Author: philg

Massachusetts contemplates California-style tax rates

by philg

Maskachusetts has been prevented by its constitution from imposing California-style progressive tax rates to fund its Progressive government goals. That could change in November if voters approve an amendment that would enable forcing the rich to pay their fair share.

Currently, Massachusetts is ranked among the top 15 states in percentage of residents’ income taken to fund state and local government (Tax Foundation). TX runs state/local gov. on 8.6% of what its residents earn. FL takes 9.1%. MA takes 11.5%. The champions include NY at 15.9% and CA at 13.5%. Government by Science (philosopher kings) is not cheap, apparently.

The Pioneer Institute provides some analysis:

The amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution would have a particularly significant impact on retirees and small businesses. It would affect a long list of “income” categories, including salary, capital gains (on the sale of investments, homes, businesses and other assets), dividends, IRA and 401K distributions, interest, royalties, and commissions. In any one year, should the totality of these income streams exceed $1 million, the state would increase existing income taxes by 4 percent on the excess.

“Pass-through” companies such as partnerships, limited liability corporations, subchapter S corporations and sole proprietorships are taxed via individual returns. These mostly small businesses, nearly two thirds of which are subchapter S corporations, employed almost half of all private, for-profit employees in Massachusetts in 2019.

Passage of the constitutional amendment would force many pass-through businesses to pay the new 4 percent tax on top of the existing 5 percent income tax. Subchapter S corporations, which currently pay Massachusetts’ unique “stinger tax” of up to 3.9 percent, would face a total state tax burden of up to 12.9 percent, a rate higher than large corporations pay.

In addition, adopting the tax hike amendment would give Massachusetts the nation’s highest short-term capital gains tax (16 percent) and the highest long-term capital gains tax in New England.

… the tax hike amendment falls primarily on households selling a family home or business to finance retirement. Nearly half of all parties affected by the tax earn $1 million or more only once in a decade; over 60 percent do so only twice.

The tax would apply to more residents every year. To adjust for inflation, the tax amendment uses the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, which has lagged well behind household income and wages in Massachusetts. State legislative salaries, on the other hand, are tied to median household income, which has risen much faster.

I’m not sure that the tax increase would be a bad idea. Due to the state’s 5% income tax and 16% estate tax, a successful person could already save $millions for his/her/zir/their children by moving to the vacation playground of Florida (see analysis below; kids will enjoy roughly 42 percent higher spending power if the parent moves 30 years prior to dying). We can therefore infer that most people who have chosen to stay in Maskachusetts don’t mind paying higher tax rates.

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Who is going to a Pride march today?

by philg

Attending mass gatherings is the best way to avoid viral infection, according to Science. See “Pride parades should go on despite monkeypox concerns: WHO” (The Hill, May 30):

A World Health Organization (WHO) adviser said on Monday that people should not change their plans to attend pride parades next month amid the increased circulation of monkeypox.

“It’s important that people who want to go out and celebrate gay pride, LGBTQ+ pride, to continue to go and plan to do so,” said Andy Seale, a strategies adviser in the WHO Department of Global HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections Programmes.

WHO experts have pointed to sex at two recent raves in Europe as the leading theory for the spread of the virus, which is endemic in areas of Africa. The agency has said several cases have been reported among men who have sex with men, but cautioned it may be a reflection of “positive health seeking behavior” in that demographic, given that the cases were identified at sexual health clinics.

Seale said at Monday’s public briefing that the organization has linked cases to a number of “social events” in European countries.

Monkeypox and variant SARS-CoV-2 will presumably be celebrating at today’s NYC Pride March. From Wikipedia:

New York City Pride March is an event celebrating the LGBTQ community; it is one of the largest annual Pride marches in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.

Readers: Who is going to a Pride event today? Below, Science explains why Pride events are typically in March rather than June here in Florida:

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Corporations go from greedy villains to heroic protectors of women by paying for abortion care travel

by philg

Friends on Facebook have been celebrating a variety of companies previously condemned as “greedy” for their 20-50 percent price increases that have contributed to Bidenflation. What did these companies do to get out of the doghouse? Promise to pay for employee travel related to abortion care. “Here are the companies that will cover travel expenses for employee abortions.” (NYT):

A handful of companies have committed to helping their employees access abortion services.

Companies began to come out with policies on covering travel expenses for employees who need abortions in May, when a leaked memo from Supreme Court justices previewed their decision on the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. This small group included Starbucks, Tesla, Yelp, Airbnb, Microsoft, Netflix, Patagonia, DoorDash, JPMorgan Chase, Levi Strauss & Co., PayPal and Reddit. Others, including Disney, Meta, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Condé Nast, joined them on Friday when the decision became final, though most of them avoided making public statements directly referencing the ruling.

“As the world’s most broadly based health care company, we strive to improve access and affordability, create healthier communities, and put health within reach for the people we serve,” Johnson & Johnson said Friday. “We also believe health care decisions are best determined by individuals in consultation with their health care provider.”

Ordinarily we assume that corporations seek to maximize profit. It is much cheaper to pay for abortion care, even if travel is involved, than to pay for parental leave and then to pay 100 percent salary for the reduced productivity of a worker with a baby at home waking him/her/zir/them up at night. But the assumption of the Righteous, who just last week were condemning these companies for “greed”, seems to be that these companies are doing the good work for altruistic/philanthropic reasons.

Yet more curious is that the folks who previously celebrated pregnant people in a rainbow of 74 different gender IDs now refer to abortion care as something only for “women”. Examples:

Women are going to die because of this horrific decision. This a cry for body autonomy, and equality itself.

Women are now second class citizens…

Are there Republicans in Congress who share the view of our [Maskachusetts] Governor Charlie Baker who will vote to protect a women’s right to choose in Congress.

I don’t want to hear from anyone about how taking away reproductive rights from women is a pro-life move.

Regardless of your views on whether abortion care should be regulated at the federal or state level (if abortion care is to be regulated at all), it seems clear that decades of progress in gender science have been wiped away by the Supreme Court.

Related:

  • “Amazon will pay US staff travel expenses for abortions and other treatments” (BBC): A message to Amazon staff said that the firm will pay up to $4,000 (£3,201) in travel expenses each year for treatments not available nearby. (Why is there a limit if abortion care is important?)
  • Broody hen compared to gravid human in the office (2018): Just as a broody hen negatively impacts a farmer’s productivity, a gravid human poses a significant inconvenience to her employer. That’s why companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple pay for female employees to extract and freeze their eggs. It’s great to see tech companies empowering women the same way that factory farms empower their battery hens!
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Uber characterizes Mohamed as gay

by philg

To celebrate Pride Month, Uber uses a rainbow icon to show the driver’s vehicle. Here’s an example where Uber’s white saviors suggest that “Mohamed” is a follower of Rainbow Flagism:

The good news is that, after a ride in the back of a Tesla 3, the Prius seemed luxurious!

Of course it is brave of Uber to celebrate everything 2SLGBTQQIA+ in the U.S., where the repercussions could be severe, but do the rainbow cars appear for Uber users in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Bahrain, Pakistan, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates?

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Is it now time for the Bloomberg Abortion Bus fleet?

by philg

From 2020: Why can’t Michael Bloomberg run a fleet of abortion buses?

The Supreme Court has said that abortion is a matter for state legislatures to decide, just as states decide on most issues, including medical licensing and practice, and just as states did for the first two post-rebellion centuries of the U.S:

After making it to the 198th trimester, Roe V. Wade has been aborted. Conceived all the way back on January 22, 1973, Roe V. Wade has been struck down after a decision was passed down today by the Supreme Court.

6 out of the 9 Justices decided to terminate the longstanding federal law. According to Doctors who performed the procedure, “Roe V Wade did not feel a thing as it was ripped apart word by word, syllable from syllable as it was fed through the paper shredder.” … At publishing time, Planned Parenthood had acquired the shredded remains of the precious document and was reportedly selling the scraps for money.

From my Facebook feed:

from Los Angeles, a woman well past her childbearing years: channelling rage and wondering what rights will get trampled next?

from Maskachusetts, a woman who could possibly have had a baby in the 1980s (but did not): I truly never thought I’d see this day. 😢 It’s probably the beginning of the end!

from Virginia, a guy whose Facebook profile picture shows him with some kids around age 10: I don’t often get angry. But I’m angry today. I don’t post about politically-charged issues, but I am today. And I don’t want to hear from anyone about how taking away reproductive rights from women is a pro-life move. It should not be a partisan issue, but thanks to the Nixon administration, it became that way and remains so to this day. Men, if you want to keep your guns, you better get your head straight about protecting women’s reproductive rights or you’re going to lose your guns through the same methods that Texas is using to take rights away from women.

a retirement-age Jewish man in Maskachusetts: The tragedy of the Trump Supreme Court will infect this country for generations. There is an unholy alliance between the extremely wealthy and powerful with the far right religious freaks and white nationalists. The rich get to pay no taxes and control all branches of government. The others get all the guns they want, abortion outlawed, and to feel good about hating whatever group they love to hate. The country will keep sinking into anti-education, anti-science, anti-truth muck.

a big law firm partner in Los Angeles (identifies as a male?): The new Civil War has begun.

from a self-described TERF in Seattle (the only one in the group who is biologically capable of incubating a baby): Wild to me that we’re entering a period that’s going to be not unlike the collapse of slavery, where slave-holding states set against free states in insane ways. Obviously thousands of women now in red states are going to be travelling out of state to get abortions, and there’s going to be states pitted against each other to either assist these women or prevent them from leaving/accessing abortion.

I wonder if we’re getting into a situation like Californians and the unhoused. Californians are rich and they say that they’ll do absolutely anything to provide housing for the unhoused (not “homes for the homeless”!) except there is one little thing that they won’t do… build and provide housing. Californians who call themselves social justice advocates will buy new Teslas, indulge in $250,000 kitchen renovations, and splurge on European vacations instead of funding apartment construction. Similarly, advocates of unlimited abortions are generally elite and wealthy. They say that they will do anything to help “women” (somehow pregnant people in 73 other gender IDs are neglected) obtain abortions…. except fund transportation from the benighted states to abortion care facilities in scientifically governed states (abortion is legal in Maskachusetts right up to 37 weeks and beyond).

“‘Proterra Powered’ electric bus travels 1,700 miles using only public chargers, exceeding 300 miles during certain legs” (electrek) describes a comfortable electric coach from Belgium (where abortion is legal until 12 weeks after conception). Billionaire Democrats could save Planet Earth in two ways simultaneously via these buses: (1) transportation without burning any fossil fuel (except whatever was burned to generate electricity), and (2) reducing the growth rate of the human population.

Readers: Abortion has been subject to restrictions in a lot of states for at least 20 years. If abortion care access is as important to Democrats as they say it is, why aren’t there already convenient and simple Democrat-funded transportation+abortion services?

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Masking is optional at the University of California

by philg

A friend teaches at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He described the continued impact of coronapanic at the school. Half of all class meetings can be via Zoom. Vaccine papers are checked to make sure that everyone has had at least three shots of the Sacrament of Fauci. Masks must be worn in the classroom by the triple-vaccinated teachers and students.

I checked the school’s Masking and Operations page:

Masking is currently optional except that it remains required in all indoor classroom/instructional settings, clinical areas, and on Triton/university transportation until further notice.

In addition, all students (regardless of vaccination status) must wear face masks within their residential unit except for their personal bedrooms or in the shower. Masks are also required when inside residential buildings and outside of students’ personal residential units in halls, elevators, lobbies, etc.

No need to wear a mask except when in a classroom or a dorm or some other places!

Professor Doctor My Friend, Ph.D. subscribes to receive text messages when there is a serious on-campus emergency, e.g., a fire or a chemical spill. Here’s one that woke him up a few days ago:

On 06/16/2022 at 11:28pm, the UC San Diego Police Department received a report of an Intimidation – Sexuality Orientation Bias, that occurred at UCSD Hillcrest Hospital on 06/13/2022 at 3:10pm. The reporting party stated that a person left multiple notes in their work space threatening their person and made derogatory comments toward their sexual orientation. The reporting party stated their co-worker received similar intimidation in a previous incident.

The middle-of-the-night message regarded an incident that occurred at a UCSD-owned hospital more than 10 miles from the main campus.

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Supreme Court ruling will encourage holdouts to move to Florida and Texas?

by philg

“The Supreme Court Has Made a Grave Mistake on Guns” (NYT, from November 2021 but updated to reflect the recent ruling):

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether Americans have a constitutional right to carry loaded concealed weapons in public and in public places, wherever and whenever they believe they might need their guns for self-defense. Practically, that could mean everywhere and at all times.

The announcement of such an absolute and unfettered right would be shocking and disquieting to most Americans, not just to Americans in the many states where the people, through their elected legislatures, have for centuries restricted the carrying of handguns in public. It would also be concerning to many Americans who support gun rights. They, too, would understandably be unsettled and frightened by the idea that everywhere they went, their fellow citizens might be carrying loaded guns.

Suppose that someone had been considering moving from shutdown-loving NY, CA, or MA to a state with open schools, e.g., FL or TX. He/she/ze/they might formerly had said “I will stay in California dodging the unhoused, the pit bulls, the unhoused with pit bulls, the pit bull poop on the sidewalk, etc., and paying 13 percent state income tax (while receiving no public schools for my kids), because I am afraid of being in a place where lots of ordinary citizens have guns.” But if the Supreme Court ruling is as impactful as the media hysteria suggests, the gun-free paradises of CA and NY will no longer be gun-free.

Or will this trend be counterbalanced by a Supreme Court ruling on abortion? Already I have heard of a computer science professor objecting to a conference being hosted in Texas on the grounds that if a pregnant person attending the conference needs an emergency abortion, he/she/ze/they wouldn’t be able to get abortion care (the current Texas law actually allows abortions in the event of medical emergencies, according to Wikipedia).

Related:

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ACLU gives us a new definition of chutzpah

by philg

The non-profit organization that actually wrote the op-ed that got Amber Heard in legal difficulties now wants to profit from the trial after which Ms. Heard was ordered to pay more than $10 million in damages for the defamatory content that the non-profit org authored. From Newsweek:

On June 1, Depp’s lawyers filed a motion with New York state’s Supreme Court expressing opposition to a request made by the ACLU. “Respondents’ request for in excess of $86,000 in “expenses” associated with their Court ordered document production is not only exorbitant and unreasonable, but unsupported by New York law,” the lawyers wrote.

The motion came shortly after the ACLU requested that Depp pay the organization over $86,000 for legal costs during the trial, which involved Depp’s lawsuit and Heard’s countersuit. According to court documents obtained by KFMB-TV in San Diego, the ACLU is demanding that Depp pay $86,256 after several ACLU witnesses testified in the trial, as well as reimbursement for documents the ACLU provided following subpoenas by Depp’s legal team.

If we combine the above with “The ACLU Says It Wrote Amber Heard’s Domestic Violence Op-Ed and Timed It to Her Film Release” (Jezebel) we get a new definition of chutzpah.

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Is it time to buy Bitcoin?

by philg

The Bitcoin into which I placed my life savings at $64,000 is down a bit. With stocks, the best time to buy is usually right after a big slide. Is it time to buy more Bitcoin?

Stress tends to reduce a large field of competitors. From Wikipedia:

Starting with Duryea in 1895, at least 1900 different [auto manufacturing] companies were formed, producing over 3,000 makes of American automobiles. World War I (1917–1918) and the Great Depression in the United States (1929–1939) combined to drastically reduce the number of both major and minor producers.

There are some use cases for crypto, e.g., Hunter Biden transferring painting sales revenue to hookers and drug dealers, but why do we need currencies in addition to Bitcoin? If all of the money and faith that people have put into 19,000 digital currencies went into Bitcoin, it could go back up to $64,000, no? (Another way that Bitcoin could get to $64,000 is via continued U.S. government money-printing… $64,000 could be the price of a Diet Coke.)

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Our militarized police

by philg

One of the recurring questions in this blog is why American police officers are armed with guns. See Why aren’t there a lot more police shootings in the U.S.? and Should we have unarmed police? (2014), for example.

“Police Militarization Gave Us Uvalde” (Atlantic) is an interesting article asking related questions. The author has experience both in the military and in the police.

… with the sanction of the courts, departments have reworked their tactics to define American communities as battle spaces, and citizens in them as potential enemies. We have for years told American police officers to regard every civilian encounter as potentially deadly, and that they must always be prepared to win that death match. This is not an exaggeration; there is extensive academic literature on the “danger imperative” as a cornerstone of police training. An entire industry of grifting ex-cops have made themselves rich training police departments in fear and loathing of civilians, quite literally telling officers that they must always have a plan to kill everyone they encounter.

Less than one-quarter of officers ever discharge their weapons a single time in their careers. Ambush killings of police have fallen by 90 percent over the past several decades. Labor statistics suggest that fatality rates for police (for all causes, not just in the line of duty) are far less than those in logging, commercial fishing, and trash collecting. This is not to say that police don’t face real dangers—they do, but the large majority of policing is routine, and the large majority of encounters with civilians are completely innocuous.

The goal of the military is to overwhelm enemies, regardless of whether any particular individual on the other side “deserves” to be overwhelmed. It seems clear that police should not approach fellow citizens, rights-bearers, with the same attitude. Yet a profession’s tools and tactics will not-so-subtly define its attitude and culture. When you repeatedly drill officers that everyone is out to kill them, some will shoot first and ask questions later—and not just the weaker or undertrained officers at the margin, either.

But in our ill-conceived attempt to refashion police into a cadet branch of the military, we have somehow managed to get the worst of both worlds. We have trained a generation of officers that being casually brutal in everyday encounters is acceptable, but these same officers show a disturbing tendency to fall back on jargon about “battlespace management” and “encounter tempo” to explain a slow reaction in the rare circumstance that really does require a rapid, all-out response.

Food for thought and in the spirit of the engraved words below, “Good government demands the intelligent interest of every citizen.”

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