I'm a big fan of David Cay Johnson. He used to write for the New York Times and won a Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting in 2001, though these days he does more general freelance writing, with a few regular assignments. He covers a range of topics, from basic investigative reporting and economics, but taxes tend to be his expertise. What I most like about him is how he can take such a sand-dry topic like taxes and make it absolutely fascinating -- a neat trick he does by often by creating real-world analogies that make the most convoluted topics brain-dead easy to understand.
My favorite example of this was when I saw him explain on television why it makes sense when you're running a deficit to spend money, not cut, and increase your debt. To paraphrase him, he said -- imagine that you're out of work and in debt. Someone offers you a job, but it's far away and you no longer own a car. Do you borrow money to buy a car, adding to your debt, so that you can accept the job, earn income and get out of debt -- or do you turn down the job because you don't want to add to what you owe, never allowing you to get out of debt? Most people with any sense, he said, would grasp this and say, of course, you spend the money. As he put it, it works the same with government as it does with personal finances. Johnson has a terrific article here in National Memo, titled "Governor Christie Embraces Theft." He talks about how Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) recently met with a group of citizens and told them that New Jersey would be unable to pay state worker retirement benefits, and in his blunt, bullying style, said -- “Promises were made that can’t be kept… Welcome to the real world, folks.” While that sounds tough and macho -- and sounds really swell to the far right, who applauded this supposedly blunt, gruff cost-cutting stance -- Johnson explains that, to the contrary, it's theft. The money, he notes, is not the taxpayers' money as many presume, but actually the workers. Money that was "promised," as Christie himself said, in earlier contract negotiations -- benefits offered as delayed compensation during retirement, rather than payment made upfront. Though some on the far right might begin to foam at the concept of benefits and tax money and delayed compensation, Johnson then does what he always does so well -- he puts it in real-world context that anyone can easily understand. "If you have trouble grasping this," he writes, "just imagine opening your next paycheck to find that only some of the money is there — and when asked about this, your employer says, “promises were made that can’t be kept… Welcome to the real world, folks.” (This is similar to the concept in Hollywood where residuals and royalties drive studio executives hot maniacally crazy. Executives insist it's giving money to the creative people as a bonus that they didn't earn, since they were already paid. Except that's not what residuals and royalties are at all. When selling your services -- or, speaking personally in the case of writers, when selling your script -- that script has value. Great value, in fact. Far more value, in fact, than any producer or company can ever afford to pay up front when there's no money coming in on the project. So, rather than demanding that they get paid what their script is actually worth -- which would guarantee that the project never gets made -- writers agree to take much less money up front, on the promise that when money does finally come in, they will then get paid what they should have gotten paid at the start but delayed their compensation until later. And that comes in the form of residuals and royalties. Studios aren't doing the writers -- or directors or actors -- a "favor" by kindly paying them residuals. These aren't "bonuses." The writers et al had previously done studios the favor by delaying compensation and at last -- only when the project has started to earn money -- getting what was agreed to and promised contractually.) So it is with state workers and their benefits. Rather than demand more money upfront, they took less salary during contract negotiations, in order that the state could provide services to its citizens, on the condition of a promise to make up that guaranteed salary in the form of retirement benefits. As Johnson says, it's the workers' money, not the taxpayers. If an employer can't pay his promised benefits he has choices: he can go out of business, he can declare bankruptcy and be placed under court ordered receivership, he can try to negotiate a new payment agreement with his employees and accept new obligations, or he can even make cut-backs to save money. But the money for benefits is still owed. The obligation doesn't just disappear because the boss decides he doesn't want to pay and screw you, saying, "Sorry, promises were made that can't be kept...Welcome to the real world, folks." You know the workers who are owed the money would insist on it. As for Gov. Christie's Real World, in the real world,workers would go on strike, or quit when they see the boss is so untrustworthy that promises aren't going to be kept, or they'd sue for money owed. In the end, if you make cut backs to save money, the reason you're saving money is to pay your expenses, which include the benefits you owe. At the very least, if the state can't pay its employees what it owes them, it should at the very least have the human decency to not try to bully its way out of the hole it itself dug, and try to make itself the hero by stealing their money. But then, this seems to be a recurring theme in conservative politics, the supposedly "personal responsibility" folks -- buy but don't pay. That was the idea during GOP efforts not to raise the debt ceiling, which was nothing more than authorizing Congress to be able to pay for what they'd already spent. Or GOP insistence on authorizing services, but not raising taxes to pay for them. It follows the infamous words of Dick Cheney when he told Ronald Reagan, "Deficits don't matter." Spend what you like, don't worry about paying for it. Welcome to the real world, folks. Keeping in mind, of course, the White House official under George Bush (believed to be Karl Rove) who told Ron Suskind that "We can create our own reality." That's the "real world" of conservatives, of Chris Christie. Where promises can regularly be made but not kept, because you can spend but not pay for it. You can read all of David Cay Johnson's terrific article here.
0 Comments
I just finished listening to tonight's Cubs game. Okay, that might not mean much to most people, but you're missing part of the story. The game took 16 innings, and lasted six hours and 27 minutes. It was the longest game in Chicago Cubs history. Given that the Cubs franchise began in 1870 -- 144 years ago -- and they're not only one of the two oldest teams in major league baseball, but also the oldest professional sports team (any sport) in the United States to play continuously in one city...that's a long history. But hey, it was a long game. The winning pitcher was John Baker. Again, that might not mean much to most people, but you're missing part ofthat story, too. You see, John Baker isn't actually a pitcher. He's a catcher. But the Cubs had run out of pitchers to use. So, in the top of the 16th inning, they had no choice to put Baker in. He got the first batter for the Colorado Rockies out, walked the next one, and then the third batter hit into a double-play. His Earned Run Average is now officially 0.00. There was oddly enough a bonus in having Baker in pitching. That meant that when it was the pitcher's turn to bat, the Cubs would have a position player at the plate, someone who knew how to hit, rather than a weak-hitting pitcher. And it paid off. Because Baker led off the bottom of the 16th inning -- and walked. Eventually, he moved to third base, as the Cubs loaded the bases. That brought all-star shortstop Starlin Castro to the plate with one out. And if he could drive in Baker at third, that would mean that John Baker would score the winning run to make him the winning pitcher. And here's how it blessedly ended at 1:34 AM in Chicago. And now I can go to sleep. This is a very interesting segment on the Santa Monica NPR station, KCRW, for their show The Business with Kim Masters, who's an excellent long-time reporter and book author on Hollywood. In this interview, she talks with comedian Rob Schneider who has a new TV series he's trying to sell, Real Rob. But there's something unique about how he's doing it.
First of all, rather than just pitch the idea, or shoot a pilot -- Schneider made all eight episodes. They're completed. Second, the shows aren't 22-minute episodes for a half-hour timeslot. These are about 45 minutes each, that work out to an hour slot. ("Why can't a comedy be an hour?" he asks. "As long as it's funny.") And third -- he largely broke the cardinal rule of show biz: Never use Your Own Money. Though he did get some investment, much of this has been done with his own money. It certainly was a far-bigger risk, but it meant he had full creative control. (He directed all the shows and co-wrote them with his wife, who plays his wife in the series.) So, he's trying to find a distribution outlet. Interestingly, by virtue of having the entire series shot, it's made it much easier to sell overseas, and so he already has commitments there, meaning some of the money is already scheduled to be coming in. His model on this is Louis C.K and John Cleese with Fawfty Towers (all the more apt since Cleese wrote and co-starred in the show with his then-wife, Connie Booth). I liked Schneider's answer when asked why he didn't do this as a Kickstarter project and get money there from his fans. "My fans have already paid for this," he says, explaining that he means the money he's made during his career and is therefore lucky enough to try something like like that. Unfortunately, I can't embed the broadcast. To listen to the 12-minute segment, click here. Then look on the right side of the "Real Rob" black banner, and click on the white right-arrow sitting on a light blue background. The other day I mentioned a young British director Amanda Boyle and posted a PSA she did about children. I mentioned that's she'd made a couple offbeat short films, and thought I'd post one of them here. It's only five minutes, but done wonderfully and with a quirky charm, and almost no dialogue. It's about...well, I'm not 100% sure what it's exactly about, but it appears to be about a couple of totally mismatched, alienated temporary roommates and how their different personalities take them in an unexpected direction. It's called Skirt. And I have no idea why. But I like it nonetheless. Almost a year-and-a-half ago, I re-posted an article here I'd written on the Huffington Post two years before that, on March 5, 2011. It was an article titled, "Audiences Won't Go to See An Action Movie That Stars Women,: The title was tongue-in-cheek, as the piece was full of research that showed the very opposite, despite the "Myth Perception" in Hollywood that was insistent upon its validity.
This came to mind when I noticed the box office figures for two action movies that opened over the weekend. box office gross per screen avg budget Lucy $43.9 million $13,800 per screen $40 million Hercules $29.9 million $8,300 per screen $100 million To be clear, Hercules did quite well. To be even more clear, Lucy did 50 percent better, and cost less than half. This by itself doesn't prove anything. It could be dismissed by Hollywood executives for any none of reasons (Good ad campaign, bad ad campaign, audiences couldn't tell that Hercules starred Duane Johnson, Duane Johnson can't open a movie, audiences don't want to see movies about ancient Greece, Scarlett Johannsen is hot, Lucy also has Morgan Freeman in it, "Lucy" is fewer letters than "Hercules," none of which are valid, but that's another matter). And ultimately, even without excuses it's still just two movies and one weekend. But...I can assure you that if it was the other way around, it would have been held up as meaningful by those same executives. And if Hercules had flopped, it would have been dismissed as a bad movie about ancient times. And if Lucy had flopped, it would have proved that...well, you know -- Audiences Won't Go to See an Action Movie That Stars Women." Hollywood loves its Myth Perceptions, "wise sayings" that one person hears from another, which therefore makes it true. "I heard that..." And that gets passed along to another and another. Until it eventually becomes Truth Itself. But a Myth Perception, nonetheless. Myth Perceptions are great in Hollywood because they eliminate the need to think or do research. And they can be used to support comforting misconceptions, no matter how inaccurate. And when something comes along to turn that Myth Perception upside down, well that's not proof, it's nothing more than just a one-time, non-recurring phenomenon. An exception to the rule. Like Lucy, The Hunger Games series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (and its upcoming series), Gravity Snow White and the Hunstman, Divergent (and the upcoming series), the Twilight series, Prometheus, Frozen, Brave, Mirror Mirror…and on and on and on. Massive successes, many of them over half a billion dollars worldwide, some over a billion. And still Hollywood executives show a bizarre resistance to such things. At best, seeing such films as a fad. At worst, a glitch in the space-time continuum. At what point does reality start being recognized as not “a fad.” As not a “phenomenon”?? But rather seen for it was -- a market that has long existed but sat untapped. It’s what I've been writing about and researching and demonstrating for the past decade. And at some point, Hollywood executives are going to grasp it and see it for what it is. Reality. You'd think they'd leap at the realization, finding a brand new, massive market for their product. Yet still they fight it. Still they discount it. Still they are wary -- waiting for some mediocre action movie that stars a woman to fail, just so that they can say, "Aha, see, I told you so. Audiences Won't See An Action Movie That Star Women." I say this with some experience in the game, a tale far too long to get into. But just know that this Myth Perception of women's action movies is pervasive and insidious. I first wrote about this in depth over four years ago -- and have followed several times -- and the articles always have dealt with actual facts and very real numbers that went back long before that. But Myth Perceptions live on. Sometimes head-bangingly so. One of my favorite Myth Perceptions is that the second Charlie's Angels movie was such a disastrous flop that it killed the promising franchise. After all, the first Charlie's Angels movie was a spectacular hit, grossing a huge $264 million worldwide. (Check it out here,) But after the second one, the massive flop, that awful movie, the series was over. I'm sure you've heard that, probably believe it, too. Likely hated the second movie. But this is the reality -- whatever one thinks of the second movie, it grossed (are you ready?) $259 million worldwide. You can find the reality here. The sequel might have been a gut-wrenchingly terrible movie -- but it made a quarter of a billion dollars, virtually the same as the first. And Myth Perceptions live on. Everywhere, it seems, but at the box office. I should have posted this yesterday, though I have a sort of excuse. I'd looked for the video a few years ago and could only find the audio, so I figured it didn't exist. But then last night I was watching a TV special about "Mr. Baseball," Bob Uecker, on the MLB Network and they had footage, so I figured it had to exist -- and so I looked again. And there it was. The whole thing. A brief background. For many years, Bob Uecker built a career making fun of his years dismally playing major league baseball, though still insisting he belonged in the Hall of Fame. Never mind that his career batting average was a pathetic .200, with only 12 home runs. But -- beyond over 100 appearances on the Tonight Show, starring in his own TV series, and making commercials and movies, most notably Major League -- he went on to have a terrific career as a play-by-play announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers, an announcing career that's still going, in fact, now in his 44th year. And in 2003, he finally and actually did make it into the Hall of Fame. Not as a player, of course, but as recipient of the Ford Frick Award for broadcasting. This is Bob Uecker's speech when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. As you might imagine, it's hilarious. Not just in parts, but pretty much all the way through. There's a slight story behind it. When contacted by the Hall of Fame, they asked him if he could work something up for his speech. He asked how much time he'd have, and they told him about six minutes. No, Uecker told them, he really couldn't put something together proper in less than 15 minutes. The Hall agreed, and Uecker spoke for 18 minutes. And he had pretty much everyone laughing the whole time -- not just the audiences (and those of us listening at home), but the legendary Hall of Fame ballplayers behind them. In fact, as Uecker recounted in the special, he'd turn around and see the players laughing and pushing him to go on. There's something else remarkable about this speech which I didn't know until watching the TV special. It's that Bob Uecker did the entire speech extemporaneously. Nothing was written down. I don't mean that he just didn't read a speech -- he didn't even make notes. (Bob Costas tells the story on the show that he urged Uecker to at least write down five or six highlight stories that would be important to tell and write them out on note cards. No, Uecker said, he didn't need that, he'd just talk.) And talk he did. Even if you don't follow baseball -- or even like it -- this is just a wonderful monologue. But if you do love baseball, this is about as terrific a Hall of Fame acceptance speech as you'll hear. Keep in mind, that in pretty much every other Hall of Fame induction speech (and I'm guessing that "pretty much" is another phrase for "all of them), the recipients spend their time talking about excellence and thanking all the many people along the way who allowed them to reach the pinnacle of their profession. On Sunday, for instance, Frank Thomas of the Chicago White Sox spent almost his entire 10-15 minute speech making a list, simply thanking people, and eventually doing so for the second half of it in near tears. But whoever makes the speech, it's always about excellence, dedication and achievement with the help of coaches, teammates and most of all, family. And then, onto the podium stepped Bob Uecker. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
Categories
All
|
© Copyright Robert J. Elisberg 2024
|