Read it.

• As of 2006, the tax burden of the top 1 percent of taxpayers exceeds the tax burden of the bottom 95 percent combined. Moreover, according to the National Taxpayers Union, households in the top 5% by income have been paying about 60% of the federal income tax bill for years.

But you’ll never see that in the One-Party Media.

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Read it.

Daddies, don’t let your babies go up to be law students….

Read it.

This is God telling you not to marry game experts. It always ends badly.

His persistent berating of her and his heavy drinking formed the background to the couple’s stormy relationship which culminated in Green stabbing her 99 times at their flat in the seaside town, Preston Crown Court was told.

You know that somebody was assigned to do that count.

Read it.

And if you think mooring the yacht in Rhode Island rather than in Massachusetts is a tax dodge, the senator’s spouse’s decision to be a Pennsylvania resident rather than a Massachusetts one for tax purposes has its own advantages. The Massachusetts state income tax is 5.3%, while Pennsylvania’s is 3.07%, according to the Tax Foundation. The Massachusetts estate tax is up to 16%, while the Pennsylvania inheritance tax maxes out at 4.5%. The lost income to Massachusetts as a result of Teresa Heinz Kerry’s decision to be an official resident of Pennsylvania probably dwarfs the $500,000 or so at stake in the debate over where the yacht is moored.

Well, one of the way that rich people get, and stay, rich, is by not paying a lot of taxes.

As recently as March of this year, Senator Kerry issued a press release touting “new tools” for the IRS “to detect, deter and discourage offshore tax abuses that currently allow companies and individuals avoid paying taxes.” He said, “It repulsed me that while the average American plays by the rules and pays taxes, some of the biggest corporations avoid paying their fair share.” And he vowed to “close the loophole that allows for offshore tax havens to help taxpayers shirk paying their fair share.”

‘We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.’ — Leona Helmsley

Read it.

One argument against is that black men are more likely to have criminal backgrounds and thus these criminal background checks discriminate against black men.  Let’s put aside the normative issues. What’s surprising is that under plausible circumstances criminal background checks can lead to an increase in the employment of black men. The reason is that without the background check employers face a risk that their employees are ex-cons. If employers are very averse to hiring ex-cons then they will seek to reduce this risk and one way of doing so is by not hiring any black men. As a result, a background check allows non ex-cons to distinguish themselves from the pack and to be hired. Furthermore, when background checks exist, non ex-cons know that they will not face statistical discrimination and thus have an increased incentive to invest in skills.

Check it out.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that China had a pole-dancing school.

Andrew Exum points out that there is no there, there.

ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper.

Third, the site asserts that the Pentagon employs a secret task force of highly trained commandos charged with capturing or killing insurgent leaders. I suspect that in the eyes of most Americans, using special operations teams to kill terrorists is one of the least controversial ways in which the government spends their tax dollars.

Indeed.

Mr. Assange has said that the publication of these documents is analogous to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, only more significant. This is ridiculous. The Pentagon Papers offered the public a coherent internal narrative of the conflict in Vietnam that was at odds with the one that had been given by the elected and uniformed leadership.

The publication of these documents, by contrast, dumps 92,000 new primary source documents into the laps of the world’s public with no context, no explanation as to why some accounts may contradict others, no sense of what is important or unusual as opposed to the normal march of war.

Read it.

A popular dating website exclusively for beautiful people has branched out to provide a fertility forum aimed at creating beautiful babies.

Hmm.

“It’s completely democratic – if you secure enough positive votes, you are accepted; if not, you are shown the door,” said Mr Hodge, who manages from Los Angeles the website launched in the United States in 2005.

In other words, the world’s biggest fraternity/sorority. Hmm.

In a major departure for the BeautifulPeople.com founders, even ugly people are allowed to subscribe to the new forum, browsing for attractive sperm and egg donors to ultimately improve the gene pool.

Well, it seems to me that, if you breed beautiful people to ugly people, you just get more ugly people — perhaps not as ugly, but still….

“But everyone – including ugly people – would like to bring good-looking children in to the world, and we can’t be selfish with our attractive gene pool.”

How generous of them. Now, you could just not allow the ugly people to breed…? Oh, wait, they already tried that.

Read it.

Oh, really? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Read it.

Under George W. Bush’s “tax cuts for the rich” the rich paid more in taxes in 2005 than any time in the prior 20 years. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal noted, thanks to George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, the richest one percent went from paying 25% of all income taxes in 1990 to 39% in 2005. The richest 5% went from paying 44% of all income taxes in 1990 to paying 60% of all income taxes in 2005.

Democrats want to ‘tax the rich’, not because they think it’s more fair (although they will gas on endlessly in that vein), but because they want to discourage not-rich people from trying to become rich – like them. (Most not-rich people don’t know the tax code and don’t realize that rich people don’t pay those ridiculous rates they publish in the newspapers.)

Most rich people, especially those who inherited their money rather than actually earned it, are Democrats. (Of course, there are sufficient tax breaks that rich Democrats don’t suffer all that much. Especially those in public office, as the Obamas and the Clintons can tell you.)

This is why people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates come out in favor of higher taxes; they realize that, with higher taxes, their relative advantage in terms of wealth is greatly exaggerated. The point is not to have a lot of money, but to have a lot more money than the people around you, so that you get most of the benefits, and can rub the noses of the less-rich in it. There’s less competition for seats in fancy restaurants, for ski chateaux in Aspen, for yacht-slots at the marina, for seats in Rich Class on the airplane when God forbid you might have to fly commercial, etc.

The truth is out there. You just have to run the numbers and follow the money.

Read it.

Science is losing its credibility because it has adopted an authoritarian tone, and has let itself be co-opted by politics.

Read it.

“We know that if you have veterans in one place where they can befriend each other and talk to each other. You know when you’ve gone through similar things you need to share it. I don’t care whether you are a policeman or a fireman or a veteran or by chance a member of Congress,” the California senator said. “[Democratic Rep.] Maxine [Waters] and I could look at each other and roll our eyes. We know what we are up against. And it is hard for people who are not there to understand the pressure and the great things that go along with it and the tough things that go along with it.”

I loved the incident where she chewed out some Colonel or General for calling her ‘Ma’am’ rather than ‘Senator’. Now, I would have waited until she finished and then said, ‘Whatever you say, sir.’ And I would probably have gotten fired. But it would totally have been worth it.

Steve Sailer cuts to the chase.

One reason why class has faded relative to race so dramatically as a subject of liberal concern since the days of Harry Truman is that there’s no money in it. You can’t file a disparate impact lawsuit over class discrimination because the government doesn’t count by class, it counts by race/ethnicity, by sex, and by age. The Soviet Union counted people by class, but the whole project seems pretty hopeless in the U.S. The Office of Management and Budget has rules for how to count by race, but not by class.

Read it.

It is considered something of a rude question, nevertheless I think it fair to ask why 90% of all economists missed the coming of the current disaster. One doesn’t wish to judge too harshly. After all, everyone makes mistakes, even scientists. And if economic science missed this one, it wouldn’t be fair to use such a mistake to call into question the whole science. None of us would wish to be judged by one mistake. Should we not extend the same courtesy to economic scientists?

The problem, however, is that the same 90% of all economists also missed the last crises, and the one before that as well, and before that, and so on. In fact, their record of being able to diagnose and treat economic problems is about zero. And their prescriptions always seem to be counterproductive: the recommendations to limit government always make it grow, their advice on limiting taxation always makes it more, their prescriptions on growing the economy only leads to the illusory growth of bubbles, etc. Put it this way: If your doctor had this same track record of diagnosing and treating disease, you’d be dead by now.

Freeberg says it best.

More and more, it looks to me like this: Shirley Sherrod spent 43 minutes lying about her motives and what she’s been learning on the job, and Brietbart unfairly played a few bits out of context, the ones where she told the truth about herself.

I’m tired of the duplicity. I’m tired of being told Sarah Palin is malicious because some stalking pervert moved in next door to her. I’m tired of being told just because someone can be called a victim of something and she happens to have dark skin, and a chestless jackal for a former boss, that her motives must be pure.

In fact, there are other crackpots and nutjobs in the mix as well. I’ve had it to here with the “because”-es. I’m fed up with being told Elena Kagan will be a great Associate Justice because she’s funny. Rush Limbaugh is evil because he’s rich. Dick Cheney deserves to die because he ran Halliburton. The Gulf oil spill is in good hands because Stephen Chu has a Nobel prize.

Read it.

Lawyers and Judges having a good time.

Mostly judges. Lawyers have jobs that they can be fired from.

Read it.

Gates of Vienna deconstructs the Third OIC Observatory Report on Islamophobia.

I’m sure that Communists left over from the heyday of the Soviet Union are kicking themselves that they didn’t think of exploiting the term ‘Communistophobia’ along with the other tools that the Useful Idiots of the West were so eager to hand them.

Read it.

Read it.

Indians have a bit more focus on this problem than Americans do.

Read it.

Madame Hillary apparently has no comment. (What could she say? ‘Gee, I wish we could do that.’?)

Secretary Clinton’s remarks with President Correa on June 8: “I think the goals that Ecuador and its government have set are goals that the United States agrees with.”

Read it.

It follows two of the worst winters in recent memories when many householders refused to clear snow from the pavement outside their homes fearing they could be taken to court if somebody fell over.

“People and local communities want to be able to take practical steps to clear snow and ice without fear of litigation,” Mr Quarmby said.

That’s modern Britain for you. “Shut up, slaves!”

Joe Wickert looks at a very interesting question.

I’m buying ebooks almost exclusively now.  In fact, I can’t even recall the last print book I bought for myself.  Although I ditched my Kindle on day one with my iPad, I do most of my book reading in the Kindle app on the iPad.  Although Amazon has a major selection advantage of the iBookstore, Apple will catch up at some point.  Then there’s B&N and Borders.  Both of them have iPad apps and ebook stores.  And don’t forget about Google and their upcoming Editions program as well a host of other up-and-coming e-tailers.

What products and services can an e-tailer offer to earn your repeat business?  Or, with all these stores just a click away, are we less likely to remain loyal to only one or two of them?

Read it.

And these are the people who won’t allow voucher programs so that poor people can get a decent education for their kids. Ain’t that special.

Read it.

The Roman control over Britain stretched even further than first thought, the discovery of a new villa suggests.

Check it out.

Read it.

As usual, the Wall Street Journal has the best coverage.

The Other McCain is on the case.

More here.

Read it.

At someone else’s expense, of course.

This is why we don’t want to be like Europe.

Read it.

Two members of a ‘happy slapping’ gang who killed a Muslim pensioner outside a mosque for fun will be free in less than 18 months.

This is outrageous. The initial sentence was just four and a half years, which is inconceivable.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in California.

Read it.

He said that the website was preparing to publish the material and decided to include The Guardian and their American and German counterparts.

The Guardian is, of course, a rabidly left-wing and anti-American publication in Britain; it’s telling that the New York Times is considered an American equivalent. (Not really news, but a useful reminder.)

Read it.

I certainly hope so.

Read it.

Yet another appeal to competitive narcissism.

Andrew Gilligan (no relation, I trust) is another of those Crustians who are just chock full of bright ideas for how other people (you know, them) ought to cut back on convenience.

The bike is perfect if you don’t value your time, don’t mind getting sweaty, and really regret that technology has advanced since Queen Victoria’s time (the heyday of the bike).

Freeberg nails it.

Yeah, that there is pretty much my textbook definition of a bad idea.

Concur. But wait, there’s more.

It’s an abandonment of history. And that brings many perils. It’s a manifestation of a younger generation that is disinterested in what came before — they want all the things that will consume their attention, to be positioned for that consumption behind a narrow selection of avenues. They want comfort as they supposedly broaden their horizons; more comfort than can be realized while one is truly broadening one’s horizons.

Jayne Merkel is a Crustian of the Chattering Class.

Like the rest of her regiment, she makes her living by selling her opinions, and she is just chock full of ideas for those not as highly-credentialed as she (i.e. almost everybody) to Do More With Less, although I guarantee you that she doesn’t restrict her living space to 1200 square feet, unless it’s her condo in Maui.

But when it came to their houses, it was a time of common sense and a belief that less truly could be more. During the Depression and the war, Americans had learned to live with less, and that restraint, in combination with the postwar confidence in the future, made small, efficient housing positively stylish.

Horseshit. They got small, efficient housing because that’s all that the could afford. My parents were of that generation, and I grew up in that environment — it was small because we didn’t have a lot of money, and it was efficient because that’s the only way to make small work. ‘Stylish’ didn’t enter into it; ‘stylish’ was the concern of people who had the income of, oh, say, Jayne Merkel. They wouldn’t have known Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or Frank Lloyd Wright from Friedrich Nietzsche.

The apartments in the elegant towers Mies built on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, for example, were smaller — two-bedroom units under 1,000 square feet — than those in their older neighbors along the city’s Gold Coast. But they were popular because of their airy glass walls, the views they afforded and the elegance of the buildings’ details and proportions, the architectural equivalent of the abstract art so popular at the time.

And they were inhabited by soldiers returning home from the war and going to college on the G.I. Bill? Sure, I believe that.

But like much of American society, the middle-class home began to grow over time. The average size of an American house in 1950 was 983 square feet. Slowly, though, both more square footage and more amenities became part of the American dream, so that by 2004 the average home topped 2,300 square feet.

That’s because they, like my parents, bought more house as soon as they could afford it. (Not, of course, as quickly as today’s slackers, who think nothing of buying stuff they can’t afford to pay for.)

And, of course, there’s the ritual Two-Minute Hate of housing that she doesn’t approve of:

Sadly, many of the small, architect-designed houses of the postwar period have been demolished to make way for McMansions.

This is a process called ‘trading up’. If you can afford to live in a ‘McMansion’, you don’t settle for a ‘McHovel’. And, indeed, I doubt that Jayne Merkel lives in a ‘small, architect-designed house of the post-war period’. Such things, after all, are for the Little People.

Read it. And read it again. You may even need to read it a third or fourth time. Don’t be shy.

American Protestants do not have to believe in God because they believe in belief. That is why we have never been able to produce interesting atheists in America. The god most American say they believe in just is not interesting enough to deny. Thus the only kind of atheism that counts in America is to call into question the proposition that everyone has a right to life, liberty, and happiness.

Putting it as directly as I can, I believe we may be living at a time when we are watching Protestantism, at least the kind of Protestantism we have in America, come to an end. It is dying of its own success. Protestantism became identified with the republican presumption in liberty as an end reinforced by belief in the common sense of the individual. As a result Protestant churches in America lost the ability to maintain the disciplines necessary to sustain a people capable of being an alternative to the world. Ironically the feverish fervency of the religious right in America to sustain faith as a necessary condition for supporting democracy cannot help but be a strategy that ensures the faith that is sustained is not the Christian faith.

I try to help Americans see that the story that they should have no story except the story they choose when they had no story is their story by asking them this question — “Do they think they ought to be held accountable for decisions they made when they did not know what they were doing?” They do not think they should be held accountable for decisions they made when they did not know what they were doing. They do not believe they should be held accountable because it is assumed that you should only be held accountable when you acted freely, and that means you had to know what you were doing.

Of course the problem with the story that you should have no story except the story you choose when you had no story is that story is a story that you have not chosen. But Americans do not have the ability to acknowledge that they have not chosen the story that they should have no story except the story they choose when they had no story. As a result they must learn to live with decisions they made when they thought they knew what they were doing but later realized they did not know what they were doing. Of course they have a remedy when it comes to marriage. It is called divorce. They also have a remedy for children. It is called abortion.

Read it.

1. It is the nature of things that man does not have a legal problem with God. That is to say, the nature of our problem is not forensic. The universe is not a law-court.

2. It is the nature of things that Christ did not come to make bad men good, but to make dead men live. This is to say that the nature of our problem is not moral but existential or ontological. We have a problem that is rooted in the very nature of our existence, not in our behavior. We behave badly because of a prior problem. Good behavior will not correct the problem.

3. It is the nature of things that human beings were created to live through communion with God. We were not created to live as self-sufficient individuals marked largely by our capacity for choice and decision. To restate this: we are creatures of communion, not creatures of consumption.

The nature of things is that people die – and not only do they die – but death, already at work in them from the moment of their birth, is the primary issue. The failure of humanity is not to be found or understood in a purely moral context. We are not creatures of choice and decision. How and why we choose is a very complex process that we ourselves do not understand. We can make a “decision” for Jesus only to discover that little has changed. It is also possible to find ourselves caught in a chain of decisions that bring us to the brink of despair without knowing quite how we got there. Though there are clearly problems with our choosing and deciding, the problem is far deeper.

The importance of these distinctions (moral versus existential) is in how we treat our present predicament. If the problem is primarily moral then it makes sense to live life in the hortatory mode, constantly urging others to be good, to “take the pledge,” or make good choices. If, on the other hand, our problem is rooted in the very nature of our existence then it is that existence that has to be addressed.

Marines. When you care enough to send the very best.

Read it.

Granted that Australia’s demographics don’t map all that well to America’s, nevertheless certain trends that are working out Down Under may sketch what America’s future looks like, as we slowly catch up. I can certainly see a day when the red/blue divide will not be territorial but sociological, based on urbanization — deep blue city cores composed of Underclass tenements, ‘gritty’ hipster enclaves, gentrified yuppie zones, and near-burb Richistan areas, with layers growing increasingly redder as one moves out into Nascar Country. The Coasts will always be more blue, and the Heartland more red, and how national elections come out will depend on the balance between the Crust and their client proletariat versus the Countryside.

Rod Dreher puts the boot in.

Well, at least he admits it. What he’s saying is that he’s someone who identifies as a Catholic but who hates the things that define Catholicism. He goes on to say that he remains a Catholic because “the Gospel matters.” Well, it matters to Protestants too; they have the Gospel without Catholic claims for authority. What Pierce has done is become Protestant without leaving the Catholic Church. Except Protestants, at least in theory, recognize an authority outside of themselves, namely, Scripture. Not Charles Pierce.

Hey Charles — you’re not a Catholic! Man up and admit it. You are a Catholic by birth and cultural identification, but you have ceased to believe as Catholicism teaches. Why do you lack the courage to be what you are: a non-Catholic Christian? Catholicism is far more than a set of propositions, but it is at least a set of propositions to which one must assent to call oneself a Catholic. I am not a Catholic any longer, and I don’t call myself Catholic — even though I probably believe far more of what the Catholic Church teaches than Pierce does. If I called myself Catholic now, without qualifying it as “fallen-away”, I would be lying to myself. Look, I know it’s extremely painful to leave the Catholic Church. It was the most difficult thing I ever did in my life. But if one cannot believe, or one will not believe, why stay? I’m not talking about the Catholics who struggle with this or that aspect of the Church’s teaching. I was one of those Catholics too, and I suspect most Catholics are. That’s normal. I’m talking about people who stand there and say with pride, anger and defiance that they don’t believe this stuff anymore, but they want all the privileges of being able to call themselves Catholic.

The same criticism applies, mutatis mutandis, to the ‘gay marriage’ crowd. Marriage has a common traditional definition, around the world and in every human society, and that definition has never included people of only one gender. Why is that important? Because words have meanings, and if people can, like Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty, just make them mean whatever they want them to mean, then there is no means available to make distinctions between things that are different. Language is how we express thought, and if our language becomes corrupted, our thought becomes corrupted as well.

Read it.

Armed with a newly-acquired master’s degree in public health from New York’s prestigious Columbia University, she is being lined up for a top role at the philanthropic foundation set up by her father, ex-president Bill Clinton.

For now, however, Miss Clinton, 30, clearly has other priorities. On Saturday, she will marry Mr Mezvinsky, 32, an investor banker whose parents both served in Congress and whose father recently completed a different sort of term – five years in prison for fraud.

Let’s see: Cutesy name: check. Rich Democrat liar politician father: check. Rich Democrat bitch politician mother: check. Went to a ‘spensive private school where she had to apologize for being white: check. Coasted through the Ivy League: check. Lined up for a cushy ‘job’ in the Crustian NGO millieu: check. Marries a guy of similar background who probably thinks Alan Alda is a Real Man: check. Never have to work a day in her life: check. Yup, all bases touched.

Prediction: They will have exactly one child, who will be given a last name as his first name (can’t really say ‘Christian name’ with this crowd), and who will follow a similar course during his life.

Read it.

As I arrived for a visit, my 90 year old father was perusing ads from his favorite big box store for chicken parts. Seizing the moment that all children savor, I sought to impress him with my declaration: “I buy my chicken parts – albeit at higher prices – at the natural foods store; you know daddy, where the chickens ate naturally off the barn yard floor like they did when you were a boy”? Not missing a beat and dashing my hope for an “at a boy,” he retorted: “I saw what those chickens ate off the barnyard floor and I’ll buy my chickens at Walmart(s)!”

Those who know what the Good Old Days were really like prefer Now, thank you.

Watch it. Join in if you know the song. If you don’t know the song, you have been badly brought up.

Read it.

And watch the video.

Robert Samuelson connects some dots.

If you want a preview of President Obama’s health-care “reform,” take a look at Massachusetts. In 2006, it enacted a “reform” that became a model for Obama. What’s happened since isn’t encouraging. The state did the easy part: expanding state-subsidized insurance coverage. It evaded the hard part: controlling costs and ensuring that spending improves people’s health. Unfortunately, Obama has done the same.

Aside from squeezing take-home pay (employers provide almost 70 percent of insurance), higher costs have automatically shifted government priorities toward health care and away from everything else — schools, police, roads, prisons, lower taxes. In 1990, health spending represented about 16 percent of the state budget, says the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. By 2000, health’s share was 22 percent. In 2010, it’s 35 percent. About 90 percent of the health spending is Medicaid.

Similar forces will define Obamacare. Even if its modest measures to restrain costs succeed — which seems unlikely — the effect on overall spending would be slight. The system’s fundamental incentives won’t change. The lesson from Massachusetts is that genuine cost control is avoided because it’s so politically difficult. It means curbing the incomes of doctors, hospitals and other providers. They object. To encourage “accountable care organizations” would limit consumer choice of doctors and hospitals. That’s unpopular. Spending restrictions, whether imposed by regulation or “global payments,” raise the specter of essential care denied. Also unpopular.

A pity that the Crust don’t seem inclined to learn anything from history, but would rather live in their own fantasy world of myths and legends.

Read it.

Perhaps they know something that we don’t.

Moe Lane gloats. It is not a pretty sight.

Do I sound entertained?  It’s because I am: and I will enjoy every second that Jimmy Webb is broken on the wheel for relapsing into error like this.  And do you know why I will enjoy every second?  Because of ‘macaca,’ that’s why.  Jimmy Webb stood by and calmly, disinterestedly watched as his new owners flash-mobbed his opponent for supposed racism in the 2006 Senatorial election. He did that because Jimmy Webb wanted to be Senator so badly that he was willing to overlook precisely the hyper-emphasis of race that he complains about now; after all, it put him in office, and that was the important thing, right?

Read it.

Ah, the unintended consequences of bad legislation. It’s no surprise that many people have pinned a lot of the blame  on the financial crisis on the ratings agencies (mainly Moody’s and S&P). After all, they were the ones who went out there and said that collections of slices of dices of the worst mortgages around should be rated as top notch, sure-fire, investments. And there were clear conflicts of interest in how the ratings agencies did their ratings. But, in the end, the ratings agencies were really just giving an opinion — and opinions are (last we checked) supposed to be protected by the First Amendment.

The real problem came from the government writing those agencies’ ratings into the law. Basically, the government, in a really short-sighted attempt to avoid financial problems, required certain institutions had to maintain a percentage of “highly rated” or “investment quality” bonds, in order to engage in certain activities. Suddenly, these “opinions” weren’t just opinions, but had important legal consequences. If a ratings agency downgraded an investment, it could legally force some holders of those bonds to have to sell them to maintain its investment ratios. With that, those ratings also took on the sheen of something objective and factual, rather than a random opinion put forth by a bunch of guys (mostly guys) who might not know what’s really going on, and who have some serious conflicts of interest.