Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, December 18, 2023
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47 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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The sad, sad cries of entitlement.
A “Delicate Matter”: Clarence Thomas’ Private Complaints About Money Sparked Fears He Would Resign
Just a suggestion: don’t stay at 5 star resorts or buy toys that you can’t afford.
@Scott:
We should revive and adapt a Roman custom. namely to have the high office holders bear the expenses of their office.
@Scott: Something about Avocado Toast comes to mind.
I never fell asleep last night. I’m still perky and kinda sorta wide awake after being awake for 24 hours. Bedraggled and exhausted, but still awake. I tried twice and laid down for a hour still and tranced out, but no go. I wasn’t feeling stressed or anxious, it just didn’t happen. I was sleep impotent last night. It happens.
I’m certainly not begging for sympathy. I mostly don’t care. I’m retired and live alone. Nothing on my schedule today beyond entertaining myself. To me it’s not a big deal. I prefer to arrange it so that I wake up between seven and eight. But if that doesn’t happen it’s basically inconsequential. I adapt and adjust.
I have the privilege that no one expects me to be somewhere at a specified time today or this entire week. I have to be somewhere at a certain time on the 23rd and 24th, and then it’s entirely clear until New Year’s. And I’ll likely bail on New Year’s.
New Year’s is the worst holiday. I prefer to not be around drunk people. I prefer not to be drunk in public; hell, even very slightly buzzed means I need to go home. I no longer party hearty.
I might an idle, indolent, slothful layabout, but I do prefer to wake up near to dawn.
@de stijl:
Let’s be blunt about this: New Year’s Eve is for jerks.
@Scott:
Hold on! Wait a sec. $267,000 for a fucking RV. In 2000? That is just utterly unfathomable to me. I don’t understand anything about the decision making process that would lead anybody to think my life is incomplete if I don’t have an RV that costs more than a quarter million dollars.
That is just…. I lack words to…. I can’t grok what…. What the actual fuck?!?!
A goddamn RV? $267,000 dollars in 2000 money? In 2000 I was living in a basement apartment in The Wedge neighborhood. I think it was about $400 a month. I took the bus to work cuz parking downtown was wicked expensive. Walked if I was up early.
At that point in my life I was a seasoned camper. I knew enough to not to buy cheap shit. Have a decent tent. Spend more money than you think it should cost on the sleeping pad and sleeping bag. Don’t low-ball skimp and get cheap shit, you don’t need high-end super-fancy, but you will need and want decent gear. This is a thing you do not want to chintz out on. It’ll sting a bit at the check-out, but you’ll thank yourself later, trust me on this.
That is insanity. Why would you ever buy such a thing? I love car camping and do it several times a year. I have a really nice tent. Cost me about 200 dollars three decades ago. A decent set of gear that’ll see me through from late March to late October and in between.
If it rains or storms like crazy sleep in the car. Or go to the nearest motel.
Who in the fuckedy fuck needs a $267,000 RV to camp? Besides, RVs suck to drive. Big, tall, wide, wobbly, bouncy with crap side mirrors. The only campgrounds you can drive into are basic bitch campgrounds directly off the interstate. RVs suck.
Light, small vehicles can get to the off the main drag campgrounds where the cool, awesome people camp.
The point of camping is to experience living outdoors for a short while. Not live temporarily in a medium sized house on wheels. It’s unnatural and ignores the purpose. I’d rather camp out of a bivy bag or under the stars.
@Scott:
With his financial situation, Clarence Thomas probably would not qualify for a security clearance due to his susceptibility for financial co-option by a hostile power.
@de stijl: Quarter mil wasn’t unreasonable for a class a motorhome even in 2000.
And RVs aren’t for camping, either.
@de stijl:
Wasn’t it used too? I could be wrong, but I thought the point of that particular camper was a status symbol. I think the most important thing about Clarence is that he absolutely, wholeheartedly believes that he is smarter and better than just about everyone and deserves to have his ass wiped for him.
@CSK:
Aww boo. I finally convinced my partner to go out on NYE. We’re going to a rave though so it’ll mostly be professional partiers. There’s bound to be one or two people who K-Hole themselves before midnight though.
@de stijl:
@just nutha:
@Beth:
RVs are for rich people too old to play with doll houses.
Ah, things are finally looking up for Xlon. Xitter is under investigation by the EU, for breaking EU laws on disinformation and illegal content.
Oh, ti sounds bad, but there’s this: “Under the Digital Services Act, which came into force in August, a company can be fined 6% of its global income or be banned from operating across the EU if it is found to have breached the law.” (emphasis added).
LOL! What income? Finally we see Xlon’s 11th dementional chess: bankrupt the company so it can’t be fined! Utterly brilliant.
@de stijl:
In Jnne, 2000,I purchased a 2 bedroom, 2 bath house with a huge (for Los Angeles) backyard, in Van Nuys, for $151K. So that RV, in 2000, cost $100 more than my house.
In today’s dollars, that $247K would be $470K. Fortunately, that house appreciated to double that.
@de stijl: They are not camping at KOAs.
@de stijl: I thought I read he was staying in Walmart parking lots.
Because he is a man of the people, you know.
@Scott:
I was planning to write about that and your post gave me the kick in the butt I needed. Folks can comment on the story at this brand spanking new post:
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/what-role-have-gifts-played-in-keeping-justice-thomas-on-the-supreme-court/
@de stijl: It’s a super-fancy brand of RV. He bought that one used…they typically retail for much, much more.
@de stijl:
Much, much sketchier than that. This isn’t the type of RV that middle class retirees buy when they sell the family home in New Jersey and use the proceeds to buy a condo in Florida and a $300K RV. He bought it used, from a “friend” and it is an ultra-luxury brand favored by the uber-wealthy. Even back then they went for well over $1M when new and are heavily customized. In one article I read it said there was virtually no used market for them since the people who bought them didn’t want to buy used, especially since they customized them to their own specifications. The two new ones the manufacturer has in inventory both go for $2.8M dollars, and that’s before customization.
@Chip Daniels:
@just nutha:
Thomas’ problem was that he hung out with very rich people and he has that envy gene / trait. He was making good government money. He had a side gig giving speeches to conservative legal “scholars” i.e., patrons. It didn’t even need to that original, just extemporize over a Power Point and hit the highlights, and we’ll give you 100k for a night; travel and lodging is on us. No future obligation [wink].
Thomas and/or his wife liked being courted by the very influential. Ginni certainly liked it. He wanted to fit in to the extent his income would allow. Hence the $267,000 RV.
I understand a fancily kitted out high-end tour bus can get pretty spendy. But how do you spend a quarter million on an RV? Forget the why, which also baffles me, but how? Is it made of platinum? Also, why would anyone choose to do that with their money?
Thankfully, I was born with the frugal gene / trait. Such concerns and desires are alien to me.
@Joe:
I don’t camp at KOAs. KOA sucks.
I like little known, poorly visited state park campgrounds, national forests campgrounds. BLM land. Black lives do matter, but in this instance Bureau of Land Management. I swear to Odin, BLM manages about half the land in the inter-mountain west. In many cases there are national forests just adjacent to the big national parks like Glacier. And no one thinks to camp there. Certainly not anyone driving an RV. Those are the best spots. Usually empty even in July and August.
I have a go-to site in the Black Hills. I hit it every summer with friends. 8 times out of 10 we are the only folks there and it’s mid July. A lake, a view, a vista, a sky, a night sky devoid of light polution so you can see the sky as our ancestors did, and almost always ours alone. We are responsible. Keep the noise down, pack out what we brought in. Even tidy up the whole site. We might shroom out hard one night and skinny dip, but we do that responsibly and in a neighborly, polite fashion. You can take the boy out of Minnesota, but you can’t take the Minnesota out of the boy. I am unfailingly polite.
@just nutha:
I don’t know man. A really decent class A motorhome costs between $100,000 and $300,000 today.
In 2000 dollars? Well, google “$400,000+ motorhome” and pretty much all of the hits use terms like “ultra luxury,” “rare,” and “nearly the price of your own Supreme Court Justice.”
Apparently, I am entirely unschooled and ignorant about the market price of high-end RVs. Today I learned. That’s spooky and weird. Really dumb, I think.
Why would anyone in their right mind buy such a thing? It’s utility is limited. It’s a glorified camper van with a fetid, stanky-ass toilet you have purge every few days. Drives like a milk crate and you can’t see shit behind you.
Why not just buy a tent? Why not poop at the truck stop like a normal person? I’m ignorant, not dumb.
I am befuddled. I swear on whatever deity you want I am not playing the fool and pretending to be amazed at the actual price. I am fairly savvy and not befuddled by your big city, high falutin’ monkeyshines. I am not being cheeky and pretending to be dumb for effect. This is new information I learned today. What the hell does a million dollar RV look like? Are we talking full bus conversion? JFC!
I now know new information about the market price of high-end RVs. It’s still baffling to me.
Why would anyone buy that?
I ran into a “van life” couple near Joshua Tree. Didn’t interact. They were filming themselves for an hour. Then buttoned themselves up inside for the night.
@de stijl:
Cost is relative. It’s a percentage of what you have. There’ve been times in my life when I was excited to find a dime in a payphone slot or a quarter in a laundromat dryer. When you got nothing, something can be a lot. When you got a lot, you don’t even bend over to pick up the dime you dropped.
Back when I (actually my wife, because…) was driving rusted out, Bondo’d up Dodges and Plymouths and on occasion abandoning them when they broke one too many times, I said out loud that only a moron would spend more money than necessary to get from Point A to Point B. I was thrilled when at age 39 we were finally able to buy a new Ford Taurus by lying on our credit application.
Now I have a Merc and a BMW, but those two cars are much less costly relative to income and wealth than the old $300 Plymouth Valiants. So, I’m a moron, but I’m not a moron who has to crawl under a car and adjust the clutch every time there’s a steep incline. And I don’t even hold my breath when pushing the start button. Also, my foot doesn’t go through the floor. And I don’t stand by the side of a highway in freezing rain with the hood up staring impotently at the engine.
Also, the BMW makes a really cool ‘vroom’ sound when I start it, and that is so very important.
NDT has a fun video about this very concept.
“I have a stable job, a house, a car…A penny? I’m not bending down to pick up a penny. Same with a nickel. A dime? Depends. A quarter though? I’ll pick up a quarter. So let’s ratio that to Bill Gate’s wealth…”
$45,000. That’s what Bill Gates would have to find on the sidewalk for it to equal the feeling we normies get finding a quarter on the sidewalk.
@de stijl: Since you asked, here’s a used 2004 vehicle currently available for more than Justice Thomas paid for his new. And I don’t get it either, but the most common explanation I’ve received (yeah, I’m so rude that I will ask) is that paying motel rent is prohibitive for vacations when you’re taking family with you.
(And Justice and Mrs. Thomas are probably not taking their vehicle into BLM territory and camping in areas serviced by forest roads, I would assume.)
@de stijl: Different strokes. We just bought a small tow behind camper trailer and so have been researching various RV camp sites. A not insignificant number in the Adirondacks reserve some or all of their sites for full season reservations only. Basically people drive up in the spring, towing a small car behind. Then they spend the next 5-7 months living there. The sites have hookups with power and water, as well as public bathrooms with showers, convenience store, community events. Those giant vehicles are not for me but it makes a lot more sense if you think of them as a summer home rather than something for camping.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Thomas didn’t buy his new. He was killing time before an event in Phoenix back in 1999 and saw it on a lot:
[snip]
[snip]
Today, I bought gas, in FL, for $2.499 / gallon.
The MAGA Trumpsters were just whining about gas prices, and Trump is up there saying “Drill, Drill, Drill”…. and adjusted for inflation it’s damn near at Clinton’s 1993 $1.00 / gallon prices.
Unemployment is non-existent (except for ne’er-do-well layabouts like me), stores are full of people, there are 4 homes being built in my sub (with vacant dirt properties being sold at outrageous prices), people are buying $300,000 RV’s, inflation is slowing down, wages are going up. We are leading the global economy with our rapid post-COVID recovery, Feds have indicated that interest rates may be cut (as the boogyman of recession is NOWHERE to be seen), federal spending is fixing the stuff that needs to be fixed…
And yes somehow the MAGA are screaming that it is all unbearable … so much so that they are ready to flush democracy outright.
And their solution would be??? Likely: Cut Taxes (ESPECIALLY for the rich), Cut Federal Spending, and drive-up unemployment and ensure a recession.
Seriously: WTF?
The DEM Party better figure out how to drive the message of recovery home, or… else. (literally!)
—
(Disclosure: RV Owner. I would not advise it. 6 MPG, and a guaranteed $5000 repairs every year.)
Likud Party’s founding charter states that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
Why is this not interpreted as “genocide” if from the “Jordan to the sea” is interpreted by many to be a call of genocide by Palestinians?
@Kathy:
I prefer to think of it as “people who want the option to create their own cruise itinerary”. I may consider it when I retire. As with river cruises and small-boat ocean cruises, the ability to bring your hotel room with you everywhere you go is pretty damned awesome.
(Bringing the entire hotel, the neighborhood it sits on, and the adjacent theme park is much less attractive to me, but some people seem to love it…)
@The Q:
Likud considers the proper Palestinian state Jordan and are not calling for death to the Palestinians in their charter therefore, not genocide. Hamas on the other hand, calls for the extermination of the Jews, that is genocide.
Edit: What Likud advocates would be considered “ethnic cleansing,” which is considered a crime as well. You may recall that NATO participated in war in the Balkans during the 1990’s, the purpose of which was to stop and reverse a Serbian attempt to remove Bosnia’s and Croats from certain lands that Serbia claimed.
To explain my befuddlement. I live in the Midwest.
$267,000 would get you a really good house here. Not fancy pants rich, but pretty far up the totem pole. On the middle upper end of middle class. Above the norm. 60th percentile. In that range.
In comparison my house cost $103,000. I have the smallest house on the block by far. Perfect size for me. I don’t own that much crap. City tells me it’s worth 114k now for tax purposes. Average market price for a house in my neighborhood is probably 225 to 300k or close enough. These are good houses in a good, desirable neighborhood.
You could buy a pretty sweet two story, three bedroom house with a freshly re-done kitchen for $267,000. And that’s in 2000 dollars. That’s $467k in 2023 dollars which buys you fairly high end house here. That’s a solidly upper middle class house. We don’t pay California prices for real estate here, thankfully.
Ergo, my befuddlement. His RV cost more than a middle class family house (here) by quite a lot.
When I sold my mom’s house in Mesa, AZ in 2018, what my eyeballs told me was a $275k house sold for a shit ton. More than double that by a lot. I was astounded. Y’all are daft. Houses shouldn’t cost that much. The market is severely skewed.
@Neil Hudelson:
Amusing, but still low. Money has sharply diminishing utility once you hit “stupid rich”. To get the same marginal boost in utility that I get from finding a quarter, Gates would probably need to find at least $1B in the couch cushions. It has to be enough that either there is something he can now do more easily than before, or it changes his self-perception in a positive way.
(For me, the quarter is only worth picking up because there are still parking meters in my life that only accept coins. When that is no longer true, my threshold will bump up considerably. My wife, on the other hand, has a fair bit of self-image invested in being a frugal person. She will pick up quarters for the rest of her life.)
Odds and ends:
From “Ten Drugs” by Thomas Hager: No drug is all good. No drug is all bad, They are all both.
It’s about pharmaceuticals, but he begins with opium, and covers related derivatives like morphine and heroin, but also synthetics like fentanyl. Many do have medical uses.
Amazon wants employees to beg.
Next I’m reading Tangled Up in Blue by Rosa Brooks. It’s about her experiences as a reserve police officer in DC. I find it remarkable a law professor who’s done stints in the State and Defense departments, actually went and joined a police force out of curiosity.
So far it’s all anecdotes about various calls. It reminds me a lot of an early 2000s show called Third Watch, about patrol cops, firefighters, and paramedics.
@The Q:
Because, not to be too in-the-weeds, what Likud is talking about is either ethnic cleansing or perhaps a version of apartheid. Hamas explicitly calls for the killing of Jews. That would be genocide. Words have meanings.
ETA: I see @Sleeping Dog beat me to it.
@DrDaveT:..the ability to bring your hotel room with you everywhere you go is pretty damned awesome.
In February of 1974 when I drove my quadriplegic friend Joe on a four week trip from Southern Illinois to the west coast and back our “hotel room” was the 1970(?) Ford E-150 Econoline van that his parents bought for him when he started college. It was not rigged for him to drive however since he qualified for funds from the county to pay for a full time attendant there was always someone to be his chauffeur. It was a bare bones van with two captains chairs as front seats, automatic transmission and no cruise control. There was a wooden platform across the back that served as a bed and the floor was carpeted. The only modifications to accommodate him in his electric wheel chair was a manually operated fold down ramp on the side door. No tie downs for his wheel chair. Just placed a 2×4 behind his back wheels and off we went. When he was in his chair behind the two front seats he sat too high to see out the windshield or the side windows so on most daylight miles I would lift him out of his chair into the passenger seat so he could see the USA as we traveled. We were on the road from mid February to mid March. Our plans were to sleep in the van as much as we could. Interstates were not completed at the time and one of our missions was to survey existing rest areas for wheelchair accommodations. Most nights we stopped at those rest areas. At least twice we rented space at campgrounds to shower and recharge his chair batteries. One night we camped out in the desert near Thousand Palms and at least twice on the run northbound on California State Route 1 between Los Angeles and San Francisco we parked overnight right on the Pacific Ocean. The only nights that we did not spend in our “Hotel on Wheels” was the week or so in San Francisco when we stayed with friends. We thought we budgeted for gas, beer and weed. We did not anticipate gas jumping from 35¢-40¢/gal to the
50¢+/gal that we had to pay on the return trip. I think that we bought cheeper beer to compensate. The other thing we did not anticipate was the National Maximum Speed Law. The uniform speed limit was signed into law by Nixon on January 2, 1974, and became effective 60 days later,..WikiP just in time for our return trip from California to the midwest. I clearly remember seeing Highway Road Crews posting SPEED LIMIT 55 signs along highways that we had just traveled 65-70 mph just two weeks earlier. I tried to comply but talk about draggin’ ass!
If you haven’t seen Nomadland with Frances McDormand, I highly recommend it.
It is not highly structured. Okay, there basically is no plot or narrative. Frances McDormand in her stark, of her age, austere gorgeousness travels through the American west in her van looking for easy transient work. She does shitty day labor and looks at the landscape when the sun sets in some of most starkly pristine images ever captured.
If you like big road trips to nowhere, if you like basking in austere beauty, if you love gorgeous cinematography, if you have a melancholc bent, if you feel the call of the endless road, if you find capital R Romantic joy in wandering around outside gawking at beautiful natural things, then this surely is a movie you want see.
I was stunned. I was awestruck. I wept like a wee babe at the beauty of the landscapes. This is hard-core melancholic tao twilit dusk landscape porn.
@Mister Bluster:
Sometimes the road is the destination.
@Mister Bluster: My wife, son, and I drove for vacation from northern IL to Denver when the 55 limit was new and the cops were enforcing it. Gawd Kansas was wide.
We stayed a night at a Holiday Inn in the middle of Kansas. A road junction and some tiny podunk town. Nothing anywhere near it. The motel had a large, nice restaurant and bar. Seemed odd. That night they had live music and the place was jammed. Somebody in marketing had done a nice job of site selection.
@Jen: Bernie Little and the Beer Wagon are childhood heroes of mine from growing up watching the Gold Cup and, later, the Seafair Trophy races on TV from Lake Washington. I never had friends with enough stroke to get me down to the lake to watch. 🙁
And for all of us who’ve grown up with the joke about sailboats being holes in the water that never fill up no matter how much money you throw in, hydroplanes are sailboats on steroids.
@DrDaveT: A couple of months ago, I “camped” in downtown Seoul–the only place to a toast sandwich for breakfast was 2 blocks away. 🙁 Bringing the room with me has no appeal unless it’s connected to an all-night coffee shop. Walking a block to find an espresso shop is “roughing it” enough to suit me.
@de stijl: I grew up in a story and a half 3-bedroom bungalow of ~1000 sq. ft. in size that my parents bought (in the blue-collar side of our neighborhood*) for $12,000. The current Zillow estimate for that house is $763,700 (down 5k and some change over the past 30 days.
*35th Avenue was the dividing line for our neighborhood. People who worked for the shipyard, the steel mill, or other blue-collar jobs lived east of 35th. My classmates whose fathers worked at Boeing or were teachers or had other professional jobs (my mom’s boss when she worked for the union, for example) lived west of 35th avenue, where clone of the house I grew up in sold for $15,000 when my parents bought ours. (The house with the same address on 37th Avenue is valued at $100k more than our house is currently even though it’s the same basic house.)
Two vastly different worlds. Over here the neighborhood lines are just as red as they were 70 years ago. Fun stuff!
@DrDaveT: I’ll pick up quarters forever–I do my wash at the laundromat. 😉
I never pick up any coins unless they’re head’s up.
I also don’t step on cracks, cuz they might break my mother’s back.
It’s just how I roll. 😛 😛
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Two words, Vern: “Nespresso”
@DrDaveT: Nespresso? EEEEEWWWWWW!!!!!!
Not that this likely will be seen, but:
Delonghi Magnifica.
A remarkable coffee machine, dramatically overpriced, which produces astounding coffee.
The rich folk pay close to $1000 for this thing, and then sell it on craigslist for hundreds when they realize they don’t use it. Silly rich folk.
@just nutha: $267,000 in 2000 is equal to almost $500,000 today when accounting for inflation.