Tim Cook Testifies: Apple Games the System, Or How The Rich Stay Rich

Let's talk about taxes.
No, not those taxes, not the taxes the Tea Party doesn't want to pay because it is an educational institution which spends only 49% of its time on politics.

Not the exemption to taxes.

Let's talk about the taxes Apple, Inc. did not pay.  
Apple did not pay taxes to either Ireland or the United States for its Irish subsidiary, a shell company it set up to evade taxes.  

Here's how the game is played: Ireland taxes corporations only if the the corporation is managed and controlled in Ireland. The USA taxes corporations based on where the company is incorporated.  So Apple incorporates (a subsidiary)  in Ireland (not taxed by the US) and controls that subsidiary by having board meetings in California (not taxed by Ireland) and thus avoids being taxed on earnings of billions (millions in taxes) in either country.

Oh, and it gets better: Apple sells it's subsidiary company in Ireland some products, like iTunes or whatever, and the Irish Apple sells that stuff abroad, so there is no profit in the USA to tax. Apple files to pay taxes in neither country. Apple is laundering money, legally. If a drug lord sends money abroad to a bank to spend it through that bank, that is a high crime. If Apple does it, it is a brilliant business strategy.

You've got a phantom company paying nobody taxes.

Now, it gets way better: Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, goes before a Senate committee and holds up a scolding finger and proclaims Apple has paid every dollar it was legally required to pay (which is to say, none) and that it also complied with not just the letter of the law but with the spirit of the law.

Mad Dog particularly liked that spirit of the law bit. He is still trying to figure out what exactly that spirit is. The spirit of not paying taxes? The spirit of gratitude to the country that provided you with skilled, educated employees, infrastructure and sustenance? Mad Dog likes that spirit thing.

And, oh, yes, Apple informed the Senators you don't want to tax Apple anyway, because if Apple gets to keep all the money it makes, it will make better decisions about what to do with that money than the government ever could. 

To which, Rand Paul swoons. 

You got to give Cook credit. The man has chutzpah. He tells the United States Senate Apple is not above the law, but outside it, and having managed to evade the law, he makes a virtue of that tax evasion.  You wouldn't want that money anyway. You wouldn't really know what to do with it. You want us to keep the money and spend it on things which we know are good to spend money on. 
 And Rand Paul says, "Amen."

Is this an amazing country?  Or what? 

Here's what Mad Dog wishes the chairman of the Senate committee, Mr. Levin, had said:  "Mr. Cook, thank you for your comments today.  I understand you feel very virtuous. I, on the other hand, think you belong in jail.  I will go back to my office now and I will consult with my staff to see if we can think of a way to tax Apple in the future in a way to recoup some of the millions of dollars you have evaded paying.  Until now, you have slipped through one loop hole or another, but we ought to be able to construct a net with mesh fine enough to catch even as slippery a worm as you."
 

Tar and Feather The Tax Man

Don't we all hate the tax man?
But we want our exemptions from the tax man, because we hate the tax.
 And Congress, having wrought an exemption to taxation based on the simple premise that if an organization does "education" 51% of the time and politics only 49% of the time, oh, Congress bears no blame at all for the mess which ensues.

Remember those shrimp fishermen along the Gulf of Mexico who faced the loss of an entire season's income when BP fouled the Gulf waters?  So President Obama sends a man down from Washington to hand out money to compensate the fishermen for their losses.  And the man from Washington says, "Okay, it's this simple. We will give you the same number of dollars you made last year. Just bring in your income tax forms so we can get the number of dollars from that record and we can cut you a check tomorrow.

Problem was, lot of these fisherman never paid any friggin income tax. Never filed. No records of what these guys made because everything they made was under the table, off the books, untaxed, unseen, unrecorded.  

Since they never paid the government a thing, they were in a pickle when it came time for the government to help them. 

They didn't want anything to do with the government, until it came time for the government to send money their way.

Well, all those thousands of  Tea Party groups were all anti tax and antigovernment, until it came time for claiming their exemptions, so they could keep their donor lists secret, so they could get foundation money, so they could suck on the teats of all those organizations tax exempt status would confer.

And now Michele Bachmann is saying conservatives will be targeted for death by the IRS operating through Obamacare.

Can the black helicopters be far behind?

Ah, Gail Collins and Charles M. Blow

Here's what Gail Collins had to say about the Congressional hearings on the IRS: 
"They were working at the Determinations Unit of the Rulings and Agreements Office of the Exempt Organizations Division of the Internal Revenue Service. Spending their lives trying to clarify the 501 (C) (4) status. You try that for a while and see how you like it.
   If Congress wanted to help, the members could simplify the law so IRS minions aren't trying to figure out which groups spend only 49% of their resources on politics as opposed to 51 percent...
   The IRS employees were stuck with a pile of 70,000 applications for the tax-exempt status that's awarded to organizations engaged in social welfare issues. Recently, political groups have been gaming the system, announcing they're just do-gooders with a minor political sideline in order to qualify. When they succeed, the get to keep their donors secret."


Charles M. Blow amplified:

"The Congressional Tea Party Caucus founder, Michele Bachmann, who never misses a chance to say something asinine, suggested to the conservative web site wnd.com that it was 'reasonable' to worry that the IRS might use Obamacare to kill conservatives...
'Reasonable and 'Bachmann' don't even belong in the same conversation, let alone the same sentence, and yet she remains one of the most visible spokes-women for the movement."

Ah, finally, some actual pith from the un Republicans.

Ye, Gads. Why are all the Congressional Democrats running for cover?  Where is Barney Frank when you need him?

 

Susan Collins: Airhead Republican

Today's Portsmouth Herald has an op ed by Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, about the IRS "scandal" over the IRS's Exempt Organizations Division, which "targeted" organizations with "Tea Party" or "Patriots" in their names for special examination to insure these organizations, which claimed their contributors should be able to claim their contributions as deductions to their own personal income taxes and which claimed their organizations should be exempt from paying taxes.

Ms. Collins is irate, irate, I tell you about the abuses of these patriotic citizens by "the most powerful and feared, federal agency in Washington." 

And she wants to tell you something else:  "The American people cannot, and will not, tolerate the abuse of power to erode their most fundamental rights."

And, she warns darkly, "Some believe that the abuses that are now making headlines appear to be part of a larger pattern of questionable activity by the administration that seems intended to hinder or chill the expression of views critical of the president's policies."

Oh, there it is, the paranoid style in American politics.
And all this from the prototypical "bipartisan" and "moderate" Republican.

Of course, this is not about the violation of free speech by organizations with "Tea Party" in their names. This is about money. 

These organizations came to government attention because they were, in essence, asking the government to subsidize their activities by tax write offs.

This same sort of argument comes up all the time with respect to churches which have a role as a religion but which also become involved in political speech and activity to influence elections, to advocate for candidates either by name or by clear implication, in the real world of policy and politics.

When it is a liberal church advocating for liberal causes the Republicans become irate, irate I tell you, about the government legitimizing their opinions by granting these churches tax exempt status.

In perhaps the most clear cut and egregious example of the trouncing of freedom of speech, Frederick v Morse, otherwise known as the  "Bong Hits for Jesus" case, Chief Justice Roberts dismissed arguments the case was about free speech because the plaintiff had asked for monetary compensation. "That means this case is not about freedom of speech. It is about money." 

But now that the right wing finds itself asked to pay for its own organizations, we have the bogey man, the IRS trampling on free speech.

Well, speech is anything but free in these 21st Century United States of America. It costs money. And what really appalls the Tea Party and its Republican mistresses and shills in Congress and the Senate is the idea any right winger should have to pay his fair share of taxes. 

It's not surprising a Republican like Senator Collins is in the pocket of the right wing party which paid for her election; but it is disappointing Democrats have allowed the Republicans to become the most outraged people in the room. Collins with her "cannot, and will not" blather and, of course, Michele Bachmann with her, "The power to tax is the power to destroy" quote. 

Yes, Chief Justice John Marshall did make that observation, Ms. Bachmann, in the 18th century when government did more taxing than spending and supporting.But it is also true, in the 21st century, exempting you from the burden of paying your fair share is a burden on every other taxpayer, and an exemption is a subsidy.

The IRS Got It Right: To Hell with The Tea Party

No analysis can be on safe ground until "the facts" of a controversy are known and Mad Dog does not pretend to have all the facts about the IRS investigations of organizations applying for tax exempt status as "educational" organizations which had "Tea Party" or "Constitution" in their names.

Was this shameful "profiling" of conservative organizations as the Republicans would have us believe or simple vigilance?

Mad Dog heard some of the Congressional hearing testimony today and an IRS man, already fired and humiliated explained there was suspicion that some groups which claimed to be "educational" were actually political.

Now, how do you draw the line?  Do Tea Party people and Republicans and Democrats not routinely say they need to "educate" the public to "understand" the issues, when what they really are up to is persuasion and, when possible, indoctrination?

If you advocate for the election of leaders who will fight for "limited government"  and "cutting taxes" and shrinking the government to a size where you can drown it in the bathtub, are you not advocating against President Obama and the Democrats?

When does "education" become political speech?

Mad Dog is only sorry President Obama did not react thusly: These Tea Party thugs routinely tried to use the laws intended to protect universities and non political advocacy groups to funnel money and contributions into their phony "educational organizations." Well, the IRS was doubtful, as they well should have been.  This was not some Nixonian "enemies list." This was simply healthy skepticism: IRS agents were saying--show us what makes you an educational group rather than a political group.  For all the IRS knew, these groups were no more apolitical educational groups than the Westboro Baptist church is an apolitical local church. Whenever an educational group or, for that matter a religious group attempts to influence public policy it becomes an interest group, a lobby if you please and it loses its immunity to scrutiny and should lose its immunity to exemption from taxation."

That's what Mad Dog wishes the President had said.

But the President instincts are audi alteram partum--there are two sides to every argument. Hear the other side.

And, of course, there is an other side here: The IRS demanded all sorts of lists of members, minutes of meetings and all those aggravating, irrelevant, intimidating records few people keep. They wanted a summary of books read in book club groups. The head of book club sent in the book and said, "Read it yourself." As well she should.

So, it's hard to love the IRS. They are not always very bright. But, if you are President Obama, use this flap to your own advantage. Attack. Attack. Attack.

 

In this case, he ought to have presented his side, the government's side with more vigor and backed down those howling hyenas of the Republican right.

Republicans: Feeding at the Trough

Republicans are defined by many things:  Bible Thumping, opposition to  abortion, endorsement of gun rights, sanctimony, a tendency to demonize and vilify their opponents, resentment of people who sport brand name educational institutions in their resumes, resentment toward government in general, but not, in specific.

Republicans love government when it comes to bringing government power to bear on people who speak in opposition to prevailing dogma (see Bong Hits for Jesus) or when it comes to supporting police intimidation, as in strip searching persons arrested for rolling through stop signs or for walking down the street while Black, or when it comes to defense contracts,  or when it comes to preventing local governments from passing strict gun ordinances or when it comes to preventing a fourteen year old girl who has just had unprotected sex from buying and using Plan B, so she does not get pregnant.

Republicans hate government, until the point they want government to do something for them or to other people.

In that, they are not all that different from John Q. Citizen.

When you look at the pie graph of government spending, it strikes Mad Dog, there are surprises, pleasant surprises, in the way our federal government chooses to spend dollars.  Republicans, of course, think we spend too much money on everything, except for the things they want to spend money on--like weapons. 

But look at that pie: We spend only about 14% on Defense, roughly what we spend on "welfare.'  Of course, how you define "Defense" is crucial. If spending on the Veterans Administration, with all those prosthesis for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan comes under "Health Care" then the small slice of the pie for Defense is misleading.

If we spend roughly 20% on healthcare Mad Dog would say that's money well spent, although it should be noted, Europeans, who in general have better health care than Americans spend only about 10% of their budgets on healthcare.

Roughly 20% on "pensions" which likely includes both federal government pensions and social security is money well spent because it keeps senior citizens out of poverty, off the bread lines and out of the emergency rooms. It probably saves money in the long run, and it certainly prevents much misery.

But look at that "interest" slice: If that 6% is all we spend on servicing our debt, I'd say we're doing pretty well. Republicans will tell you our deficits are killing us. Paul Krugman says they are paranoid schizophrenics on this score. Mad Dog tends to believe Professor Krugman on this one.  They are paranoid because the threat they perceive is non existent. and they are schizophrenic because they are split personalities, of two minds. Spending 6% on debt is intolerable but spending 14% on defense, including spending on weapons systems and ships and airplanes which make us no safer, make corporations richer as a form of corporate welfare, that is just fine with our Republican friends.

With friends like these, as the saying goes, we don't need enemies.

Olympia Snow and The Absent Congress

A seat in the United States Senate is something many men and some women are willing to spend millions for. Of course, most of them are spending other people's money, but still, they want to be there.

Olympia Snow recently decided it was not a job worth having. 

Now, she is hawking her book about the dysfunction in Congress and she is associating with some organization which is supposed to be dedicated to improving the function of Congress.

Among her recommendations is Senators should actually stay in Washington and work with other Senators, rather than flying home Thursday morning and not returning until Tuesday. 

The advent of air travel has meant Congressmen and Senator can go back to their home states, and many argue this is desirable, so the elected can stay in close touch with those whom they are supposed to be representing.  But the problem with Congressmen and Senators who are so tightly joined to their home constituencies is these elected few do not spend enough time in Washington to get anything done in the city they were sent to do battle in.  When a Senator spends only 2 1/2 days in Washington, he or she cannot become part of a functioning governing machine in Washington, cannot get to know other representatives, cannot form working relationships, cannot get seduced by the comraderie of the governing class.

Some would argue this is a good thing, but having seen the other side of this coin, Mad Dog can say one reason for gridlock in Washington is the absence of the Representatives and Senators who are supposed to be doing the work of Washington. They are simply missing in action. 

It's all good and well to stay in close contact with them what's sent you thar, but if you don't engage in the organization and the process you can't very well help the government do much for the folks back home.

Of course, there are all those T Party, Rand Paul types who argue we should push things exactly in the direction of an absent government in Washington, D.C.

But if you are interested in effective, competent government, then you have to keep the elected representatives in their offices in Washington, or, at the very least, in the bars and restaurants and swimming pools of Washington, where they can wheel and deal and horse trade so government can actually accomplish something.

If it were up to Mad Dog, he would require all Senators and Congressmen remain in Washington, even (and especially) on weekends and not be allowed to leave the District of Columbia, until the Congress adjourns. 

New Hampshire: The Shire Looks at the World

Mad Dog once had a photo of a group of children of different races, arms around each other, smiling into the camera in his office.  This was some years ago, and things may have changed, but it struck Mad Dog that whenever an American adult looked at that picture, the American would smile back at it.  But when a German or Frenchman or Italian or often, a Brit would look at it, not so much. People from these places, when they looked at the picture at all, often did so with knitted brow, narrowed eyes, and did not look pleased, much less smile back.

Not exactly a controlled experiment. Just an impression. 

But it did strike Mad Dog as a sort of gut check, unvarnished study. In Mad Dog's warped mind, it seemed Americans had internalized the Star Trek ideal of a multiracial society working together in harmony on the same spaceship earth, whereas Europeans may not have, or at least some Europeans.

Like many studies, this one may have returned the results Mad Dog wanted to see, rather than the more complex truth of what is actually out there.

Mad Dog has just returned from two weekends "abroad," one in New Orleans, one in New York City.   These quick visits drove home a point he had not thought about for some time:  New Hampshire is a very white place.

In fact, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, in that order, are the three white-est states among all 50 states. Utah and Rhode Island, once among the most white are no longer, with only 80-85% whiteness, presumably, in the case of Utah, owing to Hispanics and in Rhode Island's case, more research needs to be done.

But as Mad Dog walked around the streets, through the parks of New York City, and felt the vitality, the energy, the sheer exuberance of the place, he realized a very strange thing--something he would never have expected he would have even given a thought: Mad Dog missed seeing colored folks, missed just saying hello to colored folks, missed their presence. 

He also realized that in every society he has ever lived, somebody occupied the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder.  When he was growing up below the Mason Dixon line, that place was mostly occupied by African Americans, but AA's are no longer in that position. In Washington, DC and in New York City you see plenty of affluent minority folks.

In New Hampshire, Whites occupy the bottom rungs. They tend to be people from large families, often broken homes, and they tend to be under educated. They are straight out of the pages of Grace Metalious and Peyton Place.

Mad Dog is not suggesting New Hampshire import colored folks. But, if this observation means anything for our state, perhaps it means if we are homogeneous in some ways, perhaps we ought to make a special effort to reach out to the rest of the world, and to be sure we hear other opinions, and we ought to make an effort to explore the world beyond our cozy little shire.

We already do this, of course, with the Music Hall, the nearby Ogunquit Playhouse, and by going to movies and by watching cable TV, those of us who can afford cable TV.

And it must be remembered, New Hampshire voted for a Black man (mixed race actually) twice. Mr. Obama took every town on the seacoast (save New Castle) in the first election and did almost as well in the second.  There were racial epithets, snide banners, nasty bumper stickers, but ordinary, white, New Hampshire tradesmen and housewives, who Mad Dog met while canvasing during the weeks running up to the election, made no mention at all of Mr. Obama's race, only his policies. Many, if not most of them, thought he had tried to do the right thing, and been thwarted by stubborn Republican resistance. 

But when Mad Dog talks to his co workers, he is struck by how little interest they have in the world beyond the shire.  He tried to get them to listen to National Public Radio, but, as one commented, "I tried, but it was always about news from some place in Africa or some country I'd never heard of and will never go to."

One of my co workers has never been on an airplane. Her husband has only been out the the states of New Hampshire and Vermont once, to fly to Wisconsin. (Another very white state.)   

These people show no sign of overt racism. They simply have no opinion of or experience with people of different races, people who come from different cultural backgrounds.  When they go to college, traveling to Keene or Plymouth, New Hampshire seems a long haul. Somethings they consider Maine or Rhode Island. 

One wonders when this will change, and when it does, how, and in what direction?

Benghazi: The Movie. The Hearings. The Witch Hunt.

So the Republican leading the ongoing, interminable hearings in the Republican House of Representatives has released his movie poster for the hearings. Can an i Tunes release be far behind?

The big star most recently was a State Department official, Gregory Hicks, who was demoted afterwards. Knowing a little something about bureaucratic vindictiveness, it is not hard to believe Hilary Clinton might just stick it to anyone who was not Hilary Clinton who had the temerity to speak to the press.

And so, we have begun to discover, what?  Did Mr. Obama launch the attack on Benghazi to cover up the secret files housed there which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was born on Mars? Did Hilary Clinton launch the attack because she was having an affair with Ambassador Stevens and he was about to pull a Monica Lewinsky?  Did Hilary and Mr. Obama arrange for the hit on Ambassador Stevens because he was actually their love child and they could not afford for that news to get out? 

Or, did Hilary Clinton send the ambassador to a poorly defended outpost and then try to cover up the report she had been negligent in protecting her own staff by demoting Mr. Hicks and by ordering her underlings to report this was a spontaneous, thus unpredictable act of violence?  And if this is so, should Ms. Clinton be scratched as a potential Presidential candidate because, obviously, she is not great at responding to the totemic 2 AM phone call?

Or, did Mr. Issa have a love child with Ms. Clinton, i.e. Mr. Hicks, and Mr. Issa is very indignant Ms. Clinton laid the heavy wood on Mr. Hicks and demoted him?

The plot lines are legion.  This soap opera could go on as long as "As The World Turns."
Stay tuned. Brought to you by the RNC, The Rush Limbaugh Show and the Watch-out-for-those-black-helicopters .com blog.

Mark Sanford: He Is Risen

There are no second acts in American lives.
                            --F. Scott Fitzgerald


One might argue Mark Sanford's election to his old House of Representatives seat is not a second act but just a continuation of the first.

One might argue this is simply the second act of "House of Cards."

Mad Dog would argue, Mr. Sanford's election is no surprise. The surprise would have been if he had been defeated.

What were his offenses? 
1. He cheated on his wife. No disqualification there: JFK, Clinton,Henry Hyde,  you name him.
2. He lied about cheating on his wife, about where he was when he was not on the Appalachian trial. Clinton lied about Monica Lewinsky.
3. He flew down to Argentina and to various assignations on  government money.
Now, that might matter, but the man is all about saving the government money, and about not being Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama, so we can forgive him that youthful indiscretion.

The misperception of the Bible thumping voter is that he or she could never forgive a man who violates his sacred marriage vows, said before God, on the wedding alter. But the South Carolina voter is not the New England Puritan. The South Carolina voter knows he's a sinner. He's embraced a culture and a history of slavery. He's happy to sell tobacco to Asians.  He can forgive a lot. 

What he cannot forgive is being Barack Obama, being judged by sanctimonious Northerners and a federal government which wants to take his money, or tell him what he is doing is immoral, injurious or wrong.  

As that great South Carolina Representative to the Congress of the United States, Francis Underwood, once said, "What you have to understand about my people is that they are a noble people. Humility is their form of pride. It is their strength; it is their weakness. And if you can humble yourself before them they will do anything you ask. "

Niall Ferguson, John Maynard Keynes and the Homosexual Hypothesis

Niall Ferguson: Wishful Historian

"During a question-and-answer session after a prepared speech at the Altegris Strategic Investment conference in Carlsbad, Calif. on Thursday, Ferguson was asked to comment about Keynes, an influential 20th century British economist who advocated government spending as a way to make up for lagging demand in a down economy.
Ferguson suggested that Keynes philosophy was shaped by his homosexuality. Keynes, therefore, had no children so he wasn't as invested in future generations as others might be, Ferguson said."
--from the Internet

If history is just one long argument, then we might judge the history offered by any author as a wish list of the way he thought the world ought to have happened.

This is no where more apparent than in the pronouncements, writings and expostulations of Niall Ferguson, Oxford PhD, professor of history at Harvard and gadfly about the nation, who created a dust up recently attacking not just the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, who had the temerity to suggest that when free market, capitalistic economies were tanking, the government might do some good by rescuing the capitalists from their own folly by pumping money into the economy. Ferguson, a disciple of Margaret Thatcher and other right wing ideologs, thought this heresy unconscionable and offered a psychobabble historical explanation for Keynes's theory--saying that anyone who wanted government to ride to the rescue in the short term, could not possibly care a whit for the long term consequences, which would ultimately be doom and gloom, and anyone who had no concern about the long term must not have children, because, of course, only people with children could possibly care about the long term. 

And since Keynes was homosexual, and had no children, he could not possibly care about the future.

Whew! Got that?

Of course, Keynes may well have been a homosexual, but he was also married, had a wife and his wife lost a child in a miscarriage, so we might further conclude, having lost his own individual genetic contribution to posterity, Keynes had no further use for the future.

Ferguson really does  not like Keynes: Feruguson suggests elsewhere the main reason Keynes was dismayed by World War One is it swept away all the young men Keynes liked to pick up for sexual adventures, and sent them off to the trenches, where they died in heaps, and so Keynes had a personal stake in the war.

One wonders how Ferguson and historians like him get that sort of insight. Do they prowl through diary entries?  "No young men on Picadilly Street today. All off at the war. Damn this war! No gay escapades this week! Damn this war!"
Or, perhaps, Ferguson interviewed old friends and acquaintances of Keynes:  "He was all in a snit about the war, don't you know? Took the cream of the crop. Meant he had to go home to his proper wife. Didn't like that one bit."

Or, perhaps Ferguson simply had a graduate assistant plow through biographies of Keynes.

The fact is, Ferguson has been adviser to John McCain's campaign, and the professor is a member of the Hoover Institute--ah, now there's a fine, upstanding trickle down hero, Herbert Hoover--and wherever you see a gathering of right wingers drawn together, you are apt to find Mr. Fergusson writing history for them.  

Stella Tremblay has been drinking from the same cup as Professor Ferguson, as every right wing whacko must.  The gospel according to...Ms. Tremblay, Mr. Ferguson, and every telling of the way things happened somehow bolsters the view of the current world held by the right wing.  Even today, former Senator Jim Demint (R-SC),  who now heads the Heritage Foundation, brings forth a "study" which shows exactly what the conservative Heritage Foundation suspected all along:  That immigrants cost the nation more than they contribute. Those derned immigrants, showing up at emergency rooms, getting hospitalized, getting welfare, a real drag on the federal treasury and on the economy. We told you so! And now we have a study to prove it! And it's all true. We know it's true because we did the study our own selves!

Actually, you have to give the right wing some credit for breadth of personality. They range all the way from Lindsey Graham who says really absurd things while sounding like an idiot, to Niall Ferguson, who says really absurd things and sounds oh so British and intelligent. 

So Ferguson says history shows us government spending leads to long term financial collapse. It's been 80 years since The Great Depression which was ended by government spending. 

Paul Krugman:  Substance Over Style

"Krugman argued that Ferguson's view is "resurrecting 75-year old fallacies" and full of "basic errors". He also stated that Ferguson is a "poseur" who "hasn't bothered to understand the basics, relying on snide comments and surface cleverness to convey the impression of wisdom. It's all style, no comprehension of substance."
--Wikipedia article on Ferguson



But in the end, it's the substance not the style, as Mr. Krugman reminds us. Lunacy riding about in an aristocratic hat and cloak is still lunacy.

The old ditty, the first casualty of war is the truth.
Same can be said of the right wing historian.

Stella Tremblay: New Hampshire's Very Own

 Thank God we have at least ONE state representative from the state of New Hampshire who is willing to stand up for justice in defense of truth, and to face the powerful NWO sellouts who will pillory and vilify her without mercy, until she is driven from office, Mark my words, her removal is already being planned. Soon, Zionist dollars will flow prodigiously in an attempt to to create a ruse to push her from office with a recall election, or failing that, they will insure her defeat with unlimited funding to back a suitably compliant opponent in the next election. Tremblay, first elected in 2010, was born in Italy .Maybe that's why she's willing to speak her mind and do the job she was elected to do. Thinking Americans, who realize the grave danger we now face, need to rally to the support of any state or federal politician who is willing to speak the truth and stop this treasonous sedition in its tracks....] By Jim Haddadin jhaddadin@fosters.com



Where is Gail Collins when the Granite State needs her?
Or The Onion? Or Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert?

Really, does any state, even South Carolina, have anyone to match the Republican Representative from  Auburn, New Hampshire?

Ms. Tremblay recently made a name for herself on national websites by claiming the Boston bombing was actually a federal government black ops plot, that one of the victims, shown in a wheel chair holding what was left of his left leg (the fragment of his tibia clearly visible), did not look to be in pain, which was, Mad Dog can only guess, meant to suggest his injury was bogus, despite the photographic evidence, and that those victims who wound up in various Boston hospitals were all part of some grand government plot, a grand fiction, like the moon landing and President Obama's Hawaiian birth.

The website, "Granite State Progress," lists Ms. Tremblay's votes in the legislature and there are no surprises here:  Votes to require the University of New Hampshire to investigate every student who might be an immigrant to be sure they are not illegal, votes to endorse the Arizona immigration law--with its racial profiling--votes to de-fund Planned Parenthood, votes to de-fund any hospital which is in any way connected to abortions, which would cost New Hampshire billions in federal matching funds.

She is the genuine Tea Party, frothing Free Stater, on-what-planet-do-these-people spend-the-majority-of-their-time article. 

And she's all ours. Actually, if Mr. Haddadin is correct, she was born in Italy, but she is as American as apple pie and Olive Garden.

Mad Dog has been moved to pick up that splendid volume by Richard Hoftstader, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, which demonstrates, if nothing else, that Ms. Tremblay is nothing new, only freshly amusing. 

She is also a prodigious historian, who has rendered opinions about Frederick Douglass and his opinion of the allusion to slavery in the U.S. Constitution, and opinions about Woodrow Wilson, who, she says, believed with Hitler in the destiny of the Aryan race to rule the world. Actually, if you read Howard Zinn, you might find something to this portrait of Wilson the racist.  It is curious how often the Tremblay sort of mind alludes to history.  It is as if by talking about a version of history which is different from what we all learned in high school she can make claim to an insight the rest of us lack, an insight which should inform our understanding of where we are now.  So, if we know that Frederick Douglass actually believed slavery, then we can believe what the government and the media are now telling us about the Boston bombings is untrue.

Ms. Tremblay informs us, in somber and pregnant tones, that we really need an independent inquiry into the so-called Boston bombing, because we cannot believe what we've been told thus far, and it really was, presumably, all staged on a back lot in Los Angeles, and nobody was actually blown up, and all those hospitals and doctors are just actors or part of a vast conspiracy.

Can you imagine what her living room must look like? Can you imagine what Auburn, New Hampshire must be like?  Mad Dog may have to drive out there and spook around.  It's probably crawling with federal agents on their cell phones to the black helicopters circling overhead. 

Can you imagine how much fun it would be to simply follow her around with a microphone?  Why hasn't anyone done this?  

Where is Michael Moore, when you need him?

Richard Hofstader, Columbia University

 

Economics 101

Paul Krugman, Who Knows of What He Speaks

Don't know much about economics, other than what I read in the New York Times, the New Yorker and what I see on "The News Hour."

Economics is not like biology--it is not an experimental science. Oh, we do economic experiments all the time, but we cannot hold enough variables constant to call it a science. It is not clear that, for all the numbers economists throw around, you really need to understand those numbers to understand the basic economic forces and concepts.

It must mean something  that Mad Dog can now watch a discussion of economic policy and Mad Dog can finish the sentence of each participant. It must mean we are hearing the same arguments over and over again.

Last night, on the "News Hour" they had some stooge from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, and a man from some Boston institute discussing our economy. The Boston guy says, "When you have a recession, an economic slow down, that's when you do not want the government to stop spending. The national economy is not like a family budget. Sometimes deficit spending is a good thing. It's an investment in the future. You get people working, repairing the infrastructure,  paying taxes, spending and then you can back off, pay down the deficit and restore balance. But if the European experience shows anything, it is that cutting government spending at the beginning or in the middle of a recession just makes things worse." 

To which the American Enterprise Institute guy replies: "Deficits are bad. When you allow the deficit to grow to over 45% of GNP you simply run out of money to spend. This Kenseyian argument, that we should spend our way out of a recession, is a recipe for disaster." 

This very same argument has been going back and forth since at least the years when Andrew Mellon was the Secretary of the Treasury arguing that a Depression purges the system of bad blood, bad, lazy people and is just what the doctor ordered for a country which needs discipline. He was Herbert Hoover's secretary. Hoover said all along there is nothing government can or should do in hard times. Hoover lost that argument to FDR and the Republicans lost the White House for the next 4 elections.

Republicans ever since have argued the only way Roosevelt got America out of the Depression was to get into a world war and unemployment went from 20% to close to 0% in a year.  And, of course the implication of that was--war is bad, so anything associated with it must be bad.

The fact is, what that wartime government spending  demonstrated is economically, the effect of government hiring vast numbers of people was capable of pulling us out of the Great Depression and that good economy persisted for decades after the war, with deficits going down when people were working and paying taxes.  May have been we put a lot of undeserving people who were wicked and mean to their children back to work, and we rewarded an undisciplined American population, but it sure was good for the economy, and government spending did not result in disaster but relief and prosperity.

So why, Mad Dog asks, are we still debating this issue?

Do we really still need to debate whether or not the heart pumps blood to the brain?

Do we need to discuss whether or not metal airplanes can fly or whether or not metal ships will sink?

Do we really need to listen to David Stockman, people from conservative "think" tanks proffer these antediluvian ideas on national TV, radio and newspapers?

When will we get tired of listening to idiots?

Hal Rogers: When Sunlight Is the Best Disinfectant

Hal Rogers, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee

Sometimes Jon Stewart is simply indispensable.
Tonight was one of those classic examples. 
First, Stewart runs a montage of Fox News bimbos saying the Sequester turned out to be a big nothing--proving we can cut government spending drastically and nobody notices because government does nothing important. There's an air head blond saying, "It turns out to be a 'No-questor," and grinning, very pleased with herself.

Then Stewart shows the irate reaction of the chairman of the House Appropriations committee, a Republican named Hal Rogers, who is grilling the head of the FAA about the furlough of air traffic controllers which has inconvenienced Congressmen trying to fly home to their districts. "Why didn't you tell us this would happen?" the Congressman demands.  

So Stewart rolls a montage of Obama official after official warning of this very outcome, of news people warning about air traffic control trouble if the sequester is allowed to go forth.  Then he plays the Congressman intoning how outrageous this is, nobody told him!  Stewart observes he must be one of those people who complains nobody told him the gun would go off if he pulled that trigger.

Then Stewart shows Susan Collins speaking on the Senate floor, all giddy that Congress was able to pass a law which returned all the air traffic controllers to work. "See how we can work together. We can cross party lines to get things done!"

To which Stewart replies, "Oh, we should be so happy we have a Congress which having created a problem for the many, has been able to solve one small part of that problem for the few, namely themselves, when the problem affects them."

He then sends correspondents out to soup kitchens, cancer treatment centers which have had to close their door because of the sequester. 

So there we have it--Congress as the ultimate example of the old adage: The worse thing for a bad product is good advertising.

 

Peggy Orenstein: When a Disease Becomes a Cause

Peggy Orenstein has written the article Mad Dog would like to have written, but thought it was too politically incorrect.

For readers of Mad Dog Democrat, the idea anything is too politically incorrect for Mad Dog may come as a surprise, but this topic is so incendiary and requires such tact, Mad Dog knew it was simply beyond his talents.

The problem here is: Is anyone rooting for breast cancer? Does anyone not wish to see an end to breast cancer? So any time you question or undermine the efforts of a group which is trying to end breast cancer deaths, you have to tread lightly, something Mad Dog has not mastered.

Ms. Orenstein writes an article which embraces the complexities and the successes and the lack of successes in a very adroit way.

The problems with the Susan Komen organization and others like it is they are focused on raising awareness of breast cancer, on the psychological impact, on making breast cancer socially acceptable to talk about, to acknowledge you've had, but at some point we all really have to accept, okay, mission accomplished when it comes to marketing and name recognition and attitude change: What we really need now is some good, effective science and technology.

Breast cancer, as she points out is not even one disease. There are different types of breast cancer (estrogen receptor positive, estrogen receptor negative, Herc positive, triple negative--the list expands as molecular genetics identifies new types.) There is even a pre-breast cancer which may or may not ever develop into breast cancer, DCIS.

As Ms. Orenstein points out, delicately, women almost never die of breast cancer which is confined to the breast; what they die from is metastatic breast cancer, i.e. breast cancer which escapes the breasts and implants in liver, brain, bone, lung and elswhere, seedlings in the wind, taking root, becoming the ultimate invasive species. 

The big problem is this process may occur before there are enough breast cancer cells to see on mammography, so even if you remove the breast cancer you find by imaging, by mammogram, ultrasound, MRI, you may still be dealing with a mortal illness--you just won't know it for some years.

When Mad Dog was an intern at Memorial Sloan Kettering, he admitted dozens of patients every week who told the same story: "They told me they got it in time. It was so small. I was cured."  But here they were, 10 or 15 years later with breast cancer growing in vertebrae, femurs, ribs, lungs, liver, brain and all stops in between. Dying of a disease the doctors thought they had cured.

It was this realization, that microscopic, invisible tumor cells escape early and may be growing in distant sites which moved the researchers in Milan, Italy to try chemotherapy to flow in the blood and kill the invisible metastases at the time of the original breast surgery and that study was done in the early 1970's. American doctors came later to accept this concept and now protocols include chemotherapy to get those sleeper cells.  

But chemotherapy does not kill every cell in every patient and patients are still dying from widely metastatic disease despite all the protocols, years later.

And mammography may not have made much of a dent in this process. 
But when various scientific groups, recognizing the futility of screening mammography for various groups of patients--e.g. women less than 40--have recommended mammography start later and not be used annually all hell breaks lose because breast cancer organizations--who have a stake, financially, professionally and emotionally--oppose these recommendations, not because the science is flawed but because they have other motivations.

Consider this example, which Orenstein quotes:  Suppose you have 100 women who have a mammograms at age 67, are found to have breast cancer and treated but they all die 3 years later at age 70.  The 5 year survival in that group is 0%. Suppose now, you have 100 64 year old women who have a mammograms and gets treated but the treatment doesn't work and they all die 6 years later at age 70 The 5 year survival for these women  is 100%. Looks like a great victory for mammography: You've improved 5 year survival by 100%!  But what have you really done? You've made the women in the first group aware they have cancer three years earlier and they've had to live with that knowledge but they have not lived a day longer for it.

The fact is, funding for research is competitive: If the National Institutes of Health funds breast cancer at $100 billion dollars there is not going to be $100 billion for melanoma. And with diseases acquiring advocacy groups, AIDS, prostate CA, testicular CA, decisions may rise or fall based on who has the best paid lobbyists in Washington, rather than who has the best scientific arguments in Bethesda (where the NIH is.)

And what happens to testicular CA if it's major poster boy falls from grace for doping while he was winning the Tour de France?

Is this any way to run a railroad?

Ms. Orenstein has written a very important public policy, public health article. It is one every citizen ought to read, in the quiet of his or her own home, preferably after a Valium or a good glass of wine.

Jefferson Davis Lives

On Jefferson Davis Avenue, in New Orleans, stands a statue of the man, "Profound scholar of the constitution, In judgment sound, in morality firm, in resolve steadfast" or words to that effect, but most of all, "Patriot."

In Cabin John, Maryland, stands the Union Arch Bridge, which, legend has it, was dedicated by Abraham Lincoln in 1860.  In 1861, Lincoln sent a detachment of calvary to remove a plaque from this bridge because the plaque listed various officials who had part in the construction of the bridge: Montgomery Meigs, of the Army Corps of Engineers and Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War.

Apparently, Mr. Lincoln disagreed with the idea Mr. Jeff Davis was a patriot.

There must be a difference between traitor and patriot.

Some would say it's all in your point of view.

Others would say it's in where you stand now.

Lindsey Graham: South Carolina as the American Chechnya

Far as Mad Dog can see, there are parallels and then, there are parallels.

In the case of the "War" on "Terror" both war and terrorists have bullets and bombs and there are deaths and innocents (non combatants) are killed and maimed. 

Of course, in the case of the war on terror, there are no armies, no capitals, no flags, no actual battles--and as Carver once said of the "War on Drugs" in The Wire , this isn't even a war. Why not?  "Because wars end," Carver replied.

This is a subtlety lost on Senator Graham, of course. Many things are lost on Mr. Graham.  Mr. Graham does not approve of people who hail from places which are in rebellion against a power which they feel has been imposing its will over them, not respecting their local traditions and values, a place like Chechnya, for example, or say, South Carolina.

Of course, you cannot compare the Chechnya rebels to the rebels of South Carolina. They were both rebelling against a stronger neighbor from the north which insisted a separatist movement would not be tolerated, but the Confederacy had an army with uniforms and canon and they fought out in the open and they were Christians, praying to a Christian God.  In fact, these rebels were so upright and upstanding Mr. Graham's fellow South Carolinians fly the Confederate flag over their state house to this day, just to show the guerrilla spirit is still alive and well in South Carolina.  

Chechnya knows all about guerrilla spirit. Apparently bombs go off every week there, and no police station is safe. 

The Confederates in South Carolina might just admire that, if those Chechnyans were Christians and wore nice gray uniforms. 

But now we have the Confederates back in positions of power and when they are United States Senators they invoke hell fire and brimstone against the unholy, unwashed terrorists from foreign places, and Heaven Knows, we don't like foreigners and we ought o re examine our immigration policies which allow undesirables like Russians or Chechnyans or people who don't speak English at home from unloading their baggage here in the United States. 

In fact, when the Russians point out a potential trouble maker and the FBI investigates and that trouble maker subsequently makes trouble, well the FBI has dropped the ball on the one yard line. Fumbled, I tell you! The FBI ought to be able to predict human behavior. What have we been spending all those hard earned tax dollars down at FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia if not to be able to read minds and predict future behavior by nasty, ill meaning violent revolutionists? 

Mad Dog can see where Mr. Graham is coming from. Same place he is always coming from.  South Carolina.