A statutory blunderbuss that mandates this vast amount of overblocking abridges the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.
—Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissent to the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the Children’s Internet Protection Act. Could we maybe get some bright script kidz to whip up an internet filter that replaces offensive, commonly filtered terms like “breast cancer” and “gay and lesbian youth” and “wiccan religion” with code words like Rehnquist and Thomas and Scalia and Kennedy and Breyer and O’Connor? Or would that not pass muster, somehow?
Treason.
Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Ann Coulter wants to rehabilitate McCarthy. You do the math.
Morons.
Democrats are ponying up for the 2004 GOP convention—out of their pride in New York City.
They’re paying out of their own pockets to support a party that’s capitalized in an incredibly ugly fashion on the greatest tragedy ever to strike the city, or the country, milking it for political capital in the greatest roll-back of civil liberties this country has ever seen. They’re paying out of their own pockets to support a party that intends to use the memorial of 3000 New Yorkers as a backdrop for the 2004 presidential campaign. They’re paying out of their own pockets to support a party that’s starving New York City at every turn of basic funding—to say nothing of the extra monies needed to keep it, and all the rest of us, safe.
If they had any pride in New York City at all, they’d put their money back in their pockets and tell the GOP to go fuck themselves.
Nixon, when in China.
Prompted by my grudging paen to a conservative Christian Republican, Michael Bowen of Alabama writes to let me know of his blog, A Minority of One, which he’s dedicating to covering Governor Bob Riley’s (bold! audacious!) plan to render Alabama’s tax code as somewhat more progressive than its current state. I’ve added him to the linchinography, and heartily commend him to your attention on this topic: he’s dug in and found some fascinating stuff. Like the fact that, while timber companies, largely out-of-state conglomerate, own 25% of the state’s land, due to a quirk in the current state tax structure, tax revenues from timber and agriculture properties combined bring in less than 2% of the state’s property tax revenue. [Ed. note— Timber companies own 25% of Alabama’s timberland. Timberland makes up 71% of the state’s land. That 71%, owned by corporations and individuals, brings in 2% of the state’s property tax revenue. Correction supplied in comments by Mr. Bowen. Management humbly apologies for the misreading.] Or that the national Republicans are taking note, and do not like what Riley’s doing; Dick Armey’s coming to Alabama to denounce the plan. Or the rather astonishing efforts of the Mobile Register to spin their own poll: “Survey finds voters oppose governor’s $1.2 billion tax plan,” says the headline—of a poll that’s a 44/43 split with a 5-point margin of error.
Best, perhaps, is his take-down of the odious Christian Colation of Alabama. Their refutation of the proposed tax plan, for instance, cites the Bloomberg Wealth Manager rates Alabama’s tax plan as 9th in the US in terms of “wealth friendliness” towards families, and gives Alabama’s current tax code a B+. Sounds like things aren’t such a raw deal after all, right? Well, Bowen did his homework, and looked at the specs of that Bloomberg Wealth Manager survey. Here’s how they defined the families towards which the Alabama tax code is so wealth-friendly:
He used four hypothetical families whose sources of wealth are highly concentrated in either wages, real assets, mixed (real and financial) assets, or retirement income. Well, that seems fair enough. Here are the asset profiles that he used for the four families:
For the family that derives most of its wealth from salary, we assigned $500,000 in adjusted gross income; $12,500 in long-term capital gains; $12,500 in municipal-bond interest from another state; a home value of $250,000; and spending of $30,000 ($10,000 on food, $2,000 on prescriptions, $1,000 on other medications, 1,000 gallons of gas).
For the family that derives most of its wealth from real assets, we assigned $100,000 in adjusted gross income; $12,500 in long-term capital gains; $12,500 in municipal-bond interest from another state; a home value of $1 million; and spending of $20,000 ($10,000 on food, $2,000 on prescriptions, $1,000 for other medications, 600 gallons of gas).
For the family that derives most of its wealth from mixed assets, we assigned $500,000 in adjusted gross income; $50,000 split among long-term capital gains, municipal-bond interest from another state, and interest from Treasury securities; a home value of $500,000; and spending of $25,000 ($10,000 on food, $2,000 on prescriptions, $1,000 for other medications, 600 gallons of gas).
For the family in retirement, we assigned no earned income; $100,000 split among long-term capital gains, municipal-bond interest from another state, and interest from Treasury securities; $30,000 in pensions; $23,868 in Social Security; a home value of $500,000; and spending of $25,000 ($10,000 on food, $4,000 on prescriptions, $2,000 for other medications, 1,000 gallons of gas).
Let’s review some basic facts, shall we?
- Most Americans believe between 1 and 5 million Americans live in poverty.
- The actual number is 33 million.
- Most American believe the poverty level for a family of four is $35,000 a year.
- The actual classification as set by the Census Bureau for a family of four is $18,104 a year.
- Alabamians start paying state income tax on incomes of $4,600 a year.
- Alabamians who make less than $13,000 a year pay 10.9% of their income in state and local taxes.
- Alabamians who make more than $290,000 pay 4.1% of their income in state and local taxes.
Wealth-friendly, indeed. This isn’t class war; the war is fucking over. This is a class empire. With oppressed class colonies struggling under class viceroys watching their resource-based monoculture economies of timber and chickens and minimum-wage employment get sucked dry right out from under them. Dick Armey is lying when he says of Riley’s plan, “Family budgets are already stretched to the limit and most can’t absorb the strain of losing more money from their paychecks. The Governor shouldn’t pass the mistakes of government on to the hard-working people of Alabama.” That is not what Riley’s doing. Riley’s working to shift the tax burden from them what hasn’t to them what has, and them what has are getting upset. It’s that simple.
Only Nixon could go to China; only Clinton could “reform” welfare. Only a conservative Republican governor, perhaps, could have gotten as far as Riley has in turning back the regressive tax tide so beloved of folks like Grover “drown it in a bathtub” Norquist. That doesn’t mean that Democrats and progressives and moderate Republicans (where the hell are you guys?) who are sick and tired and terrified of the “wiped clean” mentality can’t capitalize on this struggle. Bowen notes a number of editorials from around the country who are taking note of what Governor Riley’s trying to do. Alabama is far from the only state reeling under a budget crisis imposed by the federal government’s gross dereliction of duty. It’s far from the only state whose regressive code could use an overhaul. This has legs. This is a chink in the teflon. This is a turning point. This is the bellweather and the watershed. The day of 9 September, when Alabamians go to the polls to decide the fate of Riley’s plan, is going to be a red-letter day.
And as of right now, I’m cheering for Riley—a conservative Republican—all the way.
I have no response to that.
The increasingly incomparable Daily Howler on why we have the world we do and what we face as we try to change it—
For the record, Carlson had explained Gore’s lousy coverage in real time, in a way that was even more revealing. On Tuesday, October 10, 2000, Carlson appeared on Imus in the Morning to discuss press coverage of Bush and Gore’s first debate. As she noted, Gore was being slammed as a liar because of a few trivial misstatements. Much larger howlers were being ignored—misstatements by Bush about policy matters. Speaking with Imus, Carlson explained the press corps’ apparent double standard:
CARLSON (10/10/00): Gore’s fabrications may be inconsequential—I mean, they’re about his life. Bush’s fabrications are about our life, and what he’s going to do. Bush’s should matter more but they don’t, because Gore’s we can disprove right here and now. We can’t disprove that there’s going to be a chicken in every pot.
According to Carlson, the press had focused on what was easy. She explained in a bit more detail:
CARLSON: You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and get out your calculator or you look at his record in Texas. But it’s really easy, and it’s fun, to disprove Gore.
It was “fun” to disprove Gore’s errors! Carlson took her presentation through one more startling iteration:
CARLSON: I actually happen to know people who need government, and so they would care more about the programs, and more about the things we kind of make fun of…But as sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us. And we can disprove it in a way we can’t disprove these other things.
What an astonishing presentation! According to Carlson, the press was pursuing Gore’s trivial errors because it was “greatly entertaining” to do so. And why had they ignored Bush’s errors, which she found more significant? Because they weren’t as easy to disprove! According to Carlson, the press agenda had been set by what was “easy”—and “entertaining” and “fun.” It was “sport.”
For extra credit, factor in this amazing Eschaton post on the decline of academia in our political life and the concomitant rise of the think-tank echo chamber. Be sure to follow all the links—if not, you’ll miss Michael Bérubé’s decade-long one-two punch. (Unless, of course, you’ve already seen it. In which case, why hadn’t you told me about it?)
Days like this, I think there’s only one thing left to do, and that’s take Bérubé’s 1991 joke as a serious plan of action:
Just the other day a friend and I came up with the most pernicious academic scheme to date for toppling the West: he will kneel behind the West on all fours. I will push it backwards over him.
Ask yourself what democracy was like.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden reminds us that back on 4 June, the House once again passed an amendment to the Constitution that would grant Congress the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.
Sigh.
It’s important to remember that this is, as Democrats have put it, a Republican rite of spring. Score points with the freepi back home by passing a useless law everyone knows the sensible solons of the Senate will decline to bless with a two-thirds majority. It’s happened that way five times in the past eight years, after all. Yawn, ho-hum, they’re wasting time and money and cheapening the country’s rhetoric, but at least the ACLU can use it to drum up a little more when they pass the hat. So laugh it off: ha ha ha.
But it’s also important to keep in mind the rules are changing:
A telling anecdote: When an employee tried to stop Mr. DeLay from smoking a cigar on government property, the majority leader shouted, “I am the federal government.” Not quite, not yet, but he’s getting there.
[...]
There’s no point in getting mad at Mr. DeLay and his clique: they are what they are. I do, however, get angry at moderates, liberals and traditional conservatives who avert their eyes, pretending that current disputes are just politics as usual. They aren’t—what we’re looking at here is a radical power play, which if it succeeds will transform our country. Yet it’s considered uncool to point that out.
It’s also tempting, at first, to laugh off an attempt by one tiny set of non-governmental organizations to decide that the efforts of another tiny set of non-governmental organizations are detrimental to our country, after all. Pot? Kettle’s on line one. Project much? —But watch what’s happening on the ground:
Last week, Save the Children and Mercy Corps, a Portland humanitarian organization, objected to a demand that all contact with journalists be filtered through USAID in order to qualify for the same development program turned down by CARE, IRC and WorldVision.
The media restriction, which one NGO official called “unprecedented,” was imposed soon after USAID Director Andrew Natsios told a forum of InterAction, the largest alliance of American humanitarian groups working overseas, that NGOs fulfilling U.S. contracts are “an arm of the US government” and should do a better job highlighting ties to the Bush administration if they want to continue receiving funds for overseas projects.
So I guess the point is the old one about eternal vigilance and evil triumphing if good folks do nothing: pick up the phone, fire up the email, contact your Senators, and point them to this eloquent argument that an amendment forbidding the “desecration” of the flag strikes at the very heart of the religions of the People of the Book. Then tell them that food and water and aid for the Iraqis we’ve dispossessed is far more important than keeping some NGOs on message. —We can still do our best to keep the rules from changing. Tom DeLay isn’t the federal government yet, by God, and the sky’s still blue in my neck of the woods.
Though it is acquiring a distinctly greenish cast…
33 vases 33.
I’ve been at a slow boil over a nasty little meme scuttling about the mediasphere the past few days. Goes something like this: “Hey! Only 33 important artefacts were looted from the Iraqi National Museum! (And several thousand minor ones!) Bet those liberals aren’t going to apologize for lying about this any time soon!” It causes the red film to descend over my vision, and the pains in my chest to start up; I get this cramp in my left arm, just thinking about it, and quail at the notion of how much of my own bile and slaver I’d have to shovel to get at a clear, concise, poisonously succinct fuck you.
Luckily, it’s an Augean stable Teresa Nielsen Hayden is well-equipped to clean. A mighty river of truth and perspective is all that’s needed to wash these Billy Rubins clean and reveal their various high-minded calls to “set the record straight” as the pathetic projections they are.
Go. Read. Now.
A long drink of water.
From Orcinus, I learn that somebody off on the dextral side of the Islets of Bloggerhans is challenging folks who find themselves on one end or the other to say something nice about their better halves. —Apparently, bipartisanship isn’t so much like date rape in Paul Muller’s book:
So here’s my challenge – if you are a proprietor of a Democratic blog, and primarily post on how the GOP is the great evil, comment to me on one thing that the GOP has done that’s good. And, if you are feeling adventurous, post something on your actual site that does the same thing. Maybe a local Congressman or Senator has done something good for the area you live in. Perhaps a bill has been supported that you agree with. Maybe you actually gasp like the policy someone has. Whatever it is, let’s hear it.
So I’m game, though I’m afraid I might be spoiling the spirit if not the letter. While Muller seems more concerned with the GOP on a national level, I’d rather highlight the efforts of one Bob Riley, the conservative, Christian, Republican governor of my home state of Alabama. (Thanks to Julia for pointing me to the New York Times spit-take.)
The basic gist of what this red-stater is up to is summed up thusly by a blue-state elitist:
Alabama’s tax system has long been brutally weighted against the least fortunate. The state income tax kicks in for families that earn as little a $4,600, when even Mississippi starts at over $19,000. Alabama also relies heavily on its sales tax, which runs as high as 11 percent and applies even to groceries and infant formula. The upshot is wildly regressive: Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while those who make over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent.
A main reason Alabama’s poor pay so much is that large timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The state allows big landowners to value their land using “current use” rules, which significantly lowball its worth. Individuals are allowed to fully deduct the federal income taxes they pay from their state taxes, something few states allow, a boon for those in the top brackets.
Governor Riley’s plan, which would bring in $1.2 billion in desperately needed revenue, takes aim at these inequalities. It would raise the income threshold at which families of four start paying taxes to more than $17,000. It would scrap the federal income tax deduction and increase exemptions for dependent children. And it would sharply roll back the current-use exemption, a change that could cost companies like Weyerhaeuser and Boise Cascade, which own hundreds of thousands of acres, millions in taxes. Governor Riley says that money is too tight to lift the sales tax on groceries this time, but that he intends to work for that later.
Doesn’t sound much like a conservative Republican, does it?
Perhaps that’s because he takes his Christianity seriously. “Alabamians are used to hearing their politicians make religious arguments,” says the New York Times,
and Governor Riley thinks he can convince the voters that Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system. “I’ve spent a lot of time studying the New Testament, and it has three philosophies: love God, love each other, and take care of the least among you,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can justify putting an income tax on someone who makes $4,600 a year.”
In fact, now that he’s steered his plan through the divided, squabbling halls of Goat Hill, and it now hinges on the votes in an upcoming September election, Riley’s counting on religious groups to help grass-roots the plan to victory; Susan Pace Hamill has written a law review article titled “An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics,” and is planning to train speakers this summer to address church groups with this argument.
It’s not the specter of a Republican raising taxes and the progressive shifting of the burden from them what hasn’t to them what has that I’m cheering, though. That’s reason enough, mind, but I’d like to think there isn’t a human being alive who could take a look at a system that taxes a family making $4,600 a year and not want to do something about it. (And yes: that does say a lot about Alabama politics to date.) —And it’s not like I’ve vetted his plan in any great detail, though there are details I quite like—still, there’s some education reform in there I’d want to know more about before signing off on them, education being one of those areas where the word “reform” has been deformed beyond all meaning, and anyway tax policy’s far from my strong suit.
No, it’s that anything at all is being done. It’s that a politician took a look at the problems besetting the voters, the resources available to hand, and then waded in and knocked heads and did something, or tried. Things have gotten to that state: there has been such a gross dereliction and abdication of duty at the federal level (I’m talking Donkey and Elephant here, Paul, so I don’t think I cross your line) that the states are facing unprecedented challenges. Each is rising to the occasion in its own gridlocked, squabbling, bipartisan way: the New York state legislature has told Governor Pataki to fuck off in no uncertain terms, for instance; here in Oregon, we’re going to kill the Hummer deduction. Whether you agree with Governor Riley—and the Alabama legislature, there on Goat Hill—or think he’s making a dreadful mistake, you must admit that they’ve remembered what it is governments are good for, and shown a remarkable alacrity for making it work. —If you doubt it, remember: if the voters of Alabama say yea to the Governor’s plan, a family making $4,600 a year will no longer have to set some of that aside to pay state income taxes.
And it’s also the thrill of seeing a compassionate conservative; of seeing someone who wields religion in politics not as a club for once, but as a beacon. One does not have to agree with someone’s convictions to admire their courage for sticking to them, and one merely needs to turn to John Giles of Alabama’s Christian Coalition for an illuminating counter-example: he feels tax reform isn’t necessary, saying the state “need(s) to cut out the pork completely”; he misses the point of one of the most misused verses of Scripture ever, insisting the key question is “How much is Cæsar’s?”; his response to Susan Pace Hamill’s detailed ethical argument on tax reform is to question her stance on abortion.
I’d like to think any Republican—any Christian—would prefer to be in the party of Riley. Not the party of Giles.
There’s that famous speech Michael J. Fox delivers in Aaron Sorkin’s overrated and underappreciated can President. “People want leadership,” he says. “And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership, Mr. President. They’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.” We’ll leave off for the moment the President’s pointed response; he Learns His Lesson in the end, and all becomes right with the world. —I’m sure there are aspects of Riley’s governorship that would make me livid. I bet there are things I believe that would cause him to mutter darkly about moral depravity. But for all those differences imagined or not, I can see he’s holding out water for people who’ve been thirsty for far too long.
And that, at least, is something I can drink to.
Thirteen thousand in your name.
If you’re an American citizen, you should know this: in your name, in our name, 13,000 Arab, Muslim, and Middle Eastern men will be deported from this country. That’s roughly 16% of the 82,000 total who came forward voluntarily during the waves of Special Registration late last year and early this—only to be arrested without warning and detained for for a time without charges.
These 13,000 deportations ostensibly have to do with terrorism—but only 11 of those 82,000 have been linked with terrorism.
These 13,000 deportations are ethnically biased—“What the government is doing is very aggressively targeting particular nationalities for enforcement of immigration law,” said Lucas Guttentag, director of the immigrants’ rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “The identical violation committed by, say, a Mexican immigrant is not enforced in the same way.”
These 13,000 deportations are subject to political manipulation—Armenians, for instance, were originally targetted for Special Registration, but were removed after intense lobbying.
These 13,000 deportations are intended to close loopholes—“We need to focus our enforcement efforts on the biggest threats,” said Jim Chaparro, acting director for interior enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security. “People may not like that strategy, but that is what we need to do. If a loophole can be exploited by an immigrant, it can also be exploited by a terrorist”—but many of these loopholes result from negligence, overextension, and incompetence at the Department and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
These 13,000 deportations are being overseen by the remnants of an agency known for its criminal disregard for the rights of aliens.
These 13,000 deportations will tear families and communities apart. They will affect far more than 13,000—only men were targetted by the Special Registration. Their wives, sisters, mothers, and children will need to choose between staying behind or leaving with them. These 13,000 deportations will foster resentment and hatred in the very people who had our best interests at heart, sending people back to the very countries they fled to escape persecution, oppression, economic hardship, whose governments they came here to speak out against, to countries that some haven’t seen since infancy. The threat alone has already sent thousands of immigrants over borders and deeper into hiding. These 13,000 deportations will not fight terrorism. They will not make us any safer. They are cruel and mean-spirited. They are unnecessary. They are short-sighted. They will, in fact, make the world more dangerous. They are wrong.
It’s not even as if we’re closing the barn door after the horses broke loose. It’s as if we decided not to bother closing the door at all and instead went around shooting the horses that stayed behind.
These 13,000 deportations are being done in your name.
Tell your congressional delegation what you think about that.
(Thanks to TalkLeft. Earlier Long stories: Niemöller time, Tomorrow belongs to—, Anecdotal.)
Laura Ashley is definitely back… She’s back, and this time it’s personal. See, they mated her with the Home Depot guy, and that’s where you get Martha Stewart.
Far be it from me to defend Martha. But some recent news regarding her case is, shall we say, unsettling:
Inserting an unusual twist into their indictment of the domestic diva, prosecutors charge that she committed a crime when she stood up in public last summer and denied engaging in insider trading.
“I was a little surprised at that,” said Richard A. Serafini, a former economic crimes prosecutor in New York. “There’s kind of a natural tendency when you’re confronted with something to deny it. Now they’re charging it as market manipulation.”
On the other hand, one looks forward to what this level of prosecutorial zeal will dig up when (finally) brought to bear on Ken Lay, et al.
(Title gacked from the unaired Buffy pilot, of course.)
Let’s add a link to this in-depth piece from Steve Gilliard over at the Daily Kos.
Updates, faxblasts, petitions, that sort of thing—
The samizdata fuck-off.
Well sir, the Senate is mighty pissed at those irresponsible FCC commissioners. “It looks for all the world like you could not or would not stand up to corporate interests,” said Senator Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND), and no wonder. But it’s more grandstanding than anything else, given that the House seems much more amenable to the media borg, and Committee Chair John McCain (R-Ariz.) doesn’t support a bill doing anything about a situation that’s already this bogglingly bad and only getting worse. Here’s where you try to can convince him otherwise, and here’s where you can light a fire under your own representative and senators.
40 hours and a mule.
Whoa. We sorta won one. HR 1119 has been pulled from the schedule owing to the fact that the Republicans couldn’t find 218 representatives willing to sell out hourly employees—but they’re vowing to pursue passage later this year. “Only in Washington could lobbyists and politicians continue to get away with denying parents the freedom to choose to spend more time with their children.,” said Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee. “I can assure you that the fight to change this outdated requirement on behalf of America’s working moms and dads is not over.” He appears to have been noticeably less effusive on his fight to allow large businesses to take out interest-free loans from the labor of their employees. Here’s where you can send off a letter to Wage and Hour Division Administrator Tammy McCutchen (and cc it to President Bush, for a laugh).
40 hours and a mule.
If you haven’t fax-blasted your Representative yet regarding HR 1119, do so. The vote’s tomorrow; the overtime pay you save might be your own. Don’t let them turn your work week into a no-interest loan for businesses. Don’t let them utterly stall the economy by taking money out of the hands of people who need to spend it on basic necessities and putting it in the hands of people who are sitting on the idea of new investments because the economy is in a slump right now on account of all the people who aren’t spending money on basic necessities. Don’t let them render meaningless such formerly useful words as “compassionate” and “flexible.” Don’t let them squeeze anymore blood from this stone. From us.
Did you know—
—that over and above $2 million dollars in taxpayer-funded trips, FCC staffers have taken an additional 2,500 trips costing nearly $2.8 million, most of which came from the telecom and broadcast industries that the agency is supposed to regulate? The top destination was Las Vegas, with 330 trips to such plush accommodations as the Bellagio; then New Orleans, at 173; then New York, at 102. Also listed: Paris, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, London, Buenos Aires, and Beijing.
Nor does the FCC compile its own data or crunch its own numbers when assembling support for its proposed revisions to our media regulations. Instead, it relies on third-party information providers and self-reporting from—again—the telecom and broadcast industries it’s supposed to regulate. (Presumably, this helps explain why commissioners had to meet 71 times with industry reps leading up to Monday’s historic vote, but only five times with the two major consumer groups working for public interest.)
Wow. You’d think this would have made the news or something, to let us all know what was up with the vote: the Center for Public Integrity released these findings back on 22 May and 29 May, respectively. —Funny, that.
(Well, it did make Molly’s column, at least. I should remember to check in with her on a more regular basis.)
The samizdata fuck-off.
The FCC, defying the will of 98% of the thousands upon thousands of Americans who wrote and faxed and emailed and overloaded their phone systems, has voted to ease the rules restricting media ownership. “Our actions will advance our goals of diversity and localism,” is the money quote from FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Yeah. And bank mergers have ever and always been about better service and cutting costs.
Orwell fatigue’s setting in.
If I haven’t been writing about this or calling to arms with the fervor of days-gone-by, it’s because a) I’m tired and b) this more than anything else has been a foregone conclusion. We could have wired those three Republican FCC wonks to a Ryder® truck packed in with fertilizer and fuel oil and a suicidal Mickey Mouse,® haggard after 70-some-odd years on the plantation and more to come, ready to push the button if they dared vote yes—and, well, it still would have come down along party lines, 3-2 in favor of keeping in place the restrictive rules that lock thee and me out of the broadcast media playground, while relaxing to the point of meaninglessness the rules on those who’ve already greased their way over the insurmountable licensing hurdles.
Boom.
Time for the samizdata fuck-off: it is assumed you already don’t listen to the radio much. (Not many of us do, and fewer every day.) Shut it off. Cancel your cable; get a jump on the decline in television viewership to come, and be ready to miss the coming age of shock-block programming. (You can get your Sopranos fix from DVD if you really, really need it.) Get your news from civilized countries and scrappy under-the-radar sources, using your favorite blogs as filters and pointers. Add your own voice to the mix—pick up the slack on local coverage by covering it yourself, keeping in mind that “local” is as much the doings of the school of small press poets whose work you follow from Kokomo and Kathmandu as it is the politics of the school board race run just last week. —And while you’re waiting in your online bunker for the inevitable borgification of the net, pick up a typewriter. Buy a copier before you have to have a Kinko’s license to own one and keep it in toner. Learn to run a mimeograph machine. Let’s see a renaissance of ’zines and minicomics, chapbooks and ashcans. Home-tape your own talk shows and soap operas, existential dramas and surreal collagerie, and pass ’em around as mpegs on CD-ROMs. Solder together a micropower transmitter if you’re feeling daring and take back the airwaves with your band’s live concerts.
The net (by which I mean so much more than the internet) treats censorship (by which I mean so much more than bowdlerization) as damage and routes around it, yeah. But we are the net. We do the routing. So declare defeat. Turn off, tune out, walk away. Let them have it, tell them to fuck off, and do it your own damn self.
Well, I don’t think it’ll all fit on one page
and I’m sure some might find an item or two “unfair.” But you know what? I hear that charge levelled from certain quarters these days, and the only conceivable response is to dredge up bitterly black and bilious laughter. Anyway: George W. Bush’s resume. —Via David Chess.
Speaking truth from power.
Which is always refreshing—
We interrupt this blog post to bring you an important bulletin. —See, I was gonna add value to this link to the Warren Buffet quote that’s flying all over the Islets of Bloggerhans today by digging up that old Doonesbury strip where Zonker’s in the House of Lords and they’re voting on I think it’s Maggie Thatcher’s hideously awful poll tax, or maybe it was actually voting for a upper-class tax increase which would make a little more sense given the punchline, I can’t remember which, so anyway I go to the handy dandy Doonesbury Town Hall to punch up the full online archive of 32 years’ worth of strips so I can plug in “House of Lords” and “class” maybe (or maybe something else, it always took a couple of tries to find what you were looking for), so I could add a link to that old strip where the Lord sitting next to Zonker says, “Haven’t you ever betrayed your class before? It’s jolly good fun!” only when I got to Doonesbury.com I a) discovered it was now a part of the Microsoft family (along with Michael Savage, ain’t that a kick in the pants), and b) you have to pay to get at the frickin’ archives. Information wants to be free; cartoonists want to eat; this isn’t so much eating as putting another zero in the bottom line; why shouldn’t an artist make hay off intellectual capital; why should I pay $9.95 a year for a terribly narrow window of pop-cultural research; the tragedy of the commons; the tragedy of the tragedy of the commons, and inevitable monopolization, and the borgification of all media, and the plummeting usefulness of the New York Times as an online source—anyway, what’s important here is that more links all over the web just went dark.
So.
Fuck.
Right, right. —Warren Buffet, ladies and gentlemen:
When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a “break” requires—now or down the line—that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can’t deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party.
Supporters of making dividends tax-free like to paint critics as promoters of class warfare. The fact is, however, that their proposal promotes class welfare. For my class.
Jolly good, eh wot?
Further evidence of the decline of values we hold in common or Cato was right.
I mean, 8 to 5, or 9 to 5:30, just doesn’t have the same ring. —And that’s what we’ve got going for us now. Before this passes.
