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.
I was informed, as 2011 waned, that my tax credit for commuting would fall from $230 a month to $125. This bothered me. Not because I feel I deserve a credit to commute, but because I can't figure out what the government is trying to do.
The fact is, if public transport is a 'good' we should all take advantage of no matter what, then the government should pay for it by taxing everyone and making it available for 'free' - as they do in Portland. Of course, I oppose this idea entirely. However, if the theory is that we can get people to do something that is 'good for everybody', then isn't this the way to do it? Half-measures, like credits, subsidies, and other methods of this ilk only mask what is possibly (though probably not) a problem - that public transportation isn't really viable. There are ways to determine whether this is true, but not for the average commuter.
What is the premise behind having a tax credit for public commutation? I like it, I'll use it if it's offered, but I didn't demand it, nor did I write Congress to keep it at $230/month. The cost, to me, of increased taxation due to the lower credit will be about $270 over the course of the year, so it's not a big deal. Why not just get rid of it altogether? If public transport is truly efficient, then it would make much more sense for me to take it, rather than driving into the city myself (or carpooling).
My commute is about $330/month. The cost of driving (assuming the Federal allowance of .55/mile and $150 a month parking) is about $780/month. Even if I made a more realistic assumption of about .25/mile, public transport is still an advantage. But public transport is heavily subsidized. So I really don't know which is more efficient, and determining this is very hard.
Here is the issue: Subsidies and tax breaks are supposed to promote the 'public good'. But how do I know which is more efficient, let alone even better, for me personally? If it is a 'public good', then its value will be transparent without subsidies and credits. I'll take whatever credits get offered. It would be crazy for me not to. But I'd much rather have a clear means of determining which makes more sense by comparing simple features like cost, time and effort (hey - in the end, I like reading on the train, so if it did cost more I'd probably still take it).
It is precisely this lack of transparency that makes other government initiatives, like Obamacare, a pure misallocation of resources. Unable to determine where our real efficiencies lie, we opt for what we assume is 'best' or costs us least. But we cannot know for sure if these things really make sense at all.
A reader sent us this info about the Romney lads whose pics we posted this morning:
Taggart Romney (1970)- Managing Partner at Solamere Capital , CMO at L.A. Dodgers, Vice President of OnField Marketing at Reebok, Director of Strategic Planning at Elan Corp.; B.Sc Economics, BYU and MBA from Harvard
Matthew Romney (1971) - VP of Property Management at Excel Legacy Corp, Product Manager for Microsoft Corp.; Bachelor of Arts from BYU and MBA from Harvard
Joshua Romney (1975) - Owner of Romney Ventures (a real estate developer), Acquisition Analyst at Intercontinental Real Estate; Bachelor of Arts from BYU and MBA from Harvard. Josh served in a number of political positions in the past several years, most notably as an advisor to his father’s presidential campaign and Utah Governor’s Gary Herbert gubernatorial campaign.
Dr. Benjamin Romney (1978) - Practices Internal Medicine in Boston; Degree in Management from BYU and a medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine.
Craig Romney (1981) - Advertising Music Producer at McGarry Bowen; Bachelor Degree in Communication, Brigham Young University (BYU)
When is enough pleasure and instant gratification enough?
Oh, maybe never, I hear my readers thinking.
I put the word "addiction" in quotes because I am not referring to physiological addictions such as to narcotics or alcohol, but to the pop culture use of the word, as applied to chocolate, food, sex, money, power, buying, etc. The casual use of the term, of course, refers to the difficulty in stopping the behavior when it doesn't make sense.
Some people are studying the brain to try to understand satiety. Some, interested in overweight, are studying foods. I think they are barking up the wrong tree (Yankees might not realize that that is a reference to coon hunting with coon hounds).
I believe that most of these "addictions" are more subcultural and psychological than physiological. Returning to the topic of food, the well-respected scientific journal Elle points this out in Satisfaction Guaranteed:
As a child, were you encouraged to clean your plate and then go back for seconds? If so, you probably didn’t grow up in France, where children are taught to savor the feeling of longing, or envie, for their next course (just think of the cheese!). Our differing notions of satisfaction were examined in a 2006 study of 133 Parisians and 145 Chicagoans published in the journal Obesity. While the French paid attention to an internal cue, the feeling of fullness, the Windy City-ers relied on the external: when their plate was empty; when their companion had finished eating; or when—quelle horreur!—the credits started to roll on the TV show they were watching.
Many Americans ignore the body’s subtler signals of hunger and fullness, hearing only the clanging gong at each end of the pendulum—Starving! Stuffed!—and rarely pausing to enjoy the much more pleasant midpoint: Ahhh, satisfied.
Some subcultures believe in big eating, some in savoring, some in minimalist eating, and, for some, food is just not a central part of life at all - Northern Europeans, for example. I was raised, for example, to learn that a lady always eats slowly, and never finishes the food on her plate. Not in public, anyway. It's not considered ladylike.
Rosenberg argues that belief in free will and purpose and all that (see above) is belief in hokum of the same order as belief in God. The atheists’ self-image as the hero nihilist choosing her fate is condemned as being just as hopeless as the religious self image.
Everybody "believes in something," even if it is only Self. Self is a false idol. Question is whether the "something" is worthy of devotion.
I'll offer to teach Tea Party 101 for free. After all, it was a much bigger deal, with clean, non-sociopathic and polite people, involved tons more people with no arrests, and had real impact. Guess the Academic Left doesn't care for those sots of things.
We made it to the final night of the Ailey's NYC season at City Center last night. Mrs. BD commented that Ailey is now the only modern dance company that can fill a large venue in NYC for three weeks straight. Yes, they did Ailey's Revelations, along with some Paul Taylor and a very cool piece by Ohad Naharin. A jolly, sold-out, and enthused crowd.
We tried the pre-theater supper at the famous olde Russian Tea Room for nostalgia's sake. Good vodka, same olde atmosphere, the Russian food not great (certainly not as good as when Jackie O hung out there) but the Vodka selection was excellent - around 40 varieties. The lad and I had the Russian Standard (their vodka shots come ice-cold in little flute glasses). OK, I know - the place has become a little tourist trap for Euro-trash celeb-seeking visitors, but it's still kinda fun and they do have a good caviar selection on their regular menu (We think Petrossian a great place for mid-town caviar etc., but Maggie's Farm is not Zagat's):
Fix Me Jesus, from Revelations. What Christian has never prayed for that? The pupette and her pals loved it all. So did I. It was my second time.
Everybody knows what they are doing. They are trying to run a guild in a post-guild society. One aspect of that is keeping prices high - the prices for the schools, and worse, the prices for the poor clients and to hell for those who cannot afford a lawyer but are not poor enough to get a cynical, burned-out Legal Aid person.
Justice is exorbitantly - and unjustly - expensive and, as I have often said here, I think a better case could be made for socialized legal coverage than for socialized medicine, because equal justice is an American ideal, but illness is just human fate. In my view, the American legal system is a broken and often piratical mess run for the benefit of the lawyers (most politicians are lawyers). Just consider how many people settle unjust and annoying claims simply to avoid legal fees.
... there is simply no reason to require people to attend law school before sitting for the bar exam. As law professor Paul Campos notes, legal education is a rip-off, since the typical law professor "knows nothing about being a lawyer. Hence, he must bullshit -- he does not lie to his students about how to be a lawyer (doing so would require him to know how to be a lawyer, while attempting to deceive his students regarding the substance of that knowledge); rather, he 'talks without knowing what he is talking about,'" when it comes to discussing the legal system or how to be a lawyer.
Law schools' lack of interest in preparing students to be lawyers is illustrated by Tulane's recent decision to give a murderer a scholarship to attend its law school, even though he most likely will never be admitted to the Bar given his criminal record. Law schools lie about whether graduates find jobs: two law schools are being sued for fraudulentplacement data. Law schools have increased tuition by nearly 1,000 percent since 1960 in real terms.
Of course, if you want a Big Job in a Big Law Firm, you will want a Big Degree. It's just one more example of greedy Big Education's monopoly on credentials. Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Government, Big Education, Big Farming, Big Tort Law. Same old story. Just follow the money.
Some old friends were back in the NY area for the holidays. Rather than stay at a hotel, they watch friends' homes who are also traveling. Last year, I was jealous of the fact they were staying in a house that George Washington had slept in. This year, they stayed in the same house. After a nice dinner at a local pub, they invited us over.
The house as it appeared in 1919:
The house is known as The Timothy Ball House in Maplewood, NJ. It's not open to tours, because it's a private residence. The owners do let in groups of local school children to see the portions of the original structure which are intact and visit the room that Washington literally slept in.
The Ball family were Washington's cousins, Mary Ball having been his mother. Washington would stop by while the troops were wintering in Morristown (which they did over two brutal winters, the second far more difficult than Valley Forge), because a view from the ridge in Maplewood allowed him clear access to watch English troop movements in Elizabeth and Staten Island.
Imagine what a horror 2011 was for progressives as Americans began to comprehend their stunning abundance of fossil fuels — beyond their two centuries’ supply of coal. Progressives responded with attempts to impede development of the vast proven reserves of natural gas and oil here and in Canada. They bent the willowy Obama to delay approval of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry oil from Canadian tar sands; they raised environmental objections to new techniques for extracting gas and “tight” oil from shale formations.
The way to revive sustainable growth is with more government aid to help create jobs, support demand and prevent foreclosures. As things stand now, however, Washington will provide less help, not more, in 2012. Republican lawmakers refuse to acknowledge that government cutbacks at a time of economic weakness will only make the economy weaker. And too many Democrats, who should know better, have for too long been reluctant to challenge them.
It has been a long standing theory of mine, starting back in the late '90s, that the more complex systems become, the easier they are to break. The complexity creates conditions in which a minor glitch in one system can create havoc in other associated systems all without human interaction. This theory also applies to society as a whole as far as I'm concerned meaning that the more rules, regulations, laws and policies are enacted, the ability to circumvent them becomes easier and easier.
AA Daily Reflections online. You do not need to be an alcoholic to benefit from them because we all have grievous flaws and faults and, if we aspire to be more worthy people, we can use anything that helps.
The notion of the 12 steps came from the evangelical Oxford Group movement of the 1930s, whose first "step" was "We admitted that we were powerless over sin." (The author of the linked piece seems to view AA as a dangerous cult.)
To be spiritually reborn, the Oxford Group advocated four practices:
1. The sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian life given to God. 2. Surrender our life past, present and future, into God's keeping and direction. 3. Restitution to all whom we have wronged directly or indirectly. 4. Listening for God's guidance, and carrying it out.
Good stuff. Reborn is good. Otherwise, it's just all about me - and I ain't all that great.
Here Bill Wilson discusses the construction of the 12 Steps. I am no expert on AA (and am happy to be corrected on any misunderstandings), but my impression is that Bill Wilson did believe that only God could rescue him - and many others - from their personality flaws (in Wilson's case, possibly some sociopathic and narcissistic tendencies) and addictions (in Wilson's case, alcohol).
Doctors do not have the power to cure addictions, and no Psychiatrist would claim it (if they are, indeed, "curable"). It seems to me that only things like AA have the power to combat them - and to help people grow to higher levels of sanity, maturity, and realism - possibly higher levels than those who never had deal with these things. As my pastor says, only God can do it, but that could be said of all healing.
Feel free to tell us about any AA experiences you might have had.
Therefore do not worry, saying "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For after all these things the Gentiles seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need all of these things. But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
In the Northeast US tonight, 
When is enough pleasure and instant gratification enough?
