Lileks, as usual, has General Clark’s supporters’ number.
…Of course, if the Republicans put a retired general on the ticket, half the chattering classes would take to the fainting couch: bonjour fascism, au revoir America.
But Clark’s different! He’s pro-choice, pro-high taxes, at least at press time. And he wants “a new patriotism,” the old one presumably sullied beyond use by the boot-clicking usurpers who foul the Oval Office now. “No administration has the right to tell Americans that to dissent is disloyal, and to disagree is unpatriotic,” he said in a recent speech.
Oh, absolutely. That’s why we need Clark: Enough of those big banners in the train stations telling us to SHUT UP AND OBEY, and the endless mandatory TV shows about our Glorious Leader and his plans to increase the radish crop by 170 percent for the next five-year plan. Don’t you wish your TV came with an off switch, so you could avoid the propaganda? Don’t you wish you could skip the Tuesday night book burnings? Don’t you wonder if we crossed the line the night John Ashcroft personally executed Al Franken on “Saturday Night Live”? I miss America, too.
GEN. CLARK: Well, first of all, they were not efficient in terms of stimulating the kind of demand we need to move the economy back into a recovery mode, a strong recovery and a recovery that provides jobs. There are more effective ways of using the resources. Secondly, the tax cuts weren?t fair. I mean, the people that need the money and deserve the money are the people who are paying less, not the people who are paying more. I thought this country was founded on a principle of progressive taxation. In other words, it?s not only that the more you make, the more you give, but proportionately more because when you don?t have very much money, you need to spend it on the necessities of life. When you have more money, you have room for the luxuries and you should?one of the luxuries and one of the privileges we enjoy is living in this great country.
No, General, this country was founded on the principle of no federal income tax at all. We had to pass a Constitutional amendment, within the last century, in order to levy it.
[Update on Thursday morning]
There’s a debate ongoing in the comments section, but in the meantime, Professor Volokh has some thoughts.
GEN. CLARK: Well, first of all, they were not efficient in terms of stimulating the kind of demand we need to move the economy back into a recovery mode, a strong recovery and a recovery that provides jobs. There are more effective ways of using the resources. Secondly, the tax cuts weren?t fair. I mean, the people that need the money and deserve the money are the people who are paying less, not the people who are paying more. I thought this country was founded on a principle of progressive taxation. In other words, it?s not only that the more you make, the more you give, but proportionately more because when you don?t have very much money, you need to spend it on the necessities of life. When you have more money, you have room for the luxuries and you should?one of the luxuries and one of the privileges we enjoy is living in this great country.
No, General, this country was founded on the principle of no federal income tax at all. We had to pass a Constitutional amendment, within the last century, in order to levy it.
[Update on Thursday morning]
There’s a debate ongoing in the comments section, but in the meantime, Professor Volokh has some thoughts.
GEN. CLARK: Well, first of all, they were not efficient in terms of stimulating the kind of demand we need to move the economy back into a recovery mode, a strong recovery and a recovery that provides jobs. There are more effective ways of using the resources. Secondly, the tax cuts weren?t fair. I mean, the people that need the money and deserve the money are the people who are paying less, not the people who are paying more. I thought this country was founded on a principle of progressive taxation. In other words, it?s not only that the more you make, the more you give, but proportionately more because when you don?t have very much money, you need to spend it on the necessities of life. When you have more money, you have room for the luxuries and you should?one of the luxuries and one of the privileges we enjoy is living in this great country.
No, General, this country was founded on the principle of no federal income tax at all. We had to pass a Constitutional amendment, within the last century, in order to levy it.
[Update on Thursday morning]
There’s a debate ongoing in the comments section, but in the meantime, Professor Volokh has some thoughts.
They’ve (temporarily) postponed the recall election until March, prolonging the circus and giving Davis a much better shot, by having his fate decided by hordes of Democratic primary voters. It’s another attack of the chads!
We’ll see if the SCOTUS weighs in to preempt this nonsense.
Assuming that punch card ballots are generally less reliable than the alternatives, why should we think that using punch card ballots in several counties in Oct. 2003 would be less reliable than using the alternatives for the fist time in those counties in Mar. 2004?
Here’s an interesting piece from the LA Times about how postmodernists have taken over film schools. I found this particular paragraph revealing, though I’m not quite sure of what:
From Kevin Brownlow, the world’s leading silent movie historian, author of “The Parade’s Gone By . . .,” and co-producer, with David Gill, of acclaimed documentaries: “You would think, from this closed-circuit attitude to teaching, that such academics would be politically right wing. For it is a kind of fascism to force people practicing one discipline to learn the language of another, simply for the convenience of an intellectual elite. It’s like expecting Slavs to learn German in order to comprehend their own inferiority. But they are not right wing. They are, regrettably, usually left wing?quite aggressively Marxist?which makes the whole situation even more alarming.”
I would have liked more elaboration why that was “alarming,” rather than completely unsurprising. Apparently, even some leftists are embarrassed by this stuff.
It’s been twenty five years now, and the AP has a story of the anniversary of the Love Canal debacle. It was the event that created the insane Superfund for environmental cleanup, most of the money for which is siphoned off into lawyer’s wallets.
And of course, what the AP doesn’t mention is that it wasn’t Hooker Chemical’s fault–they just ended up being the fall guy for stupid bureaucrats.
It’s been twenty five years now, and the AP has a story of the anniversary of the Love Canal debacle. It was the event that created the insane Superfund for environmental cleanup, most of the money for which is siphoned off into lawyer’s wallets.
And of course, what the AP doesn’t mention is that it wasn’t Hooker Chemical’s fault–they just ended up being the fall guy for stupid bureaucrats.
It’s been twenty five years now, and the AP has a story of the anniversary of the Love Canal debacle. It was the event that created the insane Superfund for environmental cleanup, most of the money for which is siphoned off into lawyer’s wallets.
And of course, what the AP doesn’t mention is that it wasn’t Hooker Chemical’s fault–they just ended up being the fall guy for stupid bureaucrats.