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When I wasn’t watching what the Soviet Strategic Rockets Forces were doing during my military service, I was required to read the magazines and newspapers printed by the Soviets. While there was certainly “no truth in Pravda¹ and no news in Izvestiya²” there was a lot of “agitprop”. Agitprop is a combination of the Russian words, both cognates, for agitation and propaganda, and it was part of the normal process of government during the Soviet era.

As I read the American media these days I can see the agitprop popping up more and more often. Bush’s recent choice of Karen Hughes to a State Department post for Public Diplomacy is just more of the same. The taxpayers are paying to be lied to, just as happened in the Soviet system. The buying of columnists, the faked news casts, the staged “town hall meetings” with pre-selected and pre-rehearsed audience members is not about information, it is about disinformation.

Public information is released, or not, based on political decisions, not its value to taxpayers. Government web sites are posting political talking points, not the non-partisan views that they are paid to provide.

Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof points to a New York Times article on this issue and Digby at Hullabaloo has a nice rant of his with a very appropriate Soviet poster.

If I had the time I would “photoshop” it to read “Under the Banner of Bush towards the second Four-Year-Plan”, but I don’t like straying outside my core competency.

People who keep pushing for the Fascist model miss the point that this administration is filled with “Cold Warriors” who have a lot more knowledge and interest in the era after World War II.

I would note that one of the things that made the Soviet system of information management so successful was self-censorship. The censors weren’t very busy as most writers didn’t even attempt to push the envelop. When you read newspapers or watch the news this will tell why certain stories don’t get reported: editors don’t want to rock the boat.

Edit: Maru at WTF Is It Now, Oliver Willis, and Jack at Ruminate This have also chimed in on this official policy of presenting fiction as reality.

1. The literal translation of “Pravda” is truth.
2. The literal translation of “Izvestiya” is news.

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Fish

Eat, swim, sleep – hey, someone has to do it.

[Edit: The two-bit goldfish just eating around the aerator. These are literally two-bit, as in 25¢ fish. My Mother would like koi, but the pond would have to be deeper and larger, or there would be another “Koi named Fu” incident my neighbor had with herons.]

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Florida has an “Intangibles Tax”. This is a tax on stocks and bonds that is similar to a property tax. The way the exemptions are structured you aren’t subject to the tax unless your portfolio is worth in excess of a million dollars for an individual. The rate, like property taxes, is in mills, i.e. thousandths of dollars or tenths of cents.

The Republicans are planning to eliminate this tax, while the Democrats have proposed reducing the sales tax rate if the state is so overburdened with money.

The claim is that the Intangibles Tax is on money that has already been taxed. Sorry, but the Federal income tax means that all our money is already taxed and in many cases the sales tax is collected on taxes. More than half of the price of gasoline or cigarettes is taxes, so more than half of the sales tax collected is based on taxing taxes. If gasoline is priced at a dollar a gallon, it costs $2 with the Federal and state taxes. The sales tax in Florida is 6%, so half of the 12¢ you pay in sales tax is actually on tax.

The transfer of the burden for government to the “Third Estate” continues. Oh, you can ask students in the Florida university system, or those people forced by private insurance companies into the state’s insurer of last resort, or the local governments waiting to be reimbursed for hurricane expenses if the state is overburdened with money. None of these groups seem to believe that the state has too much money.

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Among the invasive creatures that have been introduced in the South one of the most deadly is a species of red ant. The fire ant is the largest single cause of death for fawns in Florida. Fawns are taught to freeze and remain in place if their mother isn’t around, and if they freeze near a fire ant mound the bites of the aggressive ants kill them.

It isn’t just fawns or feral kittens that the ants kill, this CBS article reports of the million+ dollar settlement paid by a nursing home to the family of a patient killed by ant bites.

The bite is highly acidic and is treated by a baking soda and water paste, but, by the time you realize there’s a problem, you will be treating a dozen bites.

The pesticides that are most effective against fire ants kill almost everything else, and a water table within a couple of yards of the surface would mean polluting your well if you used them.

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