now, for a non-musical interlude.

And, finally, for reasons that are somewhat revealed here, Sweet Caroline is played at every Red Sox game. Here’s Neil Diamond accompanying himself and the crowd.

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An economic theory, revisited

Friday, April 26, 2013

Paul Krugman grapples with the baffling fact that austerity continues its grip on policy when it has been proven ineffective time and again:

Part of the answer surely lies in the widespread desire to see economics as a morality play, to make it a tale of excess and its consequences. We lived beyond our means, the story goes, and now we’re paying the inevitable price. Economists can explain ad nauseam that this is wrong, that the reason we have mass unemployment isn’t that we spent too much in the past but that we’re spending too little now, and that this problem can and should be solved. No matter; many people have a visceral sense that we sinned and must seek redemption through suffering — and neither economic argument nor the observation that the people now suffering aren’t at all the same people who sinned during the bubble years makes much of a dent.

But it’s not just a matter of emotion versus logic. You can’t understand the influence of austerity doctrine without talking about class and inequality.

What, after all, do people want from economic policy? The answer, it turns out, is that it depends on which people you ask — a point documented in a recent research paper by the political scientists Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels and Jason Seawright. The paper compares the policy preferences of ordinary Americans with those of the very wealthy, and the results are eye-opening.

Thus, the average American is somewhat worried about budget deficits, which is no surprise given the constant barrage of deficit scare stories in the news media, but the wealthy, by a large majority, regard deficits as the most important problem we face. And how should the budget deficit be brought down? The wealthy favor cutting federal spending on health care and Social Security — that is, “entitlements” — while the public at large actually wants to see spending on those programs rise.

You get the idea: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.

He goes on to make the point that in the long run, we would all, rich and poor alike, be better off if we abandoned austerity, though the rich have done far better under this regimen than the rest of us.

So once again, I tender what I believe to be the correct explanation for this phenomenon.

President Kennedy once observed that a rising tide lifts all boats. The point was that in a good economy we’re all better off, be our boat a yacht or a kayak. But his analogy was somewhat flawed, for in a rising economy, one in which we peons get decent social security, health care and wage increases that reflect our productivity, our boats, relative to those of the 1%, might rise just a bit higher relative to theirs. Sure, they’d still be able to look down from the decks of their yachts into the hold of our canoes, but they’d be holding their heads an an angle slightly less oblique, and this they cannot abide. Why is this? Again, I must quote a line masterfully delivered by Robert Vaughn, playing an arch-villain capitalist in Superman III: “It is not enough that [they] succeed, everyone else must fail.”

So, while the super-rich might succeed just a tad more if we ditched austerity, it would not be enough to make up for the fact that so many fewer would fail. They see before them the prospect of a brighter tomorrow, a world governed by and for the oligarchs, dressed up in a facade of faux democracy to keep the proles ground down and quiescent. They’re not about to give that up for a few extra bucks that none of them need.

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