We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Maggie's has been fortunate in gaining a goodly number of new readers over the past month. We are pleased by that, and offer y'all a hearty welcome to the Farm.
If you enjoy Maggie's Farm, the best holiday present you can give us is to send our site around to anybody who might enjoy it. A growing readership, and readers' feedback, are our only tangible rewards for our (usually) enjoyable efforts.
Remember - you do not have to be a right-wing wacko to find our rationalist, centrist site an interesting addition to your day. We aren't all about politics, and plenty of Libs read us just for the fun of it. There's more to life than the sleazy soap opera of politics (despite our little, old-fashioned hang-ups about political and economic freedom and minor details like that).
Thanks -
Bird Dog, Editor Dog in Chief
(If you happen to be Chinese, so much the better. Why our China readership is so low is difficult to understand unless we are blocked by the government: we're a pretty good sample of ordinary American life for the curious. We would love to have a good-sized Chinese readership.)
NCLB’s accountability system led to another distortion, this one harming top students. Because the law emphasized mere “proficiency,” rewarding schools for getting their students to achieve that fairly low standard, teachers and administrators had an incentive to boost the test scores of their lowest-performing students but no incentive to improve instruction for their brightest. Robert Pondiscio, communications director for the Core Knowledge Foundation and a former New York City Teaching Fellow, describes how the process worked at his South Bronx elementary school. “Eighty percent of the kids in my fifth-grade class were scoring at the two lowest levels on the state reading and math tests,” he recalls. (Each student in New York State receives a test score from 1 to 4, with 1 signifying performance far below grade level, 2 below grade level, 3 grade level, and 4 advanced.) “Early in my teaching career, an assistant principal told me that the kids in my class already scoring a 3 or 4 ‘are not your problem.’ In other words, my goal should be to move the kids scoring at the lower levels up a few points on the scale. I was not specifically ordered to do this, but the message was very clear. My job was to get more kids over the lowest two hurdles, because that’s how the school was rewarded for good performance in the city’s accountability system.”
As a result, Pondiscio says, the few gifted minority students in his class didn’t receive any extra attention—attention that could have given them a better chance to pass the rigorous test for admission to one of the city’s elite specialized science and math high schools. That’s especially sad when you learn that the percentage of black students passing the admissions test for top-ranked Stuyvesant High School has dropped steadily over the past decade. Last year, it fell below 1 percent.
I'm opposed to any new income taxes. It matters little if they are assessed on my income or a much wealthier person's income. The average person is overburdened.
I feel the same way about corporate taxes, too. The oddity, in both personal income and corporate taxes, is how little people actually pay and how few of us pay. There are a myriad of reasons for this. Loopholes, primarily, but also the manner in which taxes are assessed. After all, capital gains and investment income are not taxed in the same fashion as earned income, for many good reasons. It is money at risk, and money at work. It must be treated differently.
My personal belief is that a flat income tax, with no (or very few) loopholes is transparent, easy to employ, and would reduce the need for a large bureaucracy chasing the average citizen. It would generate more, or at least equivalent, revenue but not cost the government as much. All told, it's a money saver. This is a preference that I'm unlikely to ever see, as many people don't fully understand the benefits of a flat tax, in particular its very 'fairness' (a vague term, but defensible in the manner I'm using it).
A flat tax alone probably isn't enough, though. To truly have an impact and get people focused on longer time frames, I've always felt a Tobin Tax would be useful. Capital gains taxes would be eliminated and replaced with a Tobin Tax on currency trades and a Transaction Tax on investments. There are many reasons to not like this, given the nature of Wall Street behavior today. However, as part of a broad tax overhaul, it would probably yield tremendous results. Bruce Krasting disagrees, as does the House of Lords. It's possible this is because the current concept would be to implement a Tobin Tax in addition to the existing tax structure, rather than as part of an overhaul. As part of a complete restructuring of the tax code, these taxes would focus investors on longer buy and hold periods, reduce High Frequency Trading, stabilize currency exchanges, and generate considerable revenue for the government. The problem, of course, is the level at which the tax is set. .03% is perhaps too high. Then again, OWS would complain it's too low.
It would be intriguing to see someone elected who is willing to alter the tax code so it more naturally meshes with the way business is done today.
The Church of Kathleen Sebelius - A zealous administration wants to require all health insurance plans to cover contraception, sterilization and drugs known to induce abortion.
It is a frightening prospect to have a president who lives in a time warp that lets him believe that the failed policies of 1935 can lead this nation back from the brink.
I was listening to All Things Considered on the car radio and heard this very beautiful, haunting Franz Schubert song, "Hurdy-Gurdy Man" in English, a Hurdy-Gurdy Man playing a stringed instrument to attract attention to his wares or to get charity. On the show, it was recommended by a son remembering his father trudging 10-miles through cold and snow to a menial job to put food on the table. The Youtube has the English translation.
There are many who are unfortunate through little fault of their own. In this season of extra giving, it is well to remember them and donate to worthy charities that help them.
The All Things Considered story is worth the read.
The story of the transition from Judaeo-Christians to Gentile-Christians. Jesus taught only to his fellow Jews, but the history of the expansion to the gentiles, and the discomfort between the Jewish Christians and the gentile Christians made for interesting drama and conflict.
Eventually, the gentile-Christians dominated the faith. Most Christians today were pagans in their ancestral histories - hence our Saturnalian December Christmas (Jesus likely born in April, but it doesn't really matter) - and the good old pagan Christmas trees.
Today, Yahoo! asked if I am I better off than my parents? Do I have more opportunity and a better life overall? These are questions that politicians will be asking the next few months. They are questions pundits continually ask. But posing these questions doesn't really inform us.
Depending on how I define 'better off', I could reply yes or no to both questions. If all I did was pay attention to the broad statistics and ignore my personal situation, then no. I should join OWS and complain incessantly.
Am I earning more in real terms than my father at a similar age? No. I do have much more saved for retirement, but at my age my father was finishing putting two boys through college, and looking to pay for three more children. He had a larger home and a nicer car, and he went on some very nice vacations (sometimes with us, usually without). The problem is, no matter how well off he was, his life is not mine. I can't compare how well I'm doing to him, because we entered very different professions and made very different choices. Do I feel better off? Yes. Do I live very well? Yes. So whether I am better off or not is a vague question. It is not dependent purely on statistics. Answering the two original questions will beg other questions rather than providing a concrete response.
After all, we tend to have very short memories about our situations and how we've progressed.
Just minutes into last Monday afternoon's confab between Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich, I heard Newt say something really noteworthy and thought, Man, I should grab that clip for the post and jotted down the video time to snip it out later.
A few minutes after that, I heard another memorable quote and jotted down the time. Then another. Then-
At that point I realized the whole damn video was turning into a highlight reel. I realized that this wasn't a debate or a forum or even an in-depth discussion.
It was a seminar.
There quickly comes a point when you realize you've never heard anything quite like this before, and certainly not outside academia. It isn't just that both of these people are masters of the field of foreign policy, but they're both master tacticians, as well. You not only hear the what and why, but the how to, as well.
If Newt's the 'Big Picture' guy, Huntsman isn't far behind. His serving as Ambassador to China gave him a world view that none of the other candidates can touch save Gingrich. The extra dimension he provided to the affair is his in-depth knowledge on how to deal with this rising economic-military behemoth, while Gingrich does his usual superb job of keeping things in historical perspective.
When you have an hour and a half to spare sometime, give it a spin. The link is here. Click on the link over to the right to begin play.
This isn't something to be rushed through or watched in pieces. You'll see what I mean at the end. This is an event to be savored.
Started thinking about Christmas shopping yet? I began to think about thinking about it last night. At the Farm, the immediate blood-related BD family (my two parents with five kids, each with a very nice spouse, countless grandkids of all sizes) decided years ago to prohibit presents as an interference with just getting together for drinks, food, and fun - just too many people. For my in-laws and my kids, focusing on theater and music tix and restaurant vouchers in NYC. Cool memories last longer than things. Maybe some Christmas socks or a book too. (The Jesus part is the bigger deal for me, says the sanctimonious Bird Dog - but I do mean it.)
I have seen this too. How can these people look at themselves in the mirror, knowing they are milking their working neighbors and avoiding opportunities?
The dystopian fantasies which imagined that a police state would be the product of some right wing takeover never seemed to anticipate that just as in the east, it would be the left that would resort to it. That is where George Orwell, who came out of the left, proved far wiser than many other writers. The police state is a consequence of the left's failures, its economic failures and its demographic failures. That is as true in the United States as it is in the UK as it is in Israel and throughout what was once known as the free world.
Chicago: Feds probe union pension deals - Subpoenas show feds investigating how 11 leaders qualified for inflated retirement payments
The studies like this, of course, are more correlation than causation, but, in my experience, red-blooded men require more than three. The healthier fellows will be more vigorous and horny, so they will have more of these things. Strong young men in energetic relationships seem to need 2-3 per day.
But what about women? How many orgasms per week correlate with health and well-being?
...the frugal wealthy understand that it is not wealth per se but rather its flamboyant display that erects barriers between the rich and the rest. Gated communities, private jets and the mass promotion of ridiculously expensive luxury goods -- all widespread only in the last generation -- have done more to provoke class division and remove the rich from contact with ordinary people than the actual increases in their wealth.
In the last generation, but also at many times in history. Let's face it. We have vulgar rich, vulgar poor, and vulgar in-between. There is no cure for vulgarity.
...it's upsetting that some people have so much while other people have so little. It isn't fair. But I accept this unfairness. Indeed, I treasure it. That's because I have a 13-year-old daughter. And that's all I hear, "That's not fair," she says. "That's not fair! That's not fair!" And one day I snapped, and I said, "Honey, you're cute, that's not fair. Your family is pretty well off, that's not fair. You were born in America, that's not fair. Darling, you had better get down on your knees and pray that things don't start getting fair for you."
Having the luck to be born in America is the most unfair thing of all. Where else on the planet do you have a wide open field to plan a life according to your own lights, interests, abilities, and desires, and run for it? Freedom of pursuit, but no guarantee of results on this planet. And still, some people bitch like babies.
"The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me "to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers." I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them."
Jonathan Swift, from Gulliver's Travels (h/t Englishman)
Many forms of atheism, and plenty of atheists appear to attend church or synagogue for all sorts of reasons - including the hope that faith might be contagious. One quote from Novak's post:
Some years ago I read a book on atheism, by a devout atheist (if that is the right word), who had found to his surprise that a large majority of those Americans who call themselves atheists actually believe in some more-than-human power, force, intelligence in all things. This is a position not altogether unlike the ancients (and the moderns) described in #3 above. The ancients did not call such persons atheists, but held them to be theists, albeit under a vague and unclear sort of deity, but intelligent and powerful and drawing all things toward the good.
"Higher Power"? That is certainly a form of theism albeit undeveloped.
It's gift time, and I have been thinking about my own gifts, such as they are. Besides being fairly tall, possessed of regular features, a Victoria's Secret killer shape despite 3 kids, and a functional IQ and an athletic nature, what are the gifts with which God has endowed me? Am I doing justice to those gifts?
I have recently made a project of listing my strengths and weaknesses, and my special abilities which I view as my gifts. Middle age will do this to a person. Like most people, my list of weaknesses and of abilities is long, but my talents are f.
Do I use my semi-talents well, those gifts of the spirit, and do I use them in service of the Lord? Do I neglect them, or do I use them only for my foolish personal wants? I do love my foolish personal wants, however pointless they may be. Like a certain Michael Kors handbag. For what?
Maggie's has been fortunate in gaining a goodly number of new readers over the past month. We are pleased by that, and offer y'all a hearty welcome to the Farm.
Russia has become 
Started thinking about Christmas shopping yet? I began to think about thinking about it last night. At the Farm, the immediate blood-related BD family (my two parents with five kids, each with a very nice spouse, countless grandkids of all sizes) decided years ago to prohibit presents as an interference with just getting together for drinks, food, and fun - just too many people. For my in-laws and my kids, focusing on theater and music tix and restaurant vouchers in NYC. Cool memories last longer than things. Maybe some Christmas socks or a book too. (The Jesus part is the bigger deal for me, says the sanctimonious Bird Dog - but I do mean it.)
H/t 
It's gift time, and I have been thinking about my own gifts, such as they are. Besides being fairly tall, possessed of regular features, a Victoria's Secret killer shape despite 3 kids, and a functional IQ and an athletic nature, what are the gifts with which God has endowed me? Am I doing justice to those gifts?
