Policy Corner: Won't Someone Think of the Farmers?!?!

(I promise, “Policy Corner” will only appear once in a while)

I am speaking today of that favorite bogeyman of the right, the estate tax.

The Senate Republicans are going to take time out of their busy gay-hating schedule Wednesday and Thursday to try to make permanent the 2001 phase-out of the estate tax, which, they will tell us, is about the most evil thing this side of, well, gay marriage. The Magic Diagnostician himself wrote an article about this on Monday, in which he lays out most of the GOP talking points, all of which run the gamut from “misleading” to “blatant lies.” In the interest of keeping this post to a manageable length, I’ll just focus on the worst, most misleading, most often repeated one:

“But Ann Bennett of Kingsport, Tenn., is a good representative of people who pay the tax.

Her family has farmed the same piece of land for nearly 130 years and already has paid over $100,000 in death taxes so that her father could acquire it from her grandfather. When her father passes on, she and her sisters will have to come up with $2 million or her family will have to sell.”

Ah yes, all the poor family farmers whose legacy is ripped away from them by the evil death tax! It’s an effective technique, casting the government in the role of Hazzard County Commissioner Jefferson Davis Hogg, trying to take the family farm away from one Jesse Duke, and deny his niece and nephews their rightful inheritance.

But it’s just not true. I hate getting in the way of a fine Republican talking point with, you know, “facts,” but this is a lie. Last year (when the bill passed the House), the Congressional Budget Office actually figured out how many family farms would have to have been sold in 2004 if the Democratic plan to reform the estate tax were in effect.

13.

Yes, thirteen.

But, wait, I thought Bill Frist said that the family farmer he mentioned, Ann Bennett, was a “good representative of people who pay the tax.” About 2.4 million people died in the United States in 2004, and THIRTEEN were family farmers whose heirs had to sell part of the farm to pay the tax (that’s five ten thousandths of one percent, for those keeping track at home).

And for this we’re forgoing $1 trillion over the first ten years of repeal?

Out of curiosity, though, I also decided to see what I could find about this Ann Bennett. It turns out that she is quite the activist. In 1999, she turned up installing a Ten Commandments plaque in her local county courthouse. Then she turned up again in 2005, railing against the “homosexual movement.” And you thought “Republicans Hate Gay People Week” was over!

It sure is good to know that the Republicans are fighting hard to secure her inheritance so she can work tirelessly against the “homosexual movement!” Oh, and they’re fighting for these two, as well…

Soccer is Janet Jackson's boob

ABC and ESPN are overrun by the horrible ads -- the ones with U2 music and an Irishman's voice (that can't be Bono) talking about how soccer has saved the world.

At least two blogs that I really like are writing about it. More soon, probably. Then it will be people at work, and Air America, and there will be no escape.

I've made my feelings about this activity quite clear, but I still wasn't prepared for the deluge. The sport's undertones of nationalism and globalist pomposity don't help.

As the poet Alan Thicke once wrote, diff'rent strokes to move the world. But like NASCAR and heroin, I'm content to have soccer enjoyed outside of my presence. We might have soccer to thank for the fact that Europe hasn't had a continental war in 60 years. No small feat, and I'm happy to leave it at that.

And then there's this business about Disney's media empire needing to manufacture a U.S. television market for this sport, and how they're going about it. But that's a more serious conversation for another time. I expect to bitch again before this tournament ends.

The lesson I've learned from this is why some people went apeshit over Janet Jackson's boob. Boob-haters only wanted to watch the Superbowl; I just want to watch PTI. Plenty of people didn't hate Janet Jackson's boob until they were forced to see it; I wouldn't be so annoyed with soccer if U2 music and the Irish narrator (it can't be Bono) weren't in my face.

Boob-haters worried about the future -- more boobs on TV, culminating with halftime shows featuring Janet Jackson's vagina.

I worry that if soccer in this country catches on, I'll have to stomach this garbage for the rest of my life. Already, I'm turning on U2. Hair gel and shiny jerseys? No thank you.

Boob today, goal tomorrow.

Jason Grimsley Is Still In the League?

I may have had a different reaction than most people to today’s story about Jason Grimsley’s steroid use. Sure, it’s weird that Jason Grimsley (Jason Grimsley!) has become the Elia Kazan of the steroid era, but unlike Mark McGwire, I did not come here to talk about the present, I came to talk about the past.

Because, you see, this isn’t the first time that Jason Grimsley (at left, presumably before he got on the juice) has come up when the subject is cheating.

Back in 1994, my own beloved Cleveland Indians were in the midst of their first good season in my lifetime. They had a powerful team, a beautiful, brand new stadium that had just opened, and they were challenging the Chicago White Sox for the division title. Of course, then the strike happened, but all that was a month away on July 15, 1994.

On that day, the Indians were playing the rival White Sox at Comiskey Park, and Sox manager Gene Lamont complained that Indians star Albert Belle’s bat was corked. The umpires confiscated Belle’s bat, intending to inspect it after the game. In the interim, the bat was placed in the umpire’s locker. In a ridiculously clumsy attempt to get Belle off the hook, the Indians dispatched a player to crawl through a small crawl space in the ceiling above the umpires locker room, and replace the bat with a cork-free model (this failed miserably, as the bat he replaced Belle’s with clearly had first baseman Paul Sorrento’s name written on it).

The player who wriggled through the ceiling?

Jason Grimsley, the Zelig of baseball perfidy.

A typical day/ is described in these haikus./ A boring premise?

When I screeched last night
I was not upset or mad.
Just aimed for surprise.

Why the hangover?
Is it nicotine or beer?
Clean living, someday.

That punch left a bruise.
I know it wasn't meant to.
Actions speak louder.

Spilled juice on my shirt.
Dropped coffee on my trousers.
It's my standard look.

Large-hipped women seen:
Subway staircase. Angles shift.
Thighs encased in jeans.

Flourescent-light frowns.
Blue button-downs. High-heel clops.
Coffee breath abounds.

Playing on iPod:
"Welcome to the Terrordome."
Bounce at work, door closed.

Inane discussion.
Quietly, I nod, knowing.
They think something else.

Waitress who hates all
Glares at me when asked for beer.
Like that tiny tip?

Who Among Us Does Not Love the Texas Cowboys?

Well, I wanted to start off with something light and fun (like, say, a Tale of the Tape: American Pastoral vs. Crenshaw Melon), so the first impression I made wouldn’t be one of a ranting lunatic from the fever swamps of the left blogosphere.

But then I saw this:

Well, given my bile as regards certain persons and groups, this really has it all for me. All that’s missing is Toby Keith and Creed covering “The Victors.”

Here, also, is a fun quote from Bush at the ceremony: “I want to -- look, I was a Texas Cowboy fan, you know. (Laughter.) Dallas Cowboy fan -- and -- yes, I know, I know.”

Texas Cowboys? Are they the ones that just signed Terrence Owens?

But my big question is the same one I posed to Flop a few weeks ago when Bush claimed to have caught the largest perch in the history of fishing: What do you suppose would have happened if, say, John Kerry had uttered the phrase “Texas Cowboys?”

Would it have been laughed off as just a meaningless slip of the tongue, as Bush’s was? Or would it have been symbolic of how out-of-touch and effete he is, like it was for Kerry (see also: “Manny Ortez,” “Lambert Field”)? I think we all know the answer to this.

It's good to be back...

…and I’m looking forward to attempting to fill Flop’s Chuck Taylors for a while. I’ve got some good ideas for some fun things to write about. Here is a preview:

• As many soccer hooligan stories as I can get my hands on
• A detailed review of the R. Kelly, Trapped in the Closet DVD
• A live-blogging (once I get the tape from my mother) of the episode of WEWS-TV Cleveland’s Academic Challenge wherein Flop gave the answer “sperm whale”
• The results of my soon-to-be-conducted search for a good recipe for cole slaw
• A contest to determine into what bizarre shape I will carve my current beard before shaving it for the summer (A handlebar mustache? A chinstrap? Your suggestion could be the one!)
• All this plus my usual frustrated-under-a-veil-of-sarcasm commentary on the state of the body politic.

I think we're going to have a good time.

Monday Ritalin: a post for short attention spans

Over Memorial Day weekend, Brian and I watched Michigan softball before his kick-ass barbecue. The following dialogue occurred:

Me: "Wow, this is really bad. I'm rooting for them but I keep saying, 'Go bitch,' and, 'Yeah bitches.' It's offensive, but I mean it in an affectionate way."

Brian: "I think you just summed up your entire personality."

***

I used to think that this guy is the best pure writer among New York bloggers. (And he is very good, even if he gets overindulgent comments.) Now I think the title goes to this guy: "My focus was so intensely concentrated on the nerves in my feet that I think I could have read a newspaper with my toes, no brail. I could have identified Coke over Pepsi with the soles of my goddamn feet right then, I swear."

Other people write sitcoms. He writes short stories. Almost every post is outstanding.

***

On Saturday night, I went to dinner and drinks with two longtime friends who had a baby in December. The rain had just broken. Their baby sat silent through dinner, transfixed by the leaves and our drinking water.

Afterward, we went to get some pints at a bar. (We were those guys.) The baby was happy. She bounced to hip-hop as she held onto my finger. I petted her hair and said things like, "Nice kitty," and, "Good dog." For a few hours, I thought, "Huh. This is okay."

***

In terms of originality and insight, Spinachdip's post beats the shit out of my own weak attempt to discuss the National Review's list of 50 "conservative" rock songs. This should go without saying.

But here's a question:

Where's Neil Young?

"Needle and the Damage Done" was the first anti-drug song by a major American recording artist. "Let's Roll" must have been the first prominent song about 9/11. And aren't, under the rules of this contest, "Powderfinger" and "Down By the River" pro-gun? The only explanation for those songs' omission: Living With War really pissed them off.

Also, what about The Hold Steady's "How a Resurrection Really Feels" -- the New Testament finale to an Old Testament album?

That list blows.

***

Anyone who's traveling to Europe; anyone who's been to Europe; anyone who's heard of Europe: You must read Tony Judt's Postwar. I finally finished it over the weekend. The continent stereotyped for Sprockets and cheese-eating surrender monkeys will never look the same, and you'll never again get distracted by tourist traps. One of the best pieces of non-fiction I've read -- a surprise on every page and an epilogue that reveals the book's thesis with the momentum, logic and credibility of great fiction. It's as good as it gets.

***

A counterproductive Sunday afternoon: I'm about to take a nap on the couch when I get a call from our former Baghdad Bureau chief.

It'll just be a couple of beers.

Eight beers, several cameo guests, a pack of Marlboro Lights, one long-distance inquiry about hooking up with the relative of an Alabama quarterback, and one rainstorm later, I'm home writing this post.

The week is taking shape.

Re-introducing Crunk Raconteur, as himself

Those of you who enjoy our site's comments (and really, you should, because they're more interesting than our ramblings about whatever shiny objects catch our respective eyes) are familiar with the pseudonym of Crunk Raconteur.

Flop finds himself abroad for responsibilities stemming from the sport that whose name should not be spoken. Washington, D.C.-based Crunk Raconteur will be his guest blogger for the next two months.

I barely know Crunk Raconteur. Based on what Flop has told me, he was a bit player in a high school quiz-bowl incident that predicated Flop uttering the phrase "sperm whale" on Cleveland public television. Crunk and I first met at Touchdown Cafe in the late '90s. More recently, we met in early 2004 at Dempsey's Pub, and had a table-pounding argument about the relative merits of Howard Dean and John Kerry as Democratic presidential nominees: I argued in favor of Howard Dean, and Crunk argued that Kerry was the only electable prospect. I uttered something along the lines of "Fuck you" as Crunk entered a cab.

I'm not sure who history vindicated.

More recently, he guest-blogged this past fall while Flop and I were away on our (separate) travels. We both were pleased with his performance.

Ladies and gents, enjoy his prose stylings. I'll still be here to clean up the cigarette butts and empties when he goes home.

"As dirty an election as America has ever seen."

Every few years, I come across a piece of non-fiction that changes how I look at the world: Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Chris Hedges's War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.

A new article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is one of those works that turns everything on its head. Was the 2004 Election Stolen? is a lengthy, scrupulously documented piece of muckraking. It is utterly convincing. Reading it changes everything. The article is indispensible.

Hyperbole? No. I came to the article skeptical. Immediately after the election, I donated to Black Box Voting. Then I stopped thinking about it. Like a death in the family, there's a point where you need to move on and rationalize. Claims of a stolen election took their place with conspiracies about the Kennedy assassination and U.S. responsibility for 9/11.

But like a James Ellroy novel transplanted to electoral politics, this article builds a chilling, cynical, frightening momentum, and conventional expectations wilter. It's so lengthy and detail-packed that I can't summarize it. I don't want to do a book report -- I want everyone with a conscience to read.

The article isn't a retread about the flaws of electronic voting machines and Republican disfranchisement minorities. In the state of Ohio, the fix was in on every level. As the article says:

Indeed, the extent of the GOP's effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. ''Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,'' Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. ''You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb.''
***
In January, a team of mathematicians from the National Election Data Archive, a nonpartisan watchdog group, compared the state's exit polls against the certified vote count in each of the forty-nine precincts polled by Edison/Mitofsky. In twenty-two of those precincts -- nearly half of those polled -- they discovered results that differed widely from the official tally. Once again -- against all odds -- the widespread discrepancies were stacked massively in Bush's favor: In only two of the suspect twenty-two precincts did the disparity benefit Kerry. The wildest discrepancy came from the precinct Mitofsky numbered ''27,'' in order to protect the anonymity of those surveyed. According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion.

Go. Read. Now.

Update: Salon.com has posted a fairly persuasive piece rebutting Kennedy's use of fact. For instance: "... Kennedy relies on a band of researchers whose research on election fraud has long been called into question by experts. Especially in his section on Ohio's exit poll, Kennedy reports his sources' theories uncritically, even though many have been debunked, or have at least been the subject of tremendous debate among experts. Reading Kennedy's article, you'd never guess that some of his star sources' claims have fared quite badly when put to people in the field."

All the answers to the immigration debate

This isn't one of those rants where I pop off and call people dumb motherfuckers or grasp at credibility by throwing out the name of a book I read three years ago but barely remember.

This one is easy.

Here it is: Whether people like it or not, there will always be illegal immigration. A wall won't stop it. Shooting people trying to cross a border won't stop it. It might be empowering symbolism, but it won't change the flow of people.

Once you accept that there's no feasible way to stop the physical act of immigration (tell me if you have any good ideas, because you've solved the riddle of the Sphinx) the only question is what to do with people once they get here. It isn't whether illegal immigration is, itself, bad. For the purposes of this post, I'll concede that. Doesn't matter.

So assume that the people will keep on coming. Federal immigration authorities aren't known for the competence or vast resources, so mass deportation isn't an option. People are going to keep coming, and they're going to stay.

You can get yourself riled about how "bad" it is, but that's like shaking your fist at a thunderstorm. It's just a fact of life, so deal.

One response to immigration is to deny public benefits. This includes some combination of public education, medical treatment, student loans, housing -- the basics that let people live and get by. Some citizens feel cheated by this and think it amounts to a reward for lawbreaking. Meanwhile, well-intended liberals talk about wage deflation and the ill effects on labor rights.

I'm not going to explain why those arguments are silly, except to note that they're too high-minded to matter. I mean, they're nice enough things to worry about, in the way you might wonder whether that cloud looks like a labradoodle.

I'll dismiss these arguments because they assume that there's an on/off switch. Sure, deny public benefits and shut them out of work opportunities. What are you going to do then? People aren't going to pack up and leave.

There's a name for places with large numbers of undereducated, unassimilated migrants who live off the grid and don't have a shot at being a full member of society: They're called France, the Netherlands, and Dubai. The first two have more generous social safety nets than the U.S., but they don't have the same kind of laissez faire labor markets. Much more difficult to show up in France or the Netherlands from Algeria or Morocco, get a job as a cabdriver or deliveryman, send your kid to school, and gain a toehold. All those public benefits don't amount to much if you're in the bottom caste of a society where every job is an entitlement and newcomers can't find employment.

Dubai's problems, like Kuwait's, come from having huge numbers of workers imported from developing nations. These guest workers don't have a shot at citizenship, and thus, no stake in society. They're there to work, and they form a permanent, stigmatized underclass. Think about the reality of a guest worker program, then tell me how much you like the idea of a guest-worker camp of 20,000 men living 2 hours outside from L.A. Doesn't sound so hot.

Labor-minded liberals: your well-intentioned arguments will end up with an explosion of black-market sweatshops on U.S. soil. Belt-tightening conservatives: Fast-forward 20 years when you have millions of people who are the product of kids denied public education, parents who had no incentive for citizenship or access to benefits, and people who were segregated economically and residentially, with state endorsement. Maybe you want your apocalyptic fantasies realized, but I suspect that off-the-books deliveryman and the little girl with Head Start funding will look a lot less upsetting when City of God is the baseline reality.

That's the choice. Suck it up and pay a little in benefits right now, or wait thirty years for our own Paris riots and Sao Paolo slums. Any other framework is empty symbolism.