Okay, Motherfuckers…

After my job interview this morning I stopped by the Coffeetree on Walnut before heading downtown for work. Coffeetree is one of those lovely coffee shops that spreads out a few different papers for customer perusal. The have the Post-Gazette, the Times, and the Wall Street Journal. It was my bad luck that only the Journal was still not spoken for. The news in the front of the A section was well-reported and valuable. Then I got to the Opinion page and my blood started to boil. I know Rupert Murdoch is a scum-sucker, but I still have the layover feeling of the Journal as a reputable news organization and I was simply blown the fuck away by how brazen the Opinion Editor wrote around facts and presented agenda. Apparently the Journal has it out for Warren Buffett, because there was editorial (“Buffett’s Latest Tax Break”) next to a third of the letters column devoted to their last Buffett editorial (“Warren Buffett’s Tax Dodge,” August 17).

The blood boiling stopped after I took out my red pen and had little fun teachering the page. The Buffett editorial has the most red ink, and I’d like to take a moment to show how in four short paragraphs the editor makes two conflicting points, and how both of them are fucking awful. The first sentence reads: “For a guy who spends a lot of time advocating for higher taxes, Warren Buffett does a remarkably good job of minimizing his own corporate tax bill.” Is this an editorial about closing tax loopholes? No way! The writer says he supports the minimizing of the tax bill, because Berkshire Hathaway can “no doubt can invest the money more wisely than the Federal government is likely to do.” He even uses the phrase “tax-avoidance triumph.” The avoidance he’s referring to is Buffett’s recent investment in Bank of America, because under current tax law Berkshire Hathaway would pay about 10.5% on roughly $300 million in dividends expected from the investment each year. This comes directly after the writer complains of the 35% corporate tax rate America has, “the second highest in the world.”  to get to the 10.5% figure the government gives a 70% exclusion on dividends received from another corporation.  Then he or she goes on to support the policy and wonder why there isn’t a One Hundred Percent exclusion on dividends earned by invested in another corporation. The editorial is capped off with the statement “most Americans know that more jobs will be created if the money is deployed by the Berkshire bunch than by the Beltway boys.” Awful alliteration aside, these short paragraphs are so wrapped around each other that the last sentence is the only takeaway most readers will have. I, for sure, was fucking baffled.

I want to go through the points made in the editorial again, chronologically.

1: Warren Buffett is untrustworthy because he advocates higher taxes but pays lower taxes.

2: Mr. Buffett should be lauded for finding ways to lower his tax bill, because the government is bad at spending money wisely.

3: The US corporate tax of 35% is too high.

4: Mr. Buffett will pay much less than this rate because of an exclusion of money made by investing money in another corporation, that sneaky bastard.

5: The exclusion is a wise policy but 70% is too low.

6: Mr. Buffett will pay along the lines of 10.5% on his Bank of America investment. (With this in mind look up there at number 3: what’s our corporate tax rate again? In any case, it’s too high.)

7: By not volunteering to pay the full 35% rate, Mr. Buffett has abdicated his moral high ground and his calls for higher tax rates on the mega-rich should be ignored or derided.

8: The government sucks, so they shouldn’t get the money anyway.

If nothing else, the hall-of-mirrors feeling this editorial produced for me was impressive to me as a writer, for its incredible craftsmanship. The mixture of small-government talking points and character assassination results in a fine, frothy mixture of hackery. I was wondering how the arch-capitalists were going to figure out how to disown Warren Buffett, who is better at this capitalism thing than anyone else.

My fucking head hurts.

Business-Professional

Yesterday I was sitting in Hemingway’s around 3ish, enjoying a beer and digesting, when I got a call from a random 412 number. Sometime a day or two before, I had submitted a resume to a marketing firm on a whim, during a period of more than normal pre-life stress. I never expected to hear back, but here was a random phone call from a businesslike woman asking me to come down for an interview. I fumbled a little on the phone, but of course I said yes to the interview. Fuck it, it’s a job right?

For some reason I decided to walk from 18th and Carson all the way down to the office on Terminal. I was a touch sweaty when I got there. But the lobby was air-conditioned and I was early so I settled down to mentally prepare. I had no idea what I was walking into, I’ve never tried to get a job in marketing before (and the more I say that, the weird it sounds: marketing). But I figured if I had my wits about me I could handle it.

I go up to the suite, and tell the desk-lady that I have an interview at 11:45.

“Oh..” she says. “Well, um, you’re wearing jeans.” Yes, I am. “They won’t interview you in jeans.” Really? “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

I’m a little taken aback, and very embarrassed. For some reason it had no occurred to me that jeans would be in appropriate. I’d worn jeans in every interview I’d ever had, but then again, the most formal of those was for the City Paper. And the woman on the phone hadn’t mentioned a dress code. I was wearing a fucking tie, that’s not good enough?

The lady gives me some forms to fill out so that when I come back with the proper attire the process will go smoother. The other guy in the entry room gets called back into the offices, and I find myself really pissed off that he’s wearing a smooth black suit. He could probably have beaten me up.

I fill out the forms and hand them back to the woman with a copy of my resume. Just to make sure, I ask if there are any other rules for the dress code I should know. “No,” she says, “Just business-professional.”

Business-professional. Fucking business-professional? Is that why you have your flabby-ass tits hanging out of your shirt, does that count as business-fucking-professional? And did you really have to look at me with some much disdain cause I dared come into the office in jeans?

Naturally I said thank you very much and left, with an interview rescheduled for 10:30 on Friday.

Fuck You Rick Santorum

Yesterday it was all I could do to avoid a constant bombardment of Weiner jokes via my small cache of internet news sources. I was incredibly displeased to see that Slate took up the term “Weinergate,” and devoted a silly-large amount of time to talking about the scandal.

When news is obsessed with scandal, real or supposed, one fairly interesting story has the ability to grab the entire industry by the balls and completely dominate the cycle. Yesterday it was Weiner’s bummer of a press conference. I did end up watching it, out of the curiosity, to see if he was more Eliot Spitzer or Mark Sanford: it was a disturbing combination of the both. But you know, yesterday had more news that just the admission of “lewdness,” as some have taken to calling it. Yesterday, Rick Santorum announced he is running for president. Yeah.

Santorum doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning. This makes me happy. Googling his name still directs one first to the Dan Savage created hilarity of spreadingsantorum.com. This makes me happy, too. But despite that, the idea of his being anywhere close to a national election makes my skin crawl.

So, Lest We Forget:

In 2001, then Sen. Rick Santorum attempted to attach an amendment to No Child Left Behind to promote the inclusion of intelligent design in public school curricula.

In 2003, Santorum in an interview drew connections between homosexuality and bigamy, incest, pedophilia, and bestiality.

In 2004, Santorum blamed the Catholic Priest sexual abuse scandal on the “moral relativism” that liberals espouse, and thought it made sense that Boston, the “seat of… cultural liberalism in America,” would be the place the scandal broke.

I’m reminded of something my brother once said about Gerald Ford. Ford had just died, and with flags at half-mast most folks were singing the praises of the former president. My brother shot off a letter to the local alt weekly that listed a few of Ford’s most egregiously poor decisions, and declared that even in this time of mourning we shouldn’t forget “the piece of shit that man had for a soul.”

Well said, Matt. In that spirit:

Fuck you Rick Santorum. The voters of Pennsylvania ousted you in favor of a milquetoast son-of-a-governor, and this country will never allow your greasy hands, your vacant, beady little eyes, or hateful, hateful mind to return to government. Fuck you.