Politics & Culture

Tax Rates — The Next Civil Rights Battle?

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Amid the drama of the Occupy movement, with its anti-corporate sloganeering, and the push by Democrats in Washington to reduce the deficit through tax hikes, conservatives seem to be waging a rearguard action. Prominent Republicans (the “Young Guns” of the House, notably excepted) appear to be mostly accepting of Democratic arguments at face value, without bothering to dig into the premises behind those arguments. The game seems like a tit-for-tat struggle over talking points for which the Dems, by virtue of their ethics-laden rhetorical style, enjoy a natural advantage. Who, after all, wants to be seen as taking away goodies away from voters?

The problem is that the Democrats, by and large, simply aren’t serious yet about the discontinuity between their policies and the health of the country; they either refuse to acknowledge, or fail to understand, the cliff up to which their entitlement programs have pushed the federal treasury. It was smart politics a century or even a generation ago to promise more Social Security, more Medicare, more union benefits. More, more, more. Yet it’s increasingly obvious that America has reached a point — brilliantly observed and meticulously calculated by the likes of National Review‘s Kevin Williamson and Mark Steyn — where the old rules simply don’t work anymore.

To be fair to the Democrats, it’s not exactly easy to pivot when your party’s playbook has transformed from a path of short-term electoral success to a program of long-term national suicide; witness the GOP struggle to define a coherent foreign policy in the aftermath of the Soviet dissolution. The wrenching change that accompanies a material shift in the country’s fortunes rarely ends well for ideologues who anchor their political edifice to yesterday’s reality — think, for example, of the unceremonious death of the Whig Party before the Civil War and the implosion of the Republicans during the early New Deal years. We can hold out hope that the Party of Jefferson will find a bold leader who will reorient the left toward a saner worldview. It’s possible … but then, so is failure.

Yet although there are hints that some Democrats have wisened to the new economic reality (think James Carville or Doug Schoen), the rank-and-file of the party seems caught in the cross hairs of a struggle between centrist-leaning New Democrats and hard-left Progressive Democrats. The failure of the so-called Supercommittee to find meaningful deficit reduction seems to boil down to one point: Republicans wanted to cut spending without increasing taxes. Democrats wanted to make wealthy people pay higher taxes so as to reduce the spending cuts to programs that they favor.

This leads to a curious impasse, with the Dems forging a curious end-run around it through the politics of group discreditation.

American history is replete with examples of scapegoating. When hard-working Protestants were priced out of the labor market in the nineteenth century, Irish Catholic immigrants bore the blame — and the wrath of government, through immigration restrictions and laws that made it harder for Catholics to integrate into mainstream society. When Detroit suffered the first massive wave of layoffs in the 1980s, people blamed Japan and Japanese. During the national paranoia after the Soviet bomb and Sputnik, the rump of U.S. communism was persecuted without mercy. In the 2000s, it became fashionable to blame Mexican illegals and NAFTA for “taking good jobs” from white Americans (despite that white Americans steadfastly refused to take those jobs). After Pearl Harbor, FDR ordered Japanese Americans rounded up and put in prison camps; after the Civil War, wounded Southern pride exacted its pound of flesh from freed blacks, setting up generations of segregation and lynchings.

And so on, and so on. Easier to blame than to reform.

America overcame institutional scapegoating largely though a deeper commitment to ensuring civil rights for all citizens. Anti-Catholic bias is mostly gone. Racism has largely been eradicated from government. Everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Although some problems remain — why does anyone care if a Mormon is elected president? And why is Mexican immigration still such a hot potato? — the default position in polite society remains one of neutrality and toleration of our differences.

Curious, then, that the response of the Most Elevated Disciples of Toleration, the Democratic left, seems to play the scapegoating game again with reckless abandon. Economy in the tank? Blame “millionaires and billionaires” who’ve gamed the system by speculating off of unsustainable bubbles that left the working family’s 401(k) plans empty. Can’t find a job? Blame “large corporations” for sending jobs overseas. Cutting back on bloated local spending? It’s because “the rich” aren’t paying their “fair share.”

Is there any problem in today’s America that doesn’t spring from the wealthy? One would think the rhetoric of socking it to the Rich Parasite would have fallen away after Auschwitz and Treblinka and Birkenau, but apparently it’s still okay as long as you substitute “millionaires and billionaires” for “Jews.”

Blame substitutes for reform, because reform would make the Democrats face the unpleasant reality that a not-insubstantial share of today’s economic crisis results from generations of DNC-sanctioned policy preferences. Easier ignore the facts and point fingers than to accept responsibility for giving birth to Leviathan.

Housing bubble? Look at the irrational federal expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act that mandated banks to make housing loans based on sociopolitical rather than economic factors. Death of heavy industry? Most of this comes from generous union contracts, making domestic labor significantly more costly than foreign labor. Infrastructure decay? It costs much more in time and regulatory compliance just to get an clean environmental impact statement — making such projects unattractive and inherently risky. Medicare at risk? The doc fix doesn’t help, leaving fewer and fewer providers willing to pick up federally insured patients.

America has a lot of problems. Insufficient taxation of the wealthy isn’t among them. Consider:

  • For tax year 2009, the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 36.7 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 10 percent of wage earners — those with a federal adjusted gross income of just $112k or higher — paid 70.5 percent of all federal income taxes. By comparison, the bottom 50 percent of wage earners paid 2.3 percent of all federal income taxes.
  • Taxing income at 50 percent for earners in the $1 million to $10 million category would raise enough revenue to reduce the deficit a mere 8 percent (and the debt, just 1 percent). Taxing at 100 percent for all people earning $10 million or more would generate a 12 percent deficit reduction and a 2 percent debt reduction. Guess what? That’s a drop in the bucket.

So. Even if we granted every progressive’s wet dream and taxed the wealthy at 100 percent levels, we won’t have enough revenue to solve America’s financial problems. Not even close.

Demonizing the wealthy isn’t about economics, it’s about politics. It’s about redirecting blame from bad policy to allegedly bad people. It’s easier to lambaste successful Americans for “not paying their fair share” — and why isn’t 70 percent of revenue among the top 10 percent of earners fair enough? — than it is to admit that a socioeconomic model based on wealth redistribution eventually proves unsustainable.

Conservatives need to fight back against this demonization of the successful by turning economic success into a civil right. Just as it’s not fair to scapegoat Jews or Catholics or blacks or gays or Mexicans for our problems, it’s also not fair to scapegoat the wealthy. The counter-argument must self-consciously adopt the language of civil rights activism if it’ll stick against Democrats who relish class warfare as much as children relish candy.

The rich didn’t make America’s economic problems; bad policy did. If we want to play the blame game, lets start with generations of politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, who treated America’s wallet like a no-limit credit card with a bill date of February 30. And instead of merely pointing fingers, let’s put in place policies that promote economic growth and reduce the influence of burdensome regulations pushing down on small businesses across the fruited plain.

America faces a difficult economic future. Present spending is unsustainable and no amount of tax increases will fix it. The only solution comes from significant spending restraint and entitlement reform. If we continue to let the Democrats blame the wealthy, we will turn these important reforms into an unnecessarily ideological hot potato that means we’ll see ruthless ideological warfare in the back seat as Uncle Sam drives off the cliff.

The unhappy ending is avoidable. The question is — will we stop the unnecessary and distracting class warfare and actually address the problem, or will we let envious scapegoating continue to block meaningful reform?

Perhaps a bit of good old-fashioned civil rights talk can help the body politic get the scapegoat off the altar long enough for our leaders to institute real and meaningful reform.

Politics & Culture

Quick Thoughts re: Last Night’s GOP Candidate Debate

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Last night, six of the GOP candidates (from stage left: Santorum, Perry, Romney, Gingrich, Paul, Bachmann) for the presidential nomination met on stage in Iowa for a televised debate hosted by ABC News correspondents Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. The event lasted nearly two hours. Impressions:

  • Sawyer and Stephanopoulos did a good job at moderating. They tended to be warmer than other moderators, and less critical of the candidates. They seemed to view their job as being facilitators rather than dictators, being much less aggressive about timekeeping than, say, Scott Pelley was, and more celebratory of the human side of campaigning. Although Sawyer’s delivery tended to ramble a bit, the questions themselves were fair game and delivered in fair manner. The pair made for the best debate moderators I’ve seen yet this cycle.
  • Maybe it was the more relaxed timekeeping, or that there were fewer candidates on stage (Cain backed out and Huntsman and Johnson weren’t present), but it seemed like the candidates had more time for crossfire and to express themselves in a reasonable amount of time. No one was really cut off the entire night. Everyone on stage had plenty of time to talk — no “Siberia” in the corners, as it were.
  • Santorum performed well. His answers were generally good, and delivered strongly, although he felt too nervously earnest. Like the popular high school jock running for class president, and you know in 10 years he’ll be selling used cars and be overweight with three kids and a minivan. Unfair, I know. I just wish he seemed warmer and less uptight. He could try smiling and even crack a joke every now and then.
  • Perry had a good night — he rarely stumbled and had some fairly decent answers, although it’s not clear he helped himself by appearing unable to count to three. He has a maddening habit of giving a cursory answer to the question presented to him and then using the rest of his time to answer someone else’s questions — the net effect is to suggest that he can’t answer on the fly and instead needs to think about what the last guy said and then try to one-up it.
  • Romney was Romney — generally polished, with good answers and an easy grace. He took more of a beating than Gingrich (unfairly, I think, from Bachmann) but handled it OK. The ABC News commentators argued that Romneys’ “$10,000 bet” to Perry about the contents of Romney’s book hurt him in Iowa, because Iowans don’t bet $10k even on sure things. Not sure I believe that — it was a gimmick, but it pushed Perry on defense. I wasn’t a huge fan of Romney’s answer about Gingrich’s “Palestinians are an invented people” claim: The former governor seemed to suggest that the President of the United States needs the approval of the Prime Minister of Israel before opening his mouth about Middle East affairs, an absurd claim if ever there was one. Yes, Gingrich’s comment was ill-timed. But it wasn’t wrong, and to suggest publicly that making statements of that sort requires pre-clearance by the Israeli government transmits a sense of American weakness I think it’s best to avoid. Romney seems to defer to the side of caution. This may be admirable in a POTUS but as a candidate being blunt about being cautious sends the wrong signals.
  • Gingrich was Gingrich. The Speaker did well, giving generally good answers. Sometimes he seemed a bit too impressed by his own cleverness, but again — Gingrich was Gingrich. He handled the marital-fidelity question with grace. Newt is a polished extemporaneous speaker. The ABC News commentators suggested that by this point, it’s Gingrich instead of Romney who’s the apparent nominee. I wouldn’t be upset by a Gingrich candidacy, but it’ll take a lot of discipline to get through the primaries then the general election, and Newt’s lack of discipline is … well, legendary.
  • Paul remains the GOP’s irascible old curmudgeon of an uncle. He provides color, and a welcome diversity to the ideological spectrum on the stage, but his policy proscriptions are so off-kilter that it’s good for America he’s polling so poorly.
  • Bachmann enjoyed a very strong night. She spoke frequently, and forcefully, on many issues. Although her performance was solid and likely helped her in Iowa, her bulldog-like attacks on Gingrich and Romney seemed contrived and desperate (and were successfully rebuffed by both men simultaneously heaping scorn on her for the comparison) and when she gets on a roll, her eyes glaze over and she doesn’t blink or shift her gaze. Minor point, but it kinda creeps me out. And she needs to stop worshipping Herman Cain.

In all, the debate left me heartened about the overall quality of the Republican field. Any of the people on stage — even Paul, and even the candidates who weren’t there — would make a far better president than the incumbent.

The current horse race puts it as a two-way competition between Romney and Gingrich. I’m OK with either candidate. I think Romney would perform better with independents in the general election, but Gingrich may inspire more conservatives to turn out. And although Obama is currently weak, the Democrat’s chances could improve, and the eventual GOP nominee may well suffer from self-inflicted danger.

The long series of debates had a real impact on the nomination process. Painful as it sometimes was, the system did its job of helping Republican voters better understand who their nominees really are. For that, and for the quality of Republican candidates in this cycle, every conservative ought to be relieved.

Politics & Culture

Quick Thoughts re: Last Night's GOP Candidate Debate

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Last night, six of the GOP candidates (from stage left: Santorum, Perry, Romney, Gingrich, Paul, Bachmann) for the presidential nomination met on stage in Iowa for a televised debate hosted by ABC News correspondents Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. The event lasted nearly two hours. Impressions:

  • Sawyer and Stephanopoulos did a good job at moderating. They tended to be warmer than other moderators, and less critical of the candidates. They seemed to view their job as being facilitators rather than dictators, being much less aggressive about timekeeping than, say, Scott Pelley was, and more celebratory of the human side of campaigning. Although Sawyer’s delivery tended to ramble a bit, the questions themselves were fair game and delivered in fair manner. The pair made for the best debate moderators I’ve seen yet this cycle.
  • Maybe it was the more relaxed timekeeping, or that there were fewer candidates on stage (Cain backed out and Huntsman and Johnson weren’t present), but it seemed like the candidates had more time for crossfire and to express themselves in a reasonable amount of time. No one was really cut off the entire night. Everyone on stage had plenty of time to talk — no “Siberia” in the corners, as it were.
  • Santorum performed well. His answers were generally good, and delivered strongly, although he felt too nervously earnest. Like the popular high school jock running for class president, and you know in 10 years he’ll be selling used cars and be overweight with three kids and a minivan. Unfair, I know. I just wish he seemed warmer and less uptight. He could try smiling and even crack a joke every now and then.
  • Perry had a good night — he rarely stumbled and had some fairly decent answers, although it’s not clear he helped himself by appearing unable to count to three. He has a maddening habit of giving a cursory answer to the question presented to him and then using the rest of his time to answer someone else’s questions — the net effect is to suggest that he can’t answer on the fly and instead needs to think about what the last guy said and then try to one-up it.
  • Romney was Romney — generally polished, with good answers and an easy grace. He took more of a beating than Gingrich (unfairly, I think, from Bachmann) but handled it OK. The ABC News commentators argued that Romneys’ “$10,000 bet” to Perry about the contents of Romney’s book hurt him in Iowa, because Iowans don’t bet $10k even on sure things. Not sure I believe that — it was a gimmick, but it pushed Perry on defense. I wasn’t a huge fan of Romney’s answer about Gingrich’s “Palestinians are an invented people” claim: The former governor seemed to suggest that the President of the United States needs the approval of the Prime Minister of Israel before opening his mouth about Middle East affairs, an absurd claim if ever there was one. Yes, Gingrich’s comment was ill-timed. But it wasn’t wrong, and to suggest publicly that making statements of that sort requires pre-clearance by the Israeli government transmits a sense of American weakness I think it’s best to avoid. Romney seems to defer to the side of caution. This may be admirable in a POTUS but as a candidate being blunt about being cautious sends the wrong signals.
  • Gingrich was Gingrich. The Speaker did well, giving generally good answers. Sometimes he seemed a bit too impressed by his own cleverness, but again — Gingrich was Gingrich. He handled the marital-fidelity question with grace. Newt is a polished extemporaneous speaker. The ABC News commentators suggested that by this point, it’s Gingrich instead of Romney who’s the apparent nominee. I wouldn’t be upset by a Gingrich candidacy, but it’ll take a lot of discipline to get through the primaries then the general election, and Newt’s lack of discipline is … well, legendary.
  • Paul remains the GOP’s irascible old curmudgeon of an uncle. He provides color, and a welcome diversity to the ideological spectrum on the stage, but his policy proscriptions are so off-kilter that it’s good for America he’s polling so poorly.
  • Bachmann enjoyed a very strong night. She spoke frequently, and forcefully, on many issues. Although her performance was solid and likely helped her in Iowa, her bulldog-like attacks on Gingrich and Romney seemed contrived and desperate (and were successfully rebuffed by both men simultaneously heaping scorn on her for the comparison) and when she gets on a roll, her eyes glaze over and she doesn’t blink or shift her gaze. Minor point, but it kinda creeps me out. And she needs to stop worshipping Herman Cain.

In all, the debate left me heartened about the overall quality of the Republican field. Any of the people on stage — even Paul, and even the candidates who weren’t there — would make a far better president than the incumbent.
The current horse race puts it as a two-way competition between Romney and Gingrich. I’m OK with either candidate. I think Romney would perform better with independents in the general election, but Gingrich may inspire more conservatives to turn out. And although Obama is currently weak, the Democrat’s chances could improve, and the eventual GOP nominee may well suffer from self-inflicted danger.
The long series of debates had a real impact on the nomination process. Painful as it sometimes was, the system did its job of helping Republican voters better understand who their nominees really are. For that, and for the quality of Republican candidates in this cycle, every conservative ought to be relieved.

Computers & Technology, Personal, Philosophy, Politics & Culture, Social Media, Marketing & Privacy, Vices, Writing, Editing & Journalism

Assorted Ruminations

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Well. What an interesting couple of weeks it’s been. Summary commentary follows, on subjects as diverse as writing, politics, socializing and privacy. Read on, dear friends, and be enlightened.

“Society” Isn’t Responsible For Your Bad Choices

Big Al and I have engaged in several recent conversations about Occupy Wall Street, and in particular, about the nature of the main claims emanating like a vile penumbra from the protestors’ wish lists. The crux of the debate: To what extent is society responsible for the condition of people saddled with huge student loan debt and no strong employment opportunity?

Although Alaric refuses to state categorically that he thinks the protestors are totally free of moral culpability for the current condition, he does seem to argue that they aren’t solely culpable and therefore deserve a personal bailout. He asserts that the overwhelming social message that “college is the key to success” means that people really had no other choice if they wanted to be successful, and that colleges have misled many students about the value of their chosen courses of study. As best as I can tell, his position is that the social pressure to attend college mixed with bad or misleading counsel about the options available for majors means that many unemployed students were effectively sold a bill of goods. Therefore, in the interests of the macro economy, it makes sense to lighten their load and to implement reforms to prevent such from happening again.

Our debates have been lively. Although I appreciate his perspective — and do, in fact, concede that social pressure is a not-insignificant contributor to the higher ed bubble — I cannot agree that debt-laden students get a pass. For one thing, imprudence isn’t a virtue. Yes, I’m sure some people really did think that a degree in puppetry would be fulfilling — but did they bother to check the expected labor market for such a focus? Research is abundant and free, beginning with the Department of Labor public databases. As an ethics major, I realize that the only job I’m qualified for is one that requires “a degree, any degree” — no one is actively looking for someone with a B.A. in moral philosophy. I knew that going into it. I made my choices, and I have to accept my consequences. Choosing to go in willfully blind doesn’t provide a layer of insulation for when times get tough.

I get that for many people, life is challenging. I don’t think it’s society’s problem.

Evening of Cocktails and Fine Dining

Last Saturday I welcomed the opportunity to have dinner with Jon and Emilie, Tony and Jen, and Joe. We started with cocktails at Tony’s office in Lansing, then went to Copper for dinner. The meal was delightful and the company was heavenly. We had a great time and settled on the dates for the “All Things Tony” trek to The Happiest Place on Earth in early June.

Scotch Is Good for the Soul

Good Scotch whisky is proof of the existence of a benevolent God. In recent weeks, I’ve enjoyed Ardbeg 10-year (a staple of Jim Murray’s list of top whiskys) and now I’ve laid hands upon another rare bottle of Ballentine’s 17-year. Add to that a good deal on Lagavulin 16-year, and life is good.

But added to the mix: Gentleman Jack. I saw a fascinating Discovery Channel documentary on how Jack Daniel’s is made, and it impelled me to pick up a bottle. Glad I did. GJ may become my default sipping whiskey.

NaNoWriMo Is Harder Than It Looks

So I’m writing a novel. It’s harder than it looks. The goal of National Novel Writing Month is to produce a minimum of 50,000 words in the month of November. Some people have already met their goal, and bully for them. I remain stuck in the low four figures, mostly because I started late and have been planning as I go. The prose I’ve generated so far, I’m mostly happy with. And I purchased Scrivener for Windows — an all-in-one writing application for professional writers — and sync its data files with SkyDrive so I can pick up on any of my computers. So far, so good.

The “discipline thing” presents something of a self-improvement opportunity. My goal is to generate 80,000 words and shop it for sale. As a published writer of non-fiction work, I hope I have at least a tiny bit of credibility to get an agent to look twice at my submission. But if not — it doesn’t matter much. I’m enjoying the craft of writing for writing’s sake.

The fun thing about NaNoWriMo? The social aspect. There are active forums and chatrooms for local areas. The “Ottawa County – Grand Rapids” group has been a blast. I’ve done two write-ins with fellow novelists already, and will do more in the coming weeks. It’s been motivating, and fun to connect with fellow local writers. Even if Elizabeth insists on circulating a paper chat room while I try to write and even if Jennifer won’t bring me Scotch. At least Adrianne gave me chocolate because she’s a nice person.

I’m Not a Commodity: Or, Facebook+Spotify Sucks Huge Donkey Dick

Having read of the hype around Spotify, the streaming music service recently made available in the U.S., I was eager to install the app on my phone and enjoy a wide library of musical bliss. The downside? The only way you can actually register for Spotify is to log in with your Facebook account and agree to share an astonishing amount of personal information (including your name, age, location, friends, and profile details) with Spotify. There is no other way to gain access to the music service. Spotify, seemingly caught off-guard, insists that people can create dummy, empty Facebook accounts if they wish — which seems to defeat the purpose.

Long story short: I refuse. I uninstalled Spotify. And for good measure, I logged into Facebook and stripped all of my data from the service. I deleted all my photos (except a really crappy one for the profile), untagged myself from everyone else’s photos, removed all my personal profile details, and set all privacy settings to the most restrictive level. I even “unliked” almost everything I’ve liked in the history of Facebook — only a few dozen things, but still. My profile is now mostly an empty shell devoid of useful marketing data. Fuck you, Mark Zuckerberg.

Note to Big New Media: I’m a human being, not a data profile. I own my information. You don’t. I grow weary of being offered “free” apps or services only to discover later that the fine print says that you get to commodify me into a package of information that you can sell to others and that I have no say in the matter (not even to opt out or to at least curate what gets shared). I’m also out of the game of “logging in with Facebook” (or Google, or Twitter, or …) — give me the chance to log in using de-identified information, or forego me as a customer. Next up for scubbing: Google. I’m watching you, Mountain View.

State of the GOP Presidential Race

Here’s what I know. Most significantly, Rick Perry managed to disappoint me; I can forgive a bad debate performance, but not a 100 percent failure rate in debate performances. Mitt Romney really does look like the default nominee, and despite Erick Erickson’s bloviations, I think he’d be a strong contender and a solid POTUS. Notwithstanding my lack of enthusiasm for his early debate performances (where he came off arrogant and picking fights on social issues he didn’t need to wage) I think Jon Huntsman might be the best man for the job — he’s sufficiently conservative, smart, polished and experienced. Paul, Gingrich, Bachmann and Johnson should probably exit, stage right. And Herman Cain? He just needs to implode and retire from the race before too much damage is done to the GOP brand. Between the sex scandals and the implausibility of 9-9-9, the risk to Republican seriousness is high.

What a Difference A Gigabyte Makes …

Last week, I acquired for the low, low price of $44 a 2 GB memory chip for my netbook (the package also included an 8 GB micro-SD card). I installed it, booted up the machine — and it purrs like a kitten. Still not quite as fast as my full-sized laptop at home (what, with its dual-core Athlon processor and 4 GB of RAM) but the netbook is keeping up admirably with a dual-boot Win7+Fedora16 setup.

Truth be told, I think I’ve finally settled on an all-Microsoft approach to data management. My laptop, netbook and smart phone all run Microsoft OSes, and I use Windows Live SkyDrive for all my personal cloud storage. I’m increasingly centralizing information with OneNote, conveniently synchronized across all my screens. Although it’s not a perfect setup, I’m satisfied with it and am more productive than I was in the days of miscellaneous FTP syncing and random OS mixes.

… Also, a Single Settings Tweak

The only non-MS device left in my portfolio is my HP TouchPad. Granted that I acquired it at firesale prices, I find WebOS to be snappy and elegant. I was tempted to install the CyanogenMod tweak to push it to Android, but why screw around when WebOS works? The only problem I had — and it frustrated me to no end — was TouchFeeds, an RSS reader that’s simple and robust. However, it would hang the tablet on occasion and sometimes be mind-numbingly slow. Slow, to the point I wanted to chuck it at the window and grind my boots on the shards just to show it who’s boss. Funny thing, though: Simply changing the TouchFeeds setting to stop auto-mark-read-as-you-scroll completely fixed the problem. Now, I just push the “mark all read” button and it flies like a dream. Sometimes, just screwing around with settings solves problems.

Pictures on the Wall

Last weekend, I finally got around to printing 21 4-by-6 photos for the huge wall-mounted photo display I got for a steal a while back. Picking which 21 I wanted to print prompted a delightful trek down memory lane. It also reminded me of how bad of a job I do at taking pictures, despite having a 5 MP camera in my HD7. Now the display is prominenly affixed to the wall of my living room.

Politics & Culture

Liberate Wall Street! Or, Thoughts re: #Occupy Shenanigans

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The phenomenon that is “Occupy Wall Street” boggles the mind. The inchoate protests across the country that have no rhyme, reason or focus — other than to “just protest” — marks either the canary in social discontent’s coal mine, or Thermidor for the progressive Left. Regardless, watching people protest with no coherent message, animated only by their desire to benefit from taxpayer largesse, proves instructive.

Two points.

First, the Occupy movement, despite its small size and dazzling parade of clowns, represents the same type of discontent from the Left as the Tea Party marked for the Right. The Tea Party said: “I don’t want to pay for other people’s bailouts.” The Occupy movement says: “You paid for everyone else’s bailout, now where’s mine?”

It’s easy — too easy, for some conservative pundits — to let ridicule substitute for engagement in their approach to the Occupy phenomenon. The “where’s mine?” attitude on full flower in New York is easy to dismiss as naive or to caricature as the whinings of people too stupid to realize that a master’s degree in Medieval French Feminist Literature has relatively little market power. The dismissals are on-point, to be sure, but they miss the point at the same time. The protesters are demanding personal bailouts. It’s not caricature if it’s fact, and the fact is, student loan debt (most significantly) has fanned this particular flame of discontent, and those left with more debt than they can pay back really do feel like they’ve been sold a bill of goods. Deriding it without acknowledging that people genuinely believe they deserve a personal bailout risks missing the forest for the face-pierced trees, and acting like personal bailouts are unreasonable despite our history with all sorts of public bailouts (not to mention welfare policy) constitutes willful blindness of a point that many consider to be valid in principle if not always in practice.

Second, the emergence of the Occupy movement and its sycophantic support among mainstream Democrats from Obama on down, unmasks in a creative new way the far Left agenda.  The general public so far seems less than amused. Conservatives and even some moderates snicker at some of the demands that have leaked from the “General Assembly” in New York — including immediate debt forgiveness for everyone, everywhere — but in truth, they are doing everyone a form of service. They are showing the country where the real Left pole lies. Elected Democrats shy away from this pole even though they’re beholden to it, much as elected Republicans have their own love-hate relationship with the far Right. Yet the challenge from the Left is that the old divisions (centrist, liberal, progressive, socialist, communist, anarchist) are eroding just as the internal divisions eroded within the Right in the last generation. People point to today’s monolithic Republican Party with much less internal ideological diversity as being a bad thing, yet this outcome is the end result of a process beginning with Watergate and continuing through the GWB years — and it’s only now beginning in earnest within the Left. Just as moderate Republicans are an endangered species, so also are the moderate Democrats: Just look at how the Blue Dogs were wiped off the map in 2010.

This means that in the coming years, the folks to the left side of the center almost surely will undergo the wrenching sea-change in ideology that will pull Democrats further to the fringe and impose a more rigid political and ideological template on rank-and-file politicians. The Republicans moved further Right in the 1990s and 2000s; the Democrats will move further Left in the 2010s and 2020s.

A NoLabelist third-party conglomeration of moderates is unlikely to prevail; the system revolves around a two-party duopoly, and in any case, not many beyond the ranks of self-appointed public intellectuals feel the call to rally to the cause of moderation. Instead, the independents will trend Right or tune out altogether.

It’s not hard to envision this moment — the Occupy movement, the weakness of the Obama administration, the ongoing failures of Keynesian stimulus, “leading from behind,” the backlash against Obamacare — as the point where another generational change begins. A change where the aspirations of the progressives decisively lose favor with the broad Middle America, and Democrats seem poised to devolve into decades of bitter internecine wars of ideology. Whatever the outcome for the Democrats, the progressive movement looks like its on the verge of collapse, at least as a serious contender for mindshare among educated citizens.

The progressives want to Occupy Wall Street. Fine. Yet it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the net result is that we’re now witnessing the first wave of the liberation of Wall Street from the powers of regulation and redistribution that are only now shedding the pretext of moderation and allowing their full ideology to flower.

America is a center-right nation. Always has been. When the progressives could cloak their ambitions under the veneer of moderation, Democrats have been successful. Just look at Bill Clinton. It takes a real crisis of public confidence mixed with effective blame assignment toward the Right to elect a true left-wing president — FDR, LBJ, BHO. Under ordinary circumstances (think McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, William Jennings Bryan, or even TR’s Bull Mooses) the further to the left they drift, the less likely the odds they’ll be elected.

Market economies work. That so many graduates with useless degrees are unemployed sort of proves the point. As long as the Right presents a solid pro-market strategy that leaves reasonable room for helping out the less fortunate, conservatives will win election after election. A pro-growth agenda that holds people responsible for the choices they make while providing a safety net to help those whose choices were constrained by circumstance will lift more boats than a soak-the-rich, give-to-the-poor Robin Hood fantasy that seems to animate the Left lately.

And as far as the freak shows in Zucotti Park — laugh, if you must. But beneath the unwashed hippie facade lies a discontent that could fizzle. Or explode. Conservatives would be well-advised to keep eyes wide open while they chuckle at the spectacle, lest they find themselves being tomorrow’s lion fodder.

Politics & Culture

Musings on Current Political Trends

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Politics lately seems touched by the surreal.

  1. The usual internecine warfare among Michigan Republicans is heating up again. Not content to fade gracefully from the spotlight, the DeVos family continues its genteel vendetta against Pete Hoekstra. Hoekstra, the former U.S. House member who ran unsuccessfully for Michigan’s GOP gubernatorial slot last year, is a solid performer with excellent constituent skills and a superior command of the things that matter. He presents the MI GOP’s best chance for defeating Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2012. Nevertheless, Clark Durant — a charter school man with a distant memory of federal service — has stepped in, and immediately the DeVos family and its acolytes, including Saul Anuzis and former Sen. Spence Abraham, duly lent their endorsement. Why? This is stupid. Michigan Republicans have a golden opportunity to unseat Stabenow, yet we play these little power games to the point that our field is weak before the general campaign begins. Michigan should be a shade more red than it is, and the incessant meddling of the DeVos family holds significant accountability for GOP under-performance over the last decade.
  2. Rick Perry has entered the race for the GOP presidential nod. The Texas governor is an underrated tactician with a good sense of how to talk to his base. Whatever initial discipline problems he may have will fade. Talk of “Texas fatigue” and the like will dissipate in all but the leftmost corners of the media during the Obama Economy. I was interested in Pawlenty, but could find a lot to like in Perry. Less of a fan of Bachmann — I don’t believe in the wild-eyed slurs against her, but she has yet to earn the major and wide-ranging experience necessary to fix the mess the next president will inherit from the current administration.
  3. I wonder if the average West Michigan voter realizes he ended up replacing the center-right Vern Ehlers with libertarian Justin Amash. If a really savvy Democrat pops up in the Third District, Amash could be in real trouble. This district isn’t well-suited to someone who has the temperament of someone who could be a cabinet official in the Ron Paul administration.
  4. The Kent County GOP continues to not engage in outreach. Why, I cannot say.
  5. I’m pleasantly surprised the House Republicans kept it together on the debt-ceiling issue. If the idea of a “spending problem, not a revenue problem” is worth more than a talking point, then holding firm against more spending and new tax hikes is bold. Let’s pray they remain steadfast.
  6. I’m finding less and less coherence from the Left. I read a lot of progressive material — FDL, Salon, TPM, etc. I don’t think they get that the answer to Obama’s weaknesses isn’t to double-down on FDR-style progressivism. The harder they push, the worse the pushback with the electorate, but their cognitive  dissonance explains this as “we didn’t push hard enough.” Bizarre. Used to be, I encountered a lot of liberals who I didn’t agree with, but at least I grasped their reasoning. Nowadays, the reason is so riddled with logical error and ad hominem attacks that it’s less “argument” and more “polemic.” And that’s sad — even though I favor conservative positions, the Right does better when it must articulate positions against a mature and coherent ideological opponent.

The 2012 campaign season will be … interesting.

Politics & Culture

Time Value of Money & Opportunity Costs — In Real Life

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A few weeks ago I was chatting with a co-worker as he was washing his Tupperware in the sink of the office kitchenette. He mentioned that as a way of saving money, he brings his lunch to work and typically eats at his desk. He spends roughly $5 per day on lunch, whereas I spend $11 when I visit the bistro at the hospital’s heart center for a hot, nutritious meal.

His argument: Why pay more for food?

My counter-argument: After he spends time in the morning preparing his meal, planning his workday lunches in advance, lugging a cooler around, washing the containers and losing the chance to escape from the office for an hour or so … he may be paying less in raw dollars for his mid-day meal but his hidden costs are much greater.

People often fetishize their dollars at the expense of their sense. Lacking an appreciation for the time value of money, they will hunt for low gas prices and drive 30 minutes round-trip out of their way to save a total of $2 on a fill-up, not realizing that if they thought about things rationally, that they are basically saying their time is worth $4/hour.

To be sure, some people have so much unproductive slack that the whole point of opportunity costs is moot; when you don’t do anything of significance for big chunks of your day, spending time to save a dollar here or there does make a degree of sense.

But for people who are otherwise occupied with tasks, clients and the like, every minute spent in the pursuit of a marginal cost savings must be weighed against its opportunity cost — that is, the cost of the next best alternative. If you are a freelance writer, for example, does it make more sense to waste 30 minutes to save $2 in gas, when you could use that 30 minutes to write an article that pays $15, $20, or $25 in the long run?

Time is a commodity like any other. When you invest your time in low-risk but low-reward activities like bargain hunting, with its associated immediate payoff, you may be saving a little today but foregoing the benefit of earning more tomorrow.

From my perspective, I’m glad to pay a daily $6 premium on my lunch because I like the taste of the bistro food, I get out of the office, I don’t need to worry about planning ahead, and I don’t need to lug a lunch tote or wash dishes later. The time and hassle of eating a “home lunch” just isn’t worth it, so I look at the $6 as a fair trade for the added enjoyment and convenience of the experience. In exchange, I get non-tangible benefits at work (like leaving my desk) and can use more time in the evening writing or reading or engaging in long-term self-improvement projects instead of worrying about tomorrow’s menu.

People make odd choices sometimes. If more people grasped the pillar economic concepts of opportunity costs and the time value of money, perhaps productivity would improve and overall contentedness would rise.

Politics & Culture

Time Value of Money & Opportunity Costs — In Real Life

1 Comment

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a co-worker as he was washing his Tupperware in the sink of the office kitchenette. He mentioned that as a way of saving money, he brings his lunch to work and typically eats at his desk. He spends roughly $5 per day on lunch, whereas I spend $11 when I visit the bistro at the hospital’s heart center for a hot, nutritious meal.
His argument: Why pay more for food?
My counter-argument: After he spends time in the morning preparing his meal, planning his workday lunches in advance, lugging a cooler around, washing the containers and losing the chance to escape from the office for an hour or so … he may be paying less in raw dollars for his mid-day meal but his hidden costs are much greater.
People often fetishize their dollars at the expense of their sense. Lacking an appreciation for the time value of money, they will hunt for low gas prices and drive 30 minutes round-trip out of their way to save a total of $2 on a fill-up, not realizing that if they thought about things rationally, that they are basically saying their time is worth $4/hour.
To be sure, some people have so much unproductive slack that the whole point of opportunity costs is moot; when you don’t do anything of significance for big chunks of your day, spending time to save a dollar here or there does make a degree of sense.
But for people who are otherwise occupied with tasks, clients and the like, every minute spent in the pursuit of a marginal cost savings must be weighed against its opportunity cost — that is, the cost of the next best alternative. If you are a freelance writer, for example, does it make more sense to waste 30 minutes to save $2 in gas, when you could use that 30 minutes to write an article that pays $15, $20, or $25 in the long run?
Time is a commodity like any other. When you invest your time in low-risk but low-reward activities like bargain hunting, with its associated immediate payoff, you may be saving a little today but foregoing the benefit of earning more tomorrow.
From my perspective, I’m glad to pay a daily $6 premium on my lunch because I like the taste of the bistro food, I get out of the office, I don’t need to worry about planning ahead, and I don’t need to lug a lunch tote or wash dishes later. The time and hassle of eating a “home lunch” just isn’t worth it, so I look at the $6 as a fair trade for the added enjoyment and convenience of the experience. In exchange, I get non-tangible benefits at work (like leaving my desk) and can use more time in the evening writing or reading or engaging in long-term self-improvement projects instead of worrying about tomorrow’s menu.
People make odd choices sometimes. If more people grasped the pillar economic concepts of opportunity costs and the time value of money, perhaps productivity would improve and overall contentedness would rise.

Politics & Culture

WTF re: Really Odd Tattoos

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First off, I admit it — I do have a tattoo. It’s on my right forearm: A nautical star in blue and black with the Latin words “decus, virtus, sinceritas” below it. I am not anti-tattoo. I rather like them, and wouldn’t say no to more, especially if an apprentice needed a model for his master work.

That said, I’ve noticed lately a trend that perplexes: The odd tattoo.

By “odd,” I don’t mean “creative” or “unique.” I mean … horribly random or soon-to-be dated. For example, there is a delivery driver who comes to our building. His forearms are covered with inked logos: D&G, Nike, Burton. Why? What would possess someone to pay hundreds of dollars to have corporate logos permanently affixed to prominent places on his body?

I also see more and more people who have several tattoos that appear to be randomly placed. I observed a woman last week, running in a halter top and short shorts, who had perhaps a half-dozen small tattoos spread across an arm, her chest, her calf, and her upper thigh.  Or people with arms or legs filled with small, unconnected tats. Don’t get me started on several neck tattoos.

Odder still are designs that are … curious. I saw a guy at Meijer yesterday with a bust of Winston Churchill on his calf. I’ve seen guys with giant chunks of poetry inscribed along the sides of their abdomens. Designs that look like they were drawn by an epileptic. Or huge blocks of ink in pseudo-tribal designs that end up looking like a Rorschach test.

Don’t misunderstand. I think a well-done full-sleeve is a thing of beauty. But some of the oddness I’ve seen lately screams “regret in years to come.”

Politics & Culture, Religion

Preferential Option for the Poor, Take Two

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Jesus says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the Kingdom of God is theirs.” Jesus instructs his followers to engage in corporal and spiritual works of mercy, including feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. And Jesus warns his flock: “What you do onto the least of your brothers, you do onto me.”

In modern Catholic social-justice theory, good Christians must put the needs of the poor at the top of moral ratiocination. We must give a “preferential option” for the poor, as it were. Particularly in matters governing man’s relationship to man, protecting the poor and ameliorating their plight must always be paramount.

It’s a commonplace of secular contemporary socioeconomic discourse to ascribe various government-intensive solutions to address the plight of the poor. You see this in the “War on Poverty,” various social-welfare programs, the burgeoning diversity movement, anti-poverty activism and direct-transfer payments from the wealthy to support programs for the poor.

In “Preferential Option for the Poor,” new First Things editor R.R. Reno raises a salient point about this bedrock principle of Catholic social justice. He notes that we almost never consider poverty in anything but raw economic terms: No one seems much to care about moral and spiritual poverty. Reno’s conclusion is that a more holistic understanding of “the poor” will lead us to a conservative social agenda that favors stabilizing families, nurturing shared community norms and enriching public culture.

The problem, as I read Reno’s perspective, is that a secular “preferential option” focuses on economic conditions, leaving moral poverty to libertine impulses. “Who are we to judge?” after all. Yet this bastardizes a properly Christian conception of care for the poor; what good does it do to provide material benefits to a family without the the moral sense to make sound long-term decisions? For example, why should the state subsidize pregnancies among single low-income women without also teaching them the virtue of chastity?

Poverty of spirit is just as dangerous and just as open to repair as material poverty, yet left-wing activists encourage redistribution and big-government schemes to repair the latter while paying the former no heed. Is that virtuous? Or is it a bastardization of the full and authentic meaning of the “preferential option?”

Reno’s analysis is spot-on, and well-worth the read. Were I to add anything to his commentary, it would merely be this: Even if you do focus only on helping the poor in a material sense, the virtue that attaches comes from doing it yourself. There is no real spiritual benefit to paying higher taxes to fund a government redistribution of wealth. The spiritual and moral benefit to helping the poor comes from working the soup kitchen or rape crisis center. It doesn’t come from mere advocacy or from writing a check.

Jesus also said: “Woe to the rich, for they have already enjoyed their reward.” Woe also to the armchair liberal who would rather be seen to be virtuous among his peers while doing very little to help the poor in the ways that matter most. They have already enjoyed their reward.