Cliff May Interview

I have to give kudos to a man named Cliff May, he's the first guy in defense of what I believe to be torture who has actually made some sense. I also have to give kudos to Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, who has again proven to have the ability to do the kind of hard-hitting serious interviews you almost never see on TV news any more.

Here are the three parts of the interview. Very thought provoking.

I've only just finished watching them, and will likely need to watch them a few more times before I fully absorb them and can comment, but the initial impression I have is that while May makes some very good points, he misses one extremely important one: While there may be honest debate over what really does constitute torture, the fact is that waterboarding is unambiguous. It has been considered torture historically, it has been tested and found to be torture, it is not ambiguous.

I'm also going to get around to reading the so-called "torture memos" tonight, so there will probably be another post on them if I feel so inclined.

Meanwhile, watch this. Regardless of what your opinion is on torture, it's a pretty good airing of both sides, and hopefully you can come away from it with a better sense of what the other side believes, even if your own mind is not changed.

Liam.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 1
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 3
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Fear Mongering...

Another day, another Administration, another political party's pundits playing the fear card. I'm tired of it.

Last night, I was watching Countdown, and they spent an inordinate amount of time on the fact that Susan Collins and a few other Senators are still "bragging" about having removed pandemic readiness from the stimulus bill.

They did at one point admit that the readiness bill was passed separately, but they spent large amounts of time condemning these Republican Senators for their short-sightedness in light of the current Swine Flu situation.

But let's think about it. First off, Swine Flu is far from a pandemic at this point. It's a little bit scary, but the numbers of cases are not out of line with the numbers of cases of other influenzas, and the fatality numbers aren't that much higher than the other ones.

But secondly, given the fact that the preparedness bill did pass in an alternate form, what this really represents was someone's attempt to remove it from the stimulus bill, so as to make that already huge bill less political and pork-laden.

There are arguments on both sides, of course. Disease preparedness isn't directly related to stimulus, but it can also be said that a pandemic at a time of recession could topple the country into a full fledged depression, so viewed through that lens, perhaps it belonged in the stimulus bill as a "protective measure against further economic down turn".

But really, I'm sick and tired of people with political axes to grind. When you spend a lot of time talking about torture and what this country should do to atone and make right the behaviors of the recent past, that is not necessarily partisan. It certainly may be used for that purpose, but there are those of us who aren't looking for charges based on party affiliation, but on law breaking. If, as some assert, certain high ranking Democrats were briefed on the program and didn't object, they should be prosecuted as well.

But this whole "Lookie lookie at how the Republicans were short sighted, playing politics with this important bill, now that Swine Flu is rearing its ugly head" meme has got to go.

It isn't unreasonable for someone to believe it didn't belong in the stimulus bill, and it clearly passed separately, so any faux-trage is just political partisan posturing.

Enough.

FairTax, another thought...

What about all of those "Roth IRAs" out there? What about the 529 college accounts?

Both of these work by putting away POST tax money, and the benefit is accrued at the time of withdrawal, the money which has grown tax-free continues to be tax-free.

As soon as you enact the "FairTax" you basically invalidate the planning of anyone responsible enough to make use of one of these plans.

Of course, you could always have a "one time pre-bate" payment to people to make up for the loss, but that's one more bit of spent money that would have to be made up, and one more complication thrown into the mix.

Just my thoughts for this morning.

Liam.

More Thoughts on the so-called "FairTax"

I have discussed the so-called "FairTax" in this space before, and everything I've read about it seems to indicate that it is an overly simplistic idea that appeals because of its simplicity, but which would in fact not be nearly as simple or beneficial as its supporters suggest.

I've been reading over the FAQ page on FairTax.org and had a few more thoughts that I thought I'd write down.

The FAQ page says that corporations would not be taxed. The authors were quite incensed about the idea that a corporation was somehow a legal person and should pay taxes. So my question is what prevents me from setting up a personal corporation and doing all of my purchasing that way? What's to prevent retail establishments from offering their better customers deals whereby they'd simply report that the sales went to corporations, and then not charging the tax?

It doesn't even have to be a phony corporation, suppose someone like my wife, who manages several apartment buildings for a living, uses her corporation to purchase things for our home. It's not a phony or sham corporation, but should we be able to avoid paying our "FairTax" income taxation because we did the purchasing through our corporation?

Also, the "FairTax" is assessed on services as well as goods. That means that small business owners such as landlords who have never really been set up to deal with taxation (other than income, of course) from their businesses will now have to collect a 30% higher rent and file the taxes on those rents. Hardly a simplification for those who own rental properties.

The "FairTax" web site says that the interest and principal payments on mortgages would be exempt from taxation, which (it says) means that everyone would gain the full benefits of home ownership, not just those who itemize their deductions, and that even those who do would gain by using non-taxed dollars to pay the principal as well as the interest. This is disingenuous, though, because at purchase time, the price of the house is taxed at the "FairTax" rate of 30%. So let's imagine a home purchased for $100,000. Under today's system, under a 30 year mortgage at a 5% interest rate, the payments would be $536.83, and for the first three years, at least $400 of that is pre-tax interest payment and less than $137 is post-income-tax principal payment. Even assuming income taxation at the highest rate of 39%, that means the principal payment plus tax is around $225 for a total payment of about $625.

Now buy the house with a 30% "FairTax", so the purchase price is now $130,000. The same mortgage now has a payment of $697.87. You have to get almost 16 years into the mortgage in the first case, while earning income in the highest tax bracket, before you break even on that mortgage payment including the tax on the taxable portion. So much for "everyone benefitting". Statistically, few people keep a mortgage for more than 15 years, with moves, refinances and the like, mortgages that see their 15th year are quite rare.

Oh, and for those who say "But wait, you aren't calculating in the savings on Property Taxes", that's right, because Property Taxes are a state tax, not a federal tax, which means they would not be affected by the "FairTax". At best it would be revenue neutral, assuming states continued to tax the value of the house and not the value-plus-FairTax higher price paid. Those taxes would be paid with non-taxed dollars, just as they are today (interest paid is deductible on your federal income taxes).

I'm not a big fan of taxation, I don't know anyone who is, although I do believe that we need to pay for the things we buy, and if we can't reign in our government's spending, then paying taxes to support that spending is really the only reasonable option.

Still, this "FairTax" system really feels scary to me, because the people advocating it are clearly selling it with incomplete information, and whenever I can feel the sales job, the cynical part of my brain starts wondering what they aren't telling me.

By the way, if you want another view of some of what is wrong with the FairTax, check out this link.

Liam.

Bigotry revealed

There’s a storm gathering.

The clouds are dark and the winds are strong and I am afraid.

Some who advocate for interracial marriage have taken the issue far beyond mixed-race couples. They want to bring the issue into my life. My freedom will be taken away.

I’m a California pastor who must choose between my faith and my job.

I’m part of a New Jersey church group punished by the government because we can’t support interracial marriage.

I’m a Massachusetts parent helplessly watching public schools teach my son that blacks marrying whites is okay.

But some who advocate interracial marriage have not been content with interracial couples living as they wish. Those advocates want to change the way I live. I will have no choice. The storm is coming.

But we have hope, a rainbow coalition of people of every creed and color are coming together in love to protect racially pure marriage.

Paid for by National Organization for Marriage which is responsible for the content of this ad.

This is NOT the content of the ad paid for by the National Organization for Marriage, because they are advocating against same sex marriage, rather than different-race marriage.

Nevertheless, the ad I have adulterated above is presented with soft, reasonable sounding voices and soothing music, all designed to make it sound reasonable, and it really requires a change like the one I've made above to truly see how vile this hatred and bigotry is.

Just because you can say something in a reasonable sounding way does not mean that it is inherently reasonable.

If you are homophobic and a bigot and can't support gay marriage, that's fine, but don't try to tell me that your argument is any more reasonable or righteous than the anti-miscegeny arguments of the middle of the last century.

Liam, really peeved on behalf of his gay friends and neighbors.

So Much For 'Change You Can Believe In'

The Obama administration seems to have done a complete 180 on its position regarding executive authority to spy on citizens, and while the cynic in me isn't particularly surprised, the optimist in me really feels let down, and the constitutionalist is just plain pissed off.

Long time readers will recall that I took great exception to some of the extra-Constitutional activities of the previous administration, including:

1. their insane justifications for "interrogation techniques" which when perpetrated upon us by others in past wars we've tried as torture and war crimes
2. their use of semantic tricks such as defining new categories ("enemy combatant") to circumvent the existing laws for treatment of prisoners in war time
3. their use of warrantless wiretaps even on American citizens, in clear violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, especially without warrants

It is this last one which concerns me today, because the current administration (in the form of Attorney General Eric Holder), rather than backing away from these activities, has asserted not only the right of the government to continue doing these things, but has asserted rights in excess of those claimed by the Bush administration.

To wit: The case of Jewel vs. the NSA deals with people who are suing over AT&T's alleged transmission of their telephone information to the NSA.

Holder has asserted to the judge that defending against these claims would violate "state's secret privileges". In effect, he's telling the judge "You can't let these people sue, because whatever we did, legal or not, would violate state secrets for us to defend against it", which essentially also says "We as the government can do whatever we like, because we refuse to acknowledge anyone's right to hold our feet to the fire if we violate pesky little things like the law, the Constitution or citizens' rights".

But the really heinous part is that not only are they arguing against even the possibility of any findings that laws might have been broken and rights may have been violated, they also argue something called "sovereign immunity", which sounds a whole lot to me like "unitary executive power" in different clothing. Under this, the administration claims that the government can only be sued if the information gathered by such wiretapping is released. As someone on one of the radio shows said this morning, this is kind of like claiming that if I steal money from you, I can only be prosecuted if I actually spend the money I stole.

The administration further asserts that not only can they not be required to defend against this suit because it might require the release of classified information about the NSA, they even assert that being forced to confirm or deny facts which are already publicly confirmed via other sources would violate these state secrets.

Now, I understand national security. I do. And there are times when it can be used legitimately. But it galls me that the federal government has become so large that it now feels justified in acting however it feels because it alone has the right to assert when a case against it can validly be heard.

Imagine a murderer with the power to decide which evidence the police could use against him, or able to successfully get the case against him dismissed on his assertion alone that defending himself against the charges would involve releasing information that must vitally be kept secret.

We have laws. These laws are supposed to apply to everyone. Instead, we have a state government that seizes power from the citizens that it isn't due under the constitution, a federal government which likewise seizes from the states powers which are constitutionally not theirs to grab, and an executive branch which continues to view itself not as one of three co-equal branches of government, but as essentially an elected king. That anyone who craved power enough to run for the office wouldn't likely voluntarily cede any of it is not surprising.

Still, this is one of the promises Obama made to us when he was running, that he would put a stop to flagrant abuse of executive power and restore law and order. To have him continue to assert the same tactics in defense of what was, according to the constitutional scholars I've read, pretty clearly a violation of the Constitution is galling.

(Much of the information for this post came from last night's Countdown with Keith Olbermann).