lexicography.com

If you are my age you probably sent your parents to the hereafter.

My Mom lived a full life into advanced years. When things started to go bad, she was 84 or more, she looked me in the eye after one bad experience and said, “I thought I was going to die, I thought ’so soon.’ ”

Goethe in Dr. Faustus could not be so expressive. Whenever it comes, it will be “so soon”. No measure of life will be enough. My 84 year old mother saying “so soon” made me wonder what those exiting years earlier feel. What would I feel if it were tomorrow? It is always and forever “so soon”.

There are established mass media ways of distributing content; network TV, cable TV, newspapers, radio, book publishing. Most of it is highly profitable. Lots of it is accompanied by power - a TV producer sets the agenda and colors the reportage, the New York Times tells millions of influential people what the correct opinion is, TV is the only source of news for countless other millions, mass media is a one way communication device where a cabal of like thinking people pretty much have the megaphone.

Then there is the wall.

Over the wall are things like Instapundit, You tube, google, lexicography. The first thing I noticed about over the wall is that the big money and big influence are not there. Ads on popular web pages do not cost as much as ads on the Super-bowel. In the mass media you pretty much have to sit through the ads to get the content. Over the wall, ads are much more easily avoided. That means the compensation for bring a media person becomes less as the add is less required, the advertising revenue is less rich, the media personage is less a super star and less compensated, the whole order that we are used to is turned on end.

Powerful interests in the past have watched as their power and compensation declined. This is in effect with respect to the mass media today. More and more eyes are getting their content “over the wall” and the compensation to the content providers is thin. The influence of the content provider is thin also, maybe so thinned out as to equal the quality of their ideas.

Back on the declining side of the wall are all the old legacy media. They remember their out sized influence and out sized money - all an accident of technology. For a long time technology made the one speaks to everyone model work and the high capital/regulation cost of being the one talking limited it to elites.

The money is gone, the exclusivity is gone and the technological advantage for the few is gone.

I slobbered over some 360’s. Am I pathetic or what?

OK, The 430 model is going up up up in value. I never saw anything like this but I am only watching these cars for the last six months. Someone said that the near rich will never displace the rich in their accommodations but may make the rich pay lots more to maintain their relative position. Lots of global liquidity leads to people paying stupendous prices for 430’s (with the emphasis on the stup[id].

I am not going to put a quarter million into a car then park it in the triplex parking lot.

The 360 is fine for me. There are a few on the market but I can;t quite decode if they are serious sellers or people filling in the dry zone hoping to sell the unsellable. I plan to wait until spring as I am still learning.

ABSENTEE, n.

A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction.

The Republicans, after being chastised by the voters about as strongly as voters are able to chastise, are not even going to change their leadership

Clearly, the vote is much too blunt an instrument to influence government in even slight ways.

Here’s an idea. How about massive civil disobedience.

How about if we all calculate our taxes perfectly, fill in every line and multiply every number. Then we cut a check to the Treasury for the exact correct amount and send it in with a blank signed tax form. Let them figure out that it is right on their own. Wait. Most people do not send in a tax check, they file a tax form to get a refund - some of their money back. You’ll never get a refund sending in a blank form. Oh well. They surely set this up in a way hard to wreck. You would have to claim excessive exemptions to get withholding below liability and risk fines for under withholding to even try this one.

Since they generally over withold, how about sending in a blank tax form saying “I donate any excess withholding to the Treasury to reduce the national debt”? Personally painful? Yes. Still pretty effective. Hundreds of millions of tax returns with no accounting of capital gains, pension withdraw ls, gifts, depreciation, interest deductions. The possibility of the IRS doing anything about the total lack of self reporting - zero.

They get to keep all the over witholding from wages, they are blind about interest, capital gains, gifts, depreciation, everything else. You may say fidelity sends a form when I sell a stock. Pshaw, if you do not enter the numbers from that form into your tax return IRS random sampling might catch you and the fear of that may make you report on yourself. If two hundred million Americans simply did not bookkeep for the IRS about capital gains, the IRS could never even begin to do it for themselves.

Now I don’t know if failing to fill out your tax return is a crime. If it is, obviously anyone doing that will be in trouble. I don’t know if actually paying your accurate tax burden without showing the work would save you from jail. So this is not advice. It is more an exercise in thought. It is harder to control you than you think if you do not willingly lend a hand.

I believe the Democrat majority in both houses is different today than in the past for this reason: today, no matter what legislation is passed by progressives, the MSM gives it a pass. Campaign Finance Reform demonstrated that pretty clearly.

The MSM is perfectly on board with a command and control organization of America. They simply do not see anything wrong with it, particularly when those in command share their mindset.

If most conservative and libertarian bloggers can see that this is a temporary Democrat interlude, that the Country is still shifting right, that the Democrat Party had to run candidates who on the surface did not support Democrat ideology, that voters turned down windfall profits taxes and prohibited affirmative action, well, then the Democrat leadership understands it also.

What if some major problem arises during the next two years? Suppose housing implodes. Banks having to write off bad loans and raise capital reserves will stop lending. The fed may lower interest rates to zero but if banks cannot write loans there will be no credit to fuel any more bubbles. The Dems could even pass legislation that makes the problem worse; anti-foreclosure laws, prop up insolvent banks, the kind of stuff Japan did. As the problems increase more dramatic and more extreme legislation will be called for by the MSM. Condo projects will stop and sit unfinished in downtowns across the country, whole new developments will become ghost towns because of the misapplication of resources to housing during the bubble. Many illegal aliens who worked in construction will turn to petty crime to survive. Perhaps there will be a terrorist attack. People who counted on their homes to fund their retirement will find out that they have nothing. Hedge funds and even some chartered banks will require bailouts when Fanny securities default.

Then, when people are truly afraid, when millions in equity disappeared, when recession has taken hold, the Democratic Congress will send one after another socialist measure to “W”. Each plausibly a solution to the great hunger. Each with some appeal to underwater homeowners or over leveraged speculators.

Each will be vetoed by “W”; and the New York Times will more stridently proclaim that the do nothing President is prolonging our suffering. A new socialist bill, a veto, and new headlines that the President wants to do nothing to get us out of this mess.

Then the election of 2008.