A Rockabilly Christmas
The Reverend Horton Heat did a whole Christmas album. If you have Amazon Prime, you can stream it for free; also on Spotify.
The Yuletide
Today is the Winter Solstice, the traditional beginning of the Yuletide. The Christmastide does not begin for a few days (traditionally Vespers on Christmas Eve).
Feedback
I haven't gotten very excited about the tax bill either way, believing that it fiddled in minor ways with individual tax brackets and generally pushed food around on the plate. On the other hand, I do favor the lowered corporate tax rate, because I believe there should be no corporate tax at all: I'd prefer to do the taxing at the individual level, where any money not ploughed back into the means of production will have to go eventually, in the form of salaries to workers or dividends to stockholders. AT+T already has announced a $1,000 bonus to its workers to celebrate the tax cut. See other similar corporate responses here.
What's more, I think the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions will have a salutary effect on the most broken part of the current tax system, which is the failure of feedback mechanisms. As this article makes clear, a principal effect of the SALT deduction cap is to move toward a system in which the people who vote for higher taxes will be the ones who actually have to pay them. Any system in which citizens can easily vote for other citizens to shoulder most of the tax burden is bound to spin out of control.
I'd rather see lower taxes and smaller government, but if there must be high taxes and large government for important and worthy tasks that can't be accomplished any other way, then let those who want it put their money where their mouth is.
What's more, I think the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions will have a salutary effect on the most broken part of the current tax system, which is the failure of feedback mechanisms. As this article makes clear, a principal effect of the SALT deduction cap is to move toward a system in which the people who vote for higher taxes will be the ones who actually have to pay them. Any system in which citizens can easily vote for other citizens to shoulder most of the tax burden is bound to spin out of control.
I'd rather see lower taxes and smaller government, but if there must be high taxes and large government for important and worthy tasks that can't be accomplished any other way, then let those who want it put their money where their mouth is.
The Last Jedi, Take II
Meditations on leadership and its failures, from the Angry Staff Officer. (That's almost every staff officer, in my experience.)
Sex and Vengeance
What I’ll say for now is we should try to hold in balance two truths. Sex is an intractable conundrum rather than a solvable problem. But that does not absolve us of the obligation to try to make better arrangements to minimize the chance that people are victimized by it. But we should attempt this in full recognition that there may not be a satisfactory way to render safe and tractable the will to domination and subordination that radical feminists rightly see as bound up in sexual desire without summoning up a will to purity and control—and vengeance—at least as destructive as the thing it opposes.It even be that sex is the safer, and less destructive, of the two impulses. After all, all of nature is founded on it: it is the flourishing of every higher species, and the waxing of every human nation.
Good Advice
Headline: "Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What's Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions."
On the other hand, just because it has gone that way in the past -- or, even because it usually goes that way -- doesn't mean it doesn't sometimes go the other way too.
On the other hand, just because it has gone that way in the past -- or, even because it usually goes that way -- doesn't mean it doesn't sometimes go the other way too.
The Last Jedi
For those who have seen it, and for those who don't mind spoilers, a review.
Spoilers are likely in the comments, so if you don't want them, stay out of the comments.
Spoilers are likely in the comments, so if you don't want them, stay out of the comments.
A Hero in Quebec
Untrained, unprepared, but brave in heart, Aymen Derbali ran to the sound of gunfire and thus saved many lives.
"I have no bad feelings or bitterness," Mr. Derbali says. "This hasn't changed my vision of this country. I'm proud to be Canadian. What happened could have happened anywhere in the world."
Still, there are times when he has reason to wonder if the world has moved on. His act of bravery has gone uncelebrated. He has not received a single note or visit from a politician since arriving at the rehabilitation centre in July. "I'm surprised," he admits, choosing his words carefully.
One day – no one is able yet to say when – he will leave the medical centre. He cannot return to the family's fourth-floor apartment because it is not adapted for his wheelchair. The family of five will have to find a new home. Where will they go? How will they pay for it? Calls for help to city and provincial officials have gone nowhere, Mr. Derbali says.
I love this guy
In retrospect, the powers that be probably made a mistake letting this guy get his hands on a foreign education. And Stanford University probably should have strangled him in the crib, too.
Genocide in Chicago
An idea seriously suggested by a Cook County councilman: deploy UN peacekeepers in Chicago.
President Donald Trump’s implicit threat to put the National Guard on the streets of Chicago to tackle the city’s violence problem attracted widespread ridicule earlier this year.It's amazing to me that anyone would trust the United Nations' blue helmets in their community, given their track record.
But if the soldiers were instead wearing the sky blue helmets of United Nations peacekeepers there might not be such a problem, according to Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin, who flew to New York on Thursday to discuss what he described as a “quiet genocide” in Chicago’s black community with the U.N.’s assistant secretary-general for peacebuilding support, Oscar Fernandez-Taranco.
“The United Nations has a track record of protecting minority populations,” Boykin told Inc. before his meeting. “There was tribal warfare between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Africa, and they deployed peacekeeping troops there to help save those populations and reduce the bloodshed. We have to do something — black people in Chicago make up 30 percent of the population but 80 percent of those who are killed by gun violence.”
"Rough Justice"
The anti-harassment revolution claimed its first female, feminist victim.
UPDATE: It won't do to suggest that women are equally responsible for sexual dynamics, of course.
Ramsey, a 56-year-old retired business executive from Leawood... was running with the endorsement of Emily’s List, a liberal women’s group that has raised more than a half-million dollars to help female candidates who support abortion rights.When equality is your only principle for justice, it is satisfied both by treatment that is equally good and by treatment that is equally bad.
Ramsey will drop out on Friday, her campaign said.
“In its rush to claim the high ground in our roiling national conversation about harassment, the Democratic Party has implemented a zero tolerance standard,” Ramsey said in a statement Friday. “For me, that means a vindictive, terminated employee’s false allegations are enough for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to decide not to support our promising campaign. We are in a national moment where rough justice stands in place of careful analysis, nuance and due process.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has not endorsed anyone in the race, said in a statement that members and candidates must all be held to the highest standard.
“If anyone is guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault, that person should not hold public office,” said committee spokeswoman Meredith Kelly.
UPDATE: It won't do to suggest that women are equally responsible for sexual dynamics, of course.
Behold, Your Judgment is Upon You!
Well, no one around here, but this does give us a chance to revisit a favorite song...
Math Problems for Fun and Not Much Profit
But some, perhaps, if working through them improves your mind for a while. The exercise might do you good, and they certainly are fun to think through.
Externalities
Wretchard is theorizing. You have to read from the bottom.
So the concept is that Hollywood and D.C. failed to hold themselves to standards, so they're kicking the problem out to us. That complicates our lives, because, well, these failures aren't really reflective of the most of us -- they're reflective of these power elites. We're being asked to take responsibility for them, which means accepting a higher degree of public overwatch on ourselves in return for exercising authority over these elites.
There are two questions to ask about this.
1) Is this right? Did the most of us have a good handle on this, such that this is really an elite problem? A partial answer can be found in the relative ease with which corporate America is disciplining wrongdoers, compared with the way that political elites are less capable of being held to standards. It could be that most of America has adjusted already; corporate elites have avoided adjusting, but are deeply exposed; and so only political elites are so far protected.
So maybe it's right. But maybe not: there are other interpretations, which I invite you to explore.
2) Is this a good deal? Ordinary citizens having power over elites is in the right lane for a small-d democratic outcome. On the other hand, a vastly increased policing of sexuality has significant negative consequences. There's a big downside to accepting a moral right to pry into our private lives. Don't forget the two rules of business:
That's a principle that's really worth defending. It's not that it doesn't admit of exceptions.
I don't particularly want to have to concern myself with these scoundrels, and I definitely don't want them to feel free to concern themselves with me. On the other hand, they're much in need of correction. It would be to the common good.
What say you all?
UPDATE: Outside of the Hollywood field, two different polls are now suggesting that majorities want President Trump to resign over being accused of similar behavior. Quinnipac, which didn't ask about Trump but about "elected officials accused of sexual harassment" found a majority even of Republicans want a resignation in such cases; 66% of adults overall agree. PPP specifically asked about Trump, and finds that a majority of registered voters wants a resignation (but not of Trump voters, who back the President staying in office). Both polls presume no trials, no recall elections at which voters formally consider the question, just straight to resignation based on multiple accusations. That suggests a very high degree of willingness to believe such charges, and to purge people from office on the basis of that belief.
So the concept is that Hollywood and D.C. failed to hold themselves to standards, so they're kicking the problem out to us. That complicates our lives, because, well, these failures aren't really reflective of the most of us -- they're reflective of these power elites. We're being asked to take responsibility for them, which means accepting a higher degree of public overwatch on ourselves in return for exercising authority over these elites.
There are two questions to ask about this.
1) Is this right? Did the most of us have a good handle on this, such that this is really an elite problem? A partial answer can be found in the relative ease with which corporate America is disciplining wrongdoers, compared with the way that political elites are less capable of being held to standards. It could be that most of America has adjusted already; corporate elites have avoided adjusting, but are deeply exposed; and so only political elites are so far protected.
So maybe it's right. But maybe not: there are other interpretations, which I invite you to explore.
2) Is this a good deal? Ordinary citizens having power over elites is in the right lane for a small-d democratic outcome. On the other hand, a vastly increased policing of sexuality has significant negative consequences. There's a big downside to accepting a moral right to pry into our private lives. Don't forget the two rules of business:
That's a principle that's really worth defending. It's not that it doesn't admit of exceptions.
I don't particularly want to have to concern myself with these scoundrels, and I definitely don't want them to feel free to concern themselves with me. On the other hand, they're much in need of correction. It would be to the common good.
What say you all?
UPDATE: Outside of the Hollywood field, two different polls are now suggesting that majorities want President Trump to resign over being accused of similar behavior. Quinnipac, which didn't ask about Trump but about "elected officials accused of sexual harassment" found a majority even of Republicans want a resignation in such cases; 66% of adults overall agree. PPP specifically asked about Trump, and finds that a majority of registered voters wants a resignation (but not of Trump voters, who back the President staying in office). Both polls presume no trials, no recall elections at which voters formally consider the question, just straight to resignation based on multiple accusations. That suggests a very high degree of willingness to believe such charges, and to purge people from office on the basis of that belief.
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