The International House of Bacon

* The Wall Street Journal examines Barack Obama’s tax plan to “save Social Security.” The result? A 13% tax rate increase for people making over $200m a year (more than what a reversal of the Bush tax cuts would be, and this number doesn’t factor in that probability, either) in exchange for keeping Social Security out of the red for a whopping three extra years. Removing the wage cap cannot save a program that is a failure to begin with. Barack Obama: Same Old Washington Politics as Usual.

* More on Obama and taxes from the Obamology blog: an unsigned but honest examination of proposed taxes if one of the remaining three candidates wins. Not surprisingly, Obama comes out furthest ahead, and his per-year spending increases are just as staggering. Same Old Washington Politics as Usual.

* I’ve been a big fan of David Mamet’s plays since I was first exposed to him in college. He was the first “adult” playwright I really encountered (not counting Rent, which is an absolutely “adult” production but was all the rage amongst teens in my theatre hangouts) and I always found him to be interesting. The big blogswarm today is about Mamet’s political change of heart following writing a production about “a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.” Mamet knows his way around the English language anyway, and reading about his journey into what sounds like a conservative point of view on many important issues is really incredible. A few choice parts:

I found not only that I didn’t trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

I still get blank stares when I point out the resemblences between FDR and Bush.

I’d observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

This piece resonates with me a lot, as I was convinced of plenty of what are considered liberal ideas until the Clinton impeachment proceedings, where I then got more involved, more exposed, and figured out what I really believed. I didn’t have decades to turn back on, but I can absolutely relate to the realization aspects of his story. It’s long (and the Village Voice site has been up-and-down all day, allegedly due to the linking of the piece - a mirror of sorts is available here), but worth reading, especially if you want to try and understand where I come from politically.

* Libertas wonders what might be making the film Vantage Point more successful than the other war movies we’ve seen in 2007. They’ve been hammering home the concept that people don’t want to see “America is evil and corrupt” films, and I wasn’t really ever sure I could buy into the theory - none of those movies have been appealing to me regardless of politics - but this is an interesting note about it, nonetheless. The greater question remains, however - why doesn’t Hollywood go for more, for lack of a better term, “red state” movies?

That’s all I’ve got.

The end of Eliot Spitzer’s career comes to a close about 11 years too late. While many are wondering what might have been, I’m quite excited to see the end of what has been a really horrible time from a human being who should have never gotten as close to any position of authority as he did, let alone attorney general or governor. His Judge Dredd (”I AM the law!”), cavalier attitude toward those he was supposed to protect is something that should be villified, not praised.

The lives he actively harmed were in the thousands, the amount of money lost by both corporations and individuals in the tens of billions. Alan Reynolds, who writes for Cato’s blog, shared a speech regarding Spitzer’s tactics yesterday (an absolute must read if you care even a bit about government power and overreach), and it’s eye-opening - a 1921 law in the New York state books, the Martin Act, allows for the sort of cavalier attitude that Spitzer brought to the office by giving the AG of New York unprecedented, overbearing power to question companies for any reason without counsel, using the press to posit theories that companies cannot realistically defend by law, and then extort settlements from these companies as stock prices plummet and ruin the lives of many involved. You don’t have to take Reynolds’s (or my) word for it - take a look at the record in areas such as the Marsh & McClellan suit or the Dick Grasso harassment, and then tell me with a straight face that Spitzer was doing his job ethically, and doing it well.

Thomas Sowell ultimately said it best, as he’s prone to do: “What Eliot Spitzer did was not out of character. It was completely in character for someone with the hubris that comes with the ability to misuse his power to make or break innocent people.” That Spitzer got nailed by an unjust law (prostitution) via unjust means (the monitoring of financial transactions of an arbitrary amount that presumes guilt as opposed to innocence) is a shame, until you consider exactly how many times he used the same types (if not exactly the same) unjust laws to ruin the lives of countless people. That’s what ultimately makes it different than the Vitters or Craigs of the world - they, too, are hypocrites, but at least Vitter wasn’t prosecuting the same prostitutes he was meeting, nor was Craig arresting homosexuals in the next stall over.

Good riddance, and New York should take the opportunity now to right a wrong. Those companies can’t get their money back, and perhaps some of them don’t deserve it. But to step up to the plate and weaken the power of the attorney general is an absolute must - if they don’t, it won’t be a question of if another Spitzer will roll around, but when.

More good articles on Spitzenfreude: Reason on why Spitzer’s hypocrisy is worse than you think, The Wall Street Journal on the press enabling Spitzer’s reign of terror (and QandO has more on this), and the betrayal of human rights groups.