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A gift for the Democrats

Monday, May 21, 2012

One nice thing about the modern Republican party is that so many of them can’t help themselves. They are reflexively pro-rich, and reflexively against anything more than one Democrat is for. Sometimes, they react before taking time to think, meaning they do quickly what they would do anyway, because true thinking is hard. Case in point:

New Democratic-led legislation aimed at penalizing those who would renounce their U.S. citizenship to dodge taxes has provoked fiery criticism from influential conservatives and is putting Republican leaders in a politically precarious situation.

Inspired by the actions of Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder who renounced his citizenship ahead of a large tax payment associated with the company’s much-ballyhooed initial public offering, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Bob Casey (D-PA) unveiled a bill Thursday to force such tax-dodgers to pay a 30 percent tax rate on all future U.S. investments and ban them from ever setting foot in the country again.

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist compared it to the actions of Nazi Germany.

“I think Schumer can probably find the legislation to do this. It existed in Germany in the 1930s and Rhodesia in the ’70s and in South Africa as well,” Norquist said, as quoted by The Hill. “He probably just plagiarized it and translated it from the original German.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board derided the legislation as “Soviet-style exit taxes” that resemble “what oppressive and demagogic regimes do, and it’s humiliating to see U.S. Senators posture in such fashion.”

(via Talking Points Memo)

Perhaps it is smart politics to defend a billionaire who renounces his citizenship to avoid paying taxes. (In the interest of fairness, I should add that he has said it was not about taxes, but if you run that through Google translate it comes out as It’s all about taxes, something even his Republican defenders acknowledge celebrate.) It’s an option, it hardly needs pointing out, not available to the rabble. This plays perfectly into the Obama attack line against Romney, who thinks the only reason the GM bailout was any good is because GM is now making a profit. Now, if only the Cory Bookers of the Democratic party would get out of the way.

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Friday Night Music, with some old time comedy

Friday, May 18, 2012

Okay, this is in response to a request, and by way of proving that we can meet on some common ground, even with those with whom we disagree politically. A somewhat frequent commenter, who I think it’s fair to say never agrees with me on anything else, suggested I put up the Beach Boys. I think, years and years ago, I found an acceptable video of Sloop John B, so I thought I’d see if I could find California Girls.

Most of the good stuff has embedding enabled. This one is available on youtube in color, again with embedding turned off. I think it’s a live version, and for anybody under 40 in the audience, it gives a little taste for what passed as comedy in those days, so I was glad to find this black and white version. This is from so long ago that Brian Wilson was still with the group.

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The Emperor may be naked, but you can’t convince the press

Friday, May 18, 2012

As I recall the tale, none of the grownups watching the parade would admit the obvious until a little boy in the crowd made his views known. But, at least at that point, the folks in the crowd cast off their delusions, and joined in the cry that the Emperor was naked. Perhaps human nature has changed since the time of Hans Christian Anderson, or maybe the American press corps is merely thicker than your average Dane:

Last month, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein published an Op ed and a book making the extremely controversial argument that both parties aren’t equally to blame for what ails Washington. They argued that the GOP — by allowing extremists to roam free and by wielding the filibuster to achieve government dysfunction as a political end in itself — were demonstrably more culpable for creating what is approaching a crisis of governance.

It turns out neither man has been invited on to the Sunday shows even once to discuss this thesis. As Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum note, these are among the most quoted people in Washington — yet suddenly this latest topic is too hot for the talkers, or not deemed relevant at all.

I ran this thesis by Ornstein himself, and he confirmed that the book’s publicity people had tried to get the authors booked on the Sunday shows, with no success.

“Not a single one of the Sunday shows has indicated an interest, and I do find it curious,” Ornstein told me, adding that the Op ed had well over 200,000 Facebook recommends and has been viral for weeks. “This is a level of attention for a book that we haven’t received before. You would think it would attract some attention from the Sunday shows.’

Ornstein also noted another interesting point. Their thesis takes on the media for falling into a false equivalence mindset and maintaining the pretense that both sides are equally to blame. Yet despite the frequent self-obsession of the media, even that angle has failed to generate any interest. What’s more, some reporters have privately indicated their frustration with their editorial overlords’ apparent deafness to this idea.

…

Ornstein, while stressing that he wasn’t casting any blame, noted that the topic hasn’t come up on Howard Kurtz’s weekend media show.

This is curious. Is “experts confirm that, yes, one side is more to blame than the other, and journalists should say so” really too hot a topic for the Sunday shows? Is it not relevant or interesting?

Of course, this should not be surprising. There’s been quite a few of us babes in the crowd decrying the “both sides do it” meme, seeing as there is no objective evidence to support it. Still, when two of their own cry out, you think they would at least stop, listen, and cluck disapprovingly, before going back to spouting their drivel . Ah well, Ornstein and Mann will probably get on the Daily Show or Colbert. You know, on the Comedy Channel, where the thinking people hang out.

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Brooks again

Friday, May 18, 2012

Dean Baker concentrates his fire on David Brooks again, despite my suggestion that he avoid high blood pressure by not reading him. Baker takes issue with this gem from Brooks’s latest column:

“Western democratic systems were based on a balance between self-doubt and self-confidence. They worked because there were structures that protected the voters from themselves and the rulers from themselves. Once people lost a sense of their own weakness, the self-doubt went away and the chastening structures were overwhelmed.”

Baker’s criticisms are all well founded, of course, but there’s a more fundamental problem with the quoted paragraph. It’s total, ahistorical gibberish, made up on the spur of the moment to support another of Brooks’s absurd theses. I defy anyone to cite a founder of this democracy, or any democracy, who opined that “democratic systems were based on a balance between self-doubt and self-confidence”. I heard about this guy, for instance, who said this one particular democratic system was “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. But then, maybe Brooks knows something he didn’t know. This is simply a variant of Brooks’s typical “there are two kinds of people in the world” argument, with his side, as always, on the side of reason.

I suppose if one were to torture some words and phrases from some historical moment, the mangled remains, once the cries for mercy died down, might, when viewed in the dark, yield up something one could interpret as being suggestive of Brooks’s formulation. In his world, maybe that’s enough. The balance of his paragraph makes even less sense. This is what passes for deep thought in this day and age. Were only Brooks afflicted with a modicum of the self-doubt he urges on the rest of us, we would all be better off.

Postscript: I hereby make a solemn promise not to mention David Brooks again for at least a month. This could become as addictive as ice cream, and far less nutritious.

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Capitalist speaks truth, is muffled

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Nick Hanauer, and I have no idea who he is, though he is apparently rich, made some wholly obvious points during a TED lecture. Naturally, this led the folks at TED to try to block distribution of his talk, apparently on the grounds that it would hurt the fee-fees of other rich folks. Some might recall that I wondered a few days ago about why the capitalists, at least those who actually produce things, don’t demand stimulus. Hanauer, we must presume, agrees that is precisely what they should be doing.

 

 

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Curt Schilling at the public trough

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Life is a mystery. Curt Schilling, well known for being a vocal Republican, would never go in for a government guaranteed loan like Solyndra got, would he? After all, the government is not supposed to pick winners and losers, am I right? And yet…

38 Studios, the video game startup founded and funded by former Boston Red Sox ace Curt Schilling, is reportedly in troubled waters just three months after releasing Kingdoms of Amalur, its first title.

Ocean State economic development officials are reportedly working to keep the company viable. At stake is a $75 million loan guarantee the state of Rhode Island made to the fledgling video game developer.

The Providence Journal reports Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee spent the weekend working under a “tight timeframe” with 38 Studios and officials from the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp., with the aim of “keeping 38 studios solvent.” A spokeswoman for the governor’s office confirmed that the governor had made the reported statements.

38 Studios started six years ago in Massachusetts. But in 2010, Rhode Island lured the startup company south with a $75 million loan guarantee. In exchange, 38 Studios promised it will grow to a head count of 450. Turbine Inc., at one time the largest independent video game developer in Massachusetts, had a head count of 300. Schilling has invested millions of his own money in the company.

Presumably he’d welcome an Issa-type investigation.

 

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Adventures in Semantics, Redux

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

A few days ago I noted that the Mystic River Press featured this front page (very large type) headline:

RTM tries new tact on budget

Apparently the disease is spreading. Today I saw this, in an article about the demise of unlimited data plans, at a computer blog called EverythingICafe:

AT&T has taken a different tact. They set limits on unlimited plans. Once a customer hits those limits, they are throttled. There is little to no advantage to having an unlimited data plan on AT&T at this point.

This shook my faith in my own mental dictionary a bit, so I resorted to the Oxford Dictionary of English, which restored my faith, though I suppose there are some who might argue that the English have no business telling us Americans what words mean.

The English language is under assault from two directions. On the right, the Orwellians, determined to manipulate language in service to their ideology, and from all other directions, the lazies, who have no agenda, other than the preservation of their right to know no dictionary. To be fair, the blogger may simply have been a victim of the tyrannical spelling checker now incorporated into the Mac operating system.

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Some British Businessfolks waking up

Monday, May 14, 2012

A while back I wondered why it was that the Best Buys of the world (or at least, of the USA),were not demanding stimulus. Well, so far as I know, nothing has changed here, but according to Atrios, the business world in Britain is beginning to wake up to the fact that when no one has a job, no one can buy the crap they sell.

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Business as usual for the Democrats

Monday, May 14, 2012

Sigh…

This is the kind of thing that is all too typical of the Democratic party:

Wisconsin Democrats are frustrated with the lack of national support in the effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker, and in what’s likely an effort to pressure the Democratic National Committee to pitch in, they’re airing their frustrations to Greg Sargent:

“We are frustrated by the lack of support from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors Association,” a top Wisconsin Democratic Party official tells me. “Scott Walker has the full support and backing of the Republican Party and all its tentacles. We are not getting similar support.”

“Considering that Scott Walker has already spent $30 million and we’re even in the polls, this is a winnable race,” the Wisconsin Dem continues. “We can get outspent two to one or five to one. We can’t get spent 20 to one.”

Give Howard Dean credit. He pushed the 50 state strategy, forcing the Republicans to defend seats that were not formerly in play. Besides the Walker race, the Democrats are nowhere to be seen in Paul Ryan’s district, where Rob Zerban is a credible candidate.

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Convention

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Today’s convention was they way they all should be:short and sweet. Well that’s not quite sure. The 2006 convention was long, but far sweeter, as that was the year Ned Lamont shocked everyone with the high percentage of votes he got at the convention, doing far better than Susan Bysiewicz did this year. But, there is something to be said for a convention so short that it,left everyone with plenty of time to enjoy what might have been the most beautiful day of the year so far. We in the second district were placed, appropriately give our standing in the state, as far from the scene of the action as they could put us. This picture was taken only a few rows up from where we Grotonites were sitting.

Here’s most of the Groton delegation. As the guy with the camera, I have the luxury of being among the missing.

 

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