Author: Andrew Sullivan

A reader writes:

While I like that taxpayer receipt, there is one big problem with it.  About a third of our current budget is paid for by deficit spending, not taxes.  I would suggest that another column needs to added, with numbers in red, showing how much is being borrowed to pay for the various items on the list.

Another writes:

The one that just drives me nuts: The IRS. The cost of our system of tax collections has always been too high. Just think how much better off we would be as a nation if we directed all of the human capital now spent on paying our taxes to driving our economy. We spend untold billions on educating the participation's  – plus the massive man hours  – with absolutely nothing achieved.  Ditto on the DEA.

Another:

Something is amiss in this receipt.

First of all, it's a bit misleading because it breaks up combat, military pay, vet benefits, and military retirement.  Now, on one level, that is helpful info, but it makes more sense to me to collapse those under a general "military" umbrella, which brings that total to well over $500, placing it between Medicare and Medicaid, more like where it belongs.  To make the case a different way, Social Security could have also been broken up to reflect retirement benefits, disability benefits, administrative costs, etc.  You get the picture.

Which leads to the second point, in that this list gives you no sense whatsoever of the real place of general defense spending, which is larger than Medicare and Medicaid combined, and larger than Social Security.  These 2009 figures also do not reflect the fact that most of the spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were done outside the Congressionally approved budget, in discretionary spending, which contributed wildly to our overall debt.  (Thanks so much to the Bush/Cheney war machine for this Republican insanity.) This pie chart actually breaks it all down far better.

While I appreciate that the source of this information is at least relatively sane (i.e., thethirdway.org), I'm puzzled that their breakdown is so misleading.

Yglesias also questions the numbers and how much of an impact such a receipt would make. Another:

I would personally love to receive a tax receipt, but unintended behavioral consequences should be considered first. For example, I can imagine people donating less to charity. Once they have concrete numbers of tax expenditures, they might begin considering a portion of their taxes to be charitable donations that they no longer feel compelled to make. Not necessarily a reason not to implement tax receipts, but worth thinking about.

Another:

I think the receipt is a really good idea. I was just wondering a few weeks ago if there was any merit to giving people some small amount of discretionary amount in their taxes. Basically, with 2% of your tax bill, you get to choose whether it goes to some broad categories of government work (arts funding, or military hospitals, let's say). I have absolutely no idea what it would mean for tax administration (probably a lot of effort and useless headaches), but I do wonder if maybe people would feel less robbed by the government?

Another:

Thought you might like to know that the tax receipt idea was proposed by Ethan Porter in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas earlier this year. The article is called "Can't Wait Till Tax Day!", and Porter asks, "It's a heretical thought, but would people pay more taxes if they could designate where a portion of their money went?"

Republican Mary Fallin's campaign for the governorship of Oklahoma has taken the Palin model of no independent press interaction, and speeches only to supporters, one step further:

[On September 21] the Jim Thorpe Museum was host to the annual President’s Forum, a gathering of University and College Presidents, the Board of Regents, and a handful of other dignitaries and invited guests. Speaking before this distinguished audience were the two candidates for governor, Lieutenant Governor Jari Askins, and Congresswoman Mary Fallin. The format for the event was that Fallin would first deliver remarks, then take questions, and then Askins would do the same.

However, just before she was to begin, Fallin made a strange request of the event organizers; she didn’t want the Lieutenant Governor in the room while she spoke. Nor did she want any of Jari’s staff in the room.

In fact, she even scanned the room for faces that might be unfriendly, to see who else she should have ejected. Apparently she didn’t like the look on [retired] State Senator Mike Morgan’s face, because she told the event organizers she would not take the podium until he had left the room. Senator Morgan was a guest of the event. He was seated at a table enjoying his lunch, until he was unceremoniously asked to gather up his things and leave the room until it became Jari’s turn to address the crowd, at which point he was welcome to re-take his seat.

Are you as creeped out by this as much as I am? Not just the request – the fact that anyone, including a state senator! – would comply. Fallin, meanwhile, has a 26 point lead in the Rasmussen poll. (Hat tip: The Lost Ogle.)

Shankar Vedantam explains two studies on the smear campaigns of 2008 and why they worked:

The researchers found that when they subliminally flashed the name Obama before [McCain] volunteers—the flashes were so brief that the volunteers did not notice the flash—this unconsciously activated words such as Arab, turban, and mosque in the minds of McCain supporters. Likewise, subliminally flashing the word McCain unconsciously activated words such as senile, dementia, and Alzheimer’s in the minds of Obama supporters. The same thing did not happen when volunteers were flashed the name of the candidate they supported. The slur-related words were activated only by unconsciously reminding them about the candidate they opposed.

This is why the subtle conflation of Obama with terrorists – one of Palin’s disgusting tactics in 2008 – was so powerful. I have no doubt that, as Steve Schmidt ruefully concedes, Obama’s landslide would have been much larger if she had not been on the ticket. Because she will say anything, and because she sees the entire world as “us” vs “them”.

An expat in China writes anonymously after a stint as a speed typist for the Chinese Ministry of Propaganda during the 2008 Olympics:

While I didn’t experience censorship as it’s shown in the movies—the black sharpie, the page torn from the record—I did experience a casual tyranny strong enough to keep my name off this piece.

Deviating from official narratives only sometimes triggered retribution, though this irregularity didn’t make the prospect of punishment any less frightening. Instead of a brutal and consistent disciplinarian, the Chinese government reminded me of a cantankerous uncle, who in his attempt to seem youthful would let most of my rebellions slide before he pounced: forbidding me to borrow his car, drink his scotch, live in his house. …[R]andom repression could be effective: would I be the anomaly, the one who was caught? Punishment—usually in the form of kicking an expat out of the country or denying reentry—only really rattled those who lived in China because they loved it, those who could not bear to risk never returning.

Adam Ozimek attacks school gardens, celebrated here by Sarah Henry, as yuppie vanity. He urges education in how to defrost instead:

Are future blue collar workers really going to take the time to grow themselves vegetable gardens in window boxes outside their apartments? A lot of working people, like Megan McArdle and Matt Yglesias, frequently don’t have time for fresh vegetables. Like Matt, many people have to teach themselves late in life how to make quick delicious snacks out of frozen vegetables. This would be a much more valuable lesson for poor kids then how to select the freshest kale at your local organic farmers market, or even more ridiculously, how to grow your own …

If you can get kids to eat and prefer frozen vegetables then you’ve got a sustainable improvement in diet and nutrition. If you get them to like fresh organic vegetables they’ve grown in the garden or bought at the farmers market, then you’ve temporarily instilled in them the tastes of upper middle class people with enough time and money on their hands for such luxuries.

A reader defends Alan Grayson:

Here's what I know about Grayson (he represents my mother's district in Florida, as if that matters): I saw him at length during a whistleblower trial here at the Federal Courthouse in Alexandria (Custer Battles), and he is nothing if not calculating and is so fully aware of what he's doing that it's frightening.

That ad, when I first saw it, screamed one thing – the Conservatives have been processing this bullshit for years and now they get a full taste. You know what? Grayson doesn't believe Webster is Taliban. Grayson doesn't care any more than Rove gave a shit that everything they pushed was complete bullshit. Grayson, to me, was junkpunching the Conservatives. And, quite frankly, more power to him. If you haven't read his bio, give it a go…the guy is exceptionally smart, dedicated, and successful.

This is a fascinating story, reported in the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman. The gist of it is that a young man who was obsessed with Sarah Palin and many other public figures made a serious threat against her. Her response was, in my view, completely appropriate and understandable, as the Frontiersman's editorial recently explained:

On Tuesday morning, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman received a tip that two local women filed for and were granted 20-day protective orders against a Pennsylvania man they said had been threatening them for a year. One of those women was Sarah Palin. The other was her friend, Kristan Cole. Palin testified the 18-year-old man, Shawn Christy, threatened to track her down at her book signings in the Lower 48, told Palin “that she better watch her back,” said he was buying a one-way ticket to Alaska and sent a gun-purchase receipt.

Christy, an obviously disturbed young man, has a record of such threats:

The U.S. Capitol Police launched an investigation because Christy made more than 20 threats against President Barack Obama, more than 40 threats against 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain and another 40 against Palin. The Secret Service did its own investigation. Agents have visited Christy’s home and spent hours talking to him on more than one occasion. They did not arrest him. They did not charge him. Neither did the FBI in Anchorage and Allentown, Pa., who also investigated.

There has been no criminal charge filed against him, after all these investigations. Christy, a home-schooled rural evangelical started out as a passionate Palinite: "He donated to her political action committee. He spent his savings buying a $200 ticket to an Aug. 27 Pennsylvania event where she spoke." Again, I can completely understand why Palin sought a civil restraining order, and sympathize with her. But it is also clear she understands he is a nutter (not that nutters cannot be dangerous):

Palin testified that Christy is delusional in his statements that he has had direct communication or contact with her or her daughter. “Petitioner also testified that respondent has falsly claimed to have had a sexual relationship with petitioner,” the filing stated. “Mr. Van Flein provided evidence that the secret service investigated respondent alleging that he had threatened or said he wanted to sexually assault Gov. Palin. Mr. Van Flein testified that respondent has signed letters to the petitioner ‘your magic enemy.’”

But what's remarkable is not Palin's legitimate concern but the reaction to the Frontiersman's story – remarkable enough that the newspaper itself was shocked:

The story went up on the newspaper’s website. Minutes later, dozens of Sarah Palin-related sites had linked to the story. On Monday, our website had about 4,300 hits. After the story broke Tuesday, that number climbed to 8,700. Wednesday hits spiked to 75,000 and by Thursday afternoon we’d had more than 200,000 hits, mostly from new visitors.

Even after we broke the story that Christy is not in Alaska and has never been to Alaska, threats against him continued on our website and Facebook page. Many comments were not approved because they suggested hunting Christy and killing him. Folks asked us to post a picture of the young man so “decent” people could hunt him down and kill him. And that is exactly why we won’t publish a photo that could identify him.We were shocked at the number of people from across the U.S. calling for his death and offering to pull the trigger on a .45 loaded with “liberal lead.”

This 18-year-old admits he was in the wrong and he absolutely was. But he is now under siege and in fear of his life:

Based on his public trial and suggested execution, his hometown police department has brought in patrols from neighboring towns to help protect his family.

Palin bears no direct responsibility for this, in my view, and has done nothing wrong. But this story does reveal some of the virulence and anger and violence that lies beneath what has become a political cult. And her public statements that someone like Joe McGinnis may be a sexual threat to her children or is a "freak" and her constant invocation of victimhood are not helpful in this kind of incendiary context.

This woman commands forces out there that are truly terrifying and violent. If you want to know why so much about her is still unknown, you do not understand the fear her followers and acolytes command in her native Alaska. That fear is real; and it is not without reason.

Karen Schrock highlights a new study on smokers:

Students who were heavy smokers reacted to thoughts of death by taking even harder drags on their cigarettes.

Genius parody and watch till the very end. It helps make a little sense of why the GOP's incoherent populist claptrap may be beginning to backfire a little: