Hooter Girls For A Better Society! (It's The Great Ranking Of Priorities!)

Seems as though it's time for me to take the bull by the oars and once again tell the world what to think and how to think about it, given that people were for a very short while doing things like #Occupying Wall Street in hopes of getting some economic justice but all that quickly went away in a flurry of downward finger gestures and protests against First World Injustices.

By which I mean: I am going to Rank The Priorities we ought to have, because what I saw this morning led me to think that the uptick in social engagement and activism we saw in 2011 has suddenly been led astray -- I don't know by who so I'll just say "by corporations" -- and people are starting to forget that our world is in a crisis in which the federal government is about a week away from directly letting people who helped create the housing crisis continue to profit from it because not even the Obama Administration really gives a #(#*@ about anything anymore, and as people forget about all that they're using their energy to protest what I was going to call dumb things but instead I'll be politic and call them less than important things.

By which I mean:

Chicago-area mothers joined a nationwide demonstration against restrictive corporate breastfeeding policies Wednesday morning at Target stores citywide.

The "nurse-in" is an increasingly popular tool for breastfeeding advocates and nursing mothers to highlight alleged violations of Illinois law, which does not classify public nursing as indecency. Whole Foods stores were recently targeted after an employee reportedly told a nursing mother to cover up, and Wednesday's demonstration was inspired by a recent incident at a Houston-area Target store, Time reports.

(Source.) There were, at last report, over 6,000 people "liking" the protest or something dumb on Facebook, which, yeah, okay, it takes a second to click that thumb or whatever it is, so that's hardly worth noting -- but also this:

Best for Babes [the people organizing this shenanigan] reached out to Target last week to see if they could work together in advance of this event. "Nurse-ins require a lot of time, planning and effort from busy moms," Best for Babes wrote on their website with hopes that they could come to an agreement with the chain. Target's response was unsatisfactory, and the organization has decided to move forward with their demonstration, which will take place today, December 28th.

(Source.) Nurse-ins require a lot of time? Yes. Yes, they do. So it's a good thing that those mothers used their scarce resources -- time and money are scarce for most of us and especially so for "busy moms"-- for something that ultimately

Isn't.

That.

Important.

Okay, breast-feeding moms, I get it: You want to whip out your boobs everywhere you go because God forbid you should have to feed your baby and not browse those cute tops on the discount rack at the same time. But is that where you want your efforts, your social activism, your time and money and attention to go?

Was that the single biggest problem you could think to address at that time?

I've talked about stuff like this before, noting that people who try to rescue pets while children starved are horrible people, and that people who parade a camel around Washington D.C. were wasting time and money, too, and that mild complaining didn't seem to help, so I decided that maybe we, as a society, ought to have a list, a ranking, of priorities for our society so that we can tackle problems that really matter before problems that only sorta matter.

And I am the person to create that ranking, and this is the start of it. So here we go! On The Great Ranking Of Priorities, I put "Making Sure Women Can Breast Feed At Target" at...


...7,397th.

Also: I'm not just a complainer, I'm a fixer-upper -- so rather than simply make fun of women who took time off from getting the Subaru detailed, I thought I'd also point out that those Chicago-area Moms With Boobs could have done something really helpful, like, say, provide child-care for homeless women.

Over at Volunteer Match.org, it's easy to find charities to volunteer for. I typed in "Chicago" and "Moms" and got this:

San Jose Obrero Mission

One of the greatest obstacles facing single, homeless mothers is an inability to locate affordable childcare. Without affordable childcare, searching for jobs and housing, attending job interviews, attending school and career training, and running errands are extremely difficult tasks. That's why SJOM is searching for volunteers that would like to fill in the gaps so that our women can focus on becoming self-sufficient for themselves and their families.

Childcare is needed most at these times:

Days: Each month, we host a 10-day Career Training session at our Families in Crisis facility for non-working participants. [Contact us for specific days and times.]
Evenings: Every Tuesday from 6:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. we host Self-Esteem Building workshops for our women.

Childcare providers are encouraged to help children with homework and/or plan other activities to engage them in learning.

So, Moms With Boobs And No Time, you could have spent your time providing some childcare and homework assistance to a fellow (but homeless) Mom who is getting career training to make her life better.

But, no, yeah, I'm glad you were able to show your hooters at Target. Thanks for caring... so little.

So They Made A Song About Recalling Scott Walker, 4

I'm in a good mood tonight: The Senate got a two-month extension of the payroll taxes on the middle class and will pay for it by charging higher fees to mortgage investors while giving Obama a chance to kill the oil pipeline and the Recall Walker folks have 500,000+ signatures and are on their way to winning the right to force a referendum on Walkernomics.

So let's celebrate RECALL STYLE! Here's If You Can Sleep With Open Eyes; lyrics by Adrian Grimes and Andy Ford, performed by Hell’n’Ade,

Look at that -- someone dropped a little boy and forgot to pick him up.

See that boy? He's a victim of Christmas Shopping Fatigue. And that could be you, if you're not careful.

I love Christmas shopping, but I have to admit, even I have my limits, and we hit it tonight with trips to three different stores on top of the five different stores we went to last night -- but we had to go tonight because we had to get our presents in the mail and tomorrow's the last day we can do that and still maybe have them get there on time...

...and note that I said maybe because I did all that before I realized I could get all the Christmas Shipping Deadlines online from Best Online Coupons.

I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Best Online Coupons is BOOKMARKED on my computer, because it has all kinds of Amazon.com Coupons, which is where Sweetie shops, because Sweetie is smart and efficient and I am not.

But even with her smartness and efficienciness, Sweetie didn't realize about the Best Online Coupons guide to Shipping Deadlines for Christmas 2011 and how much help they could be, and so we ended up at the stores tonight, tramping around until our poor son collapsed...

... well, okay, he was probably also looking for a little attention, but still...collapsed!

And we could've just gone to Best Online Coupons, gotten all kinds of online discounts and savings, ordered our gifts and had them shipped, all the while knowing exactly when they would have to be shipped to make sure they get there by Christmas.

Don't let the horror of SHOPPING FATIGUE strike your loved ones. Head to Best Online Coupons right away! Before it's too late!

The 1% is now down to just SIX people, really.

The news the other day that just six people in the United States own as much stuff as the bottom thirty percent of our country, coupled with an idiot commenter on someone else's blog, has made me want to point out something that cannot be pointed out enough: The rich are getting richer and the rich are not you and me, and never will be unless we start having a more fair society.

The comment was left on a blog written by author/epic critic/guy Michael Offutt, who was writing about truthtelling and mentioned #Occupy Wall Street, and got, in response, a vituperative and incorrect comment from a deluded man who finds arguing on behalf of the selfish rich to be in his, and/or society's, best interests. Said Jay Noel, a self-styled "sales and marketing warrior",

1% actually control anywhere between 38% - 42% of the nation's assets depending on which study you look at...Oh, and by the way, to get into that top 1%, you have to have an income of more than $343,000. Hardly middle class, but hardly a millionaire.

And a VAST majority of that 1% are people like doctors, dentists, school administrators, small business owners, insurance agents and actuaries, rocket scientists, and non-profit executives. They're all assholes?

...

Even if we took every single penny from every single millionaire and billionaire in this country, it still wouldn't even pay off our national debt!

The free market and true capitalism will never see it's full bloom until it's fair. That's what many protesters are asking for. And I can't agree more.

But heck, even those right-winger show hosts give a lot to charity. Even if it's just for the sake of a tax deduction. In fact, academic studies on the subject empirically show that Republicans give a higher percentage of their earnings than Democrats. And they give something even more important to charities: their time. They volunteer more as well.
...

Where to begin with that? There is so much misinformation and misunderstandings, and after I read that last night, I woke up to this:

Six Wal-Mart heirs are wealthier than U.S.' entire bottom 30%

That was the headline on the LA Times site today, over an article that is well worth reading and hard to understand, as evidenced in part by the fact that sales and marketing warriors don't get it.

We live in a country where the money and property of six people at the top end outweighs, if put on a scale, the money and property of one hundred million people.

The U.S. as this moment, 3:26 p.m. Friday afternoon, December 9, has 312,757,380 people. 30% of that group is 93,000,000 people.

Six people on this side. 93,000,000+ people on that side -- and the six people are heavier than the rest, when weighed by wealth.

Let's have an idea what that looks like. Numbers are so hard to grasp.

Here are six people:

i i i i i i

I used lower-case is because they kind of look like people.

Now, let's look at 93,000,000 people.


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That's not actually 93,000,000 people. That's 5,920 people. If you take that 15,709 times, you get 93,000,000 people.

Those six people:

i i i i i i

Have more money and wealth than 15,709 groups of 5,920 people.

That's the 1%.

Some more statistics made real: The LA Times says:

The wealth of the 1% is about 225 times greater than that of the typical family, compared to 125 times in 1962, according to analysis from labor economist Sylvia Allegreto with UC Berkeley.

That seems dry, doesn't it?

So here's some more pictorial help.

This is rich vs. poor in 1962:

Poor:

$

Rich:


$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Seem fair? Remember that old saying, A rising tide lifts all boats?

Here's rich vs. poor, 2011:

Poor:

$

Rich:

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Funny. That poor boat doesn't seem lifted.

Today, in America, most people consider you rich if you make more than $150,000 per year. There is no definition of rich, but in America, more than one-half of the people think you're "rich" if you make more than $150,000 a year. That is to say: If you earn $150,000 or more per year, more than half of all Americans would say you're rich.

But that doesn't necessarily make you rich.

The median household income in 2009, according to the census, was $50,221. I always use median in this context because it tells you a lot, and what it tells you is: one-half of all households in the United States, in 2009, earned less than $50,221.

Remember that old law school trope, look to your left and look to your right? Well, look around the group of people you saw most recently: half of that group, in 2009, lived in a household that earned less than $50,221. For the year.

That's the 99% -- but not all of them, because only half of all Americans lived below that line. The remainder, the other half, lived above $50,221, and that's Idiot Jay Noel's point, in part: Lots of people make lots of money, he says, and they're not rich:

Oh, and by the way, to get into that top 1%, you have to have an income of more than $343,000. Hardly middle class, but hardly a millionaire.

That's what Idiot Jay Noel said. Let's look at that.

The highest median income in any locality in the United States is $248,355. That's in Hidden Hills, California. What that means, again, is that one-half of the people in Hidden Hills, California, make more than $248,355, while the other half makes less than that.

Which means that if you make $343,000, per year -- if you are in the 1%, then you make $100,000 or so more than the median income wherever you live.

I like pictures, so let's compare again. Here is the median income for the United States, as a whole:

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

Half of all people make less than that.

Here is the median income in Hidden Hills, California:

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

Half of the people in Hidden Hills, the wealthiest municipality in the U.S., make more than that.

And here is how much income you have to have to get into the 1%.

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000

Only 1% of Americans make that much money, according to Idiot Jay Noel.

So are they rich? That 1% who makes all those thousands per year? Let's consider, by looking at what it is people pay on a day-to-day basis.

AAA estimates that the average annual cost of owning a car is $6,114 per day, plus about 18 cents a mile driven.

At $50,000 per year, that uses up 12% of your gross income. (Not counting the per-mile costs).

At $343,000 per year, that uses 1% of your income. (Hey! One percent!)

Of course, after paying that $6,114, the bottom half of America has $44,000 or so remaining (gross). The 1% has $337,000 remaining, gross.

What about housing costs? The median rental in 2010, according to the Census, was $1,000 or so per month. So one-half of all apartments cost less than $1,000 per month. If you paid just $1,000 per month in housing costs, that would use 24% of the bottom-half's gross income. Meanwhile, it's just 3% of the income of the 1%.

And, of course, in real dollars, after a car and an apartment, the bottom half have $20,000...gross, while the top 1%, driving that same car and renting that same apartment (likely!) have $325,000 left in their pockets.

Then there's food: the U.S. Census' average household grocery budget for a family of four on the "thrifty" plan, in 2010, was $118.10 per week. I can tell you, that is extremely thrifty: back in about 2000, when I was just starting out, our weekly grocery budget for Sweetie and myself and three kids was about $100, and we barely made that.

At $118.10 per week, the average household spends $6,141 on groceries. If you're the bottom 50%, that means another 12% of your income gone to just barely get by on groceries. (To get an idea what that's like, read this MSN article about a woman who tried to spend just $100 per week on groceries.) Again, that's only 1% of the top 1%'s income.

And, keeping track: if you have a car, and an apartment, and food, that bottom 1% now has just $26,000 (gross) left. The top 1%: $319,000 still sittin' in the bank.

Now, Idiot Jay also mentioned paying taxes. There would, of course, be taxes to pay, right? Certainly on the top 1%. Using the IRS Withholding Calculator, we can estimate the maximum tax bite for our family of 1%ers.

I assumed straight wages, no deductions of any sort -- one income per family. That's about as flat, (and unfair) a tax as you can get. Using those assumptions (two kids both tax deductible, standard deductions), the 1% family pays $81,933 in federal taxes.

That's a lot!

But not all that much, really. It's 23% of that family's income, sure, but remember, that's sans deductions. Still, $81,933 is a hefty tax bite. I'll agree with that.

But after paying those taxes, our nondeducting, nontaxplanning 1% Family with a car, a modest apartment, and thrifty grocery habits still...still has $237,607 (gross) wages remaining.

So presumably they will be able to make ends meet.

What about that bottom-halfer family across the hall? With the same criteria: 2 kids, no deductions beyond the standard deduction, their tax burden is $2,694 -- 5% of their total income.

(Which means that if a family earning $50,000 in income truly pays no taxes, it is because they have been given $2,694 in tax deductions and credits to offset that -- given that by politicians you voted for.)

That same family, after taxes, with their car, apartment, and Ramen-noodle-based meal plan, has, after paying that tax, has only about $23,000 left (gross), after taxes.

So if both people, the 1% Family and the Poor Family, live identical lifestyles, then a rough measure of the disposable income left after basic needs are met and federal taxes paid is:


Poor family:

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000

1% family:

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

So, not rich, right?

Well, bullshit.

After meeting the most basic of needs, the 1% family has ten times the disposable income; if the two families lived identically, the 1% family has $237,000 left over at the end of the year, which is why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. You can't invest or make your money work for you when you have no money left over.

And let's not kid ourselves: the 1% are not living the same as the bottom 50%, not by a longshot.

Idiot Jay says:

And a VAST majority of that 1% are people like doctors, dentists, school administrators, small business owners, insurance agents and actuaries, rocket scientists, and non-profit executives. They're all assholes?

To which I say: Yes. Yes, they are, if they are not willing to contribute a little more to the effort of keeping our society one which does not provide for the worst-off among us, and not willing to shoulder a little more of the burden of contributing to that provision.

In that hypothetical 1% family, with the $237,000 left over, if you doubled their tax burden -- made them pay $162,000 in federal taxes -- they would still, after all that, be far better off than the poor person, but idiots like Jay object to doing that because it's not fair.

Fair is in the eye of the beholder. I think it's not fair that doctors can live in a gated community surrounded by a golf course and complain about being taxed while people starve to death in America and we provide $117 a week in food stamps, especially because you could take more of the doctors' and rocket scientists' money* and not hurt them.

Rocket Scientists aren't very likely to actually be in the 1%. The highest return on a tech education comes if you go to Caltech, which, on average, earns a person $1,713,000 over a 30-year career. That's an average of $57,100 per year over a 3o-year span. The mid-career median pay for a Caltech grad is only $120,000 -- half, of course, make more than that, but half make less.

That's the final idiot argument Idiot Jay makes: That you could tax the rich into submission and still do nothing:

Even if we took every single penny from every single millionaire and billionaire in this country, it still wouldn't even pay off our national debt!

That, of course, is an argument that starts from a false premise: That the debt is solely the responsibility of the poor and social programs, and that it must be paid off right now.

Leave aside the consideration that actually paying off the national debt might be a terribly bad idea. The "national debt" is not the deficit, which is presumably what Idiot Jay means; it's the accumulation of all the deficits ever, including the ones that Ronald Reagan -- classic Keynesian Ronald Reagan-- ran up. The current debt has been growing since 1836, so the responsibility for the amount of debt we have goes back nearly two centuries. It's not a liberal thing.

Deficits going forward are hard to predict -- the US government runs an aspirational budget, setting out what it (definitely) plans to spend and (hopefully) plans to bring in. But looking at past deficits is easy. The deficit was $1,300,000,000,000 in 2011. It was $1,290,000,000,000 in 2010.

So to make ends meet in fiscal 2011, the U.S. would have had to spend less and take in more, to the tune of $1,300,000,000,000. Again, leave aside some obvious points, like the fact that we have spent $806,000,000 in Iraq alone since that fake war was started by Worst President Ever. That's $1,000,000,000 per year on Iraq alone.

$1,300,000,000,000
_______________
$1,000,000,000

= 1/1300 of our 2011 deficit was owing to Iraq alone. That's why I'm not saying much about that (except that if we hadn't spent all that money in Iraq, we'd have it for national health care without charging anyone a penny.)

What Idiot Jay and idiots like him want to say is that taxing the rich alone won't make up that deficit.

In part, that's potentially true. The 1%, while they control one-half of all the money and property, only make 18% of the total wages -- probably (but I'm not sure) because the 1% aren't exactly W2 earners. (That 18% figure counts the cash value of such programs as Medicare and things like foodstamps as income, so the 82% earned by the other 99% includes the cash value of governmental programs, which is an unfair way to measure it: if you're going to include the cash value of programs that hand money out, count the cash value of tax deductions for mortgage interest, among other things, and see how that changes the figure.)

(In fact, the Washington Post has already done that: When government benefits and income from investments and the like are included, the 1%'s wages are $516,633 per year, which emphasizes what I said earlier: that 1% family with the $237,000 left over is investing that money and will make even more in most years than they did the year before, leaving behind the lower half.)

I began by using as my population figure 312,757,380. That means that 1% of the population equals 3,127,573 people. Since they earn on average $516,633 per year in income, that means the top 1%'s gross income, on average, in a given year, is $161,580,783,501,540.

The top marginal US tax rate is 35%-- you pay 35% of your income over $379,150 as a tax. So right now, the 1%'s top marginal taxes are:

$516,633 - $379,150 = $137,483 * 0.35= $48,119.

That's the amount of tax the 1% pays on their highest amount of income.

If we increased that marginal rate -- that top marginal rate -- to 40%, then the average 1%er would pay slightly more:

$516,633 - $379,150 = $137,483 * 0.40 = $54,993 per year. Increasing the top marginal rate to 40% results in taking just $7,000 more per year from the 1%ers.

$7,000 more per year times all the one percenters=

$7,000 x 3,127,573 = 21,893,011,000.

More per year in tax revenues. Of course, that still leaves $129,978,106,989,000 in 2011 deficits alone to make up, but a modest increase in only the top marginal tax rate still cut the deficit by 1% (hey! There's that number again!) without hurting anyone, really. They wouldn't even notice it. In fact, they wouldn't even notice tripling that figure -- taking $21,000 more in top taxes from the highest earners, and thereby increasing the revenues by $63,000,000,000. Or more. If you took 10 times the amount -- $70,0009 from each person, raising $218,930,110,000, or 10% of the total 2011 deficit, each 1% would still have tons and tons of money left over.

To see why that's so, consider this. Here is the average total income from all sources of a 1%-er:


$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000


That's $516,000.

Here's that income after taking $70,000 away from it.

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000

$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000
$1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000 $1,000



See much of a difference? Me, neither.

It's easy to throw numbers around, until you understand what they mean. Defending the right of the superrich to continue to be superrich while people starve around them demonstrates not liberty, not freedom, not fairness, but ignorance of the worst sort.

We all have an obligation to make the world a better place. The 1% have the means to do it, and can do so without hurting themselves. If you could save a man's life without in any way negatively impacting your own, and you did not do that, you would be, in Idiot Jay's words, an asshole. (In my terms, you would be evil.)

The 1% can do just that: they can save lives and not even notice it. The fact that most of them are unwilling to do so, and that most of America is not willing to call them on it, makes me ashamed to live in this country.

Over HOW MANY searches are performed each day?

There's two ways to not get lost in a crowd: 1. Wear a giant cowboy hat, or 2. Make sure your website gets found.

Me, I'm not so big on cowboy hats, what with living in Wisconsin and all, and also what with not being in any way cowboy-esque. So I opt for the latter, and so should you: You should make sure that your website gets found by the people you want to find it.

Did you know that every day over 1,000,000,000,000 searches are performed on the Internet? I just made that fact up, but it proves my point: There's a lot of people using the Internet to find a lot of things, and you want them to find YOU. So use a company like Tasty Placement, a Dallas website design firm that'll help you with your SEO.

They've got samples of websites they've created on their site, and they have a no-contract, no termination fee policy that guarantees they'll keep working hard for you. And you don't even have to wear that giant cowboy hat. (Although you can, if you want.)

Freedom always finds a way to rise...

...like a red, heartshaped balloon, as it were.

I sawthe this whileto looking at thethe State Tree today:-


I think there should always be a red heart balloon up there.

So they made a song about Recalling Scott Walker, 4:

Have you seen the Walker ad featuring "Kristi, High School Teacher?" She made news this week when she claimed to have been the subject of threats after lending her smarmy comments and smug attitude to the Walker anti-recall effort.

Of course, the "threats" aren't anything of the sort; they're mostly just claims that "Kristi, High School Teacher" will be fired, but Kristi's "sour grapes" over being singled out by teachers unions are just that: she expected to come on the air and air her views but not have others air their views, "do as my billionaire bosses command me to say, not as I do" being the current Republican platform.

Or one plank, at least, another plank being "I got mine, screw you." See, "Kristi, High School Teacher" earns more than $92,000 per year in salary and benefits, according to "SP-EYE," and when she's not getting paid $92,000 by the state to teach public school, "Kristi, High School Teacher" is an active supporter of Scott Walker's, filing amicus curiae briefs (according to that same site) and vigorously posting pro-Walker stuff on her Facebook page.

(Hope she's not doing that during school hours, right?)

Here's something "Kristi, High School Teacher" posted back in July in response to Walker's claim that he was going to replace "No Child Left Behind."

Kristi Lacroix
For those of you on this post that are screaming that Walker "hurt" teachers and "ruined" education: I am a teacher and I support Walker. I am excited at the prospect of being able to be free and clear of my union in two years (we are still under contract so I am still forced to pay). There are many educators like myself who have been patiently waiting for someone to stand up and do what is right for our schools. As somone [sic; glad she's teaching your kids?!] who has been in the classroom for 13 years...I know what I am talking about. Thank you Mr. Walker for doing what is right!!! Now it is time to start talking to those of us who see what is going on and have real solutions to solve the problems facing education!

Keep in mind that "Kristi, High School Teacher" got her $92,000+ in benefits and salary through the union negotiating on her behalf, making her efforts now the equivalent of having someone help haul you up off a precipice and then throwing them over it.

When not being hypocritical about where she gets her money, Kristi's other hobbies include "racism" and "having a husband who works for a company that directly benefitted from Walker's removal of legislation."

That is:

Kristi applauded a "white pride" speech, (maybe?) denoting her (apparent?) belief that people of color are one of "the problems facing education?"

And:

Mr. "Kristi, High School Teacher" is an employee of "Rehrig Pacific." Rehrig makes those recycling bins that Wisconsinites are forced to buy under state law. That company (with some others) got Walker to continue the mandate in the budget this past year -- because there's conservatism (government shouldn't intervene in the free market) and there's Republicanism (government should help out our buddies, screw the free market) and the Patsy Walker administration is the latter.

Here's today's Recall Walker song, finally:

Do you think I'm being too subtle?

There's always people out there who are SUPERHARD to buy a gift for, don't you agree? Those people who we either can't think of something cool to get them, or we know what we might want to give them for a holiday present, but it's too expensive?

I'm not the only one with such a dilemma, and now I'm not the only one with a solution to those problems, the solution being one of my favorite websites, "Geek Alerts."

Geek Alerts gets mentioned so often on this and my other blogs because it's an incredible website: It offers cool presents for people who used to not be so cool; it's great to be a geek NOW, when everyone thinks geeks are awesome, and it's even greater to be a geek now when there's so much stuff out there to love, like Yoda license plates or tiny RC helicopters or turntable scratch pads for cats or more stuff like that -- and Geek Alerts has the latest, best, funniest, weirdest stuff for the geek you know (or are).

Plus, they help you afford buying that stuff with their ThinkGeek coupons and Musicians Friend coupons and other savings from things like the ThinkGeek promo codes and whatnot. They don't just tell you about the things you want, they help you afford them. Right now, there are coupons to save up to $200 on musicians' stuff, including 50% off Marshall Amps, which I don't know what those are, but I'm sure your musically-inclined friends would understand why that's such a great deal.

Geek Alerts makes holiday shopping easy: go there, page around, find something for every single person on your list, from that guy in the office gift drawing to your dad (I'm sure he'll like anything they've got) and then saving you money on what you picked out.

And it EVEN helps pick out a gift for that one blogger whose blog you're reading right now. I could sure use those Yoda plates. *hint hint*

Wisconsin to allow rape victims 2-for-1 coupons at area businesses! (On Wisconsin)

Well, not really, but that's the practical effect of the two "initiatives" unveiled this week by J.B. "Van" Hollen's "Department of Justice" in Wisconsin.

On Monday, the Wisconsin Department of Transferring Crimefighting Money To Walker Supporters Justice announced that it was cutting grants to sexual assault victims services by nearly half -- 42.5% -- blaming the cuts on falling revenues. But the revenues they blamed, criminal surcharges, did not fall by 42.5% or even close to it, so the Do[TCMTWS]J is putting the brunt of (completely unnecessary) funding cuts on sexual assault victims.

What's not being cut? Ties to businesses: This week, too, the offices of "Attorney" General "Van" Hollen -- who, remember, campaigned on a platform of ousting terrorist training camps from Wisconsin, and, like the man who uses a banana in his ear to keep crocodiles from attacking, has been wildly successful in that -- announced that they'll implement a new (boondoggle) crime awareness network.

Although the DOTCMTWSJ press release seems primarily to say the program will help businesses identify crimes that affect them (like counterfeiting or retrieving stolen property, it also says:

In a recent theft case at a Chippewa Falls hospital, an alert went out with surveillance photos of the suspects and within a half-hour, local police were receiving tips about the identity of the main suspect, who was later arrested.

but doesn't provide details. A google search for "Chippewa Falls hospital theft" turned up no reports of anything like that, but I'm sure it was a real thing and all.

And, the "Van" Hollen release (suspiciously light on news of how this will fight terrorism) also says that a Minnesota version of this program for helping return some missing children.

But in testimony to support the bill creating the program, "Van" Hollen talked about thefts from businesses, including scrap metal and pharmacy thefts, and mentioned no crimes against individuals. (See here for a news release: http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lc/comtmats/old/09files/ab0785_20100318130646.pdf.)

Nice to see that Wisconsin has shifted its priorities, from fighting terrorism and/or helping sexual assault victims to making sure J.B. "Van" Hollen has a reason to go to local businesses. That ought to make you feel a little better, rape victims -- J.B. "Van" Hollen isn't just sitting around his offices, he's out fighting crime at places like Middleton Ford, helping ensure that the public understand that Wisconsin's government is owned by businesses.

Did I get that slogan right?

Forget that Christmas sweater; here's what you should be doing for the little woman.

Tired of looking at that dingy old bathroom, with it's yellowed ceramic and humidity-warped doors? Well, even if you're not, your wife is, so you should treat her to a special Christmas present this year and update her bathroom. With the modern bathroom vanities from Bathroom Vanities Only, you can quickly, easily, and inexpensively upgrade to a new, fancy, nice-looking, modern bathroom vanity. Upgrading even one room can give the whole house a new feel, and this is actually something she'll like AND use.

In Russia, Candidates Want YOU to vote for THEM. (Other People's Politics)

How bad has the Republican Party gotten? Really bad: While the GOP tries to suppress voter turnout through such tactics as Voter ID and making it harder to register to vote, Russia...

... yes, Russia...

is encouraging people to vote:



It's official: The GOP is less for democracy than Vladimir Putin.

Further in the files of the GOP Minitrue, GOP National Party head and Vowel Abuser Reince Priebus recently declared Wisconsin to be "riddled with voter fraud." In doing so, Reince ignored the evidence, as we've come to expect from the Grand Old Prevaricators: Wisconsin had exactly 7 cases of voter fraud, out of 3,000,000+ ballots cast.

Curiouser and curiousist: Priebus made the "riddled" claim while defending the Republicans' recent vote dismantling the Elections Assistance Commission, a group that is supposed to help prevent voter fraud:

Are you havin' a laugh? You will with Uberhumor's funny photos.

Is the state of politics making you want to cry? Bang your fists on the table? Write an angry letter to the editor?

For Pete's sake, don't do that last one: Nothing marks you as a crackpot faster than writing a letter to the editor. Instead of wasting your pen and paper (nobody reads those things), why not check out the funny photos, pictures & videos on Uberhumor.com?

I've had Uberhumor.com bookmarked on my browser for a couple of months now, and I check it out a couple of times a day to get the updates. Hey, I work in a serious job dealing with serious things and of course there's all the bad news out there, so I try to lighten things up with their Daily Morning Epicness, pictures of hot women and funny GIFs and awesome landscapes and more, and then I go back to check on the stuff they've added throughout the rest of the day.

I especially like the photobombs-- those pictures of people who aren't aware someone is in the back of the photo doing something crazy. Those crack me up, and I've started looking more closely at my own photos to see if I've caught some.

Life is serious -- but you don't always have to be. Go check out Uberhumor.com and see if that doesn't make you smile.

Certainly Wrong: Why it's a bad idea to argue from a generalization, and a worse one to read Chris Rickert.

Recently, on Twitter, I was asked by Wisconsin State Journal's columnist Chris Rickert to explain this comment:

@ChrisRickertWSJ But Rickert is WAY better at overgeneralizing from a false premise.

To which Chris Rickert asked me:

And the false premise was?

As nice as it was to realize that not even Chris Rickert pays much attention to or remembers what he wrote, thereby reducing the harm that can come from poor argument, weak thinking, horrible justifications, general wishiwashiness, and bad humor printed in a newspaper -- but who reads newspapers anymore? Not me, in part because they continue to publish the likes of Chris Rickert -- I still felt like I needed to respond, because this particular bit of overgeneralization stemmed from a particularly weak premise.

I've said over and over that I don't mind reading someone who disagrees with me (in fact, I seek it out in order to not ghettoize my thinking, which is important), but I do mind reading poor writing and Chris Rickert's December 1 column calling Recall Walker supporters was poor writing in every single way writing (and thinking) can be bad.

Rickert's column seemed primarily to take issue with the Recall Walker campaign's announcement that it had reached 300,000 signatures already. I say "primarily" and "seemed" because, really, the whole point of the column was hard to discern. At first I thought a set of notes for an idea for a column had accidentally been posted.

But Rickert begins:

On an overcast, rainy Tuesday in 2004, some 1.48 million Wisconsinites trudged to the polls and voted to re-elect George W. Bush president of the United States.

To the state's credit, about 1.49 million other Wisconsinites voted for John Kerry, so the state's 10 electoral votes went to him, even if the election didn't.

Now-- SPOILER ALERT! -- it struck me that Rickert's point, after reading this column was that a majority of people liking something doesn't necessarily make it right. But if that was his point, then beginning with an example of a minority --the Worst President Ever voters being a Wisconsin minority in 2004 -- is a terrible way to support your argument. "Majorities aren't always right, just as that minority was clearly not right that time," Rickert's argument begins. In short: the majority in 2004, in Wisconsin, was right.

Rickert, having begun his "majorities are wrong a lot" column by proving the exact opposite, then tries to say he's not exactly talking only about majorities by noting

Americans were getting killed in Iraq due to a poorly supported but greatly hyped allegation that turned out to be flat wrong. And here enough people were apparently OK with that to re-elect the falsehood's cheerleader-in-chief.

So: he's talking about just a lot of people being in support of a bad idea? Not a majority? All of the other examples Rickert gives in his column are majorities, so you'll have to decide what his actual point is, since Rickert didn't bother really having one, other than "I don't like you Recall people and so I'm going to tar and feather you somehow."

That becomes obvious in the next paragraphs:

Which brings me to the announcement Monday that those collecting signatures to recall Gov. Scott Walker have surpassed the 300,000 mark, giving them more than half the 540,208 they need by Jan. 17 and proving there's a constituency for everything.

I know this and other hyped milestones in the march toward next year's obscenely expensive, special-interest-driven gubernatorial do-over are just part of keeping the recall troops energized.

"Proving there's a constituency for everything." That is, Rickert is saying, the fact that 300,000 people are willing to say Governor Scott "Patsy" Walker should be recalled is proof that you fools will believe anything.

Rickert's thought processes, not mine.

Note, too, that Rickert has tossed in that trope so frequently used by people who oppose democracy: recall elections are the law, allowed by a formerly-much-more-progressive Wisconsin as a check on the power of officials who had been elected but who were not living up to the standards people elected them for. We are constantly told, by people who oppose democracy, that democracy is expensive. Special elections, recall elections, recounts to verify the accuracy of the elections: these things cost money!

The idea that democracy is too expensive to actually allow is a pernicious nugget of misinformation that people like Rickert should have the responsibility to not argue, but which they argue, nonetheless, because they have no other answer to what is, after all, a constitutional right. In what other area of the Constitution do "conservatives," or whatever Rickert will claim he's, not, really, argue that a Constitutional right is too expensive to allow? (Leave aside criminal defense, which is always underfunded and a waste until your son is accused of something.)

Nobody ever talks about how expensive elections themselves are, but a regular old election costs the same as a recall election: Poll workers are poll workers, ballot counting is ballot counting. Doing a recall means, just, holding two elections, and if two elections is too expensive than eventually they'll be arguing that one election is too expensive, too, and we ought to just leave Walker in charge until he's tired of treating our state like it's a private eBay for the Kochs. (Don't scoff: Handing power to the for-now-governor in the name of cost savings is what the Republicans are all about.)

Just out of curiousity, I did a search for "Chris Rickert Walker ipad" to see how the ever-cost-conscious Rickert, who finds constitutional rights too expensive to exercise when he disagrees with the goal, felt about Walker handing his public-private boondoggle commission all a bunch of iPads on the state dime.

But Google must not have been working, because I wasn't able to find anything Chris Rickert, Fiscal Conservative When It Comes To Causes He Disagrees With, said about Walker's cronies at Walker720 all getting iPads.

I guess Rickert, like a fiscal Potter Stewart, knows obscenity (in costs) when he sees it. iPads for your buddies? Okay by Rickert! Exercising a constitutional right that has been allowed for nearly a century? Whoa, there, buddy! Do that and we might not be able to get Walker's kids an iPhone 4S for Christmas! Think of the children!

Or think of the other numbers that aren't preceded by dollar signs but which still horrify Rickert, who goes on to say:

Nevertheless, it's a rallying cry premised on the power in numbers.

Did you get that? The rallying cry is just NUMBERS. You people, with your recalls and your chants and your wanting a living wage so that you don't have to go on foodstamps while you work your government jobs and don't have to see your special education funds cut in the future, you don't have any real ideas, you've just got numbers!

Numbers! Not ideas! Numbers! Rickert, who presumably thinks of himself as a journalist, saw in the announcement that 300,000 people had signed the recall petitions already -- a rate of 25,000 per day, more than 1,000 per hour (if you want to talk numbers) only numbers, not ideas.

You people probably don't even know what you're signing, you're just doing it because everyone else is doing it, Rickert begins to argue. Like baggy pants on kids, or Justin Bieber, or the TV show Happy Endings, if other people do it, you'll do it, and you won't even know why. That's Rickert's thesis.

Nope. Not making that up. You can't think for yourself, Recall Lemmings, says Rickert:

The 300,000 signers — like the tens of thousands who protested at the Capitol in the spring — are meaningful to the anti-Walker crowd largely because they speak to an ingrained psychological reflex that more is better, and popularity denotes worth. Or, in this case, 540,208 people can't be wrong.

That's my emphasis but Chris Rickert's denigration of the cognitive abilities of the people who sign Recall Walker petitions. You know how 50,000,000 Elvis fans can't be wrong? They can, and you are, because you're only signing those petitions to keep up with the Joneses, says Rickert.

Just how wrong are you? Let Chris Rickert guide you through the Forest of Your Wrongness by pointing out the Trees Of Large Numbers:

So in addition to George W. Bush's vote total in 2004, I thought I'd throw out a few more large numbers, just to test that notion.

• In November 2006, 1,166,571 Wisconsin voters passed an amendment to the state constitution to "protect" marriage, thereby discriminating against couples who've done nothing worse than love and commit themselves to someone of the same sex.

• In November 2010, political novice Ron Johnson, who ran on an anti-government platform, won a U.S. Senate seat with 1,125,999 votes, despite running a company that's taken government money and relied on government to provide health insurance to some of its workers.

• In April, despite having lobbed some decidedly injudicious insults and threats at a fellow justice, Supreme Court Justice David Prosser was re-elected with 752,694 votes.

I'm going to have to call Google and file a complaint. I can't find anything from Rickert on the marriage amendment, and when I google "Chris Rickert Ron Johnson" I find only this article, in which Rickert brags about having a degree in nothing helpful to mankind whatsoever, and spends more time discussing the lamentable quality (?) of his college education than the lamentable lack of quality in Wisconsin's newest senator.

Google "Chris Rickert Prosser" and find this article in which Rickert admits not bothering to read an entire report before reporting on it, but don't be dismayed -- Rickert still manages to add, in that column, a suggestion that the Supreme Court of Wisconsin simply issue a per curiam one line opinion that, in its simplicity, demonstrates either a reckless disregard for, or complete misunderstanding of, where courts get their power.

For Rickert, I'll spell it out: Courts get their power from persuasion. From convincing you that they are right. Saying "We're right, go home" isn't, ever, the best way to handle a decision.

(From a journalistic point of view, Rickert's decision to publish a column in which he says that anger management would have been a "slap on the wrist" for Prosser even though he admits not having read 117 pages of the reports is itself shocking, and would be grounds for dismissal at any reasonable, credible newspaper. Opinions based on partial sets of facts are only, only allowable when the complete set of facts is not available. When Bill Lueders published the article that set off that particular firestorm, he did not have all the facts but had made an attempt to get them. When Rickert attempted to support the Walker/Prosserites in a seemingly evenhanded column that continued Rickert's role as a de facto Walker campaign aide, he had the 117 pages of reports but to quote his own lead, he "gave up" reading them and went and read news coverage instead.)

Now you know, though: Rickert's opinion is based on the facts that he's not too lazy to read -- if you shovel some facts up for him, he'll maybe digest them, so take that into consideration as you go on reading his Damnation By The Numbers of the People Who Would Recall His Hero:

It's one of those weird ironies of life that majority rule is both a linchpin and a drawback of representative democracy. A man who dragged the country into an unnecessary war got a second term in the White House, and a man who's done nothing worse than employ conservative principles to balance the state budget is facing recall.

"Done nothing worse than employ conservative principles to balance the state budget?"

Which conservative principles? Local rule? That's a conservative principle. This article, among many, describes the impact of Walker's legislation that restricts the local municipal authorities from raising property taxes to help fund local services. What part of conservatism denies local municipalities the right to decide what level of services, and taxation to pay for those services, they want? I live in Middleton, by choice, because the relatively high taxation has relatively high levels of local service, including special education for my two youngest. I voluntarily choose to live there, and Walker's "conservative reforms to balance the budget" have allowed people who live in Kaukauna, or Superior, or Waukesha, to determine what my property taxes ought to be, and how much education my boys can get.

That's "conservative?" Centralization of power away from local control is in no way a conservative principle.

What about upholding basic constitutional rights, like free speech, or access to the Capitol? I can't remember any other governor turning our Capitol, which I used to like to cut through to get to court and to take my boys to to see the Christmas tree, into an armed camp with searches and seizures -- let alone charging people for the right to protest him. Conservatives are supposed to be against the overexercise of government power. Scott Walker and his Hillbilly Legislature are exercising power like petty tyrants. That's not conservative, Chris Rickert.

Leaving aside the budget that has already started to decimate Wisconsin's schools and government workers while producing less than zero new jobs, and the tax cuts that had no impact on job creation either, look at what else Walker has presided over in just a year: Wisconsin is an armed camp where people can now shoot you for crossing the threshold of your house uninvited. He has reduced the role of state agencies in rulemaking, taking away expertise from the people who are on the ground dealing with those issues and putting it into the Capitol. He has helped redistrict the state in a brutally partisan way, pushing that legislation through on a short timetable without debate. He tried to have state legislators arrested during session, a completely unconstitutional action. He admitted to having given consideration to sending thugs out to mix it up with protestors. He has spent more on security than any governor prior to him. Many of his appointees got hefty salary increases while he was decreasing pay for regular union workers. His Act 10 budget proposals caused an unprecedented retirement among sitting circuit court judges and his delays in appointing new judges have led to even more court backlogs.

That's just off the top of my head.

But Rickert is not willing to credit any of that with being the basis behind the recall petitions' phenomenal popularity -- not if it means taking away Walker, whose lap Chris Rickert apparently wants to sit on and gaze lovingly up at the beatific, smug face of the Man Who Will Not Be Governor next year. It's just a numbers game, to Rickert: He starts from the false premise that you have no reason to be mad at Walker, and continues on to the premise that now, the people who are signing are doing so only because of the others who sign, and suggests that the people behind the recall are promoting "the numbers" to get others to sign because they are devoid of other ideas: it's a numbers game, the popularity of the recall creating the popularity of the recall in an ouroborean cycle that has no intellectual basis behind it.

That's the false premise of Rickert's latest sin against journalism: That it's not ideas driving the recall, it's just petty grudges and numbers. That's a thought promoted by the Walker camp: If you disagree with them, you're just holding a grudge from the last election and you don't really know what you're talking about -- and now, even more, if you're signing a recall petition you're only doing it because someone else did it.

Rickert's comparisons of Recall Petition signers to Bush and Prosser voters and anti-marriage amendment voters is particularly disagreeable because it suggests that all majorities are the same and that if you're in the majority you must be wrong. But Bush misled people into war, with the help of supposedly dignified, smart people like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, who sacrificed their intellectual dignity and credibility to further a murderous cause of neoconservatism, the neo completely negating the rest of the word. To link the Recall signers with people who voted to put Bush into office in 2004 despite having been lied to is to suggest that Recall organizers are committing a similar lie...

...to suggest it without backing it up or having the guts to directly make the comparison. What lie have the recall organizers foisted off on the public, Chris? Apples can't always be compared to apples and all majorities are not created equal.

To link Recall supporters with Prosser voters is even worse: The Prosser-Kloppenburg race will go down, with the 2000 election, as the most suspicious of elections in Wisconsinites' memories. Whatever you believe about the race -- and I'm on the side of those who don't trust the votes from Waukesha and think they were manufactured -- it was a tainted race for everyone and Prosser will never regain his credibility, either, making him useful only to the conservatives who would rather the Court side with them than the law, but suggesting that Recall organizers and Prosser campaigners are coequal majorities is to suggest that there is something tainted or underhanded about the Recall, and what is your evidence of that, Chris?

To link the Recallers with the hate-inspired antimarriage amendment that has resulted in more travesties of family law than I can recount here -- although I could, with permission, provide a transcript of a judge lamenting the fact that a good parent cannot get a remedy for the de facto kidnapping of her children, a result that occurred in part because of that amendment -- is just as bad. The Recallers are not proceeding from a position of personal hatred and animosity, or of false, holier-than-thou jury-rigged claims. The Recallers did not look at Walker and say "I am going to, based on my own personal so-called religious beliefs, try to deny you basic constitutional rights others enjoy." They said they disagreed with his policies and exercised their constitutional right to do something about it. There is nothing personal about the Recall, and it is not being sold to the public on the same sham basis ("Protecting marriage from the gays!") that the antimarriage amendment was.

There have been plenty of majorities that were right, of course, including the majority of Wisconsinites who lead off Rickert's awful article by simultaneously rejecting Worst President Ever and undermining Rickert's false premise before it gets going, but Rickert doesn't want to note those -- majorities that include the majority of legislators who had to (twice) approve the Recall process and the majority of voters who had to approve it to get it into the Constitution.

Let me, like Rickert, finish up with a John Kerry quote. Rickert ends his random collection of letters thusly:

It brings to mind another memorable episode from the 2004 election — when in a debate Kerry pointed out the obvious flaw in one of Bush's most vaunted selling points: his "stay-the-course" "certainty" in world affairs

It's one thing to be certain," Kerry said, "but you can be certain and be wrong."

That's the problem, you see, with relying on other journalists to think for you -- you can, as Rickert is, be certain of your quote, and also wrong about the gist of the quote. Rickert is attempting to use Kerry's words to paint Recallers into a corner, as the intellectual (?) equivalents of Worst President Ever, and trying to shame them with the words of someone they (presumably) support.

But Rickert didn't bother reading the whole quote. Here's the whole thing, from the transcript of the debate. Commenting on Worst President Ever's assertion that presidents need to be certain in foreign policy -- Worst Ever had just commented on Kerry's changes of position and said that a president needs certainty-- Kerry responded:

...let me talk about something that the president just sort of finished up with. Maybe someone would call it a character trait, maybe somebody wouldn't. But this issue of certainty. It's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong. It's another to be certain and be right, or to be certain and be moving in the right direction, or be certain about a principle and then learn new facts and take those new facts and put them to use in order to change and get your policy right. What I worry about with the president is that he's not acknowledging what's on the ground, he's not acknowledging the realities of North Korea, he's not acknowledging the truth of the science of stem-cell research or of global warming and other issues. And certainty sometimes can get you in trouble

That puts a different light on it, doesn't it? When you realize what Kerry was really saying, you can see that the actual quote that Rickert didn't want to use demonstrates first that Kerry had no problem with admitting that sometimes certainty is right, too -- and also that people must be willing to change their positions given new facts -- to acknowledge what's on the ground and modify one's position.

Walker supposedly wanted just to balance the budget -- but would not negotiate on the issue of collective bargaining even after unions said they would take the exact pay cuts proposed.

There are two Republican suits trying to enforce the brand-new districts for the recall election, despite having already lost that battle.

After two of six senators lost in the summer recall elections, Walker made exactly zero overtures to moderates and Democrats to soften his stances.

When job numbers continue to fall, Walker's office continues to spin the results.

I could go on.

It's Walker's certainty -- his refusal to accept that his cronyism policies handed out like candy on behalf of wealthy benefactors who guarantee unpopular Republicans sinecure jobs if they lose office are hurting the state on the most fundamental levels -- that has turned the debate from one over merely collective bargaining to one over the very soul of Wisconsin.

You wouldn't get 1,000 people an hour pulling over their cars to sign a recall petition to support collective bargaining. Workers are not downloading petitions to circulate at private offices, or standing on street corners on their lunch breaks and after work, as a fight over union rights. A woman did not walk around our neighborhood in the pouring rain one Saturday afternoon to fight to collect union dues through a payroll.

Wisconsinites, at a rate of a thousand an hour, have watched the damage done to their state in less than a year, and have concluded that whatever they thought last November, they need to rethink it.

They need to rethink it, because Walker won't.

And they need to rethink it because idiots with a newspaper column that helps magnify the effect their ill-supported reasoning would otherwise have refuse to think in the first place.