TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 597.
Archive for 2014
December 27, 2014
KICK THE CHICKEN, KOWTOW TO THE MONKEY: Forget about North Korea and The Interview: For decades Hollywood has been censoring its own output to protect access to the Chinese market.
It’s no mystery why Washington plays down Beijing’s cyber-transgressions in this realm. The Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” strategy depends on “pragmatic cooperation,” as the president puts it. There’s nothing wrong with this; engagement is necessary with a nation as large and powerful as China. But when the President also says it is time to discard “outdated zero-sum thinking” with regard to China, one wonders what he means. Not since President Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing have U.S.-China relations been dominated by zero-sum thinking. Is Obama naive? Or has the meaning of “pragmatic” changed, so that now there is no balance between security concerns and commercial self-interest?
Here’s the real difference between the chicken and the monkey—or maybe we should say gorilla. North Korea, with its paltry population of 28 million and its impoverished, closed society, is not a tempting market for U.S. companies. Nor does Pyongyang have a team of lobbyists defending its image in the United States. China, on the other hand, has more than a billion consumers hungry for everything that America produces, and its lobbyists, if you can call them that, are everywhere.
That brings us to The Interview. Two-thirds of the revenues for Hollywood blockbusters are generated from overseas markets. China is far from being the most lucrative of these—according to Ben Fritz of the Wall Street Journal, it is fifth on the list, after the UK, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. But it is already a cash cow for Hollywood, with revenue hitting $3.55 billion this year, up 32 percent in the first nine months of 2014. Transformers: Age of Extinction took the lead with $320 million in profits.
Measure this against the potential of a Chinese market completely open and friendly to U.S. entertainment products, and you have all the explanation you need for why American movies feature so many North Korean villains and so few Chinese.
This is the same reason why, back when the “solid South” was a Democratic stronghold, you got a lot of Confederacy-friendly or at least South-friendly stuff from Hollywood and academia, and now that it’s gone solidly GOP it’s a different story.
NATIONAL JOURNAL: Nine Questions For Hillary Clinton In 2015. Actually, they left out the big one: How do you reconcile your history of attacking Bill’s female accusers with your “war on women” rhetoric?
CLAIRE MCCASKILL: Statistics? We don’t need no stinkin’ statistics!
Who needs facts and statistics when you have a good narrative?
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., during an interview reported by Chuck Raasch of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, indicated that she was not happy about disputing statistics regarding campus sexual assault.
“Frankly, it is irritating that anybody would be distracted by which statistics are accurate,” McCaskill said.
This coming from a senator who has rallied around the one-in-five statistic and featured it in her own report about campus sexual assault. Now that new evidence suggests the incidence of campus rape is closer to one in fifty women over four years than to one in five, statistics suddenly don’t matter.
Yes, there seems to be a pivot from the science is settled: there’s an overwhelming rape explosion! to even one woman’s rape constitutes a crisis!
PUSHING BACK AGAINST BIG GOVERNMENT: Bill aims to get inspectors out of home kitchens, after residents complain.
Virginians who try to sell homemade food from their kitchens are feeling the heat from state and local inspectors.
“I have to turn down my neighbors when they ask if they can buy pesto I make from my own basil plants,” says Bernadette Barber, a farmer in Lancaster, Va.
And this isn’t just a rural phenomenon.
In Arlington, government inspectors shut down a home-based soup maker, even though no customer complaints had been registered. Others have encountered similar fates, stripping them of needed income.
Legislation served up for the 2015 General Assembly would turn the tables.
HB 1290, sponsored by Delegate Rob Bell, R-Charlottesville, would end home-kitchen inspections on items produced for direct sale. The goods would bear a label stating that the products are not for resale and were processed without state inspection.
“If someone wants to buy food from someone, what business is that of the state?” asks Matthew French, a farmer in Bland, Va. “The state basically comes at you with a gun, and says you can only buy from state-approved supplier.”
Indeed.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Rice ISD substitute teacher/aide charged with inappropriate relationship, sexual assault. “A Rice woman investigators say was a teacher’s aide or substitute teacher in the Rice Independent School District has been charged with sexual assault of a child and improper relationship between and educator and a student.”
FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS: Cathy Young: The Crusade Against “Rape Culture” Stumbles. “The Rolling Stone account of a horrific fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia, which many advocates saw as a possible ‘tipping point’—a shocking wake-up call demonstrating that even the most brutal sexual assaults on our college campuses are tacitly tolerated—has unraveled to the point where only a true believer would object to calling it a rape hoax. . . . It also looks like Jackie made up both ‘Haven’ and the sexual assault he supposedly engineered in an attempt to get the romantic attention of Ryan Duffin, one of the friends she called for help that night. Tellingly, her lawyer has not commented on these revelations. . . . Will 2015 see a pushback against the anti-‘rape culture’ movement on campus? If so, good. This is a movement that has capitalized on laudable sympathy for victims of sexual assault to promote gender warfare, misinformation and moral panic. It’s time for a reassessment.”
REMEMBERING the Christmas Truce of World War I. Had it lasted, Western Civilization would be in a very different place now.
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Hollywood Barbarian: The Romantic Genius of John Milius. Excerpt: “I love this episode because it illustrates the mythic dimensions of Milius’ reputation in Hollywood, the way in which he came to resemble the charismatic and unpredictable and dangerous heroes he created for the screen. And Kael’s reluctance to confront the filmmaker whose art she did so much to degrade, her alternation between rhetorical ferocity and social cowardice, is characteristic of certain types of left-wing movie folk, as we see today in the studio reaction to threats made against The Interview.”
December 26, 2014
THE UGLY JUNCTURE OF ELITISM AND OIKOPHOBIA: Students Rally Around Peer With ‘No Sympathy’ For Dead Cops At $60,000-A-Year Brandeis.
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Can beer boost brain power? “New research has shown that a chemical compound in beer may be able to improve cognitive function. The beverage once thought to obliterate brain cells when consumed in abundance may actually have the opposite effect and boost brain power.” As always, the good/bad effects are dose-dependent. . . .
THE “ISLAMIC STATE” IS A STATE, to the same degree that “Woodstock Nation” was a nation.
FALLEN ANGELS LOOKING MORE AND MORE LIKE PROPHECY: Video: WH Science advisor says man made global warming saving us from another ice age.
FASTER, PLEASE: Existing Drug May Prevent Foggy ‘Old Age’ Brain. “Researchers at The Rockefeller University and The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found they could stop normal, age-related memory loss in rats by treating them with riluzole. This treatment, they found, prompted changes known to improve connections, and as a result, communication, between certain neurons within the brain’s hippocampus.”
I’ve always felt that I think and remember more clearly when taking phosphatidylcholine supplements, though that’s not an age-related thing as I’ve been doing it for decades. These are what I’m taking now, though I’ve taken many brands without much noticeable difference.
MICHAEL WALSH: With Two Years Left, The Inflection Point Of The Obama Presidency. “This is not about Obama suddenly grabbing ahold of himself and remembering to dance with what brung him: this has been the end game of the entire Obama presidency from the start. The re-election of 2012 was crucial, for without it the entire scheme would have collapsed. They — campaign guru David Axelrod and the others who foisted Obama on the body politic — had to get him to this point in order for the plan of rule-by-fiat to be fully operational.”
UPDATE: From the comments: “The government is in open rebellion against its people.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The scientific reason you should put booze into your pies.
RAND SIMBERG: The Nutritional Junk Science of Our Government Nannies.
AT AMAZON, 20% off Jeans, for men, women, and kids.
SHOULD YOU JOIN A Brain Gym?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Chicago (22%), Philadelphia (35%) Law Schools Suffer Large Enrollment Declines.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Anti-DeBlasio Banner Flown Over New York City.
Rank and file New York City police officers dramatically escalated their feud with Mayor Bill De Blasio Friday. A group of them reportedly hired a plane to fly over the city while carrying a banner that said: “De Blasio Our Backs Have Turned To You.”
The plane reportedly flew five circles above the Hudson River before returning to a local airport.
Even Dinkins had nothing like this kind of hostility from the police department.