Whose Hand Is That In My Pocket?

 The Electronic Freedom Foundation offers a time line of changes to Facebook's privacy policies. Slippery slopes ain't in it. More of an avalanche.
Terms of subtly, or not so, dubious import are explicated in the Facebook to English guide.
Should a reading of these fill you with grave doubts similar to those I experience, there is a handy guide to opt out.
The real shame is the lack of a true cancellation. Hanging about in deactivated limbo is not equivalent.
--ml

What Krugman Wrote

An old friend from high school was commenting on his career in Economics which spanned NGOs, government and currently a major bank on Wall street.

"And the money is just stupid."

--ml

Blogaversary

Half a decade. Not many regulars, maybe, but about 18,000 seekers found ideas about beans and boiling ham in beer, absurd decisions, the history of the nail, hard boiling eggs, heard a Bela Lugosi story, or read a series on the Bed of Procrustes, and various other Dum Luks' topics interconnected only in what I (laughingly) call my brain before grazing on in the fields between the tubes.
Just a pokey little corner blog. But mine own. I'll keep it.
--ml

I Did It Not For Myself, But For You

Brenda Rosser at Econospeak begins a series which exhumes the roots of the current global financial crisis. Amply sourced and throughly footnoted as it is, the actual prose is pellucid. It is tempting to call the perps pirates! as is my wont. Yet there is a distinct glimmer in events of earnest but flawed persons hoping to ride a whirlwind to the aid and benefit of, at least, their masters, but also as many others nearby as possible. The worst flaw, perhaps, was a compulsion to justify an action as beneficial to those damaged by it.

Statecraft's most carefully tended tool is dissembly.

--ml

Half Don't Pay?

Various noise machines are trumpeting that the median income ($50,000) and below families don't pay any income taxes.  This proves that the wealthy are bearing all us free loaders on their back.
Uhm....
Well. Not pre-xactily.

Median Income: $50,000

Personal exemptions for 4 people

(Ma, Pa and 2 kids):   $3650 x 4 = $14,600

Standard deduction: (Married filing jointly) $11,400

Taxable Income : $24,000

Tax on $24k 

(from 2009 Tax Tables): = $2,769

Better than $200 a month. Not in the CEO league, maybe, but not nothing either.

To avoid taxes the taxable income would have to be less than $5. Per year.
[A living wage!]
And of course we aren't talking about the other taxes we pay. No. That would con fuze our ittle brains.

Those who don't pay taxes are those wealthy enough to avoid taxes by hiding their income.
Meh and triple Meh.
--ml

Grieve And Suffer.... So Long as You Tax

In Canada they call this the GST. The Mnemonic I prefer for this is Grief and Suffering Tax. Vat for Value Added Tax sorta works as in "all a youse step into this snake pit and we's see which one is whicher than the rest."
But the question I stumble over is why does a consumption based economy think that punishing consumption will result in profit? Yet 'K' street wants this. Meh.
--ml

Rewrite for Digby

Seriously, if the shiftless welfare CEO queens would just stop stealing all this money from hardworking white people, we wouldn't have all these problems. I don't see why all everyone always jumps to the conclusion that it has anything to do with race.

Yep.
--ml

Serial Tweeting

So I just tweeted:

Is it fair

to commit

serial Tweets,

to write chained

thoughts

like old highway signs

advertising

Burma Shave?

Or is the challenge

concision,

to express a thought,

like haiku,

in the narrow

compass

of 140 characters?

If the first

then only 

perseverence

delays the appearance

of the first novel

in mini-installments.

Silly.

--ml

In doing so I discovered that one may not write "on twitter" in a tweet alone, as the program interprets that as a request to follow twitter.
--ml