I Sing the Body Literate

Last night Earth lost one of our most brilliant and imaginative literary minds when Ray Bradbury passed away at the age of 91. Bradbury's books were the first to introduce me to the world of adult literature as well as science fiction, and probably the first to inspire in me the desire to write.

It was around 1970, I was about 10 or so, when I picked up a copy of The Martian Chronicles. From those first pages of Rocket Summer I was hooked. For a kid in Boston, who grew up following our conquest of space and landing on the Moon, the images came through clearly. The heat of the rockets, leaving for Mars, melting the Ohio snow were vivid in my imagination. By the end of the book, There Will Come Soft Rains, was etched equally into my thoughts and my life.

There were other "young adult" authors that I read in that period. Of course, S.E. Hinton's books were all on my shelf. The Hinton books were great for a kid who felt like an Outsider, and also helped teach me about literature. But the Bradbury books took me further, outside of myself, and into a universe of possibilities and morality.

I read more of Bradbury's short stories (The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl comes to mind) and novels, and later saw the movies that came from them. Truffaut's excellent adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 being the first, and later The Illustrated Man, starring Rod Steiger. That movie could not compare to the images that Bradbury illustrated through his prose, although to this day, when I see somebody with excessive tattooing, I hear Steiger's voice in the back of my head saying, "They are not tattoos; they are skiiiin eellustrationz."

And, of course, there was the Twilight Zone episode he wrote, I Sing the Body Electric. Many include this among the worst Zone episodes for its dripping sentimentality, but I always found comfort in Bradbury's melding of technology with heart.

Bradbury was not himself a "techie" or mechanical person. He never drove since witnessing a car accident when younger, and was afraid to fly. I learned that second bit of trivia from Bradbury's appearance as a contestant on "You Bet Your Life" with Groucho Marx. It came out through Groucho's interview with him at the top of the show. I don't recall whether or not Bradbury said the magic word triggering the duck to come down with $100.

The soft rains have come. Ray Bradbury, R.I.P.

Generosity Causes Homelessness

Here's the story: A driver tries to give a disabled person a few bucks at an intersection, one dollar falls to the ground, and the driver is given a $344 ticket for littering.

What the ...? Well, you see, in Columbus, Ohio, it's illegal to give money to a panhandler.

Um, okay, but the ticket was for littering? Well, you see, the penalty for littering is higher than the penalty for giving to a panhandler, so they're prosecuting him for the "greater crime." All for giving a few bucks to a disabled panhandler.

This is your tax dollars at work. Not at work, trying to help a disabled adult whose only income is from panhandling. No, that would be foolhardy, and would only encourage people to be disabled and destitute. No, this is your tax dollars hard at work punishing those naive fools who help out their fellow man.

Anti-panhandling laws (and anti-"camping" laws, and loitering laws, and...) arise out of the notion that if you make life inhospitable to the homeless and destitute, that they will, at best, suddenly be able to get a job and move inside, or, at the least, move on to another locality.

In Columbus, however, they've taken the next step. It's no longer enough to punish the poor for being poor, they've taken it upon themselves to punish decent citizens who take pity upon their fellow man, and therefor encourage them to be disabled and broke.

In some ways, this does make sense: it's easier to collect a fine from the guy with a job than from the guy on the street. But this is also their public policy, they obviously believe that it's that driver's fault that the guy in the wheelchair is a beggar.

Clearly, the good people of Columbus have discovered and gone after the root cause of poverty: Generosity. If we would only stop caring about the less fortunate among us, life would be wonderful, and our streets would be clean and safe.

Thank you, Columbus, for leading the way to a sweeter smelling, less caring America!

I Side With...

Each election year there are a variety of websites that claim to match you with your perfect candidate for President. This year, one which has done a pretty good job of it is I Side With... (.com). I Side With... uses a wide-ranging questionnaire to determine your politics. In some categories you can expand beyond the basic questions to give additional information.

Once your survey is complete, you are shown how close your views are to those of each of the declared candidates. Here are my current results:

I say "current" results because the I Side With... algorithm is apparently updated as more information becomes available, or when the candidates change their positions (this must keep them up late at night, keeping up with Mitt's policy gymnastics). Candidates that have dropped from the race are also dropped from your results.

When I took the I Side With... survey, back on April 21st, my results were slightly different than when I logged back into the site just now to write this blog post. At that time Barack Obama and Fred Karger were each tied at 70% concurrence with my views. Clicking on "More info" under Obama today, I see that he pulled ahead of Karger by 4% after yesterday's statement on gay marriage.

Romney, meanwhile, has dropped from 31% agreement in April to only 13% agreement today, and Ron Paul has dropped from 37% to 25%.

Holding steady as the candidate I most agree with, is Green Party candidate, Kent Mesplay, at 83% in April and May.

Not shown in the graphic, but in the survey, is Jimmy "The Rent is Too Damn High" McMillan, with whom I currently have 37% in common (clearly, we agree about the damned rent, but not much more).

Back in April, I enjoyed taking the I Side With... survey and reading the results. The site is cleanly designed, easy to use, and clicking "More info" under any of the candidates clearly explains how they arrive at the results. Today, I'm even more impressed with how they've continued to refine their algorithm and update the results. A great effort. Check them out at isidewith.com.

My Day With Newt

"I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much."

- Newton Leroy Gingrich

Poor Newt should have realized it was over last week when he was bit by penguin, but he's slow to process these things. You know, because he's an abstract intellectual and has to think things through. Even after losing five more primary contests yesterday, he's still officially in the race for another week, with plans to likely drop out on May 1. My guess is that he bet somebody that he'd make it through April.

But it reminds me of how, after he resigned the post of Speaker of the House in disgrace, in November 1998, following investigation into his ethics violations, he still hung around Congress another couple of months, clinging to his seat there till January 1999. And then all America figured that, like Dick Nixon, we wouldn't have Newt Gingrich to kick around anymore.

At the time, I was working for an organization called HandsNet. We were kind of like a nonprofit AOL for human services professionals. It was a fun and exciting time, and somewhere between surviving the Y2K scare of 1999 and not surviving the dot-com bust of 2001, my boss, Michael, and I were invited to participate in a forum on public policy and the Internet.

It was a fairly intimate group - no more than 100 people - assembled in a meeting room at San Jose's Fairmont Hotel, with tech execs, local politicians, and Michael and I representing the nonprofit ".org" space. We were taking our seats and looking over the agenda when a gnome-like little round man with sunken cheeks came waddling into the room with a small entourage. I turned to Michael and said, "Poor SOB has to go through life looking like Newt Gingrich." We each laughed.

Then the introductions started... Oops. It was Newt.

My memory of the day was that, much as I would have liked to confirm his evil bastardness with some heinous statement or another, he turned out to be a good participant. He did not try to dominate the conversation, and when in dialog with others he listened respectfully, and his responses showed that he heard the other person's points - even if he didn't agree.

At the end of the day I felt that his leaving Congress had humbled him. I also felt that I had gotten a glimpse of Professor Gingrich, and that he wasn't quite so bombastic and egotistical as Speaker Gingrich had been. His full political rehabilitation to where he would be considered by many to be a semi-plausible contender for the Republic Presidential nomination would take another decade. And, as we've seen, in that decade his arrogance was fully recovered as well.

I mentioned this meeting a couple of weeks ago, when I was catching up with Michael over lunch. He had no recollection of either the forum or of crossing paths with the former Speaker. So it goes.

And so we bid farewell to the 2012 Presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich. We'll miss him. Well, Michael won't, but somebody will, I'm sure.

Income Tax Blog

It seems apt that the final weekend before 2011 tax returns are due should start with Friday the 13th. I completed our returns and filed electronically last month, although I didn't mail the required checks until this past Monday (no refund here).

Back in January, I wrote about Mitt Romney's 15% effective tax rate. Around the same time, in the Statue of the Union Address, President Obama also talked about how wrong it is that millionaires should pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, or teachers, policemen, or other middle-income earners. To illustrate the point, Warren Buffett's secretary was sitting with the First Lady in the audience.

"The Buffett Rule" was introduced to correct this, with the simple premise that those with over $1 million in annual income shouldn't pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families. To promote passage of the Buffett Rule, the White House has posted a "Buffett Rule Calculator" - just plug in your income and your taxes, and see how many millionaires pay less than you do!

So, how did I do (actually, for my wife and I, filing jointly)? After deductions, we had an effective tax rate of 17% - higher than 37,600 millionaires. Some of our income is taxed at the 25% bracket, but our over-all effective rate is 17% thanks to some generous deductions, primarily the home mortgage interest deduction.

That deduction alone reduced our income by nearly 14% and had a dollar value greater than a full time job at the federal minimum wage. Think about that for a moment. We are not rich by any stretch, and are frankly going through some lean times. Even so, we write off from our income more than many people earn.

With the rich dodging taxes above, and the working poor struggling with a sub-standard minimum wage below, the gap is getting wider. The Buffett Rule is a small, symbolic step, and I support it, but it's just the tip of the iceberg in getting our economy working for everybody again.

(Tell your Senators to vote for the Buffett Rule by clicking here...)

So Long, It's Been Good to Know Ya'

As I write this posting, I have 324 friends on Facebook. But, considering it's an election year, and I tend to be quite open with my strong opinions on things political, the folks over at the Pew Internet Project would like to warn me that I can expect to have only 262 Facebook friends by November 7.

That's because 9% of users of social networking sites "have blocked, unfriended or hidden someone because they posted something about politics or issues that the user disagreed with or found offensive," and another 10% of those on Twitter and Facebook, "have blocked, unfriended or hidden someone because they post too frequently on politics."

I don't believe I would ever fall into the second group; de-friending just because the person likes to talk about politics. I would also never de-friend simply because I disagree with the person's politics. If that were true, I'd have long ago dumped several of my Facebook circle who post daily reminders of why they're voting for Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul. (Thankfully, I don't have any Rick Santorum voters in my circles. Or, maybe I did, but they already dumped my liberal ass? More likely, they're just too embarrassed to admit who they're voting for in public.)

Actually, I quite like seeing posts on my newsfeed from all over the political spectrum. I enjoy reading things from different points of view, even when I find them dangerously stupid. Of course, I try to be polite in my commenting, and not just come right out and tell them they're being stupid. And I'm usually successful at that.

And then there have been times when I'm afraid I've gone too far in my commenting, and been surprised when the person was still on my friends list the next morning. I'd like to take this moment here to thank them for that (you know who you are).

But the "found offensive" thing... I'd like to say that I'm not easily offended, and that I have a high tolerance for questionable humor. But there are some areas where I have to draw the line.

If I find your ideas politically offensive (see example)  I will argue with you, but I will not be the one to click the "unfriend" button. I will also remain your friend, no matter how pious, self-righteous, and pig-headed you are in declaring your beliefs to be morally, ethically, or intellectually superior to mine (I've done a bit of grandstanding myself, this post included).

But, if you resort to overt racism or sexism or other hate speech to try and make your point, where you have no legitimate point to begin with, I will remove you from my view. That's it. You've been warned.

Now, the Pew study has a bright side too. Although I may lose up to 19% of my friends for either being too political (10%), or just not the right type of political (9%), they also point out that 16% of users have "followed or friended someone because that person shared the user’s political views."

So, my net loss may only be 3%, dropping me from 324 to 314. But it will be a much more civilized and intelligent 314. I'm looking forward to that.

Rush Still Doesn't Get It

Thanks to pressure from a few Republican leaders and the loss of at least half-a-dozen sponsors, Rush Limbaugh has issued an apology to Sandra Fluke for calling her a "slut" and a "prostitute." And, in that apology, manages to once again ignore the point of her testimony before Congress, lie about the purpose of the hearing, and make her out to be a self-absorbed sexual adventurer.

"I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke," Rush's apology states, after three days of on-air attacks that included the above remarks, as well as repeatedly stating that she is "having so much sex she can't pay for her birth control," and suggesting that if she's going to force others to pay for her sexual activities she should videotape them and post them online for us all to see.

The "apology" continues:

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities.

A few points for those who may be tempted to agree with the above statements, or anything else Rush has said on the topic:

• Ms. Fluke's testimony had nothing whatsoever to do with her sex life. She was speaking on behalf of a friend who lost an ovary. The friend had been prescribed birth control pills to help control ovarian cysts, but because her health insurance did not cover "contraception" she could not take the medication, and she lost the ovary. Yes, "birth control" is prescribed for a number of reasons beyond the desire for "guiltless sex."
• The hearing was not about whether or not American citizens should pay for the "sexual recreation" of others. The topic before Congress last week was whether or not private employers should be allowed "moral exemptions" from new requirements that birth control be included under preventive health care coverage. As stated, this is not about "sexual recreation," it's about family planning and access to prescriptions for a number of health concerns.
• Rush repeatedly suggested that if somebody has trouble affording birth control pills, it must be related to the amount of sexual activity they are having. I have trouble believing that a man over 60, who has had four wives, does not know how the pill works, but one takes the same number of pills, regardless of how often they have sex, or how many partners they have, or whether they are a single college student or a married person.

This non-apology may appease a few of his advertisers and take the heat off Republican leaders to call him out, but it perpetuates the misinformation that was behind his insulting, sexist tirades.

Insurance that includes contraception adds no additional cost to the premium, and may actually reduce premiums. Insurance is all about risk, and insurers prefer a known, relatively low cost to the risk of a much higher cost. In other words, paying for birth control pills at about $900-1,200/year is better for the insurance company than the risk of paying for a pregnancy, including prenatal check-ups, hospital delivery, risks of complications... (a minimum of $10,000+).

And let's not forget that most pregnancies end by adding a new dependent to the policy; a new dependent who will require much expensive attention in those first few years. Contraception is a bargain to insurance companies compared to the risk of pregnancy.

It's not the insurance industry that's trying to get contraception removed from the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. It's religious zealots and right wing clowns like Rush, who have to resort to misrepresentation, insults, and outright lies to score political points. Apology not accepted.