Steaming Turd

Earlier today, one of the news channels had on Michael Medved, the guy who used to review movies on PBS and is now a conservative radio talk show host. He made an interesting statement (paraphrased):

Whites are willing to vote for Barack Obama because they hope that electing him President would essentially be payment on a deal that would usher in a new era in which blacks and whites are no longer pitted against each other, and in which the tremendous progress in race relations made in the US since the 1960s is finally acknowledged.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of Medved - he’s involved up to his armpits in intelligent design advocacy, for instance. Nonetheless, he does raise an interesting point:

Are Obama’s white supporters supporting him, perhaps subconsciously, because they view him as a potential capstone to the civil rights movement that will move the country past its history of slavery, lynchings, and race discrimination once and for all? And if so, will it work? Will “old guard” civil rights activists lose bargaining power on issues like affirmative action and other race-based social remedies, if people can point to Obama and say, look, if a black man can become President, then we’ve truly progressed beyond the need to treat people preferentially based on past racial injustices?

I had this really weird dream last night. Most of it I don’t remember now, but toward the end, there was a part where I was walking with two people I didn’t know and was investigating some crime, apparently. I was talking to somebody who knew some of the details (but note that all of this so far is irrelevant to the part I’m about to get to), when along came this courier guy, who handed a package to one of the people I had been walking with.

The recipient opens the package, and apparently, it had been rigged with a strike-anywhere match and a bit of shavings from a sparkler or something like that. There was a brief flash of fire from the match, a bit of harmless sparking, and the guy who was with him says something like, “I kill you with fire (something something)”.

Realizing that they were playing one of those “fake spy assassination” games, I and some of the other folks there thought it was a pretty creative way to fake assassinate someone in one of those games, so we applauded for a bit. The dream ended shortly thereafter, which is probably why I was able to remember this part.

Anyway, after I woke up, I was thinking about those fake spy assassination games. Most of the time, they use some miscellaneous thrown object, nerf darts, etc., for one person to fake kill their target. But it occurred to me that if one of the rules is that you have to be around the person you’re targeting, then employing an unwitting third party (e.g., the courier) to do your dirty work is a pretty interesting way to take care of business. You can win the trust of your target by being around them and not taking them out right away, and then when they least expect it, they more or less off themselves. Very Spy-vs.-Spy

John McCain has come under fire from Barack Obama in recent weeks for his stance on what’s commonly referred to as the “Bush tax cuts“. At the time, McCain was one of few Republicans who voted against the measure, but presently, he is on record as supporting making those tax cuts permanent instead of allowing them to expire. Obama claims that this position is self-contradictory, but I believe that isn’t true. However, McCain and his campaign have done a poor job of explaining why such a position isn’t self-contradictory.

Suppose you’re a middle-class family with kids to feed, a house payment, and a car payment. You get by fine, and you manage to save for your kids’ future college expenses while fulfilling your employer’s 401(k) matching policy.

The government lowers taxes, and with your extra money in hand from the tax break, you put away a little more savings, trade in for a more expensive car, or move into a bigger house.

A few years pass, and over that time, your finances have adjusted so that a tax increase would be a burden. Then those tax cuts expire, and you find yourself carrying that additional burden. You can’t make your 401(k) matching limit now, and between the troubled real estate and mortgage markets, you find yourself barely able to make your loan payments.

Therein lies the difference. The effects of changes in tax policy are given not just by the level of taxes, but by the magnitude of the transitions between tax rates.

It surprises me that McCain’s campaign can’t formulate this argument (or at least haven’t yet), especially since a good explanation would be mud in Obama’s eye.

Okay, so everybody by now knows about Eliot Spitzer’s recent woes, and some folks probably have read that he’s going to resign Monday. This would leave the current Lieutenant Governor of New York to become Governor in his place.

The current Lieutenant Governor is a guy named David Paterson. He’s black, and he’s also legally blind. He’d be the first African-American governor of New York, but he’d also be the first blind governor nationwide. Between those two - African-American and legally blind - which one is getting all the media attention? Which one is truly more notable in today’s society?

Fox News says African-American. The headline only mentions his race, and while the article does mention he’s legally blind, it doesn’t mention that as being a first.

MSNBC says African-American. Purporting to tell us who David Paterson is, the article does mention his blindness, but makes much ado only about his race.

CNN says African-American, barely. They did make an effort to determine the veracity of the “first blind governor” statement, citing “scarce documentation”, but the headline of the article places distinct emphasis on race.

The New York Times manages to discuss the matter without placing much emphasis on either factor. In other material, they do mention both his race and his disability, but don’t make a big deal about either.

The Associated Press restores a little bit of faith in journalism by placing emphasis on his disability. Sadly, though, it goes on to provide this ridiculous quote by Al Sharpton:

He’s a guy who had two handicaps: his blindness and his race. And he never made excuses for it.

I’m sorry, but being African-American isn’t a handicap.

We use technology to help people cope with their handicaps to improve their quality of life. We make accommodations for handicaps out of understanding that a handicap necessarily prevents a person from doing certain things. These accommodations have helped people with disabilities navigate in buildings with multiple floors and lots of stairs, cross the street safely or read the newspaper, or read the dialogue being spoken on TV.

What is it again that being black necessarily prevents David Paterson from doing? How does his race disable him? And is Al Sharpton willing to take his ridiculous assertion to its ludicrous conclusion: that someday, someone may develop a cure?

I’m guessing a lot of people in Cleveland Heights don’t have the same rationale that I do regarding the income tax levy, but apparently a lot of them agreed with my vote. The tax increase failed with 61.1% opposed.

I voted an “issues only” (aka nonpartisan) ballot today. There were only three issues present:

• A property tax levy to replace a current levy for Cuyahoga County - I usually vote for replacements and renewals if they don’t jack up the tax significantly, and this was no exception.
• A property tax levy for the CH-UH public library system - I voted for this because the library has a narrowly-defined and important purpose, which means that it’s difficult for them to make cuts to meet their budget if a shortfall arises due to falling revenues. Libraries are also important and useful services provided to the public, crucial in educating young people.
• An income tax levy for Cleveland Heights, increasing the tax rate from 2% to 2.4% - I voted against this, because I wasn’t convinced that the city had made substantial cuts in its more frivolous programs, significantly increased fees and fines, or taken a more creative approach to shoring up the tax base.

  This is a problem they’ve known was a long time coming*, but now instead of cutting unnecessary mailings, increasing fees for community programs, or surtaxing owners of chronically/perpetually vacant properties and taxing housing assistance income, they want to tax everybody an additional 20% of their current tax bill. If you’re going to tax people due to revenue shortfalls when those shortfalls are indicative of widespread changes in your community, you should target those taxes to correct or at least stave off the problematic parts of those changes. In this case, the declining tax base is the problem, and the city should target its taxes to dissuade too many people of inadequate means from moving here (and thus continuing to push higher income people to leave for the outer suburbs).

  I know that sounds elitist - and, in fact, it is - but if you expect to be able to pay for your city’s services with tax revenues, then you have to move your city toward a tax base that can actually afford to pay for those services.

* Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said something along those lines regarding Cleveland, and Mike Trivisonno plays it several times a day during his radio show: “It isn’t that we don’t know what the problems are - we’ve known those for years. It isn’t that we don’t know what the solutions are - we’ve known those for years. The problem is we haven’t done anything about it.”

Still can’t make up your mind whom to vote for? Try these political ads (slightly modified). And if that’s not enough, here are some more.