Here's a good idea: distract them!
Jun. 16th, 2005 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI'm reading What's the Matter with Kansas? (finally! was only on the wait list for seven months...) and in awe of the prescience of it. It predicted the 2004 outcome pretty well. It also makes me seethe with liberal fury over how conservatives confuse poor people into voting for them by ignoring economics and heading straight for the moral jugular. I'm glad you red-state kind of people are so in touch with God, and I'm willing to go toe-to-toe, issue-to-issue with you about how far I'm willing to let said religiosity enter my supposedly secular government. However, it does not change the fact that the conservative party, Republican, is the wrong choice for you economically. They're the ones who support big business. So liberals are a bunch of latte-drinking, foreign-car driving, Wall Street-manipulating immoral baby-killers? Got news for you: the only reason we have huge conglomerates, poor farmers, and Enron is thanks to those Repubican big-business friendly representatives. So, vote for them, destroy welfare, farm aid, social security, and medicare/medicaid. Just don't come crying to me when, thanks to consolidation, monopoly, and deregulation, big business doesn't have to pay you a dime to help you out when you're sick, lost your job, or are looking to retire.
That rant aside, today's NYTimes has this article up that, were it not for this book, I might have been lulled into trusting before I clicked on it. The title of the op-ed is "Raise the Price of Fame," and its author proposes that we make celebrities pay as huge a tax share on their monies as we do C.E.O.s.
Now, I ranted a few weeks ago about the outrageous expense of movies, partially attributing it to the outlandish salaries that these people pull down. I'm all for taxing movie stars bundles. HOWEVER, Mr. Sneaky Op-Ed man, I'm an on toyou. The writer is, as if any of you were surprised, a former CEO himself. He makes all the right concessions about how CEOs have, yes, abused their positions and, no, they shouldn't be allowed to bill the company for 'business expenses' above a certain amount (that he can say a $1 million is fair takes some balls--I just hope he doesn't expect anyone reading the Times to swallow his jizz the way he does).
He moves onto saying how all these ballplayers and actors make soooooo much money, why can't they pay as much as companies? Well, let's see, for starters, they aren't companies. Movie stars have perks, don't get me wrong, but they don't insist the studio give them access to its private jets so they can go visit relatives in foreign lands. Movie stars are contract players. If the production house doesn't like the contract demands, they don't give in, period. Yes, they cave sometimes and on somethings, but unless your name is Tom Cruise, you generally learn to make your demands moderate so as to stay in business. With athletes, it's a little different, as they sign on for contracts that give them steady incomes over several years instead of lump sums of up-front and box-office percentage takes. If they get any perks in terms of transportation or paid vacations, that's what comes with the job; sure the well-paid ones get a trip for free when they travel to play, but so do the rest of the team.
Where this arse's argument really falls apart is, ironically, in his attempt to be specific. Usually, when people try to distract you from the state of affairs or make you feel bad for billionaires, they try to avoid statistics (how the top 0.1% of the wealthy control some huge %age of wealth, etc etc.) because they almost always look bad. This guy puts in the numbers and makes himself look really stupid. The 'bad' CEOs, aka the 'ones that got caught' pull down numbers in excess of ten times what these major league players and celluloid starlets do. So Giambi makes $120 million in seven years? Gosh, that would sound like a lot if you hadn't already mentioned that Ken Lay (still out of jail, thank you big business conservatives) took in $100 million the year Enron went under, and God knows how much before that. He wisely doesn't mention the average paycheck of movie stars because not even Tom Cruise can rake in $400 million in a year (WorldCom CEO's cashout), no matter how many times he boinks Katie Holmes or how many people he hypnotizes into being Scientologists.
Wise up, dude. We may not be the brightest nation, but most of us can do a little math. And no one is fooled by your amateurish distraction. Guys like this are the ones you read about to understand what the politics of distraction are all about. Remember the Patriot Act? It's the Patriot Act! Surely anything with the word patriot in it can't be bad for us (patriot missles not withstanding)! He actually says that's what he's doing--naming his stupid idea after something everyone will love because how could hate it if you're supposed to like what it sounds like? He wants it to be the "Robin Hood Tax Act of 2005." It's Robin Hood! As the man says, "How could anyone be against Robin Hood?" Newsflash, dickwad, in that metaphor, Robin would be stealing from the profitable travelling theater acts as opposed to the corrupt merchant, church, and noble classes that really pocketed the wealth in those days. Be annoyed that movie stars make so much money and tax them accordingly, yes. Forget that the CEOs are the ones with the deep pockets and the real estate and stock to protect their money against taxation? Oh no you didn'!
You know, if we had a more severe graduated income tax and didn't waste our time trying to abolish estate taxes and other sources of non-earned income that the super-rich predominantly benefit from, we wouldn't have to hold out our hands to Hollywood like beggars. Am I the only one who finds this absurd big-business conservative thing hilarious? We spent a full year whining over a flash of titty at a violent sporting event people had the temerity to call a 'family program,' and we're censoring gay people off the air even when the issue of them being gay didn't factor into the show in which it was displayed, and don't forget the brou-ha-ha over those damned liberals in Hollywood ever since Michael Moore dragged politics through the mud as much as Hollywood's lack of decency has been assailed by the pundits and the bloggers.
All that, possibly increased action of the FCC over public airwaves and perhaps even intrusion onto the paid services such as cable that already monitor themselves to a point bordering on censorship, and they want hand-outs from these people? Talk to fucking Rupert Murdoch. Go bother the heads of the studios who greenlight a $100 million movie like Spider-Man and then take home $400 million from ticket sales and probably a net of $2 billion in merchandising and DVDs. While you're at it, threaten the friggin Loews people with higher taxes until Mr. Loews makes movies not cost $11 to see!
That rant aside, today's NYTimes has this article up that, were it not for this book, I might have been lulled into trusting before I clicked on it. The title of the op-ed is "Raise the Price of Fame," and its author proposes that we make celebrities pay as huge a tax share on their monies as we do C.E.O.s.
Now, I ranted a few weeks ago about the outrageous expense of movies, partially attributing it to the outlandish salaries that these people pull down. I'm all for taxing movie stars bundles. HOWEVER, Mr. Sneaky Op-Ed man, I'm an on toyou. The writer is, as if any of you were surprised, a former CEO himself. He makes all the right concessions about how CEOs have, yes, abused their positions and, no, they shouldn't be allowed to bill the company for 'business expenses' above a certain amount (that he can say a $1 million is fair takes some balls--I just hope he doesn't expect anyone reading the Times to swallow his jizz the way he does).
He moves onto saying how all these ballplayers and actors make soooooo much money, why can't they pay as much as companies? Well, let's see, for starters, they aren't companies. Movie stars have perks, don't get me wrong, but they don't insist the studio give them access to its private jets so they can go visit relatives in foreign lands. Movie stars are contract players. If the production house doesn't like the contract demands, they don't give in, period. Yes, they cave sometimes and on somethings, but unless your name is Tom Cruise, you generally learn to make your demands moderate so as to stay in business. With athletes, it's a little different, as they sign on for contracts that give them steady incomes over several years instead of lump sums of up-front and box-office percentage takes. If they get any perks in terms of transportation or paid vacations, that's what comes with the job; sure the well-paid ones get a trip for free when they travel to play, but so do the rest of the team.
Where this arse's argument really falls apart is, ironically, in his attempt to be specific. Usually, when people try to distract you from the state of affairs or make you feel bad for billionaires, they try to avoid statistics (how the top 0.1% of the wealthy control some huge %age of wealth, etc etc.) because they almost always look bad. This guy puts in the numbers and makes himself look really stupid. The 'bad' CEOs, aka the 'ones that got caught' pull down numbers in excess of ten times what these major league players and celluloid starlets do. So Giambi makes $120 million in seven years? Gosh, that would sound like a lot if you hadn't already mentioned that Ken Lay (still out of jail, thank you big business conservatives) took in $100 million the year Enron went under, and God knows how much before that. He wisely doesn't mention the average paycheck of movie stars because not even Tom Cruise can rake in $400 million in a year (WorldCom CEO's cashout), no matter how many times he boinks Katie Holmes or how many people he hypnotizes into being Scientologists.
Wise up, dude. We may not be the brightest nation, but most of us can do a little math. And no one is fooled by your amateurish distraction. Guys like this are the ones you read about to understand what the politics of distraction are all about. Remember the Patriot Act? It's the Patriot Act! Surely anything with the word patriot in it can't be bad for us (patriot missles not withstanding)! He actually says that's what he's doing--naming his stupid idea after something everyone will love because how could hate it if you're supposed to like what it sounds like? He wants it to be the "Robin Hood Tax Act of 2005." It's Robin Hood! As the man says, "How could anyone be against Robin Hood?" Newsflash, dickwad, in that metaphor, Robin would be stealing from the profitable travelling theater acts as opposed to the corrupt merchant, church, and noble classes that really pocketed the wealth in those days. Be annoyed that movie stars make so much money and tax them accordingly, yes. Forget that the CEOs are the ones with the deep pockets and the real estate and stock to protect their money against taxation? Oh no you didn'!
You know, if we had a more severe graduated income tax and didn't waste our time trying to abolish estate taxes and other sources of non-earned income that the super-rich predominantly benefit from, we wouldn't have to hold out our hands to Hollywood like beggars. Am I the only one who finds this absurd big-business conservative thing hilarious? We spent a full year whining over a flash of titty at a violent sporting event people had the temerity to call a 'family program,' and we're censoring gay people off the air even when the issue of them being gay didn't factor into the show in which it was displayed, and don't forget the brou-ha-ha over those damned liberals in Hollywood ever since Michael Moore dragged politics through the mud as much as Hollywood's lack of decency has been assailed by the pundits and the bloggers.
All that, possibly increased action of the FCC over public airwaves and perhaps even intrusion onto the paid services such as cable that already monitor themselves to a point bordering on censorship, and they want hand-outs from these people? Talk to fucking Rupert Murdoch. Go bother the heads of the studios who greenlight a $100 million movie like Spider-Man and then take home $400 million from ticket sales and probably a net of $2 billion in merchandising and DVDs. While you're at it, threaten the friggin Loews people with higher taxes until Mr. Loews makes movies not cost $11 to see!
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Date: 2005-06-17 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-18 05:27 am (UTC)