Heh - I'm watching TV and that commercial for the anti-heartburn pill, Nexium, comes on. Now, this commercial is goofy as hell in the first place, making heartburn and acid-reflux overdramatic and...well, excessively silly. And they're playing some music in the background, something also kind of dramatic and silly. I knew I recognized it from somewhere - it's the theme music from commercials for the Caribbean resort Atlantis. That's just not right - resorts and heartburn tied together with the same music? Huh?

My fellow Salon bloggers, The Raven and Charly Z, have responded to my response to Raven's response to an earlier post of mine. I've go tot find a better way to word that...but anyway, more writing on the economy, shall we say. Here's my bit.

Raven, it's not that I have the least problem with, to use my previous example, a doctor's kid having a better chance at worldly success than a janitor's kid. I'm grateful for the advantages that my dad's hard work has given me, and if and when I have kids, I will do my damnedest to see that they get all the opportunities I can conceivably give them. That's not a problem. What IS a problem is this: it is so much more difficult for a janitor's kid to follow the same path I have. This is why we need the same high quality of public education in ALL our schools, regardless of whose kids go there. This is why we need college education to be made available to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay.

And there's a second problem with what Raven calls "dynastic wealth-building" - the filthy rich passing on everything to their kids. I don't begrudge the right of someone who's made enough money to guarantee that their kids will never have to work a day in their lives. But I do have a problem with someone bequeathing enough money that their GRANDKIDS will never have to work a day in their life. Raven's also beating the dead horse (sorry, but that's what it is) of the lazy unemployed: you know, the ones who just don't want to work, so why should we support them? And you know what? Beyond making sure that they receive the basic human rights and dignities (food, shelter, health care, job training), they shouldn't get more. Again, I'm not proposing Marxism here - though even theoretical Marxism doesn't look fondly on those who don't provide any value to society. My concern is for their kids, who don't deserve to pay the price for their parents' mistakes. My concern is for the kid who has to drop out of high school to help support his mom and siblings, and is never able to make it past near-minimum wage food service and retail work, no matter how hard he tries.

And Charly, while spending the taxes the government brings in more appropriately is necessary, exactly as you say, that's not enough: we also need to re-balance the tax burden more appropriately.

Which brings me to the answers to my pop quiz:

Q) Which decade saw the highest tax rate on the top tax bracket in American history?

A) The 1950s.

Q) Which decade saw the largest middle class, as a percentage of the total population, in American industrial history? (i.e., the 1820s don't count.)

A) The 1950s.

Hmm...

Some quotes from Salon's article on Ron Reagan, Jr.'s contempt for Bush:

• From 2000 - "The big elephant sitting in the corner is that George W. Bush is simply unqualified for the job... What's his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?"
• "Sure, he wasn't a technocrat like Clinton. But my father was a man -- that's the difference between him and Bush. To paraphrase Jack Palance, my father crapped bigger ones than George Bush."
• "And the weapons of mass destruction? Whatever happened to them? I'm sure we'll find some," he laughs. "They're being flown in right now in a C-130."
• On stem cell research - "Now ignorance is one thing, ignorance can be cured. But many of the Republican leaders opposing this research know better, people like [Senate Majority Leader] Bill Frist, who's a doctor, for God's sake. People like him are blocking it to pander to the 20 percent of their base who are mouth-breathers. And that's unconscionable -- there are lives at stake here. Stem cell research can revolutionize medicine, more than anything since antibiotics."
• On his reaction to the idea of some 'concerned citizens' trying to get him to run for political office - "You mean like they did with George W.? 'Hey, you've got name recognition, that's all that matters -- we'll give you millions of dollars to run!' Imagine coming to a man with just two years' experience in public office, and a ceremonial one at that. Imagine installing such a blank slate in the presidency of the United States! This is a regency, not a presidency.  And they told us, 'Don't worry about W. not knowing anything, good old Dick Cheney will be his minder.' Dick Cheney? And this was going to be compassionate conservatism? Dick Cheney is to the right of Genghis Khan, he wants to drill in your backyard, he wants to deny black people their rights --it was all there in his voting record for us to see. What were we, rubes?"

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the 75-year cost of the Bush tax cuts, if the 2001 ones are made permanent and his new ones are passed, will be three times greater than the deficit in Social Security over that time, and larger than the 75 year deficits in Social Security and Medicare combined. Seriously.

Has Bush committed an actual impeachable offense yet? I don't mean anything even near as stupid as lying about a blowjob - I'm talking Nixon level. There's no way that he's perpetrated this astounding sequence of frauds on the American public and atrocities on the world without having committed a single felony, right?

In response to Raven's comment on my pissed-off-at-capitalism post a few days back... he said:

Yes, the rich have power - because they've succeeded. The danger in your viewpoint here is that it vaguely suggests that unless all are leveled out on a plain of mediocrity that there's a "problem" that needs to be "fixed."

He went on, in a second comment, to say that income disparity is a result of some people being more valuable to society than others - pardon my paraphrasing. It wasn't actually anywhere near that nasty-sounding. But here I go...

Yeah, there will always be those who are smarter than those who aren't. I definitely deserve to make more money than a guy who can't even manage to flip burgers properly. BUT I don't deserve to make 500 times what he makes, and he doesn't deserve to not make enough to live on.

And the rich often don't have power because they've succeeded - they have power 'cos Daddy succeeded. I know I wouldn't be in my swank apartment (ok, it's not actually swank, but the point stands...) with my high-paying job if my dad hadn't made enough money for us to be able to live in a town with good public education and then send me to a very good private college. The problem is not that a doctor makes more than a janitor - the problem is that a doctor's kid has a far, far better chance to be a doctor than a janitor's kid does.

I don't say any crap like "...to each according to their needs..." I am NOT a Marxist. As much as I like the idea of Dave Pollard's non-commercial economy, I don't think it'd work either. Any system that is predicated on those with the ability to take advantage of the system NOT doing so is in deep, deep trouble: see the Soviet Union, Enron, etc... Greed is real. It ain't goin' away. And Raven's argument (which I've heard many a-time before) that anyone could be doing alright if they just spend wisely and in an organized way, etc... it don't work neither. What's the answer, then? I'm not sure, but it starts with making sense of our tax code, both for individuals and corporations, and then using it for constructive purposes. I'll talk more about that soon - but I'll give you two quiz questions as a teaser now: which decade saw the heaviest tax burden on the rich (i.e., highest tax rate on the top tax bracket) in American history? And which decade saw the largest middle class in industrial American history?

By now, you have surely heard about the horrendous damage to humanity's heritage going on in Iraq right now - if not, check the NY Times, the Washington Post, and Salon. Nowhere on earth is as important in terms of our history as Mesopotamia - this is where it all started, writing, religion, farming, civilization itself.

At the National Museum of Antiquities, where priceless artifacts had been wrapped in foam and secured in windowless storage rooms to protect them against U.S. bombs, an army of looters perpetrated what war did not: They smashed hundreds of irreplaceable treasures, including Sumerian clay pots, Assyrian marble carvings, Babylonian statues and a massive stone tablet with intricate cuneiform writing.

As employees returned today to survey the damage at one of the world's greatest repositories of artifacts, they encountered devastation that defied their worst expectations. The floor was covered with shards of broken pottery. An extensive card catalog of every item the museum owns, some of which date back 5,000 years, was destroyed. A cavernous storeroom housing thousands of unclassified pieces was ransacked so badly that an archaeologist predicted it would be impossible to repair many of the items.

"Our heritage is finished," lamented Nabhal Amin, the museum's deputy director, as she surveyed a Sumerian tablet that had been cracked in two. "Why did they do this? Why? Why?"

(from the Post story)

I can't even tell you how this makes me feel. I feel nauseous just thinking about it. This is beyond a tragedy - this is the destruction of history. Think about that - these are artifacts of daily life from three, four, five thousand years ago, either destroyed for no reason or looted to be sold on eBay. And that's exactly what'll happen - small cuneiform pieces have been showing up on eBay for years, and they're almost all looted, either from museums or archaeological sites. Now...it's just unbelieveable that the Bush people didn't think about this. On the BBC this afternoon, a reporter in Iraq commented that the Americans seem to be "making it up as they go along" in terms of the future government of Iraq - what the hell is that? We're told that the original expectations were that this would be a cakewalk, right? So surely they had to be planning for what to do to re-institute order after they blasted it to pieces, right? Well, obviously not, and obviously it's not worth wasting the breath asking questions like that - of course the Bushies haven't thought things through...or else there wouldn't be Kurds in Kirkuk, for example.

And now, according to the Observer (why don't we have a paper like this in the States, by the way?), we're preparing to go after Hezbollah in Lebanon - which reads to me as a combination of helping our nasty little friends in Likud (supposedly, this is part of a deal to get Sharon to consider the road map to peace...) and trying to provoke Syria. From the moment we stopped seeing live pictures of Saddam, Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, et al have been going after Syria, and attacking Hezbollah - who we can at least claim to have just cause against, since they ARE a terrorist organization - is a great way to get an excuse to go into Syria.

Is this real? How can this be real? Aren't we all suffering some kind of group hallucination? The Bush administration makes Churchill and the other late British imperialists look like pansies by comparison - every other major leader in modern world history but the total maniacs (Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin) has understood that you need some level of international consensus to go off on foreign adventurism. But here we are, giving up on even the fig leaves. How far do they really plan to go? Is there anything we can do to stop them? Can we call for UN intervention in the US, to overthrow this unelected regime that's armed itself with weapons of mass destruction?

One last quote, from the Salon article above, said from among a crowd in Mosul watching their city get torn down and looted.

"This isn't freedom, this is bullshit," a kid said to me. It was like the report of a rifle.

Things are very, very wrong in the world right now. And Bush is at the center of it all.

Just after returning from Camp David today, Bush said to reporters, and I quote, "And, you know, it will take time to restore chaos and order -- order out of chaos. But we will." No, seriously - check the White House site. I know, it's just another Bushism - but quite the apropos malapropism, n'est pas?

Damn! I just wrote a big piece on how we need to change our education system and why, and I closed the window I was writing in by accident. Arrrrgh. I'll try to put it back together later - gotta get to work now.

Brain teaser for you all: anarchy as a political system is generally understood to be a bad thing, yet anarchy as an economic system is generally accepted as how things ought to be. Why? The huge gaping flaw to political anarchy is that someone with power is able to utilize that power over others to extend their own power, etc - without restraint. Doesn't capitalism do the same thing?

The more I think about, the more I realize that capitalism really is fatally flawed. I'm not saying that a planned economy is the answer - I'm no Marxist - but unrestrained capitalism doesn't work any better than political anarchy, since human beings aren't going to always think of others first. That's fine and understandable - it just means that we need police and high taxes on the rich, to keep those who abuse the system in check.

So yeah, Baghdad's fallen. Good - but how are we going to bring any sense of law and order there? There are no cops in the major cities, more or less - they've vanished. Do we put US troops onto the streets of Baghdad as police? Oh yeah, THAT'll work well. We've got goodwill with the Shi'ites right now - it won't be hard to lose that goodwill, and I have every faith in the Bush administration's ability to do just that...

So I'm driving home tonight and I'm listening to the radio...and I recognize the DJ's voice. I couldn't figure out where I recognized him from, until I heard his name: Andy Hicks. I went to the WBCN web page, and lo and behold, it is the Andy Hicks I knew from high school. He's a DJ on the biggest rock station in Boston. Freaky.

Thoughts on last night's NCAA Tournament final:

Carmelo Anthony can PLAY. I don't expect him to be as dominant in the NBA as he was here (even with a bad back and pretty much no production in the last 10 minutes of the game, he scored 20, with 10 boards and 7 assists) - he's not as athletic as the top comprably-sized players in the game today (McGrady at 6'8", Kobe at 6'7"), but he's still going to be fantastic. If the lottery were to go in the order of the current standings, he'd be going third to Miami, where he'd fit in nicely with Caron Butler and Eddie Jones (until Riley finally manages to move his contract) at the 2 and 3. Really, he's a perfect Pat Riley player - versatile and a great rebounder. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he has a better career than the consensus #2 pick right now, Darko Mlicic.

It's a shame Nick Collison won't be NEAR as good in the League - because I'd love to add a player like he is in college to the Celtics. He pulled down 19 points (admittedly with horrible 3-10 FT shooting) and 21 rebounds...I'm just fascinated by anyone who can pull down 21 boards in a game. But he's 6'9" and 255lb, the same height and only a little taller than the much better ball-handler and more athletic Antoine Walker...so I don't see him likely to be near as dominant a post player in the NBA. Ah well.

I forgot where my various mock draft sites were - I can only remember nbadraft.net. I'd like to get an idea of the current consensus, to see who the Celtics might be able to pick up. They've got two picks, their own and Philly's, which look like around the 17th and 20th respectively. The fantasy going around online Celtics discussion these days is moving Walker (who's going into the last year of his contract) and one of the picks to move waaaaay up in the draft - #1's not even a possibility in our dreams, but depending on who gets the 2nd and 3rd picks, it might be possible. Of course, we'd have to take on another horrible contract at the same time. And if the Celtics don't toss their GM, Chris Wallace, and ideally their coach, three-pointer-crazy Jim O'Brien, it's not worth adding any players who don't fit perfectly into the system already in place.

Ah, I'm just babbling. I'll write something the rest of you could actually care about sometime later. =)

You *MUST* go see today's Boondocks comic strip. Go there now.

I just made a mistake and briefly watched Fox News. Steve Forbes said, and I quote "Let Western Europe go on their own. We don't need them any more." What an idiot...and now the interviewer is pointing out that Europeans generally prefer Democrat presidents to Republican presidents. Well, duh - because Democrats are closer to even European conservatives than Republicans are. And Forbes just said something about Democrats being similar to the European elite - "Let them have their wine and cheese while we do the real work." HA! Steve "I inherited all my cash" Forbes claiming to be a working man...

Oh, and John Kerry has moved even higher in my opinion after slamming the Republican response to his "regime change" comments - "I don't need any lessons in patriotism from the likes of Tom DeLay." Oh, hell, yeah. "Tom DeLay, hear me loud and clear: I speak out for America, not for politics, and as long as I have air in my lungs I will continue to speak my mind ..." Ok, maybe I WILL support him. This is the strongest I've seen any major figure respond to the utter absurdness of "anti-American" claims that get thrown around so much post 9/11. Now we just need more.

To Ann Marie's friend - everything she told you is true. =)

US Central Command say that there is "increasing evidence the [Iraqi] regime cannot control [their] forces." Meaning what, exactly? Unless the cut-off Iraqi forces surrender en masse as a result of not being controlled by the regime or whatever, does this really make any difference? It's not like the Iraqis were going to win in a straight-up fight, and it sure looks like plans have been in place to shift to a decentralized guerilla form of fighting. Does it really matter whether Saddam Hussein directly ordered that Black Hawk to be shot down, or if the soldiers on the ground did it on their own initiative?

My five-minute analysis of the Democratic presidential field:

Kerry's gonna win the nomination. Shocking, huh? I know, he's the frontrunner by fiat, someone could come out of nowhere, etc, etc, but let's look at his competition...

• Lieberman - a Republican in Dem clothing. No way can he get enough of the party faithful (unions, minorities, old-school liberals) to come on board. The fact that he's Jewish won't help him or hurt him that much in most states, though it could cause problems in the South - but the South also happens to be the most conservative region, even in the Democratic party. Once he gets clobbered in New Hampshire (and he will get clobbered - more on that later) he's more or less done, no matter how much cash he can raise from insurance executives.
• Gephardt - let me count the ways...he's old. I know, he's not actually that old, but this is a guy who ran for president in 1988 and has had more or less the same job since that time. In the House. Woo. How exciting. No one's going to look to Dick Gephardt for anything new, and no one's going to expect anything much out of him. He's strong with labor, it's true, but labor is a less signficant piece of the puzzle now - and nearly irrelevant in New Hampshire. His pro-war stance hurts him in the primaries - if I remember correctly, over 50% of Democrats oppose the war (while 90% of Republicans support the war). What's more, his support for the war can be tied to his general lack of resistance to Bush's agenda...and the party faithful don't much care for Bush, thank-you-very-much. If he doesn't win Iowa, he's done. And if he *does* win Iowa, he then has to place third in New Hampshire, and then win Missouri by a landslide, AND place well in South Carolina. In other words, not bloody likely.
• Edwards - ha. Ha ha. I'm sorry, but HA. Edwards' appeal seems to be that people feel like he should be telegenic - but then he isn't. He's trying to position himself as Clinton II, but it's just not working. He's got next to no experience, he's not assured of winning re-election to the Senate, he's bungled TV appearences...oh, and there's another Southerner in the race now, meaning he won't get all of the vote-for-a-Southerner-by-default vote in South Carolina and Missouri. Clinton even said that Edwards isn't ready yet. Nah - he's not really a significant player this time. I think he may be mainly angling for VP now.
• Graham - he's oldish, he's from Florida, he's got health problems, and he's not very well known. I almost feel like he's in the race just to kill off Edwards, but the more likely scenario is that he's looking at the VP slot, too.
• Sharpton - do I even have to say anything? Luckily, Carol Mosely-Braun will split enough of Sharpton's target audience away that Al won't have enough delegates to cause a ruckus at the convention.
• Mosely-Braun - My second choice, actually, even though she's most likely running mainly to cripple Sharpton, as Donna Brazile planned.
• Kucinich - my man, even though there's no way he'll win. But he'll do well in Iowa and other states where anti-war sentiments are strong in the Democratic base.
• Dean - ah yes, Howard Dean. He's polling in a dead heat with Kerry in New Hampshire right now, and I'd be absolutely shocked if they didn't end up 1-2 there come next February. Dean's close enough to what I look for in a candidate that I'd support him in the primaries - if I thought there was a snowball's chance in hell that he could win the nomination. His best case scenario is being '04's Democratic equivalent of McCain - the guy who says what people really want to hear but gets beaten out by the much richer, party-machinery-supported frontrunner, i.e. Kerry. He's not going to do near as well outside of New England, though he stands a chance at placing top 3 in Iowa. We'll see, though - Dean definitely has the best chance of anyone not named John Kerry, and I think he may actually be more electable in the general election than Kerry is.

So yeah. I expect Kerry to get the nod. The question is how does he win? I don't see the economy recovering particularly well by Nov. 2004, which gives the Dem nominee an automatic leg up on economic issues - party out of power always benefits from a recession. But I think the deciding factor will be foreign policy and national security, which we've seen the Bush administration use as a smokescreen for domestic problems their entire time in office. How do the Democrats beat the Bushies there? Well, Bush failures in foreign policy don't exactly make Bush look better - and I don't see him doing particularly well, shall we say. Iraq may not be in full war mode by election time, but I doubt it'll be quiet. The Democratic ticket will have to be able to criticize Bush without sounding like peace activists, because the majority of the country won't buy that. So who do I think Kerry will go to as VP? Wesley Clark. A Kerry/Clark ticket is actually a stupendous foreign policy/national security ticket in any circumstances, and as a counterpoint to the Bush/Cheney ticket, they just look better. Clark has criticized the Bush policies and strategies, but it's awfully hard to tar him with the "anit-American" slur, on account of that whole career soldier thing, while Kerry's got the medals and experience in the Senate. If Kerry just grows a spine, that ticket could whomp Bush all over the place - and I think Kerry may be getting there. The Boston Globe reported today on a speech made by Kerry in New Hampsire in which he said "What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the Uinted States." That's what he has to say to get Bush out of office.