All posts by James O'Keefe

Government

Increase the sales tax: Is our legislature crazy?

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On the 27th, the Massachusetts House of Representatives approved an increase in the sales tax from 5% to 6.25%.  Strangely, my own legislators in Somerville, who are viewed as very progressive and who I know and like, voted for it.

I understand that our Massachusetts' government is facing a very large deficit and that vital programs will be cut to balance the budget.  If we don't raise taxes then vital programs that help our cities and towns, children and provide the little safety net we have, will be axed.

However, increasing the sales tax is not the way to do it!

The sales tax is incredibly regressive.  Page 58 of The Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy's Who Pays: A distributional analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States lists a break down for the total tax burden faced by people at different levels of income in Massachusetts. 

Those in the lowest 20% by income, pay 9.3% of their income in taxes.  The poorest 20% pay 5.4% of their income in sales and excise taxes.

Those in the top 1% by income, pay 4.6% of their income (6.8% before they get a kick back from the federal government because of our state income tax) in taxes.  The richest 1% pay 0.6% of their income in sales taxes.  

Basically the Massachusetts House has decided to fund services used by the poor and middle class (as well as corporate welfare) on the back of the poor.

There are alternatives to a blanket increase in the sales tax. 

Short term, we could raise corporate taxes and eliminate the Fidelity and Raytheon tax breaks.  We could also raise the income tax rate while also increasing the value of deductions and exemptions so the higher rates don't hit the poor and middle class.  If need be, it would be more preferable to change the sales tax to cover services, or items bought over the internet.  While not perfect, both changes in the sales tax are more likely to effect the well off.

Longer term we could make the income tax progressive, or impose a wealth tax.  Yes, I know "that's not possible" because the rich and the corporations own our government.  Still, we have to fight for a just tax system.

The financial corporations and rich are getting a bailout, but the poor and middle class are getting the shaft.  Please urge your State Senator to vote against this increase in the sales tax and to seek fairer taxes.

Web/Tech

Email appears to be working

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I finally tracked down the problem that caused some, but not all, mailers to fail to send mail to jokeefe at jamesokeefe dot org. 

I had setup a CNAME record for jamesokeefe.org that pointed to jokeefe.typepad.com.  This setting resulted in some servers getting the typepad domain name server and not the correct domain name server. 

Those servers that got the typepad dns would email to jokeefe@jokeefe.typepad.com.  Removing this CNAME record and instead setting up an A record that pointed jamesokeefe.org to www.jamesokeefe.org appears to have fixed the problem.

Various folks who have had problems in the past, are now able to email jokeefe at jamesokeefe dot org.  I am most pleased, though it took me too long to fix it.

Thanks to R. Scott Perry's helpful DNS Oversimplified page.

Economy

The bonuses aren’t the big scandal at AIG

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I meant to write this before, but Eliot Spitzer beat me to it.   I agree that we should force the folks who got bonuses at AIG to give them back (Doug Henwood blogs about how to do that), or tax them at 150% percent. 

However, the real scandal is that while millions of people have been laid off, UAW members are forced to renegotiate their contracts, and the US government is bailing out the banking sector seemingly without any upside, AIG paid out tens of billions of dollars to banks, hedge funds and others making good on the poorly setup Credit Default Swap (CDS) contracts that AIG entered into.

As he writes:

It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting
themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad
adventure. The payments to AIG’s counterparties are justified with an
appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG’s contracts turned out to be
shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system
would collapse.

But
wait a moment, aren’t we in the midst of reopening contracts all over
the place to share the burden of this crisis? From raising taxes—income
taxes to sales taxes—to properly reopening labor contracts, we are all
being asked to pitch in and carry our share of the burden. Workers
around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter
work weeks so that colleagues won’t be laid off. Why can’t Wall Street
royalty shoulder some of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back
100 cents on the dollar? Didn’t we already give Goldman a $25 billion
capital infusion, and aren’t they sitting on more than $100 billion in
cash? Haven’t we been told recently that they are beginning to come
back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn’t they have accepted a
discount, and couldn’t they have agreed to certain conditions before
the AIG dollars—that is, our dollars—flowed?

The appearance that
this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a
conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason
or explanation.

The US government owns 80% of AIG, right.  It would have gone bankrupt without our money potentially taking down the economy.  So why don’t we force AIG to renegotiate the CDS contracts it has entered into.  What are the parties on the other end of the CDSs going to do, have us call in the money they have borrowed from us?

Hat tip to Dollars & Sense for citing Spitzer’s article.

Music

I’m not 20 anymore

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When I was 20 I found the Throwing Muses.  I loved the band, got their tapes (yes it was that long ago), saw them wherever I could and probably pined for the lead singer/guitar player/song writer more than I should have.  They were my favorite band, bar none.

Since those days, the band has gone through its ups and downs, but it still keeps working.  During that time I bought their albums and attended their concerts.  I tended to go alone since few that I knew were interested in going.  They didn't play at places like Foxboro stadium, where we were hundreds of feet from them.  Instead, they played smaller venues where I could (and did) wade up to the front so I could be six feet from the band with no one to block me.  I could stand, singing to the songs (non-verbally of course), swaying to the music and enjoy the show.

I anticipated that last night's show would be the same.  They were scheduled to go on at 11:30, so after a dinner out with my wife, we headed over and encountered the end of the second band of the line up, 50 Foot Wave.  Now 50 Foot Wave is most of Throwing Muses, but trying a different style of music: noise rock as the Boston Phoenix called it.

Before Throwing Muses went on, I moved to the front to repeat the experiences of past concerts, while my wife stayed in back.  After nearly half an hour, something unexpected happened.  I decided that I didn't want to be there and we left.  Sure the cigarette smoke was gone from times past.  However, I found that I put more time into keeping upright in the sardine confines of the hall, trying not to block other people's views and trying to get a good pictures of the band.  Instead of enjoying the show and being in the moment as the Buddhists would say, I let myself get distracted.

Once I realized this fact, I noticed that I really don't like experiencing a concert essentially alone.  A concert is a social event, and not having someone with whom to share it takes away the charm.  When I went to see Solas at the Somerville Theatre, say, the fact that I had to sit in a seat meant that I was forced to share that experience with the family and friends with me.  I am the better for it. 

Throwing Muses is still one of my favorite bands.  However, there is no way I can pretend to be twenty even for a couple of hours.  I won't be going to any more Throwing Muses' concerts.  That song is done.

NOTE: The folks at the Screaming Females/50 Foot Wave/Throwing Muses merchandise table were really great including the guy who offered to give me some free ear plugs.  Thanks!  Also a thanks to the guy who told me to put down my camera.  He was in the moment, I was not, but without his request, I might not have had the insight I did.

Education

Who would have thunk it? – kids learn better if they have time for recess

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The Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times' Well blog has an article about how children learn better if they have time for play.  It covered a number of studies about the effects of gym and recess on learning including this one:

A study
published this month in the journal Pediatrics studied the links
between recess and classroom behavior among about 11,000 children age 8
and 9. Those who had more than 15 minutes of recess a day showed better
behavior in class than those who had little or none. Although
disadvantaged children were more likely to be denied recess, the
association between better behavior and recess time held up even after
researchers controlled for a number of variables, including sex,
ethnicity, public or private school and class size.

At my son's school, at least one teacher uses denial of recess as a tool for disciplining the children in class.  On that strategy, the article notes:

Also, teachers often punish children by taking away recess privileges.
That strikes Dr. Barros as illogical. “Recess should be part of the
curriculum,” she said. “You don’t punish a kid by having them miss math
class, so kids shouldn’t be punished by not getting recess.”

Participating in gym also helps:

Last month, Harvard researchers reported in The Journal of School
Health that the more physical fitness tests children passed, the better
they did on academic tests. The study, of 1,800 middle school students,
suggests that children can benefit academically from physical activity during gym class and recess.

Apparently just walking or being in a natural setting helps as well:

A small study of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
last year found that walks outdoors appeared to improve scores on tests
of attention and concentration. Notably, children who took walks in
natural settings did better than those who walked in urban areas,
according to the report, published online in August in The Journal of
Attention Disorders. The researchers found that a dose of nature worked
as well as a dose of medication to improve concentration, or even
better.

Andrea Faber Taylor, a child environment and behavior researcher at the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois,
says other research suggests that all children, not just those with
attention problems, can benefit from spending time in nature during the
school day. In another study of children who live in public housing,
girls who had access to green courtyards scored better on concentration
tests than those who did not.

So here is where I get to share a teachable moment.

The Green Party takes a holistic approach to, well, everything.  We tend to favor non-linear approaches in the policies we prescribe.  Rather than view learning in a linear way, i.e. knowledge=hours of study, we recognize that life has diminishing returns.   The more time or money that you put into something, say studying or consuming, the less you get out of it, i.e. knowledge or happiness.  However, as the article shows, devoting more hours to play and fewer to studying helps children learn better. 

As with knowledge, decreasing production and consumption for many of us, say by allowing people to work fewer hours, probably will increase their happiness.  By devoting more time with family, friends, neighbors and health, and less with their TVs, cars and computers, people will be richer and live longer. 

By having people with "higher skill jobs" do less, we create opportunities for those with "fewer skills" to learn and share in the work.  We can eliminate or automate the drudgery jobs and design work that uses all of our faculties.  We all end up better off if we distribute the work better, have less of it to begin with and make sure everyone benefits from the bounty this blue/green jewel of a planet is willing and able to share with us.

Fun

Jamie needs …

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I meant to write up my 25 things about me, but other than writing down a few things in an unpublished blog post, didn't complete before the meme passed me by.  Still I do have a few peculiar-funny stories from my past that I should write down to amuse kids and friends (Mel has heard them all).  That will be another post.

However, the newest meme of navel gazing is to google "<your first name> needs" and write down what pops up.  So here is my list as of midnight, EST, 2/24/2009:

  1. Jamie needs a kid (two is enough for me)
  2. Jamie needs to maybe stop copying her (will have to think on that…)
  3. Jamie needs Mental Health! (ok, right on the money with that one 😉
  4. Jamie needs long hair? (never much liked long hair on my own head)
  5. Jamie needs our support! (oh, yes please do)
  6. Jamie needs a housewife like me (well have a wife, but cleaning tends to be my job)
  7. Jamie needs a Tanner Family Hug (hmmm… well I already get quite a lot of hugs from my family, but the more the better)
  8. Jamie needs a Badd Chick (no comment)
  9. Jamie needs to loosen his choke collar (yeah, never got into those things, too straight-laced I guess)
  10. Jamie needs Kelly's backing (okey dokey)
  11. Jamie needs a haircut (wait, i thought I needed long hair)
  12. Jamie needs to go to sleep

Actually, that last one I added myself.  Good night.

Energy

Making sense of energy and materials

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The price of oil and other materials went through several years of rapid growth as the economy grew and several months of an even more rapid fall once the economy started to crash.  Over at The Oil Drum, Phil Hart gave a pretty simple micro economics explanation of what happened and what might happen going forward. 

His thesis relies on the idea that we have reached either a peak or the peak of oil production.  However, given what we know of crude oil production in the last few years, the idea isn't far fetched.
Crude oil production 12 month moving average

As Phil points out, we could see more booms and busts.  The busts prompt oil producers to rein in plans to expand oil production, leading to reduced production and higher prices.  The higher prices then reduce output from the rest of the economy, causing the bust.

We may see this cycle in other commodities.  Food production, under threat of increased desertification due to global warming, already happening in Australia and elsewhere (see Burning Questions), may exhibit a similar behavior.  Dire conditions potentially.