Posts from — May 2005

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Michael Bérubé was commenting on David Horowitz’s belief that liberal college professors make big bucks.

After World War II my Dad stayed in the Air Force at his permanent rank of Master Sergeant, rather than his Reserve rank of Lieutenant, and was assigned to establish Air Force ROTC programs at Syracuse University, and then Colgate University. The Air Force cautioned him not to reveal his salary as he was being paid considerably more than the university faculty members and that would cause problems for the universities.

While my Dad was receiving an additional payment because the normal military facilities were not available, with three kids he got an extra job as the projectionist at the local movie theater, so I can’t imagine the level of near poverty of the faculty.

I know that my salary teaching college courses was nothing to write home about, but I was only an associate professor at a state college. I do know that the kids who took two-year degrees in computer science and went to work rather than getting their BSs started at considerably more than those of us who taught them.

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A heads up: PSoTD has escaped Blogger and is now found at: www.psotd.com.

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Mark A.R. Kleiman has a nasty, mean-spirited, low-down, totally reasonable interpretation of John Ellis’s recent actions regarding young women in the care of the state of Florida.

If Jeb-Boy doesn’t want to be treated like trash&sup1 he shouldn’t act like trash. If the sheet fits…

1. In the South “trash” has a somewhat nastier meaning than in the rest of the world. If the New York City synonym were used on South Park it would definitely be bleeped.

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When you hear people talking about money you have to watch the words that they use. One of the most important ways to “lie” about income is to convince people that “median” and “average” mean the same thing, and they most definitely do not.

If you have a company where 100 people make $10/hour, 5 people make $20/hour, one makes $40/hour, and the CEO makes $500/hour, the median income is $10/hour while the average income is $15.33/hour. Note that only seven of 107 people in the company make at least the average income.

When someone like Wal-Mart tells the world that the average salary for their company is $19,000/year, they don’t say how many of their employees actually make that much money. When the top salaries in a corporation are measured in hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, the average can rise remarkably.

I was going to leave this as a comment over at Jo Fish’s Democratic Veteran, but his software has decided I’m a spammer if I post an extended comment.

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In response to several people giving their opinion of the annual income it takes to define the “Middle Class”, Kevin Hayden at The American Street posted the median income of a family of four in the US by state. The median income of a family of four in the country as a whole is $65,093.00. The Department of Health and Human Services uses $18,850.00 as the poverty threshold for a family of four.

As I still haven’t filed the instructions for my 2004 taxes, I decided to calculate the income taxes for a family of four making the median income using the standard deductions. The standard deduction [$9,700] plus the four personal deductions [$3,100/person] yields a $22,100 reduction in taxable income, bringing it down to $42,993 which has a income tax liability of $5,731 [from the table]. Now this family still had to pay at least at 6.2% tax bill for Social Security, but I’m interested in the income tax side.

The actual income tax rate on this median income family is 8.8%

The reason I’m limiting my interest to income tax is because of a post by Steve Bates at the Yellow Doggerel Democrat on yet another “flat tax” proposal. This one involves a 30% value-added-tax, which is essentially a sales tax.

If you buy a car that was priced at $20,000 in Florida you would pay $1,200 in state sales taxes. If the VAT is used that $20,000 car is now $26,000 and you would pay $1,560 in state sales taxes. The way the VAT and state sales taxes are calculated you will be paying taxes on taxes.

What this leads to is the reality that the median income family experiences a tax increase if they spend $20,000 of their $65,093 annual income on taxed items. Under the current system a family of four has to make more than the $22,100 standard deductions before they pay any Federal income tax, but under a VAT they would be paying a 30% tax on everything they buy.

The people proposing the plan keep talking about simplicity, but they start talking about exemptions and other gimmicks when the reality is pointed out. In the end Congress would be playing with exemptions before the ink had dried on the bill, and the savings they talk about achiving from eliminating the IRS would be the result of pushing the government’s tax collecting process down to businesses.

If Congress wanted to simplify the tax code all they would have to do is eliminate all deductions other than the standard deduction and the individual deduction. The whole tax form would look like the 1040EZ. They don’t want to do that because they gain power by having people pay them to include special deductions.

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In spite of voting for Republicans, 71% of Florida voters backed a Constitutional amendment that raised the minimum wage to $6.15/hour, effective yesterday, and tied the minimum wage to the cost of living. The cognitive dissonance of being able to understand that the minimum wage needed to be raised, but then voting for people who have consistently refused to raise it, is beyond me.

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The BBC notes that the Florida legal system is still functioning:

“Legally speaking, it’s not a difficult decision to make. Morally speaking, it’s very difficult,” the judge said.

“But I’m not here to make the moral decision. I’m here to make the legal decisions,” Judge Ronald Alvarez said, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

The 13-year-old was given permission by the court to do what she thought best.

The conclusion should not have surprised anyone who is familiar with the information in the final paragraph of this Newsweek article:

The abortion fight may obscure what many observers consider a far more pressing concern: DCF [Department of Children and Families] incompetence. The scandal-plagued agency made national news in 2002 when it acknowledged that it had lost track of Rilya Wilson, a 5-year-old under its custody. It still can’t account for over 500 kids whom it’s responsible for, according to The Miami Herald. At the Thursday hearing, Judge Alvarez directed his outrage at DCF for never alerting the court to L.G.’s flight from her group home. “To say that I am angry at that would be an understatement,” Alvarez said, questioning why DCF rushed to prevent an abortion but not to find a missing child (DCF counters that it alerted authorities in Pinellas County, where L.G.’s group home was). “I don’t know where our priorities in life are,” Alvarez said. “The priorities should have been to make certain that an order to take [L.G.] into custody was issued as soon as possible … But nobody cared.”

Elected Florida judges still follow the law, not the winds of politics. The Department of Children and Families was given a strong dose of fundamentalism when John Ellis hired Jerry Reiger, founder and former president of the Family Research Council, another child beater in the Dobson mold. Being a “Good Christian”, Reiger resigned over “the appearance of financial improprieties” of the type that put the former Republican governor of Connecticut in jail. The judge acts according to the law, the DCF acts according to the politics.

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Feds Seize Ducks says CBS News.

Federal employees gathered up a female Mallard and her 11 ducklings from a nest by the entrance to the Treasury Building and moved them to a park. There was no violence, no guns, no assault troops; they picked up the ducks and moved them to a safer location with a creek to swim in and tourists to feed them.

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North Korea May Have Tested Missile – “North Korea apparently test fired a missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday…”

May? Apparently? We have billions of dollars of assets watching North Korea. We have satellites over head, fixed installations in South Korea, ships off the coasts, aircraft flying by: there is no “may” or “apparently” about it, we detected the missile being launched and tracked it until it landed in the Sea of Japan. We have been watching North Korea closely for half a century and even have people who speak the language and know the culture in the Defense and State Departments.

If the North Koreans could afford microwave popcorn, it would be spontaneously cooking in people’s cupboards from all of the radars in China, South Korea, Japan, and US facilities that are aimed at the country.

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Will it never stop?

The murder of doctors, the Elian Gonzalez story, the 2000 election debacle, four major hurricanes in one year, the Terri Schiavo case, main street gunfighting, and now, the attempt to force a 13-year-old to have a baby.

As a Floridian I would really like to have this state ignored for a decade or so. I think it would be wonderful if people at least had to wait until a late-night comedian said something after “In Florida” before they started laughing.

Our legislature only meets for 60 days a year, but they always manage to do something that guarantees us a place on Comedy Central for several weeks. It is really depressing.

You know that Joe Scarborourgh was my Congressman, but at the same time I had a member in the Florida House who claimed to “channel” the ghost of John Wayne, and my state Senator was remanded to a state mental institution: Republicans all.

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Just go over to Archy for a view of John’s neighbors.

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Yesterday the Dutch marked Queen’s 25 year reign, the official celebration of the House of Orange-Nassau.

Last night was Walpurgisnacht for all the Germanic and Baltic peoples, Beltane for the Celts, and the midpoint between the equinox and the solstice.

This year it is the Orthodox Easter and, of course, the international Labor Day. The US uses the first Monday in September to separate Labor Day from its “Socialist” roots.

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See the problem is people just don’t believe that Bush has found a solution to a problem created by that “Commie Cripple”. If they would just believe and clap their hands, Bush could save them.

Karen at Dark Bilious Vapors has discovered: Finally some Average Sensible Americans Speak Up.

James Klurfeld (NY Newsday) has an article based on his correspondence with a real person with real knowledge and experience in retirement programs. Go and read what a gentleman who spent his working life as one of those boring fact-based actuaries at an insurance company has to say after looking at Bush’s program.

Or, close your eyes, believe, and clap: it will take the edge off the cold, dark, and hunger of your retirement under the Bush plan.

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Jillian at The Snarky Cat ran a little “compare and contrast” on Bush’s words in 2000 and deeds since that time.

It struck me that there is a major flaw in the system used to select people for public office. Elections are well and good for the final stage of the process, but the steps leading up to that point have a glaring omission: there’s no objective proof that a politician can walk and chew gum.

For all other forms of public employment there is a series of published requirements and tests to prove an individual can do the job before that person ever gets to the final selection process. The applicant has to provide proof of education and experience related to the job, and then take one or more tests before being placed on an eligibility list. Even the military in times of drafts requires that people pass tests to actually be inducted into service.

For a politician, everything is popularity. There are no hard requirements and no background checks before you participate. At most you have to prove you live in a certain area and are of a certain age.

I’m not saying that we should be requiring degrees in certain disciplines before someone can run for office, but it wouldn’t be excessive to require all elected officials prove they are of average intelligence, are literate, can accurately use mathematics through and including algebra, in other words, that they can pass the standardized testing for a high school sophomore.

Specifically, they should be able to balance a checkbook, complete an IRS form 1040 using a supplied W-2 form and family information, and create a family budget from supplied data. These are things that voters have to do, so it should be shown that elected officials understand what “real life” is all about.

I’m not requiring them to figure out which is the “best” credit card offer, whether to buy or lease a car, whether to buy the extended warranty, or any of the other truly complicated decisions people face every day, just the basics.

It is my belief that if politicians had these basic skills, and understood that the voters had these skills, there wouldn’t be “60-city tours” trying to sell people “Tinker Bell” solutions.

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