Charles Lemos has a post over at MyDD discussing an article in the New York Times about the struggles of the super rich in this economy.

Mainly what caught my eye were some of the figures Lemos quotes about how the super rich families prospered in the last 20 years of the 20th century:

Lax regulations of financial markets allowed old money to turn serious money into some rather serious money. Between 1982 and 2000, the Rockefellers went from $3.3 billion to $8.5 billion, the Mellons from $1.6 billion to $10 billion, the Phippses from $1.2 billion to $7 billion, the Pritzkers from $1.0 to $10.0 billion, the Mars from $1.2 billion to a very robust $16 billion, the Hearsts from $500 million to $7 billion. The ‘financialization’ of the economy coupled with the low tax regime has been very good to them. If in 1981, the top one percent accounted for 9.3 percent of the national income by 1997 that share had grown to 15.8 percent.

Compare that to any figure about the standard of living and wealth of the middle class you care to choose for the same period, and the difference will be significant. Reaganomics were good for these families. And it’s these people who are the prime beneficiaries of the fierce battles to repeal the estate tax during the first part of the Bush administration. (Due to Congressional accounting shenanigans, next year is the best year for you to have your super rich relatives die — the estate tax disappears for a year only to reappear in 2011.) This repeal was never about small businesses and family farms. Name any estate exemption in the single-digit millions you care to, and chances are you’ll have broad Congressional support. But, it’s the estates worth 10s of millions, 100s of millions, and billions that are paying for the lobbying on this movement. A crappy $10 million exemption is a rounding error to some of these families.

Say what you will about the evils of taxation, but the fact is that it has to exist. Now we’re just haggling over the price. I have yet to hear any rational justification for preferring the rights of an heir in an estate to the rights of the working man in his paycheck at the end of the week. So, I can’t see repealing the estate tax before we’ve worked out a way to eliminate payroll taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, and the rest of the taxes that affect people who have done more for their money than simply luck into the right set of parents or grandparents or great grandparents or however far back the dynastic wealth goes.

And, at the end of the day, it’s fair that these folks pay more for the government since the government protects more of their stuff. Our courts legitimize more contracts for them, our police protect more of their houses and bank accounts, our roads carry more of their products, etc. (Not to say that the little people should be entirely exempt from taxes even if that was possible — I think there is value to having citizens be invested in their government.)

Just another of my periodic rants that the estate tax (or “death tax” if you prefer the propaganda approach) is one of the more justifiable taxes in a world where some form of taxation is necessary. The dead don’t need their stuff anymore, and heirs have less of a claim to that stuff than workers have to their paycheck.

O.k., I said I had nothing for this morning, but I wouldn’t be a blogger of long standing (and they’d probably pull my bar membership) if I was truly unable to hold forth on something, no matter how trivial. So, we’ll go with the Indianapolis Star’s editorial on school start times. The General Assembly is holding hearings on when an appropriate time to start school might be. The Indy Star doesn’t say when the proper time to begin school might be, but merely opines that it is a waste of time to consider the matter. It should be a local decision, they say.

I think there is probably some value to the state setting the start date. Schools need to coordinate with one another in a number of ways. Maybe they should set a default starting date and allow schools to apply for a waiver to start at a different time if the school has a particular need. As for the proper start date, I guess I don’t have strong opinions, but the dog days of summer seems like an awfully hot time to be starting things. They started my boy’s kindergarten in the first half of August. If we’re going to have summer break, I’d probably recommend not starting school until late August or early September. If they want to structure things so that there are longer breaks scattered throughout the year but no true summer break, I suppose I’m open to the idea.

As for the push for more days and longer hours, my main concern is that we lose some of the unstructured time for kids. We’re losing a lot of that anyway as kids are scheduled for all manner of sports and extracurricular activities. My recollection of being a kid is that there was a lot of creativity involved in figuring out how to fill hours where I had nothing scheduled; particularly when I was younger. When I was older, that time was more likely to be filled with random books, TV, or video games.

What’s going on this morning?

Rachel Sheely had an article in the Palladium-Item about the Richmond Civic Theater’s centennial.

Richmond Civic Theatre celebrates the 100th anniversary of its home this weekend with the Murray Theatre Centennial Celebration Show.
. . .
The production highlights the building’s history as a home to vaudeville, movies and Richmond Civic Theatre. It is a multimedia show, making use of actors, narrators, song, dance, video and photographs, Cobine said.

Occasionally I get to wondering about how our entertainment culture has changed over the years. I hear stories about the days when big musical names traveling to small venues in mid-sized towns around the state. You occasionally see defunct opera houses in the oddest places. And, going way back, great classical plays were produced in Athens with a population of about 100,000 — less than the population of Tippecanoe County.

I suppose the abundance and ease of movies, television, and recorded music has made us less likely to produce our own entertainment locally and less likely to go to a live venue to see this stuff. I confess that I don’t take advantage of even the opportunities that are still available to me. So, I don’t have room to complain. But, it seems like we’ve probably lost something valuable by not having local, live entertainment being as vital a part of the community. Certainly, it’s a mistake to think you need to have a city of millions to produce quality entertainment. Anyway, glad Richmond Civic Theater is still hanging on.

The Associated Press article on yesterday’s committee vote on a proposed version of a public option in one of the health care bills going through Congress seems awfully misleading for a reader who hasn’t been paying close attention.

The headline reads “Government Run Plan Nixed.” The first couple of paragraphs:

WASHINGTON — In a long-anticipated showdown, liberal Democrats twice failed on Tuesday to inject a government-run insurance option into sweeping health care legislation taking shape in the Senate, despite bipartisan agreement that private insurers must change their ways.

The two votes marked a victory for Montana Democrat Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, who is hoping to push his middle-of-the-road measure through the panel by week’s end. It also kept alive the possibility that at least one Republican may yet swing behind the overhaul, a key goal of both Baucus and the White House.

From the article, you would not guess that all three committees in the House of Representatives and three other Senate committees – Health, Education, and Labor & Pensions had approved a public option. Then there is the nonsense about needing 60 votes. You need 60 votes against filibuster. You only need 51 votes for the public option. How many Democrats are actually going to stand with the Republicans to filibuster an up or down vote on health care reform? I can see them voting against a public option. I can’t see them standing against a majority vote on health care reform.

For the record, I see voting against a public insurance option as a death sentence for Democrats. Opposing it in such a way that it still gets through probably makes political sense for some Democrats. If you are one of the hand full of Democrats who causes a crappy health reform bill with no public option or the demise of health care reform entirely, you will lose the support of your base, you will get primaried. It enjoys broad public support, and the public isn’t too interested in protecting the profits of health insurance companies who haven’t been acting responsibly over the past 20 years.

Update It’s probably just a coincidence, but apparently the Senate Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee who voted against the public option were also the ones who received the most money from the health care and insurance industries.

The two largest industries in terms of contributions to Finance Committee are the Health, and Insurance industries. According to Open Secrets, the healthcare industry gave $7 million in PAC contributions to committee members. Not to be outdone, the finance, insurance, and real estate industries also gave $7 million to the committee.

Committee chairman Max Baucus has taken $1.1 million each from the health and insurance industries. The two largest contributors to Tom Carper of Delaware for 2010 have been the health and insurance sectors. The same holds true for Kent Conrad. The top donor for 2010 to Blanche Lincoln was the healthcare industry. The insurance industry has given $1.5 million to Bill Nelson for the 2010 cycle.

Now is the time of the year when I’m most inclined to grouse about Daylight Saving Time. This is more of a national thing than a state thing, but if we insist on observing it, I think standard time should resume now instead of November 1. It’s personal preference with me, of course, I simply don’t like waking up in the dark. It tends to make me feel sluggish the rest of the morning for some reason. I’ll do the rest of my crying somewhere else.

Glenn Beck has gone to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) seeking to get them to take down a domain name. In particular, Mr. Beck wants WIPO to dispose of the domain name: glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com.

Beck is attempting to do through WIPO what he can’t do through U.S. libel law. He doesn’t like the Internet meme suggesting that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 — his lack of denial of this is offered as evidence. At its root, this is a critique of Beck’s style of smearing a person, notably Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison, by voicing the smear in the context of purporting to allow the person to prove their innocence.

Beck’s efforts to go after the domain name seem likely to be unsuccessful. He essentially has to make a trademark showing that he has some right to the name or that the other person’s use of the name will cause some confusion about marks owned by Beck. But, really, how likely is it that any reasonable person (not, admittedly, Beck’s target audience) would be confused into thinking a site discussing whether he raped and killed a young girl in the 1990s was associated with one of Beck’s own websites?

As the attorney representing the owner of glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com states in his brief to WIPO:

There is no indication that the Respondent has intentionally attempted to confuse anyone searching for Mr. Beck’s own website, nor that anyone was unintentionally confused – even initially. Only an abject imbecile could believe that the domain name would have any connection to the Complainant.

We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion. We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of imbeciles that his members are blankly staring at the Respondent’s website wondering “where did all the race baiting content go?” We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent’s website shut down. He wants it shut down because Respondent’s website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck’s very rhetorical style. Beck’s skin is too thin to take the criticism, so he wants the site down. Beck is represented by a learned and respected legal team. Accordingly, it is beyond doubt that his counsel advised him that under the First Amendment to the United States’ Constitution, no
action in a U.S. Court would be successful.

The test is whether a sensible person, not an “imbecile in a hurry,” would be confused. The whole brief makes for some pretty good reading. It discusses Gilbert Gottfried’s amusing use of the smear technique in a roast of Bob Saget as well as Internet memes generally.

For all the fear mongering about voter fraud, it has proven amazingly elusive. TPM Muckraker has the story of some possible voter fraud in New York. The specific details are mildly interesting but not of much importance to Indiana. Basically, it involves a pissing match by proxy between Democrats and Republicans in a third-party primary in a county-level election. The important take away with respect to Indiana is that the fraud appears to have involved absentee ballots. Yet more evidence that, contrary to Gov. Daniels’ assertions, it is not “preposterous” or even partisan to require greater or at least equal security standards for absentee ballots as opposed to in-person voting.

Sheila Kennedy has a good column in the Indianapolis Star about the Indiana Court of Appeals’ recent decision on the Voter ID law, Gov. Daniels responsive outburst about “partisan judges” in particular. And I’m not at all influenced in that assessment by the fact that she quoted something from a previous entry here. Nope, not at all.

[G]ov. Mitch Daniels was quick to accuse all three judges who issued the opinion of “playing politics.” This rhetoric is unfortunate on a number of levels. It betrays unfamiliarity with the arguments involved, and — worse — paints judges as no more than partisans in robes. Such attacks, as the Indiana Bar Association pointed out, undermine the legitimacy of the judicial system.

Daniels’ intemperate reaction also appears to confirm suspicions that the voter ID law was itself a partisan effort.

Roberta Heiman has an article in the Evansville Courier Press on a topic with which I am intimately familiar – collection of debts in a small claims court. Apparently things run a little differently in southern Indiana. There appears to be a local practice where judgment debtors are held in contempt for defaulting on payment agreements. The article mentions a case out of Perry County I discussed awhile back where the judge apparently threatened the judgment debtor with jail if she didn’t make a payment arrangement.

It also mentions a situation in Evansville where a judgment debtor was going to be held in contempt for failing to honor an agreed order on a prior payment arrangement.

Debtors prisons aren’t permitted in Indiana. In the counties where I practice, non-payment isn’t going to earn you a contempt citation. What does happen, quite frequently, is that people get served with orders to appear and testify as to their income and assets, fail to appear, and then have writs issued for their arrest to compel their testimony. A person can also be held in contempt for failing to appear if they cannot show good cause for their failure.

Even though I think that debtors’ rights advocates are correct, generally, when they protest the practice of locking people up for non-payment; they go too far when they suggest that creditors can’t force them back into court repeatedly to inquire about their income and assets. A creditor is not going to have independent knowledge of the debtors’ financial situation. I can’t tell you the number of times I have let a judgment sit for awhile, and call the judgment debtor into court after many months, only to find that the person is no longer employed but held a job for a period of time between court dates. Had I been forcing the person into court every month, I would have discovered income subject to garnishment.

Returning to the southern Indiana practice of holding people in contempt for failing to abide by a payment agreement – certainly I think it’s inappropriate if, during the period of non-payment, the debtor never had any attachable income or assets; for example, if all they ever had during this period was Social Security income. But what if the person entered into an agreement resulting in a court order to pay $100 per month; had garnishable income in excess of the $100 per month; but refused to pay anyway. It seems to me that, in that situation, there is a case to be made for contempt proceedings: the court has ordered you to do something, you have failed to do it, and you cannot show any legal excuse for your failure.

In any case, if you hear one of these “debtors prisons” stories, always pay attention to what, precisely, led to the person’s arrest. I’ve had any number of judgment debtors complain about being arrested for a debt when the reason for their arrest was their failure to obey a court order to appear and testify as to their income and assets. My somewhat unsympathetic attitude over the years has been that, if you don’t have a job, generally you can make time to go to court.