I'm oppressed because I can't oppress

Peggy Noonan lauds the Superbowl Paul Harvey ad. One of the many reasons to adore the speech?

Because it explicitly put God as maker of life and governor of reality, again un-self-consciously, and with a tone that anticipated no pushback. God, you could say anything in Paul Harvey's day.

Paul Harvey couldn't go on the radio and say "By the way, there's no god, and often religion causes people to do terrible things." Paul Harvey couldn't go on the radio and say, "We should give gay people the same rights enjoyed by everyone else." This is a classic example of oppression paranoia, like the war on christmas. Because mainstream culture no longer 100% reflects your beliefs or points of view, you think you're being oppressed.

A Classic Dancing Chicken Moment....

A fellow with Down syndrome writes "An Open Letter to Ann Coulter," taking her to task for using the slur "the retard" in reference to Obama:

Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift.

This sort of quote makes me want to throw up my hands and declare humanity a lost cause of vicious misery. These may be my issues talking, mind you.

Enforcing Gender Norms in the Legal Profession

Findlaw's Greedy Associates blog gives advice to prospective Harvard Law students who will have a Skype interview

Dump Hello Kitty for the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Take a look at what's on the shelves behind you. Your interviewer will see these things. So you might want to consider replacing the giant plush Hello Kitty doll, and replacing it with some library-borrowed law books.

Of course, it is a feminine thing that signals your utter lack of competence. Lawyering is serious business, little lady. Another tip from the same post suggests that the interviewee wear khakis for their interview. That's not gender-specific at all, is it?

Mitt Romney and Tax Avoidance

What's Really Going on With Mitt Romney's $102 Million IRA - Atlantic Mobile

Zakaria said the "larger point at play" worth discussing is "that it shows that people like Mitt Romney and you have access to advice, mechanisms, strategies to build wealth that really ordinary Americans don't have access to. And that when you couple that with his agenda, which is to cut taxes further for those people, it gets to the heart of this idea that there are two Americas, one for the very, very, very rich and one for everyone else.""

Exactly. The preferential tax treatment of investment income is a joke. The joke, of course, is on us.

Jonah Goldberg cheats a little

Jonah Goldberg got caught in a lie:

On the dust jacket of his new book, "The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas," best-selling conservative author and commentator Jonah Goldberg is described as having "twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize."

In fact, as Goldberg acknowledged on Tuesday, he has never been a Pulitzer nominee, but merely one of thousands of entrants.
....
It's not uncommon for Pulitzer entrants to claim to be nominees. Here's how it works: Though there are only three nominees, known as nominated finalists, in each Pulitzer category each year, there are more than 2,000 entrants. One could say that all of them were "nominated" by someone. If all Pulitzer entrants could be called nominees, any publisher could give all its authors that honorific by submitting an entry form and a check for $50.

It's just seller's puffery, but when you accuse your ideological opponents of dishonesty, maybe you shouldn't cheat on your bio.

Creamed Corn

As to the origin of the word "garmonbozia" itself, neither the word or any of its parts seem to be derived from any known words in any language, although many have tried to associate it with "maize" or other words for corn, since creamed corn seems to be the physical manifestation of garmonbozia.

Twin Peaks FAQ: "Fire Walk With Me"

Erlend Øye - Thirteen - Red Square, Moscow

The Coffee Cup Satire

Allysia Finley: Coffee Is an Essential Benefit Too - WSJ.com.  This satire has been making the rounds.  It goes like this:

Can you believe the nerve of employers? Many of them still seem to think that they should be allowed to determine the benefits they offer. I guess they haven't read your 2,000-page health law. It's the government's job now.

That's a good thing, too. Employers for too long have been able to restrict our access to essential health services like contraception by making us pay some of the bill. Really, it's amazing that we aren't all dead. Now, thanks to you, we'll enjoy free and universal access to preventative care just like workers do in Cuba. Even so, there are still many essential benefits that the government must mandate to make the U.S. the freest country in the world.

The article then goes on to make a bunch of nutty suggestions about things that employers should be required to provide to their employees, from fitness club memberships to the titular free coffee.

This kind of satire is thoroughly frustrating, because it demonstrates a lack of understanding. The only reason to write this is to provide partisan opposition, not to criticize policy.

Health insurance provided by employers is essentially subsidized by the way the tax code treats employer-provided care. The health insurance that your employer provides you isn't a part of your wages - it escapes taxation free and clear. If you tried to buy your own health coverage, you don't get the same tax exclusion, and so it becomes heinously expensive to purchase your own health care. As a result, we have a system where employers provide health care.

So what can a consumer of health care do to take control in this system? Employees have no real say in what coverage their company offers. Your options are to buy your own coverage or find a new job with an employer who does offer the services you need. The first option is incredibly expensive, because you will be penalized by the tax code. The second option is ludicrous. Even if a person were able to effectively research new employers' plans and actually get a job with the new employer, nothing prevents the new employer from changing the plan and effectively ruining your efforts.

So the Affordable Care Act sets up basic standard packages of care, so that people can be assured of a basic set of services. And this is where the dishonesty starts. Is the WSJ seriously opposed to setting basic standards of health insurance packages? Why?

It isn't a free market. Nobody can go buy their own coverage, nobody can pick and choose packages. You get what your employer wants to give you.

Is that fair? Maybe not, but then your issue isn't really with the Affordable Care Act, your issue is with the system of employer-provided health care. Why don't you go pick that fight, instead?

But ultimately, how can you conflate basic health services, the services provide by physicians and pharmacists, with drinking coffee. The juxtaposition indicates shortcomings not in the ACA, but in the WSJ.

Meow

Charles Murray's plan to save white America...

Charles Murray speaks about his book, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010, decrying the lack of values among the poor. He sets forth some solutions in the New York Times

Finally, we should prick the B.A. bubble. The bachelor’s degree has become a driver of class divisions at the same moment in history when it has become educationally meaningless. We don’t need legislation to fix this problem, just an energetic public interest law firm that challenges the constitutionality of the degree as a job requirement.

After all, the Supreme Court long ago ruled that employers could not use scores on standardized tests to choose among job applicants without demonstrating a tight link between the test and actual job requirements. It can be no more constitutional for an employer to require a piece of paper called a bachelor’s degree, which doesn’t even guarantee that its possessor can write a coherent paragraph.

This part struck me as weird. In truth, the Supreme Court could make no such decision, and has made no such decision regarding standardized tests.

The cases that Murray's referring to all deal with cases of racial discrimination. Employers canned their black employees and then pointed to tests or educational standards as a fig leaf to cover their actions. The court didn't invalidate the tests, they were just found to be pretexts.

It's a weirdly revealing misunderstanding. Murray misinterprets a case about racial discrimination as being a case of meddling in businesspeople's discretion. It's just creepy.

Charles Murray's plan to save white America...

Charles Murray speaks about his book, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010, decrying the lack of values among the poor. He sets forth some solutions in the New York Times

Finally, we should prick the B.A. bubble. The bachelor’s degree has become a driver of class divisions at the same moment in history when it has become educationally meaningless. We don’t need legislation to fix this problem, just an energetic public interest law firm that challenges the constitutionality of the degree as a job requirement.
After all, the Supreme Court long ago ruled that employers could not use scores on standardized tests to choose among job applicants without demonstrating a tight link between the test and actual job requirements. It can be no more constitutional for an employer to require a piece of paper called a bachelor’s degree, which doesn’t even guarantee that its possessor can write a coherent paragraph.

This part struck me as weird. In truth, the Supreme Court could make no such decision, and has made no such decision regarding standardized tests.

The cases that Murray's referring to all deal with cases of racial discrimination. Employers canned their black employees and then pointed to tests or educational standards as a fig leaf to cover their actions. The court didn't invalidate the tests, they were just found to be pretexts.

It's a weirdly revealing misunderstanding. Murray misinterprets a case about racial discrimination as being a case of meddling in businesspeople's discretion. It's just creepy.

Jonah Goldberg: The fight over contraception coverage - latimes.com

Jonah Goldberg: The fight over contraception coverage - latimes.com

is a funny read. Mostly because it contains these two phrases:

The lying demonization of Republicans...."

and

As Ramesh Ponnuru writes in "The Party of Death"

and yet the former doesn't refer to the latter.

Mankiw's defense of carried interest

In the NYTimes

Critics of current law think it is unfair that these private equity partners are taxed at capital gains rates, whereas other high-income individuals like doctors and lawyers pay the much higher tax rates for ordinary income. It is a reasonable point, and some reform may well be appropriate. But as the tax situations of Abe through Earl illustrate, it is not obvious what the best approach would be. Not all problems have easy answers.

So the defense is that the issue is tough? That's the argument? So if it's a fair criticism, should we expect Mankiw's client, Mitt Romney, to be open to reform of the capital gains system by which Romney pays less tax than I do?

I don't think so.

It's not all money

Our Corrupt Politics: It’s Not All Money by Ezra Klein | The New York Review of Books

Really nice, about how lobbying really works.  Good article that doesn't pander to preconceptions or fuel righteous partisan anger.

Santorum: Liberals ‘are the anti-science ones’ | The Raw Story

Santorum:

“It’s so funny that this party that criticizes the right for being anti-science, but when it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones!” the candidate declared. “We’re the ones who stand for science and technology and using the resources we have to make sure we have a quality of life in this country and maintain a good and stable environment.”

Actually, science is totally neutral on the question of how much we should exploit resources. This is pretty simple, actually.

Science provides explanations and models for the real world. Science can explain how materials came to be in the earth, and science can help develop tools to extract it. Science likewise can likewise develop models to explain the consequences of that extraction. None of this information explains what we should do.

Of course, if Santorum loves science, he should have no problem accepting the scientific consensus on global warming and evolution. Of course, as a Republican politician, he won't.

The comments section...

So I read the comments section of the previous article, and it has this great howler:

"So you make 270,000,000.00$ pay 10% = 27,000,000$ in tax.Is that really fair to have to pay 27 million dollars to the government when half of the people in the US pay no tax at all? That 27 mil. would not count the payroll, state, local, school, taxes. Does not look fair to me.Amazing how we had NO federal taxes until the early 1900's.Mr.Bill"

Ah yes, let's return to the golden times of the nineteenth century.  Are you kidding me?  I love how libertarians and small government types idolize this fantasy land of no government.  Like everything would be so peachy without schools, roads, the internet, clean water, the police, and clean food.

And then there's also the old switcheroo:  Bill mentions payroll and state taxes when discussing taxes on the wealthy, but ignores then when discussing the poor who don't pay federal income taxes.

yuk!

The tax code punishes workers and favors the wealthy

NYT: Working All Day for the I.R.S.

Capital gains, investment income, all that is taxed at a lower rate than actual income.  This amounts to a policy of punishing work.

Defenders of the scheme like to argue that capital gains taxes are outrageous because it amounts to a double tax.

Of course, these defenders never suggest that we abolish the corporate tax and then equalize income treatment for all earners.

But there's more money in shilling for the super rich, so who really cares about intellectual honesty?

Buzz Bissinger on the death of independent Philly papers

Buzz Bissinger, who wrote Prayer for the City about Ed Rendell, has a NYTimes editorial about the impending death of independent Philadelphia newspapers, as a group of political interests, headed by Ed Rendell, is looking to buy up the local papers.

He argues that, without an independent voice, the local powers that are running Philly into the ground would have no effective check. It's an interesting idea. I have no idea what it would take for Philadelphia to get better. It's a shame. The city really is quite beautiful, and it has a rich history, but the politics of that city are thoroughly rotten.

Still, cheesesteaks!

Mitt Romney: good with sudden movements

David Brooks:

But Romney’s awkwardness seems to endear him to audiences, because he’s trying so hard. He spends an enormous amount of time after the speeches shaking hands, taking pictures and holding babies. Beads of sweat form on his forehead as he throws himself graciously into the crowds. He also has a nice startle response. When something unexpected happens, his face lights up and you get a burst of happy humanity out of him.

Mitt Romney: the perfect candidate for old timey flash photography.

No True Libertarianism...

Nice little blog post about how there is a lack of examples of successful libertarian regimes, or at least regimes which libertarians would accept as true libertarian governments. The basic problem is that, when the rubber hits the road, we're talking about anarchy and misery:

This, by the way, is why racism, theocracy and libertarianism go hand in hand, when from a philosophical point of view they should have little to do with one another. The negative effects of the lack of a central government are so obvious in developing countries that wherever the social order fails as in Somalia, it must have been due to bad religion, or the defect of having been born to an inferior race.

This, of course, isn't going to convince anybody on the Volokh Conspiracy, but it's a pretty persuasive point.