dispatches from TJICistan

The Atlantic passes along a graph pf what our insane federal spending looks like:

I’ve talked about my $0.8 trillion budget before, but here’s a rough visual representation:

A recap of how we cut spending and get rid of long term obligations

The total TJIC budget is $805 billion. I note that this keeps the essential functions of a state – a military, care of veterans, the courts, the national parks, federal marshals, border patrol, coast guard, mint, the presidency, statistics and censuses, diplomacy, etc. all fully funded.

In the first year, the social security “obligation” would be discharged by creating for everyone over the age of 65 to an annuity, and anyone between 40 and 65 a funded 401k plan. Funding would come from revenues raised by auctioning off radio spectrum, now-unnecessary office buildings, equipment, BLM land, etc.

To hand-wave some numbers: assume that 20 years of current benefits spending is sufficient to fund annuities that would pay the same level of benefits in perpetuity (the actual math is more complicated, because according to the actuary tables many recipients are going to die tomorrow, and many more have decades to live, but this is hand-waving, so live with it).

$580 billion in 1 year expenses times 20 years is approximately $10 trillion. The BLM holds 262 million acres. At $1k each, that’s half of the money right there. Sell of 50% of the federally owned offices and real-estate in DC, Manhattan, Boston, Las Vegas, and San Francisco, and we’ve made another 10 billion or more. Sell off the strategic helium reserve for another six bucks and 12 cents, etc., and pretty soon, we’re fully funded.

Transition over, we now need to come up with $805 billion / year.

I’d scrap the individual income tax, the corporate income tax, FICA, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, and customs…which is to say, absolutely all current tax programs.

I’d replace this with a head tax, with an optional higher tier: everyone pays $2k. Those who want to brag pay either $5k or $50k. A public service campaign involving celebrities and sports heros broadcasts the message that if every citizen in the US payed $2k/year, we’d collect $600 billion/year.

To close the gap, we grant citizenship to 400,000 individuals who promise to pay at the $50k/year tier. As Joshua pointed out, we’d end up with a fair number of bankers from Singapore, China, and Russia.

Or, perhaps, we sell off 5 times as many slots to folks willing to pay at the a $10k/year level.

Are there 2 million in the Indian middle class who might want to live here?

Voila. Social Security solved. Unconstitutional programs ended. Progressive taxes killed. Free trade established. Farmer welfare ended. The budget cut by 70%. The middle class expanded.

…all done in the context of the current American system.

The other day NZC and I decided that, instead of going out for dinner on Guy’s Night, we’d buy some steaks and get all medieval 500 ° cast iron on them.

Whole Foods, while infested by loathsome yuppy scum, as usual, also failed us by having no T-bones of less than 2 lbs in size.

So we go them.

I picked first and got away with a 2.1 lb monster.

NZC took the 2.5 lb behemoth.

We did them up, and they were awesome. NZC carved off about 0.5 lbs for his daughter Jenny (who, inexplicably, talked her way into Guy’s Night). Take off another 0.5 lbs for bone, and NZC polished off … OM*G … 1.5 lbs of steak at a single sitting. Plus asparagus. Plus other sides.

Conversation at the time:

TJIC: NZC, you’ve got half a cow in you!

NZC: …and in 10 minutes, I’m going to have half an agave in me too!

I chowed down – I probably put away 0.8 lbs or so of steak – but still had 8 oz left over.

For breakfast, I always have 4 eggs. No carbs, about 300 calories. A good way to start the day.

Today, I was out of eggs.

…and there, in the fridge, was half a lb of steak.

Frizzled that bad boy up in a skillet.

I’m totally ready to be strapped into a Mercury or Gemnin capsule and be blasted into space.

Or, if DF can be reached to give me a ration of rum, I’m alternately ready to single-handledly re-establish the British Empire.

Onward!

Background: I’ve got one friend who, for some reason that my brain has swapped out (and will probably never swap in), has just one testicle.

Also, friend X lives in a household comprised of:

• himself
• his girlfriend
• his (formerly) male dog
• his newborn son

conversation monologue at the Res:

TJIC: X has one nut, and has one kid … Nick has two nuts, and has two kids …oh, crap … I’m not really sure that I’m up for having four kids.

Talking to X about the conversation later:

TJIC: repeats above story

X: LOL! … by the way, it occurred to me the other day that my kid has more nuts than everyone else in the house put together!

Let me go on the record as saying – as much as I think that Barney Frank and other free spending Democrats caused more than their fair share, over the last 20 years, of this mess – this recession was going to hit no matter who won the presidency in ‘08.

Tactically, I’m just thrilled that a Democratic president and congress was in place when it came time to pay the piper. They will get a large chunk of the blame, and even after the MSM does its damnedest to spin it, a lot of it will still stick to them.

If McCain (just another socialist, but one bearing the “Republican” label) had been president, and/or a Republican congress had been in place, the MSM would have worked day and night to pin 100% of the blame on that single election.

This way, at least there’s a small chance that the limited government / libertarian wing of the Republican party can emerge untarred and begin the massive government scale down that we need.

OK, that was your moment of fairness.

We now return to our regularly scheduled screeds.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editor…

Do colleges redline Asian-Americans?

The answer, of course, is “heck, yes” – American higher education is the most racist institution in the country outside of – perhaps – the KKK.

There are two effects going on:

First, modern blue-state left-wing intelligentsia is the most elitist, IQ-worshipping, meritocratic cultural subgroup in modern society … yet they hate to think of themselves in these terms, so they’re always looking for ways to play against type, so as to demonstrate that they don’t really believe in IQ, the genetic component of intelligence, etc., etc., etc. (They do, of course – check out the terms they use to disparage their political enemies).

Second, leftists tend to be – in the physical arena – craven cowards who detest the thought of violence, combat, splinters, etc. (as one example among a multitude, check out Douglas Hofsteader’s jihad against the horribly manly sport of boxing … I forget which one of his collections it’s in, but you can find it).

And, if there isn’t a Muslim getting upset about an academic course that mentions that Muhammad was a pederast, there’s always the 30 year old memory of black on campus violence to cause one to wet one’s pants.

(details)

Put these two together, and a bed wetting leftist can both cower before the angry black demographic, and demonstrate his man-of-the-people-we-don’t-care-about-IQ bonifides at the same time: all he’s got to do is rig the admissions process to penalize “over achieving, bookish, un-well-rounded big nosed, money-grubbing [ oops! - off by 30 years! ] nerds” and benefit under-prepared, less intelligent, less culturally-acclimated-to-academia demographic, and he nails two birds with one stone.

If I married an Asian woman, or adopted Asian kids, I’d be torn – would I name them “Tyrone” and “Shaniqua” so that they could get into Harvard even if they got mediocre SAT scores? … or should I give them Asian names, so as to give them a first-person demonstration of the corruptness of American higher ed?

Actually, it’s a moot point – last I checked, all the Ivy League schools still insist on an in-person interview, so that they can accurately gather necessary information.

NZC and I like to refer to a handful of items that one encounters in a typical week via military-style nomenclature.

e.g. “desk, office, metal, gray”.

Looking at the shop picture I posted last night of the recycled metal chest-of-drawers, I noticed that the grey/beige hulk was sitting in front of two other grey/beige hulks – the sets of lockers that I bought a while back off of eBay or Craiglist, or wherever.

…which reminded me of the two card catalogs, also from eBay.

…which made me realize that a very large percent of the storage in my shop is in the form of discarded office/industrial shelving / drawers.

If I had tried to make a set of Chinese apothecary drawers or a tool chest with equivalent storage capacity, I’d have to make 128 drawers (to replace the card catalogs) and another 30 or so for the newer drawers, and another 30 beyond that for the lockers.

There’d be something like 1,200 dovetails there, and probably $2 – $4k worth of wood.

And, it is indisputable that I’d have a better looking shop, and I’d have a lot more practice cutting dovetails.

…but for a guy who gets about 10 hours/week in the shop, and – while not uninterested in cabinetmaking skills – is interested in home repair and woodturning above cabinetmaking, it seems that hunting for desk, office, metal, gray – and similar – is the way to go.

Also, it’s a ton cheaper than option 3: buy a few of those huge circa 8 ‘ long Snapon toolchests…for the price of a nice new house in middle America.

http://www.thebigmoney.com/features/toda…

The days when Obama could solicit a record $89 million in campaign funds from the financial industry are over, the New York Times reports. After the White House’s months of harsh rhetoric and attempts to tighten regulation, even Wall Street’s big Democratic donors are turning on him. His proposals, especially the Volcker rule and the “financial responsibility tax” on bigger banks, are angering many in the industry.

Suckers.

It was clear to some of us that Obama was a business-hating socialist before the election.

But you fools fueled your own nemesis.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

Nobody wins in Cambridge mayoral impasse

CAMBRIDGE – More than three months have passed since November’s election, but Cambridge is still without a mayor.

The nine-member City Council, which elects the mayor from within its ranks, has voted five times and can’t seem to decide among three candidates jockeying for the position.

Nobody wins?

Sounds to me like the voters are doing pretty well!

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

Governor Deval Patrick and Senate President Therese Murray plan to propose this week several ways to improve the Bay State’s business climate, saying they need to be more aggressive in steering the region out of its economic malaise.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that none of these will include “cutting the tax rates” and “cutting regulation”…

Murray said she will seek to streamline more than 30 agencies that promote economic development and create regional one-stop centers where all information about state programs and services will be available.

There are “30 agencies that promote economic development” ?!?!?

There are “state programs” ?

And “services” ?

WT* !?!?

What free market experience has Deval Patrick had?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deval_Patri…

In 1997, Patrick returned to Boston to join the firm Day, Berry & Howard, and was appointed by the federal district court to serve as Chairman of Texaco’s Equality and Fairness Task Force to oversee implementation of the terms of a race discrimination settlement

Answer: Almost none: he’s worked in two very large firms with lots of political connections.

What free market experience has Therese Murray had?

http://www.mass.gov/legis/member/t_m0.ht…

PROFESSION: Legislator.

Answer: None.

These people are nothing but jokes.

Asking them to design programs to better the business climate is about like asking me to design menstrual pads – I don’t understand the sector, I don’t understand the features, I don’t understand the problems, and there’s no way that the effects of my work will ever come back to make an impact on me.

Charlie is a local home schooled kid that I know. He’s around 11 or so, and he’s into comics, so he’s alright in my book.

…and his mom is a libertarian.

…and his dad is an anarchocapitalist (DF comment when he heard this: there are three of us in this town? You have got to be shitting me!)

So, anyway, when his mom asked if she could pay me to give Charlie shop lessons, I of course answered “Sure, payment in either .223 or specie works for me”.

No, seriously, I said “send him over, and let’s not talk money”.

Jenny has been my shop buddy for some time.

Today she and Charlie both ended up in the workshop at the same time, which worked out well, because when any one kid is in the shop, you can leave them alone for a few minutes at a time, but you can’t really get much of your own work done, and to even attempt it is to just court frustration. With two kids, you can shuttle evenly back and forth and keep them both occupied.

Today Charlie finished up a small balloon-powered boat that we’d started on last time, and then moved on to making a small display case for his iPod. He wanted a rectangular through mortise for the iPod cord, so we drilled out some overlapping holes and then I let him use a small file to clean it up.

Jenny worked on her first bowl.

and

Yesterday and this morning, before the kids arrived, I cobbled together out of some MDF scraps a small plinth with casters to support a sheet metal chest of drawers. Each drawer is a bit larger than 8.5 x 11, and was used as recently as the mid 1990s to hold inter-office mail for some public school teachers.

My mom grabbed the cabinet for her classroom when the administration threw it away, and then I grabbed it from her when she retired and emptied out her classroom. I spent a few hours wielding a heat gun and Goo Gone to clean all the stickers and 30 year old cellophane residue off.

The cabinet has a hollow base, and the plinth has blocks that tuck up inside the hollow base and prevent the cabinet from moving even a single mm.

The plinth is designed so that it rolls over the base of the floor-standing drill press. so that it occupies zero additional square feet of floor space … yet can be rolled out of the way in a moment if I need to drop the drill press table.

I cut and installed non-slip shelf liner in the top few drawers, then sorted my Sherline accessories into them and labelled them.

I’ve got some small combined wood / metal turning artsy-fartsy projects that I want to work on, and the Atlas is a bit over powered and under precisioned for my purposes.

Shop class is once per week (Sunday afternoons) so I may have more updates going forward.

Ann Althouse has a medium length (and quite interesting) post on how Sarah Palin has deftly maneuvered and (successfully) muscled for rank in the emerging modern small-government movements.

It concludes:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/02/sar…

What I love about all this is the extreme contrast to the way Palin was mocked when she resigned as Governor of Alaska. I, myself, did not think it was stupid, because I pictured her doing something like what she is actually doing, but I certainly remember the derision. Her political career was over. She was “toast.”

In the original the word “toast” is a hyperlink. I looked at it and mentally bet myself 10:1 that it was a link to a post from our favorite 14 year old girl.

I was right.

Pfft.

For a while I wondered why the Atlantic kept the hyper-excitable, perpetually-menstrual Sullivan on the payroll.

Then I realized: everyone loves a train wreck.

Reader Steve R. writes in with this:

http://rawstory.com/2010/02/south-caroli…

Five-dollar registration fee for persons planning to overthrow US government

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina’s Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state’s “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” passed last year and now officially on the books, states that “every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States … shall register with the Secretary of State.”

There’s even a $5 filing fee.

By “subversive organization,” the law means “every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State.”

I crap you not: I am going to fill out this form, cut a $5 check, and mail it in.

I’ll keep you updated.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/…

OSLO – Arni Hole remembers the shock wave that went through Norway’s business community in 2002 when the country’s trade and industry minister, Ansgar Gabrielsen, proposed a law requiring that 40 percent of all company board members be women…

But as the dust has settled, researchers are grappling with some frustrating facts…

Early evidence from a little-noticed study by the University of Michigan suggests that the immediate effect has been negative on [ improving the professionalism of the boards or enhancing corporate performance ].

Color me shocked.

Jeez, if only someone had told us, say, 15 years ago that politically correct boards are a stupid, ill-advised way to compete.

A column in the NYT talked about the phenomena of people watching accident videos on youtube. Specifically, ice skating accidents.

And provided links.

Once there, you’re presented with a sidebar of related ice skating accident videos.

I learned something.

When you type “motorcycle accidents” into the search bar, you’re presented with type-ahead suggestions.

The first is “motorcycle accidents fatal”.

The second is “motorcycle accidents funny”.

This is somewhat disturbing to me.

Sometimes you’re in a bookstore and see a Cosmopolitan magazine with an article title on the cover blaring “Five Ways to Touch a Naked Man”.

And you think “I could really hassle my male friend with this … but that would be what the kids call ‘homophobic’”.

My advice: ruthlessly suppress that instinct, and go for the gusto!

DF: Did you see Obama’s speech in New Hampshire?

TJIC: No, I missed it.

DF: When he was reading off of the teleprompters he was stilted and boring – and when he went off script, he was incoherent and babbling.

TJIC: Wow. So his famous speaking skills are gone. Well, he was elected for two reasons – is he at least still black?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CoyoteBlo…

Thirty seconds spent perusing Heavy Ink founder Travis Corcoran’s blog should have convinced them this would not end well.

Perhaps I should subtitle my blog “Musing of an Irish gentleman“.

TJIC: Greetings abhumans!

NZC: There are not abhumans here, just ab-me.

TJIC: What’s the lunch plan?

NZC: The women folk aren’t here and there’s a message on the machine – E wants to go to brunch at Johnn D’s.

TJIC: Ugggh – that place is a magnet for pretentious 24 year old douchebag hipsters.

NZC: Hey! I like Johnny D’s

TJIC: Of course you do – you fit the demographic perfectly!

NZC: You know what I don’t like? You!

TJIC: but then again who does ?

NZC: Not many, and fewer ever day.

TJIC: That’s not true! There are no positive integers less than zero.

NZC: How can I argue with that?

TJIC: I’m sure you’ll find a way.

NZC: I want to find a way, because I hate you.

TJIC: Pfft! I’m going to go practice guitar now. Call me when something useful has emerged from the chaos.

Apparently the seat of the national government is snowed in and everone is trapped in their houses.

I predict that with government officials unable to govern and convene press conferences, nationwide the economy will be stable and mass layoffs will be put on hold.

…at least until the plows get out there and let the politicians and bureaucrats back into their offices.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

US Representative Patrick Kennedy – who faces a Republican challenger and slipping popularity, according to a new poll – threw the Kennedys’ first stone at newly elected US Senator Scott Brown, calling his candidacy “a joke.”

It’s good to see that the Kennedys haven’t changed.