Glenn Hauman: View From Above

Schneier.com: Crypto-Gram: April 15, 2004

I see that Charles Murray has a piece in the NY Times called You Are What You Tax which echoes my sentiment.

Murray, author of The Bell Curve, makes me want to double-check my thoughts instincively, but the arguments he puts forward here are similar to mine. He does, however, neglect the “let the government decide” checkbox, which I think a lot of people would take– that’s why we have a government anyway.

I would say that corporations wouldn’t get that “vote”, as corporations don’t have opinions, shareholders do– if the shareholders voted, then maybe. With income tax only accounting for 40% or so of governement revenue, surely there would be enough cash in the other 60% or so to cover shortfalls in other areas.

Most of all, it’s a simple feedback form– one that the government could really use. If there’s support for paying down the debt, then do it. If there’s support for NASA, go wild. And so on.

Today’s Mallard Fillmore promotes an interesting idea: end the withholding tax, give workers their full paychecks, and let them see how much they really pay.

I’m against the idea, mainly becuase it makes more work for people and it makes government revenue a bit difficult to predict– cash comes in spikes rather than a more or less smooth pattern. And we already know how much we really pay, thank you very much– we spend a lot of time each year figuring that out.

I’d much rather see the following: put a fill in chart on the back of the tax return, saying how you’d like your tax money allocated. Want all of it to go for defense? Perhaps you want to pay down the debt? Half for education, half for transportation? Or would you rather kick it all into the general fund and let your elected officials budget it out? Obviously, an percentage breakdown estimate of how your federal tax dollars would be spent would be included for comparison.

Doing this would get more people involved in the budget process in America, and let them think about where their money is going, assuming it’s non-binding– or where they’re putting their money, if it’s not. Or does the government really not want to know how the citizens want their money spent?

From the mailbag: The Republicans are scurrying around saying the August 2001 memo isn’t a smoking gun; it’s not even a “cold” gun. Here’s why New Yorkers will disagree…

Rice says there way no way they could have prevented the 9-11 hijackings. Maybe that’s true, maybe that’s not. But if they did their jobs, they would have saved the better part of one thousand lives on that fateful day. If Bush et al had publicly acknowledged the terrorism threat, here’s what would have happened in New York City on September 11, 2001.

The North Tower at the World Trade Center would have been hit, and all those people who died there would have died there anyway. But the people in the South Tower, who (like the rest of us who were familiar with the story) immediately thought of the time an airplane hit the Empire State Building at the end of World War II would have instead thought there was the possibility this event was a terrorist attack. After all, the North Tower attack was the second made on the WTC; the parking garage was blown up eight years earlier. SOME of the people in the North Tower would have evacuated immediately; the lemmings effect would have caused more people to leave. As the word spread about the effect of the North Tower crash, still others would have left within those 30 minutes.

The police and firemen would have approached the situation differently; they probably wouldn’t have entered the South Tower in force, if at all. It’s probable that most of he guys who rushed into the North Tower would have done so anyway, I regret to say.

A great many lives would have been saved, if only Bush and his masters took the August 2001 memo seriously. But now they tell us there was no smoking gun.

They’re right. It’s not a smoking gun. It’s a smoking tower.

My correspondent doesn’t go nearly far enough. If there had been any sort of people doing their jobs, fighter jets would have been in the air in time to not only stop the South Tower from being hit, but quite possibly the North as well. Certainly the Pentagon.

Or, if you like, they could have hardened the cockpit doors to attack in a month’s time– lord knows that they did it in under a month’s time after the fact.

Yahoo! News – Enron Ex-CEO Skilling Taken to Hospital

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was taken to a hospital early Friday after several people called police saying he was pulling on their clothes and accusing them of being FBI agents, a police source told The Associated Press.

Now, is he merely laying an early gambit for an insanity plea, or has he truly, shall we say, withdrawn early from his 401K?

…not what he will do. So said Von Clausewitz.

This, more than anything else, is the cardinal crime of the Bush administration, particularly Dr. Rice. “Bin Laden determined to strike inside the U.S.” really says it all, but the lack of response to it says even more. We already knew what he was capable of doing with the Cole bombing.

Remind me sometime to tell you about Citykilling 101…

I admit it. I’m the one who showed this to Teresa, and I should have warned her about reading it while eating. Go read her take on it at The miserable Hugo.

Teresa, I’m sorry I got you all choked up. But honestly– it was worth it, wasn’t it?

Then read her other posts bashing Ms. Austen Doe (as Neil Gaiman notes, she was an idiot for being anonymous when having a name could have boosted her sales… man, I could have written this a few days ago and been seen as brilliant, but no, I have to worry about deadlines) for complaining that her advances were too big and she spent them too quickly. That isn’t a problem for writers. Crippling writer’s block– that’s a problem.

There’s been a lot of fuss over four little letters lately, particularly when used by Bono on TV. However, I suspect the real usage they want to block was this:

Did I expect George Bush to fuck [the war in Iraq] up as badly as he did? I don’t think anybody did. — John Kerry

… you can sell something that is carcinogenic AND reduces your sex drive AND has a markup measured in orders of magnitude? And people buy anyway?

Excuse me, I have to go back to reading F’d Companies now…

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Things get worse with Coke

That’s where I was Thursday morning.

I was listening to luminaries of the comics field pay tribute to the, alas, no-longer-living legend, Julius Schwartz. Tributes came in from far and wide– Harlan’s toast was read by Brian Thomsen, tributes were given by Denny O’Neil, Michael Uslan, Mike Carlin, Jack C. Harris, Karen Berger, Tony Tollin, and the always lovely Ricia Mainhardt, amongst others, and numerous emails were read at the podium– Bob Greenberger reading for Len Wein, Neil Gaiman reading– or rather, channeling– Alan Moore.

Also saw people that I literally haven’t seen in a decade or so– Mike Catron, the publisher of Apple Press, publisher of my first comic, 101 Other Uses For A Condom (there, now you know everything), Paul Curtis, John Workman, Allan Asherman, Arlene Lo, and a few dozen others. And many folks who I see on a regular basis– Mike Friedman, Paul Kupperberg, Esther Friesner, John Ordover, and Kathleen and what’s his name. And of course, Maggie Thompson of the Comics Buyer’s Guide.

Maggie asked me for my additional notes on Julie, things I would have said at the memorial had there been time. So, onward:

I suspect that I might be the youngest person to have actually worked with Julie during his regular employment at DC Comics– I started in 1989 at about the same time Julie was retiring, and I was 20 at the time.

We didn’t interact much– I was in the production darkroom most of my hours there (which in retrospect was a blessing, as it gave my eyes a respite from the wallpaper at 666 5th, and as a result I still have the ability to differentiate between most colors of the spectrum). Julie knew my name, but that was more from the man’s memory than anything particularly outstanding about me.

How he came to really remember me: a year or so later, Julie was at I-Con, and the con had assigned him a very tall, slender pale brunette with straight hair down to her belt, named Carol. I came over and said hi to Julie– and then hi to Carol.

“Carol? You know this lady?”

“Sure I know Carol– she’s my college roommate.”

From then on, every time I saw Julie, it was usually, “Hey, kiddo,” and then after a little chit-chat, he would invariably ask, “So– how’s Carol?” And for that matter, everytime I’d see Carol afterwards, she would invariably ask, “So– how’s Julie?”

This is not unheard of. Production behind the scenes story: When DC produced the Green Lantern Archives, they didn’t reprint #1 from the film negatives– Tony Tollin had the original artwork for the entire issue. How did he get the art? Well– it seems that Julie had sent the entire artwork to a girl who had written him a letter way back when, and Tony had bought the work from her. And every time I’ve heard that story told, everybody’s response was invariably, “Yep, that’s Julie.” (And if the story isn’t true, well gosh darn it, it should be.)

The wails of hundreds of broken-hearted women are the fanfares that ushered Julie into the great beyond. Hail and farewell, big guy.