Look at the grammar in this published letter (from the lazy-ass editors of The Boston Globe):
When it comes to the economy, President Bush has demonstrating genuine leadership. The growth package he has proposed takes us in the right direction...
One has seen the value of his island getaway quadruple since he built it. Another just sold his Aspen "cottage" for $10 million -- more than five times what he paid for it. And then there's former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who may have lost his $16.8 million Manhattan co-op, but can still relax at his $5.7 million Nantucket estate [shown] -- or at homes in Boca Raton, Fla., and Beaver Creek, Colo.
Judging by the headlines, 2002 was a pretty bad year for America's chief executive officers, from the debacles of WorldCom and Enron to a host of embarrassing Chapter 11 filings. But judging by the current values of their homes, many of them have made some pretty good investments. Indeed, while ordinary Americans watched their home prices grow an average 6% in 2002, some of the more newsworthy CEOs did far better, with the home values of a handful growing more than 40% in 12 months.
What's the word for hatred of the rich? Or, rather, hatred of the abusive behavior of the rich toward the people that help enrich them? Email me suggestions.
Software giant Microsoft Corp., finally bowing to mounting pressure to return some of its huge cash hoard to investors, said it will begin paying a regular annual dividend to shareholders.
The surprise move, coming on the heels of President Bush's recent proposal to eliminate the federal tax on dividends, represents a big shift for the nation's most valuable high-tech company, which for 17 years has spurned the idea of a dividend in favor of plowing cash back into product research and development.
[...]
Top Microsoft executives, however, could see their income rise soon because of the newly declared dividend. Chairman Bill Gates, who held 621.7 million shares of Microsoft as of Sept. 9, or 11.6% of the company, could expect an annual dividend check of $99.48 million. For chief executive Steve Ballmer, who holds 235.5 million shares, dividends would amount to $37.68 million.
Those attractive piles of $99 million and $37 million (try to picture them, in small denominations, in your living room) are tax-free under the ultra-generous Bush plan.
Generous to a very select few, that is. Even a truck driver with a winning Powerball lottery ticket has to pay substantial taxes on similar amounts of money. Why? He didn't work for it! It's unearned!
Why do these two already-rich men — and others like them — deserve to pay not one dime of taxes on an unearned sum of $136 million? Is it just for being alive at the same time as a dim-witted (or evil, take your pick) president?
The Office also collaborates with the following "Participating Agencies" in the city of Chicago, where I live so very anonymously:
Federal: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Internal Revenue Service, United States Attorney's Office, United States Customs Service, United States Marshals Service, United States Postal Inspection Service, Housing and Urban Development-Office of the Inspector General
State: Illinois State Police, Office of the Illinois Attorney General, Illinois National Guard
Local: Cook County Forest Preserve Police, Cook County Sheriff's Department, Cook County State's Attorney, Grundy County Sheriff's Department, Kendall County Sheriff's Department, Will County Sheriff's Department, Bartlett Police Department, Blue Island Police Department, Bolingbrook Police Department, Braidwood Police Department, Calumet City Police Department, Chicago Police Department, Chicago Heights Police Department, Elk Grove Village Police Department, Joliet Police Department, Lockport Police Department, Matteson Police Department, McCook Police Department, Oak Forest Police Department, Oswego Police Department, Palatine Police Department, Plano Police Department, Railroad Police, Riverdale Police Department, University of Illinois at Chicago Police Department, Waukegan Police Department, Yorkville Police Department
The tall man asked a second time for my cooperation, but I refused and politely showed him the door.
With the selective but extremely potent fragments of personal information they requested, they could easily make the short leap to criminal record, political party affiliations, DMV reports, citizenship status, credit report, legal activity, insurance history, medical records, and so on. Basically anything they want to make nearly any case against anyone.
Saying "yes" to "Have you ever, even once, used marijuana or hashish?" is tantamount to a written, government recorded pre-confession. Whatever public health research benefit might result from the study is dwarfed by the individual risk of personal damage by a growing bureaucracy that, beyond becoming antagonistic to its own citizens as a matter of policy, is totally out of control in practice. They won't know which fifteen Saudi nationals are in American flight schools, but they'll know you smoke pot. J. Edgar Hoover is grinning ear-to-ear as he molders in his crypt.
My wife was upset because she wanted the thirty bucks, which would not have bought even the left foot of the shoes she currently covets. But then I wondered, Who the hell is footing the bill to extract these drug use pre-confessions from an unsuspecting public?
The answer is: you are.**
Is it me, or is American life beginning to resemble Terry Gilliam's film Brazil more and more every day?
**International disclaimer: If you're an American reader and taxpayer, that is.
Last week I wrote about "cracker chic," the phenomenon of wealthy people building million-dollar houses that are intentionally distressed to look like poor people's homes.
This new cultural wrinkle, featuring residential design as a weapon of class warfare or at least class insult, has haunted me ever since. The passage below, from the originally quoted article, has literally kept me awake at night:
The desire to get "back to the basics" is what drew Fort Worth native Michelle Coslik and her husband Steve to a two-story, $1 million vacation home in WaterColor, which is being developed by the homebuilding subsidiary of Jacksonville-based St. Joe Co.
Ms. Coslik's home features 1,000 square feet of screened-in porch. The screen door is made of mahogany and fitted with hinges that mute the slam into a sort of soft thud that one WaterColor marketing executive describes as "the sound of growing up in the South." The cost of the door, including handle, is $700.
Ms. Coslik, 36, isn't using her porch to escape the heat as the early settlers once did. She has air conditioning for that. For her, the porch is a place to meditate and practice Yoga. "When I think cracker," she says, "I think of getting back to the essence and away from material aspects of life."
It is the image of Michelle Coslik, meditating and practicing her yoga on her enormous screen porch while thinking sublime thoughts about southern poor folk, that resonates so strongly for me as a symbol of what has gone wrong with our country. It has bothered me ever since because I can visualize her blithe ignorance so clearly.
And so I asked myself: Who is Michelle Coslik?
We know from the article that she is the 36-year-old wife of Steve Coslik. They live in Fort Worth. They have a million-dollar vacation home in WaterColor, a development 30 miles outside Panama City in the Florida Panhandle, where developers are going beyond architecture to offer the "cracker experience." She wants to "get back to basics." She had a $700 door custom-made to evoke "the sound of growing up in the South." She has air conditioning, but prefers to practice yoga on her screened-in cracker porch.
But I needed to know more. What are Steve and Michelle Coslik like? Where did their money come from? What do they believe in? Michelle Coslik, the meditating wife on her cracker porch, my perfect symbol of ignorant vanity, needed to be fleshed out in my imagination. And so I turned as I would for any potential object of my curiosity to the source: Google.
Cracker husband Steve Coslik is the Chairman of The Woodmont Company, a nationwide real estate services firm, where he handled acquisition, negotiation and development of 11.6 million square feet of retail, office and industrial space. The 51-year-old owner of the $1 million cracker vacation home also enjoys running (#124) and damaging wetlands.
She and husband Steve have given at least $10,000 to Fort Worth's Bruce Wood Dance Company. In my mind's eye, I can see Michelle Coslik practicing her dance stretches on her cracker porch. But, alas, she is 36! Perhaps young enough to serve as the trophy wife of a real estate magnate fifteen years her senior, but too old for an aspiring dancer. If only she were younger and more limber — like the poor but chic (and doubtlessly photogenic) cracker wife she wishes she could be.
She and husband Steve are on the advisory board of the Sedona Intensive program, a self-described "Personal Growth Alternative Therapy," that allows its adherents to "finally break the grasp of addictions, compulsive behavior, and egocentric patterns. Resolve relationship conflicts."
Is that all the Sedona Initiative does? No, no, no. "To really hear God we need to clear away the static which clouds the channels God often uses to speak to us. After you clear away toxic blocks to the Creator, we will teach you to understand The New Language."
The New Language? Is that Orwell-speak for communication among God-sanctioned class warriors? Well, yes:
What the five days, or more, in Sedona will ultimately do for you is teach you The New Language — how to listen to God and get answers to your prayers, to know that you are on the right track even when plagued by worry, doubt and uncertainty.
Many years ago, after many personal struggles, I believe I began to hear God and experience His presence in the world around me, and my own life improved tremendously. I believe that God wants all of us to have a tie-in to Him. Knowing The New Language makes that possible.
But first, you must put the plug in the jug. Get clean. Get help with sexual addiction. Face compulsive/obsessive disorders. Surrender and clear your control dramas.
Clearing your control dramas evidently means submitting to guru Albert Clayton Gaulden, mentor to James Redfield of The Celestine Prophesy fame.
Gaulden refers to his methodology as "clearing," which is not to be confused with the term used by Scientology.
As a recovering alcoholic, sober for more than 22 years, he uses his honed intuition and Jungian archetypes to speed the plow of the process. Fearless and tough, Gaulden steers the prodigals who come to Sedona toward a powerful and personal relationship with the God within.
The Sedona Intensive, prodigal Michelle Coslik's faith-based luxury spa, has many delightful features:
On a typical day, you will attend a 12-step meeting, consult with a spiritual psychologist, relax with a hot lava rock massage, take a yoga class and receive a Network Chiropractic adjustment.
In addition you will breathe through core issues with a transformational breath worker, unwind in a Jacuzzi or steam room after meditation hikes through majestic Red Rock country.
When her muscles tense from stressful meetings with her cracker interior designer, Michelle likes to relax with a hot lava rock massage. Yoga is Michelle's favorite way of exploring the God within. If she inhales too much faux cracker dust into her lungs, her transformational breath worker is just a quick jet ride away. The Jacuzzi helps wash away the expensive cracker dust from her delicate pores. The "spiritual psychologist" must be useful in helping to calm the troubled seas of Michelle's soul, even in the comfort of her cracker home.
After my exhausting research, I feel that I now know Michelle Coslik much better. And, believe me, it was worth the time. Using my honed intuition and Jungian archetypes, I am beginning to understand her. I can even detect the faint silhouette of the God within her. Given the burden of her wealth, I can almost sympathize with the shallow, hateful disrespect she feels for poor people — the cracker lifestyle she finds so chic.
Speaking of "control dramas," we're engaged in one right now. WaterColor, the cracker chic development of vacation residences for millionaires who aim to make poverty more picturesque, is one of the enclaves of faith-based and wealth-based insanity that now characterizes the USA. The Cosliks represent the kind of brain-poor but asset-rich people the Republican "stimulus package" is designed to benefit.
Cracker chic is class warfare, and the blissful, ignorant and wealthy Michelle and Steve Coslik are the enemy.
Atrios of Eschaton points out that the same letter praising W's self-stimulus package and sporting the phrase "demonstrating genuine leadership" (a poll-friendly subliminable message) is simultaneously appearing under different names in newspapers nationwide. The practice of such unreality is called astroturfing.
You can google the phrase for a current look at which lazy-ass editors have been hoodwinked by propagandist drones most recently.
UPDATE: One day later I wrote more on this topic here.
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded.
[...]
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
[...]
Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
Ouch. Blair doesn't come out smelling much better, either. (Via the indispensable TBOGG.)
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has written a scathing point-by-point catalog of the incompetence of Dick Cheney, brought on by his mindset of "cartel-capitalist" arrogance.
"If there were any justice or logic in this administration as to who should or shouldn't keep their job, there'd be another high-ranking official in line for one of those awkward [resignation-demanding] conversations: Dick Cheney."
"...the evolution of White House Iraq policy might be described fairly as a slow process of overruling Dick Cheney."
"Not since the Whiz Kids of the Kennedy-Johnson years has Washington been led by men of such insular self-assurance. Their hierarchical, old economy style of management couldn't be more different from the loose, non-hierarchical style of, say, high-tech corpor-ations or the Clinton White House, with all their open debate, concern with the interests of "stake-holders," manic focus on pleasing customers (or voters), and constant reassessment of plans and principles. The latter style, while often sloppy and seemingly juvenile, tends to produce pretty smart policy. The former style, while appearing so adult and competent, often produces stupid policy."
"...Cheney's reputation as the steady hand at the helm of the Bush administration--the CEO to Bush's chairman--is so potent as to blind Beltway commentators to the examples of vice presidential incompetence accumulating, literally, under their noses."
What a treat! It's all here: Paul O'Neill, John Snow, Condoleeza Rice's gentle scolding, the energy task force, sidestepping the Hart-Rudman antiterrorism commission, the unilateral Iraq war plans, tacit approval of corporate malfeasance, his insular background, and his colossal lack of judgment. Quite a portrait of worthlessness, which, at the vice presidential level, amounts to massive acts of national damage.
AL FRANKEN: People on the left -- liberals -- don't want to hear simplistic demagoguery. They want to hear information. This is why NPR is accused of being liberal -- because liberals [LAUGHS] listen to it, [LAUGHS] and liberals listen to it because you get a BBC report about what's going on in Afghanistan. And they don't want to hear Rush Limbaugh going like [IMITATING] "There was not one iota-- of memorializing at the Wellstone memorial, my friends." [LAUGHTER]
BOB GARFIELD: Okay, so sometimes he's a little skimpy on the facts; that's true.
AL FRANKEN: Oh -- sometimes?! [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BOB GARFIELD: Are you suggesting that it - were there a liberal counterpart to Rush Limbaugh who used the same techniques, they couldn't make it because the liberal mind, by its very nature, simply will not countenance such distortions and, and sophistry and trickery?
AL FRANKEN: You put it very well. I really believe that.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott blasted Enron's bankruptcy attorneys Monday, saying they are "lining their pockets" with fees at the expense of taxpayers, former employees and investors.
At the present rate of spending, Abbott said, the money spent on lawyers and accountants sorting through Enron's remains could approach $1 billion. He said the company should consider an immediate liquidation.
Since going into bankruptcy 13 months ago, Enron has spent more than $300 million on professional fees -- easily a record -- and is burning through $25 million a month. The situation could linger for months, even years. [...]
The meager prospect for a meaningful reorganization appears to be falling apart, rapidly burning money as it does so, some creditors say.
The fee total has already surpassed a widely cited record, $200 million spent in the early 1990s by the Luxembourg-based bankruptcy of the Saudi Arabian Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or BCCI.
And although WorldCom's bankruptcy is larger, its financial problems are far more straightforward, and thus its professional-fee expenses are much smaller than Enron's.
The primary firm representing both companies in bankruptcy is New York-based Weil Gotshal & Manges. Early on, its monthly billings to Enron were running more than $6 million a month. In comparable stages of the WorldCom case, the firm billed $1.5 million to $2 million a month.
Can't you just smell the money burning in Texas? And it's always someone else's money. Not the Bushes'. Not the Lays'. Not the Skillings'.
Lewis Lapham of Harper's said in 2001:
How else to describe the new administration's legislative agenda — elimination of the inheritance tax, revision of the bankruptcy laws, the repeal of safety regulations in the workplace, easing of restriction on monopoly, etc. — except as an act of class warfare? Not the aggression that Karl Marx and maybe Ralph Nader had in mind, not the angry poor sacking the mansions of the rich, but the aggrieved rich burning down the huts of the presumptuous and troublemaking poor.
"Class warfare"? Where have we heard that phrase before?
The more the Enron crooks (and their esteemed law firm) drag this out, the less monetary retribution will be available to the people they financially molested.
We are now in a second Gilded Age. Instead of taking steps that would strengthen our democracy, we're heading backward to the wealth inequalities of a century ago. We need to preserve the estate tax in states and at the federal level for exactly the reason it is under assault. In a democracy, we should be offended when the power of concentrated wealth brazenly attempts to shape the terms of policy debate and dictate the rules of our society.
Coming from a man who is asking for a tax on his own heirs — the richest family on earth — this logic is all the more striking in its clarity. He is insisting that rational taxation of family wealth is better than the damage to democracy that would otherwise occur.
These ideas are not unique to technology Democrats or their dads, either. Kevin Phillips, the economic historian whose own background is Republican, argues in his excellent book Wealth and Democracy:
For example, by 2000 the United States could be said to have a plutocracy, when back in 1990 the resemblance to the previous plutocracy of the Gilded Age had not yet fully matured. Compared with 1990, America's top millennial fortunes were three or four times bigger, reflecting the high-powered convergence of innovation, speculation, and mania in finance and technology. Moreover, the essence of plutocracy, fulfilled by 2000, has been the determination and ability of wealth to reach beyond its own realm of money and control politics and government as well. In America, explains political scientist Samuel Huntington, "money becomes evil not when it is used to buy goods but when it is used to buy power... economic inequalities become evil when they are translated into political inequalities."
If there is a running theme to the political content of this blog, it is best expressed by that quotation. We don't hate wealth or power. We hate the abuses of wealth and power.
Bill Gates Senior's article is heroic because it is ethical in an unethical time. He demands what is right — even when his family has so much to lose. By recognizing the greater good of American democracy, even for the wealthy, he reveals a backbone of political and economic morality that is totally absent from the White House.
The Chicago Tribune, which owns the Los Angeles Times, reports on the antiwar protests there:
Thousands of people protesting a looming U.S.-led war against Iraq marched through downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, with many chanting, "We want peace!"
According to police, the crowd numbered between 5,000 and 7,000. Many wore their opinions, such as "No War" or "Don't Cut Medicare for Bombs and Missiles," on T-shirts, buttons and baseball caps. Organizers estimated the crowd at 15,000.... [...]
At the Federal Building, rock singers, poets, activists and actor Martin Sheen, star of the NBC series "The West Wing," denounced war over loudspeakers. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Los Angeles Urban League President John Mack also took part in the event, which was a precursor to a series of upcoming demonstrations set to take place in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., on Saturday.
I voted for President Bartlett, and all I got was this lousy Supreme Court coup.
NEW YORK, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Even before U.S. President George Bush this month unveiled his tax cut plan that could eliminate dividend taxes for investors, Merrill Lynch's chief U.S. strategist picked 18 dividend-paying companies he said could offer investors safety and income, according to Barron's magazine.
[...]
Bernstein's picks include Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK), Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE:PG), Abbott Laboratories Inc. (NYSE:ABT), Gillette Co. (NYSE:G), 3M Co. (NYSE:MMM) and BellSouth Corp. (NYSE:BLS).
"Let Us Praise Steady Dividends," the original article in Barron's (subscription only – link) adds to the above information with a little-known aspect of the "stimulus package":
Of course, there will be other ways to benefit from a dividend tax cut. One lower-profile area set to benefit is the market for perpetual preferred stock. Those shares pay a dividend (although they typically give the issuer the option not to make the dividend payment), and they do not mature.
There is about $24 billion of perpetual preferred stock outstanding, estimates William Scapell, a director at Merrill Lynch. That's about 15% of the larger preferred market, which also includes trust preferreds and preferreds issued by real estate investment trusts. Those two, however, wouldn't benefit from the Bush plan because their issuers have already received a tax benefit.
Unfortunately, many of the more appealing preferred issues have rallied sharply in anticipation of the tax change. For example, Alabama Power, a unit of Southern Co., has perpetual preferred that pays a 5.2% dividend. On December 18, the yield to the 2008 call date was 11.3% and now it stands at 5.96%.
Likewise, Citigroup's perpetual preferred, with its 6.365% dividend, once offered investors a yield of 9.26% but now yields 5.53% to its 2007 call. But if Bush's tax cuts and Bernstein's predictions of a more risk adverse world come to pass, even low dividends could command the market's attention.
How much does W love the rich? Giving them $674 billion is a very public display of affection.
Say farewell to growth stocks for a while. Kiss computer technology, wireless, biotech and nanotech goodbye.
The "stimulus package" is already shaping up to be a scandal analogous to Daddy's S&L debacle, which was quite generous to W's competence-free brother Neil Bush.
Consider the Linda and Ken Lay Family Foundation of Houston. Mr. Lay was chairman of Enron, and 90 percent of the foundation assets, valued at $52.2 million at the end of 2000, were in Enron stock.
The foundation could comfortably afford a full-time director, Heather H. Herrold, whose salary was $83,684. Mr. Lay got a tax deduction based on the value of Enron stock when he gave it to the foundation.
Enron went bankrupt amid scandal in late 2001, and the foundation recently reported that its assets had fallen to $2.4 million, forcing it to postpone many pledges. The Internal Revenue Service may not, however, retroactively revoke part of Mr. Lay's deduction to reflect the decline in the foundation's value.
Bear Left!, in an excellent overview, reports that Lay donated over $20.5 million in stock in 1999 and 2000. Tax deductions are only useful when applied against income, which suggests that Ken Lay had substantial income to protect in 2000. Since we know that his insider trades prior to the Enron bankruptcy amounted to roughly $70 million, this means that not only did he lie to analysts and shareholders while he was selling his shares, but, adding injury to insult, he also underpaid taxes on his insider plunder.
Let's review:
Ken Lay created a foundation out of Enron stock worth about $52.2 million in 2000 — which he was simultaneously selling to the tune of about $70 million.
Ken Lay did this while urging stock analysts and employees to invest in the stock for investment growth and 401(k) participation.
Ken Lay took a multimillion tax deduction for the donation of the stock.
The foundation recently reported that its assets had fallen to $2.4 million.
The foundation is reneging on its pledges to the charitable causes it would supposedly help.
The IRS "may not" retroactively revoke part of the deduction to reflect the decline in the foundation's value.
Ken "Kenny Boy" and Linda "Jus' Stuff" Lay received the full benefit of a multimillion tax deduction on now near-worthless stock used to fund a charity foundation which has helped no one. No one but them.
Meanwhile, close friend Bush's "stimulus package," half of which is tax elimination on dividend (i.e., unearned) income, benefits the wealthy who don't need help, already have figured out all the loopholes, and are playing the existing shell game of insider trades, charitable foundations and tax deductions in their favor.
I can't tell you how depressing it is to read what passes for news in the the american media. Bloggers are right, media is dead. This is not a General Strike? So how come we can't go to the movies? (all movie theaters ion Caracas are closed); Buy a soft drink? (not a single one can be found in Caracas stores, they few you can find are fetching a mark up of 1200%); Drink a beer? (Only a few foreign made beer can be found). What lies! How does a reporter invent them? They probably accept government help to write the report. Forget independent thinking, that's out! Some of the criticism of the opposition is true, but the government has done the same things and that is worst, because the government has a higher responsibility. While it is not in the constitution to held an early election it wasn't in the previous constitution (of 1961) to call for a referendum to make a new constitution, Where was this asshole then? Finally, more than 70% of Venezuelans want Chávez to leave, that includes most of the poor. Buy a clue you dimwit!
The disparity between the American press and the world press is malignant and growing. Our system of media ownership by a handful of corporate entities is simply not working, and may never work again.
