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How the 'Real Housewives' Reveal Race, Culture and Wealth Issues in LA and NY |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=38164"><span class="small">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Hollywood Reporter</span></a>
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Thursday, 27 April 2017 13:42 |
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Abdul-Jabbar writes: "Were they alive today, I'm sure the great thinkers like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Simone de Beauvoir would all agree: Every burning question we have about American culture can be profoundly answered by watching The Real Housewives."
The cast of the Real Housewives of New York City. (photo: Bravo)
How the 'Real Housewives' Reveal Race, Culture and Wealth Issues in LA and NY
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Hollywood Reporter
27 April 17
 ere they alive today, I’m sure the great thinkers like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Simone de Beauvoir would all agree: Every burning question we have about American culture can be profoundly answered by watching The Real Housewives. This is particularly true when it comes to understanding the subtle yet significant differences between New York City and Los Angeles lifestyles and mind-sets. A closer examination of the Zen of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Real Housewives of New York reveals the major cultural contrasts between the home of the NYC middle-finger salute and the home of the SoCal "hang loose" hand wave.
First, my bona fides for commenting on both cities: I grew up in New York City and spent much of my youth in Harlem, where I played street ball, frequented jazz clubs, got caught in a race riot and spent a summer as a journalism intern, during which I even interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Although I traveled throughout the city and all its boroughs, I felt at home on the streets of Harlem, among the black faces — including the black mannequins in store windows — and the jazz and soul music leaking from transistor radios on the street. Even after my four years living under relentlessly cheerful Southern California sun while playing at UCLA, my dream was to return to New York when I turned pro.
I ended up in Milwaukee, caught between both coasts. The people there were gracious, generous and supportive, but when the opportunity arose to play for the Los Angeles Lakers, I chose Southern California, where I have lived for more than 40 years. I frequently visit New York for business and pleasure but return to L.A. to live my life. Whenever the plane approaches JFK Airport, I feel a buzz of excitement in my chest because I know something unpredictable and spontaneous will happen. When the plane approaches LAX, my whole body relaxes because I know I'll be home soon, among friends and family. The city is soothingly predictable.
It may seem challenging to see any differences between the Real Housewives who represent these two cities. The women are all wealthy, squabble about who owes whom an apology, openly seek beauty rejuvenation treatments, drink a lot of wine and hungrily hunt for ways to alchemize their television fame into lucrative business opportunities from shoes to vodka to toaster ovens. Plus, they are all white, which is odd, since only 33 percent of New York and 29.4 percent of L.A. is white. Last season RHONY wives had a half-Asian, half-Jewish castmember, but she is already off the show. Women of color have their own delightfully entertaining Bravo shows — Real Housewives of Atlanta and Real Housewives of the Potomac — but maybe the lack of color on the New York and Beverly Hills shows is an honest reflection of the unconscious segregation of the upper classes in both cities. Maybe this is a reflection of last year's #OscarsSoWhite problem in L.A. and New York's popular but discontinued stop-and-frisk policy that targeted mostly people of color. Both cities have racial problems they'd rather not deal with, and the Real Housewives also choose not to deal with it. It's not a criticism, just an observation that among the wealthy elite in both cities, there's no one of color they hang out with on camera.
What the Real Housewives don't share is the same attitude toward earning one's wealth. New York is the city of self-made hustlers who are driven to prove themselves in the crucible of merciless competition and high failure rates. L.A. is where people move once they're rich and famous. Sure, the L.A. tar pits are brimming with the melting skeletons of all the Hollywood wannabes who never La-La-Landed on the big screen. But their quest seems more narcissistic than the driven strivers of New York who come for a broader variety of pursuits, not just showbiz.
Although some married into wealth, many of the New York women are self-made. They earned success before fame. Bethenny Frankel is the most obvious success story, having risen from personal chef to head of a multimillion-dollar business. Her success culminated on the show, but she was always the hardest-working woman on either franchise. No matter what you think of Ramona Singer's wacky antics, she didn't shirk the daily grind that built her wholesale clothing and religious jewelry businesses long before going on TV. Heather Thomson ran her own fashion business before TV fame. And Carole Radziwill was a successful journalist and author. They were the ambitious go-getters that define the spirit of New York City.
The women in Beverly Hills mostly married or inherited their wealth. Some had brief acting or dancing careers, but few built businesses by themselves. Many of the businesses they are involved in now are a direct result of their TV fame. Only Eileen Davidson has single-handedly forged her career as an actor. Lisa Vanderpump's restaurant empire was built before the show but financed by her millionaire husband, Ken Todd. None of this means that the women should have taken on careers rather than the infinitely challenging job of raising children, or that what they are doing now is any less important than what they did before TV fame, or that they aren't working hard at whatever projects they are currently developing. It just highlights a difference between the scrappy up-by-the-bootstrappers of New York City and the glamly-come-lately of Beverly Hills.
For me, it comes down to this: If the women on both shows were stranded on a desert island for a year, when the rescue ship came, I'd bet on the cast of New York to be the survivors.
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Why Trans People Have a Constitutional Right to Change Their Birth Certificates |
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Thursday, 27 April 2017 13:26 |
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Skinner-Thompson writes: "In a pair of new lawsuits filed this month, Lambda Legal powerfully explains why the Constitution requires that transgender people be permitted to change the gender marker on their birth certificates to accurately reflect their identity."
The Constitution protects trans people's right to correct the gender on their birth certificates. (photo: Habari1/Thinkstock)
Why Trans People Have a Constitutional Right to Change Their Birth Certificates
By Scott Skinner-Thompson, Slate
27 April 17
 n a pair of new lawsuits filed this month, Lambda Legal powerfully explains why the Constitution requires that transgender people be permitted to change the gender marker on their birth certificates to accurately reflect their identity. While an increasing number of jurisdictions permit people to more easily change the gender marker on their birth certificates, drivers’ licenses, or other government identification documents, several jurisdictions still require proof of surgery in order to change the gender marker. And a handful, including Idaho, Tennessee, and Puerto Rico, do not permit gender marker changes to a birth certificate under any circumstances.
As outlined in the Lambda lawsuits, which challenge the Idaho and Puerto Rico policies, identification documents such as birth certificates are in many ways the gateway to accessing a whole panoply of societal benefits, including employment and housing opportunities. And these restrictive policies act as gatekeepers—burdening transgender people’s ability to participate in and enjoy public life. For instance, in order to obtain employment, people are often required to submit proof of identity and employment authorization, including a birth certificate. If the gender listed on the birth certificate does not comport with an individual’s expressed identity, intimate information about their identity, including their transgender status, could be outed, subjecting them to discrimination or even violence. The Supreme Court has suggested that the Constitution’s substantive due process protections circumscribe the government’s ability to disclose such intimate, sensitive information.
In a pair of new lawsuits filed this month, Lambda Legal powerfully explains why the Constitution requires that transgender people be permitted to change the gender marker on their birth certificates to accurately reflect their identity. While an increasing number of jurisdictions permit people to more easily change the gender marker on their birth certificates, drivers’ licenses, or other government identification documents, several jurisdictions still require proof of surgery in order to change the gender marker. And a handful, including Idaho, Tennessee, and Puerto Rico, do not permit gender marker changes to a birth certificate under any circumstances.
As outlined in the Lambda lawsuits, which challenge the Idaho and Puerto Rico policies, identification documents such as birth certificates are in many ways the gateway to accessing a whole panoply of societal benefits, including employment and housing opportunities. And these restrictive policies act as gatekeepers—burdening transgender people’s ability to participate in and enjoy public life. For instance, in order to obtain employment, people are often required to submit proof of identity and employment authorization, including a birth certificate. If the gender listed on the birth certificate does not comport with an individual’s expressed identity, intimate information about their identity, including their transgender status, could be outed, subjecting them to discrimination or even violence. The Supreme Court has suggested that the Constitution’s substantive due process protections circumscribe the government’s ability to disclose such intimate, sensitive information.
In fact, some courts have already ruled that laws strictly limiting a person’s ability to change the gender marker on a government identification run afoul of constitutional privacy protections. In K.L. v. Alaska, a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, an Alaska court ruled that the state’s failure to have a policy permitting individuals to change the gender marker on their driver’s license impermissibly interfered with transgender people’s right to privacy under the state constitution. Similarly, in another ACLU lawsuit, a federal court in Michigan concluded that Michigan’s restrictive policy for changing the gender marker on a driver’s license implicated the fundamental right to informational privacy under the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
But birth certificates and identification documents are about more than accessing government programs, obtaining jobs, maintaining privacy, and staying safe—important as those things are. They also center on the very basic yet critically important ability of each of us to say and define who we are. Does the government get to decide that? The doctor who quickly made the initial determination? Or does each individual get to exercise autonomy over their identity? That right lies with the individual.
And so, for that reason, the brave plaintiffs in these lawsuits also assert a due process right to gender autonomy. As Justice Anthony Kennedy explained in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision overturning bans on same-sex marriage, “[t]he Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.” (Emphasis added.)
In addition to these important due process claims, the lawsuits also argue that the birth certificate policies discriminate on the basis of sex-based characteristics and transgender status in contravention of constitutional equal protection guarantees. In this way, the suits build off other recent rulings recognizing that discrimination against transgender people is forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause, either because it is a form of sex discrimination or because transgender status itself is a protected characteristic.
Finally, the lawsuits assert that forcing transgender people to affiliate with an inaccurate gender by saddling them with an incorrect birth certificate compels transgender individuals to embrace speech they disagree with. By forcing transgender individuals to send an inaccurate message about their gender, these laws compel unwanted expression about the most sensitive of subjects. In that sense, they likely run afoul of the First Amendment, which bars the government from coercing individuals into sending a message they disagree with.
All told, these new birth certificate lawsuits serve an important doctrinal and discursive role in explaining why access to accurate birth certificates is of crucial, constitutional importance for transgender people: It is about autonomy, privacy, expression, and so much more. Of course, separate and apart from identity documents, transgender people face a host of barriers to surviving, much less thriving. As with same-sex marriage rights, “a certificate on paper isn’t going to solve it all—but it’s a damn good place to start.”
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FOCUS: Trump's Tax Plan Looks Like a Plutocrat's Dream |
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Thursday, 27 April 2017 11:51 |
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Cassidy writes: "Although the nuts and bolts of Trump's tax plan remain unclear or unformed, leaks and public statements from Administration officials this week have confirmed three key things about what he intends to do."
The nuts and bolts of Trump's tax plan remain unclear, but Administration officials have confirmed some of what he intends to do. (photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty)
Trump's Tax Plan Looks Like a Plutocrat's Dream
By John Cassidy, The New Yorker
27 April 17
 ccording to news accounts, the tax plan that the Trump Administration will release on Wednesday won’t be a comprehensive proposal but, rather, a statement of general principles—a glorified wish list. It’s well known in Washington that the staffers working for Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, and Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, are a good ways away from drafting a detailed proposal, and that the only reason the Administration is making an announcement this week is that the President demanded one in advance of Saturday, which marks his hundredth day in office.
It’s tempting to dismiss the whole thing as a publicity stunt, but that would be a mistake. Although the nuts and bolts of Trump’s tax plan remain unclear or unformed, leaks and public statements from Administration officials this week have confirmed three key things about what he intends to do:
1. Trump will propose a cut in the corporate-income-tax rate, from thirty-five per cent to fifteen per cent, and this will be combined with a mechanism to allow big corporations to repatriate taxable earnings currently being held abroad to pay an even lower rate.
2. The Administration appears determined to overhaul the personal tax code, cutting the top rate and reducing the number of tax brackets—despite recent arguments made against such measures from economists who advised Trump during the campaign.
3. There is a huge hole on the revenue side. Trump’s advisers have reportedly rejected House Speaker Paul Ryan’s proposal for a big new tax on imports, and they haven’t yet settled on which, if any, of the loopholes in the tax code they will close. In the absence of any direct revenue enhancers, Trump’s advisers are relying on faster economic growth to boost tax receipts and prevent the budget deficit from ballooning. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said the tax-cutting plan would “pay for itself.”
In assessing the Administration’s approach, the question to ask is: Will these measures help alleviate the most pressing economic problems facing the country, such as sharply rising inequality and the stagnant growth in wages and productivity? The short answer is no. In all likelihood, wages and productivity would be largely unaffected by Trump’s tax cuts. And, since the giveaways would be concentrated on the very rich, measures of post-tax inequality would rise.
Trump’s supporters and some conservative economists would disagree with these conclusions, of course. Their argument is familiar: that cutting taxes, particularly corporate taxes, would unleash a wave of investment, innovation, and growth, in turn boosting wages. But the supporting evidence is weak. In the past ten years, Britain has cut its corporate tax rate from thirty per cent to nineteen per cent. The share of gross fixed-capital formation in G.D.P. is still much lower than it was in the nineteen-seventies, when the tax rate on corporations was more than fifty per cent. And wage growth was a lot stronger back then, too.
Because of all the loopholes in the U.S. tax code, the effective corporate tax rate is already a lot lower than the official rate of thirty-five per cent. In a 2014 study, the Congressional Research Service estimated that the average rate paid by large corporations was 21.7 per cent. A study by the group Citizens for Tax Justice found that the effective rate was 19.4 per cent. Although levelling the playing field at fifteen per cent would boost after-tax corporate profits somewhat, it’s hard to see that translating into big gains in capital investment and wages. Even Ben Bernanke, the former Fed chairman—who supports this type of reform—conceded to the Times that its impact would be modest. “I don’t think it’s going to create a productivity miracle or anything like that. . . . It would probably improve investment a little bit,” he said.
It is also important to note that Bernanke and most other economists who support this approach endorse revenue-neutral reform, which isn’t what the Administration seems likely to offer. Ryan’s proposal is to offset some of the lost revenues by introducing a sizable “border-adjustment tax” on imports, but the White House apparently doesn’t like this idea. Trump and his advisers also seem reluctant to mess with politically popular tax breaks, such as deductions for mortgage interest and charitable giving. Instead, they have reverted to magical thinking.
According to the nonpartisan Center for Tax Policy, cutting the corporate rate to fifteen per cent would cost about $2.4 trillion over ten years. If you add in all the personal-income-tax cuts that Trump proposed during last year’s campaign, the tab comes to about $6.2 trillion.* Even the original Voodoo Economists in the Reagan Administration would have blanched at claims that more rapid economic growth could close a fiscal hole of this size. If the White House persists with its flaky argument, it will have trouble selling its plan to deficit hawks in the Republican Party, let alone to Democrats.
Finally, there is the basic unfairness of it all. In his address to Congress at the end of February, Trump said that he would provide “massive tax relief for the middle class.” But, from everything we know, the primary beneficiaries of his plan will be the very rich. As highly paid executives, they stand to reap big gains from a cut in the top income-tax rate. As owners of so-called pass-through businesses and investment partnerships, they stand to gain from the cut in the corporate tax rate. And as major owners of corporate equities, they stand to gain from the profit-repatriation scheme, the proceeds of which are likely to be largely used for stock buybacks and other financial-engineering schemes.
Until we see the final Trump plan, it won’t be possible to estimate the exact scale of these giveaways. But when the Tax Policy Center looked at Trump’s campaign proposal, which seems to be the basis for what the White House and Treasury Department are working on, they found that more than half of the tax cuts would go to the richest five per cent of households in the country; about two-fifths would go to the richest one per cent; and about a fifth would go to the richest 0.01 per cent.
Doubtless, Trump will persist with the claim that he is working on a populist plan designed to get the economy going. In actuality, he is cooking up a fiscally irresponsible gift to plutocrats.
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FOCUS | Trump Stumped: Tax Cut Based on His D-Student Misunderstanding of Economics |
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Thursday, 27 April 2017 11:02 |
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Palast writes: "Trump claims his big tax cut will pay for itself based on his D-student misunderstanding of the 'Laffer Curve.' Economist Art Laffer, my mentor at U Chicago, showed how cutting taxes could produce more tax revenue, a theorem he famously drew on a napkin."
President Trump has pointed to the growth linked to tax cuts passed by previous presidents when promoting his plan. (photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times)
Trump Stumped: Tax Cut Based on His D-Student Misunderstanding of Economics
By Greg Palast, Greg Palast's Website
27 April 17
 rump claims his big tax cut will pay for itself based on his D-student misunderstanding of the "Laffer Curve." Economist Art Laffer, my mentor at U Chicago, showed how cutting taxes could produce more tax revenue, a theorem he famously drew on a napkin.
Laffer drew the Curve for me—also on a napkin. (I can’t make this up: Art was addicted to cheeseburgers and always scribbled diagrams as he talked and chowed down. This is a replica of what he showed me—he used the original to wipe up.)
One napkin was shown to Ronald Reagan who, foreshadowing Trump, was too thick to understand it. Like Trump, the Gipper thought that it proved that, 'the lower the tax, the more tax revenue collected.' George Bush Sr. called that "voodoo economics."
Not voodoo, no; but here’s the key—pay attention, A students!— it’s a CURVE. When "marginal" tax rates are ABOVE 90%, cutting to, say, 85%, will actually produce more tax revenue from increased business activity. But at the lower end of the curve, with taxes below 40% as they are now, there’s no tax gain—just the opposite, the Laffer Curve shows tax collections will collapse.
Cutting the corporate rate to 15% from 40% will cause a $4 trillion-dollar tax loss — which non-corporations, that is, working class schmucks who voted for Trump, will have to make up.
Take a look…then wipe that cheese off your chin.
And that ain’t the bottom of the stupid and venal oozing from the Oval Office. The Donald’s tax plan includes opening new loophole called, "territoriality." To translate from the pigs’-Latin, this means that the US can no longer collect taxes on profits of US corporations on their foreign operations.
In other words, THIS IS A MASSIVE TAX BREAK FOR MOVING A FACTORY OVERSEAS. Shifting your plastics factory from Midland, Michigan to Monterey, Mexico means you no longer pay taxes on it. Hey, wasn’t this the guy who said he’d TAX companies that leave the USA?
Well, it looks like he’ll make Mexico great again.
But maybe Trump is no tax dunce—but one very brilliant business man who knows how to dupe his troops. After all, he’s a casino magnate who makes his money by fleecing those suckers in the red trucker hats. Trump knows: the house always wins.
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