Warren Buffett famously noted that his secretary paid a higher income tax rate than he did. It was a good illustration of the reason we have such high income inequality in this country. As one goes very high in earnings, one’s tax rate goes down. This is primarily because we don’t tax capital gains as much as we do earned income. The government is implicitly saying that owning is more valuable than working. Yes Virginia, we have a very screwed up country.

Conservatives struck back with one primary argument, “If Warren Buffett wants to pay more taxes, no one is stopping him.” It is a shaming argument implying (and sometimes saying explicitly) that Buffett is trying to force others to pay more in taxes and that he ought to just shut up. The argument has a certain appeal because it is technically right. It does make Buffett sound a bit hypocritical.

There are a couple of problems. The most obvious is that in saying this, Buffett is using himself as an example of how the policy is bad. He is making a policy argument. But no one ever makes this argument against the Koch brothers. They argue that their taxes should be lower and so no one can say that they should just pay less than they have to. So the argument here is that rich people can’t advocate for higher taxes but they can advocate for lower taxes.

What’s more, the idea behind the shaming argument is simply to take attention off the cruelty of the policy. By saying that Buffett should just pay more taxes himself and shut up, they are implicitly saying that it is just fine that the Koch brothers pay less tax than their secretaries. Since conservatives have no reasonable arguments for why this ought to be that way, they simply change the subject. It isn’t about the middle class getting screwed for the benefit of the rich; it’s about the rich getting screwed by that old meanie Warren Buffett.

Most conservative arguments on any issue come down to a belief that any privilege that the powerful have is God given. And in this case it is worse because Buffett is supposed is seen as a class traitor. The only way that the low capital gains tax can be a given is if everyone who matters agrees about it. It doesn’t matter what the poor think, because they just don’t get it. But if rich people break rank on this issue, it undermines the definitional aspect of low capital gains taxes. Thus Buffett must be destroyed as a hypocrite who could choose to pay more in taxes. No rich person should question God’s law.

Listen up everyone! It is Roger Corman‘s 88th birthday today. And you should care, because he is an amazing guy. He made all those great early-1960s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with Vincent Price that Richard Matheson wrote. And he did so much more. He is the very definition of an exploitation filmmaker. He did a great deal with very little.

I especially like Corman because he shines a very bright light on what a film director really is. This is illustrated best by Corman’s commentary on the film The Pit and the Pendulum. It mostly consists of him talking about how they reused things from House of Usher. And you can see this in his films: they tend to look the same. I’m sure that he had the scripts tailored to fit with the resources his company already had. And this is why so many of his films are set in castles, even though it doesn’t make any sense.

In some circles Roger Corman is held up as a visionary director. I don’t think this is true at all. He was just a guy trying to get films made that people would enjoy. And he was very successful. But he didn’t have a “vision,” and I doubt that any other director does either. If you look at the late films he produced, you see some the same tricks, even though they are directed by a number of other people. It’s still the same formula: make the most of what you have. And it is amazing how effective it is. I doubt that most people watching the newer films even realize just how claustrophobic they are. A bit of money spent for context goes a long way to making a small set interesting.

I wish Hollywood would learn what Corman perfected. Most films anymore have huge canvases on which they paint, but I don’t think anyone really cares. The fight scenes in The Matrix Reloaded were interesting, but it was the straight dialog scenes where the drama was. And that’s true of just about any action film you can think of. Corman understands that and so his films always look better than they cost. And that is a remarkable thing in the film industry.

Here is a scene from one of my favorites, The Raven:

Happy birthday Roger Corman!

After gushing a bit about Brendan Gleeson, JMF recommended that I watch The Guard. And so I did. It is an amusing and interesting film, written and directed by John Michael McDonagh. It is hard not to compare the film to the work of his brother, Martin McDonagh. And it makes me wonder if I hadn’t read too much into In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. Because despite all of its charm and intelligence, The Guard is something of a muddle.

The film tells the story of Gerry Boyle (Gleeson), a police officer in Ireland who is difficult in that way that the Irish can be. He’s always funny and honest and offensive, but inside beats the heart of a romantic hero. When a major cocaine deal is going to go down in the area, he’s the one guard who isn’t paid off because he’s thought to be too unpredictable. Meanwhile, FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) has come to the area in search of the drug dealers. Everett is probably a good portrait of how the Irish see Americans. He’s smart and committed and even maybe heroic. But he’s also something of a stuffed shirt with no sense of humor.

In the hands of Hollywood, this film would take a very tired course. Think The Heat. (See my review, Thematic Problems in The Heat.) Here, the film is mostly a character sketch. It wanders around without much point until an event at end of the second act that pushes Boyle into action. And the third act is then very much a Spaghetti Western parody, but more A Fistful of Dynamite than A Fistful of Dollars.

The first two acts remind me rather a lot of Bill Forsyth, who is essentially a character driven storyteller. McDonagh adds to that a genre element that both provides dramatic momentum and more thematic depth. But I don’t think it fully works here. Because ultimately, the film gets too involved in its plot and it never resolves what exactly it is trying to say about Boyle. To me, the character is a lost soul. So the heroic denouement seems forced. Comic book characters go from lost to hero; real characters go from lost to less lost.

Another problem is that Everett isn’t a very effective character. He seems to have been thrown into the narrative for the purpose of making the third act work. There is only one sequence until the end where he is not paired with Boyle. And although it is amusing, it sticks out as a distracting subplot. Most of the lesser characters have far more to them. Everett is almost entirely functional.

The film is at its best when Boyle and Everett are at each other. Boyle is never so funny as when he’s winding up Everett. And Everett’s mystified reactions to Boyle are some of the best things in the film. Because of this, it is quite an enjoyable experience. And the ending is playful meta fun. But under the surface, there isn’t much to get. And I think McDonagh means for there to be. I will be keen to see what he offers up in the future.

Afterword

I hate ratings like “Four Stars!” But I can see their uses. When I write things like this, most people will think that I didn’t like this film, even though I very clearly say that I did like it. But because I focused on the problems in the film, many people will get the idea that I didn’t. That gets to the problem with ratings. How do you rate a film that works but has problems. And what does it really matter if I like a film? I try to give an idea of what a film is about and if it works. Taste is, well, taste. So unless its Netflix, which combines my simplistic ratings with what other people who tend to like the kind of films I like, what is the point?

Balls and Strikes. That’s what John Roberts said about being a judge. During his confirmation hearing, he said, “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.” At the time, I was appalled. Never in my life had I ever heard someone say such a nakedly dishonest thing during a confirmation hearing. It was pure rhetoric of the conservative variety. What he meant was, “I’m not like those liberal activist judges, I just apply the law.” The only thing that could be worse than Roberts lying about this is if he is so delusional as to actually believe it.

It’s been a bad couple of weeks. And this week’s Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon vs FEC was the worst of it. You can read my thoughts on the case in, Supreme Court Strikes Blow for Oligarchy. It isn’t so much what it means on a practical level, because the truth is that our political system was already a mess. It’s owned by the wealthy. If you have any question, just look at what happened to Proposition 37 in 2012. But the truth is that the Supreme Court could have decided to make a stand for democracy, but the conservatives rushed to the conclusion that the best thing is for us to have an oligarchy.

What the Supreme Court is really doing is deciding between competing interests. This is what the court should be doing. And McCutcheon provided an amazingly clear choice. On the one side, there are several hundred extremely rich people who already have undemocratic levels of political power. On the other side, you have well over 300 million people who have an interest in not having their democracy manipulated. Five of the justices felt the interests of the few hundred were most important. Four of the justices felt the interests of the entire nation were most important.

I’m not saying that the interests of the majority always trump the interests of the minority. Not at all! That’s why we have a constitution and the rule of law. But this case seems pretty clear. It reminds me very much of Bush vs Gore where the conservatives on the court were so very concerned that the trust fund millionaire Bush would lose out on any possible rights. In this case, the court is very worried about the rights of an Alabama millionaire to grease the wheels of democracy. It would seem that the conservatives on the court are only really interested in individual rights when it comes to people who already have a hell of a lot more rights than most.

But the baseball analogy really bugs me. I’m always impressed with baseball umpires. Things happen fast and they very rarely blow a call. I’m sure if you had nine umpires behind home plate when a curve ball skimmed the edge of the plate, at least eight of them would agree on the call. The reason that the justices didn’t agree on the call in McCutcheon is that it is nothing at all like calling balls and strikes. And with the conservative majority on the court, just like with conservatives throughout the political system, it is all about ideology. I can live with that, but it is galling when they claim they are just objective arbiters of truth.

My favorite song is “If I Only Had a Brain.” Or at least it is if you go by the song that I sing most often. Following from my mom, I am always singing bits of songs that comment about what is going on in my life. And given that I find myself often doing very stupid things, singing “If I Only Had a Brain” is appropriate. It’s also a hell of a song with a catchy melody and clever lyrics. It is also wry and plaintive, which rather well captures the duality of my personality.

The part I most sing is actually done by Judy Garland. “With the thoughts you’d be thinkin’, you could be another Lincoln.” First: wow. I love that kind of smart and corny line. And there are others, like when “riddle” is rhymed with “individal,” a silly truncation of “individual.” Or rhyming “merry” with “dingaderry,” which may or may not be a word. And that’s the first part of the song:

What hit me this morning was what the lines imply: President Lincoln was a great man because he was smart—because of the thoughts that thought. This was an idea that I dimly remember from my childhood: that the president was smart. This idea has died, especially as of Reagan—but not because Reagan wasn’t smart. It is all part of the Republican Party’s push to authoritarianism.

If you push all the racism aside with the Nazis, what you are left with is a violent authoritarian movement. It mythologized violent, unthinking youths. And we see this everywhere in the modern conservative movement. Look at all the love that Putin is getting these days. Or look at how the religious right has turned Jesus into a muscle bound Rambo character who is coming back (Soon!) and taking names. But most of all you see it in the conservative faith that government is something that is best done by uneducated novices. (For a counter to that, see, Jerry Brown’s Liberal Bona Fides.)

The issue is not about being smart, however, but about valuing intelligence. The whole thing goes back to Paul Krugman’s line that reality has a well known liberal bias. This wasn’t true 50 years ago. But the conservatives have moved the country so far to the right that there really are very few policies they support that make any sense. So it isn’t surprising that they would start pushing the idea that stupid politicians are better than smart ones. They really don’t have many smart politicians who are willing to support their bad ideas.

Stephen Colbert mocks this rather well by talking about thinking with his gut. But it is a widely held belief. At least on the right. The last three Democratic presidents (Obama, Clinton, Carter) were, regardless of their other failings, very intelligent men. The last three Republicans presidents (Bush the Younger, Bush the Elder, and Reagan) were, while certainly not dumb, not known for their intelligence brilliance. If anyone were going to mention one of them in a song, it will be like this, “Complexity won’t trouble you; you’ll act just like ol’ W; before you get a brain!”

On this day in 1792, Thaddeus Stevens was born. When I wrote about him a year and a half ago, I quoted Wikipedia of that time saying, “Stevens dreamed of a socially just world, where unearned privilege did not exist. He believed from his personal experience that being different or having a different perspective can enrich society. He believed that differences among people should not be feared or oppressed but celebrated.” Of course, Wikipedia being what it is, no longer says anything about that but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make the sentiment any less true, even though we don’t exactly know what Stevens dreamed about.

Stevens was a very important Pennsylvania Representative during the Civil War. He became interested in the cause of abolishing slavery in the 1830s. Had he not have committed to that cause, he would likely have gone much further as a politician. But he was a true believer, not just of the cause of slavery but of the cause of the powerless generally. Even though that kind of belief (then and now) tends to go along with a lot of paternalism, it is hard to think of him as anything but a good guy. And racism was not just a theoretical issue with him.

In the 1840s, Stevens hired the one-quarter African American (then as now just “black”) housekeeper Lydia Hamilton Smith. She became what neighbors considered Stevens common law wife. So his interests couldn’t have been too paternal. She was, however, 23 years younger, and by her photograph as an older women, quite attractive. Idealistic though he might have been, he was still a man.

Happy birthday Thaddeus Stevens!

Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of the British television series Agatha Christie’s Poirot. It’s the one with David Suchet in the title role. I remember watching it when it first came out; I was blown away by Suchet in the part. I was used to Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express and Peter Ustinov in Death on the Nile. Although I liked both of those films, I didn’t feel that either actor captured the essence of Hercule Poirot. But Suchet really brought the character to life.

This is very important. The truth is that the plots of Agatha Christie really aren’t that interesting. They are often far fetched. What’s more, they are so mechanical. Christie had a formula and she stuck by it. The only real question from half way through one of her stories is what bit of arcane knowledge she will pull out of her bag of research to justify the conclusion. It is very rarely a surprise exactly who done it, only how they done it. And that surprise is pretty much never interesting.

What is perhaps most problematic about her plots is how Poirot’s evidence is so weak. I am almost always left with the idea that even the worst defense attorney would manage to get the murderer off. To make up for this, the plots usually involve the murderer confessing under the power of Poirot’s narrative. And this is often combined with the murderer’s suicide. All of this is brilliantly lampooned in “The Evil Voice” from The Mitchell and Webb Look:

So all we are left with to really appreciate is Poirot himself. And he is an awful character. Agatha Christie herself said that he was “insufferable” and “an egocentric creep.” And I think this is why Suchet is so great at the character. Poirot is a man who is very good at one thing, but is blessed in only valuing that one thing. So he’s perfectly happy being the very limited person that he is. And Suchet plays the character fearlessly in this regard.

So it isn’t that Poirot doesn’t care that other people look down on him for being a coward. It is that he doesn’t even know. There is only one Good and he happens to have cornered the market in it. Lucky him! Interestingly, in my travels in academia, I have met more than a few Poirot types. They are kind of sad in their very limited appreciation of the complexities of life. And so is Poirot. But we get to see him at his best.

Agatha Christie’s Poirot has been produced for almost 25 years now. They’ve made 70 episodes. Half of them are 50 minutes long and the other half are feature length. I think that speaks well of their quality. If you haven’t seen the series, you really do owe it to yourself to at least check out a few.

Over at The Cook Political Report, Amy Walter made a good point, Don’t Call Rand Paul the Frontrunner. Basically, she distinguished between candidates who get a lot of media coverage and candidates who actually win. Journalists like covering Rand Paul because he isn’t as dreadfully boring as most Republicans. And he appeals to certain Tea Party folk. But neither of these groups are that important in nominating a presidential candidate. “These ‘bedrock’ voters don’t show up at straw polls. They don’t wave signs or show up at rallies. They do, however, vote.” Or at least they do during presidential elections.

So Rand’s problem isn’t in a general election but in the primary. Or so Walter thinks. I think he has at least as big a problem in a general election. A big part of this is very general. Paul is an ideologue. There is intense attention in a general election. Compare him to, for example, Hillary Clinton. I actually prefer Paul’s view on international affairs to Clinton’s. But in the public sphere, Clinton’s realpolitik comes off as knowledgeable and serious. Paul’s isolationism comes off as the fantasies of a child.

This brings up another issue. Even though I agree with Paul about foreign affairs, I would never vote for him. Just on the most basic level, the truth is that Paul isn’t serious when it comes to foreign affairs. I don’t think he’s thought the issues through half as seriously as I have, and foreign affairs isn’t something I’m very interested in. I fully expect that if he became president, it would Bush the Younger all over again. The great isolationist candidate would turn into the great preemptive striking president.

But it’s deeper than that. While his foreign policy positions would make him seem like he isn’t qualified to be president, the issue doesn’t otherwise mean that much to voters. I would never vote for him because his economic ideas are loony. And I know from experience that libertarian rhetoric always turns into straight conservative policy. So Rand Paul would give us a smaller safety net but he wouldn’t lessen government spying on us and he wouldn’t reduce the number of people in prison for nonviolent offenses.

For most voters, economic issues trump everything else. The only way he might get some traction is to campaign like Reagan in 1980. You might remember that Reagan promised that he was going to cut income taxes by 10% for the first three years for a total of 27% cut. It didn’t work out that way. But at this point, I don’t think voters are going to buy lavish promises. All the big income tax cuts that Republicans have enacted have been overwhelmingly for the rich. And because of the way that most of the tax burden on the poor is in the form of local and payroll taxes, even an across the board income tax cut would be highly regressive.

The only issue that Paul might have is his embraces of cannabis legalization. But even on that issue, it is clear that he holds his nose. And by 2016, I’m not sure it will be that big an issue as more and more states move to legalize. Plus, if Paul becomes the nominee, the Democratic nominee will follow him on the issue. So cannabis is a pretty thin reed to hang a campaign on. Meanwhile, he’s for destroying lots of popular government programs. And he’s a racist, even if he uses pretty words to justify it. Bottom line: he’d be a bad candidate and I’d be more than happy if the Republicans nominated him.

Afterword

Necessary caveat: liberals said the same thing about Reagan. But it was a very different time. We are at the end of 35 years of steady movement to the right. I don’t see people standing up and demanding that we get cracking on destroying our culture even further.