Empty Milestone

Oh yeah? Then I'll just throw even more microprocessors on my motherboard, and then I'll be the fastest, won't I?

Artificial Austerity

Ah yes, but is his wife going to move in with him?

Dueling UN Eminent-Domain Projects

The Middle East peace talks have faltered ever since Israel resumed building settlements in the disputed territory. The Palestinians appear to have lost faith in the process and are considering going to international bodies like the UN for a declaration of the existence and extent of a Palestinian state. This would seem like a good idea to me if I were Palestinian. After all, it worked for the Jews.

Shore Up the Nation's Balance Sheet with Tax Rebates to Individuals

Tax rebates to individuals have fallen out of American political favor in stimulus packages. The 2001 tax cuts in part included rebates to individuals, and the 2008 stimulus package did as well, but the 2009 stimulus package, on the other hand, did not, taking the form instead of tax cuts, intergovernmental transfers, grants, and loans. The administration initially wanted to include rebates, but they were eventually dropped from the package.

This is in great part due to the concern that individuals won't spend the rebate, but rather save it, which in America means paying down credit-card bills and other debt. The results are, of course, mixed, and they have been since the 1970's. Some of the rebate is spent, and some is saved. The portion that is saved though, frustrates the purpose of fiscal stimulus, which is to increase short-term aggregate demand. Spending stimulates; saving doesn't.[1]

Now, I'm no economist, but the thought has occurred to me: perhaps individuals saving, especially in the form of paying down credit-card debt, rather than spending a rebate is actually a good thing. Consider first that the average interest rate that an individual, at the moment, pays on credit cards is 15%. Then consider that the federal government, at the moment, only pays about 2.5% on ten-year treasuries. Thus, when an individual pays down his credit cards with government rebates, the nation is essentially refinancing its debt at a risk-free rate.[2] Finally, consider that American government, as the least risky  borrower in the world, can and apparently does expect to pay similarly low rates, at the very least for the better part of a decade, the end of which time is about the time that Moody's has said it would downgrade American debt if the government didn't get its act together.

At least in isolation, then, refinancing the nation's debt through rebates to individuals seems to be a national policy worth promoting over the next couple of years as a way to shore up the nation's balance sheet in preparation for what will be the truly monumental and excruciating task of reforming the structural imbalances in the federal government's budget.

Notes.

[1] I don't know if there's room to argue that a person with a better balance sheet will increase demand as well over the longer term, if at all, but it seems right to say so.

[2] This arrangement would seem to make equally good sense even if the rebate was used to increase already positive savings. Risk-free financing of a rebate that is used to increase an individual's already positive savings would essentially be the nation leveraging return on investments. For this all to work, of course, the returns on investment would have to exceed the risk-free rate and the increased taxes on investment imposed to repay the government loan.

Suicides Caused By Homosexual Acts

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Family Research Council President Tony Perkins responded to the recent suicides of Tyler Clementi, Justin Aaberg, Seth Walsh, Asher Brown, and others.

Perkins released the following statement:

“I have watched with regret the news about the recent suicides of Tyler Clementi, Justin Aaberg, Seth Walsh, Asher Brown, and others. All of us here at the Family Research Council share a deep, Christian belief in the sanctity of human life, and we mourn their unfortunate deaths.

“As unfortunate they were, however, they were not surprising. Research has shown that homosexuals, as a result of engaging in homosexual acts, experience mental illnesses like depression more often than heterosexuals, and there is no empirical evidence that this depression—like that experienced by Tyler, Justin, Seth, Asher, and others—is caused by so-called ‘homophobic discrimination’ in our society. What makes these suicides regrettable, then, is that they could have been prevented had these young men chosen not to engage in the acts that ultimately caused their deaths.

“The Family Research Council urges all homosexuals who are experiencing suicidal ideation to stop engaging in homosexual acts and seek therapy with a qualified counselor so that they can learn to cope with and eventually be cured of their unnatural condition,” concluded Perkins.

Open Letter to Zack de la Rocha

Dear Mr. de la Rocha:

I would like to say from the outset that I am a huge fan of yours. Rage Against the Machine's self-titled album is an absolute masterwork, and you deserve to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Thank you for contribution to the zeitgeist.

I was happy to see that you published your first piece as a Huffington Post contributor the other day. It's about time the mainstream media finally came around and recognized that you are a voice to be reckoned with. I was also happy to see that you got top billing. You are way more of a celebrity than that other guy, and you definitely deserve to have the bigger name in lights.

I suspect that you delegated the task of writing the piece to the other guy, however, because the piece contain multiple instances of multiple grammatical errors. For example, it doesn't hyphenate phrasal adjectives consistently.  It should read "fear-mongering state governments," not "fear mongering state governments," and "civil-rights organizations," not "civil rights organizations." The piece also neglects to set off independent clauses joined by a conjunction with a comma and fails to use the serial comma consistently. But the gravest error occurs when the piece abuses the semi-colon in the last paragraph with that quote from Batman Begins. A series of terms or phrases can only be set off with semi-colons if the series follows a colon, and the letter following a semi-colon must always be a lower-case, not capital, letter. As written, the sentence breaks both of these rules. It should instead read something like this, starting out with the rhetorical tautologies set off with commas, not semi-colons ("So long as there is injustice, so long as...," etc., etc.), following the series with a comma, not a period, and then finishing the buildup with the strong declarative ("The resistance of organizations, artists, writers, and governments will continue.").

The piece makes other errors, but I won't belabor the point by listing them all here. I will instead just conclude by offering my services as an editor, free of charge. The next time you delegate a writing task to someone of questionable skills or are just too busy making the greatest rock 'n roll that the greatest country in history—the United States of America—has ever seen, it would be my honor if I could help you put the finishing touches on your image and the polish on your work as you expand your audience reaching out to the bourgeois as a Huffington Post contributor or in any other capacity. In closing, thank you for your time and attention, and thank you for the rock 'n roll.

Looking forward to your next album,

Tommy Leibowitz

Proportion Perspective Paris

The unions and students in France are going all-out against proposed pension reforms. Paris has ground to a halt, and there is serious talk of a full-fledged "rebellion" against President Sarkozy. The reform? Sarkozy has proposed raising the retirement age by two years. Perhaps this is my American perspective talking, but the protests seem overwrought when compared to the reform.

Metaabsurdity

The only thing more absurd than a sixteen-year-old boy having someone ghostwrite a memoir is a grown man reviewing the memoir and belittling the boy for a failure of poetry. At least Mark Twain picked on people his own size.

Tyrants Replacing Tyrants

At a recent debate in London, Julian Assange lashed out at the liberal media for investigating his finances, the conservative media for pointing out the very immediate and human collateral damage caused by his organization's sloppy work, and the technological media for documenting his organization's internal struggles. He also refused to discuss facially credible accusations of bias. Assange seems more and more like the type of guy who'd claim a state-secrets doctrine if he had one.