I am finally taking to my blog to write about How Sesame Street Ruined The English Language.

My comment on the above YouTube video was

Me is very upset at how Cookie Monster has ruined the English language. Me used to be able to say sentences like this, and people would instantly see what is wrong with using “me” as the subject. Sesame Street has trained several generations to lose their ear for proper English. Me going to write a blog post about this.

Sesame Street was on what we used to laughingly call educational television. They very effectively used repetition to teach children. What were they thinking when they used repetition from Cookie Monster to teach improper English?

I can’t remember now if the usage of “me and another person” as subject in a sentence was also started by Sesame Street. Beyond screwing up the English language they also ruined the etiquette of how you put yourself and another person into the subject of a sentence.

Rather than this being a one man crusade, can I enlist others of you to join me in helping to stamp out this usage?

Me could try to do this alone, but, together, me and you will be more effective. – translation “I could try to do this alone, but, together, you and I will be more effective.”

Was Sesame Street an ill conceived attempt to undo the implicit racism exemplified by The Lone Ranger?

The “me” as a subject of a sentence used to be a way of showing how native Americans had an inferior understanding of English compared to the “white” man. Was Sesame Street trying to show that it was OK to be ignorant of English? What a backhanded way to make up for The Lone Ranger. Maybe it was a Native American writer on Sesame Street who was just trying to get even with the way that Hollywood portrayed Native Americans. Teach the invaders’ children to talk pidgin English like the invaders pretended that the Natives spoke.

Stumbled across this on RandyK’s Facebook page. Actually he had the review Beavis and Ballmer: Let me count all the ways I hate Silicon Valley. by David Auerbach.

Warning! This piece contains spoilers for Silicon Valley.

So watch this episode first. (It is TVMA – L.)

In my career, I missed three opportunities to work in Silicon Valley. Instead I had 13 years on Silicon Mountain better known as Digital Equipment Corp., Hudson, MA. (Not all 13 years in Hudson. The Hudson facility was built some years after I started at DEC.)

I did spend one year as a Visiting Industrial Fellow at University of California, Berkeley where I learned that Silicon Valley culture and I did not always get along well. I did eventually manage to work for two companies that were headquartered in Silicon Valley. That’s how I really learned about the culture clash.

Apparently I liked this show much more than David Auerbach did.

Thanks to reader MardyS for posting a link to the article What we can Learn From FDR by Harvey J. Kaye.

This is a long  article which I hesitated to read.  When I finally did read it, I was extremely glad I did.  Kaye points out how much of our history we have forgotten around WWII that involved the politics of that time.  Kaye explains a lot of that history to justify his claim as excerpted below.

Consider that in their otherwise moving works, the Greatest Generation’s tribunes, Ambrose, Brokaw, Bradley, Spielberg and Burns, make no mention of FDR’s pronouncement of the Four Freedoms. They utterly ignore how a president and people articulated anew the nation’s historic promise in “Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear,” and went “All Out!” in their name not only to defend American democratic life, but also to enhance it. And they utterly ignore how a president and people not only saved the United States from economic destruction and political tyranny and proceeded to turn it into the strongest and most prosperous country on earth, but did so by harnessing the powers of democratic government and making America freer, more equal and more democratic than ever before in the process.

This is why we, in this generation, need to fight so hard to undo the erasure and distortion of our history.  The people who lived that history may remember the reasons they fought for what they did.  However, the people who were born decades after that history was over have no way of understanding it unless we keep on telling the story.  This is what Harvey Kaye and I believe is the great failing of the Liberals.

Some Liberals seem to act as if  everyone should just know why the Liberals fight for the things that they do fight for.  You can see that in Obama (no liberal himself) trying to fight an inside battle with Congress without realizing the importance of first reminding people why it is so important to fight for these things.  He negotiated with himself before confronting Congress, and completely forgot that carrying on the fight in public was more important than whatever minimal goals he could get Congress to agree to by bending over backwards to appease them.

It is not only about what you can achieve today, but it is also about setting the stage for what you hope to achieve tomorrow.  By that measure, President Obama has been a severe disappointment.  In my estimation, Hillary Clinton would be even a worse disaster.

The people who understand the need to fight very hard in public are Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to name two who might be on the next slate for President and Vice President.  It’s also not only that they fight publicly for these things, but I believe they really understand what the fight is about and they really mean what they say.  At the very least, they have not provided us with massive evidence that they really don’t have a clue.

Even as an inveterate skeptic, I’d rather vote for someone who might mean what they say than to vote for someone who has proven that they do not mean what they say.

Perhaps Obama and Clinton are so far to the right because their parents and grandparents did not realize at the time how important it was to pass on the history of what they had fought for.  Or perhaps it is a rebellion thing.  No generation can take at face value what the previous generation tells them.  This accounts for how easy it is to wipe history from our collective minds.  When we are more than two generations from that history, remembrance of it is completely gone.  With rebellion of one generation from the previous one, it is the grandparents who become responsible for passing the heritage on.  I cannot say I am doing a good job.

Do you suppose this is the kind of science that figured out how to put gigabytes of memory on a very small piece of silicon?

Are such devices a malicious hoax or a pernicious lie? I certainly don’t have any such device in the computer on which I am typing this. There are at least 3 scientists that say you can’t get that many transistors in one place.

The Nation has the story Why Is a Florida Man Facing Life in Prison For Lending a Friend His Car and Going to Sleep? by Charles Grodin.

Ryan Holle, who has no prior record, is currently serving his eleventh year of a life sentence.

Several years ago I read a piece in The New York Times by Adam Liptak about Ryan Holle. Ryan, who had no prior record, is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole in Florida. He was convicted of pre-meditated murder, even though no one, including the prosecutor, disputes that Ryan was asleep in his bed at home at the time of the crime.

Why not give us a link to The New York Times article Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers?

Mr. Holle, who had given the police a series of statements in which he seemed to admit knowing about the burglary, was convicted of first-degree murder.

Not having heard what the jury in this case heard, I have no way to interpret what “seemed to admit” means.

Right from the start in reading Grodin’s article, I knew that he was not telling us the whole story.  Since he has no smell test for his own writing, it’s no wonder that he had no sense of smell when he read The New York Times story.

I do not know if the accused is guilty or not, but I  have a strong suspicion that the “news” media are leaving out a lot of things.  It is obvious what the media want us to believe, but they are going to have to work harder to get me to believe it.

The Nation story was reprinted on Alternet as How Lending A Friend Your Car, Then Going to Bed Can Land You a Life Prison Sentence.

How is this kind of reporting any better than what you might get on Faux Noise?  I want the media that I read to have a higher set of standards than the media I refuse to read because of its low standards. Why would a news outlet that had pretensions of standards want to publish dreck like this? Do they realize how badly this damages their reputations? Are we to think that the editors have no sense of smell?

April 12, 2014 – 8:15 PM

I must apologize to The New York Times. Apparently I did not read the whole story.

I wanted to respond to Roger’s comment that I did make my feelings known in a comment on Alternet.

I noticed that in a comment about my comment there were some words about the trial that I had not read. These words were from The New York Times story. This is about comments from the defendant.

“All he did was go say, ‘Use the car,’ ” Mr. Allen said of Mr. Holle in a pretrial deposition. “I mean, nobody really knew that girl was going to get killed. It was not in the plans to go kill somebody, you know.”

But Mr. Holle did testify that he had been told it might be necessary to “knock out” Jessica Snyder. Mr. Holle is 25 now, a tall, lean and lively man with a rueful sense of humor, alert brown eyes and an unusually deep voice. In a spare office at the prison here, he said that he had not taken the talk of a burglary seriously.

“I honestly thought they were going to get food,” he said of the men who used his car, all of whom had attended the nightlong party at Mr. Holle’s house, as had Jessica Snyder.

“When they actually mentioned what was going on, I thought it was a joke,” Mr. Holle added, referring to the plan to steal the Snyders’ safe. “I thought they were just playing around. I was just very naïve. Plus from being drinking that night, I just didn’t understand what was going on.”

PBS is starting to mention MMT.  See the article The good you do for the dollar when you pay your taxes.

Have you ever wondered why the U.S. dollar has value?

It is not because of the gold in Fort Knox. There used to be gold behind the dollar, but not now. President Richard Nixon cut the last ties in 1971, effectively ending the foundation of the Bretton Woods international monetary system.

Rather, the ultimate reason that the U.S. dollar has value, at least in the opinion of some economists, and in my own, is that no one likes being in jail. And dollars are a get-out-of-jail-free card.

April 15, when Uncle Sam collects taxes on our incomes, is right around the corner. We must pay those taxes in dollars, and there are penalties for not paying them, which can include time in prison.

As a proponent of MMT, myself, I should be overjoyed at this.  Ironically, PBS picks the one part of MMT that I think is overplayed.  It is not that there isn’t some truth in this part of MMT. It may be true that this use of money gives it its initial value.  However, once this value is well established, I think it quite likely that there are other factors that help maintain and boost its value.  I think this is important because if the U.S. dollar is ever to lose its pre-eminent position in the world it, will be due to other factors than our use of the dollar as a mechanism for paying taxes.  That said, it will probably be possible to connect the decline in prominence to some aspect of taxation.  It’s all a matter of degree, but that does have policy implications.

The PBS article links to a Washington Post article Modern Monetary Theory, an unconventional take on economic strategy by Dylan Matthews.

Talking about economist James Galbraith, Matthews said the following:

But if Galbraith stood out on the panel, it was because of his offbeat message. Most viewed the budget surplus as opportune: a chance to pay down the national debt, cut taxes, shore up entitlements or pursue new spending programs.

He viewed it as a danger: If the government is running a surplus, money is accruing in government coffers rather than in the hands of ordinary people and companies, where it might be spent and help the economy.

“I said economists used to understand that the running of a surplus was fiscal (economic) drag,” he said, “and with 250 economists, they giggled.”

The article goes on to discuss competing theories of economics.  However, the author of the article, Dylan Matthews, never really shows a deep understanding of the topic being covered.

In discussing the arguments against MMT, Matthews never seems to understand the full significance of what Galbraith said about the fiscal drag.  In some situations, recognized by MMT proponents, the economy needs some  fiscal drag.  By recognizing that a surplus is a fiscal drag, the MMT proponents have identified exactly the tool to use when drag is what is needed.  This identifying of the proper tool to use is the opposite of saying MMT policy prescriptions will cause hyperinflation that will have no remedy.  Matthews never seems to figure this out.

In picking quotes from MMT theorists to rebut the MMT critics, Matthews chooses the least effective arguments that MMTers use.

A constant battle over property taxes rages in Sturbridge.

Here is an overly simplified view of the battle in order to provide the background for the solution. One side wants improvements and amenities in the town that would raise property taxes.  They are willing to pay the extra taxes for these additions.  The other side is already struggling to pay their property taxes, and feel that they just cannot afford to pay for these additions.

In researching the idea I had, I found that it is already provided for in the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachuestts.

I found an explanation in a document published by the city of Boston, Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Property Taxes. The relevant section is on PDF page 18, document numbered page 14.

Each city or town assessing all property at its full and fair cash value, as certified by the Commissioner of Revenue, must annually decide whether to adopt a residential exemption within the residential class for parcels that are the principal residence of a taxpayer.

A residential exemption is an assessed dollar amount of value that is exempt from taxation. It is a reduction in the amount of property tax that a homeowner would otherwise be asked to pay. For example, if the residential exemption were $8,000, then a home with a market value of $150,000 would be taxed on only $142,000 of its value.

In Boston, the residential exemption can be between 0% and 30% of the average value of all residential property in a city or town. For example, if the average value of a home was $180,000, the residential exemption could range from $0 to $54,000 of value.

A residential exemption can only apply to the principal residence of a taxpayer. A principal residence is one in which the taxpayer lives and which is used as a permanent home and legal residence. Summer or vacation houses are not eligible.

The residential exemption does not affect the share of the property tax levy to be paid by the residential class, but does affect the taxes paid within the residential class.

For example, an owner-occupied home will receive the benefit of the residential exemption, while a non- owner-occupied residence will not. Further, within the owner-occupied class, the residential exemption would have a greater effect on lower-value properties. The net effect of the residential exemption is a shift of tax burden within the residential class such that there is a higher effective rate on higher-value property than on lower- value property.

The residential exemption is a local option and is adopted in a town by the selectmen, and in a city, by the mayor with approval of the city council.

I do not know if Sturbridge has such an option, but if it doesn’t, this might be a good way to get the two sides of this battle together.  This might also help to solve the problem of the split tax rate that business people in Sturbridge claim is unfriendly to business.  It concentrates the tax relief on the lower income residents, instead of for all residents.

April 12, 2014

The web page for the Sturbridge Tax Assessor’s office does not give any indication that the type of residential property tax exemption discussed in this article is used in the town of Sturbridge.

The Sturbridge Annual Town Election is Monday, April 14.  Polling place is Oliver Wight Tavern, Old Sturbridge Village.  Poll opens at 7:00AM.

The Sturbridge Democratic Town Committee endorses three people in contested races.

• Jacob Ryan for Tantasqua Regional School Committee
• Pat Barnicle for Tantasqua Regional School Committee
• Don Fairbrother for Board of Selectman – one year term

I will be voting for all three.  Of course I will be voting in the uncontested races, too.

Democracy Now has an interview with Nomi Prins.

All the President’s Bankers: Nomi Prins on Secret History of Washington-Wall Street Collusion (1/2)

All the President’s Bankers: Nomi Prins on Secret History of Washington-Wall Street Collusion (2/2)

Here is the excerpt mentioned in the videos READ: Nomi Prins’ “All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power”.

The Nation has the article Presidential Prospect or Not, Elizabeth Warren Has a Lesson for Democrats.

Yes, yes, Warren has said that she is not running for the Democratic nomination in 2016. And there are plenty of polls to suggest that, were she to enter the race, she would not have an easy time competing with a prospective Hillary Clinton candidacy—although, notably, Warren’s numbers rise rapidly in hypotheticals that do not feature Clinton.

But let’s put the polls aside for now.

Let’s recognize that a necessary politics does not just reflect public opinion, it anticipates concerns and answers them in bolder and better ways than pollsters and pundits can calculate. Those who would lead the nation ought to offer much more than a set of approved talking points. There must be a vision, a language, that explains the crisis, and inspires a response.

This article does a wonderful job of explaining why Warren’s speech that I posted in Elizabeth Warren’s 2014 Minnesota DFL Humphrey-Mondale Dinner Speech is so important.

We Democrats can fix it so that Hillary is not in the mix. I think I would rather lose with someone who will set up the party for an eventual ascendancy, than win with someone who will slowly let our principles be eroded until the point that there is no use for the Democratic party. However, looking on the bright side, we might actually have a better chance of winning with Warren than with Hillary.

What Obama and all the Democrats after Johnson forgot, is that it is not only a matter of winning on one small issue by finding a winning compromise, it is a matter of educating the voters and changing their minds on big issues so that the path is paved for the future. Obama seems to forget after he wins or loses today, there are many tomorrows to worry about. If you win once today, but lose 10 times in the tomorrows, then you have the wrong strategy.

We should have been working on the terms of debate 30 years ago.  You can’t say, well I guess it is too late to do it now.  If we don’t start working on changing the terms of debate the way that Warren and Sanders are doing, we’ll find ourselves 30 years down the road wishing we had done this back then.  How many generations can we waste before we finally do what is necessary to save the country?

I have to thank LlandaR for finally convincing me to read The Nation magazine.  I know I am supposed to read the Bernie Sanders article Bernie Sanders Is Thinking About Running for President, but that article is only available to subscribers.