Understanding evil

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repeat of a post first published in 2007. I came across it yesterday when responding to a comment, and I though it might bear repeating.]

We may not be able to define evil, but most of us think we know it when we see it.

Unfortunately, that leads to equations such as Bush=Hitler and Trump=Hitler, or the bumper sticker I saw on a car that said, “War is just terrorism with a bigger budget.”

And it also leads to the false notion that we can truly understand the genesis of evil, when sometimes it’s hard enough to simply recognize it, and to deal with it in an appropriate and timely fashion.

Hannah Arendt caused a hue and cry when she watched the Adolf Eichmann trial and described the defendant’s demeanor as showing “the banality of evil” (scroll down to #6, here). Suzanne Field’s piece on evil [the article linked to has disappeared now, unfortunately], in Real Clear Politics, refers back to Arendt and describes instead what Field calls the “frivolity” of evil. Although I think “frivolity” is a poor choice of words, Field is making a good point nevertheless:

The devil wears many disguises, and one of them is the appearance of normality, perhaps the most dangerous phenomenon of all, because it’s a disguise unto itself.

Evil is real, but evildoers are all too human. In the photograph we know of him, Mohammad Atta’s eyes may look as though all human kindness had been scooped out of him, but his family probably didn’t see him that way—although the Portland Maine employee who watched him go by and onto that airplane on that fatal day said that he looked like a “walking corpse.”

Hitler had a strange look to us, but the German people found him highly charismatic and appealing. Ahmadinejad, as Fields points out, has no evil aura:

His clowning, his weaving, his bobbing, his smiling on the podium at Columbia University lent an air of normality to his lies and deceitfulness. He looked silly at times, but he didn’t frighten anyone with his stage presence.

Our wish for the mark of Cain, or cloven hooves, or some other clear sign of evil originates in the fact that it is only by their works that we know them, and by then it can be too late.

Of course, evil is sometimes telegraphed way ahead of time by words, and this is true in the case of Hitler and Ahmadinejad. Why are these words so often ignored by so many?

It’s easy to say it’s all just bluster. It’s easy to think we are too powerful to be seriously threatened by these little people who sound so crazy. Those who made that mistake with Hitler lived to regret it.

But one of the most fundamental errors people make when judging evil is to think we understand it, when we don’t. The fact that Hitler was most definitely a human being leads us to think that if we knew enough facts about him, we could explain the etiology of his evil.

But Hitler’s evil seems to have been much more than the sum of his parts—the illegitimacy, the lousy childhood, the failed art career, the anger at Germany’s WWI defeat. Try as one might—and many have tried—Hitler’s evil can be described and detailed but never understood nor, ultimately, explained.

The other fundamental error people make when judging evil is thinking it is less evil than it actually is, and more amenable to persuasion, argument, or kindness. Because those who do evil are human, we think they are subject to the same fears and doubts, loves and anxieties, concerns and scruples, as the rest of us. Perhaps when they were children they were, although in the cases of sociopaths and psychopaths the notion is that they were born lacking something we tend to call a conscience. At any rate, by the time we know about them, something quite unusual seems to be going on in their psyches.

I think of the example of Stalin who said, on hearing that his son had tried to commit suicide but had only managed to shoot himself in the stomach and live, “He can’t even shoot straight.”

People such as Stalin or Hitler or Ahmadinejad or Saddam Hussein are about power. That is the coin of their realm, and power is their mother tongue, even though they can learn to speak secondary languages in order to give the appearance of reasonableness. Do not forget that it is a facade, and do not believe that you know them. As Field points out about Ahmadinejad:

We may think he was humiliated by the hostility he confronted at Columbia, but maybe he, like Hitler, understands how to play it out to his advantage against the gullible, the feckless and the frightened.

Shakespeare, who may have understood human nature as well as anyone on earth and could speak about it better than anyone on earth, had something to say about all of this, of course. And so I’ll close with his words:

One can smile and smile and be a villain.

Pelosi isn’t just worried about Trump: she’s watching her left flank: the Justice Democrats

The New Neo Posted on by

Now, I don’t how far to the left Nancy Pelosi really is. Probably much further than she lets on. But my guess is that she’s not too happy about the radical wing of the Democratic Party, the one whose members stayed seated last night when President Trump said in his SOTU address that the US will never become a Socialist country.

They have a name, too: Justice Democrats. It’s the latest euphemism, I guess, because too much of the American public may have finally caught on to what “progressive” actually means. But who can be against progress and justice, right?

The Justice Democrats aren’t fooling around. And they’re not bothered by many of the considerations that dog their more moderate colleagues. The Justice Democrats (can we call them JDs for short?) must feel the time is right to lay at least a few of their cards on the table and to oppose the party members they call “radical conservatives.”

We know the name of the photogenic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but some of the others are quite obscure so far—and by “others” I include those behind her rise. From the article:

“I am talking about the radical conservatives in the Democratic Party,” said Saikat Chakrabarti [AOC’s chief of staff]. “That’s who we need to counter. It’s the same across any number of issues—pay-as-you-go, free college, “Medicare for all.” These are all enormously popular in the party, but they don’t pass because of the radical conservatives who are holding the party hostage.”

Not long ago, this would have been an outlier position even among American liberals. Today, it’s the organizing principle of a newly empowered segment of the Democratic Party, one with a foothold in the new Congress…

Although it’s Ocasio-Cortez who gets all the headlines, she arguably wouldn’t be in Congress in the first place without the group Chakrabarti founded: Justice Democrats, a new, central player in the ongoing war for the soul of the Democratic Party. It was the Justice Democrats who recruited her in a quixotic campaign early on, providing a neophyte candidate with enough infrastructure to take down a party leader. And it is the Justice Democrats who see Ocasio-Cortez as just the opening act in an astonishingly ambitious plan to do nothing less than re-imagine liberal politics in America—and do it by whatever means necessary.

If that requires knocking out well-known elected officials and replacing them with more radical newcomers, so be it. And if it ends up ripping apart the Democratic Party in the process—well, that might be the idea.

“There is going to be a war within the party. We are going to lean into it,” said Waleed Shahid, the group’s spokesman.

Here’s an article by Shahid that maps out the plan. This group means business. I suggest you read it.

Will they overplay their hand? I hope so, but I am not the least bit sure that will be the case. The ground has been prepared for them in so many ways, particularly the Gramscian march through education.

[ADDENDUM: AOC is quite popular in the Democratic Party, particularly among the young. See this.]

[ADDENDUM II: Roger Simon writes on a related subject.]

More blackface trouble in Virginia

The New Neo Posted on by

The Democratic AG Mark Herring of Virginia, who is third in line for the governorship (first the embattled governor Northam, then the accused lieutenant governor Fairfax, and next AG Herring), admits he wore blackface at a college party in 1980.

“In 1980, when I was a 19-year-old undergraduate in college, some friends suggested we attend a party dressed like rappers we listened to at the time, like Kurtis Blow, and perform a song,” Herring said. “It sounds ridiculous even now writing it. But because of our ignorance and glib attitudes – and because we did not have an appreciation for the experiences and perspectives of others – we dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup.”

Said Herring, “This was a onetime occurrence and I accept full responsibility for my conduct.”

A veritable blackface epidemic.

I don’t think anyone is going to resign at this point; there are too many of them, and apparently the person next in line for the governorship is the Republican Speaker, Kirk Cox. Can’t have that.

Nor do I think any of them should resign. Dressing up in this way close to forty years ago for a college costume party—when people weren’t all that “woke” about PC implications—does not a racist make. If a person’s a racist, you have to come up with something a lot more recent and considerably more meaningful and purposeful (unless, of course, it’s about a Republican like George Allen, whose supposed offense, although new at the time of the controversy, was almost certainly unintentional).

The whole thing sent me on a trip down memory lane. I’m older than all these gentlemen, and I went to college back in a time when racism was real racism: overt and unmistakable. The civil rights movement had already made its major gains, but socially it was still quite usual for fraternities and sororities to be all-white. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t at all unusual for Jews to not be allowed into most fraternities and sororities either (interestingly, at the college I attended, it was only the Jewish fraternities and sororities that had some black members).

And yet I have zero recollection of anyone ever wearing blackface. To check, I took a look at one of my old yearbooks this morning. Many many photos of drunken party revels, as well as costumes (Hawaiian, Lederhosen, Vikings) but no blackface whatsoever. It wouldn’t have been considered to be in good taste even then, I think; I certainly never considered it to be.

But the 1980s seems to have had a spate of accusations of this sort of thing at college campuses; see this, for example, from the 1989 NY Times:

The incidents began in the spring of 1986, when the University of Wisconsin’s chapter of Kappa Sigma fraternity held a party featuring a ”Harlem room.” Watermelon and fried chicken were served in the room, which had trash on the floor and graffiti on the walls. Members wore Afro wigs and blackface makeup.

About a year later, the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity held a ”Fiji Island” party that displayed a caricature of a black man with a bone through his nose. And during last fall’s semester, the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity held a mock slave auction in which members wore Afro wigs and blackface during several skits.

That seems a lot worse than anything the Virginia politicians did. Are we now going to discover who attended, and hound them out of their jobs? I wouldn’t put it past the left, just to show how righteous they are, and even if it turns out that Democrats are the ones implicated.

[NOTE: By the way, for what it’s worth, I do remember Fiji Island parties. Pretty wild stuff, but I don’t recall any blackface. Also, to be pedantic, that “black man with a bone through his nose” would have been a Melanisian, technically speaking.]

State of the Union thread

The New Neo Posted on by

Here we go.

“Hoping we will govern not as two parties, but as one nation.” The Democrats stand late, but they stand.

What is the chance of that actually happening? Close to zero, I’d say.

Later Trump announces Buzz Aldrin—who salutes, wearing a big American flag tie.

The big theme so far is compromise. Alexandria Ocasion-Cortez, looking glum, stays seated.

Many (most? all? I’m not sure) of the Democratic women are dressed in white, in some pretense of victimhood:

“Today we stand together wearing white in solidarity with the women of the suffrage movement who refused to take no for an answer,” said Representative Brenda Lawrence, who is also the leader of the Democratic Women’s Working Group. “To an administration that has closed its eyes to women, we will be seen.”

Trump makes a clever ad lib right before saying that we have more women in Congress than ever before. Addressing the Democratic side (who were standing for a previous comment about women, but are starting to sit down), Trump says something like, “Don’t sit down yet, you’ll like this one, too.”

Those white outfits look kind of creepy and cultlike. And white is not a flattering color for most people. Too stark.

Absolutely adorable little girl, cancer survivor. Everybody claps with sincere enthusiasm this time.

Trump reminds us about how things are seemingly looking up regarding North Korea. That’s something easy to forget; like the dog that didn’t bark.

Ringing endorsement of liberty vs. socialism. Camera goes to Bernie, who has a poker face.

Very moving tribute to a Holocaust survivor and one of the American soldiers who helped to liberate the camp, sitting next to each other tonight.

In sum, I think it was an exceptionally clever speech, very well-delivered. The emphasis on unity and the things he wants to accomplish that Democrats could and should approve of made them look small if they didn’t stand up and applaud. Sometimes they stood, and sometimes they didn’t.

My guess is that it also is a better speech—and probably a different speech—than he would have delivered if it hadn’t been postponed till now.

Probably won’t change a single mind; certainly not many. So many people are set in stone. But it’s the best SOTU speech I can recall, and a strategic one as well. I usually start watching the SOTU speeches, but I usually can only last a few minutes before incredible boredom sets in. This was great theater, among other things, because it put the Democrats in the really interesting position of having to applaud—and then applaud again—a man they hate, or else look like sour America-hating fools.

NY’s Museum of Modern Art is getting a PC makeover

The New Neo Posted on by

This news may not be of any interest to you, but it’s of interest to me, because of the fondness I bear in my heart for the old MoMA, the one that existed before I was aware it even had the nickname “MoMA.” I went there as a young child and teenager, and it was a magical place, full of bright white walls and colorful—sometimes familiar and famous—modern paintings.

In the late 50s and the 60s, the time I’m talking about, the paintings there were indeed rather new, even the old ones such as impressionists—“new” compared to now, anyway. And they were the paintings and sculptures one learned about in classes about modern art, the modern art canon, as it were. Who determined what was included in this canon? Why, art historians, and to a certain extent the art market as it later developed (which was hardly independent of art historians and often had a built-in time lag; think of the struggling finances of Van Gogh, for example).

Who decides these things now? It’s still art historians, curators, and the like, I suppose. But now PC considerations are enormous in the art world, as in so many other arenas. So this is what MoMA (which recently got an absolutely huge influx of funds from donors) is planning:

As the Museum of Modern Art begins the final stage of its $400 million overhaul, it will close for four months this summer and autumn to reconfigure its galleries, rehang the entire collection and rethink the way that the story of modern and contemporary art is presented to the public.

The Picassos and van Goghs will still be there, but the 40,000 square feet of additional space will allow MoMA to focus new attention on works by women, Latinos, Asians, African-Americans and other overlooked artists like Shigeru Onishi, a Japanese experimental photographer, or Hervé Télémaque, a Haitian-born painter who is now 81.

If the comments to the article are any indication, a lot of people are unhappy about it, although some are pleased. My opinion? I haven’t been to that museum in many moons, and the last time I was there (about 15 years ago?) it was very crowded and filled with people taking cellphone photos of the famous pictures of their choice. I remember thinking that the whole experience was a falling-off from the memories of my youth, but I wasn’t really sure why and I didn’t spend all that much time there.

But “modern art” obviously didn’t stop with the 50s and 60s, so the museum probably needs to keep pace with the last few decades to be “modern” (otherwise it would need to rename itself). Whether “modern” in that sense is “good” is another story. I mostly detest what I know of most recent art, whether it be from the West or any other place on earth, although I must say that, with what I know of recent art in the West, recent art in other countries might actually be better on the whole.

I am largely unfamiliar with modern art around the world today, but my guess is that a lot of it might follow the obscure and sometimes repellent characteristics of recent art in the West. My strong impression of the latter is that most people do not go to look at it at all, and if they do it’s not with any joy.

MoMA is also planning to disperse this art around and sprinkle it into and among the older works. At least, I think that’s what this means:

Three floors of exhibition space will retain a spine of chronology, but the museum will now mix media, juxtaposing painting, sculpture, architecture, design, photography, performance, film and works on paper.

“A new generation of curators is discovering the richness of what is in our collection, and there is great work being made around the world that we need to pay attention to,” said Glenn D. Lowry, director of the museum. “It means that the usual gets supplanted now by the unexpected.”

Sounds like a jumbled mess to me. But I’m willing to wait and see; it could surprise me.

I’ve visited other museums in recent years and noticed how much PC thought has taken over, not necessarily in the exhibits (although that has happened, as well) but in the text that accompanies them. Same for zoos, by the way. It’s all about the progressive message.

The definitive Covington video

The New Neo Posted on by

Truth is the first casualty in the war the press is waging against the right (and against Trump, and against MAGA hats, and against white males, and against Republicans…). So here’s a video put out by Nicholas Sandmann’s defamation lawyer to try to correct the lies that have been told about the Covington incident and the behavior of all involved:

Preparations for the lawsuits on behalf of Sandmann go forward.

[NOTE: Because the Covington teens are not public figures—or at least, they weren’t until the incident with Nathan Phillips went viral—the Sullivan rules do not apply. It would ordinarily be much easier to prove defamation against them than against a public figure such as Justin Fairfax. The fact that they are minors should help them as well.]

Justin Fairfax talks about suing

The New Neo Posted on by

Fairfax claims he’s been falsely accused, and perhaps he has:

A statement released by the Democrat’s office said, “The Washington Post, acknowledging that it had no corroboration, just smeared an elected official. We reiterate that this allegation is false. At no time has the lieutenant governor assaulted anyone at any time or at any place.”

I have a few questions for Fairfax, questions that I think we can safely say won’t be asked of him by the stalwart members of the MSM. I bet they aren’t questions he’s asking himself, either.

Do you have the same opinion concerning the publication of the many smears published about elected officials or other public figures on the right? What is your opinion, for example, about what happened to Justice Kavanaugh? If you think that’s different, why? Is it because you know you’re innocent, and yet you’re willing to assume he’s guilty—when the allegations against him were older, vaguer as to time and place, uncorroborated, brought up only at a time when he stood to become a member of the Supreme Court and at no other time in his previous judicial life, given an enormous forum in Congress, and disseminated far and wide by your party, the Democrats? Did you ever speak out against that campaign by your party to destroy a man’s life on charges at least as flimsy if not flimsier than those made against you?

And what do you have to say about all of that now?

Forgive me if these words of yours just don’t ring true to me as a fair expression of your actual viewpoint on the subject no matter who the target may be:

“This type of smear is what we meant when we said that politics and the coverage of it needs to rise to a higher level that befits our country and the 400-year history of our Commonwealth,” the statement from Fairfax’s office read. “This is what we meant when we said that people who continue to spread these false allegations will be sued.

If the parties were to change, my guess is that you’d sing a different tune. I don’t sing a different tune, by the way, but then again I’m not a politician. I have the same rules for both parties, and I don’t #BelieveTheWomen unless the case being made is very strong.

Oh, and Justin Fairfax is a lawyer, graduate of Columbia. As such, he no doubt is aware of the law governing defamation of a public figure, where the bar is very high. Fairfax is a public figure. The woman did make an allegation, and the WaPo first tanked it and then reported it when another outlet had published it. It was reported as being an allegation rather than a proven fact.

I don’t see how Fairfax has a case against anyone, unless he happens to have a video of the encounter and can prove that every single thing in it was consensual—and even then, I believe that he’d only have a case against his accuser, not the newspaper who reported the accusation.

[NOTE: I did some research trying to discover if Fairfax had made any previous statement on the Kavanaugh accusations. I couldn’t find one, but if you can, please offer it.]

One standard for allegations against Republicans…

The New Neo Posted on by

…a different standard for allegations against Democrats.

From Justin Fairfax:

“Does anybody think it’s any coincidence that on the eve of potentially my being elevated that that’s when this uncorroborated smear comes out?” he asked. “Does anybody believe that’s a coincidence? I don’t think anybody believes that’s a coincidence, again, particularly with something — this is not the first time this was brought up.”

He asserted that the Post investigated the account for three months before it “dropped the story” because it was uncorroborated.

“It’s uncorroborated because it’s not true,” he said, adding that “you don’t have to be cynical, you don’t have to understand politics to understand when someone is trying to manipulate a process to harm someone’s character without any basis.”

That point that starts with “you don’t have to be cynical” is a truth that most Democrats only activate when it’s a Democrat being accused. When it’s a Republican, the gloves are off and it’s #BelieveAllWomen.

The power of the weak: hunger strikes and forced feeding

The New Neo Posted on by

Some illegal immigrants in detention are on a hunger strike, and ICE is force-feeding them.

It takes a special person to stick with a hunger strike, but it’s a tried-and-true method by which those in power can be pressured. The pressure of a hunger strike depends, of course, on those in power having a sense of morality, because truly tyrannical regimes couldn’t care less if those in its prisons or detention centers starve themselves to death. Fewer mouths to feed.

But despite the efforts of the left to paint the US as such an amoral power, it is not. So hunger strikes remain a potent weapon.

Here’s the current story:

ICE authorities confirmed on Thursday that at least six immigrant detainees have been force-fed through nasal tubes and nine others have been refusing food. The detainees are located in centers in El Paso, Texas; Miami, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; and San Diego and San Francisco, California.

Detainee rights activists working with the hunger strikers in Texas say the majority of the hunger strikers are ethnic Indians who entered the United States over the southern border and were detained more than six months ago. The strikers are demanding release on bond, after spending months behind bars.

A lawyer for two of the Texas detainees, Ruby Kaur, told National Public Radio that the detainees began hunger strikes at the beginning of this year to call attention to what they say are inhumane conditions, verbal threats, and lack of information about their cases.

One interesting sidelight of this story is why “ethnic Indians” (that is, from Asia; we’re not talking about Native Americans) would enter over the Mexico border. We know why, of course; because that border is permeable. But it’s another indication that people from all over the world come to the US that way.

Once people decide to go on a hunger strike and publicize it (the two go hand in hand, because publicity is a big big part of the pressure), the government’s options are limited to force-feeding, letting them starve, or giving in to their demands.

If the demands are reasonable they should be granted—but of course, if they’re reasonable, they should have been granted in the first place without the hunger strike. Once the hunger strike begins, both of the two remaining options—force-feeding or letting them starve—are bad, as well as being bad publicity. But of the two, force-feeding is the better option, although the left will make the most of it as an example of the depravity and cruelty of US authorities and ICE.

Higher taxes for thee but not for me

The New Neo Posted on by

Recent polls indicate that Americans overwhelmingly support raising taxes on the rich:

…[A] new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Monday that found 76 percent of registered voters believe the wealthiest Americans should pay more in taxes. A recent Fox News survey showed that 70 percent of Americans favor raising taxes on those earning over $10 million — including 54 percent of Republicans.

The numbers suggest the political ground upon which the 2020 presidential campaign will be fought is shifting in dramatic ways, reflecting the rise in inequality in the United States and growing concerns in the electorate about the fairness of the American system.

Actually, I think it reflects a lot of other things, too.

The first is the surge in Democrats and/or the MSM pushing the idea as a great one.

The second is human nature, which is the reason the Ten Commandments include a prohibition on “coveting.”

The third is widespread ignorance about what percentage of our taxes the rich already pay.

The fourth is widespread ignorance about what higher tax rates actually mean in terms of whether such rates will end up raising the total tax revenue collected, or what it would do to the economy in general. But my guess is that most people not only are not aware that higher rates on the rich do not necessarily translate to higher tax revenue, but many don’t care because the driving force behind this for many people is to punish the very rich.

So, what percentage do the rich already pay [this data is from 2016 taxes, the most recent I could find]?:

The latest federal income tax data reported by the IRS shows that the top 1 percent of income earners pay 39.5 percent of all federal income taxes, nearly twice the 20.6 percent share of national income they earn. The entire bottom 50 percent of all taxpayers pay 2.7 percent of federal income taxes, which is only a small fraction (about one fourth) of their share of national income.

The top 1 percent, indeed, pay a much bigger share of federal income taxes than the entire bottom 90 percent of income earners, who pay only 29.1 percent of federal income taxes, while earning 53 percent of national income. That means as well that the top 1 percent pay a bigger share of income taxes than the entire middle class combined, defined as the middle 20 percent of income earners.

The author of that article (written in 2017) adds:

[Democrats such as Liz Warren] know that what they are saying is false, because the above data is all publicly available and they are not stupid. But they know their Democrat voter base has no idea what the rich pay in taxes, and they can stoke envy and anger among them with their false demagoguery, enhancing their turnout at the polls.

They know the so-called mainstream media will never tell the public the truth either. CNN employs economic analysts, but you will never see CNN interview one of them for five minutes on air about whether the data says the rich pay their fair share of taxes without a chorus of left wingers to shout them down.

By the evidence of the polls I cited at the beginning of the article, it’s not just Democrats who fall for this. Fifty-four percent of self-identified Republicans agreed that taxes on the very rich should be raised.

Opinion on this also depends in part on how the “very rich” is defined. Ten million dollars seems safely high, and so more people are going to support that as a cutoff. But the history of such raises is that there is downward creep. In fact, the Sixteenth Amendment, which was passed to allow an income tax, was presented as only affecting the very very rich:

Thirty-six state legislatures had to ratify the 16th Amendment before it could go into effect. The public and most newspapers seemed to favor it. The main argument for ratification was that the amendment would force the wealthy to take on a fairer share of the federal tax burden that had in the past been largely carried by those earning relatively little. Only a few critics spoke out forcefully against the amendment. John D. Rockefeller, one of the country’s richest men, stated: “When a man has accumulated a sum of money within the law. . . the people no longer have any right to share in the earnings resulting from the accumulation.”

Ratification moved slowly but steadily through the state legislatures. Some of the states had already passed income tax laws of their own in seeking new ways to finance public schools and other social needs. Surprisingly, the income tax amendment drew widespread support in cities and in rural areas alike, from both Democrats and Republicans, and in all geographical regions. Even New York ratified the amendment despite the state’s reputation as the capital of “money power” with numerous millionaires among its residents (including John D. Rockefeller). By early 1913, 42 states (six more than needed) had ratified the income tax amendment. Only six states rejected it…

Rep. Cordell Hull introduced the first income tax law under the newly adopted Sixteenth Amendment. He proposed a graduated tax starting with a 1-percent rate for incomes between $4,000 and $20,000 increasing to a top rate of 3 percent for those earning $50,000 or more…

The first tax collection day under the new law took place on March 1, 1914. Since the average worker earned only about $800 a year, few people actually had to pay any federal income tax. Less than 4 percent of American families made an annual income of $3,000 or more. Deductions and exemptions further shrank the pool of taxpayers. Nevertheless, the federal government collected $71 million that first year. Millionaire John D. Rockefeller alone paid an estimated $2 million.

All in all, most Americans thought the new tax was a great idea.

Superbowl ratings hit 10-year low

The New Neo Posted on by

Not a surprise. The NFL has been alienating a lot of viewers in recent years.

And probably quite a few of those who tuned in yesterday at the outset ended up tuning out before it ended because the game was a low-scoring defensive battle. Others aren’t all that interested because the somewhat-hated (outside of New England, that is) Patriots have become such a juggernaut that they seem to win and win and win.

I didn’t watch, but that’s because (a) I’m not a football fan; and (b) I was busy watching a movie with some friends. I hear from usually-reliable sources that even the ads were pretty bad, though.