I never get tired of this kind of whining:
The electronic lynch mob that has attacked and harassed me — you should see the emails sent to me personally! — has made my family feel threatened and insecure…..To my wife, my three children, and to anyone who was offended by my remarks, please accept my apologies. To those with pitchforks trying to attack me instead of my message, I feel sorry for you. You have caused untold damage to me personally.
Almost no one likes nasty criticism. When people make fun of my posts in the comments or send me emails calling me an idiot, it hurts my fee-fees too.
What’s perverse to me is that the all-importance of rich, serious people’s feelings so often rears its head during conversations about poor or brown people’s actual lives. The real crime isn’t the million Iraqis or thousands of servicemen who died in the Iraq War, it’s all the mean things people wrote about Jeff Goldberg’s pro-war propaganda New Yorker pieces. The worst thing about the failure of immigration legislation isn’t that the current system tears millions of Latino families apart, it’s that proposed legislation hurt “person-to-person relationships” among Senators.
In fairness, Mr. Henderson’s self-pitying non-apology takes place in the context of an earlier whine about taxes, not about killing brown people or depriving poor people of health care. But getting nasty emails is nothing like getting lynched.
El Cid
Does he get people finding his home address and staring into the house to see his countertops?
aimai
Oh, and on top of that “think of the children!” They just had a “preemie” baby–what are the odds that if that child had “pre-existing conditions” that will now be covered under the parents’ health insurance that Henderson would *still* not get it that there is some kind of relationship between taxes and services? Some kind of relationship between the Government doing something for him and the money he pays?
aimai
eemom
is this the guy who was whining about how hard it is to eke by on $250K+ when you choose to live in one of the most expensive places on the planet?
BGinCHI
With great privilege comes great irresponsibility.
Poopyman
I hadn’t noticed his Farewell Address from a few days ago.
Wow, the whine is strong in this one.
Rosalita
@eemom:
that’d be him. don’t forget the private schools and the maid.
Mike
No comments allowed on Henderson’s post, so I’ll say it here:
Get off the internet then.
EDIT: @Poopyman:
Ah, missed that. Good for him.
Jager
I know for certain Scott Henderson isn’t close to being rich, the rich guys I know would just say “fuck em” and move on.
Poopyman
@eemom: Yeah, although he says
Of course, how far above $250K the HH income is is unknown, AFAICT.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike: True enough. No one forced him to blog about his personal situation.
El Cid
I get a billion dollars each month, but once you deduct all the islands I’m buying up, the birthday parties where top name bands are brought in, decorating the house with different precious jewels and metals each months, rotating my stock of new exotic cars, the flights to various nations for exotic dinners, and pumping up the Swiss bank account, I hardly have any left at all.
Steve
Michael O’Hare, who was maybe the first person to trash Henderson’s post, said something I thought would be obvious:
Maybe I’m wistfully longing for a golden age that never existed, but I really don’t think it used to be like this. I blame the 80s for changing everything.
Davis X. Machina
The sheer difference in quality between the feelings of someone who makes $30K a year and rents, and someone who makes 15 times that, and owns? Well, you’d just have to experience it to believe it.
It’s like the thread count in percale sheets — it’s just numbers, till you experience it.
Poopyman
Apparently Todd henderson Will Be Missed.
Whatevs.
The Dangerman
Would someone sane stand up and scream at the top of their lungs:
1) It’s fucking marginal tax rates for 250K+; everyone gets a cur for the first 250k;
2) Rates are historically low;
3) Bush’s taxcuts had a sunset clause because they knew this was a budget buster even before two unpaid wars.
Fairly fucking simple.
soonergrunt
My God, what a jackass. We should all have those problems of trying to decide whether to drop the maid service or the gardener or the nanny or the private schools in order to pay to get a few Soldiers in the Army off of public assistance, or to properly fund the VA for once in the last 50 years, or to maybe, just maybe, secure some other family from bankruptcy because they too had a premature child or unexpected health costs that have strained the family budget to the breaking point.
I am so fucking sorry this guy has to go through being called out as a whiny, unaware spoiled brat in a man’s body while I scramble to find work after recent heart surgery so that we won’t miss mortgage payments on the house after seeing what little savings we had eaten by the insurance deductible.
How horrible it must be for him.
Poopyman
Of course, it’s quite possible that he’s more sorry for the offline repercussions than from those online:
Yeah, there could be some discomfort there, you betcha.
El Cid
Our heroic, deficit obsessed political establishment in this country is worried about Britain cutting its defense budget because then they won’t be as useful to assist our various military adventures?
How dare they!
BGinCHI
@Davis X. Machina: Thread count.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Can you imagine this poor man having to wear regular wool after merino? It’s just horrific. It’s like a holocaust, really.
El Cid
@The Dangerman: Look, whether you have to pay another $1,000 dollars or $3, it’s a historic injustice that people making almost a half-million dollars can’t possibly afford.
Omnes Omnibus
@Poopyman: It also appears, from within your link, that Henderson wrote a defense of insider trading as an executive compensation device. Caveat: I have not read the Henderson article.
theturtlemoves
@Poopyman: “My wife informed me I’m a pompous jackass who wouldn’t be getting any lovin’ that I didn’t require cash up front for the foreseeable future, so I decided to shut my online cake-hole for a while.”
kay
@aimai:
Long odds. Angle is done having babies so she thinks it’s outrageous to ask her to contribute to an insurance pool that covers a minimum maternity stay.
She’s not having any more babies!
I don’t know why that didn’t get tons of attention. I want to know how conservatives see this playing out. Women of child-bearing age will bear the entire insurance burden of maternity care, and everyone else will “opt out”.
Are they fucking idiots? The benefit to everyone is, everyone was once the baby. Even men! They were babies! Everyone who was born benefited from maternity care, right?
eemom
@Poopyman:
This calls for the immortal eye-rolling classic from Woody Allen’s little Alvy Singer
Hope the blog-door banged his big fat stupid ass good and hard on the way out.
Davis X. Machina
@El Cid: I’d hate to be a Tory — so conflicted. The spending — it’s Defense, so it’s sacrosanct. But if we spend it, we’d have to borrow it, which means higher interest rates — and I live by the bond market.
And cool toys for new wars, why Tories live for that — but the wars we have are Blair’s wars, not proper Tory wars.
And defense cuts are soooo Labour.
r€nato
Don’t you DFH realize that the 1st Amendment exists to protect the fee-fees of right-wingers from criticism when they say stupid shit?
Why do you hate the Constitution?
aimai
Oh, wow. Everyone should run, not walk, to read the linked piece up above (see, e.g. Poopyman at 14: September 24th, 2010 at 12:25 pm)
Basically, Professor Henderson’s two main contributions to our knowledge lies in proving that corporations ought to have no duty to maximize shareholder value and that insider trading is, on the whole, a really,really, good thing!
and:
In light of this oeuvre, and the horrid necessities forced on him by his rising tax rate, how soon before we see him writing a genteel defense of intra family cannibalism?
aimai
Violet
I’ll take his not-rich income level of over $250,000 any day. Since it’s such a ho-hum incoming level, I’m sure he’d be happy to point me in the direction of where to get jobs like he and his family have. I’m sure they’re out there just waiting to be filled.
Sentient Puddle
Uh…wasn’t Henderson the one that posted his household income and breakdown of expenses in the first place?
NonyNony
@Poopyman:
Oh Sweet Supply-Side Jesus.
This:
Tells me just about everything I need to know about Henderson. Anything else he writes is gravy because this is enough evidence of outright assholery all on its lonesome.
Rosalita
@Poopyman:
Divorce might REALLY cut into his cost of living…
Poopyman
@theturtlemoves:
“… while I sleep in my car.”
peej
@Poopyman: I suspect that his wife who is a doctor sees a lot of folks who have to make tough choices because of high medical bills (especially in her reported specialty). He’s stuck in his ivory tower. Perhaps she should take him with her to work sometimes to see how normal people live.
Hugin & Munin
Does this mean we have to hear him prattle on about his little dog Checkers?
Trentrunner
I actually don’t believe the bit about his wife not consenting to publication of personal details.
I think he’s taking cover behind the wife’s lab coat/apron strings.
What a diva-douche.
Jules
My heart it fucking bleeds…..
soonergrunt
@Davis X. Machina: Well, they ought to cut somewhere because their equipment is shit. Seriously. I’d rather go to war on a Wal-Mart bicycle with a bolt action rifle and a GI-Joe walkie-talkie than the vehicles, weapons, and comms the Brits give their Soldiers.
If they cut defense appropriations, at least the British Army will no longer be purchasing shitty equipment for exorbitant prices. Every complaint we have here about the crap equipment for heinous prices, they have in spades. it’s unreal.
aimai
I think there is no doubt that the real issue is not the “hi tech lynching” and the hate mail, though I have no doubt that was disturbing, but the fact that his wife and his wife’s friends (the other nurses, the doctors, the patients) must have gone ballistic when they discovered what a whining ass this guy is. This kind of hi falutin’ anti-government/anti tax, whattabbboutmeeeeeism goes really, really, well at University of Chicago in particular specialities but it plays really badly outside that limited sphere. And his wife’s job means that she spends most of her time outside his social network. When that story went viral you can bet that everyone who knows her, especially if they share the same last name, gave her an earful.
aimai
Hugin & Munin
“Honey, when we got married, you promised me that your ‘entitled asshole libertarian’ days were over.”
soonergrunt
@Sentient Puddle: yup. That was he, and he alone who posted about the costs of the college loans, the private schools, the mortgage, and the paying of the nanny, the maid, and the gardener. The rest of us just did math.
PeakVT
To those with pitchforks trying to attack me instead of my message, I feel sorry for you.
Lol. He could have made the original post non-personal, but he didn’t, and now he’s the “victim.”
I feel sorry for his children.
klondike
Henderson’s GBCW was, I think, pretty good and indicative of a man who has potentially learned something. Maybe he doesn’t completely Get It, but it’s not a long leap from where he is now:
to
Then again, maybe I’m just getting soft.
Cat
@soonergrunt:
mslarry
went to the comments section, big MISTAKE… many of the idiots are fans of the flat tax for all households. Fine, but when i point out that for example, a flat tax of 10% on households would go something like this :
person A makes 30k a year (most teachers in my city btw) pays 3k a year in taxes, leaving them with 27k a year before additional bills.
person B makes 450,000 a year (someone in the top 3% of earnings in this country btw) pays 45,000 a year in taxes, leaving them w/405,000 a year before additional bills…the response i get… crickets. facts and math aren’t enough to change their minds.
gawd i hate these people
mslarry
went to the comments section, big MISTAKE… many of the idiots are fans of the flat tax for all households. Fine, but when i point out that for example, a flat tax of 10% on households would go something like this :
person A makes 30k a year (most teachers in my city btw) pays 3k a year in taxes, leaving them with 27k a year before additional bills.
person B makes 450,000 a year (someone in the top 3% of earnings in this country btw) pays 45,000 a year in taxes, leaving them w/405,000 a year before additional bills…the response i get… crickets. facts and math aren’t enough to change their minds.
gawd i hate these people
Blue Neponset
He can’t make ends meet and he is still having children?
What an irresponsible asshole.
Steve
@Trentrunner: Do you believe the part where he says his wife disagrees with his opinion? Because it’s not that hard for me to imagine his wife saying, “What the hell are you doing posting our family budget on the Internet?”
@aimai: As a Wall Street guy myself, I like reading business and economics blogs. I spent about 5 minutes with that “Truth on the Market” blog before I realized it was straight-up horseshit, and I’ve never been back.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Dangerman: 1)
Exactly. He whines about how unfair the tax code is, how unfair everyone is for claiming their household income was 450K, etc etc, but he never tells us what that income is, so we can’t evaluate how much his tax increase will be. Also, the (white) elephant in this whole discussion is his house. In his original post, he says that he and his wife
bought a big house in an expensive neighborhood“chose to invest in their community”, and now they’re in over their heads. My own guess, based on his stated real estate tax of $15K (I don’t know if this is valid, I looked at on line real estate in Hyde Park) suggests that they spend more than two million dollars on that house. They did so while they were 500K in debt w/student loans. They shit in their own bed because they’re status-obsessed yuppies.Larry Signor
@Sentient Puddle: Yup. He used himself as a crash dummy. It worked.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: The fiduciary duty to shareholder article could be defensible. It is possible that he argues for a stakeholder obligation or argues that the current system prioritizes short term gains rather than long term success and that, as a result, changes are required. Ok, given what we know about him, it is unlikely. It is just that, unlike the insider trading article, it is not a facially douche-baggy position.
Redshift
@Sentient Puddle: No, IIRC he posted how much he pays in taxes and specifically property taxes, and described in detail various expenses like private school tuition (but without amounts) and smart people derived from that ballpark figures for his income, the price of his house, etc.
So either he’s lying about their conclusions about his income being wrong, or he was lying about his taxes. Since they’re both things conservative whiners frequently lie about, I’d say it’s a tossup.
Kryptik
On a different note….Colbert’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary committee is probably about the only bright note today to speak of. No links, it’s floating around the Youtubes and all.
kommrade reproductive vigor
OK, that’s just funny. In a “Isn’t that sad? He thinks we give a flaming damn about his fee-fees,” sort of way.
For one, the victim of a lynching doesn’t think the mob cares about the “untold damage” being done to his person.
Southern Beale
Actually, IIRC Henderson’s whine wasn’t just about taxes, it was about how he makes $450,000 a year and STILL isn’t rich because he has to pay for his kids’ private school and set aside a healthy chunk of money for his retirement and his kids’ college funds, all things which he is blithely unaware are LUXURIES for millions of people in America, though they are absolute necessities for him.
And for being this clueless and unaware of the plights of the vast majority of Americans for whom he would deny making things just a teensy weensy bit easier by taxing the upper 2% of income earners just a teensy weensy bit more, I say with pitchfork proudly in hand:
FUCK YOU ASSHOLE
DonkeyKong
The moral of this story is, if you’re a dick, stay in your dick-a-sphere.
Larry Signor
On the bright side, Mr. Stewart Goes To Washington. See y’all at the Mall.
PurpleGirl
@Rosalita: I was just thinking that too.
Wife: Judge, I request a dissolution of the marriage because he doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut about private matters.
eemom
his wife may have lost her shit over that particular post, but it can hardly come as a shock to her that she’s married to a “got mine, fuck you” Chicago School asshole.
I don’t feel a bit sorry for her — not even after looking at his picture on the UChicago website.
ruemara
lol, he can have my salary for a year if I can have his for year. since I obviously have more balls than him.
Redshift
On a related note, last night I got to hear a staffer for Gerry Connolly explain his support for extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich. While it provoked me to a mild case of Tourette’s, this was actually quite useful, as I was feeling slightly guilty about not helping out on his campaign (it’s the district next door) and now I don’t feel guilty at all.
eemom
@Redshift:
oh God. What did he say?
Jager
@kay:
Who would make a baby with Sharron Angle?
Jman
Brad Delong posted a copy of the Henderson post. Larry Ribstein, Henerson’s blogging associate, posted a defense of Henderson and was trounced in comments. So suddenly Ribstein’s post dissappears and Sorry II appears with Ribstein claiming he stands by the post that he was forced to take down. Ribstein is an assistant dean and has a chair at the university of Illinois law school. How can people with credentials like this say stuff and then take down their blog posts and run away? Highly paid law school professors! Shouldn’t they be able to defend their arguments? Two of them in tandem.
Leo
“took issue with the principle of a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value”
Depending on the framing of the argument, I might agree with Henderson. The notion that day-to-day maximization of stock prices is the first duty of management has a lot of negative consequences.
Jager
@peej:
I doubt if Dr. Henderson spends anytime fretting about her patients ability to pay their bills, most Drs don’t.
Mark
@aimai:
They do indeed share a last name:
http://pediatrics.uchicago.edu/FacultyDetail.aspx?ID=2245
http://www.uchicagokidshospital.org/physicians/tara-henderson.html
And of course all of her funding comes from the friggin’ government, and every pediatrician in the country knows that the only insurance that pays to fix horrible diseases and birth defects is medicaid.
She must already know what a douche her husband is though:
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/henderson
Woohoo – “captained the Law School’s all-University champion intramural football team”
Alwhite
@mslarry:
Its actually worse than that. When Little Stevie Forbes was running for Pres he offered a flat tax plan. It eliminated the first (as I remember it) $30k and then took 19% of everything after that. Which sounds simple and ‘fair’, if you are a moran.
But the worst part was it would not have taken in as much money as the existing tax structure was taking in. He would have had to take even more to balance the budget.
Mark
@aimai
shoot. my comments is awaiting moderation due to the links to Tara Henderson’s faculty profile.
-> Every pediatrician in the country knows that the only insurance that pays to fix horrible diseases and birth defects is medicaid.
-> Tara Henderson already knew what a douche her husband is
Prospero
People using phrases like “electronic lynch mob” should be strung up on the nearest fucking tree. Idiot.
Nimm
@aimai:
“Intra-family cannibalism may serve a useful purpose as our findings indicate that it does not negatively impact net family worth – if parents expect to eat 3 children, they will simply give birth to 5 children instead of 2. When weighted for the increased incidence of twins, there is a marginal net population gain to society. More importantly, cannibalism motivates parents to maximize the health and well-being of their children, in order to maximize flavor. This effect carried over not only to the children to be eaten, but to the survivors, who also realized a benefit as compared to children in non-cannibal families.”
Mark
@Jager: I have a friend who’s a pediatrician who sees all kinds of horrible childhood diseases. She says the poorest families are a-ok because Medicaid picks up the tab for everything. The families with employer insurance are screwed – they are constantly on the phone arguing with the insurance company, and she constantly has to call the insurance company to convince some poorly-qualified nurse that the cancer treatment she requested is routine and should be paid for.
Believe me – if a doctor ever works in a hospital and does anything other than bill medicare, he or she knows exactly what pains patients go through to pay their bills.
Xenos
@Poopyman: Did you catch this in your link?
So who funds Henderson’s research, the Milken-Boesky Center for Academic Excellence?
Davis X. Machina
@Alwhite: 19% of wages-and-salaries income. Not interest income, not dividends, no capital gains, not nothing, unless earned by work. Marginal Federal tax rate on unearned income — 0%
Only an offsetting complete absence of any competence in anything — thereby diminishing the threat he posed — keeps Stevie Forbes off the Dickhead All-Time All-Star Team.
JGabriel
Poopyman:
Henderson thanked Blodgett for correcting it to ~400k (from the 450k guesstimate reported elsewhere), so I guess we have our answer.
.
aimai
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, I know. There are lots of ways it could be written–that brief description could even relate to things like whether fiduciary duty to shareholder value should take precedence over, say, community health standards. But the odds are against Mr.Can’t.Make.It.Here/Can’t.Make.It.Anywhere/On.AnyAmount
making any argument that isn’t douchebaggy, you know? I mean, really, what are the odds?
aimai
Poopyman
@Xenos: Uh-yup.
And now the more I think about it the more I wonder if that post isn’t more than a little subversive. Might merely be passive-aggressive, but it makes one wonder.
soonergrunt
@Nimm: Where would you like your internets delivered, cause you just won them.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: What are the odds? Let’s just say, I wouldn’t take the bet.
JGabriel
Henderson:
First he blames the wife (and the preemie baby!) for withdrawing his post. When the inevitable divorce comes, he’ll blame the liberals.
.
jonas
@The Dangerman: “3) Bush’s taxcuts had a sunset clause because they knew this was a budget buster even before two unpaid wars.”
And, IIRC, so they could pass it via reconciliation, which is a perfectly normal, valid procedural move when used by Republicans, but the brutal rape of the Constitution when used by Democrats.
Poopyman
OT, but I just have to paste in what ABC News reports on Colbert’s House testimony:
..
..
Priceless.
(ETA: Now can someone remind me how to put multiple paragraphs in blockquotes?)
PurpleGirl
@ruemara: Better yet, he should exchange his salary for unemployment benefits…
Omnes Omnibus
The insider trading paper can be downloaded from here.
MattR
@Kryptik: Apparently WordPress does not like a reply with just a link, so now this should work
CSPAN coverage of the Colbert hearing
@Poopyman: Double underscores between paragraphs, not double periods
dmsilev
The fun thing is that if you know anything about UofC and Hyde Park, you realize that he’s even more of a wanker.
First, his $15K in property taxes means that his house is up in the 1.2 to 1.5 million dollar range. That’s near the top for single-family houses around here. Not the tippy top, but probably in the 95th percentile. 99th percentile of all residential real estate, but Hyde Park has a lot of 1 and 2 bedroom condos, which pull the average down. So, he’s *chosen* to acquire a lot of debt and recurring costs because he wanted a fancy house.
Secondly, his children’s schooling costs aren’t as high as most people have been assuming. Yes, the Lab School is pricey. But. As a UofC faculty member, he gets a substantial break on his kids’ tuition. Like half. The Lab School exists basically as an incentive for faculty to live in Hyde Park, and is subsidized by the university accordingly. So, lop a good $20-30K off the annual budget.
Thirdly, and amusingly, outside the Business School, parts of the Law School, and the Economics Department, this tends to be a pretty liberal area. His widely-publicized wankerdom will make him look like an utter jackass to a large fraction of his social circle.
dms
Redshift
@eemom: Well, the one
bright spotslightly less dark spot was that he only favors extending them temporarily “until the economy improves” (and I checked that his website actually does say that, though you have to be looking for it.) The main bits where I managed to just mutter “bullshit!” instead of screaming it because there were a lot of older folks in the room were:– With the economy so bad, we shouldn’t be raising taxes on anyone, and the tax cuts for the rich are helping the economy because middle and working class people are already spending as much as they can, so the only people who will spend more are upper-income people
– The economy needs consumer spending to recover, and one-third of all consumer spending comes from upper-income people
– That there should have been a vote on tax cuts, and that there are Democrats who will lose their seats because there wasn’t one, but it’s the leadership’s fault there wasn’t, not the fault of Dems like Connolly who oppose the leadership’s and the president’s position. (He didn’t specify, but presumably he thinks there should have been a vote on the tax cuts he wants, even though he’s in a small minority of Democrats who want that.)
– He had the gall to talk about the danger of a Republican “motion to recommit” with language to make the tax cuts permanent, which was the point where I actually did yell at him to point out that could only happen if a bunch of Democrats like him supported it (thank you, KagroX, for giving me the background to know that.)
Of course, this was intermixed with a lot of scare talk about how much worse Fimian is (which is true) and how if he loses it will be Speaker Boehner and they’ll make the tax cuts permanent anyway, so why are you griping about this?
(Oh, and I don’t want to presume, but just to be safe, if any of our hosts are inclined to FP this comment, please don’t. It wasn’t said in confidence, but it wasn’t a public event, and I wouldn’t want to deal with the uproar if it were widely circulated.)
GVG
Well he is an idiot with an entitlement issue but I’m not sure its fair to dismiss the lynch mob comment as just hurt feelings. the internet means the number of people who can read something is huge and in any large number of people you’ll get some really insane and vicious types that will make real death threats and sometimes even try to carry them out. His stupidity was so infuriatingly stupid especially in these times that I could see some real security issues coming up.
Of course we do already know he has no sense of proportion and tends to have a self slanted worldview so it can just be hurt feelings. But I’ve read comment sections on much less sensitive topics and wanted to call the cops on some of the comments so I’m not sure he’s just whining again.
Ailuridae
@Southern Beale:
There’s also likely something incredibly dishonest about his claims regarding both the cost of sending his kids to Lab (the U of C’s grammar and secondary school) and having to save for college. Tenured faculty at U oc C have a list of perks miles long and that includes undergrad tuition not just at U of C but at a long list of other comparable schools.
This guy is just a privileged, libertarian ass hole. Looking at his CV he’s done a lot of work with Richard Epstein another privileged, libertarian ass hole who wrote this pile of shit about the President before the 08 election.
Nylund
Did he actually think that his argument of, “After I pay for the mansion, the luxury cars, all the stocks and bonds I buy, the private schools for my children, the maid, the gardener, and the nanny, I’m actually quite poor,” was going to gain him sympathy?
Larry Signor
@Omnes Omnibus: Why? His expertise is
himselfthe law, not economics. For economics we have Dr. Krugman, who said what needed to be said.JGabriel
@eemom:
I’d says this post and comments (and hundreds like it across the internet) is the door banging loud and clear.
The guy is basically this week’s internet laughing stock.
.
Redshift
@Nimm: Awesome.
Nylund
His argument boils down to:
“If you don’t count the hundreds of thousands of dollars I spend every year, you’d see that I don’t much money to spend on things.”
slag
Clearly this idiot is a liberal plant just trying to make conservatives look like over-privileged, under-informed douchebags.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Jman: Henderson’s original post can be found on Google cache(or it was as of a few days ago).
Bill Arnold
@jonas:
Made me look them up (yay wikipedia!):
Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003
The 2003 act was the one where the vote was 50/50 in the Senate with Cheney as a tiebreaker (2 democrats yea, 3 republicans nay).
Poopyman
@MattR: Ah! I had been trying double hyphens. Thanks!
The Dangerman
The guy is basically this week’s internet laughing stock.
Well deserved.
I’m just trying to picture how stupid one has to be to post that level of “woe is me” shit when a lot of people are sleeping in their cars right now.
Terminally stupid, FWIW.
Omnes Omnibus
@Larry Signor: Because it is amusing. Henderson clearly subscribes lock, stock and barrel to the law and economics school-ok, he is at U of C, so it figures. Law and economics, to my way of thinking, is a horrible, horrible school of jurisprudence. It reduces everything in the law to an economic cost benefit analysis, thus writing off any concept of justice and fair play. I am not an economist, but I also think that L&E rests on some half-assed ideas about economics as well.
ricky
With all the time saved by ending his unappreciated blogging, perhaps
Prof. Henderson can do a neighbor’s lawn as well as his own to pick up some extra cash.
Southern Beale
Yes.
You see, it’s that same entitlement BS we see from those “fighter pilots of capitalism” on Whaaah Street. “I went to Wharton BY GAWD I am entitled to my $30 million bonus!”
What I don’t get are these Teanuts who hear this and go, “yeah! Fuck yeah!” Back during the Great Depression a real torch-and-pitchfork mob would have set upon these assholes.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Nylund: With the McMegan sycophants, sure. After all, that’s where he teaches.
aimai
@Omnes Omnibus:
Correct. Law and Economics is just a hideous intellectual error. Lawyers playing at being economists and economists playing at being lawyers. (I used to be at the Bar Foundation in Chicago. Those people were awful).
aimai
Steve
@GVG:
Try to carry them out? Is there a long list of bloggers who have been murdered by angry commentors? I’d settle for attempted murder, but I haven’t heard any examples of that either. Sure, death threats are despicable, but let’s not overdramatize this.
eemom
@Redshift:
UGH.
Thanks for the info, but I probably shouldn’t have asked. Now I KNOW I should shoot myself for living in this asshole’s district.
Of course, I still gotta vote for him. I was thinking of doing some outreach to folks I know in the neighborhood to make sure that they do too, but it is SO galling to have to argue, “Speaker Boner, Fimian Worse” when that is exactly the same line the smug asshole is using to justify his assholery.
Good on ya for calling out his spokesbot, though.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Ailuridae
@Omnes Omnibus:
Somebody could easily write an InstaPutz style mocking of the Posner/Epstein cadre of U of C law professors. Lest anyone forget these folks were the original beneficiaries of wing nut welfare
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/Lawecon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Olin_Foundation
eemom
@Nimm:
Yep, you have just nutshelled the entire Chicago School of Economics.
RobNYNY1957
That was the same Steve Forbes, who, when asked what the greatest challenge he had ever overcome in life, replied “Going to Princeton.”
ChrisS
It reduces everything in the law to an economic cost benefit analysis,
Except when it cuts against their ideology. WHAT?! CLIMATE CHANGE WON’T COST ANYTHING! and it’s not happening. it’s natural. it’s a conspiracy. Then, of course, the costs can’t be quantified in any meaningful (to them) way, while benefits are sacrosanct to America’s moral being.
scav
test
ETA: the Vatican has eaten my last two posts. hee hee. their banker is whining about having to obey regulations. the nerve of it! Let’s see if I can sneak past the albino FYWP this way.
mslarry
@Alwhite:
oh god, i didn’t remember that… jeez people who believe and propose this shit are total asshats.
mslarry
@Alwhite:
oh god, i didn’t remember that… jeez people who believe and propose this shit are total asshats.
ChrisS
And B) for fuck sakes, has this guy ever looked at the comments to Krugman post? Nut-picking the trolls on the internet is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Hell, I get vicious personal attacks on shit I post and I’m not even a rich asshole with a large audience.
jman
@GVG: I read the comments on Henderson’s posts and found many supporting Henderson. Those that were critical were civil although commenters were not pulling their punches. I can see where university professors might not be used to commentary like that from their students but law school professors should be able to handle what was offered in the comments. And they should be able to make arguments that are not so inflammatory to so many people. Also.
Ailuridae
@RobNYNY1957:
And, of course, Forbes was only admitted to Princeton because he dad donated a huge sum of money.
Forbes College
Martin
Shorter Todd Henderson:
My wife is PISSED that I acted like a WATB in public, with my full credentials attached. My colleagues are now openly mocking me. Can someone please throw dirt over this hole I’ve just climbed into?
JGabriel
Steve:
Nor is it that difficult to imagine her saying to her husband, “What do you think happens to people with preemie babies when they only have a tenth of our income, and no doctors in the family?”
.
Nom de Plume
It’s an odd feature of human nature, but almost no one seems to think they’ve got it good enough. I think what happens is that one’s lifestyle adjusts according to one’s income, i.e., we spend what we make. And if we’ve had a chance to grow accustomed to that level, anything that’s taken away seems like an awful privation. This, as I said, seems to cut across all income levels, which explains how someone could be all broken up over having to fire the maid.
Not that it makes him any less of a douche, of course.
Larry Signor
@Omnes Omnibus: It was amusing. Typical freshwater economics/law. His view would be that steroid use in professional sports is a positive aspect because it enhances enterprise value for team owners.
John Bird
. . . what a tool. At least he admits that he shouldn’t have been blogging in the first place in his “farewell address” and that he fundamentally misunderstood how posting his opinions on the Internet would lead to people reading and responding to his opinions on the Internet.
Although . . . I, uh, thought ‘fee-fee’ meant something else.
Svensker
@soonergrunt:
Hey, sooner, welcome back! Sorry about your budget problems but so very very glad your heart problem got solved. Yay!
themann1086
My response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHzHHb9SNrQ
Redshift
@eemom: Well, at least you can take comfort that “Speaker Boehner” was just his argument for why people who disagreed with everything he was saying should support him; it wasn’t his primary argument.
Also, the whole discussion was prompted by someone who has knocked doors for him, and was asking because she’d heard about it from targeted voters. It was good to hear that there’s some push-back that’s not just from politics-obsessed bloggers.
Overall, it was interesting, though infuriating. Dems with positions like his frequently draw reactions around here that they’re only concerned with having a high-paying job to go to, not with winning, and I don’t think that’s true. They may be utterly wrongheaded and in favor of things that are bad for the country, but they definitely want to win and think this is the way to do it. Some of it they sincerely believe, some of it they’ve convinced themselves of to justify to themselves doing nice things for the rich people who’ve supported their campaigns, but you don’t get to Congress if you don’t really really want to be there, and there are few there who don’t really really want to stay.
John Bird
@Nimm:
Nice.
Omnes Omnibus
@Larry Signor: Bingo.
Svensker
@Nylund:
Why, yes. Yes, he did.
Redshift
@Nom de Plume: I’ve read research that above a certain basic level, the health effects of income are more correlated with income disparity than with absolute levels. That is, if you make a certain amount and everyone around you makes about the same, you’ll have better health than if you make the same amount and everyone around you makes more. That’s why Brad DeLong’s discussion of perceived wealth in his response to this guy resonated with me.
Of course, it makes conservative policies driving skyrocketing income inequality even more evil. Pity we can’t convince douches like this guy of the truth of that.
Redshift
@Svensker: Well, if you believe his GBCW, he wasn’t trying to gain sympathy for his own personal situation by posting about his own personal situation, he was trying to provoke a discussion about the terrible effect on the economy of his possibly having to fire the maid and the gardener. That very important discussion got drowned in the response to his overwhelming douchebaggery. How sad.
Sentient Puddle
In an effort to try and stop commenting about politics today, I will relate stuff to video games. For instance, insider trading.
The Railroad Tycoon games have a stock market based on the robber baron era of industry, a time when you could get away with a lot of shit on the stock market. One of the things I occasionally did around mid-game was sell off all the stock I had in my company that I had been accumulating up to that point (and maybe sell short some more shares to get a little extra green), let the price tank to just a little above the point where the board of directors would have my head, buy as much as I could back, then rebuild my company, sending my prices through the roof (net gain because my share of the company was greater than before). If it left me with a huge stake in the company, I would adjust the dividend to essentially launder the company’s profit to my personal bank account.
So yeah, insider trading encourages the company owners to be more productive, or whatever the shit he said? Yeah, maybe after forcing the company to go to shit in a broader attempt to manipulate the market.
Midnight Marauder
@GVG:
You’re right. It can just be easily dismissed as utter stupidity and obtuseness, since he never faced anything even remotely close to an actual “lynch mob.”
There was no one breaking into his house in the middle of the night, violently pulling him out of bed in front of his wife and children, taking him out into the darkened forest, and then taking pure delight in stringing him up from a tree that most likely no one would ever come across, subsequently leaving his wife without a husband and his children without a father.
There is a clear definition of what a “lynch mob” means, and it’s well past time that people start stepping up to put these know-nothing assholes in their place as to its proper meaning.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Big effing deal. I’ve endured electronic disembowelment, virtual crucifixion, and online shoah the likes of which he can’t even comprehend. What a piker.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): I once suffered a digital hangnail.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): I once suffered a digital hangnail.
aimai
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): I’ve got to say I really love the “online shoah” comment. Myself, I was battered in a techno-tsunami that destroyed my online hut.
aimai
geg6
@Larry Signor:
Hmmm. I don’t consider that a “bright side” sort of thing at all. I consider it asinine High Broderism on the part of a guy who I thought was a bit more intelligent than Broder. Seems I was wrong about that.
debbie
He, like Tea Party candidates, will tolerate no questions. “Just shut up and let me pontificate, you peons!”
pragmatism
someone tell the waaaaaaaaahmbulance driver that his siren is too loud. i can’t hear a thing now. sit tight professor, they’re on the way but may stop for an italian beef en route.
liberal
@Omnes Omnibus:
Problem is that a lot of those ideas are fairly well-ingrained in economics. E.g. the Coase Theorem. (Which is wrong because of wealth effects.)
eemom
@geg6:
Yes, because Broder is so well known for his frequent efforts to motivate “sane” people to join together in a positive political statement in the nation’s capital 4 days before a major election.
And because SOOOO many people planning to attend Stewart’s rally are in fact Republicans.
I find it absolutely amazing that just because YOU don’t like Stewart, you find it necessary to piss on his rally in response to every single commenter who announces plans to attend.
Professor
@El Cid: No that is not the worry. The worry is that there will NOT be largess of money for the military industrial complex! Who do you think will buy all the unnecessary nuclear weaponery, Trident et al?
Omnes Omnibus
@liberal: I have problems with Coase in addition to those posed by wealth effects. For one thing, the Coase Theorem is based on the idea that there is one and only one Pareto efficient outcome to any problem. This is not true; most problems are complex enough that there can be several Pareto efficient outcomes. In addition, the Coase theorem is based on an assumption of equal bargaining power-and the belief that each player will be treating a negotiation as a spot transaction. Neither of these assumptions holds in the real world. I could go on for several pages, but I will stop here. Coase works in limited circumstances where very specific limits are in place.
Hugin & Munin
eemom: Pot, meet the Greenwaldian kettle, you fucking moron.
geg6
@eemom:
As usual, you have no clue what you’re talking about but that never stops you.
First, who said I don’t like Stewart? I have been, until the last week or two since he announced his stupid rally, one of his biggest fans.
Second, Stewart’s rally and his whole shtick on this is most fucking certainly High Broderism of the worst possible sort. I know you aren’t one to pay attention to details, especially when they don’t line up with your prejudices, but you might want to look into them in this case because your comment makes you sound even more clueless than you usually are.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4346683/jon-stewart-in-no-spin-zone/
Listen to who he’s aiming at here with this stupid rally. It’s not Democrats. It’s not the left. It’s not progressives or liberals. It’s the middle. Because, as he says himself, both sides are identically too extreme. If there is any more clear and succinct definition of High Broderism, I don’t know what it would be.
It’s just like your insane insistence so often here that anyone who criticizes the President hates him and is some sort of rabid Firebagger. Apparently, Jon Stewart is now sacrosanct and if you criticize his stupid, terrible ideas, it’s because you hate him, not because the ideas are stupid and terrible.
Jeebus, you’re nuts.
eemom
@geg6:
wow, I’m impressed you gathered the courage to respond to me directly for once. You know, instead of just sucking the dick of any male commenter who calls me names.
I may be nuts, but you’re an anger-obsessed, bile-spewing shrew. I’d say I got the better end of that deal.
Joe Lisboa
Fuck this guy and his fake fucking apology / whine-session. Absolutely sick to death of these plutocrats and apologists crying a river and then promptly getting lodged up it sans paddle because they have the (in his words, which make me laugh as a fellow professor) professorial audacity to push boundaries. Welcome to the experience of the vast majority of your fellow human beings, asshole(s). Congratulations on pushing the boundary which suggests that the wealthy are superior AND HAVE IT SO HARD. WAA. Fucking rot in hell, shithead.
There, that feels better. But not much.
scottinnj
Lay off Henderson, he’s had it rough. Mind you not as rough as the 44 million Americans living in poverty, though.
Paris
I’m very happy today that I don’t live anywhere near Tooooodddd or his douchey acquaintances. Sometimes we are not grateful for the things we didn’t know exist. Now we know that our lives could be much worse off – we could know Prof. Henderson.
catclub
@geg6:
Without actually seeing what Jon Stewart is saying,
I would venture that his idea of what the middle
is, in contrast to what the Village thinks the middle is,
is enough different to not make his rally high broderism.
For instance, I remember him making fun of people who think it is obvious that we have to be in Iraq and Afghanistan forever. Which is the Village line.
If i’m wrong, its online shoah for me.
Corner Stone
@eemom:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Holy….Holy..Shit..choking to death…choking..ahhh…
Cain
@mslarry:
A flat tax won’t work.. we use taxes as a way to change behavior. So for instance, if you give to charitable causes that takes away from total taxable income etc. The 450K guy is still going to be unhappy with the 10%. He’s going to want to make that as little as he can. There is no tax rate that is acceptable essentially for these dudes.
cain
aimai
@eemom:
“sucking the dick of any male commenter…?” That’s disgusting, even for you eemom. You really are exhibiting quite the pathology here.
aimai
geg6
@catclub:
He says the rally is for those in the middle who are sick of the extremes on both sides. And how anyone other than a denizen of the leftiest of the lefty blogosphere would know a single thing about anything the far left says or does is a mystery. Because the far left is never in the conversation as far as the msm is concerned, so how anyone can get upset about what they think is somewhat puzzling. The far left (and I’m not even sure who that is these days) somehow = The Teabaggers.
If that isn’t High Broderism, then I don’t know what is.
eemom
@aimai:
ooooh sowwy! I didn’t know your sensibilities were so very very dainty.
Yes, that WAS the first reference to dick sucking ever to be hurled in a flame war on this blog.
Or is it disgusting because we’re GIRLS?
Self-important twit.
geg6
@aimai:
And she wonders why people don’t want to engage her.
I generally don’t reply to people the way I replied to her above, but she has driven me to it over time.
eemom
@Corner Stone:
I SOOOO knowed you’d show up for this, Cornie. Would’ve bet the rent on it.
You and geg are the perfect pair.
eemom
@geg6:
no, actually, I don’t wonder that, because I obviously have no reason to.
I just wonder why for someone who talks so tough you’re actually such a chickenshit that you depend on men to “engage” for YOU.
geg6
@eemom:
LOL!
You really are completely insane.
Corner Stone
@eemom: You “knowed” it?
Good for you! Good for you.
Couldn’t care less about geg or anyone else. But it is flat hilarious that you would call anyone else “you’re an anger-obsessed, bile-spewing shrew”
If anyone bothered to summarize you, that would go a long way to defining your putrid essence.
eemom
@Corner Stone:
Suuuure Cornie. Let’s talk about MY putrid essence.
How many people on this blog have you called stupid, idiots, liars, and various other things just because they posted one or two comments that your tiny little mind couldn’t process? Hmmm?
Omnes Omnibus
It figures. I post something vaguely intellectual and the next bunch of posts are an unrelated flame war. I guess I learned my lesson.
Omnes Omnibus
It figures. I post something vaguely intellectual and the next bunch of posts are an unrelated flame war. I guess I learned my lesson.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s right. I felt so strongly about it, I posted it twice.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: You’ve been feeling pretty strongly about quite a lot lately.
Maybe you should hit the beach.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I’m in Wisconsin. Plus, I am not a beach person; Madame Omnibus has gotten me to them a few times, but they don’t do a lot for me. Moreover, I blame FYWP or the wireless mouse I use with the laptop.
Cain
Wow, this thread turned kinda nasty. We’re supposed to be attacking the other guys!
cain
eemom
@Cain:
That’s kind of why I think it makes no sense for people to piss on Stewart’s rally. Which was the disgusting, pathological thing I said that started it all.
Larry Signor
@geg6: Darn, I didn’t think it would come to all that. You object to restoring sanity? It’s just an afternoon at the park. High Broderism? Can someone explain that to me?
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: I have a good friend who moved to Wiscy with his girlfriend while she finished school, and they subsequently moved back to TX (Galveston) so she could do UTMB.
Anyway, I have wanted to take my son to WI for a summer vacation the last couple years for the beautiful lakes but honestly, travel arrangements from TX are pretty damn hard, and expensive.
They just don’t make it easy to eat the cheese.
Larry Signor
@Omnes Omnibus: I took my grandson fishing, which turned out to be the pleasant alternative. I still hope to see y’all at the mall. Hell of a swimmin’ hole there.
Wile E. Quixote
@Omnes Omnibus:
Damn. And here I was using my special Balloon Juice™ 3-D glasses and trying to make those two posts converge into one so they’d be all 3-D and shit and just pop right out of the screen.
Binzinerator
@JGabriel:
Yeah, that’s his idea of “just a bit over $250,000”. Dude’s not only a whiny self-entitled asshole, he’s a liar.
@Ailuridae:
There are damn few who aren’t.
Privileged that is. They’re always assholes.
Wile E. Quixote
@Omnes Omnibus:
Blame WordPress. Having to work with WordPress is like an online Chicxulub impact.*
*OK, I’ll admit it, compared to electronic disembowelment, virtual crucifixion, and online shoah online Chicxulub impact is pretty lame.
geg6
@Larry Signor:
No, I object to anyone who equates the far left with the far right. Which is exactly what Stewart has been doing with this, in his announcement of the rally and in every single interview he has given since. High Broderism (can’t believe someone on BJ doesn’t know the reference by now!) is equating both ends of the political spectrum, as if both are equal in power and influence in their respective parties and in the public discourse and fetishizing the mushy middle as the fount of all political wisdom as if slicing the baby in half solves all child custody disputes. It’s idiotic and destructive to any sort of solutions and Stewart is douche for buying into it. Period.
asiangrrlMN
Ahem. I would just like to say that in like of this excerpt:
I will be having a two-for-one sale on rusty pitchforks today.
He’s a dick. Instead of admitting he’s a dick, he compounds it by blaming everyone else. I’m sure he got some hateful bile on the subject (which I would sympathize with him about if he weren’t making a big old drama scene about it), but for the most part, I’m betting the emails were people succinctly telling him what a dick he is.
@Omnes Omnibus: I, for one, am enjoying your multiple posts. They amuse me.
different church-lady
@klondike:
Cain
@Corner Stone:
Try getting an Indian visa sometime. Those fuckers changed the rules so that I have to get the original passport I came into the country in back in 1974 or a copy of your green card (which you won’t have because you surrender it when you get your citizenship) So you have to file a FOIA request to get it. The thing is, they do it so that can check to see if you came to the U.S. seeking asylum.
They want to deny anybody coming in who seeked asylum here because the people who did were doing the whole Khalistan thing (homeland for sikhs) and so if you left because you were doing sedition..
but it translates to a shitload of pain for the rest of us. Oh yeah, if you want to visit India you will have to have a birth certificate (translatd to english if it is not in english) What will Obama DO?!
cain
Keith G
@eemom: 3657.
But he’s been off his game lately.
General Stuck
Damn, an all girl flame war and I missed it. With Corner Stone square in the middle, some days it doesn’t pay to go galt.
Larry Signor
@geg6: We seem to have a different understanding of High Broderism. The extremes on both poles are equally impotent. Most Americans don’t give a shit about the periphery. We also don’t want to be browbeaten by a Beltway Elite who intuitively know what is in our best interests. This
rallyattitude is sanity, not Broderism. I’m sureWikipediaUrban Dictionary has a nice definition of Broderism for you to reference.frosty
@soonergrunt: I always wondered how they won the Battle of Britain. Here’s the Germans, attacking with fighters made essentially by BMW (Bayerische Flugzeugwerken) against fighters that most likely were sparked by Lucas, “Prince of Darkness”.
frosty
@Nimm: Thread winnah heah!!!!
bemused
What a dope this Henderson guy is. He seriously didn’t have even a teeny, tiny thought that he might get some heavy ridicule or criticism? A lot of conservatives never learned the ‘look before you leap’ lesson. Then they are all shocked when the shit hits the fan and turn snot-nosed weepy.
eemom
Shorter geg:
And then there’s:
and
uh huh. Does split personality count as “sane”?
Peter
I’m just going to pop in quickly to say that unless you are actually a black person being chased down, beaten and killed by a bunch of white people for no reason but the color of your skin, you probably should not be tossing the word Lynch around.
buckyblue
Two words. Grow A Pair.
300baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Would you? On a blog? I would read that with enthusiasm.
Michael E Sullivan
I note that we’ve established new definitions.
If you are a black man in Georgia in 1945, beating you to death doesn’t make it a lynching — there’s got to be rope involved.
On the other hand, if you are a rich white Republican law professor, apparently all it takes is some nasty emails.