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Once again, the money flows toward the stupid

Monday, February 14, 2011

Connecticut News Junkie points us to an on-line debate between liberal Jonathan Pelto (read his post here) and conservative Heath Fahle (I don’t link to conservatives) about Sustinet, a health care initiative championed by Connecticut Democrats, with our own Betsy Ritter, of Drinking Liberally, very much in the forefront. It promises to enable Connecticut to use the new Health Care law to maximum advantage both for the people of the state and for the state itself, as it should both increase access to health care and drive down health care costs in this state.

This is all very well, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend against it, but it occurs to me that if this is successful one serendipitious result will be that we, along with other states where reason is still a factor in politics, will become even greater net exporters of federal tax dollars. We are, of course, already exporting dollars to the states where the voters want the government off their backs as soon as it deposits all its money in their pockets. It’s a given among economists that it is out of control health care costs that are driving the long term federal deficit, because so much of the federal budget goes to pay inflated health care expenses. If we get our health care costs under as much control as the new bill allows (and, I admit, that might not be by much), we will end up, as always, subsidizing the health care costs in those states that are valiantly resisting rationalizing health care in defense of recently discovered constitutional principles.

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Editorial Judgments

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Herbert Ross of Lyme wrote an excellent letter to the Day, taking issue with its decision to run a blatantly misleading editorial cartoon. The cartoon asserted, against all the evidence, that the Social Security trust fund was going bankrupt.

Mr. Ross asks that the Day explain the way the it makes it editorial decisions regarding the cartoons that it runs, and surprisingly receives a response, which I print in full below, to avoid any charge that I am misrepresenting the Day’s rationale.

The Day seeks to publish on its editorial pages political cartoons reflecting a variety of opinions across the political scale. We recognize that the message conveyed by the cartoonists does at times run counter to our own editorial opinions. Such a clash of ideas is the very essence of political debate. As for the accuracy of the cartoon’s meaning, The Day realizes political cartoonists often paint their opinions with a wide brush and provides them the latitude to do so.

This is very noble sounding, but in fact it amounts to an abdication of the editorial role. Mr. Ross is not complaining about the cartoonist’s opinion, to which she is entitled, he is complaining about her facts, to which she is not entitled. I will observe here that, curiously, it is always right wing non-facts that get propagated in the editorial cartoons.

Here, then, is what we are free to believe goes through the head of the editors as they chose this cartoon:

Here is a cartoon in which the cartoonist asserts that she is entitled to her own facts as well as her own opinion. We have a large number of syndicated cartoons from which we can choose. We choose this one. We, however, are not responsible for propagating a lie, simply because we choose to provide a platform from which that lie can be propagated. The fact that we choose to print this merely reflects our belief that we have an obligation to inject falsehoods as well as truth into the public discourse. If lies are effectively propagated as a result, that has nothing to do with us.

This brings to mind what was possibly the best example of the Day’s refusal to exercise minimal editorial judgment. Back in January the Day printed an editorial condemning talk about death panels. The editorial sat right next to an editorial cartoon that asserted the existence of death panels. By the way, news flash to the Day: more people look at the cartoon than read your editorial pablum.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, February 11, 2011

I tried to think of the most appropriate song to celebrate Mubarak’s departure. Given the situation, I thought this was the best choice:


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Rightward drift

Thursday, February 10, 2011

The essential difference between Democrats and Republicans, and the reason why this country drifts ever rightward, no matter who is in nominal control of the government:

Steve Benen wonders who is in charge of the Republican caucus, as the (comparative) grownups, the supposed leaders (Boehner, Cantor and their ilk) have been unable to corral the votes needed to pass legislation and now seem unable to control the budget process.

The answer is simple. Among the Republican caucus, it is the extreme right that is in control, and the rest of the caucus will dance to their tune. If that means doing things that are totally insane, then so be it. The “moderate” Republicans would never think of making common cause with “centrist” Democrats to pass something.

This dynamic is, as we know, precisely the opposite of how things work on the Democratic side. If the left side of the party is unhappy about something, the Democratic leadership takes pride in that fact, and Obama tries to make personal political capital out of it. Witness the latest: taking pride in depriving the poor of heat in the winter, after failing to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes, and, to add that extra bit of insider hypocrisy, calling it “shared sacrifice”.

Better to gain a single Republican maybe than make 60 or 70 liberals happy, particularly because, unlike their Republican counterparts, the more left leaning Democrats can always be counted on to accept reality and go along with whatever ineffective piece of garbage the leadership decides to put together to satisfy Olympia Snowe, who then votes against it anyway.

Democratic congresses and Democratic presidents merely slow the rightward trend. With each year we find that the formerly unthinkable becomes common wisdom. In the weeks ahead we will see plenty of “compromises” dictated by the extreme right of the Republican party, with the Democratic Party and the Democratic Administration serving as enablers.

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Bless me Father, I have sinned. And I know exactly how many times and when.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Finally, just what all Catholics have been waiting for: an Iphone app of their own.

It’s Confession: A Roman Catholic App, which TUAW says “happens to be the first iOS app to receive an imprimatur, which is essentially a blessing from the church to publish the app.”

This is a great idea, and it looks like it has a great interface. Commandments on the left sidebar. Pick a commandment, and add a sin. For instance, if you’re getting it on with your neighbor’s wife just click on the sixth commandment, and note the date and time in the list on the right.

Too distracted to enter your sins on the go? No problem, you can use the app’s customized “Examination of Conscience”, tailored to your unique circumstances “single, married, priest or religious”. So, say you’re a single woman. Had sex? Yes? Sin! Married woman? Had Sex? Yes? Enjoyed it? Yes? Sin! Easy as pie. Just click the checkbox. Sort of like the diet apps where you keep track of what you eat.

You can even enter customized sins into your examination of conscience, in case you happen to indulge in unusual sins or sins the app developers forgot about. Based on the preview screen at the Itunes store, that’s not likely. Do you really need to be reminded to ask yourself if you have “mutilated myself through any form of sterilization”?

By the way, no need to worry that anyone but Jesus will see your sins. The app is password protected.

Unfortunately, the app developers note that you still have to physically enter the box, wait for the little door to open, and recite for the priest. Won’t he be impressed, though, when you rattle off each sin, right down to the number of times you’ve mutilated yourself through any form of sterilization. Maybe you can sort them by commandment, or by mortal and venial, or by degree of actual contrition. And, assuming you can avoid additional sins on your way to church, you might just try printing a report and just handing it to him in the confessional. Who knows, but the next upgrade might include a companion app for the priest, so you can transmit your sins securely versus bluetooth, and he, in turn, could deliver your penance by a return transmission.

I’d get it today, but my wife says I have too many apps, and for once, I’m going to listen to her.


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Grifter Nation, local edition

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Samuel Johnson said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”, but surely he was wrong. It may be next but one, but surely, as Chuck Colson, John Rowland, and many others have proven, the very last refuge is religion. I submit that skipping patriotism, or at least skipping the money making side of it-politics, and going straight to religion, is a wise career move. Generally speaking, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin being glaring exceptions, you can’t make patriotism pay unless you are able to fool most of the people most of the time, while religion pays if you merely fool some of the people all of the time. Moreover, while there’s only room for a few scammers of the Beck variety, there’s room for millions of low level religious con men, and, unless you get too blatant about it, everything you do is constitutionally protected.

Consider the case of Michael Calo. The Day has documented Mr. Calo’s checkered career as a relatively small time scam artist (only the small timers get arrested, remember. The truly great scam artists get bailouts) fleecing people during the dot.com era and thereafter. Calo has now found religion and the Shoreline Church, Inc., where he has put his talents to work serving God and man:

[George] Hamberg and a couple who also complained to police about Calo dispute the notion that he found redemption when he formed Shoreline Church.

“To me, it’s like it’s a money-making thing,” said Hamberg, who filed a complaint with the Old Saybrook Police Department in 2008, concerned that his then-wife, Della, was donating money she couldn’t afford to the church.
The Hambergs were going through a divorce that involved the imminent loss of their home and business in Old Saybrook, Hamberg said, when he learned Della had donated more than $8,000 to the church. Hamberg said he was able to trace $8,000 in donations through checks but said Della gave more in cash.

“George said that Della has told family members she will no longer listen to their legal or financial advice but will only listen to Pastors Mike and Meredith Calo of the Shoreline Church,” according to a Jan. 9, 2008, police report obtained through a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act request.
Another couple told police their daughter gave nearly half of her family’s $30,000 annual income to the church.

Barry and Natalie Rand of Old Lyme said during an interview at their home last month that the more their daughter, Kelly Mastello, became involved with the church, the more she changed and the more her finances deteriorated.

The married mother of three lost her car, sold her house after pre-foreclosure proceedings had begun and moved into an apartment owned by the pastor’s in-laws, paying $1,000 in monthly rent, according to Rand’s statement in a police report and records at East Haddam Town Hall.

By all means read the full article. It’s chock-a-block with details of this guy’s colorful career. The guy is a prize, and his little wife too. I’d say he gives religion a bad name, but in this day and age, that’s pretty hard to do.

By the way, kudos to The Day for committing real journalism in this piece.

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O’Reilly’s proof of god

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Here’s a good take down of Bill O’Reilly’s “tide goes in, tide goes out” proof of the deity’s existence. According to Bill, the fact that the tides never miss a beat is proof that there must be a God, for after all, who can explain such wonderful regularity. As it turns out, lots of people.

But I can’t resist piling on, and I think my observation is at least somewhat different than all the telling points made by others.

Isn’t O’Reilly attempting to use the basic argument for science against it? It is the very fact of nature’s regularity -it’s obedience to laws- that makes science possible. If the tides came in and out at unpredictable or random intervals, that would make it well nigh impossible to come up with a scientific explanation for the phenomenom. That type of irregularity, like a “miracle” would argue for the existence of some capricious “intelligence” controlling nature. Regularity in nature doesn’t prove the existence of God, even if we can’t understand the reason for the regularity. It argues for a natural cause. Indeed, I’d venture to say that throughout history it was the perceived irregularities-thunder, lightening, eclipses, comets-which, because they could not be understood, drove people to posit the existence of fickle gods and goddesses. Predictable things-sun goes up, sun goes down-because they were reliable were far less likely to inspire the fear that created the gods.

I must now apologize for the above post. I am deeply troubled by the fact that the casual reader might think I take O’Reilly seriously. What I’ve said so far could certainly leave that impression, and for that I apologize.


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Apple: rotten to the core?

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

My RSS feeds come in two basic flavors: politics and computers. The computer feeds are heavily concentrated on things Apple. I bought a Mac about seven years ago and have never looked back. Back then, Apple was still a relatively bit player in the computer world, and besides getting better technology and software, you could also delude yourself into thinking you were supporting the little guy against big, bad Microsoft.

Alas, even that delusion can no longer be indulged. Today, my computer feeds are all abuzz about the joint announcement by Apple and the News Corporation (i.e., Rupert Mudoch, i.e., Fox) of the release of a (for now) IPad only daily newspaper. Murdoch has the ability to sell his Ipad publication by subscription, something no other publisher can do. So, the former foe of the Microsoft evil empire has joined up with the far more evil Rupert Murdoch. Of course the tech savvy but ideologically blind tech writers don’t even discuss the ideological slant of this new publication, but can there be any doubt?

Meanwhile Bill Gates is curing polio. Are there no eternal verities in this modern world?

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America is a great country: Corporate Edition

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

One of Mel Brooks’ characters observed that “It’s good to be the King”. Well, in America, being the land of opportunity, you don’t need to be a king. Being a corporation will do.

Besides being entitled to all the perks of personhood, courtesy of the Supreme Court, you get to get to game the system in so many wonderful ways. Case in point in this morning’s Times. David Leonhardt calls it the Paradox of Corporate Taxes. What’s the paradox. Well, it lies in the fact that the United States has the highest nominal corporate tax rate in the world, and one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates, given the number of loopholes granted to the corporations by a compliant U.S. government.

This results in a best of both worlds situation for the corporations. They, along with their lobbyists and their (mostly) Republican Congressional supporters get to complain ceaselessly about high U.S. tax rates, using that complaint as a device to extract ever more loopholes, while enjoying the benefit of an actually very low tax rate (getting lower all the time as those loopholes accrue), which costs no more to get than the salaries of a few tax lawyers, a few lobbyists, and the occasional bribe to a Congressman, the latter of which comes incredibly cheap. Meanwhile we the real taxpayers, and the U.S. economy as a whole, gets the shaft.

It’s good to be a corporation.


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Paul Ryan

Monday, January 31, 2011

This is rather personal for me. From Crooks and Liars:

In Paul Ryan’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union address last week, he fretted over our social safety nets becoming hammocks.

Ryan is the guy, as you probably know, who is hell bent on destroying Social Security and Medicare. But in turns out, as Crooks and Liars (quoting these folks) points out, that someone should ask him whether he spent his time after 10th grade in a hammock:

One day as a 16 year old, Ryan came upon the lifeless body of his father. Paul Ryan, Sr. had died of a heart attack at age 55, leaving the Janesville Craig High School 10th grader, his three older brothers and sisters and his mother alone. It was Paul who told the family of his father’s death.

With his father’s passing, young Paul collected Social Security benefits until age 18, which he put away for college. To make ends meet, Paul’s mother returned to school to study interior design. His siblings were off at college. Ryan remembers this difficult time bringing him and his mother closer.

That was me, only I was younger (9) when my father died of a heart attack, leaving 6 kids behind, all of whom, plus his wife, received social security benefits. Who knows what would have happened to us without them. Along with that we received other benefits, such as VA benefits. I know I was getting a check every month while I was in college, so the benefits continued at least until I graduated. My mother is still collecting, more than 50 years on, so I’m fairly sure that we have collected far more in total than my father ever paid in.

Apparently, either Ryan believes he didn’t deserve that money, or has made himself believe that somehow it doesn’t count in his case. I suspect the latter, as I have a right wing brother who rejects the very notion that he has a big time debt to the “welfare state”. He simply can’t accept that he was getting government benefits; somehow it was different when he got it. I’ve always felt a tremendous debt to the Social Security program. I remember in college, speaking up when some affluent radicals in a history class I was taking insisted that the New Deal, not being socialistic enough, had made no real difference in the country. I said I wouldn’t have been there, at a top flight liberal arts college, if it weren’t for social security, so it had made a hell of a difference to me. Those kids didn’t know better, since it was all theory at that point in their lives. What’s Ryan’s excuse?

Right now I don’t need social security, and it’s entirely possible, thanks to the boost I got when I did need it, that I will never really need it again, though I’ll certainly take it when my time comes. But I’m acutely aware that I owe a debt to the sons and daughters of all those folks who paid into the system so that Paul Ryan and I could get a decent start in life.

Ryan has presumably convinced himself that he made it on his own. No one does. We’re all in this together.


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