Self-Proclaimed “City of Tomorrow”

My current place of (temporary) residence is Troy, Michigan. While our permanent housing arrangements in Ann Arbor shake out, I am staying with Mrs. F's family in one of Detroit's upscale suburbs...

One of the reasons we are so excited to be relocating from North Carolina back to Michigan is the emphasis placed on education and services such as public libraries. This is true not only in our city of choice, Ann Arbor, but throughout much of Southeast Michigan (this is absolutely NOT the case in Asheville).

Here is some trivia on Troy:

• $108,033 - median income for a family according to a 2008 estimate. Median income for a household in the city was $88,766.
  
  
• #22 - Ranking in 2008 CNN/Money Best Places to Live: “With some of the highest-ranked schools in Michigan, moderately priced homes, safe streets and low property taxes, Troy is a great place for families.”
  
  
• $8,443 - Amount spent on vacations (domestic and foreign, household avg. per year)
  
  
• 10th - The Troy Public Library's ranking among Best Library in the United States for 2009.

Sounds pretty good, right? Who wouldn't want to move here? Open a business here?

Anybody with a fucking brain it turns out.

Earlier this year voters in Troy rejected a five-year 1.9 millage proposal that would have continued funding for quality-of-life services such as the public library. Starting this July the hours and services at the library will be slashed to minimum certification standards, and next July (2011) the library will close its doors permanently.

Some more trivia:

• $37.81 - Average increase in City of Troy portion of property taxes per residential home.
  
  
• $392.78 (or 9.4%) - Average DECREASE in all other areas of the average Troy homeowner's property tax bill for 2010 due to decrease in assessed values.
  
  
• 29% - The phony-ass “tax increase” thrown out to scare people by the local Republican Party, local Teabaggers, talk radio asshats and other bullshit-filled opposition groups.
  
  
• 5 - Number of years before the millage sunsets. Yes, it was fucking temporary.
  
  
• 30 - Ranking among the 30 full-service cities in Oakland County of Troy’s tax rate. That’s right: Troy residents pay the lowest city taxes in the area. Passing the millage would have moved them up two spots to 28.
  

Congratulations. It worked. Wealthy Republicans in this town decided “they got theirs, so fuck you” and whipped the sheeple in this town into a lather about receiving a slightly smaller tax reduction, and now there will be no public library system.

Good luck resuscitating Troy's legacy as “Innovation Alley” and here’s to a bright future as a destination for new business and residents.

Peak Wingnut, cont.

I think this piece by Andrew Sullivan on Sarah Palin's chance of running and her prospects should she do so, is worth reading. He accuses the media of being far too complacent on the topic of Palin and the de-evolution of politics—but in classic Sully style, he counters by being in my opinion, too alarmist. I think the truth lies somewhere in between: she's too dangerous to ignore, but too extreme to emerge victorious.

For now.

Reading Assignments

REVISIONIST HISTORY: PART 1
I picked up the new issue of GQ during lunch today (having a newsstand in the office is a nice perk), and read several well-written pieces on a variety of subjects. But the Editor's Letter by Jim Nelson is one of the best things I've read about the destruction of education and history unfolding in Texas. It cuts right to the bone, and cops just the right attitude. Read the whole thing.

HEADS UP, HE NEVER HAD ANY...
Daniel Larison rips the Band-Aid off the tire-swinging media types lamenting the departure of John McCain's Integrity. It breaks down perfectly how McCain thrived so many years by fooling some of the people, some of the time. And now when his transparent policy shifts should be fooling NO ONE, the morons in the media are waxing nostalgic.

REVISIONIST HISTORY: PART 2
Today's big, bad, brave bullying Teabaggers would shit their pants and die on the spot if they actually encountered real communism, facism or tyranny. An interesting post by a historian on the fallacies spread by these ignorant jackasses, and why it's a mistake not to confront it.

R.I.P. NPR

When I left Michigan for North Carolina nearly two years ago, I also said goodbye to NPR. The lack of decent public radio in Asheville, as well as having only a five-minute commute meant my daily briefings in the car to and from work were a thing of the past.

Since moving back to Michigan, and having an hour commute as well, I've had a chance to get reacquainted with NPR and Michigan Radio.

I wasn't missing much.

The bullshit I heard on the radio today was infuriating. The show was “Here & Now” (from Boston's WBUR), and since today is April 15, they had a segment on taxes...and I quote, “When the money magically disappears from our checks, what happens to it?” I was immediately wary of what was to come, but the host introduced some guest from a “non-partisan tax research group” to break it down.

This host was already beginning to channel her inner-Sarah Palin, and the assclown she brought in as an expert guest might as well have been Glenn Beck or Grover Norquist. She asked him "how does the government spend that tax dollar?" And the first thing out of his mouth ass, is:

“Most of the money is transferred to...uh...other people.”

Now first of all, everyone knows the number one expenditure is defense. To reach his conclusion, this guy rounds defense spending down from the actual 23% to 20%, and then he lists social security (note: 20%) and medicare & medicaid (note: 19%) together, and somehow comes up with 56¢ (!) of that tax dollar going to “what the federal government calls entitlements.” And why explain that the spending on SS is mandatory and covered by its own dedicated stream, and goes to people that have already paid for it.

Even if there is somehow a case to be made for his math, his framing is pretty damn obvious—hard-working Americans are paying for lazy (and probably brown) people.

He also manages to get a dig in on how much government employees are paid. Nice.

Over the next few minutes, as he addresses other minutiae, he repeatedly beats on the welfare horse.

“[defense] is the next biggest chunk after that big 56% entitlement chunk...”

“...the vast fiscal flows out in entitlements...”

Then he proceeds to lament the deficit and points his finger Obama as the source of all of those problems.

He also references the Bush tax cuts a couple times (in a good way) and neglects to mention Obama has lowered taxes, and trots out the bogeyman of rates returning to Clinton-era rates if Obama lets the Bush cuts expire.

When the discussion turns to state taxes, it's more of the same, as he laments the progressive policies of some states who tax households above $200K more.

All the way through this the host nods along, occasionally parroting a point or two, and that's it.

Fuck that shit. That’s the kind of garbage I’d expect to see on Lou Dobbs.

And when I went to the npr.org site to find the link to this piece, I saw on the front page a bogus “he said/she said” regurgitation about whether the word “bailout” is fair to describe the Democrats finance reform. (Its not.) No analysis, no facts, no actual reference to the substance of the legislation. Just five or six quotes—the first batch all seem to be right from Frank Luntz's clubhouse.

Anyway. That's just a snip from today. I did hear an interesting discussion on the Supreme Court with Nina Totenberg later, but on balance, I am finding myself outraged at NPR far more than feeling informed.

Stupid Like a FOX

Can the rest of the media stop pretending this is a real news network? A White House spokesperson points out what is patently obvious—that FOX is heavily biased—and the rest of the media rush to defend FOX's imagined integrity, like toadies ass-kissing the playground bully.

All so FOX can continue to deride them as liberal elitists.

If NBC ran a "report" like that on a pro-choice rally you can be sure producers—if not hosts—would be out on the streets in an attempt to placate the right-wing loudmouths and a fear of appearing "too liberal."

[h/t Cesca]

Stupid Like a FOX

DEALER, NO DEAL
The newest right-wing meme is the conspiracy theory that Obama forced Chrysler to shutter dealers that are Republicans. Why do they think this? Because the list of closing dealers is overwhelmingly Republican. Case closed, right?

Only if you are Michelle Malkin or one of the morning douchebags on FOX.

Nate Silver spends all of five minutes blowing a hole in this garbage:

There is just one problem with this theory. Nobody has bothered to look up data for the control group: the list of dealerships which aren't being closed. It turns out that all car dealers are, in fact, overwhelmingly more likely to donate to Republicans than to Democrats -- not just those who are having their doors closed.

[...]Overall, 88 percent of the contributions from car dealers went to Republican candidates and just 12 percent to Democratic candidates. By comparison, the list of dealers on Doug Ross's list (which I haven't vetted, but I assume is fine) gave 92 percent of their money to Republicans -- not really a significant difference.

There's no conspiracy here, folks -- just some bad math.

More like bad faith. Surely these jackasses are aware dealers are overwhlmingly Republican—they're business-owners after all. They're also overwhelmingly white, middle-aged men in suburban and rural areas...

Silver used political donations to determine party affiliation—searching for auto, car and automotive "dealer" as listed occupation. One of the mouth-breathers crashes the thread and accuses Silver of being disengenuous because his statistics "fail to distinguish between owners and employees..." The fact that those people would list themselves as "salesperson" or "mechanic," and not "dealer" is beyond them.

--

SAVE ME
The worst argument against a Supreme Court nominee ever was made the other day by economist Greg Mankiw. Does the fact that Sotomayor spends most of what she earns say something about her qualifications?

Apparently, the new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is an example of the latter [a spender, not scrimper--Mr F.]. The Washington Post reports that the 54-year-old Sotomayer has a $179,500 yearly salary but...

"On her financial disclosure report for 2007, she said her only financial holdings were a Citibank checking and savings account, worth $50,000 to $115,000 combined. During the previous four years, the money in the accounts at some points was listed as low as $30,000."

My grandmother would have been shocked and appalled to see someone who makes so much save so little.

I'm more appalled by a supposed economist passing judgment on someone because of the amount she has in the bank...perhaps she's a generous philanthropist? A big traveler? OR perhaps maybe a single woman with no children and someone who has a lifetime appointment in her career at a big salary, and generous pension and has no need to sock money away for the future like Mankiw's grandmother?

Reading Assignment

Former Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson responds to Cheney's softball/talking points "interview" on CNN.

First, Wilkerson again explains how badly the Bush Administration failed in it's "interrogations" and how illegal they were...

The fourth unknown is the ad hoc intelligence philosophy that was developed to justify keeping many of these people, called the mosaic philosophy. Simply stated, this philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib). All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals--in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.

Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees' innocence was inconsequential. After all, they were ignorant peasants for the most part and mostly Muslim to boot.

[...] Simply stated, even for those two dozen or so of the detainees who might well be hardcore terrorists, there was virtually no chain of custody, no disciplined handling of evidence, and no attention to the details that almost any court system would demand. Falling back on "sources and methods" and "intelligence secrets" became the Bush administration's modus operandi to camouflage this grievous failing.

Then he calls Cheney out for crawling out of his lair to revise history, fear-monger and sabotage and smear Obama...

Recently, in an attempt to mask some of these failings and to exacerbate and make even more difficult the challenge to the new Obama administration, former Vice President Cheney gave an interview from his home in McLean, Virginia. The interview was almost mystifying in its twisted logic and terrifying in its fear-mongering.

As to twisted logic: "Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo (sic) during the Bush administration...have gone back into the business of being terrorists." So, the fact that the Bush administration was so incompetent that it released 61 terrorists, is a valid criticism of the Obama administration? Or was this supposed to be an indication of what percentage of the still-detained men would likely turn to terrorism if released in future? Or was this a revelation that men kept in detention such as those at GITMO--even innocent men--would become terrorists if released because of the harsh treatment meted out to them at GITMO? Seven years in jail as an innocent man might do that for me. Hard to tell.

As for the fear-mongering: "When we get people who are more interested in reading the rights to an Al Qaeda (sic) terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry," Cheney said. Who in the Obama administration has insisted on reading any al-Qa'ida terrorist his rights? More to the point, who in that administration is not interested in protecting the United States--a clear implication of Cheney's remarks.

Evil personified. Richard Cheney deserves to have a fucking bag thrown over his head, abduction, swift "rendition" to Iraq to dropped off in Sadr City, where he can try to "interview" his way out of his inevitable horrible death.

UPDATE: Wilkerson's not off the hook with me, but I don't have time for that right now.

Quote of the Day

From John Cole's Being a Republican Means Never Having To Know What the Hell You Are Talking About:

Now, if you read Bob Owens during the campaign, you would have thought that Obama’s first priorities as President would have been to institute Sharia law, unionize ACORN and pay them 100 dollars an hour to go door to door taking away shotguns from white people, and then burn down every small business and build a mosque in its place. But, the times have changed, and now Owens informs us that President Obama is looting the treasury to send your tax dollars to companies that were by law forbidden from contributing to his campaign but he is sending them the money anyway, and even better, Obama managed to do it while Bush was President.

Disembowelment

One could argue that Jon Stewart drove a nail in the coffin of Crossfire, or that Stephen Colbert held a long-overdue, uncomfortable mirror up to Bush and the D.C. press corps at that dinner a couple years back...but both of those occurred in the relative obscurity of unanticipated improvisation. No one saw them coming.

This Jon Stewart vs. Jim Cramer/CNBC thing has been 8 days in the making and has gone far beyond YouTube viral stages. It was above-the-fold on USA Today yesterday—don't even ask me if that furthers the irony here or not.

Anyway, last night was the showdown, and from everything I've read it didn't disappoint. I saw a few minutes "live" last night, and a clip on line, but I won't be able to sit and watch the whole interview until later. But that doesn't mean you can't...

NOTE: Unedited and NSFW. Part One:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Part Two.
Part Three.

"Thank You, Sir. May I Have Another?

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

In Cramer We Trust

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Economic Crisis

Messing with Rush Limbaugh gets you some blowback...Messing with Jon Stewart gets you blown away.

If you need further proof that Jim Cramer indeed has no idea when, if ever, to cut his losses—he agreed to appear with Stewart on TDS tonite. I saw a few minutes live...as soon as the video's avalable, I'll post it.

Dick of the Week: Fight! FIGHT!

It's only Monday, but there are already Dicks lining up to take home this week's hardware...

Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL)
Openly questions President Obama's citizenship to supporters.

Fred Phelps
His parish of assholes were responsible for the Oscars protest signs Sean Penn referred to in his acceptance speech.

Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY)
Not even a doctor like Bill Frist, former baseball pitcher Bunning nevertheless offered his diagnosis to a fundraiser crowd, declaring that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg would be "dead in nine months." Ginsburg recently had a benign stage-1 pancreatic tumor removed. She's already back at work, unlike Bunning.

UPDATE: Bunning's "apology" is the classic “I apologize if my comments offended Justice Ginsburg.” He really wants to be D.O.W...