T h a t   O t h e r   B l o g

Usually interesting, sometimes funny, infrequently read.

:: thatotherblog {at} yahoo {dot} com ::

:: Saturday, May 31 ::


AM I MISSING SOMETHING?: So I'm poking around the Open Secrets database of political donations, as is my right as a citizen of the democratic wonderland where wealth equals speech equals political contributions equals access for the wealthy, and I come across the following:

Contributor: REED, BRUCE N, WASHINGTON, DC 20008
Occupation: DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
Contribution Date: 1/23/2002
Amount: $500
Recipient: Bowles, Erskine B

Contributor: REED, BRUCE N, WASHINGTON, DC 20008
Occupation: DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
Contribution Date: 8/7/2002
Amount: $500
Recipient: Bowles, Erskine B

Contributor: REED, BRUCE N, WASHINGTON, DC 20008
Occupation: DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
Contribution Date: 10/20/2002
Amount: $500
Recipient: Bowles, Erskine B

Joe, maybe you can cast some light on this for me, since you're in Sweden. My boss is Swedish and complains endlessly about the taxes, business regulations and lack of entrepreneurial opportunities. I am in many respects inclined to ignore him since he is clearly someone with a California venture capital background, and has lived in Belgium for quite a few years without learning French or Dutch. However, I am unable to judge how accurately he is able to judge Sweden. You've basically described Sweden in a manner consistent with an American leftist who is used to seeing the near diametric opposite of social justice. Would Swedes see their own state the same way?

Scholars note, however, that Poland and other Eastern European nations of Mr. Bush's "new" Europe date back further than nations like Germany, which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld infamously derided before the Iraq war as part of the "old" Europe, along with France.

"They're all old — Europe is old," Mr. Daalder said. "In that sense, it's nonsensical. There are countries that are now members of the `new' Europe that predate countries of the `old' Europe. Germany was unified and became a single state long after Poland was an independent country."

Mr. Bush said that Évian "will not be a summit of confrontation" and that "it will be a pleasure to talk with Jacques Chirac." He added, "Vive la France."

Major liberal organizations, from labor unions to civil rights groups, have begun to meet privately to develop a coordinated strategy to oppose President Bush's reelection in 2004. Their goal is to buttress the Democratic Party and its nominee by orchestrating voter mobilization and independent media in as many as a dozen battleground states.

All of the organizations are free to accept unlimited contributions, or "soft money" from wealthy individuals, unions and corporations. These donations are the kind that the new campaign finance law prohibits political parties and federal candidates from collecting.

Together, these organizations have the potential to target $40 million to $50 million in key states including Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The amount could be much higher if organized labor invests heavily and a new, pro-Democratic committee gearing up to run television advertisements is successful. In addition, these organizations are expected to play a crucial role in Election Day get-out-the-vote efforts.

They inherited it from Clinton who inherited it from Bush who inherited it from Reagan and I don't know what the policy was like before that. ... [T]his is a bipartisan screwup and has been for many years. Bush is part of the problem, but just a small one.

Anyone who writes critically about Dean can expect his copy to be chewed up by this army of zealous Dean Internet scribes. When I wrote a piece recently that contained a few paragraphs about Dean, a member of the Dean2004 blog team filed an almost 2,000-word entry slicing my article up into sections with labels such as "true," "false," "inadvertently true," and "foolish."

[Sen. Rick] Santorum's recent remarks didn't hurt him much at all, he was simply representing the feelings of his constituents.

"And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

It's awfully sad that achieving a fair tax policy in this country requires outspoken selflessness from the rich.

Even if we say the number one issue should be containing weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, I frankly do not believe that Iraq should be our first concern.

We do not know the full capabilities of the state of Israel, although we believe it has the full capability to defend itself against attacks or the threat of an attack. We are aware of the significant threats posed by India, Pakistan and Iran. But I can say without fear of contradiction, all of these possess substantially greater capability and means of delivering weapons of mass destruction than does Iraq.

Of all of the issues that we care about, and those over which we have some ability to determine the outcome, in my judgment, the number one priority should be the war on terrorism and the protection of the people in the United States, our homeland. Our top targets should be those groups that have the greatest potential to repeat what happened on September 11, killing thousands of Americans.

DIVIDEND VOODOO

By Warren Buffett

Tuesday, May 20, 2003; Page A19

The annual Forbes 400 lists prove that -- with occasional blips -- the rich do indeed get richer. Nonetheless, the Senate voted last week to supply major aid to the rich in their pursuit of even greater wealth.

The Senate decided that the dividends an individual receives should be 50 percent free of tax in 2003, 100 percent tax-free in 2004 through 2006 and then again fully taxable in 2007. The mental flexibility the Senate demonstrated in crafting these zigzags is breathtaking. What it has put in motion, though, is clear: If enacted, these changes would further tilt the tax scales toward the rich.

Let me, as a member of that non-endangered species, give you an example of how the scales are currently balanced. The taxes I pay to the federal government, including the payroll tax that is paid for me by my employer, Berkshire Hathaway, are roughly the same proportion of my income -- about 30 percent -- as that paid by the receptionist in our office. My case is not atypical -- my earnings, like those of many rich people, are a mix of capital gains and ordinary income -- nor is it affected by tax shelters (I've never used any). As it works out, I pay a somewhat higher rate for my combination of salary, investment and capital gain income than our receptionist does. But she pays a far higher portion of her income in payroll taxes than I do.

She's not complaining: Both of us know we were lucky to be born in America. But I was luckier in that I came wired at birth with a talent for capital allocation -- a valuable ability to have had in this country during the past half-century. Credit America for most of this value, not me. If the receptionist and I had both been born in, say, Bangladesh, the story would have been far different. There, the market value of our respective talents would not have varied greatly.

Now the Senate says that dividends should be tax-free to recipients. Suppose this measure goes through and the directors of Berkshire Hathaway (which does not now pay a dividend) therefore decide to pay $1 billion in dividends next year. Owning 31 percent of Berkshire, I would receive $310 million in additional income, owe not another dime in federal tax, and see my tax rate plunge to 3 percent.

And our receptionist? She'd still be paying about 30 percent, which means she would be contributing about 10 times the proportion of her income that I would to such government pursuits as fighting terrorism, waging wars and supporting the elderly. Let me repeat the point: Her overall federal tax rate would be 10 times what my rate would be.

When I was young, President Kennedy asked Americans to "pay any price, bear any burden" for our country. Against that challenge, the 3 percent overall federal tax rate I would pay -- if a Berkshire dividend were to be tax-free -- seems a bit light.

Administration officials say that the $310 million suddenly added to my wallet would stimulate the economy because I would invest it and thereby create jobs. But they conveniently forget that if Berkshire kept the money, it would invest that same amount, creating jobs as well.

The Senate's plan invites corporations -- indeed, virtually commands them -- to contort their behavior in a major way. Were the plan to be enacted, shareholders would logically respond by asking the corporations they own to pay no more dividends in 2003, when they would be partially taxed, but instead to pay the skipped amounts in 2004, when they'd be tax-free. Similarly, in 2006, the last year of the plan, companies should pay double their normal dividend and then avoid dividends altogether in 2007.

Overall, it's hard to conceive of anything sillier than the schedule the Senate has laid out. Indeed, the first President Bush had a name for such activities: "voodoo economics." The manipulation of enactment and sunset dates of tax changes is Enron-style accounting, and a Congress that has recently demanded honest corporate numbers should now look hard at its own practices.

Proponents of cutting tax rates on dividends argue that the move will stimulate the economy. A large amount of stimulus, of course, should already be on the way from the huge and growing deficit the government is now running. I have no strong views on whether more action on this front is warranted. But if it is, don't cut the taxes of people with huge portfolios of stocks held directly. (Small investors owning stock held through 401(k)s are already tax-favored.) Instead, give reductions to those who both need and will spend the money gained. Enact a Social Security tax "holiday" or give a flat-sum rebate to people with low incomes. Putting $1,000 in the pockets of 310,000 families with urgent needs is going to provide far more stimulus to the economy than putting the same $310 million in my pockets.

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.

The writer is chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., a diversified holding company, and a director of The Washington Post Co., which has an investment in Berkshire Hathaway.

“All of the candidates have been here for all the votes where their vote was needed to win,” said Jay Carson, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). “As long as that remains the case, it’s not an issue.” ...

“It’s not just votes they miss. They miss the negotiations, they miss the discussions,” said RNC spokesman Jim Dyke. “So when Gephardt goes out and talks about energy policy and how important it is, not only did he miss all the votes on energy legislation, but he missed being a part of the discussions that led to the legislation.”

Make no mistake, there were some truly great anticommunist Democrats -- men who fully understood and loathed the communist threat and all it represented. Two things happened to those Democrats: first, they lost control of their party's soul around 1968 or so; second, many if not most of them became Republicans.

The effect of the much-derided Reagan military buildup (including the Star Wars program) on Soviet strategic thinking is well-documented, and the policy of confrontation (including, in places like Afghanistan and Nicaragua, violent confrontation) bore self-evident fruit.

... bore self-evident fruit. You'll hear a lot of rationalization these days that these policies were irrelevant, affecting events not at all or at best hastening the inevitable. Don't believe it: they're the losing side's posturing for the historians.

When I go to the South -- you know how I plan to win in the South? It's a hard place for Democrats to win. I'm going to say to our African-American base, "We support you, we need you, and we're going to talk to your issues." But then I'm going to say to Souther whites, "You've been voting Republican for 30 years. What do you have to show for it? There are 103,000 uninsured kids in South Carolina; most of those kids are white. Has your job gone to Indonesia? Have you had a raise in the last five years? Are you satisfied with the quality of your public schools? Because if you don't like the answer to that question, you ought to think about voting Democratic again. Because when white people and black people vote together in this country, this country moves forward."

A lot of people say, "Well how's this guy from Vermont gonna win? He wants to get rid of the president's tax cuts! How's he gonna win in the South?" Here's what you do: we're not gonna say, "Oh, let's get rid of the president's tax cut -- all the money went to the wealthy." I don't think class warfare works. What we're gonna say is: You have a choice, Americans. You can have the president's tax cut or you can have health care that can never be taken away. You can have the president's tax cut or you can fully fund special education so class size can go down and your property taxes can go down. You can have the president's tax cut or you can have the 20% of the federal highway grants that the president cut to every state this year because he couldn't manage the money. Now, if you put it that way, most people are gonna say, "Well, I want to have the roads, the education, and the health care," -- because they didn't get the president's tax cut.

After my son fell into an autistic shell, he would spend hours sitting on the floor just staring at his latest obsession. We did not yet know enough about autism to know how to break his obsession and gain his attention. For more than two years, I would come home from work each day and greet Bobby with a cheery “dad’s home.” Each day, Bobby would completely ignore me, refuse to even look in my direction and simply continue staring at whatever he was locked into at the moment. To gain Bobby’s attention I had to physically place myself between Bobby and the object on which he was focused. As we gained knowledge and skill, we worked very hard to teach Bobby how to make eye contact and how to attend to people. One day as I came home from work and greeted Bobby, I noticed that he shifted his eyes slightly in my direction. We rejoiced.

Over time, after much more effort, Bobby would turn his head and acknowledge that I was there. Later, he began to come toward me to show me the object of his focus. Today, when I get home, Bobby will see me and smile, pleased with my presence. He will approach me for a hug and a quick spin. He may even pull up his shirt in an effort to get tickled. If I tickle him, he will be sent into spasms of laughter and joy. It took us more than five years to go from a complete disregard of my presence to an interactive game in which he expresses joy in human interaction. What exactly does Mr. Savage find in that behavior that calls out for mocking?

Bobby will be eight years old next month. He is non-verbal. Through many years of speech therapy, applied behavioral analysis and other techniques, my wife and I, Bobby’s teachers and therapists, and Bobby have all worked endless hours to get Bobby to talk. We have been unable break through the autism to attain speech. Last month, Bobby brought me his shoes and my car keys. That is way of asking if we can take a ride in the car. As Bobby and I approached the car, Bobby in tones clear as a very fuzzy bell said, “ride in car.”

My heart leaped. Fighting the urge to run back into the house to tell my wife (which would have provided negative reinforcement for Bobby's success by delaying the reward of a ride), I started saying “good talking Bobby, very good talking Bobby.” When Bobby asks for a ride in car with words, Bobby gets to ride in the car.” With a quick hug I put him in the car for a ride. During the ride I tried to prompt Bobby to say it again. “What is Bobby doing?” Is Bobby riding in the car?” Does Bobby like to ride in the car?” Twice more on the trip, he responded by saying “ride in car.”

After Bobby showed no sign of saying anything further I returned home and rushed into the house to tell Deb the news. As she was lavishing praise and hugs on Bobby for his “good talking,” tears of pride and joy were running down her cheeks and mine.

Our toil is long and difficult, our triumphs rare and Bobby’s progress may seem to others to be marginal. Bobby’s progress is the reward of his hard work and ours. We revel in the successes and try to think of the failures as part of the journey to success.

A S O M E W H A T L I K E L Y C O N V E R S A T I O N
F E A T U R I N G T W O , A N D P O S S I B L Y T H R E E ,
S H A M E D J O U R N A L I S T S .

A N E W W O R K B Y B E N G R E E N M A N

What follows is an alleged transcript of a conference call between writer Ben Greenman and two other journalists who have recently made headlines: Stephen Glass, who was fired from The New Republic in 1998 after the discovery that several of his pieces were fabricated and has recently written a novel, The Fabulist, based on his experiences; and Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who was cashiered last week following revelations of extensive plagiarism and falsification.

Mr. Greenman claims to have contacted both men while on assignment in Washington, D.C., researching the possibility of a previously unknown naked room in the basement of a Congressional building. As he is a journalist, we have no reason to trust him.

---------

BLAIR: Before we begin, I wanted to remind you that Stephen and agreed to speak with you only on the condition that this be off the record.

Q: I know.

GLASS: That means that nothing we say here can be used in print. You understand that?

Q: You're reminding me about fundamental journalistic principles?

GLASS: I just need to be sure that we're all on the same page.

Q: Got it. Off the record. Let's start with Stephen. While you were a journalist, paid to create nonfiction, you wrote fiction. Then you took a large advance to write a work of fiction and ended up writing a nonfiction, or at least heavily autobiographical fiction. Does this sum up the paradoxical nature of your career thus far?

GLASS: Yes.

Q: And yet, the risk and invention that characterized your nonfiction pieces if largely absent from your novel, which offers up a somewhat traditional narrative that mixes romantic comedy and fuzzy confessional? Through most of the book, you, or your main character Stephen Glass, is paralyzed as a result of his misdeed, doesn't know what course to take, and just wishes that someone would love him: It's like Bridget Jones's Aporia.

GLASS: Well, I wanted to create a trustworthy narrator. That was my main objective. That meant toning down the lying considerably. I think I accomplished that.

Q: I don't know. You may have. I didn't read the book. Okay, now let's turn to Jayson. Before I ask you this first question, Jayson, I should mention that I'm standing on a wooden porch in rural American somewhere. Let's say Georgia. Next to me is Linda Polk, a woman whose nephew was killed in the first Gulf War. Later she became a peace activist. Very moving. It's picturesque here.

BLAIR: I know. I've been there. Say hello to Mrs. Polk for me.

Q: Jayson, why did you do what you did? In its unprecedented correction, the Times painted a picture of an eager young reporter who fell off the rails, who was both disorganized and lazy, and who spent much of his time working on a book proposal while pretending to fly around the country conducting interviews. Is this accurate?

BLAIR: I would have told the story quite differently.

Q: How so?

BLAIR: It might have been set on a wooden porch in rural American somewhere. Let's say Georgia. Next to me there would have been someone sad who represented a national tragedy. I don't know, maybe a woman whose nephew was killed in the first Gulf War and who later became a peace activist. The whole thing would have been picturesque and very moving.

Q: You just stole that from me!

BLAIR: Your word against mine.

Q: But you have no credibility left.

BLAIR: This isn't just about me. As you know, Stephen and I have hurt the credibility of all journalists by violating the trust between reporters and readers. Some people will believe you; some will believe me.

Q: That's what's most interesting about these two cases -- everyone wants to talk about how the two of you have eroded the foundation of American journalism, but have you? Both of you were caught and drummed out in dramatic fashion. Do you think that there's an element of scapegoating, and that you're being selectively prosecuted for large-level deceits that happen all the time, albeit to lesser degrees?

GLASS: Hadn't really thought about it. Mostly I've been trying to forgive and/or promote myself.

BLAIR: Same here. Remember, we're opportunistic narcissists, not philosophers.

Q: You know what? Rather than bother with reporting, I think what I'm going to do is make up some comically exaggerated dialogue for the two of you so that I can recast this as a piece of satire.

GLASS: What do you mean?

Q: I'll show you. Did you consider any other titles for your book?

GLASS: I wanted to call it Empty Glass, after the great album by Pete Townshend, but he said he didn't want to be associated with me. Can you imagine? A guy who was caught with kiddie porn on his computer doesn't want to be associated with me?

Q: See. That's made up. You never said that. But you could have.

BLAIR: This is an outrage. You can't do this!

GLASS: Please, Jayson. Isn't it time we showed some generosity toward another person?

BLAIR: Even another journalist?

GLASS: Yes. Even another journalist.

BLAIR: Now that has to be made up.

Q: No, that's one's legit. He actually said that.

BLAIR: Wow. That's messed up. Steve, you're one conflicted dude.

Q: One final question and then I'll let you go. Did one of you invent the other one?

[Long pause]

Q: Come on. If you did, you should confess. It's good for the soul, remember?

[Long pause]

GLASS: Okay, I admit it. I invented Jayson.

BLAIR: And I admit it. I invented Stephen. I hope that clears the air. You can read all about it in my forthcoming book. I'm thinking of calling it The Fabulist.

---------

Ben Greenman's collection Superbad is available in hardcover from McSweeney's Books. The paperback will be published in January, 2004, and will include a reasonable amount of new material.

So do other liberal democracies have these interminable bitter fights about appointing judges? My impression is that they don't. If not, why not. And if we know how other countries can avoid this sort of mess, is there any way we can imitate them?

The only case I have any familiarity with is Canada, where there seems to be nothing besides a strong norm preventing the Prime Minister from abusing his appointment powers in pretty much any way he sees fit. The norm seems to have held up well so far, which is good for them, but not really something we can decide to imitate.

One can't help but think that endorsements from Bill Clinton or Al Gore would be extremely valuable commodities in the 2004 primaries. Those guys have better name recognition and more street cred than anyone in the race, and as a certified expert on the topic of getting elected, Clinton's views on the important (to me, at least) question of electability carry a lot of weight. I assume, though, that for the sake of party unity Clinton won't endorse anyone and will just get behind the nominee when the time comes. Al Gore, on the other hand, has an obvious candidate to endorse, namely Joe Lieberman. It seems like only yesterday that Al Gore's position was that Al Gore should be president of the United States and that Joe Lieberman should be second in line for the job. Now Gore's out of the running, so that seems to leave Lieberman.

In that context, failing to get behind Lieberman is something of a rejection, even if the stated reason is simply that Gore isn't going to endorse anyone. A Gore endorsement, on the other hand, could help Lieberman out with what is by far his biggest problem, namely the fact that the party base doesn't trust him.

I think, though, that Gore will have to endorse Lieberman, since it wouldn't make Gore look particularly good to turn on him. The question then becomes whether it's a tepid, reluctant endorsement or a serious one. One's also got to wonder if Bill Clinton will decide to involve himself at some point.

CNN was more irritating than the gleefully patriotic Fox News channel because CNN has a pretense of objectivity. It pretends to be run by journalists. And yet it dutifully uses all the language chosen by people in charge of "media relations" at the Pentagon. It describes the exploding of Iraqi soldiers in their bunkers as "softening up"; it describes slaughtered Iraqi units as being "degraded"; some announcers have even repeated the egregious Pentagon neologism "attrited" (to mean "we are slowly killing as many of them as we can"). I don't know if I'm more offended by the insidiousness of this euphemism or by the absurdity of its grammar.

To recite from a Pentagon press release that an Iraqi division has been "degraded by 70 percent" is an astounding abdication of journalistic responsibility. A journalist these days must not just report the facts, but also explain the news, give it color and significance. The graphic reality of "degradation" is a large pile of dismembered bodies. Surely some picture or explanation of what the wiping out of an entire division with high explosives actually looks like is called for.

Many readers and watchers of the news were baffled as the battle for Baghdad came suddenly upon us without any large-scale engagement with the dreaded Republican Guard. What happened to those three or five divisions that were supposedly ringing the city? The facts of their destruction were grudgingly mentioned almost in passing. They were destroyed from the air. This did not make a glamorous or even central story to anyone's coverage of this war, because there were no embedded reporters with the Iraqi troops. It's hard to get a TV camera into a line of trenches that is being puréed by bombs. Instead of reporting that this peripeteia in the war's narrative was happening, and that it entailed thousands of deaths leading to the rapid collapse of the Iraqi regime, the television and the press simply downsized the story. No pictures, no story. This is the real meaning of "degradation."