Plus, Faster Iraq meme gathers steam.

Dem Panic Watch 5: The needle, she no move. ... Kerry up by only one point in California? ... Don't worry! He's a good closer! ...Joke-spoiling caveat: Conservative T. Bevan is impressed with Kerry's advantage among April/March-deciders  in the IBD poll. And there is some pro-Kerry movement  among registered voters in the USAT/CNN/Gallup Poll, but not among "likely" voters. ... And nothing's happening  among the registered voters over at AP/Ipsos. ... 12:52 P.M.

The Full Monica: Eduwonk likes Kerry's latest education proposal-- basically more money and pay in exchange for easier dismissal of poor teachers. (Wasn't that Monica Lewinsky's education plan? It was!  But she was sound on this issue.) ... Questions:1) Has Kerry abandoned his previous plan to also water down the standards in the No Child Left Behind Act? Apparently not; 2) How do we know Kerry won't waffle and fold on the firing question at the first salvo from the teachers' unions (the way he folded on his feckless affirmative action rethink in the ealry '90s)? How do we know these aren't just more words from overzealous speechwriters--part of Kerry's current suck-up-to-centrists campaign, which followed his now-semi-renounced suck-up-to-liberals campaign in the primaries? We don't. 3) Any reform of this magnitude--sackng lots of now-tenured teachers, on federal command--will require a political fight. You can't just propose it and expect it to sail through Congress. You have to educate the voters and whip up some general interest pressure to counteract the highly effective special interest pressure of the teachers' lobby. That means running around in public telling horror stories about poor teachers who couldn't be fired, which means deeply annoying the National Education Association. There's no sign Kerry is ready to do that. [But Bill Clinton didn't tell many welfare horror stories before reforming welfare--ed. Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich had told the stories for him. Plus, voters have always hated welfare.] ...

P.S.: In an encouraging sign, Kerry has been unexpectedly tenacious in sticking with his Social Security semi-means-testing idea. Of course, nobody's really attacked him for it--yet.  2:49 A.M.

Monday, May 10, 2004

Nobody Covers the Art World like kausfiles! Here is a passage buried deep within the recent  NYT Sunday Business piece  on big shots who try to avoid paying sales taxes on the art work they buy:

As president of the Whitney Museum board, Robert J. Hurst has played a pivotal role in shoring up the institution's finances and securing prized artworks for its permanent collection. One of the Whitney's galleries bears his name. In addition to being a leading figure in the New York art scene, Mr. Hurst is the former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, and held a $267 million stake when the firm's shares began trading publicly in 1999. ... [snip]

As the investigation of art dealings got under way in early 2002, investigators in Mr. Morgenthau's office discovered that Mr. Hurst had bought a large number of artworks in New York for which he had not paid New York sales tax, according to one senior prosecutor. The unpaid tax amounted to at least $2 million, said a senior law enforcement official.

According to a law enforcement official, Mr. Hurst had the art shipped commercially to a home he owned in Colorado. Shortly thereafter, the official said, Mr. Hurst reloaded it on a private jet and whisked it back to Manhattan.

A senior law enforcement official said that when Mr. Morgenthau's office confronted him about the matter, Mr. Hurst was offered the opportunity to pay the tax and did so. In a brief telephone interview last week, Mr. Hurst said: "I have paid all my sales tax. I am absolutely current." Although he said he would call to discuss his art purchases further, one of his assistants called later to say that Mr. Hurst was traveling and would be unavailable for an interview. [Emphasis added.]

Let's assume Hurst has now paid all his taxes. Is he really the sort of person the Whitney wants heading its board? This is an institution famous for using taxpayers' money to fund exhibits that many taxpayers find offensive (e.g. Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ"). Shocking the citizenry has been a successful marketing strategy for the Whitney. If the taxpayers' outraged representatives were to try to withdraw or limit their contribution, as they occasionally do, the Whitney would be among the first to call it censorship--asserting, in effect, a conditional right to the tax money. Fair enough. But you'd think the Museum would then want to be headed by people conspicuously willing to pay the taxes that help support it--not those who appear to go to elaborate lengths to dodge their tax obligations, which they seemingly only fulfill after they're caught out. ... 3:54 P.M.

Building on his strengths: ABC's The Note says Kerry "has yet to find a voice that comforts while it enervates." ... Hey, don't be too hard on him. It's early in the campaign, and he's already got the enervating part down. ... 2:19 P.M.

WaPo's excellent piece on the background of the Abu Ghraib comes close to making the case that the abuse was the logical consequence of a) having too few troops to b) fight an insurgency that intimidated potentially friendly Iraqis. ...No wonder the Pentagon sponsored screenings of Battle of Algiers. If I remember right, one character in the film is a plain-speaking French general who argues that winning the guerilla war requires torturing prisoners. ... I wish I could believe the convenient win-win line peddled by Sen. Pat Roberts on ABC's This Week--that torture doesn't pay off in terms of accurate information, so it's completely senseless on all counts. But I fear the fictional French general was closer to reality. WaPo implies that the tougher interrogation techniques instituted by our troops last fall did pay off, though it cites only "U.S. generals." ... What's not clear from the Post is the short-run tradeoff: If the U.S. had decided to scrupulously hew to the Geneva convention, even at the risk of more insurgent attacks and more casualties, how much worse would it have been? In the medium-to-long run, of course, the get-tough policy is looking like a disaster for the U.S., even within Iraq and even apart from humanitarian considerations.  ... 

Impolite question: Not that it would have made everything all right, or even partially right, but why didn't our generals or their subordinates ban photographs,to forestall the propaganda debacle that has now taken place? That would have shown some understanding of how modern information technology can help fuel global Al Qaeda-like hatred. It's been been suggested that the photographs were a part of the intended humiliation and "softening up." But even if you wanted to humiliate--which I'm not advocating!--surely there are ways to do that that don't also risk humiliating the U.S. around the world.  How much incremental benefit did the photos add? (You could have had flash bulbs pop without actually taking pictures, even.) ...