MarkFord
“You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.” – Robert Anton Wilson
Slumgullion – believed to be derived from “slum” (an old word for “slime”) and “gullion” (“mud” or “cesspool”) – was used by miners during the California gold rush to describe the muddy slurry left behind after washing gold. By the turn of the 20th century, it was used to describe a weak, tasteless beverage or stew. From Roughing It by Mark Twain: “Then he poured for us a beverage he called ‘Slumgullion.’ And it is hard to think he was not inspired when he named it. It really pretended to be tea, but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and old bacon-rind in it to deceive….”
On May 27, I mentioned how much I enjoyed The Offer, the docudrama about the making of The Godfather. Here’s an interesting discussion with the producer, Al Ruddy, that fills in some of the details from his perspective…
Back to the Future With COVID
The CDC released new guidelines for COVID-19 on Aug. 11. And although we heard virtually nothing about it from the Biden administration or the mainstream press, what it did was astounding.
After two years of lockdowns and massive restrictions of personal liberty – justified by “following the science” – the CDC dropped all of the mandates that hobbled the economy and put it into a recession. (Not to mention further dividing an already divided population along political lines.)
Gone are the mask and vaccination-card mandates. They are no longer required in retail businesses, public buildings, museums, arenas, movie theaters, airlines, or public transportation of any kind. Gone, too, are the many requirements for social distancing. And most astounding of all, the CDC is no longer requiring the non-vaccinated to quarantine for five days, even if they have been “in close contact with an infected person,” so long as they haven’t tested positive or shown symptoms.
In short, the CDC’s new position is that COVID-19 should be treated like we have traditionally treated all other common viruses – by allowing for individual discretion rather than nationwide, economically damaging, non-legal bureaucratic mandates that never truly followed the science.
When I was writing about COVID two years ago, I noted how politically charged this issue had become. And I predicted that the restrictions would continue so long as the Democrats stayed in power or until they, and those that feared the virus, realized that those measures don’t work – until they realized that the virus was a serious threat to only a small percentage of the population.
Because the CDC decided to protect the rest of the population that didn’t need protection by imposing massive business shutdowns may have reduced the GDP by as much as a trillion dollars, while, at the same time, restricting personal liberty through the implementation of unprecedented extra-Congressional (i.e., not legally legislated) restrictions on personal liberty. (Arguably the primary political/social/ethical principle upon which our country was founded.)
Although it was never reported by either the CDC or the mainstream press, the data re mortality are now quite substantial. If one corrects for the idiotic CDC stipulation that dying “with” COVID-19 is equal to dying “from” COVID-19, it’s become clear that there was no significant reduction in either cases or deaths between the states and countries that imposed the strictest mandates and those that had the least stringent. Click here to learn more.
87,000 New IRS Agents… but Not to Worry!
The so-called Inflation Reduction Act (see the Aug. 9 issue) has $80 billion earmarked for the IRS. The lion’s share of that money will go for the salaries of 87,000 new agents whose primary job will be to conduct more audits and enforce their claims.
And by “enforce,” they mean it. The job, as advertised by the IRS, requires applicants for the job to be prepared to “carry firearms and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”
Not to worry, the Biden administration says. Companies and individuals that earn less than $400,000 a year won’t be affected. Those 87,000 new IRS employees will be working full-time to get at big businesses and billionaires that “aren’t paying their fair share of taxes.”
If that’s the case, I’m wondering… Why do they need 87,000 agents? Depending on your source (Forbes Magazine or The New York Times, there are 735 to 935 billionaires in the US. Add that to the roughly 500 businesses that make a billion or more and you have approximately 1,500 targets for these new agents. Let’s see… 87,000 divided by 1,500. That works out to around 60 agents dedicated to each billionaire company or person!
Hmm. I’ve been going through a several-year audit myself. And though I’m not nearly a billionaire, I do file a long-form tax return. And the IRS has done a fine job so far, as near as I can tell, with just a single agent assigned to my case.
As to the argument that these billionaires aren’t paying their fair share of taxes, Joel Bowman, writing in Bonner Private Research, has this to say:
Never mind that Elon Musk, to take the most conspicuous example, cut the IRS an $11 billion check last year, the most paid by any single citizen in American history and, in itself, almost enough to fund the entire IRS… and never mind that, like him or not, love or hate his companies, agree or disagree with his politics, Mr. Musk nevertheless employs 110,000 people across his various businesses, each of whom (presumably) pays their own taxes.
Let’s go instead with Elizabeth Warren’s assessment of the situation and assume Musk is a “freeloader” and needs to “pay his fair share.” And let’s go ahead and assume his “fair share” is… 100%. Everything he owns.
And let’s say that goes for ALL America’s billionaires. (After all, Bernie Sanders said they “shouldn’t exist.” Who are we to argue with The Bern?)
So you confiscate 100% of the billionaire class’s wealth. At $4.7 trillion, you’d have enough money to cover the nation’s bar tab for… less than one fiscal year!
No. Taxing billionaires and billion-dollar companies is not going to balance the books. If history has anything to tell us about it, the effect will be lower relative incomes for working- and middle-class Americans and more unemployment. To pay for the Inflation Reduction Act (and the $6+ trillion the government has borrowed in the last several years), they will have to increase taxes on all the measly millionaires and the companies that are making measly millions, resulting in a wider scourge of lower relative wages, higher unemployment, and ultimately higher inflation.
That’s how it looks from here. Let me know what you think.
UCLA Creates Database to “Track Attacks on Critical Race Theory”
In an exciting step forward for identity politics, and by reinventing rationality, the UCLA law school has initiated a program to track down and prosecute individuals and groups that oppose the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools across the country.
In what I’m sure they perceive as a noble venture, they are funding an effort to support the Justice Department’s war against a threat that they claim is greater than the threat posed by the folks that brought us 9/11.
As of Aug. 2, their new database has screened nearly 24,000 media articles and identified “479 instances of anti-CRT activity since August 2021.” Not surprisingly, it showed that this activity is “much more pervasive and extensive than generally reported.”
Click here for details.
The Personalities You Need to Grow Your Business
Some years ago, in an attempt to figure out how to deal with the challenges being faced by our fast-growing company, I developed a theory that has been helpful to me ever since. The theory: Two types of leadership skills are essential for success.
It began with the observation that growing a business requires a commitment to constant change and innovation and a willingness to test new ideas. So, the sort of person a business needs in order to stimulate growth must have a high level of interest in growth and a low level of sensitivity to the confusion and chaos it creates. I called that type of person a “grower.”
Successful entrepreneurs are growers. That’s why they have a reputation for being aggressive and pushy. They believe their job is the most important one in the company. They don’t want to be hampered by people telling them all the reasons their ideas will upset the status quo, creating messes that will have to be cleaned up. “Someone else can do that,” they think.
And they are right.
The kind of people that are perfect for the clean-up job are very different from growers. I call them “tenders.” They don’t like change. They are painfully aware of the problems it causes. But despite their aversion to disruption, they are very good at dealing with it. In response to change, tenders calm the troops and figure out ways to make the transitions as smooth as possible. As a result, the business is able to achieve growth without falling apart.
My recipe for a functioning business that wants to grow is to surround each grower with several tenders. The stronger the grower, the more tenders the business needs.
I came across an interview with research psychologist Gary Klein recently that ties in with my ideas. He takes a different approach than I took because he seems to believe that creating growth in business is a matter of training managers to see new ideas as worthy things, rather than finding managers that instinctively believe that.
“To be a good manager,” he says, “you want things to run smoothly. And insights are not ways of running smoothly. Insights are disorganizing and disruptive. And so, that’s a major reason that organizations, without even intending to, block the insights that come their way.”
He’s wrong in believing you can train tenders to promote growth. But his analysis of what is wrong with the way most businesses manage growth is exactly right.
You can watch the interview here. (Warning: His manner of expression is dry and academic. But his analysis is good.)
A New Take on “Who’s on First?”
COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America.
ABBOTT: Good subject. It’s 3.6%.
COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?
ABBOTT: No, that’s 23%.
COSTELLO: You just said 3.6%.
ABBOTT: 3.6% unemployed.
COSTELLO: Right. 3.6% out of work.
ABBOTT: No, that’s 23%.
COSTELLO: Okay, so it’s 23% unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, that’s 3.6%.
COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 3.6% or 23%?
ABBOTT: 3.6% are unemployed. 23% are out of work.
COSTELLO: If you are out of work, you are unemployed.
ABBOTT: You can’t count the “out of work” as unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.
COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!!!
ABBOTT: No, you miss the point.
COSTELLO: What point?
ABBOTT: Someone who doesn’t look for work can’t be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn’t be fair.
COSTELLO: To whom?
ABBOTT: The unemployed.
COSTELLO: But ALL of them are out of work.
ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work. Those who are out of work gave up looking. And if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.
COSTELLO: So if you’re off the unemployment rolls, that would count as less unemployment?
ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!
COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don’t look for work?
ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That’s how it gets to 3.6%. Otherwise it would be 23%.
COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means there are two ways to bring down the unemployment number?
ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.
COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?
ABBOTT: Correct.
COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?
ABBOTT: Bingo.
COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to have people stop looking for work.
Art Is About Beauty – Sometimes in More Ways Than One
When I first read that Anna Weyant, a 27-year-old artist represented by the influential Gagosian Gallery, had sold a painting for $1.6 million, I was eager to know more about her. I first looked at her work. And, sure enough, her paintings are technically accomplished and… well, beautiful. But I’d never heard of anyone that young getting that kind of money. Ever. So I did a bit more research and discovered that, prior to signing with Gagosian just three years ago, her paintings were selling for just hundreds or thousands.
That was an even greater anomaly. Until I saw this photo and read about her relationship with the gallery. What was her secret? Find out here.
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” – Oscar Wilde
This little clip sent in by JS – made nearly 30 years ago – reminds me of someone. But I can’t figure out who…
China Lockdown: A Conspiracy Theory?
China has ordered an indefinite lockdown of the city of Yiwu, the world’s largest wholesale shipping hub. The reason: an “outbreak” of COVID-19. Between Aug. 2 and 9, 135 cases were reported. The government called that serious.
But hold on… These were cases of the Omicron variant, the much-less-lethal variant that nobody in the west much cares about anymore. And that’s 135 cases out of a population of 1.8 million.
This will result in more disruptions to global trade and supply chains – including those affecting the US. And for what? Certainly not to prevent the spread of a virus that we know cannot be prevented and, in its current emanation, is not particularly lethal. So, why? Am I a conspiracy nut or could this be the first of the promised retaliations promised by the CCP after Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan?
Click here for more about the lockdown.
Quick, Easy, and Scary
Amazon is rolling out its 2020 “one palm” scanner technology at 65 Whole Foods stores in California. It will, the company says, make paying for goods faster and easier. It works like this: Users visit a kiosk or a point-of-sale station at participating locations to link their palm and payment card to the service. Then all they have to do during checkout is hover their hand over a scanner to complete the transaction.
Add this to retina recognition and fingerprint technology (widely used today at airports) and the eventual implementation of a digital dollar, and you have near-perfect state-controlled surveillance on every US resident.
Click here for the latest on this new technology.