Ship’s Log II December 14, 2012 Last night Joan Baez patted me on the cheek. Yes: this Joan Baez, who opened for Martin Luther King, Jr., who was at Woodstock, who introduced Bob Dylan to the world, who has been fighting for justice at home and abroad more or less nonstop all her life. This is some cruise we are on. Earlier yesterday, I semi-marched with more than 100 others on the nice little Cayman Islands building that is estimated to house 18,000 corporations in 18,000 teensy-tiny post office boxes . . . semi-marched because I’m just not good at crowds and chanting (Hey hey! Ho ho! Tax evaders have to go!), though I respect and often admire those who are. Strictly speaking, tax evaders beat taxes by violating the law, which I have no idea whether any of those 18,000 do; tax avoiders merely beat taxes by finding loopholes that they, or their predecessors, managed to insert into the law. So they’re doing nothing illegal; just grounding their often aggressive patriotism in the tradition of “no taxation without representation!” while somehow ignoring the fact that for the last couple of centuries we have had representation, which has led us to tax ourselves to finance wars (until today’s uber-patriotic Republicans decided to finance them with deficits), interstate highways, social safety nets, moon landings, Marshall Plans, college aid, and so much more that helped us to end the 20th Century the envy of the world. In between my semi-marching and the pat on my cheek I got to hear a panel on the Arab Spring (with strong participation from an audience member who holds dual US and Iranian citizenship and another who is Egyptian) . . . and then an interview conducted by Victor Navasky, who (among so much else) 41 years ago was the young New York Times Sunday Magazine editor who worked with Merle Miller to publish his ground-breaking (and just re-released in paperback) cover story, “On Being Different.” The interview had nothing to do with that, it was with Jack O’Dell, who is not Irish, who ran the voter registration and direct mail fundraising efforts for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (he is now 89). This is some cruise we are on. This morning we appear to be in Honduras. Gotta run.
Ship’s Log December 13, 2012December 14, 2012 [WORDPRESS REALLY SUCKS. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE POSTED WEDNESDAY.] Brief bulletin from . . . MY FIRST CRUISE EVER: Just climbed a waterfall in Jamaica. Aboard with 400 VERY liberal liberals. I am the right-winger compared to most. Tomorrow (today, as you read this), some of us will draw attention to Cayman Islands tax avoidance. Had my first mangosteen. Had dinner with an MSNBC hero. Horrified by the cost of Internet connection. Gotta go. YMI Up smartly yesterday (finally!); Guru says to take our profits. I’m selling. TRANS John Leeds: “I had an interesting surprise a few months ago. I called a guy I hadn’t talked with in 10 years and a woman answered. She said she knew him but wouldn’t tell me his number but said she’d pass the message on. About a week later a woman called me whom I didn’t know. Looking back, I realized it was the woman I had spoken with. It was him — now her. She’s got a boyfriend in Canada and hopes to move there soon. Even before my recent experience I had realized I have much to learn to embrace the concept of transgender and to allow my compassion and empathy rule the day, not my reaction to differentness. She is very much like he was. But calmer. Really more evolved. She says part of it is the different hormonal balance.”
Trans December 12, 2012December 9, 2012 Trans-fat: bad, leads to illness. Trans-gender: confusing, long thought to be an illness. Not any more. Here’s the story, posted by a retired eye surgeon, herself transgender, and an acquaintance of mine, Dr. Dana Beyer. I say “acquaintance” rather than friend to draw a distinction between the increasingly loose use of the word, where anyone you’ve met even briefly is “a friend” — where people routinely have hundreds or thousands of Facebook friends (although in a world that needs all the friendliness it can get, this may not be such a bad thing) — and the stricter meaning, wherein friendship connotes a real bond. By that definition, I have four transgender friends. But that’s four more than most people and four more than I had ten years ago. And that matters, because as with anything “different,” we’re wired to reject it until we get to know it, or at least until it comes highly recommended. When I was a kid, no one knew gay people — or knew that they did, which amounts to the same thing. Now everyone does, and, guess what? Most of today’s kids can barely imagine a world where being gay was a codified mental illness, often treated with electroshock therapy. They know Ellen DeGeneres. They know Anderson Cooper. They know their gay aunts and uncles and perhaps their gay fraternity brother, congressperson or (as of next month) senator. I’m sorry, but it’s pretty hard not to like Ellen or Anderson. And while some on the right may think the mayors of Paris and Berlin and Houston and Portland (and New York’s City Council President) hold some “crazy” political views, few would argue they are mentally ill. Well, as of this month, Dana reports, trans persons are no longer classified as mentally ill, either — just as happened 39 years ago when the American Psychiatric Association made the same determination about gays and lesbians. Most of us have a lot on our plate. Actively seeking to make transgender friends or to read up on the topic will not make most to-do lists. But once you do get to know people like my friends Diego, a widely respected congressional aide who was born a woman, and Babs, born a man, with whom I sit on the DNC Executive Committee, and Renee, who captained Yale’s all-male tennis team, and Martine, who recruited Ray Kurzweil — yes! “my” Ray Kurzweil! — to the board of the public company she founded and runs . . . once you get to know people like these, discomfort turns into fondness and respect.
Ben Cohen’s Best Flavor Yet: Rubber Stamp Your Cash December 11, 2012December 9, 2012 One of the highlights of my life some years ago was having Ben Cohen come over with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s so we’d have something to enjoy as he pitched me on his campaign to cut military funding and I pitched him on my campaign to increase DNC funding. We wound up trading checks (thank you, Ben!), and I learned how self-defrosting refrigerators work and why that takes a toll on ice cream. I expect he may not even remember that hour — I obviously do — but I did make it into his address file, apparently, because his office just sent me this. It’s so good, I wanted to be sure to offer you a taste: Dear Andy, I’m sending this email to anyone I’ve run into over the years. I want to let you know what I’m up to and if you like the idea, hopefully you might like to participate by purchasing some unique holiday gifts that are fun to use and help get big money out of politics all at the same time. We sell the stamps at our cost: $6-$10. order online. StampStampede Rubber Stamps The Gift That Really Keeps on Giving StampStampede is a non profit campaign I started to encourage tens of thousands of Americans to rubber stamp messages on paper money calling for an Amendment to the Constitution to Get Money Out of Politics. We’re part of a movement that is rapidly gathering momentum. Already 400 municipalities and 11 states have passed resolutions in favor of the amendment. Over 100 senators and congress people have signed on as well. The average stamped dollar bill will be seen by 875 people over the next 2 ½ years. Multiplication is amazing. We actually have the potential to reach every voter and politician in the country multiple times. It’s Monetary Jiu Jitsu – using money to get money out of politics. And it just might be the progressive stocking stuffer of 2012. This isn’t defacing currency – it’s adorning your dollars. And it’s legal. StampStampede stamps are a delightful holiday gift for friends, mates, kids, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, teachers, business associates, clients, employees, bosses or what have you. The StampStampede campaign just started in October and already it’s been covered in USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones, and The Huffington Post. With a multiplier factor of 875 as each bill gets passed around, StampStampede stamps are truly the gift that keeps on giving. Please visit our website at StampStampede.org to learn more about the campaign and order up some stamps. Happy Holidays and Happy Stamping, Ben Head Stamper StampStampede.org I ordered six.
Marriage: A $363,000 Question December 10, 2012December 14, 2012 [WORDPRESS REALLY SUCKS. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE POSTED MONDAY.] Sailing, sailing . . . which means I have no Internet and am tele-posting this through sheer force of will, like the time my mother made my brother’s crutch fall just be setting her mind to it. My brother had broken his leg hitting tennis balls on the ice (and went on to Harvard? seriously?) and so was on crutches. Crutches can be fun, if you’re not on them. It was fun to try to get one of the crutches to stand upright on its own . . . don’t breathe or you could knock it over . . . and then watch my mother knock it over via telekinesis. We pronounced it tele-KIN-ness-sis though I believe it’s tele-keh-NEE-sis. And it’s just possible it was not telekinesis, however pronounced, that toppled the crutch. But if not, then how do you account for the way she started the engine of our 1958 Buick one frigid February morning after my dad had, indisputably, “flooded” it? I could explain to younger readers what “flooding” a car engine was, and how it used to lead to cursing, missed trains, and threatened marriages, but it’s only that — marriages — that are the focus today. Because as you’ve doubtless heard, the Supreme Court Friday accepted two same-sex marriage cases for review, with decisions expected in June. The first case will likely strike down DOMA — the so-called “Defense of Marriage” Act — unless a majority of the Justices think it’s “equal justice under the law” for Uncle Sam to afford all legally married couples the same tax treatment . . . except for couples like this one, together for 42 years and deemed legally married by the State of New York, but hit with a $363,000 federal estate tax bill anyway. The second case will likely strike down California’s “Prop 8,” allowing same-sex marriages (approved by California’s legislature, governor, and appeals court) to resume, and likely also dealing . . . in some needle-threading way . . . with whether to force marriage equality on states whose legislatures have not approved it — or civil unions, or anything else. Mississippi springs to mind. The world faces bigger issues. But marriage equality is one on which progress is being made — and gaining momentum.
Cruising Toward Plutocracy December 7, 2012December 6, 2012 While we’re waiting for Borealis to go to the moon (they probably have a patented technology for doing that, too) — do not lose faith in Borealis because, however considerably speculative it remains, it’s a virtual sure thing compared to what we started with back in the last century . . . . . . and while I embark next week on my first-ever cruise (with a bunch of liberals and we get to have dinner with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes) — so who knows how well the Internet will work off the exotic coast of Ft. Lauderdale and/or whether I’ll be too cheap to pay for it . . . . . . I give you three really long, fascinating, important articles from the pre-election issue of The New Yorker: 1. HOW HANS VON SPAKOVSKY TRIED TO SUPPRESS THE VOTE By Jane Mayer. This guy seems really to believe in what he’s doing. If there is a single felon who lost his right to vote for having sold a bag of weed 30 years ago — but only lost it in some states and now, after decades of voting legally elsewhere has moved into one of those states but, not realizing that, voted anyway — this guy, Hans Von Spakovsky, will stop at nothing to thwart this conspiracy to subvert democracy. And if the lines to vote in Democratic districts can be three or four hours long — or eight — all the better. 2. WHY IT WASN’T ENOUGH By Ryan Lizza. You know all that money I kept asking you for, and that many of you joined millions upon millions of people in giving? This is the story of how we spent it. It is — in a deeply geeky way — thrilling. 3. AND WHY THERE’S WAY TOO MUCH MONEY IN POLITICS By George Packer. Last week I linked to Slate’s story on “How Political Campaign Spending Brought Down the Roman Republic.” This profile of Jeff Connaughton brings to life the all-too-frustrating way Washington works — which is to say doesn’t work — and the urgent need for reform. One concrete piece of which could occur on the first day of the Senate’s new term January 3, when Democrats will move to bring the filibuster rules back toward sanity. (For example, requiring that for a senator to filibuster, he or she actually has to filibuster.) Have a great weekend. (You’ve seen “Lincoln,” right? Taken together with these three New Yorker articles, it seems to me one would have the equivalent of a riveting college course in American political science. With no exams or term papers. All in three or four stimulating hours.)
Building Robots In The Dark December 6, 2012December 6, 2012 Rob Brown: “Re your automation column yesterday, here’s a good one: ‘The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.’ I’d also read about automated factories that ran in the dark due to no humans. Quick Wikipedia search reveals …” Existing “lights-out factories” FANUC, the Japanese robotics company, has been operating a “lights out” factory for robots since 2001.[6] “Robots are building other robots at a rate of about 50 per 24-hour shift and can run unsupervised for as long as 30 days at a time. Not only is it lights-out,” says Fanuc vice president Gary Zywiol, “we turn off the air conditioning and heat too.” LADY PENS No: seriously. Have you seen these?
Why “Income Distribution” Is Not A Four-Letter Word December 5, 2012 Well, apart from the fact that it’s two seven- and a twelve-letter words. Imagine a world in which a single mammoth machine, controlled by a single operator, handles . . . everything. The machine is distributed around the world, with “parts” everywhere, but all connected to a central brain that essentially provides for all our needs — with vehicles that drive themselves, picking up finished solar panels from the local plant, installing them as needed to power local parts of the machine, which powers our homes (that are built by robots) and delivers anything we want from Amazon — as UPS does now, but without the need for humans — and stocks our pantries with robotically picked fruit and vegetables . . . and on and on. Hard and dangerous and boring work would be a thing of the past. Machines could do all that, leaving us free to spend all our time strolling, singing, and snuggling. But if there were only one job, and only one guy owned the machine, how would anyone else get any money to BUY those robotically picked peaches and tomatoes? Only the inventor/operator of the machine would have any real money unless we could figure out a sensible, equitable, and dignity-respecting way to redistribute the wealth that inexhaustible energy from the sun, paired with another few decades in technological advance, had brought us. Okay, so I have not mastered the art of science fiction. But I have mastered the art of the hyperlink. (See the two below.) And I have previously noted Ray Kurzweil’s prediction that the next 50 years will be 32 times as dazzling in their technological advances as the last 50 have been. And the last 50 were pretty damn dazzling. So the real challenges, it seems to me, are not so much figuring out how to have “nearly free energy” as we now have “nearly free communications” (free Skype video calls to China? who would have believed 50 years ago any such thing could be possible?). That stuff will come. The real challenges are, first, avoiding the kind of cyber-terrorism (or cyber-accident or wars) that could unleash Armageddon, and, second, finding a way to share all that unimaginable prosperity, should it materialize. Spread the wealth. Redistribute the income. First hyperlink, courtesy of my big brother (no metaphor here, my esteemed big brother), who writes: “Interesting and a bit scary. Automation is already putting so many people out of work, and this piece forecasts a big leap forward. How will the wealth it creates be distributed?” Second hyperlink, wherein this talk of robots and artificial intelligence ramps up yet a notch further. What a time to be alive. Many of us may actually live to see the end of the beginning. But how will it end? In chaos and calamity, with the cockroaches chuckling at our demise (“remember those sticky-floored motels they built for us? like that was really gonna work”). Or with the species having solved the basic problems of “sustainability,” “prosperity,” and “getting along” — leading to a whole new galaxy-wide aeon of opportunity (following the first couple decades of which the robots might still take over, leaving the cockroaches to pine for the days of a master species that left crumbs everywhere). Have a nice day.
Most of This Post Is Invisible December 4, 2012 ESTATE TAX Irwin Gerstein: “The right wingers are always talking about how getting money you haven’t earned is a disincentive to work and personal development. I wonder why they want to deny Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian the same character-building opportunities that the daughter of a Walmart cashier gets.” PUTTING THE “TEMPORARY” BACK IN (SOME) TAX CUTS Vince DeHart: “As the President stumps for his budget proposals, I’d like to see him remind everyone that the current tax rates were enacted under his predecessor as temporary. Avoiding discussion of the rich paying their fair share and the counter-arguments about redistributing wealth and penalizing success, he could present it something like this: Extending the middle-class tax rates is essential to continuing our economic recovery. Allowing the lower rates to expire for high incomes is essential to reducing the deficit — we can’t afford to extend those temporary cuts while we’re faced with the deficits they helped to create. So it’s not about class envy or partisan politics, it’s about the most effective way of simultaneously addressing both of our major economic challenges.” ☞ Exactly. And please note that, as currently envisioned, 100% of us — not 98% — will get a break on our first $250,000 ($200,000 if filing singly). All of us! It’s only on income above that amount that some of us will pay more. Just as we did back in the half century before George W. Bush when, for the most part, the economy boomed. WHAT’S INVISIBLE This charming TED talk mentions the four fundamental forces of nature (which I thought were Charisma, Compound Interest, Robin Williams, and Ketchup but are, in fact, Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Strong Force and the Weak Force), notes that there are twice as many genes in rice as in humans (and two more chromosomes in a potato than in yourself), and concludes with a quote from W.H. Auden: “We are here on Earth to help others. What the others are here for, I’ve NO idea.”
Dream Girls, Brilliant Women December 3, 2012 DREAM GIRLS If you live near Washington, D.C. or will be visiting in the next few weeks, here is a really terrific revival of Dreamgirls. I saw it opening night 30 years ago and may have enjoyed this one, given all that’s gone down since, even more. BRILLIANT WOMEN Women perhaps do have something to offer. And not just when it come to chairing the committee that supervises the House cafeteria. (Sorry: could not resist. But you will recall that all 19 House chairs the Republicans selected for the next Congressional term were men . . . leading John Boehner to appoint Candice Miller — who was not even on it — to chair the House Administration Committee, to make it 19 men, 1 woman. Hats off to him for listening; but the Republicans arguably have a long way to go toward truly appreciating the talents of, and sharing power with, women.) Jibes aside, this article credits three American women with terrific leadership: . . . In Libya . . . three women saved the day: Obama’s adviser, Samantha Power; his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton; and his ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice. . . . The President did a pretty good job choosing his first Secretary of State. Maybe he should be allowed to choose his second. THE NUMBERS RACKET – II Mike H.: “Quick footnote to Mike Martin’s recap of the numbers racket in Friday’s post: In the early 1980s, I was a sports editor at one of New York’s daily papers. One of the most important things to get into each day’s paper was a small item that appeared in the tiny agate type at the end of the day’s horse racing results: the daily handle (the total amount of money bet at the track that day). Why was it so important? Because traditionally, the last three digits were what the mob used as the winning number for that day. Pretty smart system, actually—it was a random number easily checked and (more or less) beyond manipulation.” FRESH DIRECT IN NEW YORK AND PHILLY – II Mark W. Budwig: “Fresh Direct is not the only way to shop for groceries online and have them delivered locally in Manhattan. Food Emporium has free delivery on orders over $50 and and D’Agostino has the quickest service, even same-day. But the best prices and widest selection are at Peapod. Granted, Fresh Direct has great prepared food and excellent produce, but it’s expensive and the selection of ordinary groceries is very limited by comparison.”