In the night

Suzanne Vega, "Night Vision" off her best-selling album Solitude Standing. The world is darkness, and only night vision can let you see.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Joke going around

I have to do it too, because it's so true:

A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across, takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier, and says, “Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie.”

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Newt the Lizard's conversion to Catholicism

I'd think that Newt Gingritch was sincere about his purported "conversion to Catholicism" if he actually embraced Catholic social teaching.

Note that Catholic social teaching holds that citizens have a fundamental right to life and to the necessities of life. In addition, according to Catholic social teaching, every human has the right to what is required to live a full and decent life, things such as employment, health care, and education. Waiting for New the Lizard to agree with the Pope’s teachings on this… 3… 2…. 1…. err. No? Alrighty, then!

- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Talkin' about guns

This is one of those conversations that is a no-win. Some folks like their guns. They like stroking their guns. They like waving their guns around and feeling the breeze on their guns. They don't feel like a man unless they have their gun close at hand. And that's their right as an American, to love their guns. So what. I really don't care as long as they don't wave their gun in my direction -- I don't bend that way, if ya know what I mean.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Paisly dream

This one is almost impossible to find, because it's David Roback's second band, Opal, with Kendra Smith doing the singing duties on "Here the wind blows". Nothing of theirs is still in print, mostly because Kendra Smith has basically disappeared into the woods of Northern California, where my suspicion is that she's doing things of a pharmaceutical nature (heh) while playing Earth Mother.

You might better remember David Roback's third band, Mazzy Star. Kendra Smith was about halfway through Opal's first tour when she suddenly decided she didn't want to be in a band anymore, and went home. Robacks then asked one of Kendra's acquaintances, Hope Sandoval, to finish the tour as singer with them, and the band renamed themselves to Mazzy Star after the end of the tour.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Homeless man starves to death in front of Wal-Mart

And nobody notices for days that he's dead, until, likely, a tow truck driver is sent to remove the van, and the smell of dead rotting human causes them to call the police.

This is America. This is what America is like today. Forget all the bullshit about community and charity and compassion and helping hands, if you're poor you have the cooties, the only hand you'll get is the grudging one you get from pestering people until they give you money to go away, if not the back of a hand across your face. And heavens help you if you have too much pride to pester people asking for assistance...

-- Badtux the American Penguin

Why does California have a net outflow of people?

It's been the case since about 2003 that more people leave California than come to California from other states. The crash of the dot-com bubble explains 2003, but what about since then?

Demographers say that the primary problem is high cost of living, the most important of which is the high cost of housing. It's not taxes, because if the problem was taxes, the wealthy (who stand to gain more by moving to lower-tax states) would exit the state at a higher rate than the poor. The opposite is true -- 1.73% of California's poor outmigrate, while only 1.09% of California's wealthy outmigrate. Furthermore a smaller percentage of the wealthy who do outmigrate go to low-tax states as compared to the poor. In short, the data simply does not support the supposition that taxes cause the majority of the outmigration, because if the problem was taxes, the rich (who do pay more money as taxes) would outmigrate to low-tax states in higher numbers than the poor do.

So why does California have higher housing prices? Part of that is the market distortions caused by Proposition 13, which provides a disincentive to buy and sell when your family's needs change (due to a new kid, or the kids leaving home), since you'll pay higher taxes on your new (smaller or larger) home than you paid on your old (grandfathered) home. This results in fewer homes on the market, and thus higher housing prices than would otherwise exist.

Still, that cannot explain the full reason for high housing prices, because the Central Valley of California has significantly lower housing prices than the coastal job centers, and has traditionally been perhaps 10% more expensive than the rest of the country. Yet housing prices in the San Francisco Bay area are often as much as three times more expensive than the rest of the country. The 2010 median home price in the U.S. was $168,000, while the 2010 median for the California Bay Area was $375,000 (Source: U.S. Association of Realtors) -- 2.23 times the national average. What gives?

Well, it's like this: The wealthy individuals who create new companies in California prefer to live in the milder climate and nicer scenery of the coastal areas rather than in the blazingly hot desert that is summer weather in the Central Valley. The core problem we run into then is geography. There are only three large areas of coast in California that can be developed -- the San Francisco Bay area, the Los Angeles / Orange County area, and the San Diego area -- the rest of the coast is mountains with only small flat areas such as around Monterrey Bay that cannot support a large population. And all three of these areas are largely built out -- in Contra Costa County, for example, every flat area of land with the exception of some salt ponds along the coast are built out. The salt ponds are below sea level, which means that homes cannot be built there without being built upon expensive landfill with expensive foundations that have stilts down to firmer soil, which basically restricts these salt ponds to commercial development or to parkland. As for the notion that "most of Contra Costa is zoned for greenbelts", well, yes -- but the greenbelt areas are the coastal mountains which are largely unbuildable due to the San Andreas Fault, landslides caused by all the faulting (since the underlying rock has been fractured by centuries of earthquakes and will slide if you breathe hard on it), and simple steepness of the geography, which makes it extremely expensive to build anything in these areas. Thus as landowners moved away from ranching, they've sold or donated their property to the state or county for preservation as natural areas.

In other words, supply and demand says that housing in the three coastal metropolitan areas will always be more expensive than in most of the nation because a) that's where the jobs are due to the decision makers preferring to live in those areas, and b) thus there will typically be more people who want to live there than there are houses for them. What that means is that during times of a growing economy when these three areas are adding jobs, there will be net inmigration. When the economy is stagnant or declining, there will be net outmigration as people lose their jobs and are forced to return back home to their low-living-expense states. And in fact the data appears to support that. The San Francisco Bay area has experienced net job loss in the lower income job categories over the past ten years. And it's primarily the lower income people who've left for lower-expense areas.

And at this point I'm drowning in data, so I'll let you go. But the salient point is this: High taxes are *not* a cause of people leaving California. Rather, high living expenses -- primarily driven by the cost of housing -- is the major cause of outmigration from California. Anybody who tells you high taxes are causing the loss is saying that based on ideology, because the facts simply do not support such a statement. But then, I keep forgetting, the facts have a liberal bias :).

-- Badtux the Reality-based Penguin

Nordic

Danish band Our Broken Garden's song "Seven Wild Horses", off their album In the Woods. Almost the definition of Nordic euro-pop -- eccentric female singer with pipes, electronica, dance beat, the works. Not exactly my usual cup of indie tea, but hey, even a penguin needs a change of pace from time to time :).

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

My apologies...

...for the poor editing of the prior two posts. I have a massive headache, the kind that makes even your vision blur. It's hard to effectively edit your posts when you can barely see them :(.

-- Badtux the Pained Penguin

More libertard zombie lies

And now here go the libertards again, claiming that "businesses are fleeing California due to high taxes". Err.... no. We have two separate studies on this over the past ten years. Businesses aren't fleeing California for *any* reason, taxes or no. The the vast majority of businesses closing shop in California are doing so due to bankruptcy, not taxes. Furthermore, 40% of new venture-funded companies are in California -- California is still by far the preferred state to start a new company in. F

Furthermore, California's tax rates for corporations and the wealthy aren't even that onerous, due to California's generally non-progressive tax scheme. From a standpoint of the wealthy, the top 1% pay only 7.4% of their income as state and local taxes (the bottom pays 20% pays 10.2% of their income as taxes), which is pretty much middle of the pack (look through the data in that paper and you'll see that the top 1% pays on average around 7% of their income as state and local taxes of all sorts). California's statutory corporate income tax rate of 8.84% also isn't out of the ordinary, being somewhat in the middle of the pack (still looking for effective tax rate, but given that California gives billions in tax breaks to corporations (whether it's the bogus "enterprise zones" or "pay taxes only on sales within California" break), it'll be somewhat lower. As I previously pointed out, corporate property taxes have been shifted to individuals due to various tax shelters available with Proposition 13 (the "partnership" shelter being the big one -- by leasing your building from a "partnership" which has held ownership of it since initial construction, you lock in your property taxes at its initial construction rate). The end result of all this is that California does have high taxes -- if you're in the bottom 20% of taxpayers. For everything else, California's in the middle of the pack.

So there's the facts. There's no evidence that a) California has high taxes on corporations or the rich, or that b) high taxes are causing corporations or the rich to flee California. Indeed, the evidence explicitly contradicts both assertions. Yet the zombie lies still get repeated time after time by zombie liars.... it is to laugh, if it wasn't for the fact that they're so effective at catapaulting their propaganda lies via repitition after repetition, until the majority think their lies are true.

-- Badtux the Fact-based Penguin

Corporate Smaugs

Guess what. If you paid $5 in income tax last year, you paid more income tax than CitiBank, JPMorganChase, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Boeing, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and probably a shitload of other big corporations--combined!

As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, corporations paid 30% of income taxes paid in 1950, and 7% of income taxes paid today. Who pays the 23% that corporations no longer pay? Look in the mirror!

At this point the libertarian fucktards say, "Corporations don't pay taxes. The taxes are passed along to the purchaser of their goods and/or services or a reduction is made in the dividend payout to the stockholders. Either way, people pay. Lower the corporate tax rate to zero and see how may jobs are created." At which point, I say... wha the fuck? First of all, corporations don't set prices. The *MARKET* sets prices. Secondly, you stupid ass libertard motherfucker, CORPORATIONS do not create jobs. *DEMAND* creates jobs. Corporations are sitting on TRILLIONS of dollars of money right now (at least $1.7T according to the Federal Reserve) and NOT CREATING A SINGLE GODDAMNED JOB WITH IT because, look. Libertards seem to be ignorant of the most rudimentary and FUNDAMENTAL law of business, which is that YOU DON'T HIRE UNLESS YOU GOT DEMAND TO JUSTIFY HIRING because the whole POINT of a business is to maximize profits. Corporations are not welfare agencies. They don't hire people just out of the goodness of their hearts. They hire people because they HAVE to hire people, otherwise they have no product to sell. And if demand for their product is low, it doesn't matter HOW many trillions in tax breaks you give them -- they will hire NO workers. None. Zero. Nada. ZILCH.

You don't have to believe me. In fact, please DON'T believe me. Believe the actual DATA. Because the DATA says that anybody who says that corporations will hire just because they have money is a LYING COCKSUCKER WHO PROBABLY LICKS HIS CORPORATE MASTER'S ASS EVERY MORNING and then takes it up the rear while cheerfully saying "Thank you sire, give me more!" Because the data says that corporations are already sitting on trillions of dollars and doing nothing -- nada -- zero -- hiring with it. What, you think giving them two MORE trillions will make them suddenly start hiring out of the goodness of their heart? If you believe in such a deranged notion, you're either the dumbest motherfucker on this whole goddamned planet, or you're stuck so far up your corporate master's ass that you probably can't even remember what your own dick looks like.

And that's my response to the libertards on this issue. The data simply refutes their notion that giving corporations more money or reducing their tax liability to zero will cause them to hire more people. The data is the data, and doesn't give a shit what moronic ideology you have. But oh I forget, in THEIR universe, where unicorns are pink and cotton candy grows on trees, poor beleaguered corporations hire people just out of the goodness of their stockholder's hearts. What a strange, strange universe libertards must live in! Too bad it's not ours... I just wish they'd keep their nonsense in their novels, where it's okay to have that kind of nonsense alongside the unicorns and cotton candy trees, and quit spouting that nonsense in *this* universe where it just plain is not true

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

Independence

Kathleen Edwards with "Independent Thief" off of her 2005 album, Back to Me. Just some good alt-country from Canada, y'all. And Colin Cripps is really makin' that thare gee-tar cry'n'sing...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Politically incorrect

So a roaring fire is bad for the environment, and doesn't really warm up your house much if any. So what. On a cold and rainy day, tossing on some scrap wood (pieces of wooden pallet from work) and then sitting in front of it just feels right.

-- Badtux the Warm Penguin

Messy bed

My well-known problems with making up my bed continue. The weather's been cold, so my owners have been occupying strategic portions of the bed before I can tidy it up...

Note that The Mighty Fang and Mencken usually are *not* this cozy with each other. But they make an exception for cold mornings.

-- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin

Why is this such a hard concept?

Various Americans are irate that gas prices are up even though all current supplies were purchased at lower prices.

To which I reply: If I sell gas I bought at $3 for $3.50, then I have $3.50 to buy its replacement gallon of gas, which is $4.00. $3.50 won't buy $4.00 worth of new inventory. So I have to raise my price to above $4.00 *now* so I can afford to buy my next truckload of gas, otherwise I won't have enough to buy that next truckload of gas and I won't have gas to sell and I'll be out of business. Why is this concept -- that I have to price my inventory at its REPLACEMENT cost, not at its PURCHASE cost, or I'll have no inventory -- so difficult? Are there really that many people ignorant of the basics of how to run a business?

The real culprits here are the speculators. If we raised taxes on millionaires, they'd no longer have money to speculate with, but oh no we can't do that because speculation creates jobs. In the fertile imaginations of morons, anyhow.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Closets the size of fuckin' MANSIONS

Rep. Chris Lee, the "Craigslist Congressman" who abruptly resigned when it was discovered that he was soliciting sex over Craigslist, apparently liked dark meat with wiener schnitzel.

Now, we had wondered why Rep. Lee had resigned so quickly. I mean, a right-wing bible-thumpin' Christian Republican who turns out to prong prostitutes is no big deal, just ask Diaper Dave Vitter (R-La.) or Jimmy Swaggart (R-Loonytoons), both of whom survived their prostitution scandals. But I guess now we know the rest of the story -- Rep. Lee is so far deep in the closet that he can't come out even to himself, thus his attraction to trans-men, who at least look like women even if they're genetically male.

Now, some of you might wonder why I'm chortling so gleefully here. What's the matter with getting some wiener schnitzel action from trans hookers, you ask? Well, nothing, actually. But folks who use the "Christian moral values" schtick to interfere with gay American's rights then turn out to themselves be gayer than the gay mayor of gaytown simply make my snarky glee explode in a flurry of penguin feathers, that's all, yo.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

More credible than Faux News

One of the things that is always amusing, when talking to wingnuts, is that they're always referring to things they saw on Faux News or read on World Nut Daily. It is to laugh. "Give me a URL to somewhere credible", I tell them. And they say, "So who's more credible than Fox News?"

Uhm. Dude. Talk about low-hanging fruit. Even pro wrestling and the Weekly World News have more credibility than Fox News. Not that it really matters, for reasons explained in this very credible and well documented news story.

I, for one, eagerly await being eaten by our gorgeous tall blond alien overlords.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Heart-filled river

The Walkabouts with "Drag this river", off their album New West Motel. Nobody has ever heard of these people, even though they've been making music for over twenty years now...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

We don't need no edumacashun

Providence, RI, sends layoff notice to EVERY SINGLE ONE of their school teachers. I guess they figure the custodians and school secretaries are all they need to edumacate them thare little brown chilluns.

State of Michigan orders the Detroit Public schools to raise class sizes to 60 students. That's about the same size as seminar classes in college. You can't fit 60 kids into a regular-sized classroom. But again, I guess they figure them thare brown chilluns don't need no edumacashun anyhow, 'cause they's all criminals or athuhleets anyhow, right? Right?!

Remember, this here is AMERICA. Ain't no damn NEGRO got a right to an edumacashion in this here nashion, it's time them darkies picked themselves up by their bootstraps and got right on out of our white Christian nashion, God bless America, Glory Halleleujah, AH-men! If them darkies want an edumacashon, they should just move into our lily-white gated community (where the gate keeper won't let'em past the door 'cause they're all criminals, but hey, ain't no racism here, nosiree!), and go to our segregated all-white suburban school in our segregated all-white suburban school district. It's conservative family values at work, it's the American Way! USA! USA! USA! Whoot yeah!

-- Badtux the Disgusted Former Teacher Penguin

Lonely dreams

Los Angeles dream pop duo Devics with their song "Alone with You", off their album My Beautiful Sinking Ship. An album title that could sum up the majority of the Devics' work... beautiful, and depressing, torchy dream pop.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin