Potter Stewart on sexting?

Potter Stewart famously said:
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."
—Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964), regarding possible obscenity in The Lovers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Imagine that 30 years ago, before smart phones, a teenage girl took a picture of herself in front of a mirror with an old fashioned box camera – every three months – to keep track of how she was growing.  Imagine she showed other girls – or they trade pictorial notes.  Imagine she passed a picture on to a boy she could legally have sex with.

Would Potter Stewart have taken this for child pornography?

MY MINIMUM WAGE COMMENT ON THE AFL/CIO BLOG

 Re:  http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/10-Not-So-Fun-Facts-About-the-Minimum-Wage

Small stat error -- BIG STAT MISSING: The minimum wage was $10.74 an hour 45 years ago, not 40; tiny -- AVERAGE INCOME (per capita economic output, productivity, whatever) DOUBLED since since 1968; giant omission.

If economic growth does not matter, why not go by the $4.25 an hour minimum wage of 1938, or the $7.25 an hour of 1950, or $8.50 an hour in 1956 instead? Did something happen between 1956 and 1968 that allowed the minimum wage to go to $10.75 an hour? It is something called growing productivity -- which is why the minimum wage could be $20+ now if you ask US Senator Elizabeth Warren. By 1978 the minimum wage would have reached $14.11 an hour -- if indexed for both inflation and per capita income growth (see table in comment just below). 

(Note: fast food workers did not have to get more productive -- they just had to live in a more productive economy that can pay them more -- will pay them more before they stop going to McDonalds. Barbers in France make more money than barbers in Poland because France has more ability to pay. Ditto for 2013 compared to 1968.)

This (giant) omission reminds me of the old Republican saw: "Why not make the minimum wage $100 an hour?" Same answer: ECONOMIC GROWTH! When output per person grows enough -- about five times today's -- we can do it. Since output per person doubles about every forty years, come back in about a hundred years. :-)

But, $15 should be a breeze.

* * * * * * 

My minimum wage worksheet -- my easily-could-have-been minimum wage double-indexed for inflation and per capita income growth:
yr  per capita    real     nominal  dbl-index   %-of
68    15,473    10.74      (1.60)     10.74      100%
69-70-71-72-73              [real, low point -- 8.41]
74    18,284      9.47      (2.00)     12.61          
75    18,313      9.11      (2.10)     12.61
76    18,945      9.44      (2.30)     13.04        72%
77                                                               [8.86]
78     20,422     9.49      (2.65)      14.11
79     20,696     9.33      (2.90)      14.32
80     20,236     8.78      (3.10)      14.00     
81     20,112     8.61      (3.35)      13.89        62%
82-83-84-85-86-87-88-89                          [6.31]
90     24,000     6.79      (3.80)      16.56  
91     23,540     7.29      (4.25)      16.24        44%
92-93-94-95                                                [6.51]
96     25,887     7.07      (4.75)      17.85
97     26,884     7.49      (5.15)      19.02        39%
98-99-00-01-02-03-04-05-06                      [5.97]
07     29,075     6.59      (5.85)       20.09
08     28,166     7.10      (6.55)       19.45
09     27,819     7.89      (7.25)       19.42        40%
10-11-12                                                      [7.37]  
13    29,209?    7.25      (7.25)      20.20?     36%?

Trickling down the trickle down -- US and California's very minimal minimum wage increases

If Obama gets his (not very fervent) wish to raise the federal minimum wage by $2 an hour over two years that should shift an incredibly small (almost unbelievably small) ONE-QUARTER OF ONE PERCENT per year of overall income in this country from the top 80 percentile to the bottom 20% …

… as per capita income grows TWO PERCENT, P-E-R Y-E-A-R*. Talk about-trickling the down the trickle-down.
*http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/29/news/economy/gdp-report/

Which is about what California’s raise from $8 an hour to $10 an hour spread over two years will also achieve. (California income numbers only 5% higher than national averages so the comparison should hold.)
http://www.cpec.ca.gov/FiscalData/50StateEconGraph.asp?Type=MedIncomeAverage&Gender=Total
********************

ABYSMAL ASSUMPTIONS:
$9 an hour is about the 15 percentile wage. 5% of work force at minimum wage. So 20% of national workforce gets a raise to $9 an hour. 

To do our average (half) raise math we will add 5% -- to account for the 5% at the minimum wage who get a full raise.

25% of the national workforce = 35 million people. Average pay raise (half the dollar per year raise) 50 cents an hour. Assume a 2000 hour work year.  35 million X average $1,000 raise = $35 billion out of a $15.8 trillion dollar economy = .0022151 = about one-quarter of one-percent price rise -- or shift of income from top to bottom per year.   

Nearby wages should be pushed up but not much.  In societies with high minimum wages (e.g., the US in 1968) even the median wage is not that much higher. 
******************** 

I AM  GETTING SO TICKED OFF AT PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO BE OUR FRIENDS ADVOCATING NOTHING BETTER THAN TRICKLING DOWN THE TRICKLE DOWN  -- STEP BY STEP, BY STEP, SNEAKING UP ON 1956 ($8.50 AN HOUR MINIMUM WAGE) OR ON 1968 (ALMOST $11 AN HOUR MINIMUM WAGE) THAT I AM GOING TO START CALLING ANY ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE WHO DOES THAT GOVERNOR STEPIN FETCHIT (BROWN) OR PRESIDENT STEPIN FETCHIT (OBAMA).  THEY MOVE STEP-BY-STEP-BY-STEP AND WE FETCH IT.

ANOTHER BIG MISTAKE THAT TOO MANY SUPPOSED FRIENDS MAKE -- ROBERT REICH MAKES IT HERE -- IS NOT TOUTING THE DOUBLING OF PER CAPITA INCOME SINCE 1968.  SEE THE WORKSHEET ABOVE -- IF THE MINIMUM WAGE WERE DOUBLE-INDEXED FOR INFLATION AND PER CAPITA INCOME GROWTH IT WOULD HAVE  GROWN TO $14+ AN HOUR BY 1978.  BARBERS IN FRANCE GET PAID MORE THAN BARBERS IN POLAND BECAUSE FRANCE HAS MORE TO PAY BARBERS WITH FOR THE SAME WORK.  HINT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Satanic pyramid scheme -- my deal with the Devil

I sold my soul to the Devil – my idea – but I get my soul back – and the Devil gets a pretty good deal too.

I sold my soul to the Devil for everything I want in this life – but I can get out of the bad part if I sign up five other souls for the same deal.  And they can do likewise.  Like all pyramid schemes, the thing is to get in early before the supply of (eternal) suckers runs low. 

“What will it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?  For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”  The answer apparently is at least five other souls.  :-[

Restore print media by restoring core issue discussion -- only two ways

To renew print media to full life two commonsense things can provide it with a high volume of news that only print (even the internet version) can deal with fully – and that only print opinion writers can deal with comprehensively.

One: if income taxes were adjusted monthly in direct step with increased or decreased expenditures, newspapers would have to add a new section for avid taxpayers to follow the latest additions and cuts.

We would not build a courthouse for 100 years.

Second: a randomly picked grand-type-jury could become our informal third branch of government. Such a directly-powerless citizens' branch could informally set the public agenda in accordance with the needs and interests of everyday people – without worrying about the tangles of expending political capital (automatically building it; see below) and avoiding controversy and all the usual stagnation inducers.

Mad Mayor Bloomberg's crazy idea of building a new $400 million Bronx courthouse in 2004 to TAKE OVER from the almost brand-new $120 million supplementary court building opened in just 1977 to pick up the criminal case overflow during the crime wage AND ALSO take over from the 1939, landmark status, main court building up on the hill (the latter still standing because it is the architectural anchor of the area -- both still standing actually -- empty) – would have been laughed to derision by a real people jury. Ditto for the new $600 million Brooklyn courthouse opened by Crazy Mikey in 2004 – also after criminal cases had declined 4X.

Obamians and Clintonians and friends want to help everybody, just nobody in particular. They pick a limited number of objectives each year and fight them to a standstill with Republicans -- perpetually leaving untouched key bread-and-butter issues like doubling the minimum wage and rewriting the entire American social landscape with legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements – issues that promise no immediate results (at least not in the eyes out of touch elitists).

Let's face it; Obamians and Clintonites are academic liberals who do not relate on any visceral level to what immediately interests everyday Joan -- so what interests Joan can always wait until next year, or decade, of forever. They never catch on that if they were pushing hard on doubling the minimum wage reform and sector-wide re-unionization (the only market setup that works historically, and world-wide) they might build more political capital then they would knew how to spend -- even if they did not immediately succeed on the specific issues.   

Harry Truman said: "The power of the presidency is the power to tell people what they damn well should have known in the first place." 

The automatic solution to progressives' political capital building inability could be a monthly adjusted income tax and an informal political grand-type-jury that would put society’s truly deepest concerns on the very front of the political burners and keep them hot until resolved. Interested, high volume content-newspapers; interested long analysis pieces-magazines?

Israel: a light to the Gentiles or a blight to the Gentiles?

Have today's Jews become the Japanese of the Occident? Millennia of isolation behind protective waters has left Japanese culture inwardly fixated. Two millenniums of imposed and self-imposed isolation plausibly may have left the Jewish people comparably self-focused.

Factor in the Ultimate Pogrom for a pathologically synergistic combination – like alcohol and drugs – precipitating blind-to-the-real-world foolishness?

Case in point: In 1949, the new Israelis picked up almost 80% of the former Palestine. Palestinians living within their borders caused no violent strife: no blown up buses or teenagers' hang-outs. It is said everyone in Israel knows someone harmed by a Palestinian terrorist. What -- purely self-interested -- sense is there in spending the last through next centuries fending off violent retributions, all the while morally bankrupting a modern Western nation (it's called "ethnic cleansing") to pick up a few percent more?

In 1968, "West Bankians" perhaps could have looked upon Israelis as liberators in some sense – having freed them from Jordan -- in any case they had no deadly beef with Israel. A nice combination of economies might have enjoyed wholesome prosperites, side by side. 
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/The-Gatekeepers/70264711?strkid=1242111655_1_0&strackid=19ea2249a50c63f3_1_srl&trkid=222336  

Case in point: Hezbollah has stamped "Made in Israel" all over it. In 1982, the Israeli military was welcomed in Lebanon as liberators – tossing out the PLO which was terrorizing everyone. Then Israel decided, in its too typically couldn't-care-less mode, not to completely clear out: rest in peace 240 US Marines. In 2006, Israel retaliated for a skirmish with Hezbollah that killed a few of its soldiers by carpet bombing the same's entire home base for 30 days, killing 1000 adults and 400 children.  Now made to last forever.

Hint -- Vietnam lessons: three years of attrition warfare under General Westmoreland (long stretches of bringing home 500 American body bags a week) and locally raised Viet Cong were breaking into the major cities and even into the American Embassy during the 1968 Tet offensive. Three years of counterinsurgency operations under General Abrams (as in Abraham, not Arabian) and American ambassador Bunker could drive himself anywhere in South Vietnam unescorted in 1971 – homegrown Viet Cong all gone.  (South Vietnam overrun in two months by external invasion in 1975 -- earlier attempt fended off with full US financial backing and extremely heavy air support in 1972 -- by which later juncture we had abandoned it.)
http://www.amazon.com/Better-War-Unexamined-Victories-Americas/dp/0156013096/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382401200&sr=8-1&keywords=a+better+war

Case in point: a Jewish school and social services center, in the sleepy Jewish end of Chicago's sleepy West Rogers Park neighborhood appears constructed to ward off a terrorist attack! Children's playground looks to be insulated from the adjacent streets by twin steel fence lines containing the double row auto parking. Front and back exits guarded by raised slicers with signs warning of "severe tire damage."  
https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=chicago,+pratt+and+kedzie

The Cossacks are coming; the Cossacks are coming -- to Rogers Park?!  Or is ever guiltier conscience further toxifying (in-toxifying?) the synergistic fixation -- further decreasing the ability to live rationally among one's neighbors?  Even in West Rogers Park?!  

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Israel -- as with much of the world across the millennia, of course -- is that if it had begun life on a more even psychic keel it might have been a civilizing influence amid the pervasive sectarian violence of the Middle East -- instead of a major instigator of said tribulations: a light to the Gentiles instead of a blight to the Gentiles.

I only hope I may have been "of assistance", Hebrew-sans.  (Hands at sides -- slight bow)   :-) 

Constitutional privacy down the DRANO?

Goodbye Fourth Amendment? Goodbye Constitution?

When I was growing up, the beef with the Supreme Court — beginning with the Warren Court — was that it kept finding individual rights that supposedly  weren’t there. Now, the worm seems to have turned 180 degrees. Now, individual rights seem to be disappearing one by one.

Latest, personal, example: checking out at Target the other day the clerk requested my picture government ID — my driver’s license — which she used her laser reader to record the bar code on the back with — because I was buying a bottle of Drano, which she explained to me could be used to make illegal drugs.
http://qctimes.com/news/local/illinois-to-require-id-for-some-cleaner-purchases/article_239ea346-3361-11e1-9a15-0019bb2963f4.html

Ipso facto, the government may not constitutionally record IDs of people because they — remotely — might commit a crime.

My answer to the late executive trampling on Fourth Amendment privacy is federal legislation making it a crime to instigate massive intrusions -- at least the most massive examples: broadband NSA snooping, 20 square blocks of homes searched in a Boston suburb searched, NYPD’s random stop-and-frisk practices.

But, what national policy can stop legislatures from hatching heavy privacy invading schemes? Maybe only people waking up while there is something left to fight back with.