La Vita Loca

Inheritance

We're starting to get more flack about "the death tax", and of course, the frame is that we simply must protect the children of the small business owner or the family farmer from losing everything to the Tax Man when the patriarch croaks.  And I'd go along with it if there was any real truth to it.  But there isn't, so I can't.

The National Memo:

You may have heard of the estate tax, but chances are you will never have to pay it, especially now that the Senate has set the exemption at $5 million.

That means that if you inherit an estate, likely because you were born with the right last name, you won’t have to pay taxes on any of it unless its value is over $5,000,000 — then you’ll pay 40 percent on the amount above that, about the same as the new top rate on high earners. And that $5,000,000 exemption will be adjusted for inflation yearly.

The argument I find truly bogus is the one revolving around, "that money's already been taxed..." cuz that one's just pretty dumb.  Every dollar has already been taxed.  The dollar you spend at the movies is an after-tax dollar; so is the dollar you spend on rent or food or gas etc etc etc.  These arguments are in favor of the Ownership Class grabbing more for themselves and leaving less for everybody else.

I have great sympathy for anybody who survives the tragedy of losing a family provider, and we have to make sure we take care of people who need taking care of, so let's be at least a little careful with how we set it up; intergenerational wealth transfer is a good and important thing - we have to put some limits on it though.

So I'm thoroughly unconvinced that a first son or the designated heiress to the family business deserves to be handed a multimillion dollar enterprise at no cost, owing solely to their choosing the right joint to be born into.  Here's a thought: Come up with a business plan, go to the bank, borrow the bucks and let's see if you're as good at farming as your dad was.

Any other way of doing things is anti-competitive, anti-meritocratic, and pushes us all back towards the kind of imperial aristocracy we're supposed to be resisting.

The Cook Book

Brian Dalton (Mr Deity) tells us why Cook Book Religion doesn't make for a better world.

Today's Pix

Some Random Tho'ts

• My bed is a magical place where I suddenly remember everything I was supposed to do.

• I'm having one of those days where my middle finger seems to be the answer to every question.

• The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google Search Results.

• Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.

New Music

Dunno what exactly to think about this - I guess it could just be the standard teenage angst-y thing about looking for a place to belong, but there's something that feels a little more universal to me.  It's interesting.



hat tip = Balloon Juice

Gotta Keep Going

Getting Obama re-elected wasn't the end of anything.  I have to remind myself constantly  that the "other side" plays the long game.

The Wingnut Welfare system is alive and doing quite well, and people like Davie and Chuckles Koch never stop - they don't have to stop because it's practically impossible for anybody to spend all the money these guys have.  Once upon a time, we had some semi-scoundrels like Carnegie and Mellon, who surely did plenty of unpleasant things to make their fortunes, but who ended by building public libraries and endowing universities - in a certain sense, they paid it back to us.  The Koch Boys are glorified rent-seekers who seem to have no potential for such redeeming gestures.

It's important to remember also that whenever we have these cancerous growths on the body politic, we're bound to get a large rasher of opportunistic parasites that go right along with them - from Addicting Info:

1. You want an abortion? That’s ok, but you’ll need to wait 24 hours. Oh, and here’s a pamphlet explaining how an abortion can contribute to your risk of breast cancer.
2. I’m sorry to tell you that we’re going to have to let you go. We have a moral objection to your use of birth control. But other than that, we really like the job you’ve done.
3. Would you like your aborted fetus to be cremated, or would a casket suit you better?
4. You can have an abortion, but you should know that you will likely want to commit suicide, as a result. Sign here, and initial here.
5. You were raped by your uncle? That’s awful. But you should know that if you choose to abort the baby, you’ll have to pay for the abortion. Taxpayers frown on that.
6. You should really take a look at your fetus before it’s aborted. No? Well, that’s ok. I’ll describe it for you then.
7. You were raped and beat up? How horrible. We can help except if you’re Native American, an undocumented immigrant, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
8. That poor woman has a fetus that will never make it to term. But I’m going to lie to her because I’m afraid that she’ll abort it. Good thing I won’t get sued over it.
9. Abortions will no longer be available for women who are pregnant for more than 20 weeks. We don’t care about Roe v. Wade. We’re invoking states’ rights!
10. You can’t use the word vagina anymore. However, we can regulate what you do with your vagina.

We Just Don't Know

Except we kinda do know - or at least we're getting to where we have to be starting to think there has to be something to it. There's always whatever small probability that it could be a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc, but c'mon - at what point do we just have to say those damned hippies were right all along?
From The Rocky Mountain Arsenal:

Deep well injection for liquid waste has been safely used for many years at sites throughout the United States without documented damage to human health or the environment. After an extensive study of deep injection wells across the country by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it was concluded that this procedure is effective and protective of the environment.
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal deep injection well was constructed in 1961, and was drilled to a depth of 12,045 feet. The well was cased and sealed to a depth of 11,975 feet, with the remaining 70 feet left as an open hole for the injection of Basin F liquids. For testing purposes, the well was injected with approximately 568,000 gallons of city water prior to injecting any waste. However, when the Basin F liquids were actually introduced, the process required more time than anticipated to complete because of the impermeability of the rock. The end result was approximately 165 million gallons of Basin F liquid waste being injected into the well during the period from 1962 through 1966.
The waste fluid chemistry is not known precisely. However, the Army estimates that the waste was a more dilute version of the Basin F liquid which is now being incinerated. Current Basin F liquid consists of very salty water that includes some metals, chlorides, wastewater and toxic organics. From 1962 -- 1963, the fluids were pumped from Basin F into the well. From 1964 -- 1966, waste was removed from an isolated section of Basin F and was combined with waste from a pre-treatment plant, located near Basin F, and then pumped into the well. The waste from the pre-treatment plant was generally a solution containing 13,000 parts per million sodium chloride (salt), with a pH ranging from 3.5 to 11.5. The organic content of the solution was high but is largely unknown.
The injected fluids had very little potential for reaching the surface or useable groundwater supply since the injection point had 11,900 feet of rock above it and was sealed at the opening. The Army discontinued use of the well in Feb. 1966 because of the possibility that the fluid injection was triggering earthquakes in the area. The well remained unused for nearly 20 years.
In 1985 the Army permanently sealed the disposal well in stages. First, the well casing was tested to evaluate its integrity. Any detected voids behind the casing were cemented to prevent possible contamination of other formations. Next, the injection zone at the bottom 70 feet of the well was closed by plugging with cement. Additional cement barriers were placed inside the casing across zones that could access water-bearing formations (aquifers). The final step was adding Bentonite, a heavy clay mud that later solidified, to close the rest of the hole up to the ground surface.

I was 14, living in Arvada Colorado in August 1967, and I remember very clearly at the time that nobody wasn't convinced the earthquakes were being caused by the US Army pumping tons of toxic waste into those wells.  The Army didn't deny it although they were pretty cagey about what they were willing to say about it in public.

Historic Earthquakes

Denver, Colorado
1967 08 09 13:25
Magnitude 5.3

The main damage occurred in Northglenn, a northern suburb of Denver, but minor damage occurred in many area towns. At Northglenn, concrete pillars were damaged at a church; foundations, concrete floors, and walls cracked; windows broke; and tile fell at a school. At one residence, a piano shifted about 15 cm and a television set overturned. Some bricks fell from a chimney in downtown Denver, damaging a car. This was the largest of a series of earthquakes in the northeast Denver area that were believed to be induced by pumping of waste fluids into a deep disposal well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The Colorado School of Mines recorded more than 300 earthquakes from this zone during 1967. Felt north to Laramie, Wyoming, south to Pueblo, west to Vail, and east to Sterling.

Cracks in highway overpass pillar in the Denver, Colorado, area caused by the August 9, 1967, earthquake. (Photograph by the Denver Post.)

And then this, from Up With Chris Hayes:

Indeed, energy independence–and the economic opportunities that come with it–may be an admirable goal. But then there’s this: fracking is causing earthquakes. Federal scientists presented a new study this week to the American Geophysical Union that suggests natural gas drilling is the likely culprit behind a skyrocketing number of earthquakes in the Raton Basin in Colorado and New Mexico. From 1970 to 2001, there were just five earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater in that region. Then, companies began injecting what’s called “wastewater fluid” from natural gas drilling into the Earth. After that, from 2001 to 2011, there were a total of 95 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater–an increase of 1,900%. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey concluded in their report that “the majority, if not all of the earthquakes since August 2001 have been triggered by the deep injection of wastewater related to the production of natural gas from the coal-bed methane field.”

This has to stop.

The Pendulum Swings

Even Obama has taken up the chorus now.  He did an interview on MTP yesterday where he said kinda straight out that the Repubs are the problem.

"...they have trouble saying yes..."

etc

It'll take some doing, but you'll have to try extra hard to ignore what a dip wad David Gregory is - especially when he gets to the question: "what is it about you, Mr President that you think is so hard to say yes to?".

Maybe it finally starts to stick (ie: the GOP is the main problem), and maybe it finally starts to make the "politically fashionable middle-grounders" feel more comfortable about  thinking so; and then actually saying so in their normal daily discourse.

Re-alignment happens when the big squishy middle starts to move.

Read what Charlie Pierce has to say about it:

Now, after carefully nurturing for 40 years the notion that government is bad, the Republican party has developed within it a legislative core that believes that, if government is bad, then governing is worse, that holds as an article of faith that the only legitimate function of government is to do nothing — loudly, if possible.

The Krugman Speaks

Evan Soltas of Wonkblog and Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider both make the same point, in more detail, that I tried to make in my series on ONE TRILLION DOLLARS: the current budget deficit is overwhelmingly the result of the depressed economy, and it’s not clear that we have a structural budget problem at all, let alone the fundamental mismatch between what we want and what we’re willing to pay for that people like to claim exists. Here’s another chart, showing the primary federal balance — that is, not counting interest payments — since 1972 (data from CBO):

We don't get to talk about the real thing because the Dems need an honest-to-god partner in order to make shit work, and the Repubs are one tent short of a freak show.

I gets pretty obvious pretty fast that what Boehner & Co (and to a very much lesser extent, Obama) are doing is playing their little games.  And it's not even Boehner and Obama who pose the real problem.  I'm not one for simple 10-word solutions to big ugly complicated trouble, but the real problem is that there're just way too many big Corporations and big Trade Groups and big Lobbies, and big Unions and Power Factions inside Government (DoD eg), where everybody has their hands out expecting whatever favors and special treatment they believe they've got coming because of the money they raised for a candidate or the voters they turned out in the election or the vital role they play blah blah blah.  And it doesn't just boil down to the usual pap about "special interest groups" - in a democracy everybody's a special interest group for fuck's sake.  I think it comes down to a weird blend of Obama's semi-conservative centrism and The Repubs getting more and more crazy as we go.  And there's poor ol' Boehner trying pretty hard to get his numbskull caucus to stop being complete dicks about everything while not actually saying straight out (not in public anyway) that they're all a bunch of complete dicks.

Conventional wisdom is saying Boehner's likely to lose his speakership next month.  I'm not sure one way or the other, but I think it probably won't matter.  It could be a huge story that'll keep the Operatives and the Squawkers busy for months, but in the end, if Boehner stays or goes we'll still have a Republican Party that can't manage a High School Car Wash much less help govern an empire - while the rest of us can only sit around waiting for something good to happen.