A few odds and ends going into the weekend, because there is so much going on but so little time.
Ruby Bridges Elementary School is holding its annual Gospel Concert which is a fundraiser for the 5th grade sleep over Science Camp, this year the 5th graders need to raise money to send 100 5th graders to this awesome three day, two night experience. That means that they need to raise $18,000 and to sell out the Kofman Auditorium they would be able to raise $15,000 of that $18,000. Tickets are only $15 each and the show is apparently super awesome. Click the link for more information. The show is next Saturday, January 26 starting at 7:00 p.m.
Since I’m still on the schools issue, the School Board also on Tuesday night voted to accept the 2013-2014 calendar that AEA selected. So there is a 2013-2014 calendar already, yay! This one:
Edited to add: here is a cleaner version of the calendar for nifty downloading and saving for vacation planning.
More school stuff, the District Staff has moved into their new offices at 2060 Challenger Driver, at the last School Board meeting there was a question about whether people could come and tour the offices if they wanted to, the answer was yes, but they’d like you to call first, but I’m sure if you just show up they won’t turn you away either. Edited to add, call this number: 337-7000, according to AUSD the Maintenance and Facilities department will schedule the tours.
And I keep forgetting but the City has a new website design, yay! x 100, you can preview it here and the City asks that you submit any comments you have. On first glance, I like it, it’s very simple and straightforward and that’s really all you want. Did I mentioned that it was designed by a local outfit: Superclean Web Designs as well? Which makes it 100 times better than the current website. Take a look at it.
Oh, also, Old Navy has started giving out plastic bags again. I guess they realized that — as a commenter here pointed out — the ban was not for retail stores.
On Inauguration Day [Monday, Jan 21], the League of Democratic Women Voters will be hosting a Viewing Party from 7 am -Noon in the back of our main library. I believe all are invited. Free. [otherwise, the libe is closed that day]
Comment by vigi — January 18, 2013 @ 10:15 am
“…Just as copyright is and always will be a balancing act between those who produce information and those who consume it, the Internet will always exist in tension between those who need to safeguard their investments by locking it down, and those who want to explore its potential by keeping it open – and occasionally playing havoc with established interests.”
“It needs its corporate lawyers, yes. But it also needs its cowboys.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/aaron-swartzs-suicide-shows-the-risk-of-a-too-comfortable-internet/article7509277/?cmpid=rss1
Internet Freedom Day: Coming together a year after SOPA/PIPA
January 18, 2013 – 6:00pm
Hattery
Internet Freedom Day: Coming together a year after SOPA/PIPA
Join EFF, Engine Advocacy, and craigconnects as we celebrate last year’s important victory over SOPA and PIPA and remember the life of Aaron Swartz, who contributed so much to the fight for digital rights.
The fight for Internet freedom is far from over—and fundamentally depends on our close community. Let us come together in celebration and remembrance.
RSVP here: https://internetfreedomday.eventbrite.com/
Time
Friday, January 18, 2013
6:00 – 8:00 pm
Remarks in remembrance of Aaron Swartz at 7:00 pm
Location
Hattery Labs
414 Brannan Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
Light refreshments, beer, and wine to be served. This event is being held with the support of Google and craigconnects.
Internet Freedom Day: Coming together a year after SOPA/PIPA
Calendar
Donate to EFF
Stay in Touch
Follow EFF
The creepy details about Facebook’s new Graph Search and your privacy https://eff.org/r.4bG7
JAN 18 @ 11:57AM
Aaron Swartz’s NYC public memorial service will be held on Saturday, January 19 from 4-6 pm. Details here: https://eff.org/r.b7G3
JAN 18 @ 11:38AM
Twitter
Facebook
Identi.ca
Projects
Bloggers’ Rights
Coders’ Rights
Follow EFF
Free Speech Weak Links
Global Chokepoints
HTTPS Everywhere
Open Wireless Movement
Patent Busting
Surveillance Self-Defense
Takedown Hall of Shame
Teaching Copyright
Transparency Project
Ways To Help
Comment by Jack Richard — January 18, 2013 @ 12:15 pm
Jack, Great Stuff……I think his friend gave him the Greatest Compliment and Why Great Companies Treasure the Value of people like Aaron Swartz they are the ones that can make great change in society and their companies and promote new inventions and new ways of looking at and doing business.
“. He was, in the words of his friend Cory Doctorow, a “full-time, uncompromising, reckless and delightful shit-disturber.”
RIP Aaron.
Comment by John — January 18, 2013 @ 9:17 pm
Here’s another shit-disturber they’re after, John:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57564855-93/kim-dotcoms-mega-goes-live/
“When you live in your happy bubble and you have everything you desire and you live a great life, you don’t think about all the nasty shit that is happening. I have a much better understanding now of how the US government operates and how much spying is actually going on, how much privacy intrusion is the reality today … we are very close to George Orwell’s vision becoming a reality.”
“They had a political agenda, plus they had an upcoming election, and they needed an alternative for Sopa,” says Dotcom, in a reference to the ill-fated and draconian Stop Online Piracy Act.”
“In Dotcom’s telling of the story, his travails began when the Motion Picture Association of America hired the veteran former senator Chris Dodd, who used his sway over his longtime ally the vice-president, Joe Biden, to encourage a move on Megaupload. “If you connect all the dots, and you see who the operators are behind all of this, you understand the political scope,” he says.”
Comment by Jack Richard — January 19, 2013 @ 5:31 pm
Thanks, Vigi for publicizing our event to have the community gather to view the inauguration of the President of the United States. I am sure you deliberately got our name wrong, as we are the League of Women Voters, as you know, and I would someday like to introduce you to one of our many Republican members. Not to mention Independents and others. The League is non partisan, always. We never, ever support or oppose a candidate for public office, and when one of our leaders runs for public office they have to leave our Board. Nor do we have elected persons on our board. It is true that many of our positions, arrived at through study, deliberation and consensus, are similar to those held by particular parties, but the study process is strict and totally non-partisan.
I hope you and many others will join us as we gather as proud Americans to observe the inauguration of our President at the main library on Monday morning. It is a momentous event no matter whom is the person being honored to take office as the leader of the free world, and one that is enriched when we gather as a community to witness our democracy (small d) in its finest hour.
Comment by Kate Quick,. — January 19, 2013 @ 8:07 pm
Hmm, just out of curiosity and since you know who of your members are Republicans, Democrats and ‘all of the below’ (since you wish to introduce them), just what is the ratio of lesser parties to the Democrat (large D) majority?
Comment by Jack Richard — January 19, 2013 @ 9:03 pm
Jack, I haven’t really followed what has been going on in regards to copyrights and infringements and patents and who gets protected and who doesn’t. I know many friends that went to China and were able to pick up thousand dollar software packages for a buck or two and different products and there are Container Ships filled to the water line shipping knocked off products worldwide which companies here designed and recieve nothing on these products. It’s interesting where we pick our battles and who we pick them with.
I always get a smile out of Gary Larson’s Farside
We don’t HAVE to be just sheep!
http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrer5qNCs11qlhevqo1_500.jpg
” And now that Edgar’s gone…Somethings going on around here”
http://joyerickson.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/the-far-side2.jpg
Comment by John — January 19, 2013 @ 10:29 pm
Jack….Interesting Times …..Warren Buffet probably had it figured out in 2005.
Trade deficit
Buffett views the United States’ expanding trade deficit as a trend that will devalue the US dollar and US assets. He believes that the US dollar will lose value in the long run, as a result of putting a larger portion of ownership of US assets in the hands of foreigners. In his letter to shareholders in March 2005, Warren Buffett predicted that in another ten years’ time the net ownership of the U.S. by outsiders would amount to $11 trillion.
Americans … would chafe at the idea of perpetually paying tribute to their creditors and owners abroad. A country that is now aspiring to an ‘ownership society’ will not find happiness in – and I’ll use hyperbole here for emphasis – a ‘sharecropping society’.
Author Ann Pettifor has adopted the image in her writings and has stated: “He is right. And so the thing we must fear most now, is not just the collapse of banks and investment funds, or of the international financial architecture, but of a ‘sharecropper society, angry at its downfall”.[152]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett
Comment by John — January 19, 2013 @ 11:25 pm
This might be what is going on with Dotcom and the Motion Picture Association .
Disruptive innovation
Disruptive
An innovation that creates a new market by applying a different set of values, which ultimately (and unexpectedly) overtakes an existing market. (E.g., the lower priced Ford Model T)
The term “disruptive technology” has been widely used as a synonym of “disruptive innovation”, but the latter is now preferred, because market disruption has been found to be a function usually not of technology itself but rather of its changing application. Sustaining innovations are typically innovations in technology, whereas disruptive innovations change entire markets. For example, the automobile was a revolutionary technological innovation, but it was not a disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles. The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the debut of the lower priced Ford Model T in 1908.[2] The mass-produced automobile was a disruptive innovation, because it changed the transportation market. The automobile, by itself, was not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation
Comment by John — January 20, 2013 @ 5:12 am
Re: #5
Quickly, say it again,” The League is non partisan, always.” and “Yes, the League is political. But when we are doing voter education work we are non-partisan. And when we are political (issues only; never candidates for office), we only speak after we have conducted a study on the issue, discussed it from many angles, and arrived at a consensus.” (Quick, sometime in the past)
That means a bunch of Democrats getting together, taking a vote on an issue then calling the result non-partisan.
The first thing one has to understand is that almost all organizations that describes themselves as non-partisan are Democrat and the mainstream media calls them mainstream or non-partisan. Those few conservative organizations that label themselves non-partisan are labeled by the mainstream media as right-wing or conservative.
Though the degree of left-ness may vary between the three levels In the League (National, State, Local) rest assured that in our little village any organization that Jon Spangler belongs to is as left as the inside of a ripe watermelon.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 20, 2013 @ 11:30 am
Jack, some are left, some are right, many are in the middle. Don’t, please, make declarations about who and what we are unless you have participated and have real knowledge. Being political to us means we have opinions, which we only state as an organization if we have conducted a study (looking at all sides of an issue and gathering a lot of information; we are doing a study now on the Initiative and Referendum process in California) and come to consensus about the information and what it means. Partisan, to us, means the organization supports or opposes parties or candidates for office. We don’t do that. Ever. I have never “counted heads” as to who belongs to what party or who might be undeclared in their voter registration, but some people mention their affiliation in conversation, so I do know we are “all over the map” as individuals.
We are doing a community information program next month on the way California has decided to do the health care exchanges under the new Obamacare program. Watch for more information. It will be a great panel. I think the community wants to know what is coming up in this area that will have an effect on them, whether or not they like the concept of Obamacare, since it is going to be a reality for most of us, soon.
Comment by Kate Quick,. — January 20, 2013 @ 3:27 pm
Tell you what, Kate, I’ll join the League if you’ll join the NRA.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 20, 2013 @ 7:31 pm
Another Victory For the Democrats of California.
“Mickelson expects to make ‘drastic’ changes because of political, economic climate
Mickelson made it known on Dec. 18 that he told the Padres he wouldn’t be part of the ownership group after expressing enthusiasm throughout the summer for his possible inclusion. He said on that night, “I’ve been born and raised here, but at this moment I’m not able to make that kind of long-term commitment to the city and to the team.”
“If you add up all of the federal and you look at disibility and unemployment and the social security and the state, my tax rate is 62, 63 percent,” Mickelson said Sunday. “So I’ve got to make some decisions about what I’m going to do.”
The options for Mickelson would seem to be to move to a state with lower taxes or go into some form of retirement.
The San Diego native has won 40 PGA Tour events and four major championships in a 21-year career.”
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jan/20/mickelson-drastic-changes/
Comment by John — January 20, 2013 @ 7:54 pm
Golfing proof that the power to tax is the power to destroy!
Comment by Jack Richard — January 20, 2013 @ 8:33 pm
Jack, When you look at these numbers I don’t think we should look for more ways to drive the people who actually pay taxes out of the state. We are setting up incentives to Not make more money at certain levels and cut their productivity back. i don’t have all the answers and just wonder what this does to the incentive of successful people at different levels. Just like there are incentives not to make more money if you go over a certain level of earnings and will lose your housing subsidizing and food and health care because you make too much.
Interesting Times…..You listen to all our City, County, and State Workers were Wealthy and they are grossly underpaid.
94501 94502 IRS Tax Returns Data
Average Gross Income per Person for ZIP Code 94501 $32,324
Average Gross Income per Person for ZIP Code 94502 $51,184
94501 Income Tax Overview
Total Number of Tax Returns for ZIP Code 94501 [1] 29,743
Total Number of Joint Tax Returns for ZIP Code 94501 9,887
Total Number of Dependents for ZIP Code 94501 8,757
Total Adjusted Gross Income for ZIP Code 94501 1,946,311,056
Average Income per Person for ZIP Code 94501 $32,324
94502 Income Tax Overview
Total Number of Tax Returns for ZIP Code 94502 [1] 6,749
Total Number of Joint Tax Returns for ZIP Code 94502 3,186
Total Number of Dependents for ZIP Code 94502 2,300
Total Adjusted Gross Income for ZIP Code 94502 696,102,161
Average Income per Person for ZIP Code 94502 $51,184
http://www.zip-codes.com/zip-code/94502/zip-code-94502-irs-tax-stats.asp
http://www.zip-codes.com/zip-code/94501/zip-code-94501-irs-tax-stats.asp
Comment by John — January 20, 2013 @ 8:55 pm
‘How Money Walks’ – the migration of the nation’s dollars.
How $2 Trillion Moved Between States, and Why It Matters
Brown says that, according to the IRS, from 1995 to 2010 over $2 trillion and millions of Americans moved between the states.
Two trillion dollars is equivalent to the GDP of California, the ninth largest in the world. Some states, like Florida, saw tremendous gains ($86.4 billion), while others, like New York, experienced massive losses ($58.6 billion). People moved, and they took their working wealth with them.
“And they do move with their wallet, “Brown said, “and the distributions when you step out of your state are not equally distributed around everyone based on available land and general population over the last 15 years.”
The states that are receiving AGI in large numbers are getting it from strong concentrations in places like New York and Palm Beach, Florida (which Florida received 6 billion), and places like Chicago and MN that have people leaving are not just moving to other parts of the Midwest, they are moving to Maricopa County, AZ and Phoenix in particular. As tax rates increase in California, Californians want to stay on the West Coast. They like a desert, dry climate, but they don’t have to stay in California. They go to Vegas and Phoenix and get that, and that’s why Phoenix has gotten 20 percent of all Californians in the last five years, with about half of the other remaining balance going straight to Nevada, which, again, does not have a personal income tax.
The Top 3 State Wealth Losers are New York – California – Illinois.
The Numbers are Substantial
NY 58 Billion
CA 31 Billion
IL 26 Billion
http://www.dailyrecord.us/Story.aspx?id=16807&date=1%2F21%2F2013
http://www.howmoneywalks.com/explore-the-data/
http://www.howmoneywalks.com/
Comment by John — January 21, 2013 @ 5:54 am
Here is another source (though it maybe considered biased since it comes from the Government) of how California compares to the rest of the nation on a number of indicators: http://mikemcmahon.info/LAOCalFacts2012.pdf Overall, California tax rate is above average.
As for Mickelson example cited above, he is self employed and as a result has to pay taxes as an employer and employee which explains why his marginal rate is so high.
Comment by Mike McMahon (@MikeMcMahonAUSD) — January 21, 2013 @ 8:54 am
Except Mickelson’s marginal tax rate is nowhere near the 62% he cites and neither is his effective tax rate.
The “double” SS applies only to the first $110,000 or so of income, at which point his CA effective tax is approx 7% and his federal marginal rate is 25-28% and his effective rate is much lower due to deductions and exemptions. When he gets to the top brackets his marginal rates are a bit over 50% (39 federal and 11-12 CA plus medicare) which is a painful number, but it’s NOT the 62% he claims, it’s quite a bit lower, and even with the high marginal tax rates, his EFFECTIVE rate is lower still, as top federal bracket won’t kick in until $400,000 for single taxpayer. If he did buy the Padres it would be a lot lower as that chunk of his income is mostly capital gains vs. ordinary income, as income from owning a sports team will generally be. (Most profit is a gain on sale, and any districutions he receives can well be structured as ROC. Sportsteams also get massive depreciation benefits).
An interesting discussion could be had about the fairness and wisdom of the tax rates we do pay, but that discussion cannot happen if Mickelson and Dumb & Dumber (aka Jack & John) don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Fox News makes you stupid.
PS I am top bracket tax payer. I hate it. It’s confiscatory. But it ain’t nowhere near what the idiots above think it is.
Comment by Jack Schultz — January 21, 2013 @ 10:39 am
Its just heartbreaking to hear that Phil might have to move because of our unjust tax requirements. Thank God I don’t have those kinds of problems.
Comment by John P.(L) — January 21, 2013 @ 11:12 am
#12. We have aj70′s era 3/4 ton GMC pick up truck with NRA stickers on it in our driveway. It was my dad’s farm truck and we will never get rid of it or take those stickers off of it. I think that is somewhat of a bona fide, Jack. You make way too many assumptions about people who disagree with you. I grew up with guns, but also had a dad who taught us all gun safety and would have disapproved of anyone not in the military having an AK 47, much less high capacity magazines and the rest of that crap people think the second amendment is all about. Oh, he didn’t think we needed to protect ourselves against our own government, either, or black helicopters, or any of that. He did like his guns and he did teach his kids to shoot, including me.
Comment by Kate Quick,. — January 21, 2013 @ 11:42 am
Your a Funny guy Shultz…Don’t watch Fox but I’m sure you do..
Schultz: [Klink is in prison awaiting a possible execution] I have some good news and bad news.
Col. Wilhelm Klink: This time tell me the good news first.
Schultz: You are going to be executed in the morning.
Col. Wilhelm Klink: Then what’s the bad news?
Schultz: They aren’t giving you a blindfold.
Comment by John — January 21, 2013 @ 3:03 pm
Hey Schultz, your words speaking of taxes, “I hate it. It’s confiscatory.” Now the last time I heard ‘confiscatory’ and ‘Hate it’ as applied to taxes was just before a dumb rich guy not like you was leaving California. All I said about taxes was in my #14 above, “the power to tax is the power to destroy,” I didn’t come up with that phrase. I just echoed Chief Justice John Marshal back in 1891 while we were both watching Fox news.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 21, 2013 @ 3:47 pm
Why would these people make these #s up? Because they had good Rabbit Ears to Watch Fox back in 1926
Listed below is from Cal Tax
Our Mission
Founded in 1926, the California Taxpayers Association is the state’s largest and oldest organization representing taxpayers. Established as a nonpartisan, non-profit research and advocacy association, CalTax has a dual mission to guard against unnecessary taxation and to promote government efficiency.
CalTax conducts research and advocacy on significant tax and spending issues in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. CalTax is involved in a variety of activities that impact California taxpayers, including legislative advocacy, regulatory and legal developments, research, media outreach and public education.
CalTax focuses on legislative, tax agency, and local government tax policy deliberations, and we work with CalTax members and industry representatives to combat proposed changes that would increase the cost of doing business in California, while also supporting any changes that would have a positive impact on California taxpayers.
Where Does California Rank?
California is a high-tax state, with some of the steepest sales tax, personal income tax and corporate tax rates in the nation.
For businesses seeking to create jobs for Californians by locating or expanding in the state, taxes can be a major obstacle. California has the third-worst state business tax climate in the nation, according to an October 2012 report from the Tax Foundation, a national tax research organization that tracks state taxes in its 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index.
Here is how California compares to other states in terms of major taxes:
State Sales Tax: Highest in the Nation
California levies a 7.25 percent general sales and use tax on consumers, which is the highest statewide rate in the nation — and the rate will climb to 7.5 percent from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2016, under Proposition 30, approved by voters in the November 2012 election. Local governments are permitted to levy another 1.5 percent. Click here for the State Board of Equalization’s detailed description of the statewide sales and use tax rate, and here for information on additional city and county sales tax rates.
Gasoline Tax: Second Highest in the Nation
California’s combined local, state and federal gasoline taxes total 68.9 cents per gallon, the second highest in the nation, just behind New York (69.7 cents per gallon), according to an October 2012 report by the American Petroleum Institute.
Personal Income Tax: Highest in the Nation
California’s personal income tax has the highest top rate and one of the most highly progressive structures in the nation. After passage of Proposition 30, California’s top rate is 13.3 percent (including the 1 percent surcharge for mental health programs, for all personal income taxpayers with taxable income over $1 million). Hawaii is second, with a top rate of 11 percent. Most small businesses are S Corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships, and pay their business taxes at the rates for individuals, which makes California’s taxes on small businesses some of the most burdensome in the nation. Seven states do not impose a personal income tax.
Corporate Income Tax: Highest in the West
“Corporations looking to relocate, or even establish, a business in the West may shy away from California, as the state’s 8.84 percent flat rate is the highest corporate tax rate in the West,” the Tax Foundation said in 2011. Nothing has changed, as the group’s 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index report shows that other Western states still have much lower corporate tax rates. Nationally, only eight states have a higher top corporate tax rate than California (Alaska, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennslyvania and Rhode Island).
Property Tax: High, Even Under Proposition 13
In its 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index, the Tax Foundation ranks the 50 states on property tax collections per capita. As of July 1, 2012, property taxes in California were $1,458 per capita, ranked 15th highest nationally. Without Proposition 13, the 1978 voter-approved initiative that set limits on property taxes for California property owners, the state likely would rank even worse.
Related stories and resources:
•California Ranks Poorly in Comparison of State Tax Climates
•California Is the Worst at Job Creation, Study Says
•California Prison Workers Are Nation’s Most Expensive
•Top CEOs Rank California as Worst Place for Business; California Ranks Poorly in Business Investment Survey
•Technology Firm Leaving California, Citing High Taxes and Red Tape
•California Loses Another Fortune 500 Headquarters
•California Is One of Five Worst States for Retirees, Kiplinger’s Says
•California Solar Developers Find Better Incentives Elsewhere
•California’s Energy Policies May Lead to More Jobs in Nevada, Silver State Officials Say
Comment by John — January 21, 2013 @ 6:59 pm
Congratulations, John, you’ve just figured out that taxes in California are high (for successful people, not you.) You get an B- in basic googling. Next year sign up for reading comprehension and arithmetic along with gym, gym and basketweaving.
Comment by Jack Schultz — January 21, 2013 @ 7:07 pm
Schultz of course you missed the meeting and the point…….Successful people are leaving and there is a Tipping Point where that trend or behavior crosses a threshold. .Are we there yet…I’m not sure but see signs…Your the Genius …I wouldn’t worry about it……..Your Maxima Cum Laude in being a AH will get you thru…What’s the saying…Even if your a sucessful AH…..Your still a AH…
Comment by John — January 21, 2013 @ 11:21 pm
Interesting blog post from a plotical writer that I respect.
Will Phil Mickelson Go Galt?
Among the sweet and sour sentiments expressed during yesterday’s Inaugural festivities, this bit of news struck a decidedly sour note:
Speaking after Sunday’s Humana Challenge, Mickelson hinted at what could be a “drastic” change for the world of golf, and himself in particular. Thanks to his substantial earnings and his residency in California, Mickelson now falls into two sets of laws that substantially increase his taxes … and he’s not pleased.
“If you add up all the federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and the state, my tax rate’s 62, 63 percent,” he said. “So I’ve got to make some decisions on what I’m going to do.”
Aside from the rather important dual facts that (a) he seems to be conflating marginal and average taxes, likes so many people do, and (b) to pay anything like the rates he’s talking about he’d have to have the most incompetent financial advisers in the world; Mickelson does put a real question on the table. Should we worry that in a progressive tax system extraordinary people will no longer feel a continued financial incentive to do extraordinary things? And if there’s any risk of that, how do we discern the difference between sheer greed (and in the case of people who become insanely rich playing games, perhaps ingratitude) and some presumed rational breaking-point where toil and trouble are no longer worth the effort?
I guess the simple answer to that is: experience will tell. If, somehow, at a time of exceptional concentration of wealth at the top, and of a “winner-take-all economy” in which the Phil Mickelsons of the world are rewarded all out of proportion to any conception of the value they add, people at the top of every occupational category start disappearing, then we’ll know it’s time to reconsider top marginal tax rates. Short of just letting the very rich set their own tax rates (which we’ve indirectly done over the years via campaign contributions and lobbying campaigns, one could argue). there’s no other way to identify optimal marginal tax rates, is there?
So we’ll see. Perhaps Phil Mickelson is just the first well-known Atlas to shrug. Or perhaps he’s an egomaniacal jerk who actually thinks gross income is an accurate measurement of personal worth. Or maybe he’s just a loudmouth who’s already chastising himself for bitching about his after-tax income when his fan-base is mostly composed of people who would accept his job for peanuts, as SBNation’s Emily Kay notes:
Boo-frickin-hoo, Phil. We’re guessing the self-serving gripes of a multimillionaire golfer ranked seventh on Forbes 2012 list of highest-paid athletes, who earned some $47.8 million in prize money and endorsements as of mid-June, won’t sit well with many of his fans who, living and toiling in the real world, can only dream about paydays like the $1.1 million he made for winning last year’s Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.
It’s tempting to say that professional sports, and quite possibly other occupations, might even benefit from greater turnover at the top, giving people who are still motivated by the joy of playing the game a chance. So maybe we can tolerate letting a few gazillionaires drift off to Galt’s Gulch to nurse their wounded pride. It might be just what our economy and society need.
by Ed Kilgore
Comment by Donalda — January 22, 2013 @ 7:54 am
Ed Kilgore is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly. He is is managing editor for The Democratic Strategist, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and a Special Correspondent for The New Republic.
Another objective point of View…LOL
Comment by John — January 22, 2013 @ 9:17 am
If I may interject, Kilgore’s objectivity is besides the point. He’s just one more person who rejects the object of your affection’s abject ignorance of taxes. Objectionable though taxes are, it is dejecting to see ignorant conjecture injected into what could be an interesting conversation.
Comment by Jack Schultz — January 22, 2013 @ 9:28 am
If I counted correctly, that’s 9 “jects” in 2 lines. Not bad #28.
Donalda, Ed Kilgore has obviously never read Atlas Shrugged, or didn’t understand it, because his analogy is faulty. The competent characters who retired to Galt’s Gulch went on strike, & stopped plying their trades entirely. As far as I have heard, Mickelson has no plans to stop golfing, Just plans to be smart about his money.
And Kate, AK-47s are so last century. Everyone’s buying AR-15s now.
Comment by vigi — January 22, 2013 @ 10:12 am
vigi- you are incorrect- Ed Kilgore has read Atlat Shrugged and wriiten extensively about it.
In Galt They Trust
Ayn Rand hated both God and Ronald Reagan. Something to consider for the Tea Partiers. After all, she’d hate them, too.
Ed Kilgore
Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right By Jennifer Burns • Oxford University Press • 2009 • 384 pages • $27.95
Ayn Rand and the World She Made By Anne C. Heller • Nan A. Talese • 2009 • 592 pages • $35
When the novelist, philosopher, and social critic Ayn Rand died in New York in 1982, her world had been reduced to a small group of sycophantic disciples, ironically dubbed “The Collective.” Twenty-plus years later, though, the circle of Rand’s influence is arguably wider than ever. While Rand has never lacked for book sales–the nature of her fiction virtually guarantees a self-renewing audience of underappreciated adolescents and self-righteous business executives–at present, her work is exerting far more political influence than it has enjoyed since the earliest days of American libertarianism. As Jonathan Chait of The New Republic and others have explained, Rand’s denunciations of government taxation and regulation as “looting” and her moral defense of capitalism are crucial to conservative rhetoric these days, especially within the militant “Tea Party” movement.
What a coincidence, then, that two well-researched, serious books on Rand should appear this year. Jennifer Burns, a University of Virginia historian, has penned a fine account of Rand’s life that particularly focuses on her place in the pantheon of the American Right, while veteran magazine editor Anne C. Heller (her resume ranges from The Antioch Review to Lear’s) has written a more conventional biography that thoroughly explores the heretofore darker corners of Rand’s life, including her childhood and adolescence in revolutionary Russia. While neither are Rand disciples (although Burns, unlike Heller, was given access to Rand’s private papers, zealously guarded by her institutional monument, the Ayn Rand Institute), both defend her philosophical originality and her literary talent, and both view her as a tragic figure whose greatness was spoiled by her intolerance for dissent and her abusive private behavior toward her closest associates and potential allies. They also think she has been vindicated by her posthumous impact on the libertarian movement and a variety of writers and entrepreneurs, including the founders of Wikipedia and Craigslist.
But much as Rand craved appreciation for her work (as sadly reflected in the worshipful eyes of The Collective and her bitterness about every negative book review she ever received), it’s hard to imagine that she would have been terribly happy about its current appropriation by a motley assortment of conservative populists, who mix quotes from The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged with Christian Scripture and the less-than-cerebral perspectives of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. In her own view, Rand was nothing if not a systematic philosopher whose ideas demanded an unconditional acceptance of her approach to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, psychology, literature, and politics.
Rand’s famous intolerance should not be dismissed as simply the psychological aberration of a flawed genius. She feared, for good reason, what lesser minds might do with the intellectual dynamite of her work when divorced from its philosophical context. The prophetess of “the virtue of selfishness” made rigorous demands of herself and all her followers to live self-consciously “heroic” lives under a virtual tyranny of reason and self-mastery, and to reject every imaginable natural and supernatural limitation on personal responsibility for every action and its consequences. Take all that away–take everything away that Rand actually cared about–and her fictional work represents little more than soft porn for middle-brow reactionaries who seek to rationalize their resentment of the great unwashed. This is why Rand was so precise about the moral obligations and absolute consistency demanded both of her fictional “heroes” and her acolytes. She hated “second-handers,” people who borrowed others’ philosophies without understanding or following them.
Rand’s biography is rather remarkable. She was born as Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum in the proto-revolutionary year of 1905, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish chemist in St. Petersburg. After a precocious childhood spent in a luxury and privilege that was somewhat undercut by the innate insecurity felt by all Russian Jews, Alissa struggled toward adulthood amid the steady dispossession of her father’s livelihood and property by the Bolsheviks (an early prototype for John Galt, her father refused to work for the state). Having come to hate both the God of Old Russia and the State of the USSR, she escaped Russia in 1926 as a budding Soviet film critic by convincing the authorities that her value to the international revolution would benefit from a brief sojourn in Hollywood. It was a trick: Once in America, she never considered living anywhere else.
Rand arrived in Hollywood with a new name (the origins and meaning of which have been a source of eager and inconclusive debate among her acolytes), a worldview mainly derived from Friedrich Nietzsche, and a fierce determination supported by equally fierce self-regard. A chance encounter with Cecil B. DeMille gained her a toehold in the film industry as a copy-writer (after a brief stint in the wardrobe department), and a glimpse of a handsome young actor named Frank O’Conner eventually gained her the husband she alternately adored and disrespected for 50 years.
For nearly two decades Rand lived a dual life, characterized by frantic and sporadically successful fiction writing and the drudge film work necessary to make ends meet. Her first novel, We the Living (a semi-autobiographical anti-Soviet tale), and her first play, The Night of January 16th (a heavily Nietszchean courtroom drama about a heroically selfish criminal), gave her little purchase outside the film industry. But the 1943 publication of The Fountainhead changed everything. At first (according to both biographers), the book was notorious mainly for its rape scene–a disturbing reflection of the author’s lifelong view of sex and romantic love as inherently involving conquest by men and surrender by women, with both possessing powerful, dueling egos. Gradually, though, it created Rand’s enduring cult following and marked her definitive transition from the highly ideological fiction writer of We the Living to the polemicist utilizing fictional forms that would be fully revealed in her didactic masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged. The Fountainhead also demonstrated the evolution of her world view from an essentially Nietzschean one, focused on adoration of creative, “productive” individuals and contempt for the human herd, to a systematic philosophy she later dubbed “Objectivism.”
The hero of The Fountainhead, iconoclastic architect Howard Roark, reflected this evolution. Beginning as an entirely self-referential and supremely arrogant genius (not to mention rapist), Roark, being prosecuted for dynamiting a public housing project whose design by him had been thoroughly adulterated, delivers an extended courtroom manifesto mirroring his creator’s celebration of rationalism, egoism, and absolute property rights. Roark’s “closing argument,” a précis of Rand’s own thinking on the “virtue of selfishness” and its requirements, won his acquittal from a jury cleverly vetted by his attorney to be “hard-faced.” And it was in every way a precursor to what Rand considered her life’s crowning achievement, “Galt’s Speech” in Atlas Shrugged, published 14 years after The Fountainhead.
Of all Rand’s books, it is Atlas Shrugged that remains most influential today. Galt’s 60-page radio address to a dystopic, socialist America, offering on behalf of the “thinkers” he has led “on strike” to save the country in exchange for the adoption of a thoroughly capitalist system, is the source of contemporary conservative threats to “Go Galt” by withholding productivity from a society peopled and governed by parasites and “looters.” Galt and the other capitalist heroes of Atlas Shrugged were endlessly eloquent in attributing every social evil to “altruism,” the belief that any human being owed any sacrifice to any other, as reflected in the two great ideological errors of religion (“the mysticism of the mind”) and socialism (“the mysticism of the muscle”).
But it was in the long, painful process of creating Atlas Shrugged that Rand, according to both Burns and Heller, began to show emotional and behavioral traits that not only curtailed her influence during her later life, but betrayed her own philosophy of supreme reason, self-mastery, and respect for the autonomy of others.
The primary evidence usually cited for Rand’s betrayal of her own principles is the now-infamous and frequently creepy love affair she conducted for 14 years with her youthful “intellectual heir,” Nathaniel Branden, nee Nathan Blumenthal, beginning in 1954. Reflecting Rand’s views on romantic love as the reification of one’s idealized self (and thus as an ethical imperative), the couple insisted their spouses explicitly condone, and keep secret, their relationship. Before and after Rand’s death, Branden (a name chosen by Blumenthal to exhibit his love for Rand, and an anagram, according to Heller, for the Jewish formulation “ben Randen,” or “son of Rand”) and his wife, Barbara, whose friends and relatives heavily populated The Collective, together built a small empire of Objectivist discipline and instruction. Most of this empire was centered in the Rand-authorized Nathanial Branden Institute, which began as the vehicle for live lectures by Branden and Rand herself on topics ranging from Aristotle to literary theory. It eventually sponsored “classes” in which students around the country would gather around a tape recorder to listen to Their Masters’ Voices.
In both biographies, Rand’s relationship with the Brandens is treated as largely spoiling her life and her subsequent influence. Her emotional and intellectual dependence on their worshipful regard for her, their busy and successful proselytizing activities through the institute and the official house organ, The Objectivist, and their hostility to Rand’s critics drew her into an ever-tightening and paranoid circle. By the late 1960s, there was virtually no subject imaginable that did not have an authorized Objectivist point of view, enforced pitilessly by Branden–including such unlikely subjects as classical music (Bach: bad; Beethoven: good). The weekly Saturday night meetings of Rand with The Collective in her small, smoke-filled Manhattan apartment turned into hellish criticism and self-criticism sessions in which unlucky members were challenged to “check their premises” and measure every detail of their lives against Objectivist principles and the heroic figures of Rand’s novels. Indeed, Rand’s characters ultimately became more vivid and relevant to her and her followers than the people they encountered in actual life. As Burns observes,
When [Rand] stopped writing novels she continued to live in the imaginary worlds she had created, finding her characters as real and meaningful as the people she spent time with every day. Over time she retreated even further into a universe of her own creation, joined there by a tight band of intimates who acknowledged her as their chosen leader.
This “universe of her own creation” collapsed in 1968 when she discovered that Branden, her own John Galt and the man to whom she had dedicated Atlas Shrugged, had been carrying on a clandestine affair with a much younger and decidedly non-intellectual woman, exposing himself as the very antithesis of the systematically rational and ideal-loving übermensch Rand adored. Indeed, she had been spending long hours during the early to mid 1960s counseling him about his emotional and sexual problems (with her, and with his own wife), while seeking to lure him back to her bed, unaware that his inability to be her lover in any sense of the word disguised a long pattern of deception.
Rand’s subsequent and highly public (though oblique, since she never acknowledged her affair with him) excommunication of the Brandens from her movement and her life roiled Objectivist circles for years. It also provided a loyalty test even more rigorous than full fidelity to Rand’s philosophy and polyglot opinions. Well after Rand’s death, her many detractors were fed a rich diet of scandal and hypocrisy when the Brandens, long divorced, published their own memoirs and disclosed all the sexual details of Nathaniel’s twice-weekly trysts with Rand, conducted in every available corner of Rand’s own apartment (while her once-adored husband, Frank, sat in quiet but tormented exile in a neighborhood bar). Barbara, who had reconciled with Rand weeks before the fading genius’s death, made a particular impression with her Passion of Ayn Rand, subsequently dramatized in a sexually explicit cable television movie, an ironic if probably unconscious echo of its subject’s strong roots in the film industry.
Once revealed after her death, Rand’s unheroic personal life, combined with her ideological self-isolation from anyone questioning her authority on any subject, consolidated her reputation among her followers as someone to be admired from afar and emulated selectively. Burns’s book pays particular attention to her frosty relationship with the libertarian movement that viewed her work as a–perhaps the–crucial formative influence. She repeatedly denounced the nascent Libertarian Party of the early 1970s as “hippies,” “scum,” and “plagiarists,” in no small part because of their selective appropriation of her philosophy. As her own productivity declined in the years just prior to her death, and as Objectivism became a fixed system, she seemed to fear the “looting” of her work by self-styled admirers even more than the “looting” of her income by the state.
Rand went to especially extravagant lengths to deny any association with American conservatism. In 1962, she hurled this anathema in The Objectivist Newsletter: “Objectivists are not ‘conservatives.’ We are radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for the philosophical base which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to perish.” She absolutely loathed the central organ of American conservatism, National Review, saying this in 1964:
I consider National Review the worst and most dangerous magazine in America…[b]ecause it ties capitalism to religion. The ideological position of National Review amounts, in effect, to the following: In order to accept freedom and capitalism, one has to believe in God or in some form of religion, some form of supernatural mysticism.
And she particularly hated the man who became the Holy Father of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century U.S. conservatism, Ronald Reagan. In 1976, as Burns reports, she urged readers to oppose his campaign for president. “I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan,” she wrote, calling him a conservative in “the worst sense of the word,” because he backed a mixed economy and opposed abortion rights.
Rand’s disdain for religion was as integral to her philosophy as her disdain for anything that remotely smacked of socialism. That’s made very clear in what she regarded as the most important writing of her life, Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged: “[T]here are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness. Both demand the surrender of your mind.”
To Rand, those who accepted “enslavement” to God–or for that matter, such conservative totems as family or tradition–had no moral standing to pose as fighters against socialism. This premise, more than any personal weaknesses, probably best explains her violent opposition to partial appropriation of her philosophy to suit the needs of the appropriator. As she said in 1966, “There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.”
Unfortunately for Rand’s posthumous wishes, the appropriation of her philosophy among today’s populist conservatives is full of compromises and incongruous combinations. From the other side of the divide on the American Right, Joe Carter of the influential Christian conservative journal First Things recently had this to say about the indiscriminate scrambling of right-wing memes in the Tea Party movement and beyond:
[T]he truth is the vast majority of the right subscribes to a form of libertarian populism inflected with social conservative attachments–an unholy hybrid of Ayn Rand, William Jennings Bryan, and Morton Downey, Jr.
That certainly sounds like the Tea Party movement, where participants demand all sorts of contradictory things for contradictory reasons, mostly lower taxes and larger government benefits for “deserving” people. And a Republican Party that now counts the Tea Party folk as one of two pillars–along with the Christian Right–of its popular support, all worshiping at the shrine of Ronald Reagan, is hardly a political institution that Rand could have in any way supported. If, against all her expectations, there is an afterlife, the adoption of Rand’s work by people she would have intensely disliked must be sheer hell. She is probably a most unhappy ghost at the tea party.
Comment by Donalda — January 22, 2013 @ 11:22 am
Atlas (not Atlat)- bad finger, bad finger
Comment by Donalda — January 22, 2013 @ 11:23 am
Badfinger and Rand are both tiresome schlock
Comment by Jack Schultz — January 22, 2013 @ 11:32 am
A small tangent, but I listened to Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on radio this a.m. talking about his book promoting benevolent capitalism (“Conscious Capitalism”) as some sort of natural law. The guy is maddening because he is willfully ignorant, naive and obtuse in turns. Any time he was asked a question which challenged his premises he tried to deflect them by wholesale denial any valid point had been presented, pretending to not get what was being asked as if it lacked any basic logic. He deflected every attempt at a direct criticism. As much as Mackey may have some good instinct for basic tenants of capitalism, his thinking seems muddled as is his capacity for critical thought. Can’t help think Rand would have disdained him as fuzzy headed hippie as she did early Libertarians, as per post 30.. Not that that should matter since she was a narcissistic freak, just ironic for poor Mackey.
Ayn Rand = malignant narcissism .
Comment by M.I. — January 22, 2013 @ 12:36 pm
1. 5, 10, 11, 20:
Jack and Vigi,
I do happen to know that there are both Republicans and Democrats in the LWVA here in town, FWIW. But partisan labels matter far less in the League than you might imagine, because the League of Women Voters (LWV) is,indeed, a nonpartisan and 501 (c) (3) organization:
http://www.lwv.org/content/about-us
At its core, the LWV is based on rational, deliberative, and exhaustive discourse, which seems to run counter to the NRA’s basic genes, at least in the past few decades. (Witness the NRA’s official responses to the Newtown shootings and the subsequent invitations to engage in reasonable and rational dialog and engagement, which the NRA refused outright. (As a gun owner I have no interest in being a part of any organization like the NRA that seems to be based on irrational premises.)
You–and anyone else who wished to–are most welcome to join the LWV if you want to support open, honest, and accountable government, voter education and empowerment, and are willing to engage in the sometimes-painstaking depth of nonpartisan study and consideration required to discuss and decide matters in “the League way.”
But don’t think for a minute that it is as easy as making superficial propositions (Your #12: “Tell you what, Kate, I’ll join the League if you’ll join the NRA”) or ad hominem attacks on watermelons–or me–in lieu of engaging in a genuine and respectful conversation.
Being the openly knee-jerk and unapologetic liberal that I am, I find that the League’s careful and considerate approach to public issues and politics is often extremely taxing. But it is also good for me to have to fairly consider all of the facts surrounding an issue before I make up my mind. The LWV’s approach also reminds me of the now-much-diminished “objective” school of news reporting practiced by my father and many of his peers for many decades. Neither process is easy or simplistic but both are ultimately very rewarding.
You and others can learn more about League membership here:
http://alameda.ca.lwvnet.org/join.html
Respectfully yours,
Jon
Comment by Jon Spangler — January 22, 2013 @ 2:44 pm
34: I meant to write, “But partisan labels matter far less in the League than you might imagine, because the League of Women Voters of Alameda (LWVA) is,indeed, a nonpartisan and NONPROFIT 501 (c) (3) organization…”
Comment by Jon Spangler — January 22, 2013 @ 2:46 pm
300 AAC Blackout AR-15 upper firing 220 grain subsonic cartridges, Vigi, that’s 21st century’s latest. Vince Flynn’s even using that setup in his latest Mitch Rapp. Developed for Mil Special ops. Pea shooter 5.56mm don’t get the job done.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 22, 2013 @ 3:36 pm
Jon Spangler
If your piece was respectful, why do you besmirch an organization that’s been around 142 years, born in the aftermath of the civil war (compared to the paltry 93 years for League), has close to 5,000,000 members (compared to a paltry 150,000 in the League) and has reached out to millions of Americans to help make and keep them safe, free and vigilant?
What’s the League’s position on the 2nd Amendment?
Have you ever raised your right hand to solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic Jon?
Comment by Jack Richard — January 22, 2013 @ 5:46 pm
This guy is Quite the AH..We don’t want people living in California who do this.
Phil Mickelson’s Charities
<< Back to Phil Mickelson's Player Page
Birdies for the Brave
A PGA TOUR Charities, Inc. program, Birdies for the Brave is the PGA TOURâs primary vehicle for supporting the brave men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces and their families. Since 2005, the TOUR has joined with PGA TOUR players, corporate partners, TPC club members, fans and TOUR employees to raise millions of dollars for military home front groups that provide vital services and programs for military men and women and their families.
——————————————————————————–
Homes for Our Troops Inc.
We are Homes for Our Troops, a national non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2004. We are strongly committed to helping those who have selflessly given to our country and have returned home with serious disabilities and injuries since September 11, 2001. It is our duty and our honor to assist severely injured Servicemen and Servicewomen and their immediate families by raising donations of money, building materials and professional labor and to coordinate the process of building a home that provides maximum freedom of movement and the ability to live more independently.
——————————————————————————–
Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy
You learn a lot of cool stuff from your teachers everyday. But where do teachers go to learn more about stuff like math and science? Some teachers get to go to the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy. The Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy is a cool summer camp just for teachers! At the Academy, teachers do lots of fun math and science experiments to share with you in the classroom. The experiments seem like games, but really they help everyone learn about math and science! The Academy was started by pro golfer Phil Mickelson and his wife, Amy. They worked with ExxonMobil to create a special learning environment for teachers. They are joined by math and science experts from the National Science Teachers Association and Math Solutions who teach the teachers at the Academy. They come up with fun ways to learn math and science while playing with balloons, rocket cars and marbles. Anything is possible in math and science!
——————————————————————————–
Phil and Amy Mickelson Charitable Foundation
——————————————————————————–
Special Operations Warrior Foundation
The Special Operations Warrior Foundation provides full scholarship grants and educational and family counseling to the surviving children of special operations personnel who die in operational or training missions and immediate financial assistance to severely wounded special operations personnel and their families.
Related News
Phil and Amy Mickelson host “Birdies for the Brave” Military Appreciation Gala and Golf Event at TPC Sawgrass 11/30/2012
VIDEO: Phil Mickelson's "KPMG Chip4Charity" during Chargers-Broncos game nets $50,000 for charity 10/16/2012
Vince Gill and Darius Rucker headline concert on Dec. 1 in Jacksonville to benefit Birdies for the Brave 10/04/2012
Mickelsons' Birdies for the Brave auction offers chance to play with golf stars 09/20/2012
Mickelson fundraising auction benefiting military offers Ryder Cup opportunity 09/10/2012
Phil and Amy Mickelson, Jim and Cathy Justice and The Greenbrier Classic launch online auction benefiting Birdies for the Brave 08/23/2012
Phil and Amy Mickelson Announce Fundraiser Benefiting Birdies for the Brave 05/08/2012
Mickelson, KPMG Pair for Charitable Campaign to Provide Thousands of Books to Children in Need 03/29/2012
Mickelson's Player of the Month Bonus Goes to a Charity Close to Home 03/07/2012
Mickelsons Again Assist Educational Pursuits 08/20/2011
See More Related News
Comment by John — January 22, 2013 @ 6:11 pm
I would rather get the Views of what is wrong about his thinking of the world and all they contribute to society at the Circle Jerk of Jon Spangler, Schultz and Donaldo. Who wouldn’t.
Comment by John — January 22, 2013 @ 6:24 pm
When John sinks to misspelling your name on purpose, you know you have won the discussion. Never having met Mr. Spangler or Mr. Schultz in person (perhaps at a charity event on the island?), I still feel honored to be included in their company.
Comment by Donalda — January 22, 2013 @ 6:43 pm
John, Mickelson didn’t golf that himself! His third grade teacher caught him flicking spitballs with his finger so he changed to flicking them with his pencil.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 22, 2013 @ 7:03 pm
Donal-do…….They will be easy to spot…..They are in the Self Back Patting Section at most functions…Don’t be late because their batteries run low on their self back patting machines. But being environmental friendly they now can run them by converting their own methane gas into electricity to run them..
Comment by John — January 22, 2013 @ 9:32 pm
No apology necessary from Phil Mickelson, who has every right to complain about California tax hike
Mickelson lives in the biggest tax-and-spend state in the country whose income tax rates were already the nation’s highest before Proposition 30 soaked high wage-earners even more. He has the perfect right to feel he is over-taxed.
A huge chunk of Phil Mickelson’s earnings go to the tax man.
Tiger Woods can relate to Phil Mickelson’s tax predicament, says he moved out of California years ago to avoid state’s high taxes-
. .Phil Mickelson being Phil Mickelson, he issued an apology Tuesday for insensitively airing his tax concerns.
If you were “upset” or “insulted” in any way, the lefthander wants you to know he intends not to let it happen again.
Upset? Insulted? Mickelson doesn’t have to apologize for anything. It’s almost more offensive that he feels compelled to apologize. He said nothing wrong. The worst thing he’s guilty of is a minor public relations gaffe.
Mickelson lives in the biggest tax-and-spend state in the country whose income tax rates were already the nation’s highest before Proposition 30 soaked high wage-earners even more. He has the perfect right to feel he is over-taxed. And if he wants to consider joining a list of some 3.4 million who have left the state because of the cost of living there, he can do it without being pounced on.
California native Tiger Woods admitted Tuesday he escaped in 1996. Mickelson never left.
The big to-to, of course, is that Mickelson made over $60 million for hitting a small ball around a big green landscape on mostly bright, sunny days. Lots of class warriors consider it poor form for a rich guy like him to complain about finances or even to take his kitchen table conversations outside. Suck it up, they would say.
But he wasn’t crying poverty. He wasn’t blaming anybody or asking for asking for anybody’s sympathy. And if there are any critics out there who gleefully want to hand over more than half of what they make to the government, they should all make themselves known before the debt ceiling debate.
Let’s look at Mickelson’s “controversial” quotes from Sunday. He said he might have to make “drastic changes” because he was in the “(income) zone” being “targeted both federally and by the state” and that it “doesn’t work” for him right now.
Wow. You can’t get more offensive and insulting than that.
Granted, it’s a little surprising because Mickelson is usually careful enough to steer clear of controversial subjects, certainly those outside of golf. For instance, Mickelson played on the same high school and college golf teams as Scott Peterson, the fiend on death row for the 2002 murder of his wife, Laci. When asked for a comment on the same guy who was standing in front of him in his high school yearbook picture, Mickelson famously said, “Well, I really don’t remember Scott.”
Supposedly, Mickelson has been stewing about the tax situation for weeks and he got hit with the right question at the wrong time. It’s also interesting that we want our athletes to answer questions and when they give an honest answer, we jump all over them, especially, we suppose, when they make $60 mil a year.
At least in Mickelson’s case, he’s come by his money honestly. He’s one of the best golfers of his generation and when he endorses something, he doesn’t do it half-way. His sponsors are all thrilled with how he represents them. He’s one of the most generous PGA Tour players with both his money and his time and he does much of it under the radar.
In reality, Mickelson probably isn’t going to leave California. He loves the place too much. He would have left by now.
He was frustrated. He was asked a question. He said something he later wished he didn’t. Big deal. Let’s not make him into Bernie Madoff.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/gola-mickelson-apologize-tax-rant-article-1.1245390#ixzz2Im4xZfFA
-rant-article-1.1245390#ixzz2Im4jLrPY
Comment by John — January 22, 2013 @ 9:47 pm
Great PR for Beating this Dead Horse for California
Tiger Woods can relate to Phil Mickelson’s tax predicament, says he moved out of California years ago to avoid state’s high taxes
Mickelson’s comments on such a politically charged topic as tax hikes rankled some. He said he might have to make ‘drastic changes’ in the wake of increased federal and state taxes
LA JOLLA, Calif. — While Phil Mickelson was issuing an apology for going public with his frustrations over California’s tax laws, Tiger Woods Tuesday admitted he moved out of his native state to avoid its higher taxes.
“Well, I moved out of here back in ’96 for that reason,” said Woods, who set up residence in Florida, which has no state income tax. “I enjoy Florida but also I understand what he was, I think, trying to say. I think he’ll explain it better and in a little more detail.”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/phil-tiger-found-california-taxing-article-1.1245450#ixzz2Im8j2SQy
Comment by John — January 22, 2013 @ 9:59 pm
Donalda: Just b/c someone has written extensively [& may I add, apparently mostly to show off his vocabulary] about a subject does not mean he knows what he’s talking about. The references you provide are both 2009? If you would like to read a review that is less polemical & more dispassionate, may I suggest “The Passion of Ayn Rand” by Barbara Branden [Nat's wife]. Don’t fret; it’s not nearly as long as “Atlas”. And, she was there.
Comment by vigi — January 23, 2013 @ 11:07 am
#45 especially since the relationship/friendship between Brandens and Rand ended so very well. especially the whole affair with Nat thing and that well-known compassion for her fellow man. She certainly should be the beacon to the Christian right that she seems to be (insert snicker here).
Actually I found that book underwhelming to say the least and for the record, if we judged a person’s intellect as deficient because of how well they can use language – then both you and I am must not be too bright.
Comment by Donalda — January 23, 2013 @ 12:41 pm
More of what we can expect: Starting Today, It’s Illegal to Unlock Your Cellphone!
http://a.abcnews.com/images/Technology/gty_locked_smart_phone_jt_130125_wg.jpg
Comment by Jack Richard — January 26, 2013 @ 12:34 pm
Jack, but I don’t see what these guys are doing is going to help matters……..Except seeing how vulnerable we really are……
Anonymous Hijacks Federal Website, Threatens DOJ Document Dump
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/01/anonymous-hijacks-federal-website-threatens-doj-document-dump/
Comment by John — January 26, 2013 @ 6:25 pm
Hackers are way ahead of the curve, John. They’re not interested in helping matters, they’re interested in keeping the Internet free and the government vulnerable and subservient to those whom they govern.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 26, 2013 @ 7:29 pm