I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that
if at the end I have lost every other friend on earth,
I shall at least have one friend left,
and that friend shall be down inside of me.
Abraham Lincoln
Unconscionable Quote of the Day
"To have something on the table that does not ask the wealthiest people in the country to share (the burden) ... is unconscionable." - Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)The fact of income inequality does not, of and by itself, mean unfairness. For example, in some cases, one is making a trade-off for long-term success or other investment in the future. My oldest sister, a registered nurse, didn't work during her daughters' preschool years, and the family lived off my enlisted serviceman brother-in-law's earnings.
After earning my MBA, I spent the next 3 years as a full-time PhD resident student paying for all school and living expenses (room, board, car, insurance, etc.) on a graduate stipend for teaching a couple of classes a semester: I was earning a few hundred dollars a month, just a fraction of what most college graduates were making (despite my then 3 degrees). And then I started making a decent income. After living on a tight budget for years, even after high taxes in Wisconsin and the fact I wasn't making that much as an MIS professor (I found some of my fellow graduates elsewhere were making 15-20% or more), I had enough to start saving towards retirement and spend more.
Did I make more than, say, a checkout cashier? Yes. It wouldn't have taken me years of study to operate a cash register, and after my shift, my life was my own. But I had chosen a field at the time where there was a strong demand and little supply for accredited PhD's for junior faculty positions. It took years of sacrifice and hard work to get to that point; even after my coursework was done, I had to prepare for multiple written and oral comprehensive exams, not to mention defending my dissertation proposal and the dissertation itself. Even though I got the degree, as a university professor I now had to worry about tenure, which at many colleges is not a formality. In many universities, you have a renewable 3-year contract; near the end of the second contract, you are going up for tenure, which requires solid teaching, research and service. (My first two positions were tenure-track; I left these positions due to unusual academic/office politics.) Others may spend less time, but I was routinely putting in over 70 hours a week.
I eventually earned a decent income (which only lasted 5 years when a bad job market in academia forced me to start over in a third career), I had earned my opportunity. That's part of the American way. The same things go into starting a business; you put together a business plan, you have to find a way of financing it; you may go through years of living of juggling bills and endless hours. You have to worry about the competition, with staffing and payroll issues, government paperwork, etc.
So, yes, making your way is the American dream. And if one day you find it paying off, good. Why? Because maybe if you see that hard work pays off like it did for, say, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, you'll be inspired to make your own way to building a successful business. Hinderaker notes that income inequality is a good thing. Households aren't static, i.e., stay in the same quintile of income every year; in fact, during tough economic times, income inequality tends to shrink. I'll be reporting in a lower quintile this year, despite being one of the most talented professionals and academics around. (There are various reasons why these anomalies occur. For instance, for the first 5 years after I left academics, professional recruiters worried I was just biding my time for the academic market to recover and I would take any company "investment" in my skills with me.)
In 2007, the top 1% started at about $347,000 in income. But whereas CS Monitor and progressives talk about the top 1% nearly quadrupling their income since 1979, their share of total income doubled from 8% to 17%; however, the percentage of total tax burden (including payroll or excise tax burden) went from 15.4% to 28.1%. In contrast, the total tax burden for the bottom two quintiles went from about 9.3% to 5.2%.
From 2007 to 2009, the percentage of adjusted income for the top 1% decreased by 6 points, while the percentage of tax burden decreased by 4 points. In contrast, whereas the bottom 50% earns 13.5% of income, they have an average income tax rate of 1.85%. So, yes, the top 1% earns more than the bottom 50%, it's roughly 3.4 points, while the income tax share is 22.16 points more.
In the meanwhile, we've seen federal spending escalate from just under 20% of GDP to (more recently) 24% GDP. We're not talking about the 20% of the budget that goes towards the defense spending. When are the Democrats going to put REAL CUTS on the table--not just phony cuts in the growth rate of spending. Not that I'm from Missouri, but SHOW ME SHORT-TERM real cuts in base budgets (i.e., eliminating programs and personnel, limiting program eligibility, consolidating operations).
Let's cut the crap about asking sacrifice only from one income class, the same group that already pays a disproportionate amount of taxes from their income. The Democrats are the same ones whom reneged on deals with Reagan and Bush Sr. to match multiple dollars in spending cuts for each new dollar in tax hikes (almost all from upper-income taxpayers, of course). These are the same guys whom seem to be budget-conscious when it comes to only the quarter of cuts that go to upper-income taxpayers whom pay the most taxes and not a word about the other three-fourths (which contribute three times as much to the deficit). These are the same guys whom hypocritically complain about the abandonment of "pay as you go", when they made a mockery of emergency exceptions under pay go to finance a 24% increase in domestic expenditures, over and beyond a $862B stimulus bill.
Yeah, the Democrats talk about "tax cuts for the rich" as if there was no economic benefit and tax revenue benefit to the upper-income taxpayers'comparable more efficacious spending and investing of their own income. These are the same guys whom talk about "spending cuts" which are no more than REDUCTIONS IN FUTURE SPENDING INCREASES. That's like someone currently brown-bagging his lunch saying he'll save money on next year's budget by doing fast food next year but ordering combo meals instead of a la carte (or, while making minimum payments on your existing credit card balance, promising to add to your credit card balance by shopping only on sales days at the local department store!): in either case, you are still spending more money that you don't have. The Democrats' idea of spending cuts? Disingenuous gimmicks like treating Iraq/Afghanistan spending like ongoing federal programs and treating expiring expenditures as occupation activities wind down as "spending cuts" to offset increases in domestic expenditures.
Former Penn State Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky
and the Dr. Phil Show
First of all, I've made it very clear in multiple posts my judgment on this case. if and when you witness a crime, you have a moral, if not legal obligation to do what you can safely do under the circumstances to demand the aggressor to cease and desist, at minimum promptly alerting authorities to the scene of an alleged crime.
At the same time, I realize that everybody deserves fair treatment under the law, and there is understandably a strong social stigma against perpetrators of child sex abuse. In the 2002 incident witnessed by assistant coach McQueary, currently on leave, there are differing accounts of what McQueary has said about the incident. Reportedly in recent sworn testimony, McQueary reported he saw anal penetration by Sandusky on a 10-year-old boy. McQueary reported the incident to Paterno, whom in turned reported it to the athletic director, one of two Penn State managers whom have been indicted for failure to report the incident to law enforcement. Joe Paterno has indicated that McQueary told him that that the encounter was suspicious but not definitive.
What disturbed me was how many in the media immediately assumed guilt, even though there are disputed elements in McQueary's story: what was said to Paterno and whether McQueary reported the incident to the campus police. Paterno has not been charged for failing to report the incident to police, and Sandusky recently said that he talked to the athletic director about the incident and gave (or offered to give) contact information for the youth in question. (I don't know if the athletic director contacted the boy and/or if McQueary confirmed the boy Sandusky named was the same boy he saw.)
The point is, we know, especially after the Kern County child abuse scandals, that people's lives can be ruined by false accusations. My gut feeling is that Paterno heard something differently than the grand jury did. Paterno's responsibility was to escalate the issue, and he had nothing to gain by changing the story. Presumably the police would be in contact with McQueary.
We are already seeing a Penn State backlash; other than their facility being used, the big issue is whether they promptly reported the incident to authorities. Franco Harris, a prominent alumnus and pro running back best known for the "Immaculate Reception", is a high-profile supporter of Coach Paterno; he was suspended from his recent job at a casino over his Paterno comments over the weekend (which many regard as an attempt to bury the allegations).
On Dr. Phil's show today, he had some experts analyzing the recent Sandusky/Costas interview with the general conclusion being that Sandusky was being deceptive. But there were other elements to the story I hadn't heard. There was a prior instance of something happening also in a 1998 incident between then active Coach Sandusky and a different boy; supposedly a janitor (now suffering from dementia) observed an oral sex act. The case was reported to the police, but the District Attorney failed to prosecute. The gist is that Penn State behind the scene forced Sandusky into a face-saving retirement the following year. (If this is true, I am at a loss to see how Sandusky was given access to the facilities without escort.) I do not know that Paterno and the university knew out of the 1998 incident, but if Paterno had heard about a second boy in 4 years in a Penn State shower with Sandusky: well, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me. You act first and apologize later. Your program's reputation and your own legacy are at risk (not to mention, of course, justice for the victim himself).
Political Humor
"President Obama quit smoking this year. It wasn't easy. He had to ask the Republicans for permission first." - Craig Ferguson
[It was bad enough when his progressive staffers decided that the President shouldn't smoke and cut him off. But when Obama finally had to go out to buy his own cigarettes, he suddenly discovered that the 2009 SCHIP bill he signed increased federal excise taxes on cigarettes.]
"The government took action and introduced a bill to classify pizza as a vegetable in schools. Mark this down: November 17, 2011: The day America gave up. "- Jimmy Kimmel
[Now we know what that mystery meat on the pizza really is....
Herman Cain, former Godfather's Pizza CEO, said, "We have FINALLY come to a debate topic on which I'm the undisputed expert in the field..."]
Minor factual correction: existing policy already let pizza with a limited amount of tomato paste [note: tomatoes are a fruit, not a vegetable] to count as a vegetable. The new rule would have required MORE tomato paste on the pizza to be counted as vegetable.
An original:
- I'm not saying that Ron Paul is feeling confident, but he's got the home field advantage: he's running against a former member of the Fed (Herman Cain), the person whom designed the precursor to ObamaCare (Mitt Romney), the candidate who championed renewal of the Patriot Act and regards
torturewaterboarding as highly effective (Michele Bachmann), the former Speaker whom picked up over $1M in consulting fees from Freddie Mac (Newt Gingrich), and the guy whom had a high-profile role pushing Al Gore to be President running against Reagan's tax policies in 1988 (Rick Perry).
Boston, "Peace of Mind"
