The Ministry of Minor Perfidy

Ministers

Super Genius

Holder of the St. John the Divine chair for Eschatological studies

Johno say RELAX

You mean I can get paid to exploit the masses?

Well SOMEONE's gotta do the Ministry's dishes

Java programmer, contrarian, and resident lefty

Minister Emeritus

Windy City Mike
social democrat, ca. 1930 trade-unionist, and professor of alleged history

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Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Motes, Beams, and The Mighty Sequoia

First, a thought. If you look back at last year’s posts on Iraq, and the emails that Ministers Buckethead, Mike, and myself exchanged before that, you’ll find that I opposed the libervasion partly because I feared that the US would screw it up royally, making matters worse for us here in the US. Not that I didn’t see the good that could come from the action, but I felt the stakes were too high not to think things through.

Well, they didn’t think things through. Many mistakes were made in the run-up and aftermath to the libervasion-- the disbanding of the Iraqi army, many of whom are shooting at us from behind trees and inside mosques, a wild overestimation of the readiness and capability of Iraq’s oil infrastructure, firing the guy(s) who asked for more troops to provide security, etc., etc. That rather pisses me off.

But there is a worse alternative: giving the job to the United Nations. Before the war, the UN opposed any action in Iraq, requesting that weapons inspectors have more time to do the voodoo they do. At the time, I took this as a reasonable, albeit doggedly bureaucratic, tack to take. But the breaking Oil For Food For Large Bags Of Cash scandal (covered at length here by ABC News) makes me think otherwise.

It is now clear that the UN was and is rotten with corruption, and that even such halting work as it can do under the best intentions and clearest administration is now useless. They can’t be trusted. That is a terrible shame. I am a great believer in the need for an organization like the UN as a counterbalance to the extreme alternative, a nakedly dog-eat-dog world in which nations all fend for themselves. A little red tape and stifling regulation on that scale is preferable to a free for all, in my opinion, but not if this is the way they are going to do business.

Just look at this partial list of who received oil bribes from Iraq.

Russia
The Companies of the Russian Communist Party: 137 million
The Companies of the Liberal Democratic Party: 79.8 million
The Russian Committee for Solidarity with Iraq: 6.5 million and 12.5 million (two separate contracts)
Head of the Russian Presidential Cabinet: 90 million
The Russian Orthodox Church: 5 million

France
Charles Pasqua, former minister of interior: 12 million
Trafigura (Patrick Maugein), businessman: 25 million
Ibex: 47.2 million
Bernard Merimee, former French ambassador to the United Nations: 3 million
Michel Grimard, founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club: 17.1 million

Canada
Arthur Millholland, president and CEO of Oilexco: 9.5 million

Italy
Father Benjamin, a French Catholic priest who arranged a meeting between the pope and Tariq Aziz: 4.5 million
Roberto Frimigoni: 24.5 million

United States
Samir Vincent: 7 million
Shakir Alkhalaji: 10.5 million

United Kingdom
George Galloway, member of Parliament: 19 million
Mujaheddin Khalq: 36.5 million

Egypt
Khaled Abdel Nasser: 16.5 million
Emad Al Galda, businessman and Parliament member: 14 million

Palestinian Territories
The Palestinian Liberation Organization: 4 million
Abu Al Abbas: 11.5 million

Qatar
Hamad bin Ali Al Thany: 14 million

Libya
Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem: 1 million

Brazil
The October 8th Movement: 4.5 million

Businessmen, statesmen, ambassadors, men of prominence, and (shockingly) the Russian Orthodox Church and a Catholic preist. A massive embarassment to the world community.

And yet the UN is the body that John Kerry wants running Iraq instead of the USA, as if Doc Ock would run Fort Knox better than Spider-Man. I’m no fan of Bush’s foreign policy (indeed I think it’s terrifyingly dangerous), but Kerry’s seems just as stupid, if not even more so. Just who the hell can I vote for in November who won’t make me feel like taking a shower afterward?

Posted by Johno on 04/21/04 at 01:47 PM
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Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Bad Music for Bad People

Now! Newly updated and revised, 4/21!

Blender magazine’s new issue contains the latest volley in an increasingly tiresome but still lively debate: the 50 worst songs ever. According to this USA Today coverage, the Blender top ten are

1. We Built This City Starship 1985
2. Achy Breaky Heart, Billy Ray Cyrus,1992
3. Everybody Have Fun Tonight, Wang Chung, 1986
4. Rollin’, Limp Bizkit, 2000
5. Ice Ice Baby, Vanilla Ice, 1990
6. The Heart of Rock & Roll, Huey Lewis & The News, 1984
7. Don’t Worry, Be Happy , Bobby McFerrin, 1988
8. Party All the Time, Eddie Murphy, 1985
9. American Life, Madonna, 2003
10. Ebony and Ivory, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, 1982

Man… I wish I could find absolute fault with this list, but that’s hard to do given the eminent suckitude of each song in the top ten. “We Built This City” is indeed a worthy contender for the title of worst song ever. Nonetheless I personally have a hard time finding “City” worse than, say, Extreme’s “More Than Words,” Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” (reportedly also on the list), or the entire recorded output of Supertramp.

I wonder what metric they used to put this list together? Well, I have some proposals! (Read on: there’s a few dick jokes, some graphic revenge fantasies, and some deeply ridiculous angry conviction)

[wik] BTD Greg has his own list up, and no overlap with mine. Just shows to go ya how much bad music there is out there.

More Perfidious Goodness...

The USA-Today piece notes that novelty songs, or songs that aspire to nothing more than shlock, don’t rate as “worst ever” because they don’t aspire to anything more. I can agree with that. So, no “Who Let The Dogs Out” or “Macarena.”

But how do we decide that Madonna’s excrescent “American Life,” released just last year, is worse than the Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” or Debbie Boone’s “You Light Up My Life,” which have more than half a century of sick-making between them? I argue that long-livedness should play a part. I seriously doubt that Madonna’s “American Life” will ever surface again, but on any given night, at any bar in the more thinly populated areas of the USA, you stand an awfully good chance of enduring “Achy Breaky Heart.”

Then, how do you decide what’s worse between an established artist who makes a shitty single (e.g. Madonna’s “American Life,” Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” Stevie Wonder/Macca “Ebony/Ivory"), otherwise innocuous artists who have an unlooked-for chart hit with a horrible song (Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” Wang Chung, “Everybody Have Fun Tonight") and artists who seem to exist only to fester (Limp Bizkit ("Nookie" aside), Billy Ray Cyrus, Starship)? Madonna, Stevie and Paul all have towering achievements to their name, and in my opinion, one bad song from them-- no matter how shit-your-pants embarrassing it may be-- is still better than any song from shlockmeister supremes like Jefferson Airplane’s third incarnation, Journey, or Debbie Boone. The flukes are the wild cards: competent bar bands like Huey Lewis who succeed beyond their talent, one-hit-wonders like Wang Chung, and arthouse mediocrities like Bobby McFerrin.

So. We can leave Madonna, Stevie Wonder, and Paul McCartney aside, no matter how I may personally feel about “Ob-la-di.”

I would also axe the merely incompetent. So: goodbye Eddie Murphy. Ditto the merely innocuous who punch above their weight. Goodbye Huey Lewis.

Now that I have cleared the field of all but the most serious of contenders, here is my personal, highly idiosyncratic, and dyspeptically jaundiced list of the ten worst songs of all time.

1) Debbie Boone. “You Light Up My Life.” Apart from lovesick thirteen-year-olds Christian girls crying into their heart shaped pillows at four-color Tiger Beat centerfolds of Leif Garrett (and the housewives they grew up to be) nobody can honestly claim this song is anything but an affront to all that is good, decent, and holy. More than anything else in the history of the world, this song’s fanbase are an absolutely persuasive argument in favor of a rigorous program of enforced eugenics.

2) Billy Ray Cyrus. “Achy Breaky Heart.” Made the mullet and dancing in formation fashionable once again. Hey Billy! Those were my people you did that to! My people, the good, honest upright briarhoppers, hillbillies, and piney-barrens homesteaders of the world who, if they only had a chance would groove to AC/DC and Steve Earle, but now wear big stupid hats and listen to your progeny. Cyrus is also to be blamed for collateral damage: the line-dancing craze, the meteoric rise of so-called “country” music machine-tooled for the minivan set, and making pasty drug-taking sons of bitches like Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and my main man George Jones into pop-culture footnotes for the entire decade of the 1990s.

3) REM. “Shiny Happy People.” The same band that crafted such monuments of messy genius as “Radio Free Europe” and “Belong” stumbled bad. I can’t find much to say about this song except that I hate it. The worst part (for me) is that it’s still a staple of the Adult-Album-Alternative radio I tend to listen to, and therefore I am subjected to this overmedicated pap far more often than is healthy for the members of REM. Someday vengeance will be mine.

4) .38 Special. “Rockin’ Into The Night.” The Blender list wisely chose to cut out the “low-hanging fruit” of the awful music of the 70’s, but some offenses are too egregious to bear. Three years after the punk revolution broke, .38 Special still felt fine about putting out a song whose chorus ran “Rocking into the night, rocking into the night.” So… you gonna rock into the night or something? The single most boneheaded of all butt-rock songs, first among a thick field of worthy contenders.

5) Starlight Vocal Band. “Afternoon Delight.” Although part of that terrible era Blender wisely ignored, this song’s recent resurgence via an inexplicable retro-fondness for the worst parts of the 1970s and films like “PCU” and “Good Will Hunting” renders it eligible for the list. Of all the songs ever recorded about sweet love in the afternoon, this is the only one that makes me wish I could cut off my own penis in protest. Or maybe cut the penises off the Starlight Vocal Band’s male members. That’s a healthier way to think of this.

6) Marcy Playground. “Sex And Candy.”
7) Live. “Lighting Crashes.”

These two picks represent all the worst aspects of the Alternative movement of the 1990s. “Sex and Candy” is simply the very worst song I have personally ever heard, though it seems to be quite the popular item among millions and millions of my peers. A more rational mind would conclude that they are right and I am wrong, but that’s what they said about Jesus before they nailed him to a tree, and look how far it got him! I hereby announce the establishment of a new religion: the Church of Fuck Marcy Playground.

As for Live, they make it on here because they took a great song with a lovely hook and sound and threw lyrics over top of it that include the line, “The placenta falls to the floor.” Nice, guys. Next!

8) The Doors. “Hello, I Love You.” Somehow Jim Morrison, in between drunkenly waving his dick around and acting all pretty, got himself rated a poet. A poet! “Hello, I love you/ won’t you tell me your name. / Hello, I love you/ let me jump in your game.” A poet! “Hello Mother. I want to fuck you.” A poet! “There’s a killer on the road/ his brain is squirming like a toad /Take a long holiday/ let your children play.” A poet! “Hello, I Love You” is the sound of the most overrated band of all time pushing Four Roses and calling it Champagne. Makes me want to dig up Jim Morrison’s corpse just so I can pee on it while singing “Riders on the Storm.”

9) “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” Rod Stewart. The great, the inimitable Rod the Mod burned up an entire career’s goodwill with this turd. Worse, this song represented a nadir from which Stewart would never recover, a huge loss to the world’s sleazy rock well-being. Nothing more to say, except that the Revolting Cocks cover of the tune is priceless, with an extra verse about the nameless couple realizing they have to buy a rubber and some KY.

10) This space intentionally left blank in honor of all the thousands of songs I’d like to include but can’t, ten being a conveniently round number and all. Pat Boone. Jazz guys trying rock. Jess Roden’s godawful version of “On Broadway” (Doors trivia: Roden was on the band’s short list to replace Jim Morrison when Jim took the dirt nap. Why the hell are the Doors so famous?). Alicia Bridges’ “I Love the Nightlife,” the song that proved that if disco wasn’t dead, it was shooting dirty heroin in a Chelsea bathroom with a shotgun in its mouth. Candelbox’s lone hit. There are so many, many, more, but I will leave you now with just three words: “Cold.” “As.” “Ice.”

[also wik] Allison, commenting at Begging to Differ, notes that Lee Greenwood’s “Proud To Be An American” just might be the worst song of all time. Fie on me for forgetting! She’s right.

Number 11 with a bullet) Lee Greenwood. “God Bless the U.S.A.” The anthem of knee-jerk patriotic Rotarians everywhere. No other song in the world has done so much to make me not only ashamed to be American for the three minutes it’s playing, but to wish fervently for a Chomskyite hairshirt-wearing America-hating putsch JUST SO I never have to hear that trash again. Or, I could just go cut off Lee Greenwood’s penis, for all the good it would do.

Too Goddamn Much Perfidy...

Posted by Johno on 04/20/04 at 06:58 PM
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Flying Robot Learns to Drop Bombs

Despite my well-known propensity to comment on rap lyrics, this story is not about a robot learning to rhyme. Rather, it is the next stage in the eventual enslavement of mankind.

Those treacherous quislings at the Boeing Corporation have designed a flying robot capable of dropping GPS-guided bombs.

The first bomb was a non-explosive test munition, but it landed inches from its target, demonstrating the lethal capacity of this new robot. Displaying a frightening lack of regard for the future of a free humanity, Boeing Chief Operator Rob Horton said, “It’s absolutely a huge step forward for us. It shows the capability of an unmanned airplane to carry weapons.”

The test mission was conducted under human supervision, but the robot handled all the details. The X-45 is almost completely autonomous, flying and attacking without need for human control. A person is still in the command and control loop - the robot must receive authorization before delivering its munitions. Of course, it is only a simple step to remove that person.

Horton, who was sitting 80 miles from the target, authorized the drone to drop the bomb, which was released from 35,000 feet as the plane flew at 442 mph.

The military sees such aircraft taking part in its most dangerous missions, such as bombing enemy radar and surface-to-air missile batteries, in order to clear the path for human pilots.

The Y-shaped, tailless plane has a 34-foot wingspan and weighs 8,000 pounds empty. It is the first drone designed specifically to carry weapons into combat.

Other robotic planes, including the Predator spy drone currently being used in Afghanistan, have been modified to carry weapons.

Boeing hopes to build hundreds of the X-45 planes, which would cost $10 million to $15 million each.

Of course they would.

[wik] here are some more UCAV links.

Posted by Buckethead on 04/20/04 at 04:13 PM
That Buck Rogers Stuff • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Monday, April 19, 2004

Per-Capita Income vs. Household Income

Laura writes on the income issue. She’s discovered a census bureau paper with an interesting take on the income issue. Because I think there is a good chance it was my comment that got her to do it…

Hello, Laura! There’s a good possibility that I am the commenter who inspired you to write this article. I’ve written quite a bit about the income distribution issue, and have quoted the Piketty/Saez paper often. For some additional historical perspective, there is an IRS study that tells us about income tax rates and how they have changed, over many decades. Saez has an additional paper which analyzes the mathematical effects of tax policy.

You’ve got a good find here. Read on…

More Perfidious Goodness...

I need some time to digest it, but here’s some food for thought:

1. P and S specifically address this issue in their paper. What they indicate is that for the purposes of calculating income, the changes in households (decrease in the number of persons per household) holds roughly even across all income levels. That is, poor and middle class folks have about the same change in household size as rich folks do.

2. What we’re talking about here is whether we’re really “better off” than we were 30 years ago. By the median income measure adjusted for inflation, 99% of Americans are not. Their income levels have stayed almost constant. You make the argument that _per capita_ income is a better measure of how well off we are, and by that measure things have improved quite a bit; certainly far in excess of 4%-6%, depending on time frame. You also say that while the top income earners have seen dramatic increases in their incomes, per capita income has not remained flat, and that in the median, we are better off. I hope I have accurately represented your position.

Under debate is the following proposition: Tax policy over the past thirty years has resulted in improved circumstances for the median US person. I say it has not; I’d prefer not to characterize your position on that proposition directly, as you haven’t addressed it.

The general discussion of whether we are better off or worse off, independent of government policy, is a different argument and has a different set of variables. The per-capita income argument is interesting, but has these flaws, in my opinion:

1. To a very large degree, smaller households are the result of cultural change. Government policy has probably had a minimal effect. If tax policy had not changed, we would still have smaller households.

2. It is distinctly possible that at some point in the future, the size-of-household trend might reverse itself. This would lower the per-capita income rate.

3. Taxation rates on our median individual are very important. The income numbers we are discussing are before taxes. An example: the Social Security Administration gives us a table of social security rates over time. We can see from this table that in 1969, the household income was reduced by about 9.6% (4.8 + 4.8). By 2003, this has risen to 15.3% (7.65 + 7.65). Tax rates have risen substantially over the time frame we are discussing. I’m not sure if that effect has been taken into account in the inflation adjustments.

4. The short-term effect of a drop in the number of persons per household may be beneficial in terms of income per capita. The backside of that is the forthcoming baby-boomer retirement. Taxes will have to rise dramatically, or benefits be cut, to preserve the system we have in place.

5. Employment to population ratios have altered over the time frame, as well. Using the tools at the BLS site, I’d say that we’ve seen roughly a 5% increase in employment to population.

6. Other forms of taxation have also risen dramatically (state, local, property, fees).

7. Maintaining a house is maintaining a house! Anyone who’s had a roommate knows that it’s a lot cheaper to share costs. Far more people today maintain their own households, and thus forgo the opportunity to share costs. This brings higher per-capita incomes into focus—people need to be making more, per person, to maintain the same standard of living as before.

My sense of it is this: Income per capita is a poor way of judging how “well off” we are. The dramatic drop in “married with children” homes is a primary driver; that coupled with dramatically higher numbers of women working makes income per capita too squishy to work with.

And it’s besides the point—we’re trying to figure out if tax policy has resulted in higher incomes! Tax policy has resulted in a drop of the top rate from over 90% (which was paid by only 500 taxpayers in the entire nation) way back when to the current top rate of 38.6%, which is paid by over 500,000 taxpayers (from the second Saez paper). The general trend has been a tremendous flattening of the tax system. We have pushed the tax burden “down” the income scale; the idea here is that this will lead to increased economic performance, which will “float all boats”.

One of the most striking quotes from the Saez paper:

“Top income shares within the top 1% show striking evidence of large and immediate responses to the tax cuts of the 1980s, and the size of those responses is largest for the very top income groups. In contrast, top incomes display no evidence of short or long-term response to the extremely large changes in the net-of-tax rates following the Kennedy tax cuts in the early 1960s.”

Very recently detailed studies have become available that show us what’s really happened with household income. Using them, we can see that the supply-siders were just flat-out wrong. The huge tax cuts generated little other than massive increases in wealth for the recipients. While we were cutting these top tax rates, tax rates at the bottom and in the middle have been rising to compensate. The predicted effect of across the board increases in income simply did not materialize.

The statistic I would most like to see is after-tax income, broken down into per-capita and per-household measures, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Maybe there’s a way to get there with the information sources I have.

Too Goddamn Much Perfidy...

Posted by Ross on 04/19/04 at 10:22 PM
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Nebula Awards, uh, Awarded

You can go here for the full details. The only winner that I read (saw) was the winner for best screenplay - which went to the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. As further evidence of how completely out of touch I am, I barely recognized any of the nominees or winners. I need to stop reading antedeluvian sf like Norstrilia, and read some new stuff.

Coraline, the winner for best novella, is the only Gaiman book I haven’t read. I suppose that will be next on my list.

Posted by Buckethead on 04/19/04 at 07:33 PM
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Awwwww yeeaah! Everybody in the house say, “Nothing washes off our disgrace but revolution and ston

According to Palestinian DJ Saadeh, it’s assassination season on the West Bank, which means his business is booming. In the bizzaro-world of Palestinian society, assassination season is the time for big, fun parties!

It’s a time for gathering with friends, enjoying the cameraderie of your fellow rubble-dwellers, exhorting your young people to get themselves killed, and- Allah willing- take out some Jews while they’re at it. And no block party is comlete without a killa DJ.

“Yeah yeah, party people in da house… yo yo just the ladies now, ‘Revolt, revolt, revolt. Revolt with stones!’ “

Posted by on 04/19/04 at 01:23 PM
Crazy Foreigners • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Friday, April 16, 2004

Sad but Probably Overdue

CBS News is reporting an HIV scare in LA’s porn community. Apparently this is only the latest such outbreak. Porn talent tested positive a few times in the ‘90s, and then, as now, a sort of quarantine was imposed while who had scenes with whom (and whom and whom) was sorted out. New production has been suspended in the meantime.

You know, I had some pithy remarks about… well, about this. But in retrospect I just can’t seem to work up humor or snarkiness over people with HIV, be it people in porn, trucking, advertising, insurance, whatever.

But all in all, I have to admit I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often.

Posted by on 04/16/04 at 04:56 PM
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Friday Morning Funtime Rant

It was 4 AM and I was awake. I’d had one of my standard dreams, it woke me up, and I spent the next half hour thinking about it. And other stuff too.

Before I go any further, please cleanse yourself of any references to “Apocalypse Now”, “Full Metal Jacket”, “Platoon”, “The Deer Hunter”, “China Beach”, “MASH”, “Sgt. Rock”, “Nick Fury”, and each and every one of his Howlin’ Commandos.

More Perfidious Goodness...

First and foremost, I’m awfully young to have served during either the Korean or Vietnam Wars. At the outside, I could have been conscripted to go to Vietnam when I was 2, the year conscription ended, but my martial skills were not yet recognized at that tender age. Second and midmost, an awful lot of boomer-generated media communicates the message that combat vets, particularly Vietnam-era vets, are fucked up and psycopathic, which is dreck. Third and aftmost, I’m not a combat vet and do not pretend that my experiences whilst in the armed services in any way mirrors what soldiers experience in combat. I was in during the Gulf War but the 3ID never left Germany. At least, not as an entire division it didn’t.

OK, on with the dream: This was standard dream A1, which over the last 2 years I have about 3-4 nights in 5. I used to get it before that, but not as often. In dream A1, I’m still in the Army, either having recently reenlisted or never having left. Typically in A-series dreams alot of folks I was close to then are still around. Usually we are in the same unit as we were then, and often hold the same rank, all of which is entirely inplausible. The dream, I think, is more about reconnecting than anything else, not having seen these men in so long and being happy to be in their company again. Usually when I wake up I’m sad they’re not here.

Now, this morning’s A1 dream got me up around 4. And I started thinking about how I felt during Gulf War 1. The pics of protestors in the paper ticked me off, but there was an uncertainty in the air that I wasn’t comfortable with. It had nothing to do with whether we’d win the fight- believe me- it was how things were at home that could really get people off mission and into a funk. Funk like introspective and taciturn, not funk like supabad.

See, soldiers, including members of all service branches, want to know that what they do is valued by the people they are ostensibly serving. That the profound sacrifice they make is respected and understood by the wider population. And lemme tell you, when I came home on leave and saw how things were here, I’d give this country a B-. Tops.

It’s not about yellow ribbons, although that’s nice. I saw plenty of private displays like that, and am seeing them again since 9-11. Which I like. But what is absent are public representations, public displays of support and understanding that communicate what a broad section of the population feels, together, en masse, and not the onesies and twosies of “support our troops” bumper stickers. Displays like that were largely absent in 1990, and they’re largely absent now.

But I’m not necessarily talking about billboards or advocating for continuous parades. I mean, particularly for the media, to treat this whole situation as a war, a bona-fide, thunderbolts from Zeus and sword of Ares war. Today, as then, it’s just another story, no different on the page from the piece on welfare reform, grade inflation in the Ivy League, and the goddamn weather, bracketed by upswings in fighting. Of course increased violence is newsworthy, but why are ongoing operations within this conflict rarely reported, or relegated to to lesser sections of the paper if covered at all?

You know what would be nice to see? A paper treat soldiers with some goddamn respect, and not as fucking stories. Run some major articles on what they do, and who is doing them. You could do it without running afoul of OPSEC restrictions. And hey, it’s even easier because the leads are already there: the command element runing the military side of things in Iraq puts out many press releases every single day discussing who’s doing what and where. Why do I have to go to a Pentagon website, or freaky Free Republic, to read them, not the so-called “paper of record” or its minion agencies?

What a soldier in the field needs to know is that he or she is valued back on the block, CONUS, the Land of the Round Doorknob, the World, home. We can put up all the bumperstickers, yellow ribbons, and flags we want, but such singular gestures have little impact. The only way to communicate with them in great numbers is via journalistic media, but it shows no interest in the task. And that’s a fucking shame.

But hey, the weekend weather looks promising...maybe I’ll wash my truck and take in a movie. I think the movie listings are at the back of section D, just before that paragraph about Army Special Forces soldiers building schools in Afghanistan.

Too Goddamn Much Perfidy...

Posted by on 04/16/04 at 11:58 AM
Perfidy • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Thursday, April 15, 2004

Buh-Bye

The Buckethead clan is heading west, to attend a wedding. So, no more muddleheaded and aimless bloviating ‘til Monday. You’ll have to limp along with the pithy and wise commentary of my comrades. Wait, that was suppossed to be the other way around…

Posted by Buckethead on 04/15/04 at 08:57 PM
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Ten Problems With the Current Tax System

Only ten, you say? Chris Edwards has a list of ten problems he sees with our current tax system. Most of this is fairly obvious, but it is rather disturbing to see it all at once.

I’d add to his list the problem of tax withholding. This is the big con, that allows the government to get away with confiscatory taxation. If you had to pay, as I have, all your taxes at once - you’d never think of it the same way again. When the IRS takes a little bit each paycheck, money that you never see, it’s relatively painless. Like the frog/boiling water concept. You think, “wow! I’m getting money back!” if you have a refund. Of course, you’re not. But if hundreds of millions of people had to write a check equal to a third to a half of their yearly income on this day, you’d have a tax revolt immediately after.

Posted by Buckethead on 04/15/04 at 08:49 PM
Filthy Lucre • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Athenian Democracy Taxation Scheme

What if you could decide how your tax dollars could be allocated? How would you divy up the government’s share of your income? More money for butter, or guns? Food stamps for whales, or send the Marines to Mars? James at Outside the Beltway links to an article by Charles Murray posing that very question.

I’ve thought about this before, and even posted this on the subject, though I’m too lazy to find the link. I think that a system like this would be hideously complex to implement. It would wreak havoc on the smooth functioning of the government, since budgets could be subject to wild swings tax dollars follow the fickle whims of the taxpayers. It might even be unconstitutional, since the Legislature is given the power to disburse funds from the treasury.

However, it would also be really cool. It would be a stupendous demonstration of faith in the common people. Lobbying would take on whole new forms, and arguable far less corrupt ones. Special interest groups would actually have to convince real, individual people that their particular hobby horses are the ones that deserve money. Groups of citizens could organize to direct funding to favored projects. Public involvement in politics would (alright, might) soar as people follow the projects they sent their money to. Think of the pride you would feel when you see a mars probe that you funded lands and starts poking the Martians in the belly. Or when a bomb that you funded blows up an enemy compound. And so on.

You’d have to allow some flexibility though - something on the order of a discretionary fund that would allow the government to maintain funding of secret projects, and of projects that got zeroed out by the populace but are deemed important enough to be maintained. Citizens could also be given the option of putting their money in this fund, or assigning one of several default distributions.

But I think that Charles and James are right that a large percentage of the funds would be pointed in the direction of tangible government services. And I really can’t think of a downside to that.

Posted by Buckethead on 04/15/04 at 08:25 PM
Filthy Lucre • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

The Bleat on 9/11 Movies

Lileks speculates on why we won’t be seeing a 9/11 movie:

And that’s the problem. I wonder whether Hollywood execs shy from a 9/11 movie because they think it might send the wrong message.

It would anger people anew, and we’re supposed to be past that. It would remind us what was done to us instead of rubbing out noses in what we do to others – I mean, unless you have a character in the second tower watching the plane approaching and saying “My God, this is payback for supporting Israel!” it’s going to come across as simplistic nonsense that denies the reality in the West Bank, okay? It would have to tread lightly when it came to the President, because even though we all knew that he wet his pants and ran to hide, we’d have to pretend and do scenes in Air Force One where he’s taking charge instead of crying help mommy to Dick Cheney, right? I mean the idiots in flyover people believe that stuff, and you’d have to give it to them or they write letters with envelopes that have these little pre-printed return address stickers with flags up in the corner. Seriously. Little flag stickers. Anyway, we would have to show Arab males as the bad guys, and that’s not worth the grief; you want to answer the phone when CAIR sees the dailies of the guys slitting the stewardess’ throats? And here’s the big one: if we make a patriotic movie during Bush’s term, well, it doesn’t help the cause, you know. People liked Bush after 9/11. Why remind them of that? Plus, you can just kiss off the European markets, period.

Richard Clarke’s book is available? Here’s a blank check. Option that sucker.

It’s like it’s 1943, and Hollywood turns down a Pearl Harbor movie in favor of the gripping account of a Washington bureaucrat who warned FDR that the oil embargo would needlessly anger Japan. The attack on Hawaii would take up five minutes – and even then it would be a shot of the hero listening to the radio with an expression of stoic anguish. If only they’d listened.

Posted by Buckethead on 04/15/04 at 06:48 PM
Entertainment • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Great and Terrible News

We here at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy are known to have a more-than-casual interest in giant fighting robots, preferably of the space variety. There are many reasons for this-- we are geeks, we like things that fight, we all remember Robotech fondly. But ultimately, we are fascinated by the prospect of giant fighting robots because of all the inventions of humankind, from the wheel down to the George Foreman Grill, the Pocket Pussy, and online gambling, giant fighting robots are the one system bound to fail more catastrophically and wreak more horror than any other in history.

And yet the brainiacs persist. Wired has news that iRobot, a company founded by MIT graduates, expects the US Army to field battle robots within ten years or so. Does anybody else wonder whether MIT has become a slave to its own inventions, that in some gigantic sub-basement in East Cambridge, deep underneath the Great Breast of Knowledge, lies a giant array of Cray supercomputers, sentient and malevolent, bent on its own cunningly subtle plans for world domination? Is it just me? Yes? Well.

The military is already using iRobot ~~employees~~products in the Middle East to conduct remote searches inside caves. What does the future hold?

Some of the robots that are being developed may also be used to shoot at human targets, iRobot suggested. But the company said SUGVs will provide advanced reconnaissance first. The company does not want to be seen as putting human soldiers out of business.

Robot vision systems have serious limitations, and the risk that a robot might kill an innocent civilian is too great, said iRobot CEO Colin Angle.

But Angle did not rule out the eventual use of weapons on robots, and noted that Raytheon is developing a targeting system for the SUGV.

“We’re not using these robots to hand out flowers,” Angle said.

Fantastic. Give the robots a network and guns. Shit, might as well call it SkyNet and face the inevitable. Despite the happy name and benevolence of “iRobot,” which calls to mind a future filled with flying cars, robotic servants, and galactic empire, these men are the doom of the planet. We must act now and swiftly to ensure that these fighting robots never gain the advantage. I for one do not want to live out my days as a lubrication attendant for some despotic robot overlord.

Click the “more” link to see the new hotness in apocalyptic peril!

More Perfidious Goodness...

Posted by Johno on 04/15/04 at 04:50 PM
Holy Shit! • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

And that, my liege, is how we know the world to be banana-shaped

Via Marginal Revolution I find this very puzzling article from the New Scientist which contains speculative evidence that the universe is shaped something like a funnel or straight horn.

They are not sure yet whether this is just a statistical anomaly, but I’ll be waiting to hear.

This is nutty. Not only would this imply that the universe is bounded, but moreover at some points it would have finite volume. And then, of course, there’s the question of dimensions… Oooh I’m all a-twitter!

At some point, faith, science, and gibberish are indistinguishable.

Posted by Johno on 04/15/04 at 04:05 PM
That Buck Rogers Stuff • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

I Dunno, GL… How DO You Hurt a Frog’s Feelings?

By having right-wing papers make up stuff about them, of course!

French ambassador to the US, Jean-David Effete...er, Levitte… claims that last year’s media shitstorm against France for supporting Saddam was “racist”.

The ambassador says that media efforts to denigrate France and Frenchmen was racism akin to that directed against “blacks and Jews”, and that it was deplorable that a defamation campaign directed at those populations would get immediate and furious response, yet no one was overly concerned when similar venom was spat at France. Well Monsieur Ambassadeur, that’s because there’s little basis for comparison between racism, as the word is currently used, and nationality, you fucking nitwit.

And besides, when did “French” become a race, in the way we discuss race today? Am I supposed to infer “French” is included in the “Other” block on my census form? Let’s see… black; hispanic, non-white; hispanic; white; native aboriginal...hmmm.. no French; I guess I’ll check “other”.

Unless he’s refering to a Gaullic master race, of purer Aryan stock than mongrel Americans.

Posted by on 04/15/04 at 03:44 PM
Crazy Foreigners • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

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