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As 2017 winds down I want to recommend The Russian Revolution: A New History by Sean McMeekin, very likely the only Bard College professor who is not impressed with Socialism.

I had always thought of Bolshevism as a kind of logical next step in the political development of Russia. Professor McMeekin presents the success of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin as almost an accident. The Tsar followed bad advice and entered World War I. The Germans, with whom Russia was at war at the time, financed the Bolsheviks with as much as $1 billion in today’s money. The provisional government that took over after the February Revolution got distracted by a fight with a popular general (the Kornilov affair) and failed to do the obvious thing of arresting all of the German-financed traitors. McMeekin’s point of view does not seem to be the consensus among historians, but it is an interesting perspective.

The history is also relevant for our time due to the debate that we’re having about whether we can make the average American better off by having the government grab money from rich Americans. The Soviets were the masters at this, according to McMeekin. They looted out the world’s largest gold reserves. Then they took all of the property from wealthy private citizens, some of whom were among the richest people in the world. Then they took all of the accumulated wealth of the churches in Russia, which yielded literally tons of silver. Then they took a lot of wealth from the rest of the world by defaulting on the country’s debt. Russia had been one of the world’s most successful economies in the years leading up to the revolution so there was a huge pile of loot to draw down. Nonetheless, the loot didn’t go that far and people ended up starving. What the Russian/Soviet experiment teaches McMeekin is that a growing economy is more important than grabbing accumulated wealth from rich bastards.

McMeekin closes out the book by noting that modern politicians who promise the same stuff that Lenin promised and use the same tactics are likely to rise to power in roughly the same way.

Related:

• Hugo Chavez: Great politician; poor administrator
• Book review: Piketty’s Capital

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My Facebook friends who live in California are thinking hard about how to minimize their federal tax liability. This month they are prepaying their property taxes as far out into the future as possible. For next year, however, they want to turn the state into a “charity” so that they can make voluntary charitable contributions in exchange for a 100 percent state tax credit (Bloomberg discusses this idea; the LA Times talks about it specifically for California).

If you support higher taxes and a bigger government, why not simply pay with a smile? (maybe even send an extra voluntary check to the U.S. Treasury!) It seems that they would do so, but for the hated Donald Trump having been elected by the racist, sexist, and stupid voters in other states. They don’t want to give Donald Trump more money to spend on policies with which they disagree (though if Congress appropriates $X, won’t taxpayers in other states have to pony up $X eventually, even if Californians come up with ways to avoid contributing? The Trump Administration will still spend the budgeted amount, but maybe borrow more to replace what Californians would have paid in taxes)

Here are some more explanations from the virtuous:

People- myself included- generally don’t mind paying more when you get something in return from a societal perspective.
This tax plan hurts our local system and just goes to subsidize people who voted to lower their own state taxes and gut their own state services and are now complaining about the impact. [i.e., he wants middle class people in lean-government Texas to subsidize rich people in fat-government California and New York]

this tax reform accomplished nothing productive or beneficial for the state or most individuals- it is pure partisan politics.
That is, of course, unless you are in real estate development. [from a woman who never started or managed a company; her spending power came from (a) parents, (b) a W-2 job at a non-profit, then (c) the labor of her husband. I find it interesting that she characterizes the changes to the tax code as “tax reform“, demonstrating how deeply embedded doublespeak is in our society]

What about the fact that the same people attacked Donald Trump for purportedly taking all of the deductions provided for in the tax code at the time (one rather insane feature of which, apparently, was that a real estate developer could deduct at least some of the money put up (and then lost) by investors!)? It turns out that was reprehensible while tax-avoidance via prepayment of 2019 or 2020 property tax was virtuous. Trump wrote off a “fake loss.”

A libertarian friend got into an argument with some of these rich tax-avoiding passionate Democrats. The response?

Logic and rational argument DOES seem boring to an increasing number of Americans, which is how we ended up with our current administration.

(i.e., the smart and logical people all voted for Hillary)

Related:

• The tax-avoidance strategies of folks who support higher taxes (mostly about Massachusetts)

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Thanks to Trump and climate change it has been below freezing for the whole week here in Boston and sometimes below 0F. January 8, 2018 is supposed to be our next day with an above-freezing high temp (39) and February 3, 2018 our first day when it might get warm enough (46F) to melt some of the snow. Accuweather’s forecast of the next day when the low temp will also be above freezing? March 24, 2018!

Our flight school has blocked off aircraft on the coldest mornings. If the plane is on a Tanis or Reiff heater, why is this necessary? “We have found that we do more damage than we collect in revenue below 10F. It is not just the engine. Instruments, gyros, and anything else that has to move gets unhappy. Autopilot servos, trim servos, glass screens, electric fuel pump motors: all of it is unhappy.”

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“No matter what Jackie said, we should generally believe rape claims” (Washington Post):

We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.

is sometimes shortened to “believe all women.”

A portion of a friend’s recent Facebook post:

All women deserve respect, all of the time, regardless of where they are.

I couldn’t resist responding “What do you respect the most about Ann Coulter? And do you respect Jayda Fransen all the time?

This got me thinking… what if Ann Coulter were to say that Barack Obama had touched her inappropriately? Would she be believed by those who are currently passionate about helping survivors?

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Potentially interesting item from Karl Denninger: An unequivocal summary of Bitcoin as Ponzi scheme:

All existing cryptocurrencies are designed around a math problem that gets exponentially harder to solve as time goes on. However, the number of “coins” you achieve for solving it is fixed irrespective of where on the curve you solve it. This is a Ponzi scheme by definition since the first people obtain a given reward for little effort yet later people must expend exponentially greater effort for the same reward

Related:

• Investing in Bitcoin vs. Medical School

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Here’s a Christmas posting from a Facebook friend:

The referenced story speaks with certainty about what goes on inside another person’s head: “President Donald Trump wants Americans to think he re-invented Christmas.”

Immigration from all sources should be celebrated:

“Wishing people “merry Christmas” instead of “happy holidays,” is thus in line with Trump’s decision to ban citizens of Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States”

Donald Trump will need to start scribbling:

Likewise, Nazi Germany’s propagandists rooted their idea of Christmas in visions of ethno-nationalism. They rewrote the lyrics of Christmas carols, promoted Nazified holiday traditions and launched numerous Christmas charity events for poor Germans.

Maybe there are some slight differences?

Trump’s rhetoric differs from that of Nazi Germany’s, most notably because he has never advocated for genocide.

I found it interesting that anti-Trump hatred cannot take a rest on Christmas!

Separately, it seems that Air Traffic Control is full of white nationalists because on our epic December 24th journey from Bedford to New Bedford, Massachusetts, every controller and every pilot wished those on the frequency a “Merry Christmas.”

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Our Happy Valley town mailing list has been humming with loyal Hillary supporters trying to figure out how to minimize their personal tax bills by deducting in 2017 expenses related to 2018 through 2022 (and beyond?):

For anyone planning to prepay their taxes today, town office closes at noon.

what are the hours next week???

While a covey of us were writing checks at the Town Hall’s Tax Collection counter in the basement, a young man hurried towards us and asked if he could pay five year’s worth.

As of mid-morning today, they were happy to accept 2nd half FY18 payment AND BOTH 1st+2nd half FY19 (using FY18 as the estimate). They specifically would not accept more than that. Of course, policy may have changed during the course of the day.

I went back this morning for clarification. I spoke with the very, very helpful and friendly tax collector. She explained that, yes, the town would accept THREE payments: the April 2018 payment for the 2nd half of FY 2018 property tax; the November 2018 payment for 1st half of 2019 taxes, *AND* the April 2019 payment for 2nd half of FY 2019 taxes.

Interest in this procedure was not dulled by a resident quoting his accountant:

Most towns do not assess in arears (some do) which means that
if you were to prepay on your fiscal 2018 taxes, I am not sure it would be
deductible under the technical letter of the law. So, we are telling
clients that would receive a benefit to pay the January and March tax
amounts as these are already assessed, but we are cautioning them that any
payments for the latter half of the year may not qualify for a deduction
regardless of the amounts being paid in 2017.

It turns out that the passion for having Americans who live in other states fund the Federal government is a Massachusetts-wide phenomenon. “New rules set off rush to prepay taxes” (Boston Globe):

City and town officials across Massachusetts are being deluged with calls and questions — and even requests for financial advice — from homeowners who want to know whether they should pay next year’s property taxes now, before new rules that cap state and local tax deductions at $10,000 take effect in 2018.

To the bewilderment of municipal workers, taxpayers are dropping off checks — in at least one case for as much as $30,000 — to beat changes contained in the sweeping federal tax bill passed this week by Congress.

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It is a source of sadness for me that Harvey Weinstein has been displaced in the news by 100+ lesser men (a partial list, but it doesn’t include, for example, the wheelchair-bound John Hockenberry). Harvey was truly a “whale of a story” for this blog.

Harvey apparently hasn’t skipped to Moscow (see “Where can Harvey Weinstein go for a peaceful retirement?”) so he has continued exposure to U.S. plaintiffs.

Assuming that he continues to stay in the U.S. in his new role as defendant, one question is how the various plaintiffs will carve up the Weinstein carcass (supposedly worth about $250 million).

His former assistant-turned-wife-turned-plaintiff Eve Chilton got a court order for $60 million in tax-free child support under New York law based on her ownership of three daughters. She is in court now trying to get the last $5 million prepaid in case other plaintiffs get to Harvey’s cash first (TMZ). Then there is wife-turned-plaintiff-number-2. Her 10th wedding anniversary was earlier this month and she had refrained from actually filing a divorce lawsuit (TMZ story on Plaintiff #2’s best legal options). After these two, there is a line of hundreds of women who are and will be suing in civil courts alleging that Harvey propositioned them, showered with them, etc.?

Readers here have commented that Harvey’s best strategy might be to give everything to the current wife as a settlement of her divorce lawsuit in hopes that she won’t spend it all and some will trickle down to his kids. However, this kind of action has been deemed a fraudulent conveyance in the past (source) and the line of current and future plaintiffs can potentially grab the money from the to-be-ex-wife.

Should there be a centralized process for dividing up the Weinstein carcass among the plaintiffs? The Hollywood Cleansing is supposed to be about justice, right? If so, why is it fair that plaintiffs suing in jurisdictions with speedy court systems, for example, are likely to recover money while those who must sue in places with slow-moving courts are likely to be left with nothing? And what is the fair division of cash between the women who were married to Harvey and the women who merely watched him shower? (and, to enlarge the pot available to victims, should some money be clawed back from women who had sex with Harvey and received lucrative roles in exchange?)

[Note that this is somewhat simplified when all of the plaintiffs are in family court in the same state. If Harvey had sex with four women in Los Angeles on the same night, and all became pregnant, the first woman to sue would get the full amount under the California child support guidelines, the second woman would get a child support award based on Harvey’s income after deduction of the money paid to Plaintiff #1, etc. Each child would have a different cash value to his or her respective mother depending on the order in which lawsuits were filed. One of the lawyers we interviewed on this subject for the California family law chapter said “Mom #5 has no standing to try to get Mom #1 reduced.” Note that a handful of states have rules requiring that the cash value of all of the children be equalized, but in almost every case it is easy to figure out how the money should be divided.]

Related:

• The Magnificent Century, a Turkish TV series that was made, apparently, without post-production sex-related litigation. The polygamous society of the Ottomans also featured women competing for a fixed bucket of resources represented by the man with whom they were involved sexually. Instead of using lawyers, though, the show portrays women competing by (a) trying to have more children than competitors, and (b) trying to poison competitors.
• “The Las Vegas Gunman Was Rich. Will His Wealth Go to the Victims?” (nytimes) regarding the challenge of parceling out $5 million (that’s rich?) without more than 100 percent of the funds being consumed by lawyers

 

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“Jakarta Is Sinking So Fast, It Could End Up Underwater” (nytimes) is interesting from an engineering point of view. The city of 30 million people has been sinking, leading to a New Orleans-style situation where large parts of the city are below sea level and protected by a wall. How can this work in a typhoon-prone region of the world? Should the bitcoin billionaires be trying to make their next $billion by shorting something Indonesian?

[Separately, the article is interesting for what it reveals about bias in American journalism. The New York Times stresses global problems:

[Jakarta] has to deal with mounting threats from climate change.

With climate change, the Java Sea is rising and weather here is becoming more extreme.

Climate change acts here as it does elsewhere, exacerbating scores of other ills.

all the mounting threats from climate change.

The effect on the countryside has been disastrous, with the burning of rain forests to make way for palm oil producers and textile factories causing fires so smoky they have caused air pollution to spike as far away as Malaysia, contributing to climate change.

In fact, Jakarta is sinking faster than any other big city on the planet, faster, even, than climate change is causing the sea to rise

The article says that parts of Jakarta “have sunk as much as 14 feet in recent years.” Since the phrase “climate change” appears at least 13 times in the article, global sea level rise must be pretty close to this local rate of “14 feet in a couple of decades”, right? The Times doesn’t cite any comparative data, but NASA shows a sea level rise of roughly 0.65 feet over a 130-year period.]

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Here is a story about 50 individuals who were not enthusiastic about a White Christmas in Massachusetts. Now they are living free of state income tax in Florida…

Every year it seems that young Kemp’s ridley sea turtles get caught in the Gulf Stream and travel farther north than planned. Volunteers and NOAA officials gather these lost souls from the beach in Wellfleet, Massachusetts and bring them to the New England Aquarium‘s turtle hospital in Quincy, Massachusetts. The turtles are cold and weak when they arrive and are gradually warmed up and fed. Once they’re healthy they can be loaded into towel-lined banana boxes for a journey to warmer waters.

Unfortunately, turtles can’t go as conventional air freight due to stringent temperature requirements (68-75F). The Turtles Fly Too organization matches up volunteer pilots with turtles and thus on December 8 my friend Tom and I found ourselves fighting winter headwinds from Hanscom Field to Tampa International. The day started around 3:00 am for the NOAA and Aquarium folks. They pulled the NOAA van into the Rectrix hangar around 6:45 am and were given a royal welcome by the full staff. Everyone helped load up the Pilatus PC-12 through the massive cargo door and Rectrix immediately towed us out on the ramp. We had pre-flighted the airplane the night before so we were able to start up and crank on the heat before the turtles could get cold. After about three hours we stopped at the Richmond Jet Center for a quick refueling and then proceeded through sometimes turbulent and/or icy clouds to Signature Flight Support in Tampa. The Signature folks had arranged for vans from four public aquariums to be waiting for us on the ramp (see the rock star welcome in the photos). Eventually the turtles should be strong enough to be released back into the ocean.

An intelligent person would have stayed two nights in Tampa and had three dinners at Bern’s Steak House. The parent of young children, however, had to get back into the turboprop for what should have been an easy trip back to Boston, but turned out to involve much more widespread and severe convection than forecast. We were able to climb over the top of nearly all of this weather, but only barely! (the Pilatus has a service ceiling of FL300 or 30,000′) We landed in the dark at around 9:00 pm. A mechanic from Tradewind reinstalled the rear bench seat the next day and the plane was ready to resume its life ferrying charter customers.

What did I learn on this trip? That it is considered a microaggression to refer to these animals as “Ridley Scott turtles.” Also that top quality FBOs such as Rectrix, Signature, and the Richmond Jet Center can pull out an extra stop or two when you use the “sea turtle” password.

Merry Christmas to everyone! And remember that if the turtles can escape the misery of the Northeast you probably can too!

More:

• see the photos
• we did it again a year later

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