Unsanity; The great plague!

For the first time in the not so venerable history of The Long Hill Institute, our research has uncovered a malady that afflicts much of the population, often that segment that considers itself the most advanced.

The phenomenon is unsanity, that is, a condition where an individual believes feelings are thoughts, facts or arguments.  The Long Hill Institute explored the phenomenon in the April, 2015 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.  Below is the article:

Call Me Crazy or Something

There is a vast population of high functioning  people who harbor ideas that seem valid, but are delusional.  They are everywhere, including the highest levels of government and business.  This class  are our friends and relatives, and sadly, you and I need only look in the mirror to meet them.

The folks under discussion are not people who need to be cared for.  Most can rise in the morning, competently dress and go to a business or place of employment and spend the day doing useful work.  Many attain success in their chosen field.

What is the horrible malady victimizing our population?  It is not insanity.  The afflicted need not be restrained from doing harm to themselves or others.  At large, they are not a threat to public order.  Indeed there is no description of the condition in the DSM-5(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5^th Edition, it is used to diagnose and classify mental disorders).

As pervasive as it is, there is almost no discussion of it anywhere.  The only thing to be done was to engage the resources of our official think tank, The Long Hill Institute for the Study of Heretofore Unrecognized Psychological Conditions (LHIftSoHUPC for short).

A wonderful aspect of the LHIftSoHUPC is that the shoot from the hip methodology means there are never interminable hours of research.  A name for the condition and a definition of terms were arrived at almost instantaneously.

Thus we have Unsanity, that is, a condition where an individual believes feelings are thoughts, facts or arguments.

Your columnist is himself a victim.  I firmly hold that ingesting huge quantities of  Stonyfield Creme Caramel Ice Cream is healthy because it's organic.  Even worse, I trust and act on the advertisement that says “Guinness is good for you” because they wouldn't let them say that if it weren't true.

The cognitive aberrations of a scribbler at a regional magazine are of no import in the great world.  However, when people of position pontificate wildly, it should give us pause.

Marie Harf is deputy spokesperson at State.  In that position she has the unenviable job of defending administration foreign policy.  In a well-reported exchange with Chris Matthews, Ms. Harf suggested; “we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs.”

So that's all it takes to win the War on Terror, a jobs program.  Forget that the guy known as Jihadi John, who beheads the hostages, is a highly employable tech grad.  Also put aside when suicide bombers blow themselves up they are yelling “Allahu Akbar” and not “if only I had a job at Goldman Sachs or flipping burgers or working as a spokesflack at Foggy Bottom.”

Marie, and one might guess a lot of Americans, might find it hard to grasp that not everyone in the world just wants wage slavery.  They would be well advised to read George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf.  Orwell, a man who was not unsane, noted that Hitler said, “"I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.”  The lovely life of happy self-actualization the West offers is not a universal aspiration.  There is no lack of people who find it empty.

Then again, The Allies were able to disabuse Germany of the notion by killing one heck of a lot of them over five years.

 Ms. Harf accused her critics of not being able to understand “too nuanced an argument.” that would seem to be a new way of saying “I was taken out of context” except that she said it with not a little confidence.  On Long Hill, we agree the war is not going to be won by killing, but neither is the universal jobs idea a winner.  If after almost a decade and a half, all we seem to get is more war, maybe  the game is not worth it.  That's no more an unsane conclusion than any other.

Despite the fact that we have savaged conservatives such as Ann Coulter, Howie Carr and Mitt Romney in the pages of this magazine, there is the view extant that we are running a militia up on Long Hill.  Thus, we feel it incumbent on us to search to starboard for unsanity.  Fortunately, our country is a target rich environment across the board.

The Capo di Tutti Capi of conservative talk is a prime example of the phenomenon.  Rush Limbaugh rose to prominence in the early 90s when shilling for Gulf War I.  He has always been a self-proclaimed champion of liberty. His show is one long paean to freedom. 

Until it is time to hide under the bed in fear.  According to Mr. Freedom, in light of the Snowden revelations, “Our civil liberties are worthless if we are dead! If you are dead and pushing up daisies, if you're sucking dirt inside a casket, do you know what your civil liberties are worth? Zilch, zero, nada.”*  True enough as nothing matters at that point other than how you lived your life. The LHIftSoHUPC can only render a diagnosis of Grand Mal Unsanity.

     The LHIftSoHUPC can do little to help the high and mighty with the condition no matter how pervasive it is among the elite.  We are here for the citizenry of our region even if the fee structure has not been set and we are a bit fuzzy on treatment.  However, if a client is not satisfied, we offer a complimentary dish of ice cream or pint of stout.  Your choice.

*From No Place to Hide, by Glenn Greenwald reviewed in the Jul,y 2014 Sturbridge Times Magazine.

Tax the Poor

Originally published in the February, 2014 Sturbridge Times Magazine.

The fiscal cliff has come and gone and no doubt will come again.  As always, a deal was done, and the figurative can was kicked down the road.

A constant drumbeat during the run-up to the agreement was that if the exchequer could just put its hands in the pockets of the rich, why nirvana would ensue.  To cliché it, the tax the rich meme went viral.

I’m from a working class family and as resentful of my betters as the next guy.  The pitchfork is by the door and ready at a moments notice to storm the Bastille with me, at least rhetorically.

Certain segments of the wealthy should be fair game.  The ongoing crisis that began in 2008 had its origin in large banking institutions that are “Too Big To Fail” otherwise known as TBTF.  What that means is, as is said, that if they are allowed to sink, they crash civilization. 

In the recent presidential election, neither candidate addressed the too big to fail issue.  The incumbent never said that he had been working on the problem and the solution was in hand, because he hadn’t.  The challenger never suggested it would be a priority of his administration because he would have gargled razor blades rather than touch it had the votes had been counted in his favor.

We had a measure in place that kept the banks from getting TBTF.  It was called Glass-Steagall.  The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, passed in a previous era of economic turmoil, prohibited Commercial Banks from engaging in the investment business.  What the act meant was succinctly put by economist and author of the book, Currency Wars.  James Rickards.  Rickards wrote on August 27, 2012 for US News and World Report, that under Glass-Steagall, “Banks would be allowed to take deposits and make loans.  Brokers would be allowed to underwrite and sell securities.  But no firm could do both due to conflicts of interest and risks to insured deposits.  From 1933 to 1999, there were very few large bank failures and no financial panics comparable to the panic of 2008.  The law worked exactly as intended.”

If life was not horrible under Glass-Steagall, why was it thrown overboard?  This can be explained by the nature of our party structure.  An anonymous Republican congressional staffer is credited with saying, “In America we have a two-party system.  There is the stupid party, and the evil party.  I am proud to be a member of the stupid party” The man then said, “Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil.  This is called bipartisanship.” 

Deep-sixing Glass-Steagall was bipartisanship at its most stupidly evil.  The people had not risen up and called for repeal.  Almost none of them had ever heard of it.  That’s what happens in a nation with a surfeit of laws.  No, it was the world of finance that used their influence to get what they wanted.  When they had sucked as much as they could out of the system, and it all started to go south, they went crying to the government for succor.  The bankers were all for profits staying privatized, but supported a healthy socialism when it came to losses.

So, a class of people did some looting on a vast scale and got away with it.  The cry has gone up, “Make them pay their fair share.”  To paraphrase the old western horse operas, “Taxing is too good for them.”  Unfortunately, they had gamed the system so that apparently the law, if not the force, is with them.  Of course, The SEC and the Department of Justice have been desultory at best in pursuing the wrongdoers.   There have been a few wrist slaps to pretend action, but nothing substantial.  We can’t even sentence them to having to listen non-stop to ABBA piped into jail cells for a few hours.  Okay, that is going overboard.

Taxing a class sounds like a fantastic idea.  Not all the rich were bankers and many provide honest employment for their fellow citizens.  Still, there is an argument that adjusting the tax rates upwards is a good thing.  The problem is, it is no panacea.  Most economists have admitted it can’t work magic. 

Taxing the rich inevitably reaches down into the pockets of the middle-class.  Don’t think so?  I have three letters for you, AMT.  They stand for Alternative Minimum Tax.  I don’t remember if it was Chet Huntley or John Chancellor or another newsreader in the 60s intoning in a serious talking head voice about an injustice.  The evil rich were getting away with murder.

By investing in municipal bonds, wealthy members of society were able to avoid federal taxes on the interest.  In doing this, they received a lower interest rate allowing governmental units to finance schools or bridges or other projects.  That did not matter.  Something had to be done.

What was done was the Alternative Minimum Tax.  In the early 1990s, the law was changed so the AMT could also tax people with lower incomes.  Our compassionate solons, troubled by the injustice, yearly “patch” it so most, but not all, of the middle class escapes.  Nothing permanent is ever done, though.

Adjusting the tax on the rich may raise a few dollars and make us feel good, but won’t solve the problem.  Taxing the middle-class other than the status quo is considered bad form.  What’s left?  Why of course, doing what has been done most consistently throughout history, taxing the poor. 

Unconscionable you say.  Balderdash.  We already tax the poor horribly, and couch it in terms of doing it for their own good.  The cigarette tax falls disproportionately on the shoulders of folks in the lower income bracket.  I have never heard a non-smoking fellow citizen decry this as an injustice though it raises the price of a small pleasure several times.  Taxes on alcohol are not light, but see how far you get proposing an excise that triples the cost of single malt out of compassion for the health of the wealthy.

Throughout history societies sooner or later get around to taxing the poor.  This can be fraught with danger.  Take the French aristocracy who had their heads handed to them.  No, a federal tax on the downtrodden will have to be done shrewdly.

Fortunately, there is a way to do it that, if not loved, will be embraced with enthusiasm.  In this the states have shown the way.  Many of us have stood in line waiting to pay for gas or coffee at a convenience store.  Often there is someone ahead of us taking what seems years to make several choices.  To the more highly evolved, they are wasting time, but to that man or woman, it is a momentous choice.  With each new day, it is the most important decision of their life.  If their choice of scratch ticket or lottery numbers is correct, the drudge job they hate is history, at least till the money runs out.

As a math professor once said, “The lottery is a tax on people who can’t do math.”  It is the shrewdest form of impost ever devised.  Why should not the federals use it to solve our ongoing fiscal crises?  A nightly national Powerball drawing will beat even Dancing With The Stars’ ratings.

Ah well, this may take a while to come to pass.  There are a few tricks left like a trillion dollar platinum coin so why worry.  After all the Congress saw it’s duty, came together and raised taxes on the elite, and while you were feeling good on you too, Mr. and Mrs. Two Earner Family.

Yup. The two percent increase in payroll tax will affect you more than anything that might have been done to Warren Buffett

My countrymen and women, you were like marks for a three-card monte dealer.  While the barker kept yelling beat the rich, he took your money.

Bipartisanship, ya gotta love it.