Category: Politics

MIT spirit in Washington, D.C.

by philg

“‘I am deeply sorry for my conduct’: Biden’s top science adviser apologizes to staff” (Politico):

[MIT prof] Eric Lander, the president’s top science adviser and a member of his Cabinet, sent a Friday night email to his roughly 150-person staff apologizing for speaking to colleagues in a “disrespectful and demeaning way.”

“It’s my responsibility to set a respectful tone for our community. It’s clear that I have not lived up to this responsibility,” Lander wrote in an email provided to POLITICO. “This is not only wrong, but also inconsistent with our Safe and Respectful Workplace Policy. It is never acceptable for me to speak that way. I am deeply sorry for my conduct. I especially want to apologize to those of you who I treated poorly or were present at the time.”

Lander heads the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and is leading President Joe Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot,” an initiative aimed at reducing cancer deaths that had its splashy launch event earlier this week.

The email appears to reference an investigation POLITICO has been conducting into Lander’s treatment of staff, which Lander acknowledges in his email. “I understand that some of you have been asked about this, and I thought it was important to write directly to you,” he wrote. “I also realize that my conduct reflects poorly on this Administration, and interferes with our work. I deeply regret that.”

Biden himself declared a zero-tolerance policy for improper conduct on the first day of his administration. He pledged that “if you are ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. On the spot. No ifs, ands or buts.”

Lander pledges in his email that “[w]e will take concrete steps to promote a better workplace. We will schedule regular forums to check in with staff on how we are doing in creating and upholding a safe and respectful workplace. We will also ensure that every employee knows how to report conduct that concerns them.”

Lander is probably one of the nicer people at MIT (like being a dwarf among midgets, admittedly), so perhaps this shows that Science is something to follow every day while scientists are best restricted to their labs.

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Report on a Southern Secession (Buckhead City)

by philg

On our return from Denver, we stopped overnight in Buckhead, the rich area of Atlanta that was annexed by the city in 1952 and that soon hopes to vote on seceding into “Buckhead City.” Our local host explained that the secession wouldn’t starve Atlanta of significant tax revenue, e.g., for schools. The big difference would be that Buckhead could fund and run its own police force (see “In Atlanta’s Buckhead Neighborhood, Rising Crime Fuels Move to Secede” (WSJ): “Potential loss of the city’s wealthiest and whitest area spurs debate as officials move to address homicides and property crime”).

From what I observed, Buckhead already essentially does fund and run its own police force. The restaurant where we dined and the hotel where I stayed both had hired off-duty police officers, clad in bulletproof vests and wearing guns, to make sure that roving thugs didn’t rob all of the customers. Immigrants from Caracas, Venezuela will feel right at home.

Here’s one from the only part of Umi, our inland sushi destination, that wasn’t too dark to photograph:

Faith in cloth masks is alive and well in Atlanta. Here are a couple of signs encountered on 1/29/2022:

Atlanta adheres to the proven-by-Science principle that if restaurant customers are wearing masks when walking in the door, it doesn’t matter how close together unrelated parties sit once unmasked and talking, drinking, or eating (we saw some counter-serve places with long communal tables that were completely jammed). The FBO where we parked had the obligatory signs reminding pilots and passengers that Uncle Joe’s 1/21/2021 order regarding masks at airports applied even to the world of private planes. Nobody inside was wearing a mask, however.

Our local host was in favor of secession. In his opinion, the city government was incompetent and plagued by nepotism.

(I am not sure how Georgia can compete with neighbors Florida and Tennessee in the long run. The state income tax rate is 5.75 percent (compare to 0% in FL and TN).)

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Your Christmas gift to the richest people in the U.S.

by philg

If you’re concerned that you haven’t spent enough on Christmas this year, the Wall Street Journal reassures you that, via your federal income tax payments, you’re subsidizing some of America’s richest private equity partners, $1,500/hour lawyers, etc. “High-Income Business Owners Escape $10,000 Tax Deduction Cap Using Path Built by States, Trump Administration” (12/6):

More than 20 states created workarounds to the limit, and New York’s law firms and private-equity firms are signing up

Here’s how it works. Normally, so-called pass-through businesses such as partnerships and S corporations don’t pay taxes themselves. Instead, they pass earnings through to their owners, who report income on individual tax returns. That subjects them to state individual income taxes—and the federal limit on deducting more than $10,000, created in the 2017 tax law.

Details vary by state, but the workaround flips that concept. The states impose taxes—often optional—on pass-through entities that are roughly equal to their owners’ state income taxes. Those taxes then get deducted before income flows to the business owners.

The laws then use tax credits or other mechanisms to absolve owners of their individual income-tax liabilities from business income. Thus, they satisfy state income-tax obligations without generating individual state income-tax deductions subject to the federal cap.

In these systems, state revenue is virtually unchanged, because the entity-level tax replaces personal income taxes. Business owners win, because every $100,000 of state taxes that go from nondeductible to deductible yields up to $37,000 in net gain on federal income-tax returns. The federal government loses money.

In New Jersey, pass-through businesses reported $1.3 billion in entity-level liability for the tax’s first year in 2020, suggesting an equivalent amount of federal deductions that might have otherwise been disallowed. In New York, more than 95,000 pass-through entities opted into the tax for 2021 before the Oct. 15 deadline.

“It’s really a slam dunk,” said Phil London, an accountant and partner emeritus at Wiss & Co. in New York, who said he has seen the owners of one business save $1.5 million and expects law and accounting firms to use the workaround. “The larger-income entities and real-estate investors and real-estate operators, they’re going to benefit from it.”

Private-equity firms have been particularly interested, said Jess Morgan, a senior manager at Ernst & Young LLP. And some businesses have restructured themselves to take maximum advantage of the benefit, she said.

After rejecting other workarounds, the Treasury Department blessed these a few days after the 2020 election, citing a footnote in a committee report from the 2017 law and a handful of entity-level taxes that predated 2017. The Trump administration, which had pressed for the $10,000 cap, offered the path out of it.

In other words, many of the richest Americans in high-tax states will be able to deduct nearly all of what would have been their state tax liability, thus keeping the subsidies flowing from workers in low-tax states and from ordinary W-2 slaves who can’t work around what was advertised as the law.

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We are standing up to China by sending $1 billion for broadcast rights to the Beijing Olympics?

by philg

“U.S. Will Not Send Government Officials to Beijing Olympics” (New York Times, today):

American athletes will still be able to compete in the Winter Games, but the diplomatic boycott is a slap at China for human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Pressure has been building for months from members of Congress in both parties to hold China accountable for abuses of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region and crackdowns on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Those calls only intensified after the disappearance from public life of the tennis star Peng Shuai after she accused a top Communist Party leader of sexual assault.

On the latter point, previously in the NYT: “She said she met Zhang earlier in her career and had a consensual relationship with him. She said he sexually assaulted her shortly after he stepped down as one of China’s top leaders in 2017.” Her story is that she enjoyed having sex with this elderly married guy right up to the day that he no longer had the power to do stuff for her? (He’s 75 now; Peng Shuai is 35)

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said administration officials did not believe it was appropriate to send a delegation of U.S. officials to the Games in February after “genocide and crimes against humanity” in Xinjiang.

“Genocide” is so bad that the word doesn’t appear in the story until after we learn about the young tennis player who was having sex with an old married guy?

But previous attempts to pull athletes out of the Games have fallen flat. The last time the United States pursued a full boycott of the Olympics was in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter rallied against allowing athletes to participate in the Summer Games in Moscow, to protest the Soviet Union’s military presence in Afghanistan.

The New York Times doesn’t mention that, in addition to boycotting the sports event, we poured cash and weapons into the hands of the Mujahideen (“those engaged in jihad”). How did that work out for us? (see also “How Jimmy Carter Started America’s Afghanistan Folly” (Washington Monthly))

So… we won’t send any U.S. politicians or bureaucrats to China, but we will send $1 billion in cash for the host city’s share of the American broadcast rights? How does our family sign up to be boycotted?

Related:

Excitement building in London, May 2012:

“London’s Summer Games in 2012 generated $5.2 billion compared with $18 billion in costs. What’s more, much of the revenue doesn’t go to the host—the IOC keeps more than half of all television revenue, typically the single largest chunk of money generated by the games.” (CFR)

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Urban/rural divide in Virginia Gubernatorial election

by philg

Readers will recall that one of my pet themes here is the diverging interests of urban/suburban Americans who get richer when government gets bigger and rural Americans for whom a bigger government brings higher taxes and few benefits (since government buildings and programs tend to happen in cities).

The New York Times illustrates this nicely with a per-county map of the Virginia election results:

Virginians near the state capital (Richmond) or the Nation’s Capital (D.C.) just loved hearing about the Democrat’s promises to expand government. Virginians elsewhere were more enthusiastic about the Republican’s expressed dream of eliminating the state’s income tax. The rich folks in Fairfax County (median household income $125,000/year in 2019), bordering D.C., preferred Democrat to Republican by 65:35. Folks in Lee County, at the southwest corner of the state, have a household income of less than 1/3rd that of the government-affiliated people in Fairfax: $33,000/year in 2019. They voted 88:12 in favor of the Republican candidate.

A good illustration of my pet theory?

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Political logic: We can’t pay for the essentials, so let’s spend $1.5 trillion on new stuff

by philg

From West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s official site:

Every Member of Congress has a solemn duty to vote for what they believe is best for the country and the American people, not their party. Respectfully, as I have said for months, I can’t support $3.5 trillion more in spending when we have already spent $5.4 trillion since last March. At some point, all of us, regardless of party must ask the simple question – how much is enough?

What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity. Suggesting that spending trillions more will not have an impact on inflation ignores the everyday reality that America’s families continue pay an unavoidable inflation tax. Proposing a historic expansion of social programs while ignoring the fact we are not in a recession and that millions of jobs remain open will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery. This is the shared reality we all now face, and it is this reality that must shape the future decisions that we, as elected leaders, must make.

We can’t pay for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and they are “essential” (like marijuana and liquor stores in Massachusetts during coronashutdowns?) so we should probably actually cut spending wherever we can until we can pay for these essentials, right? Certainly, it would be “insane” to spend “trillions”.

Let’s compare the above, from September 29, to “Manchin says $1.5 trillion is his limit on Biden economic agenda amid battle with progressives” (CNN, September 30):

Moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia made clear Thursday that $1.5 trillion was the price tag he was willing to settle on for his party’s plan to expand the social safety net, putting him $2 trillion away from the lowest number progressive Democrats have said they would accept.

I would love it if Senator Manchin came to help us with our household budget: “You haven’t saved enough for retirement, you’re feeding the kids ramen noodles, your supply of essential-for-anyone-from-Massachusetts marijuana and liquor is critically low, and your health insurance bills are past-due, so there is simply no way you can buy Paul Allen’s 414-foot superyacht. That would be fiscal insanity. I recommend that you buy a $15 million Riva 110 instead.”

(The CNN article also has a fun quote from Democratic Party thought leader Ilhan Omar: “We didn’t envision having Republicans in our party”)

Related:

  • Understanding Congress’s solution to the federal deficit problem (2011): “The deal cuts $38 billion from last year’s budget. It’s being called the largest domestic spending cut in U.S. history” … The FY 2011 federal budget is approximately $3.82 trillion (3.82×10^12). Of that, approximately $2.17 trillion will be paid for by taxes collected and the remaining $1.65 trillion will be borrowed from our grandchildren. If we divide everything by 100 million, the numbers begin to make more sense. We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.
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Zoolander and what it would have taken to get Democrats to support a border wall

by philg

President Biden has ostentatiously deported, contrary to international law, at least a small percentage of the Haitians who walked across the river in Texas. This has been done in a manner far more aggressive than anything Donald Trump ever did and thus has revealed that a Democrat-ruled U.S. will roll out the welcome mat for almost anyone, but not absolutely everyone.

In light of this new information, i.e., that there are some migrants whom the Democrats will not welcome, I wonder if the best way to understand the 2016-2020 conflict between Trump and the Democrats regarding the border wall is by studying the Derek Zoolander versus Hansel conflict:

  • Derek Zoolander: “And all he had to do was turn left. [to win the walk-off]”
  • Matilda: “What do you mean?”
  • Derek Zoolander: “I’m not an ambi-turner. It’s a problem I had since I was a baby. I can’t turn left.”
  • Matilda: “Derek, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who can’t turn…I mean, there have got to be some people out there just like you who can’t…turn…turn…left.”

Is it fair to say that all Donald Trump would have had to do to get Democrats in Congress to fund his border wall was find some Black people who would agree to show up on the southern banks of the Rio Grande?

Related:

  • “‘They treated us like animals’: Haitians angry and in despair at being deported from US” (Guardian): The Biden administration’s decision to deport thousands of Haitians under such circumstances drew opprobrium around the world, and prompted the US envoy to Haiti to resign in protest. Haiti is “a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life”, he wrote in his resignation letter. “Surging migration to our borders will only grow as we add to Haiti’s unacceptable misery.” Last week, the world was shocked by images of police officers on horseback charging at desperate Haitian migrants near a camp of 12,000, set up under the Del Río-Ciudad Acuña International Bridge. Delva was on his way to buy food and water for his family when the cavalry charge sent him and dozens of his compatriots running in a frenzy. “We were rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals,” he said, having spent the six-hour flight from San Antonio with his hands and legs tied. US authorities were so slapdash in their rapid deportation of the migrants that they also swept up an Angolan man who had never set foot in Haiti. “I told them I am not Haitian,” said Belone Mpembele, as he emerged, dazed, from the terminal. “But they didn’t listen.” New arrivals each received about $50 in cash as well a hygiene kit including toilet paper, soap and toothbrushes, emblazoned with the USAID logo and slogan: “A gift from the American people.”
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Can the Taliban get Western do-gooders to fund their entire government?

by philg

“UN Afghanistan donor conference raises $1 billion with crisis looming” (DW):

The UN says humanitarian aid money would go to maintain medical services, the water supply and sanitation for millions of Afghans. Additionally, funding would support women and children and set up educational projects.

Forty government ministers, including German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, as well as dozens of government representatives are attending both in person and virtually.

The German foreign minister said it was up to the international community to “take responsibility” for the people in Afghanistan.

In other words, so long as the Talibans don’t make the mistake of allocating money to health care, clean water, sewage, education, or “women and children,” Westerners will fund all of these functions of the modern welfare state. The Taliban can spend 100 percent of tax revenue on their military, police, and other tools for remaining in power.

The population of Afghanistan doubled from 20 to 40 million while the country was getting U.S. cash infusions. Over the next 20 years, therefore, so long as the steady flow of German money continues, it seems reasonable to expect that the population will double again, to 80 million (current total fertility rate is 4.72 children per woman; compare to 1.84 in the U.S. (our population still grows steadily, however, due to low-skill immigration)). Afghanistan would then have about the same population as Germany and, essentially, every German would have a corresponding Afghan dependent. Assuming the German-funded schools for Afghanistan result in mass literacy, will it be time to set up a penpal program? (After 20 years of U.S. rule, the adult literacy rate in Afghanistan is 43 percent (CIA).)

Even if the Germans send all of their money to the Taliban, they’ll still have a beautiful beach to enjoy…. fleece jacket weather in August 2016, Warnemünde:

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Andrew Cuomo as the modern Boethius

by philg

Fortuna’s wheel has spun downward for Andrew Cuomo. Who could have predicted this? Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, for one.

From Wikipedia:

In 522, the same year his two sons were appointed joint consuls, Boethius accepted the appointment to the position of magister officiorum, the head of all the government and court services. … In 523 Boethius fell from power. After a period of imprisonment in Pavia for what was deemed a treasonable offence, he was executed in 524.

He went from being the most powerful official in the world’s most powerful empire to being imprisoned, in other words. While in prison, Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy. a book that was required reading for scholars until the Age of Enlightenment began in the 17th century. More than 1,000 years of being a touchstone for every educated person in Europe, in other words.

Here’s a question… what important intellectual work could Andrew Cuomo write during his corresponding period of being on the wrong side of the Rota Fortunae? What would it be titled and what would it be about?

My vote is a work that shows that the 7 elements of the modern catechism are not in conflict. Here they are on a Sign of Justice:

Black Americans are the biggest losers from low-skill immigration (NBER), so “Black Lives Matter” and “No Human is Illegal” are in apparent contradiction. “Love is Love” refers to the full slate of LGBTQIA+ and therefore the next line, “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” doesn’t make sense because the term “Women” is no longer precisely defined. “Science is Real” is the kind of thing that Plato would have liked to consider. Is #Science real like a table is real? Or is #Science more real than a table because #Science is already an ideal form whereas the table is merely an attempted (imperfect) implementation of a real table form? “Water is Life” is confusing without reference to the other elements of belief. Is distilled and UV-sterilized water life? Is it “injustice” when Harvard discriminates against Asians? If so, why doesn’t that threaten justice anywhere, much less everywhere?

I’m not sure what this work would be called.

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Revive the abortion bus idea?

by philg

Top of the front page of CNN.com on a day when New York City was flooded, with multiple fatalities, by the leftovers from Hurricane Ida:

“Biden launches ‘whole of government’ effort to protect abortion rights after Texas ban” is kind of interesting. Leaving aside of whether the “whole of government” effort to fight the unrighteous in Texas will go better than the 20-year “whole of government” effort to permanently establish the rainbow flag over Kabul, why does it take the entire Federal government to deliver abortions to potential birthing persons in Texas?

From Why can’t Michael Bloomberg run a fleet of abortion buses? (October 6, 2020):

The billionaires trying to cleanse American politics from the filth of Republicanism could, for a tiny fraction of what they’re spending to defeat the hated Trumpenfuhrer, purchase and operate a fleet of buses painted with “Bloomberg’s Abortion Caravan” on the side. Have the buses continuously tour the U.S. and anyone who wants an abortion can hop on to be driven to, for example, Maskachusetts. We have abortion on demand up to 24 weeks; abortion of a “fetus” after 24 weeks available in the sole discretion of a single physician concluding that “a continuation of her pregnancy will impose on [the pregnant woman] a substantial risk of grave impairment of her physical or mental health.”

Essentially there is no time limit for an abortion in Massachusetts since almost any child can be a risk to a parent’s mental health (“these kids are driving me crazy” is not merely a figure of speech!).

Rich Democrats could fund abortion buses privately or, now that the executive branch has been purged of sinful Republicans, the abortion buses could be operated by Medicaid with Joe Biden being propped up to sign an order to print money to pay for the buses and then sign another order to operate them. (To get it going faster, maybe the program could be handled by contractors.)

Given the extensive transportation network in the U.S. and the fact that so many states are 100-percent controlled by Democrats and offer unlimited abortion services, why is this such a fraught issue? Why can’t the people who love abortion organize the service as a transportation+procedure package and not worry about what legislatures do in states where citizens are opposed to abortion?

(Along related lines, why can’t well-intentioned folks fund luxury buses to deliver anyone who is homeless to Santa Monica or San Francisco where rich people say that they want to help the vulnerable and unfortunate? Would it be illegal to deliver 50 indigents every hour to downtown Santa Monica? It seems like a win/win for someone who is currently homeless in, say, Chicago and a Californian who says he/she/ze/they wants to help the homeless.)

Related:

  • “As Texans fill up abortion clinics in other states, low-income people get left behind” (Texas Tribune, 9/3/2021): Texas’ near-total ban on abortions is sending patients out of state for the procedure. Advocates say many immigrants and women of color can’t leave, and that’s increasing the inequities their communities suffer. … “There are going to be thousands of individuals who don’t have that wherewithal, and it’s really particularly going to impact women of color, young women, rural women.” … “The folks that went out of state [for abortions in 2020] and came back to have follow-up care tended to be higher-income, tended to be white folks,” said Bhavik Kumar, a doctor at Planned Parenthood Center for Choice in Houston, recalling patients he saw after Abbott’s executive order ended.
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