"Where did you get that statistic?" "Your mother!"

I recently watched the movie entitled, “America: Freedom to Fascism” (http://www.freedomtofascism.com/) by Aaron Russo. (You can watch it here.) It is a documentary wherein the director sets out on a quest to find the law that says that people have to pay income taxes. He discovers that there is no such law as well as many other dark and disturbing things.

Or so he would have you think.

This “documentary” really is a work of propaganda in the style of Michael Moore which does little more than highlight cherry-picked “facts” while literally ignoring the context and explanations around them. It mischaracterizes the information that it finds and stops its search once it has found “experts” that agree with it.

I have a few general thoughts about the movie:

First, Aaron Russo is the far right’s answer to Michael Moore. They both make obvious propaganda, they both demonstrate a flagrant disregard for the truth, and they’re both overweight jerks. The only difference I can see is that Michael Moore’s movies have better production quality and have made a lot more money. Ironic.

Second, his editor must have taken tips from the Daily Show. He conducts a number of interviews with people on both sides of the issue (although predominantly from the anti-tax side). However, rather than including full sentences and leaving quotes in context, he shows snippets of sentences, partial phrases, and even cuts off the scene when it sounds like context and explanation are going to be given. This is what you see every day on the Daily Show, only they know they’re doing it.

Third, he does not listen. Throughout his movie, he asks a number of people to, “Show me the law that says that [I have to pay taxes; I can’t walk into the IRS building; pompous filmmakers should be publicly flogged].” However, even when he is shown the law, or given an explanation, or told the answer, he either doesn’t listen or flat out rejects it. The best example of this is when the former IRS Commissioner is trying to explain what “voluntary compliance” means and the director cuts him off, and then takes one line from his whole explanation and plays it over and over.

As to the substance of the movie, let me succinctly say: He’s wrong. Flat wrong. He says that the purpose of his movie is to find the law that says that we have to pay taxes. For some reason, he asks a bunch of morons rather than real experts. I say this because I set out with the same quest and it took me 30 seconds. I quote from Title 26 of the United States Code, section 1:

Tax imposed.
(a) Married individuals filing joint returns and surviving spouses. There is hereby imposed on the taxable income of--
(1) every married individual (as defined in section 7703) who makes a single return jointly with his spouse under section 6013, and
(2) every surviving spouse (as defined in section 2(a)),
a tax determined in accordance with the following table...:

He makes a number of other arguments, all of which are nicely refuted here, here and here.

At the end of the day, it is a poorly-made work of banal propaganda not really worth your time. If you want to hear some real arguments against the tax system, go somewhere else. (I’d post a link to some, but I haven’t heard any.)

You’re welcome.

"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."

Sometimes I think people should need licenses to have children. I am reminded of this each time I hear someone’s terrible name for their child. I’m not talking about celebrity names like Apple or George IV, nor am I talking about hippie names like Sunrise or Happy or Coconut. I’m talking about names – and these are real names – like Braia, Keyerrah and Dayamere Qwest (I don’t really know how it’s spelled, but that’s how it’s said). This isn’t unique to one culture, religion or ethinicity - All are guilty. My brother lives in a town that is probably 99% white and 95% the same Christian religion. He recently had a child and when I looked at the pictures on the hospital website, I could see the names of the other children. With the exception of my brother’s child (whose first and middle names are common with multiple English kings), the page was splattered with the vomit that other people chose as names. If you doubt me, see for yourself. I could write for days about the types of things that bug me about the names people choose for their children, but I’m lazy, so I’ll just skip to the end.

The queen mother of all the terrible names I’ve come across is:

Dorcas Coker-Appiah

This name is terrible for the obvious reason that it resembles some demeaning words, but it wins the crown for another reason. This lady had one of the worst names ever, but when she got married, she had a chance to change it – and she didn’t. Rather than dump her crappy last name, she chose to keep it and slap her married name on the end.*

For the record, I have a bias against her maiden name. Mrs. Daniel’s last boyfriend before me had the last name of “Coker” and was once said to resemble a turtle. You don’t need much imagination to see the potential in that.
I end with a plea: Please, for the love of your children, their descendants, and humanity at large, name your children good names. Stupid names are a curse – a curse that does not have to be. We can all work together to rid the world of this foul plague. Please don't be afraid to share your opinions of other people's names and don't be offended when others offer theirs. But your friends will probably continue to just be nice and tell you they like the name you’ve chosen, so if you have any doubt, put the name in the comments and I will give you a frank opinion. (My child’s first name comes from the Bible – it’s very prominent and also historically very popular; the middle name is also popular and is common with a revolutionary Scottish lord and someone who once threw me in a garbage can.)

* She’s actually a tremendous human being who has done great work to make better the lives of women in an incredibly oppressive environment. We should all be more like here, and I say that seriously.

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”

There are many people in this country who believe that it is good public policy to place a copy of the 10 Commandments on the walls of our public buildings. I believe that they are wrong.

Proponents of these initiatives make many arguments about why the 10 Commandments should be posted, all of which are based on the proponent’s own religious belief. (I have never heard an atheist argue that they should be posted.) One of the principal arguments made by proponents is that they are good laws to live by.

My initial reaction to this argument is that they’re right – in part. We don’t want people to murder (6th), steal (8th), or commit adultery (7th). Even some of the other Commandments are things that we would like to see in society but are harder to enact into law, such as no coveting (10th) and honoring your parents (5th). However, those are not the only commandments. The first four Commandments deal with man’s relation to God and read in part:

1. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
2. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image....Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them...”
3. “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain...”
4. “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
Exodus 20:2-11

These seem like “good rules to live by” only if you are a Christian who believes in the Bible (or are at least afraid of the Christian God). Otherwise, people have reason to keep the Sabbath holy, or to refrain from taking the name of the Lord in vain. For example, a Hindu would most likely be hesitant to worship the Christian God over say, Vishnu. Not only that, but different religions believe in different translations of the Bible. Posting one translation instead of another could send the wrong message.

My second response to the argument that they are good laws to live by is that there are also many other religious creeds that “are good laws to live by.” For example, the 5 (or 7, depending on the sect) Pillars of Islam which call for adherents to fast, pray, give to the needy, etc. are also good practices that people should engage in. In fact, one of the first steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is to acknowledge a higher power, similar to the first Pillar of Islam and the first Commandment. Nevertheless, I feel confident in predicting that if any county wanted to post the Pillars on the courthouse wall, there would be a broad national outcry against it. The same outcry would probably result from an attempt to post them next to the 10 Commandments in the same display.

The 10 Commandments are religious edicts, not public policy and as such do not belong in our public buildings, except in a religiously and philosophically diverse display outlining historical facts, rather than religious beliefs.

“Once the Sun burns out, this planet is doomed. You're just making sure we spend our last days using inferior products.”

I’m not a big fan of most of the Libertarian Party’s positions. To me, government is all about balancing values: freedom v. security, right to choose v. right to life, etc., and it’s not always easy. The Libertarians (and most third parties) usually ignore these problems or assume that private action will solve them. I think that they are wrong on both counts.

One position that I find particularly odious, is how Libertarian Party deals with the environment. Their party platform states, “Public Policy instruments including eminent domain, zoning laws, building codes, rent control, regional planning, property taxes, resource management and public health legislation remove property rights from owners and transfer them to the State, while raising costs of property ownership.... [A]nd regulation of property shall be limited to that which secures the rights of individuals.” (To see the full quote so that you can tell that I’m not taking it out of context, check out the Libertarian Party Platform.)

If I am reading this correctly, the government cannot exercise any control over what an individual does with his own property except to ensure that he can own property. A typical argument goes something like, “The government shouldn’t tell me how to use my land. If I want to build ____ structure on my land, and do _____ activity on my land, I should be able to. The government has no business telling me what I can do with my own property.” This position is very problematic because it ignores externalities. (An externality is a cost of an activity that is born by someone other than the actor engaging in the activity. For more, read, "The Tragedy of the Commons.") To illustrate the problems with the Libertarian position, consider the following hypothetical:

A stream runs through the properties of two different farmers. In his spare time, Farmer Upstream repairs old cars. Rather than throwing away the old fluids drained from these cars, he simply dumps them into the stream at the bottom end of his property, letting the water carry them away. Farmer Downstream relies on the stream water to irrigate his crops. When the chemicals dumped by Farmer Upstream get into the irrigation water, it kills Farmer Downstream’s crops.

The Libertarian position doesn’t seem to acknowledge these externalities. Using their philosophy, Farmer Upstream can dump his chemicals on his own land, but then he doesn’t have to bear the cost of that activity. The cost is born by Farmer Downstream as his crops die. Farmer Upstream has no incentive to stop dumping except his own conscience – Farmer Downstream has no power to force a bargain in the Libertarian’s hypothetical free market.

If my farmer hypothetical is too abstract for you, let me give you a real scenario. The Colorado River flows through four dry western states. All four states rely on the river for water, hydropower, recreation, and tourism. If Arizona decides to build a dam, it will lower the amount of water available in California and cause a lake to form in Utah, destroying many archeological and natural sites while Arizona gets all the power from the dam. If we strictly follow the Libertarian position, then the states have to negotiate between themselves how to resolve this problem. I can see Utah and Arizona striking some kind of deal where they split the power – Utah will leverage the threat of building another dam upstream to force a bargain – but California is left in the dust (pun intended). And how are Utah and Arizona to keep Colorado from building another upstream dam, rendering theirs useless? If you don’t like that example, think about factories in California that dump pollution into the air that then comes down on Nevada and Utah as acid rain. What can Utah and Nevada do about that?

The typical response to these questions was laid out in the comments to a recent news story from KSL. The story reported that the air pollution problem in Utah is causing kids with asthma to have an increased number of episodes. In the comments, many people expressed the following sentiment: “If air quality causes problems, look for a different place to live.” What happens when even children who are born healthy develop asthma because of air pollution and every city in the world has adopted that commenter’s view? Where will they move then?

My point is that absent federal regulation, there is no guarantee that property owners will use their land in a way that is fair to everyone or “which secures the rights of individuals”. The Libertarians are wrong when it comes to the environment and we need legislation like the Clean Air Act to ensure that all people can enjoy the use of their private property.

p.s. On their site, they have a link to a test that you can take to determine if you are a Libertarian. Apparently, I am not.

“I’m telling you, Liz is a grade A... Runt!”

I hate Oprah. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone as I am prone to random, baseless hatreds against people I’ve never met. But I have long hated Oprah. I don’t really know when it started, but it gets worse each time I’m exposed to her.

My latest run-in with her has helped to somewhat crystallize my disdain. A few weeks ago, Mrs. Daniel took control of the remote and insisted on watching a special about Oprah’s school for girls in South Africa. Apparently, Oprah has spent something around $50 million to open a school in Africa where disadvantaged but ambitious, capable girls can learn how to be leaders and hopefully use their skills to improve the lives of their fellow citizens.

The school and the special about it bothered me in so very many ways. First, the whole thing centered on how Oprah has helped these girls rather than on how these girls are advancing and how they’ll benefit their communities. This type of narcissistic focus is typical of this self-important demagogue. (For instance, when “she” gave away cars to her audience, I doubt that she or her show actually paid for them but the media focus has been on how she gave them away.)

Second, there was a sequence in the special where Oprah interviewed several of the girls individually. The girls would walk up to the door of a room where Oprah was waiting. Then, with magnificent flair, Oprah would open the door and the girls would scream with delight as they met their “hero”. Oprah would then interview the girls while the camera spent most of its time focused on Oprah’s reactions to what they were saying. I guess we can see who is important in her life.

Third, the school cost something like $43 million. I have an acquaintance who is starting a foundation that will give micro loans to starting companies in Africa and south east Asia. These loans will allow entrepreneurs to provide jobs and stability to areas that are in great need. He is currently looking for donations so that they can provide loans to thousands of people. Oprah’s school serves something like 100 girls. Not only that, but as Mrs. Daniel pointed out during this conversation, she’s (actually, the teachers hired by her underlings) training these girls to be Americans. The expectation is that many of them, if not all, will attend college in America. What guarantee do we have that they’ll go back to their home countries to make a difference? Not only that, but will little Americans be able to wield influence in a culture vastly different from our own?

To support my claims that she is an egotistical narcissistic megalomaniac, check out this quote from the website for the "Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy":

"When Oprah's chef cooked the girls Christmas dinner, one traditional sweet treat became an instant hit! Invite friends and family over to watch the special and serve them a taste of South African culture."

I just hate her self-important elitism. I also think that it’s funny that so many people, including many from the religious right just love her so much despite the fact that she’s been with her boyfriend for 20 years but refuses to marry him because she thinks that marriage is a silly societal construct.

I really hate Oprah. I just can’t say this enough.