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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, December 25, 2004
Getting Ready To Build Our Dream Home My wife has been irritated with living in what she calls "the fishbowl"--which is to say, we live on a 1/4 acre parcel near my job. She was hoping to get into a more rural setting when we came here, but at the time we moved to Boise, houses weren't selling in Sonoma County, so we had to buy relatively cheap. (I don't dare tell you what I mean by "cheap": the Californians will say, "Was that a down payment?" and most of the rest of the country will say, "That's not cheap!") Anyway, we are in the process of buying a multiacre parcel with spectacular views. I've learned a lot about site-built vs. manufactured vs. modular housing the last few days--and I think we are going to be having a modular home built in a bit over a year, once our son is close to graduating. (We certainly aren't going to change his school this close to graduation.) Here's one of the views. 
Labels: house project Good News From The Exchange Rates I've mentioned in the past that the historically low exchange rate of the dollar relative to a lot of other currencies has been bad for importers to the U.S., but good for U.S. makers, both for domestic sales and for export. Here's another industry that benefits from the weak dollar: LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A weaker U.S. dollar is fueling pent-up demand for overseas travel to the United States, helping to pad the bottom lines of hotels and tourist attractions.Not only is this good for tourism, perhaps some of the Europeans will get a chance to actually real Americans, instead of stereotypes of them--and realize that we aren't a bunch of "sister-marryin' rednecks" as one of the British newspapers characterized us right after the election. More Reasons Not To Use Microsoft Products I've switched over to using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer and Thunderbird instead of Outlook Express. You can download both progams for free. Firefox is here. Thunderbird is here. If you wonder why I have switched: it is because Internet Explorer is not terribly secure; I am impressed how much spyware and adware was coming in through Internet Explorer. Outlook Express, because it doesn't have any built-in Bayesian spam filtering, required me to use an add-on to provide that sort of spam filtering. The add-on, PopFile, was as clever as something like that could be, I suppose, but with Thunderbird, the filtering is built-in, and much easier to "train" because it is built into Thunderbird. Another irritation was that Outlook Express was having some sort of problem with sending email out, probably caused by some sort of corruption of Outlook Express's files. Thunderbird is having no problems whatsoever. Firefox is really, really cool in how it installs itself, pulls in all the Internet Explorer bookmarks and most other information, and in a few minutes, you are running a browser that is just as easy to use, more secure, and almost certainly more reliable, because it doesn't have Microsoft behind it. The next step is going to be switching to SuSE Linux, and getting rid of Windows completely. One embarrassing discovery: there is a default Postmaster account associated with my domain, which has been slowly accumulating vast quantities of bounced mail, spam, and email that various people have sent me over the last three years which ended up there, not in the clayton account--and which I have never seen. I will work through the most important of this over the next few weeks. Friday, December 24, 2004
Whenever I Start Feeling Sorry For Myself For Not Being Independently Wealthy... I was having this feeling a few days ago. Back about 1986, I went to a Microsoft Technical Conference. A friend of mine from high school was a vice president at Microsoft. I approached him after he had spoken, and he remembered me, as well he should have; unlike a lot of our class who insulted him to his face and treated him badly, I treated him well. (I didn't get treated any better by most of the same bunch.) Back in high school, I was into computers; he wasn't. I wasn't looking for anything but just a little help getting a job interview. At the time, I had exactly the right sort of experience that Microsoft was hiring--if I wasn't at the cutting edge of PC development, I wasn't much behind it. I got the brush-off--and I was so startled that I didn't know what to say. I wasn't looking to get into Microsoft with the expectation of getting rich--at that point, Microsoft was the most important of PC companies, to be sure, but they weren't quite the 800 pound gorilla that they are now. As the years passed, and Microsofties of that era all became millionaires--in spite of their company producing only passably reliable software--I became a little bit embittered by the brush-off I had received. I worked for a couple of telecommunications startups that were technically major successes, but were financially somewhat disappointing. I (and the IRS, and the California Franchise Tax Board) made a bit of money, but not enough to retire, and certainly not enough to engage in the sort of extravagance that became the norm for many software engineers. I don't own any jets, for example. My 2000 Corvette is as close as I am likely to get to an exotic sports car, and while I am looking at building a house with a view in the next couple of years (more information about what I have learned in a few days), the view of Horseshoe Bend, Idaho, isn't quite like having a beach house in Malibu. But just when I feel a bit of bitterness about being effectively brushed off by someone whom I had treated well, for a job for which I was qualified, I read a story like this. It's a bit more extreme than many of the examples that I have seen in the computer industry, where decamillionaires are common, but then again, the wealth in this story had a bit less effort involved in getting it: Excessive wealth can, and often does, destroy. Perhaps I should consider myself fortunate; the kind of wealth that many people in Sonoma County acquired when I lived there in the 1990s seems to have destroyed the moral character--and in a few cases, the lives--of their children. It is possible to raise kids with wealth and character, but it seems to be even harder than just raising kids in the middle class. Merry Christmas--and count the blessings of not being obscenely rich. If you are obscenely rich, and are worried about the dangers of it, please contact me. I'll be glad to assist you in reaching a level of wealth that won't be so hazardous! :-) More Evidence That There Are Two Standards of Justice in America A black woman gets convicted of drunk driving, and look how the system treats her! GREENWICH, Conn. (AP) - Police Chief James Walters gave Diana Ross special treatment while the singer served her sentence for an Arizona drunken-driving conviction, the town's police union said.There are two standards in America, but I very much doubt that race is anymore the basis for the distinctions that the system makes, but wealth and celebrity. I can't imagine too many whites that would get this sort of prefential treatment, unless they were as fabulously rich as Diana Ross. Riotously Funny Satire At Scrappleface Most of these are built around the theme of ACLU lawsuits and evolution, like this one, which actually would make sense if the ACLU filed it, and believed in their own peculiar notion of the First Amendment: (2004-12-22) -- The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today filed a class-action suit on behalf of monotheists seeking the removal of wetlands from government-owned property because they visually portray the 'primordial soup' where some believe life began and from which humanity evolved.This one about cell phones and potential health hazards also got me to grin: (2004-12-21) -- A new study by European Union (EU) researchers shows that the electromagnetic radiation from cellular phones can cause DNA mutations that reproduce, "opening the door to new vistas in human evolution," according to a spokesman for the cell phone industry.This last one, however, isn't funny at all, because I could actually see Microsoft doing this: (2004-12-19) -- Microsoft Corp. today released a new security patch for its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser which prevents users from accidentally or intentionally downloading the new free, open-source Firefox browser from The Mozilla Foundation. Thursday, December 23, 2004
Do You Know What "Floccinaucinihilipilification" Means? After you read this article from Scientific American about self-esteem studies, you will. The article asserts that the research done on self-esteem and behavior since California legislator John Vasconellos decided back in the 1980s that "self-esteem" was something that the government needed to enhance among students shows that trying artificially raise self-esteem not only doesn't improve kids--it may actually make them worse off. This does not surprise me. While they are careful not to overstate their case, one comment they make seems perfectly sensible to me, based on raising kids: It seems possible that high self-esteem brings about happiness, but no research has shown this outcome. The strong correlation between self-esteem and happiness is just that--a correlation. It is plausible that occupational, academic or interpersonal successes cause both happiness and high self-esteem and that corresponding failures cause both unhappiness and low self-esteem.Well, duh. Self-esteem, for most people, comes from being able to do something well. Public schools where we lived in California were pushing "self-esteem," rather than confronting the dangerous concept that kids will feel better about themselves if they are good at something. Think about for a minute: which of the following situations would make you feel good about yourself? The first strategy is (I kid you not) what Rohnert Park schools were doing. In every classroom, "John is special" day would be declared, and there was a focus on John, his family, what he does for fun, etc. Since this happened to every kid in the class during the school year, how special was it? The second strategy would involve making sure that John could do something really well: arithmetic; writing stories; drawing; making animals out of clay; basketball; dancing. Do you think that this might raise a kid's self-esteem a bit more than the pretense of "John is special" day? One of the difficulties with the second strategy is that while most kids have something that they are good at doing (maybe something not very useful), you have to actually put considerable time and effort into finding out what a kid is good at doing. Either a teacher has to do it or, horror of horrors, the parents need to find that out, and work on helping that kid to excel at that activity. It is so much easier for a school to just spend thousands of dollars on buying a "self-esteem" curriculum (as Rohnert Park schools did) and mechanically playing the game. When I was teaching Constitutional History a year or so ago, before class started, I was shooting the breeze with my students, and I expressed my concern about substituting false self-esteem for self-esteem based on being able to do something. One student told me that this was his biggest surprise, when he moved to Boise in sixth grade: in eastern Idaho, the primary emphasis was on learning how to do useful things. In Boise schools, he perceived that the primary emphasis in sixth grade was on faux self-esteem. Teach a child how to do something well, and self-esteem--real self-esteem, not a patently phony substitute--is a long ways towards being solved. Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Poverty, Wealth, and Human Needs I've received an email that suggested that I have "internalized leftist thinking" because of my concern about regressive taxation. Actually, I think of as leftists corrupting Christian thinking. One fundamental difference between libertarian thought and conservative thought is on the question of poverty. Libertarians assert that the government has no obligation to alleviate human suffering, including poverty--that this is properly a function only of charity. Conservatives often agree that the government is not terribly effective at dealing with poverty. Particular programs often make matters worse, not better--the Great Society being awash in examples of this. Conservatives agree that the best possible poverty program is a job, and relief efforts must be carefully designed to encourage self-reliance where possible. But that does not mean that the government has no obligation or legitimate sphere of activity. The origins of the Western world's notion of governmental obligation to care for weak, the poor, and the suffering coms from Jesus Christ, whose birthday we celebrate in a few days. Unsurprisingly, many of the major world religions share this notion of a duty to help the weaker members of the society. (UPDATE: Let me clarify that Jesus's message on this is strictly Jewish; when I say that Jesus is the origin of "the Western world's notion of governmental obligation," I mean that without Christianity, the Western world would not have adopted what is at heart a Jewish idea.) This does not mean that every person who wants something has an unlimited right to call upon the society for assistance. My sympathy is weak for the person who refuses to work; a society cannot long afford to support those who can work, but will not work; do this regularly, and the number of those who are lazy for some odd reason increases. However, these have usually not been the bulk of welfare caseloads in the United States. The problems of the dependent poor are usually: a mother with children whose husband/boyfriend/random sperm donor cannot be found; or a disabled person, especially if they were born that way, or developed this disability before they began to work. While the problem of the abandonded mother is often a refusal on the man's part to take responsibility for his actions, it is often a problem of a woman who refuse to take responsibility for her actions. If there were no children involved, the community could more easily tell the mother, "Tough." The children, however, didn't ask to be put into this situation. I don't know if poverty causes crime or not; I suspect that if it does, it is a far more indirect relationship than traditional liberal thinking would like to believe. But even if those children did not turn out to be problems for society years later, it wouldn't matter. We have an obligation as a society to provide at least certain basic necessities of life: food; shelter; clothing; medical care. We don't necessarily have to be spectacularly generous or luxurious on any of them, but no child should be starving, naked, or sleeping out of doors because of material want. This isn't the Third World; there is plenty to go around. As long as Britney Spears is feeding $179 meals to her dog, and movie stars are buying 15,000 square foot houses, I do not find the claim of "not enough wealth" convincing. We do need to provide some incentive to those on the public dole to make use of it only in necessity. The great struggles in Britain in the 1830s over the Poor Law reforms were because those responsible knew that poorhouses could not be excessively pleasant, or those who had available alternatives would never leave. Sometimes this is a bit ugly to watch, but there is a fine line required between being compassionate and being played for a sap. Sometimes, it is difficult to figure out whether someone is playing the system, or is mentally ill. My mother-in-law, in the last year before she died, seemed like she was being lazy, refusing to look for work so that she could sponge off my wife and me--but it became apparent in a few months that she was beginning to suffer a decline into some sort of presenile dementia. There are times that mild forms of mental illness can also be misread as laziness. No matter where you draw the line in making decisions, your bureaucracy is going to make mistakes. If you are too compassionate, you are going to let some frauds through, as has happened frequently with respect to mental illness disablity. If you are too tough, some people with mild problems are going to end up on the streets. With respect to tax structures, I am no fan of progressive income taxes, both because they seem unfair to those who work hard, and because they discourage people from working harder to make more money. A flat tax scheme would doubtless be simpler, and discourage some of the unproductive tax avoidance behavior that we see now. Still, it is hard for me to argue against all forms of progressive taxation when you see a person who is working--and working hard--to make $30,000 a year as a waitress, and paying 10% of that in taxes, while someone else is making $750,000 a year, and paying 50% of that in taxes. The person who makes $750,000 probably deserves to be well-paid--but they can live very comfortably live on 50% of $750,000 a year. The same is not true for the waitress trying to raise a couple of kids on 90% of $30,000 a year. What really gets my goat is the person who has $10,000,000, and is paying no income tax at all, and perhaps only a few thousand a year in property taxes, because they have bought municipal bonds, and are earning $500,000 a year, all of it exempt from federal and state income taxes. This person is certainly enjoying the benefits of governmental protection of their life and property, and yet paying nothing for it. Argue if you want for a flat tax--but that is also an argument against the wealthy person who pays essentially nothing for the maintenance of a government. Darkness I'm impressed how many emails I received about this. Yes, I know about light boxes--I bought one for my daughter several years ago, and six degrees further south in latitude. I suppose that I should do that for myself now. (We have had two days of sunlight--very nice!) Also, I received this observation by T. Allen Hoover, sometime candidate for state legislaure here in Idaho that I thought was very evocative: ahhh to have seasons... Someone Gave Me a Palm III That They Weren't Using I found myself saying, "This is really cool technology--but what do I need it for?" And then I found this: 2004 Terrorism Survival Bundle Palm OS Edition 3.0Oh yeah, in another 9/11, I'll definitely turn on my Palm Pilot and see what to do! Mixed Feelings About This I'm all for laissez faire, but I must confess that the prospect of making alcoholic beverages cheaper does not thrill me: SEATTLE — A battle is brewing between Costco (search) and Washington state's government over the price of wine and beer, and the fight is expected to be as long as the legs of a fine wine.The article points out the motivation for this complex system, which includes state ownership of all stores that sell hard liquor, is based on a desire to reduce alcohol consumption: Washington state's inflated pricing system was commonplace nationally after the fall of prohibition in the 1930s. The goal was to keep beer-makers from dumping their suds on saloons so cheaply that people would end up drinking too much. In other words, they hoped to hike the cost in order to limit consumption.Now, Costco could well be right. I suspect that alcohol demand is somewhat price inelastic; if you double the price of alcohol, it won't cut demand in half. My essentially zero consumption of alcohol would not change if it were free; it wouldn't change if someone paid me to drink it. (Well, okay, if they paid me very, very well to drink it, it might.) On the other hand, people with serious alcohol problems won't let rising price influence them very much until the price gets really outrageous; these are people who are prepared to destroy their families, their jobs, and themselves to have another drink. If beer gets to $50 a six-pack, I suspect that the problem drinkers would reduce their consumption substantially, but it would take pricing about that absurd to influence that crowd (and we would probably see some of the late Soviet Union's peculiar beverage alcohol substitutes being consumed instead). Still, there are people in the middle whose consumption may be somewhat influenced by price. My wife worked at a 7-11 back in the dim distant past. Young men would wander into the store, barely old enough to buy alcohol. They would lean against the counter (to make sure the counter didn't fall over), and slur out, "What's yer cheapest beer?" They weren't concerned with flavor--they just wanted the cheapest drunk that they could get. I suppose that this crowd might be slowed down a bit by higher prices, since there's usually a limit to how much you can get out of your ATM in one night. The real question on this suit, however, comes down to a simple question: what authority does the state have to regulate sales of alcohol? I was surprised in reading Michael Les Benedict, The Blessings of Liberty: A Concise History of the Constitution of the United States, at how much of the early litigation on federal authority to regulate interstate commerce--and its mirror image, state authority to regulate interstate commerce once the goods were sold at retail--was about alcohol. I guess that I should not be surprised. Attempts to regulate alcohol sales, both retail and at "tippling houses" are a recurring theme in the colonial and early Republic periods, because the problem drinkers have always been among us. Boom Town Boise An article about population changes in the United States has a closing sentence that really captures what we are seeing around here: Big population gains in other Western states such as Idaho, New Mexico and Utah may indicate that some of Colorado's appeal is fading, Lang says. The state had attracted many retirees and young professionals seeking refuge from congestion and high living costs. But major growth in the past decade has clogged highways and pushed housing prices higher. The Other Candidates Running For President No, I don't mean Ralph Nader. I clicked over to the blog of my latest (and only--hint, hint) advertiser, and I noticed that along with George Bush and John F. Kerry receiving electoral votes, so did another candidate, named John L. Kerry. Near Misses, Biblical Disasters, Etc. I started out reading this article about a recent near-miss--a rock about 16 feet in diameter that passed between Earth and the geosynchronous satellites (the ones at 22,300 miles) on December 19 (but not discovered until December 21). I kept following links, one of which was to this somewhat comforting story from 2002 that indicates that a recent review of data from the U.S. government's nuclear incident surveillance satellites indicates that Tunguska-sized collisions are probably once every thousand years, not once every hundred (as some had feared). The really fascinating report, however, was this one from 2001, that indicates that the sudden collapse of a number of Bronze Age civilizations around 2350 BC might be tied to a collision: Biblical stories, apocalyptic visions, ancient art and scientific data all seem to intersect at around 2350 B.C., when one or more catastrophic events wiped out several advanced societies in Europe, Asia and Africa.I don't know if anyone has done the ground survey--that part of the world having been a little busy of late--but it is rather interesting what other parts of the story tell: Archeological findings show that in the space of a few centuries, many of the first sophisticated civilizations disappeared. The Old Kingdom in Egypt fell into ruin. The Akkadian culture of Iraq, thought to be the world's first empire, collapsed. The settlements of ancient Israel, gone. Mesopotamia, Earth's original breadbasket, dust. Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Why Microsoft Hates Java If you aren't a computer geek, this article won't be of much interest. I'm working on a project right now (at home) in Java where I needed something very simple: a way to put a window, and ask the user to pick from one of several menu choices. There's a way to do this with the JOptionPane class: The only problem is that what appears in the window, unless you have quite a few choices, is just a single item. You have to pull down on an arrow to see the rest of the options available to you. I did a little hunting around, and I couldn't find any obvious way to change the behavior of JOptionPane.showInputDialog. But I did find on the Javasoft website some code that explained how to get around this problem. With some very minor tweaks, I now have some code (and no one charged me anything for it, which is doubtless why Microsoft hates Java) that lets me make this call instead: String[] choices = new String[]{"first", "second", "third"};Now the window is expanded to show all the available choices. Here's the code that you have to compile to get this: import java.awt.*;and this class: import java.awt.*;None of this exactly obvious--but there's a sense of "we're all in this together" that is so contrary to the Microsoft ethic of, "All competition will be destroyed, especially if they build something that works reliably." I Can't Take The Darkness Today is the winter solstice--the longest night and shortest day of the year. When I grew up in Southern California, at latitude 34 degrees north, I would read about how even before Christianity picked (quite arbitarily) December 25, this was the pagan holiday of Saturnalia, celebrating the lengthening of the days. I read about it then, but I didn't see why this was such a big deal. Now that I live at 43 degree north latitude, I see! I've never been affected by winter darkness before, but the last couple of winters have been hard on me. Even worse than just the long nights is that the days here in Boise are often cloudy--and so even the few hours of sunlight are seriously impaired. I can see why people that live in even more northern climates often develop serious drinking problems. I do wonder if it might be better to live somewhere a bit closer to the equator--perhaps a high elevation, to keep the summer temperatures under control. I don't think the East Coast or Gulf Coast would work--too humid. The California coast would be fine, but I'm not independently wealthy, and the only places that aren't outrageously expensive already are fiercely crowded. Monday, December 20, 2004
Cellular Phones & DNA Damage You know, you read enough articles like this, and it starts to make you think there might be a good case for not spending hours a week on one of these wonders: MUNICH/AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA in laboratory conditions, according to a new study majority-funded by the European Union, researchers said on Monday.I've bought a hands-free ear bud for my wife, and I've started to use mine more regularly. My son really needs one, but I'm having trouble persuading him that he should use it. First Cousin Marriage Professor Volokh points out that 19 states (many of them blue states, not red, in spite of the prejudices of certain Britons), allow first cousins to marry. I dug around a little, because I had a memory that the cousin marriage rules are at least partly from the Catholic Church. This article from the online Catholic Encyclopedia is almost unreadable (at least at the beginning), but does contain this interesting explanation of why the Church adopted and then modified Roman law on this matter: The Church was prompted by various reasons first to recognize the prohibitive legislation of the Roman State and then to extend the impediment of consanguinity beyond the limits of the civil legislation. The welfare of the social order, according to St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, XV, xvi) and St. Thomas (Suppl. Q. liii, a. 3), demanded the widest possible extension of friendship and love among all humankind, to which desirable aim the intermarriage of close blood-relations was opposed; this was especially true in the first half of the Middle Ages, when the best interests of society required the unification of the numerous tribes and peoples which had settled on the soil of the Roman Empire. By overthrowing the barriers between inimical families and races, ruinous internecine warfare was diminished and greater peace and harmony secured among the newly-converted Christians. In the moral order the prohibition of marriage between near relations served as a barrier against early corruption among young persons of either sex brought habitually into close intimacy with one another; it tended also to strengthen the natural feeling of respect for closely related persons (St. Thomas, II-II, Q. cliv, a. 9; St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, XV, x).Oddly enough, while acknowledging that there were concerns about genetic problems caused by excessively close breeding, this discussion makes it sound like this was something of an afterthought, compared to the problem of excessive clannishness. Nor does it appear that concern about close marriages and clannishness is particular to the early Middle Ages and Europe. As I mentioned last year, Iraq's clannishness is partly the result of widespread first cousin marriage. 44% of Americans Want Civil Liberties of Muslims Curtailed? You probably saw the news story. Orrin Kerr over at Volokh Conspiracy points out that the survey numbers don't actually show this--and suggests that the news reports about the survey are misleading. Whatever Happened to Free Speech? Some of these news stories disturb me: Bay Harbor Islands, Fla.: A local resident offered to donate a Christmas nativity scene to be displayed alongside a public Hanukkah exhibit and was at first turned down by town officials. She took the matter to federal court, and the judge sided with her, forcing the town to allow her to put up her display.If the problem was just an overzealous application of some notion of "separation of church and state" then neither display would have been accepted. If the accepted display was purely cultural or secular, I could understand that. But accepting a Hanukkah display and rejecting a nativity? Or perhaps the town officials think that Hannukah isn't religious. I don't know if this account is telling the whole story or not: Three thousand students at a public high school in Cincinnati, Ohio, have learned that one of their classmates is definitely not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The 18-year old was suspended after he passed out letters containing an evangelical message to fellow students at his school.More secular news sources seem to confirm it: Eric was suspended from Oak Hills High School for five days, because he distributed personal letters to 3,000 students telling them about the original Christmas gift, the love of Christ.And here: Oak Hills principal David Vannasdall says Bast's suspension isn't about the content of the letter but about breaking policy and disrupting class.Now, I understand about the importance of making school discipline. But I thought that we had resolved this little matter of allowed free speech at school in Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969). Of course, the Tinker case involved symbolic free speech--the wearing of black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. This involved actual freedom of the press--the exact sort of pamphleteering that the First Amendment's freedom of the press was supposed to protect. Or does everything change when it isn't one of the left's pet issues? Sunday, December 19, 2004
Bush Talking About Increasing Taxes on Rich People I mentioned a few days ago that one of the many problems with Social Security is that the taxes are regressive--it's a flat rate, until you reach a certain ceiling, then you stop paying Social Security taxes for the remainder of the year. There are arguments that you can make for this--that people that make $200,000 a year aren't likely to be reliant on Social Security when they retire--but it is still one of the great absurdities that for a minimum wage worker, the biggest deduction from his or her paycheck isn't federal or state income tax--it's the Social Security taxes. Well, the Bush Administration at least recognizes the unfairness of a regressive payroll tax: Bush administration officials on Sunday refused to rule out the possibility that high-income earners would be required to make larger payroll tax contributions as part of Social Security reform.I wonder how long it will take for the Democrats to decide that raising or eliminating the ceiling is "unfair"? Binge Drinking--Continued I'm never too sure whether to believe some of the lower quality British papers, but there's a reason I don't find this story impossible: A GIRL of 20 has become the youngest person in Britain to need a new liver because of binge-drinking.Part of why I don't find this story hard to believe is that a girl my daughter went to middle school with died at 16 of cirrhosis of the liver. My daughter's take on it was that this girl was a very, very heavy drinker in middle school, when they were acquainted--and being a very, very heavy drinker at Creekside Middle School in Rohnert Park was actually quite an accomplishment, since the competition for that "honor" was so strong. |
