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.
According to our hypotheses, the tax code is equally open to all. Does the average citizen have the time and expertise to plow through 70,000 pages of tax codes? Clearly, the answer is no, so it's simply not true that the tax code is equally available to all.
Let's imagine a different set of values and governance. Let's suppose the tax law stated that the entire tax code must meet two requirements: it must be able to be read and understood by the overwhelming majority of citizens with a high school education in one hour or less.
The national labs (or equivalent impartial bodies) would be tasked with conducting a randomized sampling of 100,000 citizens to test each year's tax code. If 80% of the adult citizenry with a high school education (or GED) were unable to put the tax code into practice after an hour of study, then the code would be rejected and sent back to Congress for revision until it passed this simple, transparent standard for equality before the law.
Clearly, the tax code is both legal and completely skewed to the very wealthy and politically powerful. $100,000 is still a fairly significant contribution in politics, and if that contribution ends up yielding a tax break that gains the donor $1 million in lower taxes, then that donation earned a 10-fold "return on investment."
Only the wealthy can afford to hire Panzer divisions of tax attorneys to pore over the 70,00 pages and game the system to pay less than self-employed citizens pay in Social Security and Medicare tax, never mind income tax.
The first hypothesis is still vaild--the tax code is legal--but the second--that fundamental opportunities are open to all--is demonstrably false. Equal opportunity is revealed as a social control myth promoted by those benefitting from opportunities that are not available to the citizenry at large.
This is the definition of an oligarchy.
All that the regular person can do is to declare all of their income (unless you are somebody like Tim Geithner or Charlie Rangel - hey, nobody is perfect). After that, it's a crap shoot.
Some have compared the impact on agents of ObamaCare’s medical loss ratio (MLR) to the impact of online technology on travel agents.
Yesterday, I spent hours studying many web sites to decide on a hotel to take my family during spring break. Although the web sites were very informative, most offering standard categories as to number and type of beds, whether there is a pool, etc., the information was not complete or didn’t cover all my requirements. I still had important questions to meet my family’s particular needs. I, also, noted many Commenters at these sites who’d had bad experiences due to lack of adequate information. I phoned several sites and directly to several hotels’ reservation lines, but those who answered had no more information than at their sites. Finally, I reached an agent who spent a half-hour giving me complete answers to my questions, and I made the reservation.
MLR requires medical plans to commit 80% of premiums of small group and individual plans to claims, and 85% for large plans. Agent commissions, though a pass-through charge from buyers, are treated in ObamaCare as administrative costs, thus making it harder for insurers to meet the 15% or 20% allowance for non-claim costs. The argument goes that as the Internet makes it easier to make reservations directly, the need for travel agents has declined. So, too, will the need for insurance agents decline as medical plan purchasers can buy directly from insurers or government-directed exchanges. Lastly, standardized medical plans dictated by ObamaCare are supposed to make choices easier. Therefore, we needn’t be concerned that to meet MLR restrictions that agents’ commissions have been as much as halved, leading many to reduce services to buyers or to leave the field.
This leaves medical plan buyers – as it does travel buyers -- largely at the mercy of 1-800 ignorance or inadequacy, as well as self-interest or lack of independence in not providing useful comparative information. Further, a buyer is not given additional information important to the decision, say about nearby facilities or services involved in the trip, or the efficiency of claims-processing or how certain treatments might be actually covered by the medical plan. Then, unlike the range of accommodations available at hotels at varying prices, standardized medical plan buyers will be forced under ObamaCare to buy services they either don’t need or, even, religiously or ethically object to, and pay the cost of these services, in effect, for those who want them. Premiums have already increased to cover provisions mandated by ObamaCare, and will increase further.
There’s another aspect to the MLR regulations that will further reduce the choices available and increase the costs to many medical plan buyers. If an insurer does not meet the MLR percentage limitations, beginning by August 1, 2012 the insurer will have to pay rebates to buyers. Insurers are each setting aside tens of millions of dollars for these rebates, costs that will be recovered through higher premiums. According to healthcare consultancy The Segal Co., “Until now, insurers have been able to subsidize less-profitable product lines and types of groups (usually small ones), and do it across state lines, with the profits of the more-lucrative ones. Now, with insurers under the threat of paying out rebates on the latter, they may give small-group policyholders fewer subsidies and charge higher premiums.”
There’s bipartisan legislation pending in the House and Senate to relieve this impact on agents but, even if it might pass, it is unlikely to be signed by President Obama, or regardless of the President may not muster 60-votes in a future Senate if blocked by ObamaCare supporters there.
For disclosure, I’ve been a health plan consultant and broker for 25-years. I’m at the age and resources where I’m nearing retirement. That decision is speeded by Obamacare. It’s not worth it to provide the services I did, so I reject most of those who now approach me for help. Tens of thousands of other agents are making the same choice, even if not able to retire. Tens of millions of medical plan buyers are being left adrift, at higher costs and less needed information, not able or allowed to buy a medical plan that best and most affordably fits their individual needs.
Who’s Afraid of Dirty Harry? Well, this didn’t take long. Clint Eastwood is going to regret doing that “halftime” ad after all the parodists get done with it. (link fixed)
There's a long-distance train rolling through the rain, tears on the letter I write. There's a woman I long to touch and I'm missing her so much, but she's drifting like a satellite. There's a neon light ablaze in a green smoky haze, and laughter down on Elizabeth Street And a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone where she bathed in a stream of pure heat. Her father would emphasize you got to be more than street-wise but he practiced what he preached from the heart. A full-blooded Cherokee, he predicted to me the time and the place that we'd part.
There's a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage And a longtime golden-haired stripper onstage As she winds back the clock and she turns back the page Of a book that nobody can write. Oh, where are you tonight?
The rest of the astonishing lyrics are below the fold -
How do you carve nature at its joints, when there are no joints? This is good, from Sailer: If race doesn't exist ... He quotes:
...as any psychiatrist involved in the making of the D.S.M. will freely tell you, the disorders listed in the book are not “real diseases,” at least not like measles or hepatitis. Instead, they are useful constructs that capture the ways that people commonly suffer. The manual, they go on, was primarily written to give physicians, schooled in the language of disease, a way to recognize similarities and differences among their patients and to talk to one another about them. And it has been fairly successful at that.
and
“The D.S.M. has been taken too seriously,” another expert told me. “It’s the victim of its success.”
The wife of a friend of mine was recently made to feel uncomfortable while visiting her freshman daughter's dorm to see fellows walking around the halls with towels or undershorts with long-neck beers in their hands as if the dorm were some sort of downscale Roman orgy.
I commented that co-ed showers would be the next new thing. The idea of that is, indeed, titillating.
In my paleo view, co-education itself was a bad idea. It ignores the reality of adolescent sexual tension, the reality of distraction, and the distortion of behavior that can ensue. Speaking for myself, the idea of trying to study or sleep knowing that some leggy blonde was in the next room three feet away, alone and perhaps feeling lonely, would make studying Plato a difficult thing to do.
Why is the US exceptional? Because it focuses on freedom from the state. That remains a revolutionary notion in an era in which so many want the State to be a beneficent God.
The greatest of storytellers, with an eye for vivid details of life and character types, and a tendency for unlikely dramatic plots.
He had no formal education after age 15, when he went to work. Sold his first book at 21, and fame and fortune ensued for this lad whose dad was in debtor's prison.
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
He wrote casually, effortlessly, humorously. You can learn all anybody needs to know about human nature from Dickens. He had been there and done that.
I had to laugh at that, because America is still far from providing a meaningful high school education to the average kid:
The cheerful confidence in face of utter ignorance is the most impressive aspect of this video. You can either blame the schools, the parents, or simply accept that these kids simply are not interesting in knowing much. You can lead a horse to water...
These kids don't need college. They need remedial grammar school. As Black and Right says: "We fund public schools. I demand my money back"
As Gingrich attacks Romney for being successful, and Romney proves too slow on his feet to talk about his admirable business career without apologizing or making gaffes, the Republicans cede the narrative to Obama.
... here's another term that I think deserves to be said out loud: Forced education. Like the term prison, this term sounds harsh. But, again, if we have compulsory education, then we have forced education. The term compulsory, if it has any meaning at all, means that the person has no choice about it.
The question worth debating is this: Is forced education--and the consequential imprisonment of children--a good thing or a bad thing? Most people seem to believe that it is, all in all, a good thing; but I think that it is, all in all, a bad thing. I outline here some of the reasons why I think this, in a list of what I refer to as "seven sins" of our system of forced education...
AVI in Education Changes is sympathetic to Gray's case, and does not wish his kids to have the (seemingly very good) college experience that he had. He says
...what hit me hardest about Grey's essay was what it described about me. I really was one of those who thought my role was to be amazingly brilliant and wait for someone to discover me. I really did think I was better than most of the rest of you. To see in print that this is what our current system encourages in the personalities of some bright students - and to be ready to hear that - was unpleasant. I use my education to entertain myself and others. The only direct application to my job or any useful activities is my ability to string sentences together - which may come more from reading rather than going to school.
"Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn't afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."
"Farewell to Penn Station," New York Times editorial, October 30, 1963
There was a fervor for tearing down old buildings in urban American during the 1960s and early 70s. Many historic, but dilapidated, downtowns were bulldozed, as were countless wonderful "Union Stations" - and anything else that seemed "old".
Today, we cherish towns like Savannah which were left untouched by the government scourge of "urban renewal."
19th century housing was replaced by "modern" Soviet-style planned and government-subsidized housing projects (which finally are beginning to be dynamited themselves, for good reason). And the buildings were replaced with parking lots and sterile semi-high rises, and malls - that horrible concept which turns its back on the town in an effort to create an unreal, soul-less consumer paradise for the masses.
When you drive through downtown Bridgeport, CT, Hartford, or Nashville, you will be hard put to find an old building. Lucky towns escaped this frenzy of "modernization," which I term "dehumanization." Nobody wants to be in those sorts of downtowns.
Pennsylvania Station on the West Side of Manhattan - one of the masterpieces of the beaux-art movement -did not escape the epidemic of destruction. Grand Central Station escaped - but only barely. Just tell me - where would you rather wait 40 minutes for a train to meet your girlfriend or boyfriend - the new Penn Station, or Grand Central?
Photo below of the 1910 McKim, Mead and White Penn Station, from this site of NYC architectural images. Who would have the nerve to knock this thing down and replace it with the new (and truly terrible in every way) Madison Square Garden?
Truth be told, this whole commentary was just an excuse to post this photo:
Everyone enjoyed The Firesign Theater, but I have not seen any weed for more years than I can count. Never inhaled. Shoes for Industry! Papoon for President! One organism - one vote.
Bert and I did downbeat Down East humor. Guys who can do that schtick are not uncommon, especially as aging alcoholic cooks in Maine hunting camps. Man, have I heard some good ones, spellbinding for a 30 minute absurd story, provided you keep the guy's glass full.
Uncle Ed and I will never forget the shaggy dog story of the kid who grazed a buck in an orchard up the road, and rode it home on his bicycle draped over the handlebars until the deer came to, and began pedaling the bike himself and rode it into the center of town. These stories fade from reality into fantasy so that you do not quite know where you are. Bert and I made famous the Maine response to the city folk in their fancy car who asked for directions from the farmer: "You can't get there from here."
Bob Bryant and Marshall Dodge made records of this sort of good stuff. Try a couple of the short samples here. You can buy them here.
Why is Maine "down east"? You should know by now. I will not explain it again.
40:21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
40:22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in;
40:23 who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
40:24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
40:25 To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
40:26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.
40:27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?
40:28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
40:29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
40:30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
40:31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
If you want to see a kickass World War II movie, then Red Tails is your ticket. Saturday morning, after dropping Jason off at Little League Umpiring School, candy bar in hand I slipped into a seat at the local Bijou and was transported back to the exciting WWII movies I enjoyed as a kid, and which haven’t been made since.
It’s the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, enduring racism on the ground and fighting Germans in the air. After I got home I scanned the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. The negative reviews were mostly by relative youngsters who found it over the top or the characters too wooden, or some who not bothering about other films’ literal transgressions searched for them in this one. The more favorable reviews, however, got it. The film is unabashedly about heroism and patriotism. And, the dogfights have you at the edge of your seat, hands sweaty. Well worth the price of admission into when Hollywood made these movies regularly. This isn't about so many of today's so-called youth "heroes" who revel in lewdity and are rewarded with lewd sums of money that they flaunt. This is about real men who risked and gave all for what they believed, with little recompence except self-respect, and did it with dignity and discipline.
During the movie I wished I’d brought 11-year old Jason with me. It seems the movie was actually made for him.
George Lucas, unable to get film companies’ funding, made the movie out of his own pocket, $58-million invested in uplifting youth. As Lucas tells it, "For those of us in my group of filmmakers, like Steven (Spielberg) or Ron (Howard) or Marty (Scorsese), we want to make movies that enthralled us when we were little….It's corny. It's über-patriotic. And it's a really exciting action-adventure movie." But, more than that, “"I have only one agenda, and that's for a lot of young people to see this movie…" The report continues: “The good-vs.-evil, duels-in-the-skies aspect is what makes the movie especially timely, Lucas says. For many young people today, heroes — be they athletes, entertainers or presidents — aren't defined by skin color.”
Go see Red Tails, and take your son, daughter, grandchildren.
Peru: 
The wife of a friend of mine was recently made to feel uncomfortable while visiting her freshman daughter's dorm to see fellows walking around the halls with towels or undershorts with long-neck beers in their hands as if the dorm were some sort of downscale Roman orgy.
The greatest of storytellers, with an eye for vivid details of life and character types, and a tendency for unlikely dramatic plots.
