Wiser Men Than You

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."
--James Madison, letter to William Bradford, January 1774

". . . no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
-Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
--Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794

"It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [formation of the American governments] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven..."
-John Adams

"Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he has known nothing but what has passed under his own eye." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Cooper, 1823

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."
--Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind."
--Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794

"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion"
-John Adams

"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man"
-Thomas Jefferson

"A professorship of theology should have no place within our institution".
-Thomas Jefferson

"The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
-Abraham Lincoln

"Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. I had hoped that liberal and enlightened thought would have reconciled the Christians so that their [not our?] religious fights would not endanger the peace of Society."
~George Washington

"It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [formation of the American governments] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven..."
~John Adams

"Religions are all alike -- founded upon fables and mythologies"
-Thomas Jefferson

"Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, 'This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!'"
-John Adams

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries."
-James Madison

"Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States," -James Madison

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and
State." -Thomas Jefferson

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
-James Madison

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787"

~Thomas Jefferson

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." - to Baron von Humboldt, 1813"

~Thomas Jefferson

"Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history."
-James Madison

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
-John Adams

"And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
-James Madison

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
-James Madison

"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion... has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble."
-Benjamin Franklin

"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."
-Thomas Jefferson

"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
-James Madison

"No man on Earth has less taste or talent for criticism than myself, and the least and last of all should I undertake to criticize works on the Apocalypse (Revelations). It was between fifty and sixty years since I read it and then I considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams."
-Thomas Jefferson

"The Christian god can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of the people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites."
-Thomas Jefferson

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies."
-Thomas Jefferson

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820

Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.
-Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

Atheists Are Evildoers (until you look at the statistics)

If there's one thing the Federal government does well, its surveys. From the Census all the way down to financial aid applications, some of the worlds' greatest statisticians work for the government, and produce all manner of interesting facts about our nation. Here's one of my recent favorites:

Religious Affiliation of Prisoners Managed By The Federal Bureau of Prisons:

Catholic	29267
Protestant	26162
Muslim	5435
American Indian	2408
Nation of Islam	1734
Rasta	1485
Jewish	1325
Church of Christ	1303
Pentecostal	1093
Moorish	1066
Buddhist	882
Jehovah Witness	665
Adventist	621
Orthodox	375
Mormon	298
Scientology	190
Atheist	156
Hindu	119
Santeria	117
Sikh	14
Bahai	9
Krishna	7

So, for those of you keeping track at home, atheists, being a moderate proportion of the USA population (about 8-16%) are disproportionately less in the prison populations (0.21%). Christians, on the other hand, are a bunch of criminal degenerates.

Are statistics fun?

Conservative Tax Policy vs. Reality: A Primer

The real-world effects of tax policy are counter intuitive. They run exactly opposite the conventional wisdom. They defy what modern political conservatives call “common sense” and what conservative economists calls “the logic of the market”. Reality laughs at the Laffer Curve, calls Ronald Reagan wrong, and says Milton Friedman is a loon.

Here’s a reality check: High marginal tax rates correlate with economic growth. Examples include World War II and the Truman-Eisenhower years, when it was around 90 percent, and the Clinton years, when it was high relative to the preceding and following administrations. Here’s another reality check: Tax rate increases are followed by real economic growth. Examples include Hoover in 1932, Roosevelt in 1936 and 1940, Bush the Elder in 1991 and Clinton in1993. More reality: Moderate tax cuts are followed by a flat economy. This is a generalization from one example, being Johnson in 1964. And finally, large tax cuts are always followed by a boom, a bubble and a crash (1837, 1929, 1987, and 2008 are examples).

Why do high taxes create a stronger economy? I used to run a small business -- a technical training school for adults. Every time we took a dollar out as personal income, it instantly turned into 50 cents. If we didn't really need the money, that was an incentive to keep it in the company and to find ways to spend it that took it out of the taxable profit column but increased the value of the company.You see, high taxes create an incentive to reinvest profits into long-term growth. With high taxes, the only way to retain the bulk of the wealth created by a business is by reinvesting it in the business -- in plants, equipment, staff, research and development, new products and all the rest. The higher taxes are (and from 1940 to 1964 the top rates were around 90 percent), the more this is true. This creates a bias toward long-term planning. If a business is planning for the long term, it wants a happy, stable work force. It becomes worthwhile to pay good wages and offer decent benefits.

Conversely, low taxes create an incentive for profit taking. One of the main problems of discussing politics and economics with non-historians is that it is easy to confuse profitability with wealth creation in the context of twentieth century American industrialization. They are not the same. President Eisenhower built the interstate highway system. There is no doubt that this gave the country an asset of great value, one that was very productive. It created great "wealth." But, aside from the construction companies that contracted the work, it was not profitable.

Selling subprime mortgages, trading in derivatives, packaging mortgage-backed securities and "flipping" condos were all very profitable but did not create wealth. The theory is that if the rich can keep their money, they will invest in businesses that create jobs, more businesses, more tax revenue and greater "wealth" for the nation. That sounds like logic and common sense. But is it, in practice, what happened? Once tax cutting began, the culture of business changed.

It was no longer enough for a business to be a reasonably good business, making steady, reliable profits. Indeed, that became a very bad condition for a business to be in. It made it a target for takeovers by people who were willing to milk them of their profits. Among the ways you can get more profit out of a going business are:

• Cutting the workforce (possibly sacrificing long-term productivity)
• Cutting salaries (who cares if the employees are unhappy? The balance sheet improves)
• Selling off assets (who cares what happens in 10 years? We can take the money now)
• Outsourcing (which sends the "wealth" somewhere else.)

A whole host of devices were developed to do all of the above: junk bonds, leveraged buyouts, hostile takeovers, greenmail and the like. Lots of money could be made that way for a small number of individuals. But it doesn't produce "wealth." An environment in which personal profit is incentivized and profit-taking is cheap creates the conditions for a bubble.

Once you've taken your profit, and you have the cash in hand, you look for a place where you can get profits quickly, then again and again. Instead of examining how sound a company is, how well it's run, its debt load and its long-term prospects, other things become important, such as the speed at which you can profit and the ease of entry. Instead of investing in business (which is difficult, slow and complicated) investors go into markets. They look for sectors that are hot. When investors find such an area, they flock to it. It heats up even more. People are seen making money, quickly and easily, simply by buying and selling, and they don't want to miss out. Then there's a bubble, which is followed by a crash.

Proponents of tax cuts take the position that taxes take money out of the economy. The problem with that position is that it’s not based on either reality or historical accuracy. Governments don't keep the money they collect; they spend it. It goes right back in. It just takes a different route. It goes to different places. The places that government puts money are important. More to the point, they are important for business. All infrastructure is an invisible subsidy for all business; It's easy to understand this when we're talking about roads. It doesn't matter if your business doesn't ship anything by truck or even by bicycle. The fact that you can get to your office quickly and easily, that your mailperson can get to you without traveling on the back of a mule, is a subsidy of your business.

It's a little harder to see that when we're talking about soft infrastructure.

• Laws, regulations and their enforcement
• Social Security, unemployment insurance, public health and welfare
• Education, research, support of sports, arts and culture
• Parks and playgrounds.All of them create a society that is safer, more stable, and more able to produce and consume. They produce a better place in which to do business.

Tax cut fundamentalists also claim (and I paraphrase the essence of the argument) that the money government gets disappears in wasteful stupidities. They might point out all sorts of cultural and scientific projects, like a museum for the Woodstock Festival, counting the fish in Waldon Pond, or studying the sex life of prairie dogs. I would point to the Star Wars missile defense shield, farm subsidies, the ethanol program, the privatized non-reconstruction of Iraq and all of Halliburton's contracts. But it is also true that businesses spend money on all sorts of wasteful stupidities. For example, today I started wondering just how anyone (in fact, a succession of people) could run a company with the power and resources of General Motors into the ground.

In the mythical marketplace of Adam Smith, they should fail and suffer for their faults. In the real world, the arrogant fools who ran the place will walk away with millions, and the hundreds of thousands of people who worked for them and their suppliers, who offered services and goods to those in turn, will be the ones who suffer. The point is that relying on the magic of the marketplace is like relying on any other kind of magic.

There are things that are necessarily done for the common good. Clean water, sewer systems, garbage collection and public health initiatives create a healthy population, able to work and consume. Take those away, and we return to the plague years. Imagine what that does to business. Polluted air, toxins in the groundwater, viruses and bacteria jump the borders of even the wealthiest communities. Bad health created by lack of care for the common good becomes an economic drain on society. This is not to say that a full-out, state-run economy is better than capitalism. It's not. That produces different problems that are even worse.

It is not even meant to imply that all "sound" investments in "real" businesses stopped with tax cuts. They didn't. Start-up money and venture capital were relatively easy to come by. Lots of new and good businesses were built in low-tax environments. But low taxes produced great excesses of negative activity as well. There is a propensity in business, and as a nation, to hollow out our businesses, and mortgage and sell off our assets, in order to grab short-term profits. A sound economy is based on a mix of market and government actions; in fact, the most successful capitalist economies the world has ever seen have been Keynesian in nature.

What is certain is that tax cuts on the top brackets, and in particular on unearned income, do not produce healthy economic growth. Contrary to all expectations, tax hikes seem to produce the desired growth. All the explanations in the world, funded by all the right-wing anti-tax think tanks in the world, won't change that reality. As John Stewart once stated (in all of his truthiness), “Reality has a well-known liberal bias”.

Future Techno from Turkmenistan

No joke. I present to you "Elektronik Supersonik" by Zlad! (the exclamation point is actually part of this acts' name, and not an emphatic declaration of my own excitement).