Look Out for That Clock!

Every year, twice a year, we go through the whole Daylight Savings Time thing. And every year, twice a year, we hear people complaining about "losing an hour of sleep" (or gaining it) and how the time change screws up their delicately balanced internal clock. Hogwash. Really. It's complete nonsense.

Major changes in your sleep cycle can certainly wreak havoc on you. This is what jet lag is. Ask anyone who's flown to Europe or Asia. Or Hawaii. Or even coast-to-coast. But when we change the clocks twice a year we're only talking about one hour. Just one hour. "Oh, MAB," I can hear you saying, "That's still a time change! It messed me up!" Yeah? Okay, here's a question for you. What time do you get up to go to work on a normal weekday? For some, it's 6:00. For some it's 7:00.

Okay, now what time do you get up on a normal weekend day? I guarantee you it isn't 6 or 7 for the vast majority. It's probably closer to 9 or 10. ("It's Saturday! I get to sleep in!") So, unless you go to bed and wake up at exactly the same time every day, you are screwing with your sleep cycle far more drastically than this measly hour that switches but twice a year. And you're doing it every week.

That messed-up feeling you're having is entirely in your head. It's fed, of course, by perceived wisdom and even our media. I've seen "reports" on local and even national news warning people to be careful when driving after time changes. 'Cause you're so messed up. You'll definitely be groggy. So thanks for feeding the nonsense, American media.

So you didn't "lose an hour of sleep" last night. You probably slept as much as you would have anyway. This is why they do this on a weekend, when you mess with your internal clock all the time anyway. You lost an hour of watching TV, or reading cranky blog posts.

I have nothing to say on the merits of Daylight Savings Time. I don't care one way or the other what time we all agree it is. We can argue over whether it's better to have it lighter in the morning or in the evening. Go to it. But the discussion and accompanying grief about "gaining" or "losing" sleep is just plain silly.

It's just an hour, people. Get over it.

That Was One Hell of a Hockey Game

I like how the Boston Globe shows us the scores of the most recent games played by the local boys and their next opponent. It allows us to recap the recent history of rivalries and jog our fond memories of the last time, say, the Celtics played the Grizzlies. Good times.

Remember that freaking awesome B's-Canadiens game last time out? That was a statbuster.

I remember they pulled both goalies early in the first period. Everyone on both teams got hat tricks. It was a major boost to the local millinery economy. Let's do it again, B's!

Porn in the USA

This story from NPR caught my ear the other day.

It shouldn't be news that there are certain aspects of our society that are distasteful to religious conservatives. Gay people, the First Amendment, science... Porn is also on the list. It doesn't even have to be gay porn. It's all bad. So I wasn't surprised to hear a story on NPR about how religious groups are dealing with this particular scourge.

What I didn't expect was the tone of the piece. Porn was treated as a disease, akin to gambling or alcoholism, by the religious groups in question. That's to be expected. But the NPR piece never once questioned this. The entire piece takes porn on exactly the terms laid out by the religious groups. It's a given that porn is a disease that must be overcome. No questions asked.

I can see how people can be addicted to porn and how it may interfere with their lives. (Just like non-porn web surfing or any other form of procrastination.) But this isn't discussed. It isn't the addiction, if that even exists, that's the problem. It's porn in general. There are no gray areas. Porn is taken to be a societal problem on its face and thank the Big Guy that these guys are here to help. You can be cured of the porn just like you can be cured of the gay.

Still think NPR is some crazy liberal media outlet?

I Don't Beg Your Pardon

Need a laugh? Read this.

Apparently, Tom Campbell thinks it would be a great idea to pardon Tom DeLay. Can't say I agree. Surprised?

We went through this type of thing a few years ago with Scooter Libby. Someone does something wrong, gets busted, and then someone else says "Oh, he's a good guy. He did it all for the right reasons. Just pardon him." You won't hear that kind of talk about folks in the hood who swiped food for their families to eat. But you hear it quite a bit when people in power abuse that power and are forced to pay for it, even a little. They become the wronged party.

Campbell's arguments are disjointed, unoriginal and woefully unconvincing. First he says he isn't a big Tom DeLay fan. This establishes his "impartiality". Then he compares DeLay with Charlie Rangel, noting that Rangel got off relatively easy, in his opinion. Then he says that three years in the slammer is unfair. (Compared to what? One year?) Then he says DeLay's motives were pure and that he didn't stand to gain personally. (This shouldn't matter. But, for the record, he did benefit quite a bit, personally and politically. Campbell is engaging in sophistry. There were indeed "no personal slush funds" [that we know of] but there were plenty of other goodies.) Then we get a lecture on civility. (Huh?) And then a caution against descending into "politics as blood sport" (as if DeLay wasn't engaging in that himself), followed by the tried-and-true "hasn't he suffered enough?" line. Then, inexplicably, the Tucson shooting gets hauled in.

After all of the usual nonsense, Campbell boils it down to "Think about the children!" Oy. This is not a person who feels he's laid out an airtight case.

This following bit is great.

In many countries, it is not enough to defeat opponents. Politics is a blood sport in which you must destroy them if you can. Do we wish to descend to that level? I don't think so.

That is why DeLay should be allowed to retire to private life with what he has left. He has been punished enough. He lost his position as majority leader and his congressional seat. He lost his place on the national stage. Prison will satisfy the vindictive desires of some but will trigger in others a desire for revenge.

Oh, okay. So maybe we should pardon every fucking criminal in the country. Because undoubtedly revenge is the only possible outcome. Prison is always vindictive. It's never deserved.

See, it isn't about Tom DeLay and the illegal shit he did. It's about satisfying someone else's bloodlust. And I think that Campbell's comment about DeLay's lost place on the national stage means that he desperately wants us to forget this gem.

Apart from all of this nonsense is the idea of what a pardon really is. It isn't, and was never meant to be, a method to ensure that guilty people never did their time. It was supposed to be a way for guilty, contrite people who did their time to be forgiven due to the fact that they had learned from their mistakes and had begun to make themselves into decent members of society.

The most horrible precedent was set by Chevy Chase in 1974. In that one, there wasn't even a trial, let alone a verdict or a sentence. They skipped right to the pardon. So now any time anyone in a leadership position gets convicted, we're supposed to just forget about it because one of their buddies vouches for them. Because really, they shouldn't have to serve as much time as the guy who gets busted for swiping a few videotapes. Now that was a bad guy. Lock him up.

Most importantly, acceptance of a pardon is supposed to be an admission of guilt. You will never get that from Tom DeLay. In fact he's appealing the court's decision. How can you pardon someone who's appealing the decision?

Taxation for Representation

I'm not sure why Michele Bachmann gets so much press.

Okay, scratch that. I do know why. Because she says dumb shit, just like someone else we know and love or hate depending on where we sit and how much grey matter we're sporting.

She's now riding this wave of neo-constitutionalism that has a stubborn tendency to ignore the parts of the constitution that contradict their goals. This is remarkably similar to the tendency of many, who are (perhaps not coincidentally) on the same side of the political fence, to ignore the parts of their other sacred document that don't support their views.

Although the teabaggers like to flout their reverence for the Founding Fathers (a phrase, by the way, coined by one of our most corrupt leaders), the U.S. Constitution was left intentionally open to interpretation. (And change. Amendments, anyone?) What does "general welfare" mean to you? How about "common defense"? A "well-regulated militia", maybe? They're all covered. And they're all pretty damn vague.

I just looked at Article 1 - Section 8, the section that is perhaps most frequently ignored by the teabaggers. Here's what it says.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Wanna do some "interpretation" with me? Cool.

I'm sure that people like Steve Forbes would argue that "uniform" means a flat tax. But what this really means is that no one state should be taxed more than another. That is, that the federal income tax rates should be the same for individuals living in every state. My federal tax can't be 10% in New York, but 15% in Alabama.

But take a leap with me for a moment. Could this possibly mean that each state should bear the same total burden? If we need to collect $1 trillion dollars, do we get 1/50 of it from each state? That would be "uniform", right? "No!", you scream. There are way more people in New York than in Wyoming. And way more money there. They should pay more. (These complaints would come from Wyoming far more than from New York.)

But ask those same folks in Wyoming how they feel about the Senate and it's a different story. They get two senators, New York gets two senators. So our constitution demands that each state get equal representation in one of our two houses of legislation. So howzabout they pony up for that? Equal representation, equal tax burden.

Maybe the federal tax rate should be adjusted for the amount of representation you get in congress. Toss the House into the mix, if you want. That'll level things a bit. But not entirely. Wyoming has 3 legislators in D.C., one for every 188,000 residents. New york has 31 legislators, one for every 625,000 residents. Maybe Wyoming should pay a bit more for that extra representation. More than three times as much, by my cheap calculation. Don't want to pay more? Okay, send one or two of those folks home.

And while we're at it, we can stop taxing the folks in D.C. at all.

Of course, I don't mean any of this. Except the last bit about the D.C. taxes. That I mean. But really, is it any crazier than some of the crap the teabaggers are tossing at us?

Grab Grab Grab (What I Just Gave You)

You can always count on Tea Party types to make arguments in defense of the U.S. Constitution that fundamentally misunderstand the U.S. Constitution.

Here's the latest from Fox News spokes idiot Sarah P, as quoted in Salon. Her beef is with "power grabs" by the federal government.

What we're seeing today is the inevitable result of national leaders who have forgotten the fundamental wisdom of the Tenth Amendment [which provides for America's federalist system]. Just as Mr. Jefferson warned us, as soon as we as a country disregarded the fact that the federal government's powers are limited, and that we as states and individuals hold the balance of the power, the floodgates were opened to the torrent of federal power grabs we're seeing today. Take the federal income tax, for example. We tend to think there are two constants in life: death and taxes. But America hasn't always had an income tax. The first federal income tax on individuals was imposed in 1861 to help pay for the Civil War. But the tax was never meant to be permanent, and Congress repealed it ten years after it was enacted. It wasn't until 1913 that the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified and the individual federal income tax that we know today was created.

What is most dangerous about these power grabs is that they're usually done in the name of a good cause--insuring the uninsured, for example--and have a big wad of cash attached to them.

Hilarious, as usual. She's right on some things. Of course we haven't always had an income tax. And the original tax she cites was not permanent. But once you make an amendment to the constitution, that's pretty much meant to be permanent. (18th Amendment, we didn't mean you.) And that's what we did.

What's dumb about this, on first glance, is a typical case of 10th Amendment confusion, which is sadly prevalent in the TP. Here's what the 10th says.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Okay. And the 16th Amendment was...in the constitution. The constitution can't be unconstitutional, lady. Oy.

But the dumbest thing about Mrs. P's complaint is that any time the constitution is amended -- and I'd love to know, as I would with most of her pronouncements, whether she doesn't know this or she's just conveniently ignoring it -- it has to be ratified by 75% of the states. In other words, a constitutional amendment cannot, by definition, be a federal power grab. At least 38 of our 50 states have to say yes for it to take effect. And 42 of the then-48 states said cool to the 16th Amendment. (Three rejected it and three more never took it up.) Assuming that Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia's silence on the matter equalled consent, that's 93% approval from the states from whom power was being "grabbed". Nice.

This nitwit continues to say dumb shit on a regular basis. And our media continue to quote her dumb shit. Please stop. Or at least have the common decency to say, "Hey, that is some dumb shit right there. And here's why." It isn't all that difficult. What are you people going to do when you come up against an actual skilled sophist (like, say, Karl Rove)?

Barbara Billingsley

I wasn't completely sure she was still around. But man, this lady was a champ.

Although it was already a bit long in the tooth by the time I was a kid, "Leave It to Beaver" was a huge part of my childhood. Can I tell you how much I love(d) this show? In the past year or so I had been combing through the archives, available for streaming on Netflix. It has not lost any of its charm. In fact, it may be better than I remember.

"Beaver" is constantly held up as a paradigm of cold war squeaky clean America, old fashioned and conservative. Well, kinda. Nuclear families. Bed on time. Wash behind your ears. Blah blah blah. But watching clusters of episodes recently made me rethink this.

Although Ward and June had rules for Wally and The Beave, they weren't total hardasses. They were always loving and understanding with the boys, even when they did really dumb shit. And when they lied, covered it up and -- inevitably -- were found out, Ward and June were usually more disappointed than angry. And they sat the kids down and spoke with them calmly about what they did and why they did it and exhorted them to come to the 'rents and talk to them whenever anything of the sort dealt with in that particular episode arose again.

The elder Cleavers weren't the type to say "In my day, kids had respect for their elders!" They knew that they weren't much different when they were kids and that boys will be boys. They knew that, ultimately, most of what Wally and Beaver learned, they'd learn it through experience, not by listening to a lecture. And as long as no one got hurt, it was all good. They never yelled. They never hit. It was, dare I say it, a pretty liberal show. And not just for its time.

Wholesome? Oh yes. But hardly the hoary cliche of Eisenhower America it's often made out to be. Yes, Ward went to the office and June stayed home and took care of the house, always immaculately dressed and coiffed. But the Cleavers were both active participants in their children's lives. And they discussed matters of discipline and the kids' well-being together. Ward never put his foot down and said "Because I said so!" or "I'm the man of the house, and what I say goes!" Ward and June both knew that even they didn't always know best and admitted when they were wrong. And not just between the two of them. To their kids.

I could fill up an entire post about the language on the show, which is utterly brilliant in its own right. Ward and June spoke perfect standard American English but the youngsters on the show had a patois all their own. I wasn't around when the show aired, so I can't tell you how accurate it was to the time. But there never was then and never was after that a show that had "goofy" and "crummy" and "hunka" and "hollerin' at" and "little creep" and dozens of other nuggets of linguistic awesomeness as part of its arsenal. The writing was only nominated for an Emmy once (and didn't win). This is criminal.

At the heart of the show, though, was the lady that just passed. She was filled with love for her family and a wisdom that is stereotypical of mid- to late- 20th century TV motherhood. But it all began with her. She was the mom you wish you had.

Higher Taxes Make You Work Less, Because You Don't Like Money

Does anyone still believe this? Former GWB advisor Greg Mankiw has taken the time to compose an article reiterating the old line that taxes make people not want to work. And I took the time to read it. Call me a masochist.

Oh boy. Here we go.

You wanna read it first? Here it is. Knock yourself out.

There are a few completely dishonest calculations in the piece. And a few assumptions that rankle. But the basic concept is one that's always irked me. That is, "I'd rather have nothing than have something of which I have to give part away."

We've heard it before. Taxes are a disincentive to work. Really? I can see how people might not like paying their taxes. I can see how people may argue over how much is too much. (Is 30% too much? How about 50%?) But I cannot understand people saying that because any amount is taxed, they won't bother making any money because it just isn't worth it to them.

Mankiw begins by saying that he's doing just fine, thank you very much. But what should he do if someone asks him if he'd like to make a few bucks at a speaking engagement? Apparently the answer is to turn it down. Not because he doesn't need the money. (He doesn't. Remember?) But because he wouldn't be able to leave as much of it for his children as he would if there were no taxes of any kind. Not lower taxes, mind you. No taxes. Oh. Okay.

Here's his logic, such as it is.

"Suppose that some editor offered me $1,000 to write an article. If there were no taxes of any kind, this $1,000 of income would translate into $1,000 in extra saving. If I invested it in the stock of a company that earned, say, 8 percent a year on its capital, then 30 years from now, when I pass on, my children would inherit about $10,000. That is simply the miracle of compounding."

That is simply the miracle of bullshit. Because the no-tax scenario does not exist, why are we talking about it?

But now we're not just talking about taxes here, it seems. He has now invested his money in a company that is doing very well and his $1000 has magically transformed, 30 years from now, into $10,000. Nice. But what's wrong with just having the $1000 you earned in the first place? Well, nothing. Unless your aim is to make the point that $1000 is really $10,000 and you need a benchmark with which to whip that original sum. So find a way to make it $10,000.

"Now let’s put taxes into the calculus. First, assuming that the Bush tax cuts expire, I would pay 39.6 percent in federal income taxes on that extra income. Beyond that, the phaseout of deductions adds 1.2 percentage points to my effective marginal tax rate. I also pay Medicare tax, which the recent health care bill is raising to 3.8 percent, starting in 2013. And in Massachusetts, I pay 5.3 percent in state income taxes, part of which I get back as a federal deduction. Putting all those taxes together, that $1,000 of pretax income becomes only $523 of saving."

It must be true. It's calculus! Okay. Now we're down to $523 after taxes. But hold on. We're assuming the top marginal rate, and we're assuming the GWB cuts expire. (Should we really assume that?) And we're also assuming a tax rate (Medicare) that doesn't begin for another three years. Still, even so, you have $523 left, right? That's something. Oh, wait. More horrible horrible taxes that make making money just not worth it.

"And that saving no longer earns 8 percent. First, the corporation in which I have invested pays a 35 percent corporate tax on its earnings. So I get only 5.2 percent in dividends and capital gains. Then, on that income, I pay taxes at the federal and state level. As a result, I earn about 4 percent after taxes, and the $523 in saving grows to $1,700 after 30 years."

Okay, so now he's comparing a theoretical 8% return on an investment with only 5.2%, which is still pretty damn solid, particularly in today's economy. But now we're down from the completely untaxed and wisely invested $1000 becoming a nice fat $10,000 (in 30 years) to it being only $1700. A mere pittance. Oh, but he's giving it to his kids, right? I think we know where we're going next.

"Then, when my children inherit the money, the estate tax will kick in. The marginal estate tax rate is scheduled to go as high as 55 percent next year, but Congress may reduce it a bit. Most likely, when that $1,700 enters my estate, my kids will get, at most, $1,000 of it."

Ah, yes. The estate tax. Again, we're assuming the top rate here. Which doesn't yet exist. So, Mankiw's horrible horrible scenario comes down to working for $1000 and having his kids inherit $1000. In the absolute worst-case scenario. Which doesn't exist. I'm crying here. Hey, Greg. Tell your kids to get a job instead of waiting 30 years to get that lousy $1700.

"HERE’S the bottom line: Without any taxes, accepting that editor’s assignment would have yielded my children an extra $10,000. With taxes, it yields only $1,000. In effect, once the entire tax system is taken into account, my family’s marginal tax rate is about 90 percent. Is it any wonder that I turn down most of the money-making opportunities I am offered?"

No. But not for the reasons he states. He doesn't work because he has enough money already. If he needed more, he'd take the assignment. If he didn't have any money at all, would he not take it? Would he rather have the $523 or $0? Has he never worked in his life? Because he's paid taxes at these rates already, presumably, if he has. But why? He says he has no incentive. And yet...he's worked. And continues to do so. This article's existence is proof.

Mankiw's argument seems to boil down to not wanting to pay any taxes. So apparently if someone said to Mankiw, "Hey, I'll give you 1000 bucks to do something" he'd say yes. But if they said, "Hey, I'll give you 2000 bucks but after tax it will end up being 1000 bucks" he'd say no. This makes absolutely no sense.

The equation shouldn't be "how much is going to the government". It should be "how much is going to me". If the answer to the last question is more than zero, then you have an incentive to work. If you don't, it's just spite.

Let's kick Mankiw out of this scenario and pop in an actual person, Joe Schmo. Joe isn't in the top tax bracket. Joe has rent to pay. And food to buy. Joe gets an offer of $1000 to write an article. Joe knows that he'll probably only take home about $750 of it. (Because he isn't in Mankiw's bracket.) So, Joe can a) take the job and have $750 towards paying his rent or b) not take the job because the taxes have taken away his incentive to work. Gee, what do you think he does? His incentive to work is paying his fucking rent.

And another thing: Joe isn't going to invest his money (which, contrary to what Mankiw says, could result in him ultimately getting nothing, if the company goes under). He's going to spend it. So the "miracle of compounding" never plays into it. And the evil estate tax is immaterial. Even if he did have $1000 to leave to his kids 30 years from now, unless he had another $1,999,000 to add to it, there would be no estate tax for his kids to worry about. None.

Mankiw's article is the most elitist piece of crap I've seen in the NYT, or any media outlet, in some time. And here's how he ends it.

"But don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that when the government taxes the rich, only the rich bear the burden."

So, if what he's saying is true and he won't take that writing job because he doesn't need the money and he's disincented anyway because of his tax burden, then guess who gets the job. It's Joe Schmo! So Mankiw's last statement is, by his own logic, false. Because Joe now has $750 that he wouldn't have had if we didn't tax Greg Mankiw. Who is a schmuck.

Free Mountain Dew for Everyone!

Really? This is a controversy? People are actually up in arms about restricting food stamps so they can't be used to buy soda? Oh no! They're "playing God"!

This is the kind of crap that gives welfare a bad name.

People, listen. It is not "playing God" to say that government money that is given to people to keep children from starving should actually be used to keep children from starving and not just loading them with sugar and empty calories.

Holy crap. Not a controversy. Really. Not a controversy. Thanks, ABC News, for pretending it is.

Bernard Schwartz

Okay, it's Tony Curtis. But Bernard Schwartz was just way too jewy for Hollywood.

And besides, he wouldn't have been known as Stony Curtis if he hadn't changed his name. I mean, come on. Stony Curtis. Now that's a name for a rock star.

Ahem. Sorry.

I was never a big fan of Mr. Curtis. Even in his best movies ("Spartacus", "The Sweet Smell of Success") he seemed like window dressing. Or worse.

I think I liked him best in "Some Like It Hot". He seemed to let loose a bit more there. But even then, I found myself wishing for someone a bit less...I don't know. Unsettling, maybe. Maybe it was those icy blue eyes. Expressionless. He never seemed like he belonged in any of the movies I've seen him in. Except maybe "Sweet Smell". His "I think I'd just as soon be someplace else" manner made the most sense in that creepy world.

At any rate, he's out of here. Maybe he's going to the castle of his faddah. Which lies over yonder.

And if he hadn't changed his name? Why then, Fred would have been the stunt double for (wait for it)...

Bernie Quartz!