The first three chapters of my latest book are on the Amazon webpage. (Click on the ‘Look inside’ link.) The publisher’s webpage is here and you can also buy it from any major retailer. (Note: This will be the new top post for a while. Later posts are below.)
The stories of brutality and violations of people rights by the thugs that now make up the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) forces keep appearing daily. It is now apparently the case that those groups are attractive to violence-prone individuals who relish the chance to throw their weight around while wearing masks and assault anyone they dislike knowing that what normally would have landed them in prison is now fully protected by the Thug-in-Chief in the White House and his minions who occupy most of the high levels of government, including the attorney general Pam Bondi
But even through this dense mass of what would be criminal behavior if done by anyone else, some news stories still stick out, like this one where an attack dog was used to deliberately injure someone.
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One of the messages of doom that were widely broadcast about what might happen should Zohran Mamdani win the mayoral election in New York City was that wealthy people might leave the city in droves because of the higher taxes he was promising to levy on them in order to fund some of the social programs that would benefit ordinary people. Such scare tactics to keep the wealthy happy are not uncommon. Some might view the departure of these people as not a bad thing, since wealthy people who begrudge paying more in taxes (which they can well afford) to benefit others are pests whom we would be better off without. Cristobal Young, a sociologist at Cornell University, and others have looked into this claim and find that this threat to move lacks evidence in support.
I research whether high earners actually move when their taxes go up. My colleagues and I have analyzed millionaire taxes in New Jersey and California, the migration of Forbes billionaires globally and decades of IRS data tracing where Americans with million-dollar incomes live.
Top earners are often thought of as “mobile millionaires” who are ever searching for lower-tax places to live. In reality, they’re often reluctant to leave the places where they built their careers and raised their families.
…The first fact is simple: Millionaires have low migration rates.
Mobility in America is highest among people who are still searching for their economic place in life. Workers who earn the lowest wages move across state lines at relatively high rates, about 4.5% per year, often in search of more affordable housing. People making $1 million-plus a year move only half as often: Just 2.4% of them pack up each year.
When millionaires do move, it rarely appears to be for tax reasons.
…Overall, only about 15% of millionaires who move end up with a lower tax bill. That shows the rich are willing and able to move for tax reasons. But because only about 2.4% of millionaires move each year – and only a fraction of those moves reduce their taxes – overall tax migration ends up being a small fraction of a small fraction. Not never, but not often.
Among my friends, many of them complain of problems with sleep, either falling asleep or getting up after sleeping for a short while and then being stubbornly awake for long periods. Given that we are repeatedly told that people need to get about eight hours sleep a night and that lack of adequate sleep can lead to various adverse health issues, they worry about their lack of sleep and exchange the many different strategies that are out there to combat this problem. But these have various levels of success in that some techniques work for some and not for others, and the same technique that worked for a while may stop being effective. Older people and post-menopausal women seem to be more prone to lack of adequate sleep.
During these discussions, I remain quiet. This is because I have never had any problems with sleep and it seems insensitive to tell others this when they are clearly concerned about their problem. I have a regular night time routine and I usually fall asleep within a few minutes. Now that I am older I do get up about once a night but can go back to sleep fairly quickly, waking up at around 7:30 the next day. I then luxuriate in bed for about 30 minutes before getting up. I even usually take a nap during the day, which some sleep-deprived people are recommended to not do, and it does not affect my night time sleep. Neither does taking caffeine before bedtime. I also enjoy a brief liminal period after waking, where one drifts in and out of short periods of sleep.
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Carmel (also known as Carmel-by-the-Sea) is a very wealthy small city (area one square mile, population 3,200) near where live. It has many quirks due to its origins as an artistic enclave a long time ago, the most noteworthy being the ban on numbering houses on its streets, something I have written about, as well as banning high heels in certain parts of the city. Efforts to require street numbers brought out fierce opposition from long-time residents despite the many drawbacks of not having numbers. After years and years of heated debate, the city council finally passed an ordinance requiring numbering. That seems to have settled that issue, at least for now.
But now Carmel has adopted an ordinance banning the sport of pickleball (due to its noisy nature) in its only public park, making it a misdemeanor to do so.
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Recent political developments have greatly encouraged progressives in the US and struck fear into the hearts of the Democratic party leadership. That leadership is pro-corporate, pro-war, and reflexively pro-Israel, not willing to say anything critical even as Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Forces have gone on a genocidal rampage of unbelievable cruelty against Palestinians, committing war crimes left and right. It has come to a point where one does not need to dig up evidence of the crimes, each day’s news just provides yet more evidence.
The Democratic party leadership wants the energy and youthful passion of the progressives to campaign and vote for them but wants them to also then just shut up about the issues that they care about and let them govern. This was why Zohran Mamdani’s win was so remarkable. The corporate and Israel lobby threw everything at him while the Democratic party leadership either stayed silent on the sidelines or grudgingly supported him very late in the campaign or, in the case of senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, refused to even say whom he voted for, which clearly meant that he voted for the odious Cuomo against his own party’s nominee.
But Mamdani’s win was not the whole story even though it got the most attention. There was a blue wave all across the state.
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Ludwig Minelli died yesterday at the age of 93. He had long promoted the idea that people facing death should have the option of choosing when and how they died and the organization he founded in 1998 called Dignitas helped people to do just that. It was announced that that was how he died.
Ludwig Minelli, who founded the group in 1998, died on Saturday, days before his 93rd birthday, Dignitas said. It added: “Right up to the end of his life, he continued to search for further ways to help people to exercise their right to freedom of choice and self-determination in their ‘final matters’ – and he often found them.”
…Minelli, a journalist turned lawyer, faced many legal challenges and made several successful appeals to the Swiss supreme court and the European court of human rights (ECHR).
Internationally there has been a significant shift in attitudes towards assisted dying in the nearly three decades since Dignitas was founded. France recently voted to allow some people in the last stages of a terminal illness the right to assisted dying. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Austria have all introduced assisted dying laws since 2015. In the US, assisted dying is legal in 10 states.
…Paying tribute to Minelli on Sunday, Dignitas said his work had had a lasting influence on Swiss law, pointing to a 2011 ECHR ruling that recognised the right of a person to decide the manner and time of their own end of life.
Swiss law does not allow for euthanasia, where a doctor or other person administers a lethal injection, for example. But assisted dying – when a person who articulates a wish to die commits the lethal act themselves – has been legal for decades.
Unlike some similar organisations in Switzerland, Dignitas, which says it has more than 10,000 members, also offers its services to people living outside the country.
I am aware of the pitfalls associated with this practice, the main one being that some people may be unduly pressured by others to exercise this option simply because they have become seen as a burden to others or to society.
But I for one would like to have this option. I have reached an age where friends and relatives my age (and even younger) are going through very difficult times involving their health, and even dealing with various forms of dementia. Seeing them struggle, and the thought of facing a similarly protracted end of life, is something I wish to to avoid.
Assisted dying is not available everywhere in the US. It is currently available in 11 states and the District of Columbia (of which fortunately California is one) though that right is under threat in two of those places, New Jersey and DC.
In many of the websites that I read, I come across repeated articles with headlines that suggest that Trump is unraveling because he is mentally and/or physically falling apart or that his cult following is defecting. They warn that one or other impending event is going to finally cause the collapse. These headlines have become so common that I have stopped clicking on them because they seem to be largely wishful thinking. Until I see some very tangible evidence that this is the case, I tend to ignore such teaser headlines.
This kind of thing is not only on the left-liberal end of the political spectrum. Neoconservative Bill Kristol is someone I despise. He was one of the key people who urged the US to invade Iraq as part of the imperialist neoconservative ambition to take over Iraq. Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia as outlined in their manifesto Project for a New American Century. But he and some other neocons have become, for various reasons including Trump’s campaign promise to avoid further foreign entanglements (which he seems to have forgotten), opposed to Trump and he says that the way Trump is behaving with respect to the Epstein files shows that he has something to hide and is feeling cornered.
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I am sure that everyone has seen a variation of this scene in films. Somebody gets really mad about something and then starts throwing stuff, either at another person or at the wall, or sweeping everything off their desks so that they crash to the floor, scattering debris everywhere. Whenever I see that exceedingly common scene,I always wonder to myself, “Do people really behave like that?” I personally have never felt the urge to do anything remotely destructive like that when I feel angry. Apart from the danger posed by broken crockery and glass flying around, there is also the cost of replacing them and cleaning up the mess. Even if it provides some catharsis, the costs are definitely not worth it, for me at least. No one I know has ever done that either, at least to my knowledge. I doubt that we are particularly placid people. It may just be that this kind of scene is an easy way for filmmakers to show rage as well as providing some action to spice up the film.
But one side-effect of showing them is that it might make people think that breaking stuff is a good way to release pent-up feelings of anger. And there are now things called Rage Rooms where, for a fee, people can go and break stuff when they feel angry.
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I hate airline travel. It is all so tedious, the drive to the airport, parking, taking the shuttle to the terminal, the checking-in line, the security line ritual with TSA and then the wait for your flight in the usually crowded gate area, sitting in a cramped plane for some hours, and the process at the destination, such as waiting for your bag at the carousel, and getting to the taxi cab location. The only redeeming feature is that it gets you to your destination so much more quickly than any other way. In my case, if I can drive to my destination in six or seven hours (about 400 miles), I prefer to do so since the total travel time is about the same and the aggravation is much less.
Of all the above listed discomforts of air travel, the one that I find least tedious is the waiting at the gate. If the seats are reasonably comfortable and I have access to an electrical outlet in case my computer battery runs low and the wi-fi is decent and free, I am fine waiting for even a few hours in case of a layover or flight delays. If the seats on either side of me are vacant, I consider that a nice bonus.
In walking through the terminals, I have noticed the existence of places labeled ‘lounges’ with various identifiers of airlines attached, suggesting that they are only accessible to people with some sort of membership pass. But in this amusing article by Zach Helfand, he informs me that there is an entire world behind those portals that are sought out by the wealthy and not-so-wealthy who prefer not to hobnob with the hoi polloi that make up the people in the concourses. These places offer plush surroundings, comfortable chairs, fancy food, drinks, massages, facials, manicures, spas, even pool tables and actual swimming pools.
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The American justice system has hardly ever been something to boast about. It is heavily tilted to serve the interests of the rich and powerful and against ordinary people, not to mention often being racist and misogynistic to boot. But with Trump, it has opened up new areas of legal malpractice, violating some of the norms that used to exist.
When Joe Biden was president, whenever any person or group on the conservative end of the spectrum was investigated for anything, rightwingers would howl in indignation that Biden had ‘weaponized the Justice Department’ to attack them, even though there was scant evidence that this was the case. In fact, Biden seemed to go to great lengths to distance himself from his attorney general Merrick Garland and Garland himself seemed to be very conscious of his duty to be independent of Biden.
All that seems so quaint now. With Trump, the weaponization of the entire US government against his perceived political enemies is going full blast. His attorney general Pam Bondi acts as if she gets her instructions directly from Trump. The firing of career people and replacing them with ideologues who will do her bidding is her way of making sure that political vendettas can be carried out. As a result, Trump keeps losing case after case because they are overstepping the bounds.
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