Minority Report

Living in a Vacuum

So, I went off for Thanksgiving break and didn't read or watch the news the entire time. Didn't post either because it was more important for me to spend time with my wife and the rest of the family. Which was really good because we needed that.

For someone who reads about six papers a day, though, I feel like I'm completely cut off from the rest of the world. Coming back from break, I'm now entering hell as we go into the last few weeks of the semester. Next two weeks in particular are going to be crazy. If you don't see or hear from me, that'll be why. I should be able to pop my head back up on December 13th and I'm going to post as much as I can through then. But if you don't see me, that's why.

Got a chance to see "The Incredibles" which no one in my family really liked except for me. My wife (mostly to make me feel better, I think) said that she thought there were some "really cute" parts of it. I guess maybe I'm the only one who could relate to it. Basic setup of the film is that a superhero and his wife have to give up superheroing and live anonymously in the mediocrity of suburban life. (To give you an idea of how bad, this guys is working as an insurance claims adjuster). He is prevented from doing good and often finds himself doing bad on behalf of the corporation.

As someone who is about to sell out after close to ten years of working on civil rights issues, that's a story line I can identify with. It's an interesting tale - definitely too complex for little kids (but I guess there's enough superhero action for them to enjoy the flick). I guess not enough people identify with it to be a big hit (scarily, National Treasure is beating the Incredibles in ticket sales - as if a treasure map on the back of the Constitution is any more believable).

Okay, going to bed - maybe.

No Thanks to Delta Airlines

So my wife is finally getting to Michigan today for Thanksgiving, no thanks at all to Delta Airlines. She was supposed to arrive last night but severe weather in the midwest caused a lot of flight delays. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to get a direct flight and she had to fly through Cincinatti to get here.

Her flight was delayed out of New York and she was concerned about missing her connecting flight in Cincinatti since it was the last flight leaving to Detroit. The Delta folk in New York assured her that all flights had been bumped back by a half-hour and that her flight out of Cincinatti would be delayed for her long enough to make it.

Well, you can already see the problem, right? She gets to Cincinatti at 9:15pm and her flight to Detroit is scheduled to leave on time at 9:30. So she's in the incoming plane frantic and I'm on the phone with Delta trying to get them to hold the flight. These jerks give away her seat while I'm on hold with them. They don't even bother to check to see that the passenger they're missing is coming in on a late flight. To make matters worse, she's at a completely different concourse.

It might have cost them 15 minutes of time to wait but they just were insistent on meeting their schedule so they let the flight go. Then they hassle my wife over who should pay for a hotel even though it's their fault that she missed the flight and that she even got on it on the first place. (I can assure you, if they had told her there was a risk of missing it, she wouldn't have boarded the plane in New York). It wasn't even a decent hotel - it was a seedy Days Inn in Kentucky where she was too freaked to even really sleep.

I hope the assholes at Delta know that they're doing no one a favor by lieing to them - all they did was ruin the beginning of a Thanksgiving holiday for some family. Maybe they ought to think about that instead of looking at their business simply in terms of costs per seat mile. I know we'll probably never fly Delta again. Ironically (and of course), her bags made the original flight so they made it to Detroit before she did.

Hopefully your Thanksgiving doesn't have the misfortune that we've had.

Pot Calls Kettle Black

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday that the voting in Ukraine's presidential election was riddled with fraud and that the United States could not accept a victory by Victor F. Yanukovich as legitimate.

In an unusually tough statement that some diplomats said could widen a breach with Russia, which openly backed Mr. Yanukovich, Mr. Powell also warned that there would be "serious consequences" to the American-Ukraine relationship if allegations of fraud were not cleared up.

"We cannot accept this result as legitimate because it does not meet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse," he said. "It is still not too late for Ukrainian authorities to find a solution that respects the will of the Ukrainian people."

Too bad Colin Powell doesn't take as seriously allegations of voter fraud in the US. While they were able to clear it up in time for this year's election in Florida, I'm sure the only reason that they scrapped the list was because of the intense media scrutiny surrounding the list.

I think the Ukrainian response, if they're savvy, should be really funny.

UPDATE: Didn't notice this story in the New York Times when I posted but if the Ukrainians notice, it should be really funny:

Congress' investigative agency, responding to complaints from around the country, has begun to look into the Nov. 2 vote count, including the handling of provisional ballots and malfunctions of voting machines.

Paycuts for Harvard Employees

Looks like some Harvard employees had to suffer a 27% reduction in pay:

David R. Mittelman, who manages roughly $2.4 billion in domestic bonds, was paid $25.4 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, while Maurice Samuels, who manages about $1.4 billion in foreign bonds, was paid $25.3 million.

Jack R. Meyer, president of Harvard's money management arm, the Harvard Management Company, was paid $7.2 million.

Harvard ties compensation of its money managers to the performance of its endowment, which grew to $22.6 billion at the end of the 2004 fiscal year after a 21.1 percent return on investments.

That was a better performance than the previous year, when Harvard's investments earned a 12.5 percent return and its top money managers were paid $107.5 million.

This is a sure sign that something is wrong in the economy. Instead of making millions and millions of dollars, they only made millions of dollars. Someone alert the Bush Administration - I'm sure they can squeeze in an emergency tax cut!

Creationism in a Cheap Tuxedo

A school district in south-central Pennsylvania has decided it would rather keep students ignorant.

Pennsylvania school district on Friday defended its decision to discount Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and take a lead in teaching what critics say is a version of creationism.

Dover Area School District in south-central Pennsylvania is believed to be the first in the country to approve the teaching of a new theory called "intelligent design," according to the National Center for Science Education.

Proponents of intelligent design argue that the complexity of nature is such that it could not have occurred by chance, as Darwinian theory holds, and so must have been created by some all-powerful force.

That being is not explicitly identified, but many of the theory's conservative religious supporters say it is God.

Best 'grafs:

"Intelligent design is creationism in a cheap tuxedo," said Nick Matzke, a spokesman for the NCSE. "If there was a court case, it would not be found constitutional."

...The teaching of creationism in public schools has been struck down by the Supreme Court, which said such a practice would violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

Sounds like a court case waiting to happen. What a country - you go to school to become less knowledgeable about the world - kind of like watching Fox News to become knowledgeable on current events. Next step for Dover schools is a bioanthropology course about the three distinct races - cacausoid, negroid, and mongoloid.

Failing Those With Too Little

Bob Herbert invokes FDR in his most recent column on the injustice of poverty in the US:

Franklin Roosevelt, in his second Inaugural Address, told a rain-soaked crowd, "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

...Of the 12 million families that worried about putting food on the table, 3.9 million had members who actually went hungry at some point last year. "The other two-thirds ... obtained enough food to avoid hunger using a variety of coping strategies," the report said, "such as eating less varied diets, participating in federal food assistance programs, or getting emergency food from community food pantries or emergency kitchens."

These are dismal statistics for a country as well-to-do as the United States. But we don't hear much about them because hunger is associated with poverty, and poverty is not even close to becoming part of our national conversation. Swift boats, yes. Sex scenes on "Monday Night Football," most definitely. The struggle of millions of Americans to feed themselves? Oh no. Let's not go there.

What does that tell you about American values?

Herbert is dead-on. While this societal problem knows no partisanship, it's clear which party isn't sympathetic at all to the plight of the poor despite their much-hyped "compassionate conservatism":

Former Senator Phil Gramm, a Republican from Texas who was known for his orneriness, once said, "We're the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat."

Phil Gramm is a fat bastard. This is class warfare.

Pissing on Civil Rights

Well now the numbers are there to prove that John Ashcroft was full of shit to suggest that he's been enforcing civil rights laws in the U.S.:

Federal enforcement of civil rights laws has dropped sharply since 1999, as the level of complaints received by the Justice Department has remained relatively constant, according a study released Sunday.

Criminal charges of civil rights violations were brought against 84 defendants last year, down from 159 in 1999, according to Justice Department data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

The study also found that the number of times the Federal Bureau of Investigation or another federal investigative agency recommended prosecution in civil rights cases fell by more than one-third, from more than 3,000 in 1999 to just over 1,900 last year. Federal court data also show that the government has sought fewer civil sanctions against civil rights violators.

One of the study's authors, David Burnham, said the results showed that civil rights enforcement dropped across the board in President Bush's first term in office. "Collectively, some violators of the civil rights laws are not being dealt with by the government," Professor Burnham said. "This trend, we think, is significant."

It is unlikely the decline has occurred because of fewer civil rights violations occurring, the study suggests. The number of complaints about possible violations received by the Justice Department has remained at about 12,000 annually for each of the past five years.

As if opposing affirmative action and illegally detaining and abusing prisoners wasn't enough evidence that this Administration is no friend to civil rights.

Don't Defend Malkin!

Atrios has a post defending Michelle Malkin (only barely, by his admission):

I think that someone's race or ethnicity is relevant to the discussion in many cases, though here it's just gratuitous and irrelevant. If Malkin regularly used her race in her writing to whatever extent, or directed her writing to an Asian-American audience, it might have relevance. But, since we're unlikely to hear about "Ann Coulter, the white Michelle Malkin..."

Y'know, I might be inclined to buy that if it wasn't for the fact that Atrios is wrong about whether Malkin uses her race. Malkin and other hyper-right colored conservatives like Dinesh D'Souza use their race in order to firmly establish their credibility in speaking on race issues. Malkin's new book justifying race-based policies such as internment and racial profiling purposefully takes advantage of her Asian heritage in order to suggest that she, unlike other critics, is uniquely qualified to suggest that these policies are okay. (After all, it's an Asian saying internment is okay - not a white person). Dinesh D'Souza used the same strategy to attack America's affirmative action and other race-based policies. Presumably, according to Atrios' logic, this should make Malkin fair game to talk about her race.

That said, I also want to point out that even if Ann Coulter used her race and made arguments about racial issues, I find it highly unlikely that she'd be described as a "white Malkin," not because that would be unfair but because white are rarely if ever identified in terms of racial minorities. It usually only works the other way around - it's one of those subtle things. I mean, when's the last time you heard about a "white Denzel" or a "white Oprah" or a "white Chris Rock." The reason you don't is because white people get to be judged on their own terms while minorities are often judged in relation to others.

Let me know, though if Atrios is ever called the "white AngryDesi".

Breaking the Bank

The Times has a piece on how Republicans, high on their "mandate," are now salivating over a host of regressive taxation policies that leave middle- and lower-income Americans holding the bag so that instead of making millions of dollars, wealthy Republicans can make millions and millions of dollars.

Here's the breakdown:

In the House, dozens of Republican lawmakers favor junking the income tax altogether and replacing it with a national sales tax or a flat tax.

A national sales tax is a regressive tax, meaning that people at lower income levels are taxed at a higher rate than those with larger incomes. This is naturally true since lower income people tend to spend a larger percentage of their income than higher income individuals.

A flat tax is also a regressive tax - it is also particularly deceptive in that it is presented as a fair and proportional tax. While it's true that everyone's earned income (the wage they get from working) would be taxed at the same rate, what proponents don't tell you is that unearned income (that is income from dividends, interest, and other assets) is not taxed at all. Guess who has a lot of unearned income? Yep, you guessed it - rich people.

Many of Mr. Bush's advisers, by contrast, prefer a piecemeal approach that would reduce if not eliminate most taxes on savings and investment, leaving a system that only taxes consumption.

Again, consumption taxes are regressive since the people who spend most of their income are lower- and middle-income households. Rich people save and invest.

In a speech last week, Deputy Treasury Secretary Samuel W. Bodman focused almost entirely on issues like dividend taxes and savings accounts, suggesting that the administration wanted to expand on its earlier tax cuts.

The measures include an elimination of taxes on stock dividends, expanded tax-free health savings accounts and big new "lifetime savings accounts" to shield almost all savings from taxes.

Eliminating taxes on stock dividends and savings is something that benefits rich people since most lower -income people don't make a lot on their stock dividends (if at all). While rich people would benefit, a larger proportion of government would now be funded by lower-income households.

Another idea in circulation, which has been promoted for years by advocates of a consumption tax, is to let companies immediately write off the cost of new buildings and equipment - another way of eliminating taxes on investment.

Accelerating depreciation is like giving money to corporations. They already got a major advance when the tax code was reformed in '86 (or was it '82) when they allowed buildings to be depreciated in 15 years instead of 30. (Meanwhile, the building is still usable for 30). This allows companies to take out huge chunks of their corporate income tax since the depreciation expenses are deducted from corporate profits.

To offset those tax cuts, many proponents of tax overhaul outside the administration have suggested eliminating major deductions, like those for state and local taxes and corporate interest payments.

But the political hazards are enormous. Eliminating the deductibility of state and local income taxes would infuriate people in high-tax states along the East and West Coasts.

This could be described as expansion of the current "Subsidize Jesusland" tax policy that we already have in place.

Mr. Norquist supports the idea of a stealth tax overhaul, achieving the similar goal as a national sales tax but accomplishing it through backdoor changes like a big expansion of tax-free savings accounts.

Indeed, Mr. Bush has twice proposed the lifetime savings accounts, allowing people to set aside up to $15,000 a year and pay no taxes on the income the accounts earn. Besides being bigger than today's individual retirement accounts, the new accounts could be tapped anytime before retirement for any purpose.

Do you have $15,000 that you can just lock away into a savings account each year? Yeah, neither do I. I like paying rent and having food. Of course, this isn't a concern for rich people.

If you're keeping count, the tally is as follows:

1. National Sales Tax (make poor people pay)
2. Flat Tax (make poor people pay)
3. Eliminate tax cuts on dividends (tax cut for rich people)
4. Expand tax-free health savings accounts (tax shelter for rich people)
5. Create tax-free lifetime savings accounts (tax shelter for rich people)
6. Immediate write-off of building and equipment expense (tax cut for rich corporations)
7. Eliminate major deductions for state and local income taxes (increase taxes on blue staters)
8. Eliminate deduction of corporate interest payments (tax increase for rich corporations)

There you have it - 8 tax proposals to radically restructure our tax code. Half of them are tax cuts or shelters for rich people or corporations that would reduce the amount of federal revenue. Two of them are regressive tax proposals that shift the burden of funding government to lower-income individuals and households. The only areas of tax increase are for blue staters who pay higher state and local income taxes and a small raise on corporations that is more than neutralized by the immediate depreciation of their building and equipment. (Think about it - they get to deduct the full costs of the equipment immediately but pay on the amount of interest of getting the equipment)

And to think that Republicans suggest that it is unfair to characterize this as a class war. This is the definition of class warfare. They are going to leave average Americans holding the bag for rich people at a time when income inequality is already pretty horrific.

If you think that class warfare arguments aren't effective for Dems, you'd be mistaken:

The political hazards of more radical tax overhaul were underlined in the battle in South Carolina to succeed Senator Ernest F. Hollings. The odds-on favorite had been Representative Jim DeMint, a Republican who is also the sponsor of a bill to replace the income tax with a national sales tax. Democrats set up a big advertising campaign, accusing Mr. DeMint of proposing a 23 percent sales tax that would steeply raise the price of everything from groceries to gasoline. Mr. DeMint won, but only after his challenger pulled close enough in the polls to make the race competitive.

This IS class warfare and it's time for Democrats to attack Republicans as the lazy, elitist, greedy fatcats that they are.

Now Hear This

Seems like at the same time that there's a lot of mischief going on with our leaders in Washington, I keep looking for the motivational stories about things going well for a change. Here's a touching story about an unusually talented high school football team (registration required):

my favorite football team is California School for the Deaf at Riverside, which is 9-1 and plays like a light-rail train. The Cubs are fast, noiseless, and you definitely don't want to get hit by them.

Only when they celebrate do they get noisy. CSDR won the San Joaquin League title last week for the first time in the school's 51-year history, and the players partied by slamming into one another, waving their hands like Al Jolson and turning the bass up on 50 Cent one crank past windows shatter and dancing madly to the vibrations.

"Teams really hate to lose to us because they think we're a handicapped team," signs coach Len Gonzales, who is deaf too, as is his coaching staff. "But we're not handicapped. We just can't hear."

...Actually, teams come in with a lot of questions. How do the Cubs handle snap counts? (Everybody watches the ball and goes on a tap from Korn to his center.) How do they audible? (They don't.) How do they hear the whistle? (They don't.) They've learned to stop when everybody else stops, but that can be trouble. One game this year Korn stopped on a rollout near the end zone because he saw his receiver stop. But the receiver had stopped because he was out of room. Korn got crushed and coughed up the ball, which was returned for a touchdown.

If that isn't a case for being differently-abled rather than handicapped, I don't know what is. Count me among the fans rooting for the CSDR Cubs!