Author: A.T.

Not me. (I hope.)  This guy.  Who writes:

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. . . On February 9, 1950, an obscure first-term Senator who’d lied about his military service to get elected, Joe McCarthy, gave the first speech of a 5-city tour before a Republican women’s group in Wheeling, West Virginia. Apparently wanting to stir up some buzz, he pulled a random piece of paper from his pocket, waved it theatrically, and claimed it was a list of “205 known communists” who worked at the State Department.

Americans were worried about communists then, with some justification. The “communist miracle” was widely acknowledged under Stalin as just another form of brutal anti-democratic tyranny. Stalin had starved four million Ukrainians to death in what was known as the Holdomor, while he was imprisoning his own citizens in brutal gulags. The Soviet Union had exploded their first nuclear weapon just six months earlier, and that June North Korea, with help from the USSR, would invade South Korea.

By the end of McCarthy’s tour that month, reaching Salt Lake City, he’d reduced his claim to 57 communists in the State Department; in other cities he’d claimed the number was 81. It’s entirely possible he simply couldn’t keep track of his own lies.

In any case, no such list existed. Right up to the day he drank himself to death, May 9, 1957, McCarthy never was able to name a single communist in the State Department. But his demagogic claim got him on the front pages of newspapers across America.

McCarthy and his right-hand man Roy Cohn (later Donald Trump’s mentor) terrorized people working in the US government.

Being dragged before his Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was a career-ender: over 2000 government employees lost their jobs because of his baseless accusations and innuendo. . . .

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And now, with Joe McCarthy long gone, there’s Kevin.  

True, this McCarthy has no discernible core beliefs.  If denouncing Trump instead of embracing him, or embracing an insulin price cap instead of opposing it, would have won him the speakership, he’d likely have done both.  But the extremists he’s put in power seem every bit as zealously vicious as the prior McCarthy.

What a contrast with the man whose quiet dignity, deep patriotism, and commitment to non-violence we celebrate today.

BONUS:  FLORIDA VOTERS MUST RE-REGISTER!

Advice from the Miami Herald: Don’t let the state suppress your vote. Request mail-in ballots — right now.

REMINDER

Fourth quarterly estimated tax due tomorrow, January 17.

A minister, a priest, and a rabbit walk into a blood bank to donate and the nurse asks each their blood type. “I’m pretty sure I’m a Type O”, says the rabbit.

→ Get it?

(Thanks, Brook.)

Two big shots walk into Nieman Marcus — separately — and each tries on lots of expensive stuff.

The first buys nothing and leaves the store only to realize when he gets to his car that he’s still wearing the $1,200 blue cashmere sweater he tried on!

He runs back to the store — which somehow failed to realize it was missing — and returns the sweater, apologizing for his senior moment.

The second guys also buys nothing.  He leaves the store wearing the red version of that same $1,200 sweater, a $400 scarf, and this $4,990 top coat.  He gets home and puts his new clothes away.  Himself.  Somehow, he fits the top coat into his office desk drawer.

A week later, reviewing its inventory “shrinkage” and security tapes, the store calls and asks for the clothes back.  He sends his chauffeur with the scarf but says that’s all he took.  The store makes more polite requests.  Finally, after months of his stalling, they call the cops, who get a warrant to search his home, retrieving the sweater and the top coat.

Apart from the color of the two sweaters, any fair-minded person can see that the two situations are identical. 

Simple fairness demands each man be investigated and punished in the same way.

Or, put another way:

Have a great long weekend.

(Fourth quarterly estimated tax due Tuesday.)

Long-time reader Matt Ball (whose own book you can find here) responded to yesterday’s post:

“You might find this somewhat different take on ChatGPT interesting.”

I did.

But I’m still going to try to find a few minutes this weekend to get ChatGPT to tell ME “how to remove a sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible.”

And perhaps get it to write a sci-fi novel in the style of Aaron Sorkin about how artificial intelligence displaced human intelligence one crisp October morning in 2028, just when I was planning to start work on a novel of my own.

Will I deserve credit, or perhaps even copyright protection, for that novel if all I did was set the parameters and let ChatGPT do the rest?

Does Aaron Sorkin deserve some of the credit?

Is writing a novel by hand versus ChatGPT like the difference between painting a landscape with a brush versus capturing it in a click with my iPhone?

BONUS

The U.S. Has Thwarted Putin’s Energy Blackmail.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld in FORTUNE:

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. . . The days of Vladimir Putin’s energy blackmail driving up energy prices and testing Western unity are quickly coming to a close amidst a string of underappreciated but significant energy victories for the Biden Administration, ranging from bringing down gasoline prices for drivers to supplying enough LNG to keep Europe warm this winter. . . .

. . . the Biden Administration has charted a pragmatic, centrist, effective path towards stabilizing global energy markets. . . .

. . . After Putin choked off natural gas supplies to Europe, hoping Europeans would “freeze to death” and “turn on their elites,” the Biden Administration immediately committed to delivering an extra 15 billion cubic meters of U.S. LNG to make up for the shortfall. The U.S. ended up delivering nearly 40 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe (almost three times the previous record) and is en route to becoming the world’s largest LNG exporter. Europe is fully weaning itself off Russian energy, reducing its dependence on Russia from 46% to a minuscule 8%, with gas prices falling to lower than pre-war levels. . . .

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Dancing robots.  If you’re not yet among this two-year-old video’s 38 million viewers, treat yourself.

Self-healing concrete.  A 2000-year-old breakthrough.

If only Champlain Towers had been built with this.

Self-healing robots.  On their way to becoming conscious?

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“This is not just another research question that we’re working on — this is the question,” he said. “This is bigger than curing cancer. If we can create a machine that will have consciousness on par with a human, this will eclipse everything else we’ve done. That machine itself can cure cancer.”

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ChatGPT.  I’ve saved the most stunning for last.

It plays right into a refrain I’ve long been singing: that after 200,000 years, we humans are now living through what will either be the last hundred or two before we hurtle off the rails into extinction . . . or  else the dawn of all but unimaginable prosperity and (voluntary) immortality.  See, e.g., Homo Deus.

It behooves us not to screw it up.

But first, here’s how dumb I am.

The first time I heard the 90-second climax of Leader Jeffries’ speech — posted yesterday and here, set to music — I didn’t realize it was alphabetical.

A to Z.

How he managed to come up with an X knocks me out.

Xennials?  I had to Google it.

And while we’re doing music, here’s Adam Overett having a little fun at incoming Congressman George Santos’ expense.

It’s telling that the first action the Republican House took was not to expel this blatant, breathtaking fraud but, rather, to protect the uber-wealthy and large corporations from enforcement of the tax laws.

BANNON

First he helped incite an attempted coup . . . (when you storm the Capitol in order to overturn the results of a free and fair election, isn’t that an attempted coup?) . . . and now he’s helped incite an insurrection in Brazil.

Why isn’t this guy in jail?

(Oh: that’s right.  Trump pardoned him.)

The fight for democracy is far from over.

On one side, you’ve got Trump – Bannon – Bolsonaro – Putin – Kim – CPAC – Orban – Carlson – The Proud Boys – Duterte – Xi – and, among others, every Republican in Congress who voted not to certify Biden’s election.  Which was most of them.

On the other side, you’ve got Volodymyr Zelensky, Alexei Navalny, Liz Cheney, former Vice President Dick Cheney, these folks, almost every judge Trump appointed, the Wall Street Journal, and every Democrat — and virtually every independent — in America.

BIDEN

Ricki H: “Given the breaking news about classified documents found in the office he used from 2017 to 2020, should we support Cory Booker for President?”

→ Cory is great, but this appears to be night-and-day different from Mar-a-Lago.  It was Biden’s people who alerted the Archives to what they’d found and returned them the next day, not the other way around, with the Archives and FBI repeatedly requesting documents that Trump lied about not having and then refused to return.

(Plus: we don’t even know yet how highly classified — if highly classified at all — any of the Biden documents were.)

Beware false equivalence.

THE SPEECH

With Nancy Pelosi still in Congress there to help . . . and her chosen successor making this terrific inaugural speech . . . 2023 is off to a good start.

It starts with a modest cadence, but keep watching: when he gets going, he gets GOING.

THE AD

That’s the main thing.  But over in the Senate, in Missouri, for the seat Claire McCaskill held from 2007-2019, get a load of THIS guy!

Have a great week.  Hats off to Hakeem Jeffries and Lucas Kunce.

And Nancy Pelosi. And Joe Biden.

And you, for supporting democracy.

I was struck by a talking point in John James‘ remarks yesterday as he nominated Kevin McCarthy to be Speaker.

The newly elected Michigan Congressman referred to the need to “stop 87,000 new IRS agents from picking through your pocketbooks.”

(To his credit, he didn’t add the part Republicans often do about armed auditors knocking down your doors.)

There are a couple of things to say about this:

> The first is that these 87,000 new agents are not being hired to pick through your pocketbooks, they’re being hired to enforce the tax law on people and corporations much — much — richer than you.

From the Patriotic Millionaires:

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. . . The ‘Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act,’ an incredibly deceptively-named piece of legislation, seeks to cut 90% of the Inflation Reduction Act’s allocated funds for the IRS. . . .

We’ve written at length about how the GOP has sabotaged the IRS over the years . . . By 2018, when Donald Trump was in office, the IRS had been so incapacitated that only 0.03% of individual returns for taxpayers making $10 million and above were audited; that number was 23% just eight years prior.

Between 2010 and 2018, Republicans blatantly crippled the IRS by cutting its budget by $2.9 billion, causing the IRS to lose a fifth of its staff. This dropped its millionaire audit rate by 71%. Between 2010 and 2017, it lost 43% of its tax technicians and 44% of its revenue officers, leaving the IRS with the same number of enforcement officers as it had in the 1950s when our economy was one-seventh the size it is now. Things haven’t been much better since. Over the last ten years, the agency has lost roughly 13% of all full-time employees.

The Inspector General for Tax Administration stated in 2020 that, between 2014 and 2016, the IRS didn’t have the resources to collect taxes from 880,000 high-income non-filers, of which the 300 biggest delinquents owed an average of $33 million.

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You may be the kind of person who, waiting patiently in line, sees someone cut in in front and thinks, “yeah, man — go for it!”  More likely, you’re the kind who wishes there were a line monitor to keep people from cheating and making the wait even longer.

You may be the kind of person who learns Trump paid someone to take his SATs and think, “Damn!  Why didn’t I think of that!”  More likely, you’re the kind who wishes he had gotten caught.

Likewise, taxes: I don’t mind paying what I owe if everyone else does — “taxes are the price we pay for civilization.”  But like most people, I rankled when Leona Helmsley famously said, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”

The law says we have to pay taxes.

If you believe in enforcing the law on the rich as well as the poor, then a reasonable amount of auditing is required . . . nuisance though it may be.  (Fortunately, rich people have accountants to absorb almost all the hassle; not so, innocent poor people stopped for, say, driving while black.)

> The second thing to say is that “defund the police” is in NO WAY the Democratic platform, just a terrible choice of words by a handful of people that was eagerly seized upon by our Republican friends. “Defund the IRS,” by contrast, has long been a bedrock of the Republican platform, embraced by almost all its elected officials.

Click here for a good summary of what’s going on.

Critics of funding the IRS warn it will breed resentment  that leads to poorer compliance and reduced tax collection from wealthy individuals and corporations.

Unlikely as that is, it does remind us that, as the “new” IRS modernizes and staffs up, it should strive always to be polite and sensible, thanking honest taxpayers for their time and cooperation — and for paying what they owe.

By now you’ve likely seen:  Heavily Armed Man Panics Supermarket.

Clearly, as the law now stands, he had a right to be there.

If he had massacred anyone, then of course the full weight of the law would — and should! — have rained down upon him.

That’s the view of the gun-rights crowd, who insist 18-year-olds — not old enough to buy beer — be offered military-grade assault weapons.

But how about this?

Given that ranchers and city-dwellers have needs and views, why not allow each county, city, and township to make its own rules?

Some might be incredibly strict . . . some, incredibly lax . . . some hybrid, relying on private businesses and landlords to decide what weapons, if any, to allow on their premises (and empowering police to enforce those restrictions).

Many might go back to the ways of the Wild West.

(“Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp” — sing it with me, boys! — “brave, courageous and bold.  Long live his name and long live his glory — and long may his story be told!”)

Are you really going to tell me the Wild West was somehow unAmerican?

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. . . The laws of Tombstone required visitors, upon entering town to disarm, either at a hotel or a lawman’s office. (Residents of many famed cattle towns, such as Dodge City, Abilene, and Deadwood, had similar restrictions.)

When the Earps and Holliday met the cowboys on Fremont Street in the early afternoon, Virgil once again called on them to disarm. Nobody knows who fired first [but] Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were killed by the lawmen, all of whom walked away.

The “Old West” conjures up all sorts of imagery, but broadly, the term is used to evoke life among the crusty prospectors, threadbare gold panners, madams of brothels, and six-shooter-packing cowboys in small frontier towns – such as Tombstone, Deadwood, Dodge City, or Abilene, to name a few. One other thing these cities had in common: strict gun control laws. . . .

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Of course, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, anyone who qualifies for service in the National Guard should have the sacred, uninfringed right to bear arms wherever his or her Guard unit specifies, lest the free State of Montana be invaded by Idaho or Canada — or the U.S. Capitol itself come under attack as it did in 1814 and again in 2021.

Have a great day.  May the Republicans begin to feel the same sort of regret over Trumpism as the Brits increasingly feel over Brexit.

Would you buy a Bible from this man?  If any family embodies Judeo-Christian values of honesty, charity, and humility, surely it’s the Trumps.

Twenty years for witness tampering?  That’s what the law allows — and, boy, would it ever seem to apply here.

Finding the 20%:  “A message for new members of Congress: You can get along. Here’s how.”  Finding common ground while standing your own.

Okay, I’m only about 12 years old at heart, so I can’t resist noting that the ParkerVision / Intel trial is slated to begin February 6 . . . 33 days from now.

Intel called for PRKR’s claim of “willfulness” to be dismissed, but that request was denied, which means that if the jury finds in PRKR’s favor — as a different jury in a different case before a different judge did to the tune of $173 million ten years ago — the judge could as much as triple it.

It could go horribly wrong: the jury could find in Intel’s favor.  Or the judge could just throw out their verdict as the judge in the Qualcomm case did 10 years ago (no $173 million after all).  Or he could be hit by a bus.  So this bet, like so many, is only for money you can truly afford to lose.

But it could also go wonderfully right: a large jury award multiplied by a penalty for willfulness, brightening prospects for the second Intel suit later this year (for a different set of patent violations) and for a new Qualcomm trial . . . followed by PRKR’s getting back to productive, potentially profitable work, as described here.

Christmas is coming (again).  Will we get a lump of coal?  A pot of gold?

Keeps life interesting, at the very least.

This year’s first episode reminds me why it’s indispensable.

The first segment, on Radio Free Europe, concerns the struggle between autocracy and democracy that 18 of their correspondents have died reporting on.

The second, on The Sixth Mass Extinction, notes that the first five were caused by volcanoes and a giant asteroid, but that this one is all ours — and there are things we can still do about it.

The third, on Obesity, will interest anyone who’s overweight.  Or loves someone who is.

Hats off to “60 Minutes.”

The show in the House today should be interesting as well.