Author: NewMexiKen

Warren Buffet on the estate tax

Question: Could you discuss your views on [the estate tax] and how you will allocate your wealth to your children?

Buffett: It really reflects my views on how a rich society should behave. If it weren’t for this society, I wouldn’t be rich. It wasn’t all me. Imagine if you were one of a pair of identical twins and a genie came along and allowed you to bid on where you could be born. The money that you bid is how much you had to agree to give back to society, and the one who bids the most gets to be born in the US and the other in Bangladesh. You would bid a lot. It is a huge advantage to be born here.

There should be no divine right of the womb. My kids wouldn’t go off and do nothing if I give them a lot of money, but if they did, that would be a tragedy. $30 billion will be generated from estate taxes, which will go to help pay for the war in Iraq and other things. If you take away the estate tax, that money will have to come from somewhere else. If not from estate taxes then you inherently get it from poorer citizens.

Less than 2% of estates will pay the estate tax. They would still have $50 million left over on average. I think those that get the lucky tickets should pay the most to the common causes of society. I believe in a big redistribution. Wealth is a bunch of claim checks that I can turn in for houses, etc. To pass those claim checks down to the next generation is the wrong approach.

But for those that think I am perpetuating the welfare state, consider if you are born to a rich parent. You get a whole bunch of stocks right at the beginning of your life, and thus you are sort of on a welfare state of support from your rich parents from the beginning. What’s the difference?

Andrew Tobias – Money and Other Subjects

In fairness, I suppose, it would be interesting to hear Warren Buffet’s children’s take on the estate tax.

The Sky Is Falling in Alaska

Anyone who has ever been to Homer, Alaska, and NewMexiKen has, will I think like this article about the town and its reaction to the Mt. Augustine volcano. The article is from Los Angeles Times — just two excerpts here:

HOMER, Alaska — It is, in the world of volcanoes, one of the little guys — a bump on the sea, a molehill among mountains. Some days, Mt. Augustine barely peeks above the mist that settles across Cook Inlet in south central Alaska.

Residents of this fishing town 70 miles to the east have been keeping an eye on the volcano, which woke up Jan. 11 and dusted the inlet with ash. The mountain has been erupting intermittently ever since. It is the focus of attention for the region and the talk of the town for Homer, the nearest community of any size.
…

One of Homer’s claims to fame is that a person could get in a car in New York City and drive all the way here, the westernmost point of the U.S. highway system. Pavement gives way to beach and water, and to an unobstructed view of the Kenai Mountains — so otherworldly white they appear blue in the morning and pink at sunset.

The town is populated by fishermen and freethinkers, loggers and artists — many of them refugees from big cities. Another 5,000 to 6,000 people live beyond the town limits.

On the beach one morning, ice floes carrying raucous crowds of sea otters drifted past. One held more than 30 otters, happily slipping on and off the ice, floating west, in the direction of Mt. Augustine.

Disney Loses a Voice, Pulls Rabbit Out of NBC’s Hat

OswaldIn the first known swap of a primo sportscaster for a geriatric cartoon critter, Walt Disney Co. is trading ABC’s Al Michaels to NBC for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Oswald who?

It turns out the big-eared bunny was one of Walt Disney’s first animated characters, a star in his own right before Mickey Mouse was even a gleam in his creator’s eye. But Disney lost the rabbit after he found out that Universal Studios, now part of NBC Universal, owned the rights to develop the character.

Now Oswald will be returning to Disney, it was announced Thursday. In exchange for the rabbit and other concessions, ABC parent Disney agreed to let Michaels, the longtime voice of Monday Night Football, jump to NBC Universal’s NBC network, where he will remain teamed with partner John Madden.

Los Angeles Times

I’ve noticed

The audience for Web-logs, or “blogs” had an auspicious start, going from practically zero to almost 20 in a very short time frame (20 being the percentage of Americans today who report reading blogs on at least an occasional basis). However, according to recent Gallup data, it seems the growth in the number of U.S. blog readers was somewhere between nil and negative in the past year.
…

To put blog readership in context, the December survey found that checking online for news and information is done regularly by 72% of Web users. Fifty-two percent regularly shop online, 40% pay bills, and 28% play games. At 20%, blog reading is on par with downloading music and participating in online auctions such as eBay.

Gallup

Malcolm Gladwell

Regular readers of NewMexiKen know that I am a fan of Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Blink” and “The Tipping Point.” There was an interesting profile of the journalist in this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. I found this background about the 42-year-old writer particularly interesting:

On his Web site, Gladwell offers an apologia pro vita sua: “If I could vote (and I can’t because I’m Canadian) I would vote Democrat. I am pro-choice and in favor of gay marriage. I believe in God. I think the war in Iraq is a terrible mistake. I am a big believer in free trade. I think, on balance, taxes in America — particularly for rich people — ought to be higher, not lower. I think smoking is a terrible problem and that cigarette manufacturers ought to be subjected to every possible social and political sanction. But I think that filing product liability lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers is absurd. I am opposed to the death penalty. I hate S.U.V.’s. I think many C.E.O.’s are overpaid. I think there is too much sex and violence on television.”
…

When Time magazine and other media outlets declared an attention-deficit hyperactivity epidemic in America, Gladwell argued that people were no more distracted than they’d ever been, but that Ritalin had replaced nicotine as a socially acceptable focusing stimulant. While others were vilifying the pharmaceutical companies over the cost of prescription drugs, Gladwell’s New Yorker article on the topic mapped out a broader codependency. “It is only by the most spectacular feat of cynicism that our political system’s moral negligence has become the fault of the pharmaceutical industry,” he wrote. And in an article on intelligence reform published when the country was in a furor over the failings leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, Gladwell proposed that free-market-style competition between the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. might actually be good for intelligence gathering. Lately he’s been investigating racial profiling. At first, “I had a reasonably benign attitude toward it. I felt that under certain circumstances it was justifiable — like looking for terrorists. But now I think that’s wrong,” he said. “I think it’s never justifiable. And not on ethical grounds but on pragmatic grounds. I just don’t think it works.”

Burp

It’s early in the year, and we are sure that many other candidates will come to our attention — they always do — but, thanks to an alert reader, we think we’ve found a finalist for the Best Correction of the Year 2006.

It came in the Wednesday “Dining Out” section of the New York Times, and it reads in its entirety:

“Because of an editing error, a recipe last Wednesday for meatballs with an article about foods to serve during the Super Bowl misstated the amount of chipotle chiles in adbobo to be used. It is one or two canned chilies — not one or two cans.” (Emphasis added.)

Pass the Pepto-Bismol, please.

CJR Daily

The Interference Penalty

The Sports Prof agrees with ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. that there ought to be two kinds of interference penalties in the NFL. NewMexiKen agrees. Here’s some of what he says:

In football, there are two types of roughing the kicker penalties and two types of facemask penalties. Call them “lite” and “regular” or “you just nicked the guy” or “you dadgum plowed him over.” However you slice it, if it’s at the ticky-tack end of the continuum, your team gets a smaller penalty and not necessarily a game-changing one.

That seems about right. If you simply bump a kicker on fourth and nine, it’s a five-yard penalty but it’s not an automatic first down. If you flatten the guy, you get more yards tacked on and an automatic first down.

Interestingly, right now the same logic doesn’t apply to the pass interference penalty. Brush a guy fifty-two yards downfield and the penalty is at the spot of the foul, which, translated into layman’s terms, means that it’s a fifty-two yard penalty. Clock the guy at the same spot, and, yes, it’s the same fifty-two yard penalty.

Toyota Vies for One of Detroit’s Last Strongholds

The new Tundra, not available until next year, has some interesting features. Imagine, listening to your customers.

With this truck, Toyota has attempted to do its homework. Beginning in 2002, Toyota began interviewing every type of truck owner, from ranchers in Montana to construction crews in Atlanta and business owners in Houston, to be sure it understood their needs.

One basic: performance. While some people buy pickups as car substitutes, the most serious customers use them for work. So the Tundra is capable of towing more than 10,000 pounds, and will come equipped with a new 5.7-liter V-8 engine and six-speed automatic transmission.

To its surprise, Toyota engineers learned that they do not just use their pickups to lug things around: they are the equivalent of mobile offices.

So this Tundra is compatible with Bluetooth technology, a feature found on its Lexus models, and has multiple connection ports for laptops, cellphones and other devices.

The New York Times

Congress ‘made Wikipedia changes’

Online reference site Wikipedia blames US Congress staff for partisan changes to a number of political biographies.

Computers traced to Capitol Hill removed unpalatable facts from articles on senators, while other entries were “vandalised”, the site said.

An inquiry was launched after staff for Democratic representative Marty Meehan admitted polishing his biography.

Wikipedia is produced by readers who add entries and edit any page, and has become a widely-used reference tool.

BBC News

I’m fairly certain they were just clarifying things.

Thanks to Emily and Eve for the pointer.

Late night humor

“The Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate about the domestic spying program. But first there was a big fight about whether or not to place him under oath. Ultimately they decided not to place him under oath. See, baseball players, they have to be under oath. But the attorney general, no.”

— Jay Leno

“The Vatican has hired Michael Jackson to write prayer music. Because when your church has an image problem — you call Michael Jackson! In fact he’s already been named an honorary priest.”

— David Letterman

It’s the birthday

… of Carole King. Tonight You’re Mine Completely, You Give Your Love So Sweetly — at 64.

… of Joe Pesci. Tommy DeVito is no longer a “yute,” he’s 63.

… of Barbara Lewis. Baby I’m Yours and I’ll be Yours Until the Stars Fall from the Sky — or until she’s 63.

… of Alice Walker. One assumes her birthday cake is The Color Purple as she turns 62 today.

… of Mia Farrow. The former Mrs. André Previn, Mrs. Frank Sinatra and significant other of Woody Allen is 61.

… of Travis Tritt. He’s 43. Here’s A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares).

… of Julie Warner. Vialula is 41 today. Seems like an occasion to watch Doc Hollywood.

Yesterday

Yesterday PosterTonight NewMexiKen watched another outstanding foreign film that I had somehow added to my Netflix queue — Yesterday, a film I watched in Zulu with English subtitles.

As with many foreign films, the action here moves at an unhurried, less frentic pace than so much American film-making, where camera movement and split-second cut-aways resemble nothing more than 8mm home movies. In Yesterday, the camera stays on a subject long enough for the viewer to enter the character, to begin to understand (perhaps) and empathize (perhaps).*

Yesterday is the name of the lead character, a small-village Zulu woman of about 25, played by the beautiful actress Leleti Khumalo. Yesterday has a five-year-old daughter, Beauty, and a husband, John, working in the mines in Johannesburg. The movie opens with the mother and daughter walking (for more two hours we learn) so that Yesterday can visit the doctor. As the movie progresses, we learn that Yesterday is very sick — about half-way through the film we learn she is HIV positive.

What follows is an extraordinarily powerful story of sadness, friendship, fear, pain, courage and love — but never really anger. If there are saints on this planet (and I believe there are), then Yesterday is surely among them.

Not to be missed.

* (It’s interesting to contrast Yesterday, an African-made movie, with the otherwise excellent The Constant Gardener, a European film about Africa, where the camera movement is so rapid, that NewMexiKen actually felt nauseated.)

There are few moving cars in this film, so no car chases, and few men, too, so no ‘splosions.

NewMexiKen wouldn’t have missed this film, but I must say I am in need of a comedy. Fortunately, Wedding Crashers is due to arrive from Netflix tomorrow.

El Pinto

None of the news items below alone makes El Pinto a great restaurant (just as someone at Duke City Fix not liking it doesn’t make it a bad restaurant. It’s pretty far from Central and Carlisle for the DukeCityFix crowd to be enthusiastic about it).

NewMexiKen likes El Pinto for the ambience — the cottonwoods, the maze of rooms, the fountain, the patio in warmer months. And, after all, New Mexican food tastes pretty much the same everywhere anyway.

Some of the readers of NewMexiKen have been to El Pinto with me, so I thought they might enjoy reading about its recent prominence. The excerpt is from The Albuquerque Journal:

Muy caliente! El Pinto Restaurant is one hot restaurant, and we’re not just talking chile.

The restaurant’s nachos topped Saturday’s Wall Street Journal list of best in the nation.

On Thursday, President George W. Bush, along with first lady Laura, stopped in for a chile fix.

In mid-January, the Food Network featured the restaurant during one of its episodes of “The Secret of: Comfort Foods.”

And on Aug. 30, ESPN SportsCenter filmed one of its “50 States in 50 Days” episodes from the North Valley restaurant with host Linda Cohn calling El Pinto’s salsa “the best in the nation.”
…

This is what the Wall Street nacho reviewer said about El Pinto’s: “(The) Nachos are built like lasagna, one layer at a time, so no chip is cheeseless: first chips, then cheese, until there’s a pyramid topped with sour cream, guacamole, lettuce, tomato, chicken and green chili (their spelling) sauce.”

It was the fifth visit to El Pinto for this President. His predecessor prefered La Hacienda in Old Town.

Weird

The hottest search term here in the past day has been variations on “Isabelle Dinoire.” More than 300 visits to NewMexiKen have originated with searches on her name. Ms. Dinoire is the Frenchwoman who had a facial transplant. NewMexiKen linked to the first photos last week.

The weird part is that about 10% of the searches were for “isabelle dinoire labrador.” It’s Ms. Dinoire’s Lab that attacked her and caused the injuries that led to the surgery.

Here’s a link to an article in yesterday’s New York Times covering Ms. Dinoire’s press conference — and yes, there are photos.

But none of the Lab.

Best line of the day, so far

“The gambit handcuffs Hillary: If she doesn’t speak out strongly against President Bush, she’s timid and girlie. If she does, she’s a witch and a shrew. That plays particularly well in the South, where it would be hard for an uppity Hillary to capture many more Bubbas than the one she already has.”

— Maureen Dowd in a column entitled “Who’s Hormonal? Hillary or Dick?”