GIve me your tired, ____, your huddled masses

First things first. I read the entirety of Emma Lazarus's sonnet, "The New Colossus," tattooed on the Statue of Liberty, whose famed line ("Give me your tired . . .") was all that most of us, myself include, had ever read. Here's the whole thing.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden shore!"

For my part, I don't deny having found myself a little teary-eyed, reading it aloud.

Anyway, I want to mention a quick thought about income inequality, which, as the NYT notes, is growing to near-Great Depression levels, in spite of a striking dearth public concern for that inequality. My question, though, is just what would we have to give up to do something substantive about it? Sure, there are many things that count as 'substantive,' but if we wanted to look at the current budget, what's an avenue that would pretty efficaciously start to close that gap?

In 2009, the United States spent $717 billion on the national defense, while the People's Republic of China, our nearest runner-up, spent $70.3 billion. Suppose the US cut $300 billion from the defense budget, allowing it to grow subsequently in whatever ways Congress would have it, and suppose the US reapportioned that $300 billion annually to endow households with (say) $100,000 interest-earning savings funds. First, we would nonetheless fivefold outspend our 'rivals' on defense. Second, since there are just over 100 million households in the US, endowing every single one of them with such a savings account would take just over a generation, 30-35 years.

Think it sounds crazy? Try third: in Norway, its national Government Pension Fund has saved nearly all of the oil wealth extracted from Norway's North Sea oil wells to produce savings of $89,000 not per household, but per man, woman, and child. And given Norway's low birthrate, and the projected 60% gains in that fund over the next three years, the individual savings amount will increase to $142,000. All of this? It took Norway just forty-five years. The college graduates at the start of the savings are now, today, benefiting.

Talk like that tends to put the talk of the 'profit motive' into perspective, doesn't it?

Teachers and taxes

So, people've heard that states and the federal government (i.e. we) are facing what Very Serious People (VSP) say are very worrisome levels of budget deficit in the next few years, right? That means that we'll have some money that we'll have to find some way of paying back, and given the serious tones that VSP take in these discussions, we're left to conclude that these ways of paying back are going to start awfully soon. Fine. But let's look at how Republicans, the party of fiscal responsibility if ever there was one, have handled themselves so far.

First, in abstract. There's a budget deficit. You pay your bills by raising revenues or cutting expenses. But what does raising revenues entail? It entails raising taxes. But what, really, is a tax increase? It's the state garnishing your wages, with the functional effect of your having a decreased purchasing power.

Now, consider what Republicans are willing to do to state employees and teachers. They're willing to cut teacher pay, employee pensions - in essence, garnish their wages - with the effect of raising state revenues by decreasing cost of education and pension responsibilities. So, reducing teacher pay, eliminating pensions benefits, etc. is functionally a tax increase on those people - instead of on the wealthy. Which is to say, Republicans are willing to raise taxes on teachers and state pension recipients, and they aren't willing to raise them on people making over $250,000 per year.

I hate when people talk about class warfare or whatever, but this seems like such an obvious example of it to me, that I could just puke.

Moar Historical Attack Ads

So, this video is almost as funny as the Kant video below. Some of the names the Founders called one another. . . a more enterprising blogger might write a post comparing the characteristics that people in their time thought disqualified a candidate for election to those that disqualify candidates today. I, for one, don't retreat from the belief that a man raised by a half-squaw on hoe cakes has any place in the halls of American power.

Reason the First, why England is better than the United States

Its citizens are able to recompose their leaders' speeches thusly.

Somehow, in spite of what obviously constituted a prodigious effort on behalf of its producers, the American version doesn't quite pass muster.