“Quickly, Smithers, my ‘world’s smallest violin’!”

Hollywood Reporter:

By and large, they personally forked out for his campaign, they voted for him, and they know he is capable of boosting TV ratings just by making an appearance.

But executives at the Big Four broadcast networks are seething behind the scenes that President Obama has cost them about $30 million in cumulative ad revenue this year with his three primetime news conference pre-emptions.
...
Even more irksome, the White House is bailing out bankers, insurers and carmakers, but nary a nickel has gone to the struggling media industry
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“The millions of ad dollars the president is costing us could help us keep some of those people working.”

Hee.

Via:  Sean M.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 14:04:08 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Incoming!

From The Wall Street Journal (so it must be true!):
Lessee... 120,000/year...  365 days...  328/day...  assume 14 hours play...  23/hour...

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 14:15:33 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hey Mr. Treasury Department man, I have a suggestion!

Via TaxProf Blog:

The Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy and the Service use the Guidance Priority List each year to identify and prioritize the tax issues that should be addressed through regulations, revenue rulings, revenue procedures, notices, and other published administrative guidance.
...
The Treasury Department and the Service recognize the importance of public input to formulate a Guidance Priority List that focuses resources on guidance items that are most important to taxpayers and tax administration. Published guidance plays an important role in increasing voluntary compliance by helping to clarify ambiguous areas of the tax law. ...

Okay, here’s a thought: Let’s make sure that members of Congress, the Cabinet, and other Washington types pay their fair and honest share of taxes, including all the penalties and interest for errors in reporting or paying that would be charged to regular citizens.

In reviewing recommendations and selecting projects for inclusion on the 2009- 2010 Guidance Priority List, the Treasury Department and the Service will consider the following:

1.  Whether the recommended guidance resolves significant issues relevant to many taxpayers;

I, and, I am certain, many other taxpayers, have a significant issue with a bunch of politicians flouting the tax law to no apparent consequence.

2.  Whether the recommended guidance promotes sound tax administration;

Sound administration of taxes requires that the collection process be perceived to be equitable.  Failure to collect taxes due from privileged individuals promotes taxpayer contempt for the system and sets a bad example for taxpayer compliance.

3.  Whether the recommended guidance can be drafted in a manner that will enable taxpayers to easily understand and apply the guidance;

“The law will be enforced, without fear or favor.”  (I imagine that even a Congressman could understand that.)

4.  Whether the Service can administer the recommended guidance on a uniform basis;

See #3 above.

and
5.  Whether the recommended guidance reduces controversy and lessens the burden on taxpayers or the Service.

That high government officials are seen to receive treatment no different from that applied to other citizens will Encourage the Body Politic, dispell Gloom and Cynicism, and provide opportunity for General Merriment.  To the extent that said government officials pay their full burden, where in the past they paid only a portion, will lessen the financial burden of government to other taxpayers.  And possibly, after confronting the Full Majesty of the Tax Code, said government officials might- just possibly- move toward increasing its simplicity and equity, thereby reducing the burden of explanation and enforcement to the Service.

There, how’s that?

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 00:53:01 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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“How’s that again?” again

Hi boys and girls!  Time for another episode of “Pedantry Corner.”

Barack Obama, who vowed he’d provide a transparent administration staffed with disinterested public servants with the self-restraint of Roman castrati, appointed an admitted tax cheat to run the Treasury Department— and he’s hardly the only one in the administration. - Jonah Goldberg

Ummm... the castrati were frequently noted for rather notorious (and noisy) lives:

Caffarelli was… typical of many castrati in being famous for tantrums on and off-stage, and for amorous adventures with noble ladies. - Wikipedia

Could Goldberg have been thinking of eunuchs?  No, they weren’t exactly self-restrained, either (if you get my point). Well, somebody must have been disinterested and self-restrained– unless maybe Goldberg is backhandedly implying that the president’s appointees have been, by and large, anything but.  (Such a reverse-over-and-under spin seems much too nuanced to appear in the Los Angeles Times, however.)

To take but one example: the elder George Bush “may be a New England Yankee blue blood, but he has the tear ducts of a Sicilian grand­mother.”  The yield of such lines is exceptionally high, and it’s fair to say that the particular talent required to produce them is one of the few that William F. Buckley lacked. - review of Christopher Buckley’s Losing Mum and Pup

Ouch:  Right up there with, “He has the heart of a little child. Which he keeps in a box under his bed.”  Except this one (admittedly, quoted without context) seems opaque to the point of transparency.^[1]  Given William F. Buckley’s customary care at selecting the appropriate word for the appropriate circumstance, one would belive that, if he lacked “the particular talent required to produce” analogies examplified by the one quoted, it would be a lacking for which he was most grateful.


Credits:  Goldberg via Instapundit, Buckley via Kaus.
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Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 22:36:18 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Their priorities aren’t yours

Amity Shales assumes good faith, misses motives:

Unsure of whether it wanted to punish or stimulate -- and so choosing to attempt both -- the administration generated legislation to help financial institutions and legislation that hurts them by restricting rates and terms for the credit cards they issue. Obama’s call for putting more student loans in federal hands is clever politically, and may even save students money in the short term, but it likely will restrict the availability of such loans in the future.

Standard procedure:  Use legislation and regulation to create an untenable situation.  When things blow up, blame the peon who has to comply,^[1] then call for more legislation/regulation to “fix” the situation.  Nothing unexpected here.

...Obama speaks beautifully but is on his way to a “D” grade when it comes to making the U.S. attractive for international investment, a fact the Chinese are already noting by shopping for non-U.S. bonds.

Why should he care?  “Making the U.S. attractive for international any investment” is not a Democrat priority.

The Democrats of 2009 are showing less awareness than their predecessors did in President Bill Clinton’s time on the importance of no interest whatever in either low taxes and or reasonable regulation. Only these permit strong growth... which both diminish the power of the political class and work against their party’s political agenda.

FIFY.

Because the ruling Democrats have tilted too far left have chosen policies certain to produce adverse consequences for most of the country, their allies are out on a mission of distraction, trying to prove that everyone else is too far to the right demonize and discredit anyone who would bring those policies and their consequences to the public’s notice.

...and that one, too.

Link via IP.
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Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 19:48:01 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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More good thoughts needed @ Mark’s

Get one healthy, then, concerns about another.

Good cats (and their people) don’t deserve stuff like this.  Here’s hopin’...

UPDATE 090505 20:22:  Saying goodbye sucks.


Sympathy to Mark and Toni.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:04:50 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Making politicians accountable

Charleston Daily Mail:

FOR a quarter of a century, state and public school employees in West Virginia were told that they could trade unused sick leave for health insurance premiums once they retired.

Legislators past didn’t bother to calculate what that would cost.

Now a change in federal accounting rules is forcing state agencies and the 55 county school boards to face up to the expense of what are called Other Post-Employment Benefits.

Wood County School Superintendent Bill Niday said his county will have to set aside $12 million for these benefits by the end of 2010.

“What you have is a bare-bones, no-frills budget as a result of the OPEB issue,” Niday told the Parkersburg News and Sentinel. “Next year will be at a deficit. There is no question. There is no way out.”

How about starting by clawing back any government-supported pension or medical benefits belonging to those 25-years-worth of legislators?

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 14:53:51 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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And the Pope isn’t Catholic, either

Some moonbat:

Bush is evil but the Dalai Lama proclaimed he loved him. The Dalai Lama is no Buddist.

Got a little cognitive dissonance there, don’tcha Bucky?  (Erm, excuse me, Mr. DalaiLama sir, but you’re never gonna get any respect around Cambridge if you keep sayin’ stuff like that.)

Backstory here.  (via: The Anchoress)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:31:00 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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75 years ago today - 500KW on medium wave

On May 2, 1934, WLW-AM became “The Big One.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in the White House, firing up WLW-AM’s one-of-a-kind 500,000-watt transmitter, the most powerful in the country.

“The Nation’s Station,” they called it.

From the new 831-foot diamond-shaped tower on Tylersville Road in Mason, Crosley Broadcasting beamed programs coast to coast – and beyond.  It’s the only time the government granted 10 times normal maximum power to a radio station.
...
The half-million-watt transmitter – built for $500,000 under the Mason tower – was truly the big one: 54-feet wide, 13-feet tall and 7-feet deep.

It needed 22 glass radio tubes, each 5-feet high.  They were cooled by 700 gallons of distilled water per minute circulating from a nearby pond.  Each tube cost $1,624. - Cincinnati Enquirer^[1]

Elsewhere (via Roberta X, what a coincidence!):

HT:  Darryl Parks (whose stupid Clear Channel blog doesn’t have permlinks).
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Posted by: Old Grouch in Radio at 15:05:33 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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How’s that again?

Not what was expected...

The secretary of the photographic section of the Public Relations & Publicity Department, British Railways, Southern Region, took a telephone message from Clapham Junction: “Line out of gauge.  Send photographer.”

A photographer was duly sent, and found to his consternation that the message really was: “Lion out of cage.  Send photographer.”  A lion had escaped from a circus in transit and was strolling about the station, to the alarm of the passengers and staff.  It was eventually recaptured.^[1]

Wonder if he (the lion) had a platform ticket?




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Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 14:37:36 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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