Smartest Things I Read Today

Think tanks in DC call themselves non-partisan. But of course, that’s not true, because they’ve already made up their minds. They’re not thinking at all. Merely arguing.

Seth Godin

If the Catholic Church wasn't a religious institution, would we be handling the situation differently?

"They would have been arrested under the RICO federal laws already and they would have been considered organized crime," 

Pennsylvania State Rep. Mark Rozzi, a Democrat, told Salon. Rozzi is more than just a proponent of passing new legislation to help victims of childhood sex abuse, whether from employees of the Catholic Church or other organizations; he is also a victim himself, one who was raped by a priest in a rectory shower in Pennsylvania when he was 13 years old.

Economically, the country has changed surprisingly little since 2008. The big banks have returned to risky practices, and Republicans are trying to undo the Dodd-Frank reform law, which was enacted to prevent another collapse. The distribution of income and wealth in America is as lopsided as ever. Despite almost ten years of economic growth, real wages are stuck at their pre-crisis level, while corporate profits are soaring and stock prices have reached record highs. All the misshapen economic trends of the previous decade are still with us.

The lasting effect of the crisis is in our politics. The Presidency of Donald Trump is an overdetermined fluke, an accident with a thousand causes. Among them is the catastrophic event that gutted millions of lives and ended in no fair resolution, only cynicism. The economic indicators are strong right now, but before long there will be another financial crisis. They come every seven or ten years, each bearing the features of its time. If the previous one was the result of overconfidence in free markets, the next might be triggered—as in Turkey today—by the behavior of an authoritarian leader. When it comes, we’ll be less prepared to address it than we were in 2008. This President has made an enemy of facts, Congress no longer passes rational laws, and American democracy is ten years unhealthier.

George Packer

Wisest Thing I Read Today

Most Interesting Perspective of the Week

Since then, analyses from investment banks and researchers have estimated that 40 to 60 percent of the savings from the tax cut are being plowed into buybacks. One analysis of companies on the Russell 1000 Index—which consists of big firms, much like the Standard & Poor’s 500 does—found that companies directed 10 times as much money to buybacks as to workers. As such, Milani and Tung said they expect the math on corporate spending on shareholders versus workers to become even more exaggerated in the coming years.

In the meantime, corporate boards are poised to spend hundreds of billions more on their own shares, benefiting executives along with the mostly wealthy Americans who own stock. Just this week, Caterpillar, for instance, said it plans to spend $1 billion buying back shares in the latter half of this year, before kicking off a new $10 billion round on buybacks starting in January. It is also in the midst of laying off hundreds of workers.

ANNIE LOWREY is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, covering economic policy.

Wisest Thing I Read Today

I am aware that many people might be upset by my equating religion with fake news, but that’s exactly the point. When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it fake news in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful (or incur their wrath). 

Humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time trying to control the world than trying to understand it. 

Yuval Harari 

Trump Troll

That leaves Trump free to grab his phone at all hours to shove and to smear and to spew falsehoods. As Michiko Kakutani writes in her new book, “The Death of Truth”: “Trump, of course, is a troll — both by temperament and by habit. His tweets and offhand taunts are the very essence of trolling — the lies, the scorn, the invective, the trash talk, and the rabid non sequiturs of an angry, aggrieved, isolated, and deeply self-absorbed adolescent who lives in a self-constructed bubble and gets the attention he craves from bashing his enemies and trailing clouds of outrage and dismay in his path.”

Maureen Dowd

Once Cut, Corporate Income Taxes Are Hard to Restore NYT Robert Shiller

Tax rates on corporate profits rose sharply during World War II. Here, in 1942, guns used by the United States military are assembled in a Firestone Tire & Rubber plant in Akron, Ohio.Associated Press

The Trump corporate income tax cuts are the latest in a decades-long trend of tax reductions that have been substantially reversed mainly during times of war.

The historical evidence is revealing.

When the federal corporate income tax began in 1909, it was about as low as it could be — a rate of only 1 percent of corporate profits. Over more than 100 years, it has followed a broad hump shape, increasing for about half a century, and then decreasing for about the next 50 years.

The corporate tax rate peaked in 1968 at 52.8 percent. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 brought the 2018 rate down to 21 percent from 35 percent last year.

Wars provided an impetus for tax increases, with major hikes during both world wars and the Korean War. Corporate taxes remained high for more than 30 years, then dropped sharply under President Ronald Reagan and now, again, with President Trump.

At the beginning of the modern era of income taxes in America — in 1909 for corporations and 1913 for individuals — war was not a factor. Instead, in the Progressive era, the main argument for instituting these levies was that “wealth is escaping its due share of taxation,” Edwin Seligman wrote in his 1914 book, “The Income Tax: A Study of the History, Theory and Practice of Income Taxation at Home and Abroad.”

Taxes on land hit farmers unfairly, proponents of the new taxes said, while owners of corporate stocks paid no taxes. Excise and customs duties taxed consumers unfairly and benefited specific domestic industries, so the argument went. Seligman, a professor at Columbia University, said the income taxes were not an “attack on wealth as such.” The aim of the new income taxes “was solely to redress the inequality of taxation.”

That was an intellectual defense of the income tax. But more emotional issues — those of unequal sacrifice in time of war — account for the high levels to which corporate tax rates rose.

During World War I, the federal corporate income tax rose to 12 percent in 1918 from 1 percent in 1915. In addition, in 1917 a new “excess profits tax” — on profits above the payer’s prewar level — was imposed, and it ranged as high as 80 percent. The increase came amid public outcry against wartime “profiteering.” People were angry to see men who stayed at home becoming millionaires from war profits, while the soldiers overseas were fighting and, often, dying.

The excess profits tax was scrapped in 1921, but the corporation income tax remained at nearly the same level.

With World War II, rates rose further, reaching 40 percent in 1942. And once again a wartime excess profits tax was instituted, ranging up to 95 percent.

After that war, the corporate excess profits tax was eliminated, but the corporate income tax rates were not cut back for long.

The Korean War, which scared many people as being the possible beginning of what they called “World War III,” occasioned further increases. The federal corporate income tax rate rose to 52 percent, and yet another temporary excess profits tax was instituted. And again, a familiar pattern was in place: Corporate income tax rates did not decline much after the war was over.

These wartime tax increases left a lasting legacy of relatively high corporate income tax rates. Even with the Trump tax cuts, the United States is far above the rate that prevailed before World War I.

According to a “cognitive theory” of taxation offered by Edward J. McCaffery, a scholar at the University of Southern California, governments use the opportunity of a war to raise tax rates when “citizens are either more patriotic and willing to share with the government, and/or are distracted by the crisis itself.”

What prompted taxes to begin a long decline, starting with the Reagan presidency in the 1980s? Here, we are in the realm of speculation. Decades after the Korean War — arguably the last American war with a high degree of public unanimity — the names and feats of war heroes began to fade in memory. People may simply have returned to more individualistic, self-centered views of society and the economy.

In any case, under Reagan, the top corporate tax rate dropped from 46 percent to 34 percent. In 1993, during the Clinton administration, it increased slightly to 35 percent, where it held until last year.

Similar declines occurred in other countries in recent decades. That didn’t happen because governments needed less tax revenue. To the contrary, Prof. Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan has shown that “across countries, there is no association of the expenditure-G.D.P. ratio with the corporate statutory rate.”

Effective tax rates — actual corporate taxes paid as a percentage of pretax profits, including the effects of all deductions and accounting tricks — can’t be tracked accurately all the way back to 1909, but estimates have also shown a decline in these rates in recent decades.

What data we do have shows an unmistakable trend. Consider, for example, the United States National Income and Product Accounts, published by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Data from that source indicates that the fraction of profits on corporate income taken by federal, state, local and foreign taxes peaked during World War II and has shown a fairly linear, steady and steep downtrend ever since.

This history provides an important perspective.

While it may be tempting to view the Reagan and Trump tax policies as anomalies, they may be seen as part of a long-term trend. It is important to recognize that Reagan’s tax decreases were not substantially reversed under subsequent administrations. And it is quite possible that President Trump’s corporate tax cuts may remain in place, even if Trump political power ebbs.

Given this history, I have to wonder: Will it take a major war — one that galvanizes the public, involves vast sacrifice and seems to truly threaten domestic survival — to raise the corporation income tax significantly?

Robert J. Shiller is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale.

Trump World

(CNN) Voters overwhelmingly agree with the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday.

More than 6 in 10 voters -- 63% -- agree with the landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion, while 31% disagree. There's a surprisingly small gender divide on the issue, with women agreeing on the decision at 65% and men just four points behind.

Republican voters are the only group in which a majority disagree with the decision -- by a margin of 58% to 36%.

All other listed parties, education, age and racial groups agree with the decision, the strongest of which are Democrats (84% agree), African Americans (71%), and white voters with a college degree (70%).

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(CNN) In Gallup's 2018 poll, released Monday, a declining number say they are proud to be an American, with less than three-quarters saying they are, down six points since 2016.

The driving force behind this lack of pride is a dip among Democrats, with their number dropping from 45% in 2016 to 32% now who said they are "extremely proud." Republicans moved up six points in the past two years, and independents inched down by three points.

Gallup has been tracking patriotism for a while, starting in 2001 when 87% said they were proud to be an American.

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TALLAHASSEE — The Florida legislator who sponsored a controversial law to require that women wait 24 hours before having an abortion would push for an outright ban in the state if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark abortion rights law, Roe v. Wade.

Trump Was Outfoxed in Singapore (Nicholas Kristof-NYT)

It sure looks as if President Trump was hoodwinked in Singapore.

Trump made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea. That’s on top of the broader concession of the summit meeting itself, security guarantees he gave North Korea and the legitimacy that the summit provides his counterpart, Kim Jong-un.

Within North Korea, the “very special bond” that Trump claimed to have formed with Kim will be portrayed this way: Kim forced the American president, through his nuclear and missile tests, to accept North Korea as a nuclear equal, to provide security guarantees to North Korea, and to cancel war games with South Korea that the North has protested for decades.

In exchange for these concessions, Trump seems to have won astonishingly little. In a joint statement, Kim merely “reaffirmed” the same commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula that North Korea has repeatedly made since 1992.

“They were willing to de-nuke,” Trump crowed at his news conference after his meetings with Kim. Trump seemed to believe he had achieved some remarkable agreement, but the concessions were all his own.

The most remarkable aspect of the joint statement was what it didn’t contain. There was nothing about North Korea freezing plutonium and uranium programs, nothing about destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, nothing about allowing inspectors to return to nuclear sites, nothing about North Korea making a full declaration of its nuclear program, nothing about a timetable, nothing about verification, not even any clear pledge to permanently halt testing of nuclear weapons or long-range missiles.

Kim seems to have completely out-negotiated Trump, and it’s scary that Trump doesn’t seem to realize this. For now Trump has much less to show than past negotiators who hammered out deals with North Korea like the 1994 Agreed Framework, which completely froze the country’s plutonium program with a rigorous monitoring system.

Smartest Things I Read About Rosenanne Firing Today

1. What makes this moment unique is Roseanne’s occupation, fame, and employer. Authoring racist and/or otherwise offensive material, personally attacking political opponents, and believing in a collection of wildly false narratives puts her in lockstep with what seems to be America’s fastest growing and most vocal political party. With all due respect to baseball, Roseanne was participating in America’s favorite pastime. If you see her as an outlier, you’re missing the point.
2. While the bough-breaking Tweet stands alone, the bigger issue here is that Roseanne’s whole twitter feed is a cesspool of conspiracy theories and lies that are believed by tens of millions of ill-informed Americans. The racism and ignorance are widespread — and there is an entire media industry that has been fueling this fire for years. Roseanne isn’t the big problem here. It’s the millions of others who see her, and those like her (including the Troll in Chief), as truth-tellers.
3. The Roseanne firing is a reminder of America’s modern truism. Everyone pays but Trump. He’s said much worse things than Roseanne … today.
4. David Pell Medium

Analysis of Cancellation of North Korea Summit

“Kim baited Trump into pulling out of the summit, and Trump took the bait,” said Vipin Narang, a professor of international relations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“They clearly don’t have the personnel in place and the mindset to accomplish much in these delicate sorts of exchanges,” said Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “We can’t even reach and stick to trade agreements with close partners.”

I felt that as things drew closer and Trump realized like he wasn’t going to get the grand submission with Kim on his knees, that things were not going to go well.Stephen Schwartz, nuclear policy consultant

“Kim also wanted to drive a wedge between the U.S. and South Korea, the U.S. and Japan, the U.S. and China, and he’s done that,” Schwartz said. “Donald Trump fell right into it, and he has no one to blame but himself.”

Opinion No wonder there’s an exodus from religion By E.J. Dionne Jr. (5-7-2018 Washington Post)

Do you wonder why the proportion of Americans declaring themselves unaffiliated with organized religion has skyrocketed in recent decades?

This trend is especially pronounced among adults under 30, roughly 40  percent of whom claim no connection to a religious congregation or tradition and have joined the ranks of those the pollsters call the “nones.”

To understand how so many now prefer nothing to something when it comes to religion, ponder the news over the past few days.

The same newspapers and broadcasts that were reporting on how President Trump finally admitted that he had indirectly paid a porn star to keep quiet about an alleged affair also offered accounts of what we’ll call Jesuitgate, the controversy over who should be the chaplain of the House of Representatives.

On Thursday, Speaker Paul D. Ryan backed down from his effective dismissal of the Rev. Patrick Conroy, a Jesuit priest, as chaplain. Ryan had said he asked the cleric to quit because he had provided inadequate “pastoral services,” but denied that Conroy was ousted because of a mild prayer for justice he delivered during the debate over the GOP tax cut.

Speaker Ryan says House chaplain can stay in job

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) reversed course on May 3, and agreed to keep the Rev. Patrick J. Conroy on as House chaplain. (Reuters)

That phrase “pastoral services” must inspire a chuckle from your typical millennial agnostic. It makes the work of holy men and women sound like the this-worldly tasks of the accountant, the mechanic or the dentist. (As the grateful son of a dentist, I speak with respect for these extremely useful professions.)

Conroy had initially agreed to Ryan’s request to step aside but withdrew his resignation in a quietly stinging letter. The priest noted that he had never been informed of the shortcomings of his “pastoral services.” If he had, he would “have attempted to correct such ‘faults.’ ”

Conroy also quoted Ryan’s chief of staff, Jonathan Burks, as telling him “something like ‘maybe it’s time we had a chaplain that wasn’t a Catholic.’ ” Ryan’s office vehemently denied this (the Catholic vote is substantial), but the speaker announced he didn’t want to have a “protracted fight” and that Conroy could stay.

Many of us could have told the speaker that it’s a mistake to mess with a Jesuit. But think about it: The House Republican leadership was more inclined to push out a chaplain than to impose accountability on a president who is a proven liar and trashes the rule of law for his own selfish purposes day after day.

This degree of partisan irresponsibility only aggravates the already powerful skepticism among the young about what it means to be religious. In their landmark 2010 book, “American Grace,” the scholars Robert Putnam and David Campbell found that the rise of the nones was driven by the increasing association of organized religion with conservative politics and a lean toward the right in the culture wars.

Revealingly, Putnam and Campbell found that millennials with tolerant and open views on homosexuality were more than twice as likely to be religious nones as their statistically similar peers with conservative or traditionalist views on homosexuality. Many young people came to regard religion, in Putnam and Campbell’s words, as “judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical and too political.”

If you want a particularly exquisite hypocritical moment, consider that on Thursday, the very day when Trump had to admit his lies on the Stormy Daniels payoff, the president held a White House commemoration of the National Day of Prayer. “Prayer is the key that opens [to] us the treasures of God’s mercies and blessings,” he proclaimed, quoting Billy Graham. He tweeted this out as part of a pious 42-second video set to a sentimental soundtrack of peaceful strings. I guess Trump can use some peace and a lot of mercy right now.

What’s maddening about all of this is that religion has a strong case to make for itself — to the young and to everyone else — given its historical role as a prod to personal and social change and the ways in which movements for justice have been inspired through the centuries by the words of Exodus, Micah, Isaiah, Amos and Jesus.

Conroy was getting at this in the most uncontroversial way possible when he spoke in his now-contested prayer of how “our great nation” has created “opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle.” If a chaplain could be rebuked for voicing that simple and undeniable truth, what’s the point of the “religious liberty” that Trump and his GOP allies celebrate?

And when will those who advertise themselves as religion’s friends realize they can do far more damage to faith than all the atheists and agnostics put together?

Notes from Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich

The immune system actually abets the growth and spread of tumors, which is like saying that the fire department is indeed staffed by arsonists. We all know that the function of the immune system is to protect us, most commonly from bacteria and viruses, so it's expected response to cancer should be a concerted and militant defense. 

You can think of death bed early or with resignation, as a tragic interruption of your life, and take every possible measure to postpone it. Or, more realistically, you can think of life as an interruption of and eternity of personal nonexistent do, and sees it as a brief opportunity to observe and interact with the living, ever surprising rolled around us. 

I had a different reaction to aging: I gradually came to realize that I was old enough to die, by which I am not suggesting that each of us bears and expiration date. Where is the course no fix stage at which a person ceases to be worthy of further medical investment, whether aimed at prevention or cure

Once I realized I was old enough to die, I decided that I was also old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance, or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life. As for medical care: I will see help for an urgent problem, but I am no longer interested in problems that remain undetectable to me. Page 3

It was my dentist, oddly enough, Who suggested, during an ordinary filling, that I'd be tested for sleep apnea.

What repelled me even more than this kinky procedure (colonoscopy) was the day of fasting and laxatives that was supposed to proceed it, in order to ensure that the little camera and cat encounter something other than feces. I put the saw from year-to-year, until I finally felt safe in the knowledge that since colon cancer is usually slow growing, any cancerous polyps or like insane aren't likely to flourish until I am already close to death from other causes. Page )7

Rather than being fearful of not detecting disease, both patients and doctors should fear healthcare. The best way to avoid medical errors is to avoid medical care. The default should be: I am well. Good way to stay that way is to keep making good choices – – not to have my doctor look for problems. Page 9

An estimated 70 to 80% of thyroid cancer surgeries performed on US, French and Italian women in the first decade of the 21st-century are now judge to of been unnecessary. Page 11

Not only do I rejected format of a medical lies death, but I refuse to except a medical wise life, and my determination only deepens with age. As the time that remains to be shrinks, each month and day becomes too precious to spend in windowless waiting rooms and under the Koehl screwed me up machines. Being old enough to die is an achievement, not a defeat, and the freedom it brings is worth celebrating. Page 13

I continue to elude unnecessary medical attention and still doggedly push myself in the gym, where if I am no longer a star, I am at least the fixture. In addition, I retain a daily regimen of stretching, sunroof which might qualify as yoga. Other than that, I pretty much eat what I want and indulge my vices, from butter to wine. Life is too short to forget these pleasures, and would be for too long without them. Page 207

The US Census Bureau reports that nearly 40% of people age 65 and older suffer from at least one disability, with 2/3 of them saying they have difficulty walking or climbing.

As for colonoscopies, they made the tech potentially cancerous polyps, but they are excessively costed costly in the United States – – up to $10,000 – – and have been found to be no more accurate than much cheaper, noninvasive test such as examination of the feces for traces of blood. Page 37

One recent study found that almost half the man over 65 being treated for prostate cancer or unlikely to live long enough to get the disease anyway. They will, however, live long enough to suffer from the adverse consequences of their treatment.

An article and the Harvard business review review entitled Executive Physicals: what's the ROI answers it sound question with what amounts the way from "not much" – and for all the reasons I have given here: the frequency of false positive's, the danger of the test themselves (such as radiation) , And the unlikelihood of finding a problem and they still treatable stage. Page 41 

There is one time honored salve for the anxiety of approaching self dissolution, and that is to submerge oneself into something "larger than oneself," some imagined super being that will live on without us. Page 191

The Hallmark disorders of aging – – such as atherosclerosis arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis – – are all inflammatory diseases, characterized by a local build up of macrophages. Page 173