Sloppy thinking at the 'New Yorker'...

Via boingboing, on a commentary by one Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker, to wit:

A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.

Semantically, there is not much of a difference between "spreading" wealth and "sharing" it. However, when one considers the source of the wealth, a small, yet significant distinction arises.

In the case of a state's natural resources, they are - since they are owned by the state - pretty much by definition owned collectively by the population of that state. Sharing or spreading monies derived from developing those resources among the population "distributes" the money and, if anything, is about as far as you can get from the socialist tradition, which would hold that the state ought to retain and use such revenue to expand the scope of its power benefit the people.

The source of the government's income tax revenue, on the other hand, is income. Instituting a change where some end up paying more and where a "refund" is given to a large number of others who currently don't pay anything at all may be described using the same adjectives, but also constitutes a fairly significant "redistribution" of wealth, which is a word that nobody - at least nobody in the media - wants to use, at least not in the same paragraph as the word "Obama."

Cheers...

Six more days, and a wake-up...

We're signing a lease tomorrow to rent the house, which complicates life. It means Galina will be heading toward Colorado by herself, while I pull on my seven-league boots and head off to Kazakhstan again (assuming the Astra 1M spacecraft launches as scheduled). Upon my return, the current plan is for me to rent a U-Haul and a car trailer, drop by the house, load said rented items, and take off for Colorado myself.

Since every campaign is subject to the whims of weather and happenstance (a guidance computer, for example, can fail a routine electrical test and thus delay a launch for a week), it'll be difficult to buy a reasonably priced airline ticket for Galina to arrive in New York on a particular date, unless we're feeling lucky.

I was not able to write invoices today, since every time I sat down to do so, it seemed that something would interrupt three minutes later: a phone call, Shiloh, a trip related to estate matters, tracking down bank information, you name it. If I want to have any billings at all this month, I must get the invoices - and expense reports - out tomorrow! (On the other hand, I did get a load of stuff done outside the house, too, including refilling my BP meds for the upcoming trip, so it's not as if the day was a complete loss. :^)

Costco had a pretty good deal on letter/legal storage boxes when we stopped to do some shopping yesterday, but we bought only two packages of 10 boxes (for about $1.50 a box), and based on having filled 10 boxes with books from the bookcase in the den, the second package is not going to be enough to finish the job. I figure we need at least one more, and maybe even a second additional package, for good measure. I've been making a photo record of what books go in what box, as I am good and tired of having to go through a bunch of sealed boxes to find a particular book. Bits are cheap; making life easier is, to borrow a tag line, priceless.

It's not even 9 pm, but I'm pretty tired. Time for some green tea and then to bed!

Cheers...