The Point of View Waltz

Back in 1971, Harry Nilsson wrote the concept album called “The Point,” which was later made into an endearing animated special that I recall seeing in elementary school. While much of the material isn’t particularly relevant to business topics (the album and the film are about equality, tolerance, and finding value in people who are different from you – a very enlightened viewpoint by 1971 standards) – I will still pull out the occasional reference, since many of them are timeless. One of the songs on the album was called “The Point of View Waltz” (often shortened to the P.O.V. Waltz), and I always wind up thinking about it when something comes up in the news that depends entirely on how you look at it – as does the call made yesterday for a change in the depreciation rules for private and company jets…

Much like a business, our government has only two ways of improving cash flow: bring in more revenue or eliminate spending. In the case of a national government, revenue is mostly generated through taxes – it’s occasionally possible to raise some money by selling off assets, but unless you can somehow obtain new assets for less than your sale price, this will have limited possibilities. Reducing spending generally means that someone who has been getting government funding won’t be – and in a republic, that someone will most often be whoever has the weakest representation in Congress. Traditionally, Democrats have attempted to fix cash-flow problems by raising taxes (but only on people outside of their core power base) while Republicans have attempted to cut services provided by the government (again, focusing on those services that don’t go to their political base), but both parties have tried to avoid mentioning that they get most of their support from the wealthy and powerful…

In the current case, the President is suggesting that private jets be moved from the five-year depreciation to the 7-year depreciation category – effectively, that the people who own private jet aircraft should have to pay more taxes on them. Doing so would generate an additional $3 billion dollars over the next ten years – which sounds very impressive, especially considering that anyone rich enough to use a private jet in the first place can probably afford the increase in costs. However, when you consider that the President is trying to eliminate $4 trillion worth of Federal deficit, this comes to less than one-tenth of one percent of the total. It’s a good start – $3 billion is enough to do a lot of worth-while things, even in 2011 dollars – but for the Democrats to present this as a major step forward (or a major blow to the greedy rich) is just as disingenuous as the Republicans presenting this as a major hardship being visited upon people who already carry the bulk of the tax burden in this country…

The truth is that none of our national problems are going to be solved by political grandstanding, let alone with stupid accounting tricks, which is all this particular measure actually is. Even if you lined up a dozen more new taxes just as big as this one, you’d only cover about 1% of the deficit, and you’ve already got people from the private jet industry complaining about being “singled out” by the Federal government and how unfair this is. Meanwhile, our national debt is growing and our economy is tanking while our political leaders stand around and posture with tax raises and tax cuts that they know will serve no purpose beyond appealing to their own party’s power base. How you regard the situation, as with how you regard this particular tax initiative, depends mostly on your point of view – but from where I’m sitting, none of this is particularly reassuring…

You Keep Using That Word…

There’s a famous joke that occurs in the classic movie “The Princess Bride,” where the leader of the bad guys keeps saying the word “Inconceivable!” with regard to their enemies catching up with them, climbing up the cliffs, and so on. Finally, one of his henchmen responds in consternation “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” This was essentially my reaction to one of the most recent pronouncements from a pretender to leadership of the Tea Party Movement this past week; I’m just worried about what will happen if more people start making the same malapropos…

You can find the story on TPM here if you want to, but I’ve cross-checked the story on some other sources, and it appears to be correct in the particulars. On Wednesday of this week, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips put out a list of what he called “Liberal Hate Groups” – in other words, groups that he and his followers (assuming he has followers) believe hate them and their values and possibly America into the bargain. It’s a direct reaction to the Southern Poverty Law Center (number 4 on Mr. Phillips’ list) declaring some of the hard-line conservative religious/political groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association onto its list of Hate Groups because of their opposition to same-sex marriage and the abolition of the military “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, along with more basic civil rights. Other groups named in the same fatwa include the NAACP, the Department of Homeland Security, the ACLU, and the SEIU, all for the same general sort of refusal to adhere to a conservative Christian Euro-centric cultural view of the U.S. It would be even funnier if it wasn’t so clear that the Tea Party Nation has no idea of what a hate group actually is…

Now, in fairness to everyone, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list includes groups like the KKK, and having a political organization whose goals you agree with end up a list like that would certainly anger most people. But calling them a hate group because they take exception to organized (and well-funded) groups trying to deny millions of people basic civil rights is a little silly, and putting DHS on the list because it supports the current Presidential administration is asinine unless Mr. Phillips actually wants Federal agencies to declare open rebellion against a lawfully-elected government. The ACLU is just as stupid; the only rationale given is that the ACLU hates America (according to the Tea Party, anyway) and is therefore a hate group. By the time you get to the end of the list, it’s clear that whoever came up with this spew has both the intelligence and the manners of a spoiled child. The problem is, they’re also the nominal leadership for a group that numbers somewhere between five and thirty million people – and they don’t appear to be kidding…

It would be nice to end the year on an up note, and maybe sometime in the future I will, but for the moment, I read this sort of thing and a cold wind goes up my back. Because when those in power (any kind of power, I don’t care!) start calling their enemies “un-patriotic” and demanding that they be disenfranchised, imprisoned, or destroyed outright, I recall the lessons of history and what happened the last time a national government was co-opted by such people (reference Germany, 1930 to 1945, if you didn’t catch it), and I worry for the future of this Republic. In five hours or so it’s going to be 2011 – let’s all be careful out there…

Hate the Malfunction, Not the Robot

From time to time people who know me will hear me going off about the automated ticket cameras used to enforce red lights, speed limits and so on. I’ve been against these for a number of reasons, not least of which is because I feel they violate our civil right to be confronted by the witnesses against us, and actually getting a ticket from one for something I know (but obviously can’t prove) I didn’t do only reinforced my opinion. In most municipalities, even if you can prove you’re in the right there’s no point in trying; court costs (and lost wages from spending the day in court) will cost you more than just paying the ticket and going to traffic school, and there are venues in the U.S. where the court will not actually hear traffic cases involving the traffic camera – you are on camera doing something, therefore you must be guilty. It’s a slippery slope with some really chilling implications, but most people just ignore it, on the grounds that they’ve never been caught doing anything wrong. All of which is fine, until you get “caught” by a speed camera in a city you’ve never visited driving a car you don’t own…

The Chicago Tribune website has the story of a woman who was sent a ticket for driving her 2005 Nissan 62 miles per hour in a 45 mph work zone in Sangamon County, Il earlier this year – despite the fact that she does not own a 2005 Nissan, has never been to Sangamon County, and looks nothing like the woman in the speed camera image in the first place. If you really care, I can direct you to first-person accounts as well as cases documented in the public record of incidents like this occurring all over the United States and Europe, as well as related information about companies being paid a commission based on the number of tickets issued by the equipment. The real kicker, as far as I’m concerned, is the studies showing that these devices do not lower average driving speeds, increase compliance with the law, or improve road safety; in point of fact, there seems to be good evidence that traffic cameras actually cause accidents…

The only known benefit to these devices is that they generate revenue for the municipality that installed them, as well as for the company that provides and services them. In the story linked above, public records clearly indicated that the woman being fined did not own the car in the picture; a quick glance at the speed camera image and her driver’s license photo would also have confirmed that she wasn’t the driver. Yet despite being confronted with all of these facts (and the relevant legal documents), the County refused to even consider her case unless she made the nine-hour drive to appear in court in person. It wasn’t until the local consumer advocate reporter got involved that the State and County officials finally backed off enough to consider the facts of the case…

I will offer no argument to the fact that my personal feelings about these devices color my view of them, but I don’t believe the facts of this case (or any of the hundreds of similar ones) require any special pleading from me. If we are actually willing to accept the enforcement of criminal laws that extort money from innocent people and threaten them with jail time for things they’ve never done in places they’ve never been, and allow private companies to profit as a result, then somewhere nearby Franz Kafka is laughing his little black heart out – and our Race to the Bottom has become institutionalized…

Fear and Loathing

There’s a recurring question, raised by the late Robert Heinlein among others, that asks why people seem to be willing to legislate against things they don’t like – that is, why do people assume that anything they personally don’t like, don’t appreciate, fear or find disgusting must be against the law, or must be made illegal if it isn’t already? Heinlein argued that anything you enjoy that does not unnecessarily harm another human being can not be considered “wrong” or “evil” in an ethical sense (harming yourself isn’t evil – it’s just stupid); he also contended that attempting to impose legal restrictions on things simply because you do not approve of them IS evil. I would like to point out that in America, such legislation is frequently unconstitutional – and in the 21st Century, it’s generally also expensive…


Consider the case of Manassas, Virginia, which is attempting to legislate all “sexually-oriented businesses” out of their city limits. You can find the story here if you want to, but the basic issue is that there’s an “adult boutique” opening in the Old Town section of Manassas, and the local residents are up in arms about this business generating an entire red-light district, attracting perverts, corrupting innocent children, and all of the assorted uproar this sort of business always seems to touch off according to conservative commentators. Whether these fears have any grounding in reality is, as always, a matter of opinion, but in this case the cost of hiring an independent legal counsel to review the situation and the proposed ordinances is going to cost the town an estimated $71,000 – not counting potential lost revenue from sales taxes, business permits, and other effects of having a successful business operating nearby...


Now, no one is saying that local governments shouldn’t be able to legislate against business operations that will work against the needs of their community; that’s one of the things a local government is created to do in the first place. If the city council wants to pass an ordinance to keep a big-box retailer out of their 19th Century downtown area (I’m looking at you, Wal-Mart) or prevent a large pesticide factory from opening next door to the local grammar school, they should have the right to do that. But by the same token, it’s hard to imagine that a single retail store operated by a mother-daughter team will turn a small town in Virginia into another Las Vegas, and there’s no conclusive evidence that anything this store is going to sell would actually do anyone any harm in the first place. More to the point, if the good people of Manassas want to purchase questionable videos, explicit pictures or “marital aids” they can get them sent discretely from thousands (if not millions) of Internet sites anytime they want to. Thus, it’s hard to imagine what benefit this ordinance will do anyone except for those who regard anything to do with sex with fear, disgust, or loathing…


It seems ironic that in a time when people are living in fear of terrorists from extremist groups that oppose free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and gender equality, those same people would attempt to outlaw the construction of religious institutions, limit the publication of print and video media, and browbeat women into returning to a subservient role that has been inappropriate for centuries (assuming it was ever appropriate in the first place). As with the “defense of marriage” hysteria of the past few years, I have to say that if your moral fiber (or the alleged purity of your children) can be threatened by a small boutique opening downtown, then you need professional help, not legislation banning certain types of businesses. And if this sort of puritanical nonsense becomes commonplace in America, we will have hit the Bottom – and started to dig…

Gaming the System

Despite the name, not every post that makes its way onto this blog is actually going to establish a new record for slime, crime, or general inhumanity; the number of truly exceptional stories that come down the newswires is actually limited to no more than a few times each month. Some of these rants are just going to be cases of remarkable or noteworthy idiocy that make an important, illuminating, or educational point. And then there are going to be cases like the one I found today, about credit companies using the criminal justice system to have people thrown in jail for outstanding debts…


One might reasonably argue that debtor’s prisons were abolished in the United States over a century ago, violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishments, and constitute a disgusting misuse of public safety services (and funds) that could otherwise be used to apprehend, prosecute and incarcerate actual criminals. And one would be correct on all points, especially the one about using criminal courts to enforce civil matters being a complete perversion of our justice system. But, as this article in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune website makes all too clear, in at least some of the states the people actually running the system don’t appear to care…


Now, it is certainly true that there exist people in this country who, as one of the judges in the linked story puts it, “there are people who have the money but just won't pay a single penny." Many of the people who receive notice of the court actions don’t understand what the documents mean, don’t recognize the company that says they owe money (often because the debt has been sold to another institution to recover), or just assume that these communications are part of some attempt to defraud them. But if even a single case occurs where someone is jailed over legal proceedings before they were officially notified, let alone served with court documents (and there are several of these in the linked news story), then this situation has exceeded a mere perversion of our justice system and become a perversion of justice itself. This is the sort of abuse of privilege and influence that this country was founded to avoid in the first place, and any such actions should be repugnant to all Americans – and anyone else with a working sense of justice…


So it’s not a case of incompetent management, criminal malfeasance, or customer service so completely asinine that it actually damages the customer and ultimately the company providing it. This is all completely legal; it’s just so disgusting that I can’t even think of a bad metaphor for how disgusting it truly is. It’s a reason to avoid Minnesota, Arkansas and Washington State altogether, and another good reason for staying out of Arizona. It’s a truly inspiring effort at racing to the bottom – and until a new outrage appears on our radar, I think we have to call this one the winner…


It’s just sad to think that there should be another one along by next week…