Monthly Archives: December 2012

View 754 Friday, December 21, 2012

WINTERSET

I am pleased to tell you that we have passed both dawn and noon local time in the Mayan palaces, temples, and pyramids in Yucatan, and the world does not seem to have ended. Edgar Cayce predicted the rise of Atlantis with resulting tsunamis creating disasters on the Atlantic coast, and some time later – I’d have some warning – on the Pacific coast. I am pleased to say that so far there is no sign of that happening. Alas, Cayce wasn’t so exact as he might have been, and the rising of Atlantis may not happen until the opening of the New Cycle.

Tomorrow morning begins a new Long Count cycle under the Mayan Long Count calendar. Each cycle lasts 1,366,560 days. The Romans used to have the Secular Games (you see remnants of them in Catholic Jubilee years) which by law were “something no living man has seen, and no man living will see again.” I think a 1,366,560 day cycle qualifies.

The Republican Plan B which would halt the tax rise (average of $3500 annually per household) in 2013 for everyone making under $1,000,000 a year, but would allow the rate for those making a million a year to revert to the previous level before the Bush Tax Cuts could not get enough Republican votes to pass. It was doomed in the Senate and President Obama had said he would veto it, but the Speaker apparently thought he had enough votes to get it through the House.

The plan was to present the coming tax crisis as the Democrats’ fault for rejecting Plan B.

The Club for Growth, a tax cut advocacy group which preceded the Tea Party and is not a part of the Tea Party movement, had this to say:

“Like many of you, we at the Club have been watching the ongoing debate over the “fiscal cliff” closely. A brief reminder of how we got here: President Obama and Republicans in Congress agreed to a 2-year extension of the Bush tax rates two years ago, and then pushed through a deal to raise the federal debt limit last summer that created “sequestration” or automatic spending cuts if a so-called “super committee” couldn’t reach a deal on deficit reduction. The combination of tax increases and spending cuts set to happen at the beginning of January 2013 is a culmination of these two deals in what is now known as the “fiscal cliff.”

The Club opposed the August 2011 debt limit deal because it raised the debt ceiling without structural reform (like a Balanced Budget Amendment). We firmly believed that Congress would never allow sequestration to happen, and that all we’d be left with is trillions in new debt.

Earlier this week, after publicly putting tax increases and yet another increase in the debt limit on the table during negotiations with President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would put forward a proposal to raise marginal income tax rates, as well as rates on capital gains and dividends. He called this anti-growth tax increase “Plan B.”

Thanks to members of the House, elected with Club PAC support, the Plan B tax increase was defeated. Fiscal conservatives revolted, and Speaker Boehner was forced to pull the bill. The Speaker even tried to “buy” votes by including spending increases that broke the sequestration deal (just as we predicted).

Lawmakers now need to focus on the long term pro-growth solutions to grow our economy and reform entitlements instead of their myopic concerns of how polls will blame them tomorrow, next week, next month, or ahead of the next election. The standard by which we should measure legislation is not whether it generates revenue to the government. Instead, the paramount consideration should be whether it promotes growth and reduces the size of government.

The Club will continue to closely monitor the progress of Congress and urge Senators and Representatives to find a pro-growth solution to the fiscal cliff. Stay tuned.”

The Republicans now seem determined to allow the US to go over the financial cliff, since it is unlikely that any Republican Bill that has any chance of passage in the House will be acceptable to the Democrats. It is not clear whether the Democrats can concoct a bill that could attract enough Republican votes to pass, but it is not impossible.

The “financial cliff” that will take effect on January 1 is the reversion to the Clinton era tax rates before the Bush tax cuts, and the sequestration of funds that automatically takes place due to the Republican/Democrat compromise bill that raised the debt limit ceiling. The Act makes many drastic cuts in Federal spending – actual cuts, not merely reductions in planned increases – but does not affect Federal employee pay or pensions. It makes large cuts in military spending, but not in military pay. Medicaid, Social Security, and veteran benefits are not affected. There are those who say that blanket cuts in Federal spending would be a Good Thing.

Note that the Federal Zero Interest Rate policy is not affected; this policy has enormous effects on investment strategies. Do note that everyone who holds cash is subject to a 2.5% tax on total cash holdings (including money in checking accounts) and in general the return on savings accounts doesn’t cover inflation either.

The financial cliff includes taxes on medical devices; it is not clear why pacemakers, crutches, splints, ankle braces, replacement knees and hips, and so forth deserve a special tax and should be made more expensive. Since a great deal of the cost of such devices is borne by Medicare and Medicaid, and thus the tax is paid by the Federal Government, the effect is a rise in costs for those covered by private insurance or by their own bank accounts; which may in fact be the purpose of the tax, which seems to be inserted by those who favor increased government control of medical care.

Once we go over the cliff, the Democrats will propose “tax cuts for the middle class” and will probably gain a great deal of credit for having done so. They repeal the Bush tax cuts and later come up with Obama tax cuts. The Republicans do not seem to have made many political gains from being responsible for the Bush Tax Cuts (which the upcoming Obama Tax Cuts will probably not match – he wants more revenue, and it’s easier to get that from the middle class) but it is likely that Obama will get a lot of credit for his. So it goes.

Of course the Senate has not passed a budget for years. It will be interesting to see if it can do so.

Under the Constitution no money can be drawn from the public treasury except through a law that originates in the House of Representatives and which has been passed by the Senate.

The NRA position is that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

It hasn’t said much about who the bad guys and who the good guys are. King George and Lord Germain undoubtedly had different ideas from those of Samuel Adams and George Washington.

And when we disarmed they sold us
And delivered us bound to our foes…

It is evening and the world has not yet ended. I suspect most of us will still be here tomorrow. The days will begin to be longer, and another year begin. Or another Long Cycle if you are a Mayan astrologer. Happy New Year.

I continue to point out that if we took $10,000 from each of the 2% of Americans every year, that would amount to $62 Billion a year; about the amount the US borrows every month. Not insignificant, but also not likely we can get that much more from people already paying taxes at the current rate.

View 754 Wednesday, December 19, 2012

A WARNING

I got this email today:

: Warning: My email was hijacked by a SPAMBOT

This morning I opened an email from an old friend. It held one line that said "Hey, check this out" and a link to an article on MSN. I opened the article.

Evidently the article was a SPAMBOT. Soon thereafter I found numerous MAILER-DAEMON "DELIVERY FAILED" notices in my inbox. The evidence is that the SPAMBOT illegally used my e-address to propagate SPAM to those on my address book.

If you see an email from me in your inbox with the subject "Hey!", DO NOT OPEN IT! Delete it.

Thank you.

As it happens I had already received the deadly message purportedly from him, and I had marked it to be looked at later when I had time. I had not opened it but I might have. I don’t know what would have happened. In another time I’d have gone to a quarantined machine and opened it just to see what would happen, but I don’t do so much of that any more.

The site that leads to is http://msn. msnbc. msnbc- news3. com/jobs/ which I include so you can see that on first look it appears harmless, but on examination is fairly suspicious. In any event, stay away from it unless you are an expert at this sort of thing.

The subject of the message (at the moment) is Hey!  The message will come from someone who has your email address.  I think not from me; I never visited that site and I see no signs of anything out of the ordinary here. But be careful.

I am working on my essays, but I have been slowed down by many matters, some pleasant and some not so much so.

I also have to do a piece on the state of “mental health science” and the impulse to change the law. The Newtown school massacre has sparked two movements for federal legislation: one to limit possession of guns, the other to expand federal control over persons likely to commit crimes and expand federal power on “helping” people with “mental health problems.” Both are pernicious. The states have plenty of power in these matters. There is no need for new Federal legislation.

Of course the greatest influx of assault weapons into the hands of criminals was Operation Fast and Furious in which a Federal Agency under the supervision of the Department of Homeland Security arranged for more than 2500 AK-47 Assault Rifles to be passed along to Mexican criminal organizations. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I would bet that more than 27 people have already been killed by those Us Government Issued weapons than were killed at the Connecticut school – and of course the Fast and Furious count is not done yet.

As to the confiscation of weapons, it was said well enough long ago. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail269.html#copybook

Kipling’s poem, which we ought to read at frequent intervals, is also here, with some appropriate illustrations: http://andstillipersist.com/2012/11/the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings-illustrated/

And when we disarmed they sold us
And delivered us bound to our foes…

When I was in graduate school I became involved in the movement to limit mental health detentions. As Professor Cole put it, do not people have a right to be punished, rather than locked up forever for their own good? One case was that of a man who pleaded guilty to a sex crime for urinating on a school wall at a time when there were pupils present but he wasn’t aware of that: they were peering at him through a hedge. He was sent to Atascadero essentially at the pleasure of the State of California, and remained there for 10 years until he finally found someone interested in taking his case. He was drunk on beer at the time, and it was 0830 in the morning. He had not exposed himself to anyone before and was embarrassed. He had not realized that his guilty plea was to a sex crime and made him a lifetime sex offender.

Fifty years ago there were many cases like that, madhouses full of people who had long since ceased to be threats to themselves or others, but who were very useful as unpaid orderlies and attendants (trustees, of course) in the asylums.

We also had the Cold War, and the famous cases of people in the USSR sent to mental health hospitals for treatment for their dissent from Communism.

The result was a movement that did justice to a number of people who possibly deserved punishment, but their punishment became life sentences. Unfortunately the pendulum swung too far. From prohibiting imprisonment of sane people in madhouses it swung to abolishing the madhouse as if there were no madmen.

In those days before the reforms a panel of three, one policeman, one psychiatrist, and one official of an institution for treatment of mental disorders could commit someone for years. No judge and jury. Just a panel of experts.

Again the pendulum swung too far. Rather than tighten up the criteria for involuntary commitment, and possibly inserting some kind of judge and jury into the system for long term commitment particularly in cases in which there had not been a crime, only odd behavior, it became very difficult to put away people who were clearly out of their minds, and almost certainly dangers to themselves if not others – dangers to themselves if only because they could not refrain from driving others, like shop keepers, into fits of rage.

None of this is simple. Locking people away is a serious matter. So is madness. And the state of the sciences is such that we really don’t know what we’re doing. It is true that psychiatric medicines – meds – have changed schizophrenia from dementia praecox – young onset dementia – into something that can be ameliorated and possibly controlled. At one time a diagnosis of schizophrenia was essentially a diagnose of lifetime psychosis since there was no known cure or even amelioration, either on the medical side or among the various schools of psychotherapy from Freud to Rogers to Horney to – well, you get the idea.

Now the MD’s can prescribe meds which sometimes have real effects. They don’t precisely cure but they do arrest the deterioration, and some people on meds can function in a way nearly indistinguishable from those who don’t have one or another of the disorders. I decline to get into specifics here. I’m way out of date. The DSM didn’t really exist when I studied abnormal psychology in grad school. Of course there is a good argument that the DSM was essentially a device for the convenience of insurance companies and mental health practitioners who could put in labels for getting paid by someone other than the patient; but that’s another conversation.

I don’t think anyone has a solution to the problem of detecting and deterring mad killers. I do think that leaving it to the states, with some possibilities of intervention by the federal courts on behalf of those involuntarily committed, is a deeply flawed system – but far better than anything we could get from a Congress advised by “mental health experts.”

We are, after all, dealing with fundamental matters of freedom. What is one free to do? At what point have you made it clear that you are a real danger to the world although you have not yet harmed anyone? These are matters of deep concern for those who love freedom.

Freedom is not free. And eternal vigilance remains the price of liberty.

We do not teach poetry in school any longer. When I was in school from first grade through high school graduation we read numerous poems, and were required to memorize and recite some of them. It is a practice that might be reinstituted. See my references to Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings above.

I was recently reminded of this by Longfellow. At one time half the people in this nation could have recited it. Many who have never heard the entire poem will find familiar lines and phrases.

A PSALM OF LIFE

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
                    SAID TO THE PSALMIST

    TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
        Life is but an empty dream ! —
    For the soul is dead that slumbers,
        And things are not what they seem.

    Life is real !   Life is earnest!
        And the grave is not its goal ;
    Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
        Was not spoken of the soul.

    Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
        Is our destined end or way ;
    But to act, that each to-morrow
        Find us farther than to-day.

    Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
        And our hearts, though stout and brave,
    Still, like muffled drums, are beating
        Funeral marches to the grave.

    In the world’s broad field of battle,
        In the bivouac of Life,
    Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
        Be a hero in the strife !

    Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant !
        Let the dead Past bury its dead !
    Act,— act in the living Present !
        Heart within, and God o’erhead !

    Lives of great men all remind us
        We can make our lives sublime,
    And, departing, leave behind us
        Footprints on the sands of time ;

    Footprints, that perhaps another,
        Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
    A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
        Seeing, shall take heart again.

    Let us, then, be up and doing,
        With a heart for any fate ;
    Still achieving, still pursuing,
        Learn to labor and to wait.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

http://andstillipersist.com/2012/11/the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings-illustrated/

View 754 Sunday, December 16, 2012

Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, has announced that she will introduce a bill to ban assault rifles on the first day of the new Congress. This will begin a new round of the move to disarm American citizens, as the people of Great Britain were disarmed following the slaughter of children in a school in Scotland in 1996. It was my understanding that the Bushmaster at Sandy Hook was found in the automobile, not in the killer’s hands, but of course that may have been another false report; but he didn’t need the rifle. The two pistols with multiple magazines would have been more than sufficient.

I point out that a majority of Swiss households have assault rifles and ammunition readily available – indeed they are required to have them.

And far more than 20 school age children were killed by automobiles than by guns last year– indeed, cars are the leading cause of death for children of any age, and have been for a long time.

The Sandy Hook massacre will spark a new round of political debate, and it will be used in every political discussion for a year or more.

There are about 350 million Americans. Two percent are said to earn more than $200,000 a year, and raising taxes on them is a sine qua non for the President. It’s the only way to pay off the debts and continue to entitlements. Two percent of that is 7 million people. If we levied an additional $10,000 on each and every one of them, and all of that was paid without additional costs, the result would be an additional $70 billion a year. The United States borrows something like $40 Billion a month. How much revenue does the President expect to obtain from this?

Of course if the intent is not to raise revenue but to lessen the difference in income, that is another story. One does suppose that those who have very large incomes have many options on where they live.

A recent letter, which will be in Mail reasonably soon, reminded me that we are nearing the anniversary of the death of Dr. Harry Erwin, whose Letter From England was a regular feature of Chaos Manor Mail for decade or more. That sent me looking for my announcement, which I found in the January 3 2012 View. That issue also had my comments on the coming primary season. I really miss Harry Erwin and his commentary on the social and political scene in England.