The Picket Line

The Picket Line — 11 March 2010

2010-03-11T00:00:00Z

11 March 2010

Last Spring I shared some charts that showed how IRS enforcement activity was changing over time and also some charts showing how “delinquent” taxpayer activity was changing over time.

The new IRS Data Book is out, so I can update the numbers. The number of levies and seizures are down from their peaks, but the use of liens continue to rise:

On the “delinquent” side, the number of people who didn’t pay their taxes when they were due and the number of people who didn’t file on time (or at all) are both off from their peaks, but the IRS continued to to be overwhelmed by the backlog of delinquent cases and so the total unresolved delinquent accounts continued to rise:

The Picket Line — 10 March 2010

2010-03-10T00:00:00Z

10 March 2010

That emerging left/right/libertarian anti-militarist coalition now has a homepage. There’s not much there yet (some more write-ups of the inaugural meeting from some of the participants), but there’s an RSS feed if you want to be notified when things get moving.

Paul Buhle, whose anti-militarist activism goes back to his time with Students for a Democratic Society in the Vietnam years, writes of the group’s first meeting: “There never was such a boundary-crossing event before, at least not in my 50 year political lifetime or any historical incident that I can recall.”

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

Mencius Moldbug, who has established himself as the voice of the contemporary anti-Whig movement, turned me on to Vaclav Havel’s essay on The Power of the Powerless. It eloquently describes one of the forms that coerced consent took in communist Eastern Europe. “Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”
National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen Kelley says that the Joe Stack kamakaze attack seems to have proven an inspiration: “There were calls where taxpayers said they were thinking of ‘taking flying lessons’ in the context of an audit or a collection. There are 70 that have been reported. I have to tell you that the first time I heard the one about ‘taking flying lessons,’ I cannot imagine in any scenario, following the Austin attack, where that's an appropriate comment to make.”
The IRS is so fearful of taxpayer retaliation that it has started to develop a sort of paranoid autoimmune disorder, in which it shuts down and heads for the bunkers at the sign of anything in the least bit unusual — this time, “a suspicious package found near the IRS building — the contents of which were soon found to be harmless.”
Here’s another example of inmates raking in bogus tax refunds while still behind bars. Prisoner Shawn Clark was caught on tape discussing his scheme: “I’m through with the street crime. I’m strictly white collar from now on. I love the IRS.” The scheme netted over $100,000 before they got caught.

Thanks to Queer Equality Revolution for plugging The Picket Line.

The Picket Line — 7 March 2010

2010-03-07T00:00:00Z

7 March 2010

I’ve got an article in this month’s Simple Living News on your favorite topic and mine.

The article aims to pitch tax resistance through the low-income, simple-living lifestyle to people who already see the merits of that lifestyle and who might want another arrow in their salespitch quiver when trying to talk it up to others, or who might think “well, I’m almost a tax resister already, might as well go the extra yard and pick up that merit badge too.”

I deliberately tried to cast a wide net, including lots of information on war tax resistance (since there’s lots more information to be had there), but also trying to be welcoming to potential resisters of other stripes. The impression I have is that the Simple Living News has a pretty ideologically diverse readership.

The March 2010 issue of Rojo y Negro, a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist monthly, has a couple of articles about war tax resistance. (Translations mine, and I’m not very good at it.)

We Continue Our Disobedience to Military Spending

At least 875 people have resisted taxes in 2009, redirecting up to €80,600, which has been allocated to alternative projects

One year more we publicly present the data that we have compiled on objectors to military spending in different regions of the Spanish state in the 2009 tax season. Although we are aware that there are several more, there are 875 people who have reported their objection in this campaign by directly informing Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement or other groups that promote war tax resistance and are responsible for collecting these data. In particular we are aware that at least €80,600 has been deducted from Spanish military spending and has been redirected to other citizens’ organizations that certainly will apply it to a superior end.

We Are at War

We are at war. Although the bombs do not drop on our territory, or spray us with shrapnel, the Spanish state participates in military conflicts all over the world (Afghanistan, Lebanon, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, the Congo…), subsidizes the war industry with sweet public contracts and does business in the arms trade. Armies in the world are sustained by three fundamental pillars: human resources (reserve and active military, professional or conscript), ideological justification (these days they legitimize their existence with the excuse of global security; rich countries, that is), and, of course, the important economic pillar. All three are necessary for the functioning of the military machinery of modern armies, with their hypocritical humanitarian façade that has the function of defending the interests of the most rich and powerful to sustain a situation of injustice that condemns three-quarters of the world population to poverty.

Military Spending: Data That Is Obscured

All of this is done, whether we like it or not, with our money. The Spanish army is a real consumer of economic resources. The state has budgeted for 2010 military spending that amounts to a whopping €18,161 million. Rather than covering the real social necessities (sustinance, shelter, education, health…), an average of €394 per person will be spent every day in preparation for war.
It is not an accident that the money budgeted for the Defense Ministry will not be more than 42% of actual military spending. In order to get the complete figure, one must add the money corresponding to military R&D (nice self-contradiction!) since most of the military industry is financed with this money, those parts of the Foreign Affairs Ministry budget destined for spending on NATO and the EU, military pensions, and more spending besides, with which they hide the final scandalous figure. The fact that the state will not be transparent in its public accounting is an indication that they have something harmful to hide. And our objective is to undo this harm.

War Tax Resistance

War Tax Resistance, as we know, is a a form of civil disobedience that consists of refusing to pay the taxes for military spending, and aims to stop it. Anyone can be a tax resister by nothing more than deducting, on one’s tax return, a quantity of money for military spending (a symbolic amount, or a percentage that corresponds), which is then destined to some project of solidarity that actually contributes to constructing a more just world. In this way we demonstrate that the redirection of money to non-military purposes can be effective. Together with the tax return, is included a declaration of the redirected money and a letter explaining to the Treasury the reasons for our disobedience: we commit tax resistance because we refuse to collaborate in the sustaining of the military machine and because we want to make a public denunciation of this injustice.
War Tax Resistance is now in its third decade in the Spanish state. It has involved many thousands of people over the years and has also managed to redirect substantial amounts of military spending that have enabled the realization of numerous social projects of solidarity both in the Spanish state and in various countries. In recent years it has supported antimilitarism, nonviolence, feminism, and different struggles and basic skills in places like Colombia, Zimbabwe, Chile, Russia/Chechnia, Palestine/Israel, Iraq… or the Spanish state itself.

Appeal to Common Sense: Invitation to Disobedience

Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement wants to make an appeal for sanity and common sense in order to fight against the army and military insanity. In a world where capitalist imperalism has gone so far that the destruction of the planet is, in this day, a work in progress, and where the domination of the powerful over the impoverished majority forms part of the “inevitable” scenario, disobedience is necessary. It is necessary that we say no, it is necessary that, like years ago in the disobedience campaign, we set forth and refuse to collaborate with the army. Not a single woman, not a single man, not a single euro for war!

Two tax resisters stand up to the Treasury

Valencians Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes have been practicing war tax resistance for several years. For example, Hugo deducted from his tax returns between 2003 and 2008 about €1,500 which he donated to various pacifist, nonviolent resistance, and social media organizations in protest against war and militarism, as he stated in an explanatory letter along with his returns which included an accounting. In each of these tax returns he deducted a percentage equal to that which in the Federal General Budget represents spending on military and armaments, and he recorded this on the form itself, creating his own handwritten line-item deduction “For War Tax Resistance.”
A few months ago the Treasury demanded the amounts deducted along with penalties and interest. Both Hugo and Jorge maintain the legitimacy of their action, and each one, on his own, decided to resist the administrative decision, appealing it. With this they are not seeking for preferential tax treatment for themselves, of course, nor the recognition of an individual right not to pay the part of the taxes related to the military establishment, but rather the active demand of a collective right to live in a world at peace, which involves the progressive dismantling of the machinery of war. So far, with the support and advice of Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement, Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes have appealed their tax claims before the Regional Administrative Economic Court and plan to gather public support and to appeal to the Superior Court of Justice in Valencia, Hugo in the coming months, and Jorge in the coming weeks. Hugo and Jorge are only two of nearly a thousand people each year who redirect a percentage of their income taxes as an active, conscientious, open, and committed signal for demanding the progressive elimination of the military budget and the abolition of the military.
All this forms an even more outrageous picture today, seeing all the generous aid to banks, carmakers, and the housing industry, and in the midst of significant cuts in social rights in connection with a crisis of capitalism that fiercely struck the most vulnerable sectors. In view of this, it appears necessary to update the classic antimilitarist pacifist proposal: We end war (and the economic crisis) by dismantling the army. Let the army pay for the crisis.

The Picket Line — 6 March 2010

2010-03-06T00:00:00Z

6 March 2010

David R. Henderson gives a more complete summary, with a more complete guest list, of the recent gathering of people from across the political spectrum who want to create a broad antiwar movement that I mentioned last month.

It sounds like it was a fascinating meeting of the minds and that it went well. Henderson says, “I emerged with more hope for the antiwar movement than I’ve had in a while.”

Henderson has been working hard to establish and maintain a left/right/libertarian anti-war coalition in Monterey, California. It requires some delicate stitch-work, but is showing promise. I included some observations by Henderson about individual responsibility for state actions in a Picket Line entry back in 2006, and also in We Won’t Pay.

In other news…

The U.S. Treasury Department is required to publish a list of people who have renounced their United States citizenship. “[D]uring the quarter ending December 31, 2009[, a] total of 502 individuals expatriated. This is the highest quarterly number of individuals expatriating for many years. In fact, during that one quarter, there were more expatriations [than] in the combined previous seven quarters.” International Tax Blog speculates that this is because of a recent change in the law concerning tax treatment of expatriates. Until recently, even if you renounced your citizenship and moved to another country, the U.S. still wanted you to file tax returns for 10 more years, and would tax you on all of your income if you spent more than 30 days a year in-country. Now “moderately wealthy individuals can expatriate without any U.S. taxation… the 10 year tax filings are no longer necessary, making the expatriation a clean break from the U.S.”
Karl, at Embracing Mystery, reports on the “Possibility Alliance” community in Northern Missouri, founded by Ethan & Sarah Hughes:

Inspired by Gandhi’s whole-system approach to nonviolence, they are guided by five principles: simplicity, service, activism, inner work, and celebration.
In terms of simplicity: they grow their own food (including everything from peaches and nuts to goat cheese) in permaculture food forests and they can food for the winter; they travel by foot, horse, bicycle, or public transportation (Ethan has been in a car less than 10 times in the last 10 years); they live electricity-free and computer-free, eating dinner by candle-light every night; they make their own music with guitars, a piano, and their own voices; and they tell stories by the wood stove at night. Some of their many forms of service and activism include: they live by the “gift economy,” sharing free food, free lodging, free permaculture courses and more; they helped start a bicycle cooperative in a local town; they advise people on natural building techniques; they are war-tax resisters; and one month a year Ethan leads a group of costumed “superheroes” on bicycle-powered spontaneous service adventures in various parts of the world. For inner work they regularly share readings from various spiritual traditions, study Nonviolent Communication, and support one another to live with open hearts and minds.

The Picket Line — 4 March 2010

2010-03-04T00:00:00Z

4 March 2010

From the 4 March 1978 Spokane Daily Chronicle:

Tax Protest Techniques Told

Military expenditures take up 53 percent of the national budget, “a disproportionate amount,” but there are ways to protest it, Irwin Hogenauer, a war tax resistance counselor, said here today.
“Resistance can take two directions: Personal, by not paying taxes to carry out your convictions, disengaging yourself from the production of war material; and public, making it a political effort to raise the social consciousness of others,” Hogenauer said in an interview.
Some methods of tax resistance are legal and others are not, he added. One that is legal is to file a return with a letter of protest, saying the money is being paid under duress, he said.
“Let your employer and your friends know how you feel,” Hogenauer said. “But the government still gets the money. That’s one of the difficulties.”
Hogenauer, 66, has been a volunteer war tax resistance counselor in Seattle for 30 years. Before he retired four years ago he said he showed his resistance to use of tax money for war materials by refusing to file a yearly tax return.
He was never prosecuted, Hogenauer said, although from time to time an Internal Revenue Service employee would appear at his door.
“But that’s not unusual,” he said. “Thousands of people across the nation don’t file a tax return and there are no efforts at prosecution of most of them. It is selective and hit-and-miss.”
Hogenauer is in Spokane today to lead a “Personal Responses to War Taxes Workshop” sponsored by the Spokane Fellowship of Reconciliation.
He said he was one of about a half dozen conscientious objectors during World War II who formed a tax refusal committee.
He said there is no way of knowing how many people refuse to pay income tax, but said the number is increasing.
Hogenauer cautioned that there is always the potential for prosecution and incarceration of war tax resisters. The IRS can get the tax payments and penalties from bank accounts, wages and seizure of property.
“But even for refusal to pay the telephone tax, the amount is so small, say $12 a year, that it would cost the government a minimum of $50 or more to begin to collect it.”
He said he advocates total disarmament of the United States, and unilateral disarmament of the rest of the world [sic].
Asked if he would approve of disarmament if the United States were the only country to go through with it, Hogenauer said:
“That’s fine. It’s about time some country take the lead. The strongest need to do it because the weakest won’t.”

Hogenauer was among that group of World War II conscientious objectors who qualified for civilian work camps but then soured on the idea and decided that they could not accept being conscripted even into civilian work tangentially-related to the war effort. He went AWOL from his civilian work camp and ended up doing 10 months of a two year sentence in prison.

Here’s a second article on Hogenauer’s resistance, from 1983:

No tax woes — he just doesn’t file

Seattle (AP) — Irwin Hogenauer doesn’t fret or fume as tax deadline nears. The 70-year-old Quaker and war protester just keeps doing what he’s done since 1948 — refuse to pay.
To protest spending taxes on the military, Hogenauer hasn’t filed a tax return for 35 years.
“I’ve lived a life of principle and I’ll continue to stand by it,” he says.
Occasionally, the Internal Revenue Service checks up on him.
“Once they came to my door and asked me to sit down with them and fill out a form,” he says. “I tol them I wasn’t interested.”
Another time, he had a chat with an IRS official in Tacoma, who said “he would be sure my papers would come across his desk and I’d be hearing from him. I never heard a single thing from him,” says Hogenauer.
He is one of a small but committed group of people who resist paying income tax because of moral objection to war.
Few, however, are so extreme. Most file proper 1040 forms and, like Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, withhold a port of their tax equivalent to the budget’s percentage of military spending. Others wind up paying when the IRS closes in.
But Hogenauer feels that even filing a return cooperates “with the sytem of war.”
Why hasn’t the IRS grabbed him?
One reason is that his income usually hasn’t been taxable. Hogenauer, who is retired, has held a variety of jobs, including milk truck driver, bowling alley attendant, school janitor, children’s program director, carpenter, and YMCA executive secretary.
“People who are conscientious objectors often mold their lifestyles so they don’t have any taxes to pay,” said Helen Provost-Kees, IRS spokeswoman.

The Picket Line — 3 March 2010

2010-03-03T00:00:00Z

3 March 2010

There’s a movement afoot — pushed by groups like “Move Your Money” — that’s encouraging people to take their money out of the big banks that have been plundering the Treasury and put it instead into other institutions like local credit unions.

Another good reason to move your money into credit unions is that, unlike banks, credit unions do not generate taxable profits, and have been tax-exempt since the credit union structure was codified by the 1934 Federal Credit Union Act.

Last month’s kamakaze attack on the IRS building in Austin was a good excuse for reporters to go back through the archives and write up something about the recent history of attacks and threats against the IRS and its employees.

One of the better of the bunch was Andrea Ball’s, for the Austin American Statesman. Excerpts:

Threats, contempt come with job for IRS workers

Some Americans heckle or mail tea bags; others, such as Stack, act in more dangerous ways.

Michelle Lowry knows first-hand how much people hate the Internal Revenue Service.
The 37-year-old Leander woman, who processes forms for the IRS in Austin, confronts that venom regularly. People slip razor blades and pushpins into the same envelopes as their W-2 forms. They send nasty notes with their crumpled documents. Last year during the height of the Tea Party movement, hundreds of taxpayers included — what else? — tea bags with their returns.
And then there’s the weird stuff.
“Sometimes you’ll see stuff that looks like blood on them,” said Lowry, who has worked as a seasonal employee for five years. “We wear gloves.”

Lowry is used to the presence of security guards at the IRS office in which she works. She’s been through evacuations caused by suspicious items in the mail, such as white powder. (It turned out to be packing material.) And while she has always known the risks of her job, she wasn’t concerned about her safety until now.
“I’m a little worried, honestly,” she said. “Every time I walk into the building, I’m going to think about it.”
Austinite Jesse Pangelinan, 41, never felt threatened during his 13 years at the IRS. He said it wasn’t until after he left the agency in 2000 to become a stand-up comedian that he came face to face with true IRS rage. After he joked about his former job at a comedy club in Ardmore, Okla., one audience member heckled Pangelinan so badly that the heckler had to be removed from the building.
“I was escorted back to my car in case he followed me,” said Pangelinan, who also works at an insurance company in Austin. “The security guard followed me back to my hotel.”

And… right on cue: another “suspicious substance” sent to an IRS building led to an evacuation and the deployment of a hazmat team. The cause of the panic was “an envelope that appeared to have seeds inside” — showing that the level of paranoia has risen to the point where things that are out-of-the-ordinary, even if they appear completely benign, are considered threatening.

The Picket Line — 2 March 2010

2010-03-02T00:00:00Z

2 March 2010

The IRS has released a new Statistics of Income Bulletin with the first numbers on the 2008 tax season.

Last year, I noted that the percentage of people who filed returns that indicated that they paid no federal income tax had dropped slightly, to 32.4%. A revised figure brings that back up to 32.6% which is typical for recent years. But for tax year 2008, the percentage has jumped to 36.3%:

Tax Year	Number of Zero-Tax Filers	Zero-Tax Filers as a Percent of All Filers
2004	42,500,000	32.6%
2005	43,800,000	32.6%
2006	45,700,000	33.0%
2007	46,600,000	32.6%
2008	51,600,000	36.3%

(These numbers only represent tax filers who owed no federal income tax for the years in question; it does not include other taxes. In tax year 2007, some people who ordinarly would not have filed a tax return — for instance because they didn’t have any income to report — filed anyway in order to claim their stimulus payment. Those people aren’t included in the totals above.)

Between 1980 and 2000 this percentage hovered in the 18–25% range. Then it climbed to this 32–33% plateau during the Dubya years. This new 36.3% figure represents a jump, but there is an even bigger jump expected from people filing this year.

From the 3 March 1913 New York Times:

Won’t Pay Tax On Babies.

Socialist Town Council Thwarted by Indignant French Mothers.

By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times
Paris, March 2.— The Socialist Municipal Council of Brest has imposed a tax of 6 cents daily on market vendors for the right to wheel handcarts through the streets. The ordinance applies to baby carriages, and mothers and nurses are up in arms at the demand that they pay 6 cents every time they take a baby out for an airing.
The first attempt to collect the tax was made yesterday, and all the women refused to pay.

The Picket Line — 1 March 2010

2010-03-01T00:00:00Z

1 March 2010

The Miami News 1 March 1951

I didn’t find much else about the Riggses in on-line newspaper archives, but one other article, from 15 March 1950, reads:

Tax Collector Wins, But Refusal Registers War Tax Protest

Boston — AP — The tax collectors always catch up with Mrs. Francis R. Riggs — by her own admissions — but she feels she scores a point.
The Cambridge woman was one of nearly a score of persons who participated in a public protest yesterday against use of tax funds for military purposes.
She told reporters that for seven years she had deducted from her federal income tax that proportion she believes is being spent to prepare for war.
This year, she said, she and her husband are withholding 39.3 per cent of their tax.
“They catch up with me in the end and charge me six per cent,” Mrs. Riggs said, “but I am convinced that public protest is morally right and necessary.”
The group, led by the Rev. Wolcott Cutler of St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Charlestown, carried posters reading “I refuse war taxes” and “H-bombs return to burn.”
The posters said members of the group represented the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters’ League and the Peacemakers.
The walked for an hour on Tremont Street between Park and Boylston Streets. The protest was timed to interest workers hurrying home at 5 P.M.

The MIT Tech ran this editorial in their 11 April 1950 edition:

The Saga of Valerie: The Tech receives all sorts of mail — bills, checks, Clipsheets from the Board of Temperance. But in garnering material for this article, I was handed a letter with the scribbled commentary, “required reading.” It is from one Valerie Riggs, who says that she has refused to pay income taxes since 1944 and is refusing again this year because, to put it simply, she doesn’t like the way the government is spending it. She says that “…those in our government who are deciding our fate for us … are consulting the cleverest minds in science to concoct the most diabolical schemes for killing innocent men, women, and children…” This is probably accurate enough to make the boys in Ballistics run their fingers around the insides of their collars, but Valerie has found the solution, fellows! Just refuse to pay your taxes, and the world situation is solved! Let’s all Laissez-faire with a big bang!
We appreciate the thought, but someone, whose initials are V.R., is being awfully idealistic. There is even an organization known as the Peacemakers whose members are doing the same as Valerie. So if any of you want to do away with your taxes, we can give you the address of these people and you too can refuse to pay. There’s only one catch — it’s illegal.

And this is from the 14 March 1952 Rome News-Tribune:

Pacifist Couple Refuses To Pay War Tax Funds

Whittier, Calif. March 14 — (AP) — A Quaker pacifist couple have mailed their income tax returns to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, minus 72.6 per cent of the tax due, which they figure is the amount the government would spend on war.
Francis Behn Riggs, 70, retired boys’ school headmaster, and his wife, Valerie, 67, said they expect the bureau to seize the missing funds from their savings accounts. “as it has been doing since 1944.”
But, Mrs. Riggs added, “There is a difference between handing the government our income tax for the military and the government taking it from us.”
Along with the returns, Mrs. Riggs sent a note saying: “My conscience tells me that the killing of human beings is a criminal act, and that paying for that killing is likewise criminal. This conviction is based on religious belief.”

The Picket Line — 28 February 2010

2010-02-28T00:00:00Z

28 February 2010

War tax resisters Frank Donnelly, Larry Dansinger, and Dan Jenkins were on WERU’s “Voices” show early last month. Here’s a podcast:

Residents of Villa Nueva, Argentina have been urged to refuse to pay for road work on the grounds that the work is being paid for with federal grants that have come out of their taxes once already. Translation (mine, caveat emptor):

Villa Nueva — The town set the blame on radicalism but later, on [Mayor] Vivas.

They cover the whole city with anti-government pamphlets

The town awoke with leaflets that call on citizens not to pay for street work. The government summoned the press and condemned the deed.

It isn’t the first time. This has happened on numerous occasions, but in this case, the pamphlets appear to be signed by a Grassroots Group of Citizens, such that the Government was prompted to contest them publicly. Nevertheless, this group disassociated itself from the act and emphasized that they don’t have partisan goals and don’t seek confrontation.
Villa Nueva awoke yesterday with leaflets that called on the citizens not to pay for road work, because it came to be by means of a nonrefundable subsidy from the national government. “Seek advice,” the pamphlet said to the residents.
As is known, in the last year the city moved forward as never before in paving work with funds that mayor Guillermo Cavagnero negotiated before the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In November, the Executive sent to the Council a scheme under which residents would be charged a percentage of the work, as with that money to carry out others of vital importance.
The publication, which flooded the streets of the town, stresses that sewers, pavement, and lighting are brought about with money from the federal government, and that these things should not be charged.

The article goes on to relate a string of denials and finger-pointing, as everyone tries to pin the pamphlets on somebody else and to deny that they had anything to do with it.

IRS “customer” service has been getting worse, particularly their phone service. It used to be that your big problem when calling the agency at tax-time was in getting a reliable, correct answer to your tax questions. Nowadays, the problem is getting any answer at all. In 2009, only 64% of callers got through, and each of them had to wait on hold for an average of 519 seconds first.

This year the agency has gone begging to Congress for more money just so it can meet the pathetic goals of raising those numbers to 71% and 698 seconds (wait a minute… shouldn’t that second number be getting lower, not higher?).

698 seconds will get you through the classic “Help on the Way” → “Slipknot” → “Franklin’s Tower” studio version on Blues for Allah, so… tax filers, I recommend lighting up a doobie, dropping the needle on side one, and writing down your tax question ahead of time in case you forget it by the time someone picks up the phone.

The Picket Line — 26 February 2010

2010-02-26T00:00:00Z

26 February 2010

For years now, a class action suit has been trudging through the court system filed on behalf of prisoners of the State of California asking for relief from conditions of imprisonment that fall below Constitutional standards.

They have good evidence for this, and so the highest court to yet hear their case agreed with them — saying, for instance, that California provides such an inadequate level of health care for those it imprisons that this is killing a prisoner every month and causing others to suffer needlessly from preventable and curable diseases.

The court ordered California to fix things, California agreed, but then dragged its heels instead. So four years (and you do the math on how many preventable deaths) later, over California’s strenuous objections, the court appointed a receiver with substantial power to oversee the prison health system and enforce the court’s orders. The receiver quickly reported that things were even worse than the court knew — “Almost every necessary element of a working medical care system either does not exist or functions in a state of abject disrepair” — and that it would take years to make things right.

California continued to drag its heels, and so finally the court ordered the state to reduce its prison population by 55,000 people within three years in order to reduce prison overcrowding to the extent that prisoner health issues might in theory be managable by the existing infrastructure. California continued to delay, appealing this ruling multiple times in multiple ways to the same court, losing each time, and finally vowing to ask the Supreme Court to rule that the Federal Court of Appeals doesn’t have the power to micromanage how a state corrects a constitutional violation (which might be more credible if the state were taking any independent steps on its own).

Why is the state so reluctant? Two reasons: 1) no politician wants to run against Willie Horton ads in the next election, and 2) the California prison guards union is very, very politically powerful, and has an interest in shaping state policy so as to increase the number of prisoners, thus the number of prisons and prison guards, thus the power of the union.

As you may be aware, the state of California is in dire financial straits, for a number of reasons. The court pointed out, hopefully, that reducing the prison population as demanded in the court order might also trim nearly a billion dollars from the state’s prison budget. But the state had a better idea: the latest California state budget cuts $811 million — 40% — from the prison health care system!

But I told you that story so I could tell you this one:

Cocktails are mixed with great sincerity at Bourbon and Branch in San Francisco. Take the Clermont Affair, a marriage of pear-infused Old Overholt whiskey, a liqueur called Amaro Nonino, barrel-aged bitters and a house-made tincture of cloves.
But for state liquor license regulators, the concoction itself is flawed. On a recent Friday night, they entered the speakeasy-themed Tenderloin tavern and warned bartenders they were breaking California law by altering alcohol — infusing it with the flavors of fruits, vegetables and spices.
Mixing elaborate drinks — say, muddling mint leaves in mojitos — and serving them immediately is OK. But, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agents said, Bourbon and Branch was changing the character of the booze by allowing it to mature on the shelf — “rectification” that is illegal without a special license.