Repeal the 20th century. Vote GOP

The title of this article comes from Steven Pearlstein writing for the Washington Post in a wonderful article, The Magical World of Voodoo Economics, debunking a lot of GOP assumptions. Things they just don’t believe or ignore, like the 20^th century. But my favorite is how the GOP constantly promotes the ideas that regulations will destroy jobs and are economic infeasible, by taking them out of economic interactions. He writes:

One recent example comes from the cement industry, which now warns that new regulations limiting emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide could close as many as 18 of the 100 cement plants in the United States, resulting in the direct loss of 13,000 jobs.

Then again, where do you think all those customers of the 18 plants will get their cement? Do you think they might get some of it from the other 82 plants, which in turn might have to add a few workers to handle the additional volume? Or that a higher price for cement might induce somebody to build a modern plant to take advantage of the suddenly unmet demand? Or perhaps that higher prices for cement will lead some customers to use another building material produced by an industry that will have to add workers to increase its output? And what about the possibility that the regulation will encourage some innovative company to devise emissions-control equipment that will not only allow some of those plants to remain open but generate a few thousand extra jobs of its own as it exports to plants around the world.

Such possibilities are rarely, if ever, acknowledged in these “job-scare studies.” Also left out are any estimates of the benefits that might accrue in terms of longer, healthier lives. In the Republican alternative universe, it’s all costs, no benefits when it comes to government regulation. As they see it, government regulators wake up every morning with an uncontrollable urge to see how many jobs they can destroy.

For the whole article see http://www.washingtonpost.com/the-magical-world-of-voodoo-economists/2011/09/07/gIQARBiEIK_story.html

Private Public Disconnect Verbiage

When I look around at the folk I know  for the most part they seem to me to be nice folk with good intentions, concern for each other…all-round good people. I’ve also been around people long enough to know that at our base level we are self serving, self-righteous folk who are more concerned with ourselves and ours than to those we don’t know or connect . We all live with this paradox of human nature.

Usually our conversations with each other a civil, respectful, and reflect genuine caring and concern for each other. We also can get mad at each other and yell and say things we later regret. A few will let their ideas interfere with their relationships but most seem to accept differences and then get on with it because we know our relationships are more important than our differences.

All of this makes me feel pretty good and happy.

Then there is public debate, such as political debate, where the civility we practice in private or small group conversation goes away and we find people speaking and saying vile uncaring statements about each other. I find myself embarrassed by our political rhetoric and false posturing and wonder what causes such change in human behavior.

One explanation may have to do with the ideas of righteousness and self-righteousness. We like to feel righteous, right about things. But often we are caught up in self-righteousness, meaning we want to justify our own behavior, ideas the lot as being best and superior to others behaviors, ideas and the like.

Public debate seems like the story Jesus told as recorded in Matthew’s gospel.

The Story of the Tax Man and the Pharisee [Matt 18, The Message]


⁹He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: ¹⁰“Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. ¹¹The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. ¹²I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’
¹³“Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’”
¹⁴Jesus commented, “This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”

I return to my biblical roots at this point where righteousness is seen as being right with God, being in accord with God’s wishes for us, following the teachings of Jesus. Self-righteous is that which accent self over anyone else.

Those running for public office are supposed to be those who want become public servants; those who serve the people as best they can. They all have certain beliefs, ideologies they believe we allow them to serve others well. But in the public arena all that seems to disappear. Incivility dominates over civility, hubris surpasses humility, self-righteousness hold sway over righteousness. And all this makes us feel bad, and I think is embarrassing.

What I find most embarrassing are those who hold certain religious beliefs acting in the most self-righteous ways, demeaning, degrading, and condemning those who do not agree with them. They discredit not only their party but the God they are supposed to follow. They do not appear to be the kinfolk of Jesus who taught the way of servant leadership. They reflect the legalistic viewpoint of the Pharisees rather than the love and inclusion of Jesus.

There are also those who have distorted and idolatrized the Horatio Alger story. In this country we believe our democracy allows folk who work are can and will attain their dreams. And those who are fortunate to achieved those dreams sometimes think they did it all by themselves. They claim to be the masters of their ships, the captains, of their souls. They think they are islands unto themselves dependent upon no one nor anything but themselves for their successes. The claim to do it “my way” powerful and independent unlike “those who knell.” The song lyrics and poetry referenced all reflect this type of thinking, this variety of hubris. And they are untrue and delusional. They are counter to my religious beliefs of righteousness. Others see more clearly that their success is built upon the achievements and gifts of others that enabled them to reach their goal. They also are apt to realize that in this land of opportunity some are dealt a raw deal and need our love and care; in other words, being the keepers of our brothers and sisters.

I hope you did not miss the irony of the use of the Tax Man in Jesus’ story. Tax men in Jesus’ day were held in even lower regard than they are today. And yet it is typical of Jesus to use those folk whom society tends to look down upon as symbols of the way of true righteousness, those who acknowledge their dependence upon others and especially upon God, and those who are truly humble.

While individualism and individual effort to better ourselves in our society are very important, it is together that we created a nation. It is in the sharing of our wealth in the form of taxes that enables us to succeed and to care for those who have had bad breaks. We want fairness in our taxes true, but again that fairness I hope is based upon the biblical idea of “to whom much is given much is required.”

Given the unequal distribution of wealth in this country it is easy to see that self-righteousness has dominated righteousness in our society in recent times. I would hope that the civility and care we show each other in private and small settings would spread to the public area and we unite to seek the public good of the nation.

The right loves to talk about the small changes brought into being by the Obama administration as “Obamacare” and likens it to socialism. Are you kidding? If you at all aware of our health system, (profit based) as compared to public systems used in most of the developed countries, you know that our health care is by far and away the most expensive health care in the world and does not provide the best health care unless you are very very rich.

Following is a summary of an article from the Washington Post by N.C. Aizenman, September 27, 2011 with my comments. See link: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/survey-rising-health-insurance-costs-shifted-to-workers/2011/09/26/gIQASSpx1K_story.html

The upshot is that both employers and employees are caught in this economic crunch with employers less and less able to pay for full health care for employees and employees shouldering more and more of the expenses up to 10% of their wages. Increases in health care while wages decrease.

Healthcare: The Big Issue Often Ignored

According to Andy Kroll of Mother Jones, the Tea Party has lost favor with the public. Only 28% of our citizens favor the Tea Party now and 53% dislike it. It seems the Tea Party peaked in2010 when it was about half and half favoring and disfavoring the party.

One of the most popular figures in the country – Hilary Clinton, 69%.

Ah, is there hope for American sanity?

http://www.doink.com/clips/charlie_brown/1563456/snoopy-bleah

More on Taxes & Other Ways

One has to be careful in describing our taxes as 'progressive'. Our tax system is a complex combination of what I would describe as semi-progressive and outright regressive taxes. Take sales taxes (regressive), gas taxes (regressive), payroll taxes (flat to regressive) and property taxes (depends on state/locale but generally are regressive or 'humped' in the middle in terms of proportion of income spent).

Only the income tax is 'progressive' and even then it depends on your situation. For example, if you make income in working wages you can be taxed at a higher rate than someone who makes the same income in interest or dividends and substantially higher than someone who makes the same income from bagging some capital gains. If you're a savvy real estate investor you can realize literally millions in cash income without paying a penny in income taxes.

So within types of income the income tax is 'progressive' but somewhere along the line we made a political decision to tax work at a higher rate than income by any other means -- simply by cutting taxes on non-work income.

Of course, I once had an economics teacher who argued that all taxes were regressive, whatever the rate. Why? Impact. Because if you tax someone 38% who's making $400,000 he isn't making any hard choices - maybe he buys the BMW instead of the Mercedes. But you're not taking any food off the table. But you put a 7% tax on someone making minimum wage, good chance you're taking food off the table.

If it were up to me, perfect world, we'd start over, obliterate all the various regressive taxes and start from scratch with either a genuinely pure progressive tax scale, or just can the ideology on both sides and go to a straight across-the-board Value-Added Tax (VAT) in place of it all to depersonalize the tax thing once and for all.

In a progressive income tax scenario, I would also eliminate corporate taxes, for 3 reasons: (1) taxing corporations essentially gives them a stake and a voice and makes them too much leverage - I'd couple it with an amendment to the constitution to reverse the infamous Citizens United ruling (2) it's really just a bad substitute for a properly progressive personal tax structure: in the end, humans pay all taxes anyway, and (3) the big corporations have figured out how to avoid it anyway through offshoring and other tricks, so the tax ends up falling harder on smaller-to-medium businesses and so is regressive.

Economic Class Warfare?

Mitt Romney, one of the two palatable Republican candidates by my reckoning, called himself part of the middle class the other day. I find the comment a bit out of touch. As a pastor, folk knew my economic class as it was voted on by the congregation each year. For most others it is a mystery. But if you are interested in where you fall by today’s categories, here they are:

  Poor – (lowest 20%) earns less than $17,000

  Lower Middle Class – (20-40%) earns between $17,000 & $32,000

  Middle Class – (40-60%) Earns between $33,000 and $57,000

  Upper Middle Class – (60-80%) earns between 58,000 and 97,000

  Rich (above 80%) earns more the $98,000

  Stinking rich (top 1%) earns more than $500,000

Thus the median income of the country is $43,000.

I hear folk arguing for a flat tax, everyone paying the same rate, as being a fair tax, in contrast to our current progressive tax, the more you make the more you are taxed, though this has been radically changed since the Regan era. If you are in the lower class or lower middle class there is not much of your income that is not required just to live; even the middle class finds it difficult. A flat tax in their case is really a regressive tax and punishes lower income earners.

Bear that in mind when you hear the rich and the stinking rich complain about class warfare, it exists alright but they are not the victims. 

Education and the Crisis of Public Values

The title of this piece is the title of a new book by Henry A. Giroux. I found it at www.truthout.org, to which he contributes. The material comes from the preface of that book. Full title: "Education and the Crisis of Public Values: Challenging the Assault on Teachers, Students and Public Education" (Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education), published by Peter Lang Publishing; First printing edition (July 30, 2011). Of course I throw in my two cents every now and then as well.

Giroux believes that since the early 70’s, rich, corporate power brokers and right wing advocates realized that education was important to creating a populist movement reflecting their interests. They have done exactly that over the last 40 years in the name of “reform” to accomplish their aims successfully. They created talk shows, anti-pubic think tanks,  and organizations while the left pursued single-issue movements. In the 80’s they educated the public on a wide range of issues the appeal to the overall public; tax reform, role of government, educational crises, family values, the economy etc. They emphasized unbridled freedom and individualism and a hatred of the social contract (concern for the common good.

The movement was cruel and vulgar in producing a new form of political illiteracy where one could see no difference between opinions and arguments, reason and emotion, evidence and false information. Science became a liability, anti-intellectualism was a virtue, social protections dismissed as socialism. The right wing Christian extremists became ready allies in this process. Thus conservative colleges were seen as equal as more prestigious liberal ones, and Fox media was as well receive as the Wall Street Journal.

Private schools, charter schools, etc, were promoted over public schools. They push anti-union values, and real educational reform and demonized previous programs that aided the country such as the New Deal and the Great Society programs. All of this funded and promoted by the rich and powerful in order to remain rich and powerful.

They have been very effective. Note the changes in TV fare over the years from family shows, variety shows that reflected middle class values to today’s crude reality TV, and celebrity watching. Kim Kardashian becomes the role model for vulgarity and stupidity.

This is capitalized upon by the new crop of Republican candidates, who so well reflect those values the public has been taught over the years. Their rhetoric pays little heed to science, rationality, or the public good, but panders to fears they generate and a general disregard for truth over what is pragmatic towards winning elections. Michelle Bachmann and Rich Perry deride science and dismiss it warnings, Govs. Scott Walker and Chris Christie go after unions. They seek to gut public services and sell them to the highest bidders.

“As the meaning of democracy is betrayed by its transformation into a market society, corporate power and money appear unchecked in their ability to privatize, deregulate and destroy all vestiges of public life. America's military wars abroad are now matched by the war at home; that is, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have found their counterpart in the war against the poor, immigrants, young people, unions, public-sector workers, the welfare state and schoolteachers. The call for shared sacrifices on the part of conservatives and Tea Party extremists becomes code for destroying the social state, preserving and increasing the power of mega-rich corporations and securing the wealth of the top one percent of the population with massive tax breaks while placing the burden of the current global economic meltdown on the shoulders of working people and the poor. Deficit reductions and austerity policies that allegedly address the global economic meltdown caused by the financial hawks running Wall Street now do the real work of stripping teachers of their collective bargaining rights, dismantling programs long associated with social services and relegating young people to mind-deadening schools and a debt-ridden future.”

Unfortunately, President Obama, in seeking to work with others felt the need to cooperate with these false values estranging himself from his progressive supporters and leaving behind the vision that captured our imaginations.

This thinking has infected the world stage as we see Europe in economic materialistic throes and Eastern countries who imitated the materialist west to a place of domination and power over the west. Other writers have talked well about the time when the U.S.A. just become a nation among nations rather than an international leader. We have abdicated our moral leadership and the world and we suffer because of it. Even the democracies emerging from the Middle East while liberating people, have a hard time finding good role democratic models that emphasis the public good over individualistic material gains.

The book looks to me like a good read.

Who Increased the Debt Update

Prisons for Profit

In the name of debt reduction Rick Perry has come out for private for-profit prisons. After all his state has more prisoners than any other state in the union, 75,000.


Oh how we love to incarcerate in this country. In the last 15 years the number of inmates held in U.S. prisons has increased 49.6% Private prisons during the same period have increased 353.7%. According to the Corrections Corporation of American (CCA) and the GEO group, the 2 biggest private prison companies had combined revenues of $2.9 billion. They benefit and help fuel all this. Private prison groups such as these have strong lobbys, given large campaign contributions giving them great access to local, state, and federal policy makers. Of course, these profits come at the expense of tax payers.


Paul Ashton, Gaming the System, notes campaign donations: $835,514 to federal candidates and $6,092,331 to state-level candidates since 2000. They particularly seek out poor communities in the South and Southwest. 


Of course these private systems successfully support long terms for the convicted. And these folk want lower taxes while creating larger tax needs.


Obviously serious study needs to be done on this problem, but of course, the right will oppose such wasteful government spending.


For more information go to http://www.justicepolicy.org/news/2615

Trickle Down Economics via Koch Brothers

This is a concrete example of how supply side economics works. The Koch brothers are riding high but the same cannot be said for the rest of us.

Enough said

Happy Birthday Brother Bill

My brother and his wife Nadine recently returned from the cruise on the Queen Mary to England and are now looking forward to more cruises. They, of course, always invite us to go as well and we have a couple of times. Delightful.


My brother is one of the great human beings of this world, my hero from childhood onward. He also can write better than I can when in the mood. But has remained silent so far, though he tells me he reads the blog. Maybe this will goad him into writing a bit. 


This is my brother Bill, he is funny and brilliant, write something funny and brilliant Bill. No pressure. 


(The green print is to denote envy.)


Happy Birthday my Brother!

Political Pawning...

PK’s article hits a responsive note with most of us. I also connected it with a piece I found today by William river Pitts on the www.Truth-out.org blog site. Here is the beginning of the piece: [It is entitled: Class Warfare My Ass.]

I have been saying this for years upon years, but it bears repeating: the most awesome, fearsome, and effective weapon in the arsenal of the modern Republican Party is their total, utter and complete lack of shame.

That weapon - the ability to say or do anything, literally anything, even as it flies in the face of on-the-record comments made just the day before, or contradicts thousands of votes cast in congresses past - is the equivalent of a battlefield-deployed tactical nuclear weapon. It clears the field, but good, and if everything is ashes in the aftermath, so be it. So long as effective spin makes the news cycle, it's a victory for them, and screw the people who get hurt.

The GOP wins when that is the contest, and that is all they care about...and the awful irony comes when the very people getting screwed are up on their feet cheering after the deal goes down, because "their team" won the day.

I am often amazed at the inability of right to take any responsibility for the damage they have done to this country in recent years, then blithely condemn the present administration for things they began. And then continue to block actions that help bring the country back a better place.

On Bradblog.com I found more of this shameless activity about the Koch brothers, the ones that held secret meetings of high rollers for the Republican party. These guys dumped at least 91 metric tons of uncontrolled benzene in was streams at its Corpus Christi refinery. Under the Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft dropped 88 counts over the spill in exchange for a guilty plea to falsifying documents and a $20 million dollar fine (which could have been a 320 million dollar fine. A pretty good return on the $32,000 known contributions to the 2000 Bush campaign. Nobody went to jail on that one. But in their words they are “waging the mother of all wars” to regain the white house.

Double-Top-Secret News

If it had been a Tea Party rally it would have gotten round-the-clock coverage. But it wasn't, so you probably didn't hear about it.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/311886

Disaster Victims as Political Pawns

We hit a new absolute low in politics this week. Disaster funding, of all things, being held up by politics.

Why? Because the House can't pass a clean bill. They passed a disaster funding bill, one that many argue isn't sufficient but that more importantly was loaded with toxic provisions that make it unpassable in the Senate. It pits disaster funding against a job-creating program that promotes energy efficiency. Since the R's are anti-efficiency, they saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, as it were.

We've never used disaster relief as a political toy before. This is a new low in politics, a new low in basic morality. Leveraging disaster victims' pain to achieve an ideological goal. This is "the end justifies the means" thinking that seems to rule now. It's disturbing on so many levels.

And this is just stopgap funding for a couple months. We aren't even talking about a real budget yet or any dollar amounts or time frames that really matter in terms of deficits or what have you. So, yet again, we're facing prospects of shutdown.

This is getting OLD.

Thought some might find this interesting.


http://vimeo.com/28940439

Christian Century favorites.

When I get my copy of Christian Century Magazine each month the first section I turn to is "Century Marks" which has small paragraph articles on things along with a few quotes. I thought I'd share a few with you.


"You enter into the soul, the spirit of somebody else by listening to them, not by telling them something." ~ Eugene Peterson on a key pastoral ministry in an interview on Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly [PBS May 13]


My friends and I have been coddle long enough by a billionaire-friendly congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice. ~ Warren Buffet [NY Times August 14]


They also often have a poll, this one was upon God's Role in natural disasters.
Percent of Americans who agree:
    56% God controls everything in the world
    40% Natural disasters are God's way of testing faith
    38% Natural disasters are a sign from God
    29% God punishes nations for the sins of its citizens.


Rick Perry makes a show of his conservative religious views. I wonder how he interprets the fires in Texas.

Just so you know.

According to NPR there will be no more special meals for death row inmates in Texas.

Squeeze bottle solutions?

Before the days of squeeze bottle catsup, those bottles used to drive me nuts. You’d spend a half an hour pounding on the bottom of the thing with no results until the last pound whereupon the entire contents would descend upon your fries and your shirt and pants. This was particularly true of Heinz. Realizing their stupid catsup wouldn’t come out of the bottle, the Heinz advertisers then deveoped campaigns extolling the virtue of their thick catsup. A number of food and household products caught on to that and would advertise their products limitations as virtues.

Now does this strike a remarkable similarity to today’s politics. Paul Ryan, representative of the 1^st Wisconsin district (you cannot contact him on his website unless you are from his district) seems to be the budget go to boyo for the Republicans, “let’s not spend anything cronies.” He has fervently said that Keynesian economics (demand side economics) is a failed concept. It was the dominant concept and used up to the Regan era. For 35 years, the Regan era onward, supply side economics (trickle down economics) has been in use. During that time the wealth of the country has been concentrated in the hand of a tiny few, the median income has consistently dropped, the middle class has diminished, the lower class has increased in size and the national and personal the debt has risen remarkably. Pound the bloody bottle all you like, it’s still stuck in there. So, of course, blame the system that worked before for your problems. The Republicans seem to have that mantra down pat.

Wall Street owns the Republicans, bankers own the Democrats, lobbyists for the rich and powerful groups write the legislation; what we need is a squeeze bottle.

Elizabeth Warren, I like this woman

The Following youtube piece is Elizabeth Warren, a democratic candidate for the senate from Massachusetts.


Her opponents want to paint her as too intellectual calling a bad name like "professor." She makes an incredible about of sense to me. Her opponent is a wall street buddy Scott Brown.


Give her a listen


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX2usfqMEs&feature=player_embedded

Lingo, Propaganda and Reality

The art of propaganda is to create impressions and connotations without giving any useful information. We're seeing that in full swing now. Take, for example, the re-branding of high-income individuals as the 'job creators'.

The goal is obvious enough - to create a new wealth-worshiping narrative while symbolically bifurcating the workforce into two value groups -- first, a group of virtuous elites, called the 'job creators', worthy of protection from any deficit-cutting efforts - and second, the relatively worthless masses that constitute the other 98% of the population.

This has two benefits - one, it shields the hedge fund managers, former subprime mortgage brokers and other Wall Street elites, rebranding them from a group that had recently viewed with suspicion and places them safely into a newly minted category of saints thoroughly beyond reproach. Two, the second benefit is the new narrative works to convince average workers that they are not fit to lick the boots of these elites and should be happy with whatever scraps they get from the economic table, if any.

Want to see the job creators? Look in the mirror. Every day you purchase a product or service with your hard-earned dollars you are driving a market that creates jobs through your choices. Somebody has to come up with the product, but that product goes nowhere without consumers. No consumers, no jobs. Economics requires both supply AND demand. The one-sided philosophy just doesn't work. Like trying to clap with one hand. You can get temporary starts on the supply side alone, but only for a certain number of cycles, only up to a point - where those at the bottom finally run out of chips and get too indebted to stay in the game anymore.

And that's the fundamental problem today. With all the money piled into the supply-side end of the pool, and with the consumers broke at the demand end, the economy grinds to a clattering halt. You can't have all the income increases going to the top income groups and expect the consumers to magically keep the economy growing by just going ever deeper into debt while their wages erode. The math just breaks down, as finally occurred in 2008.

The end result is too much debt, public and private, trying to compensate for the lack of broad-based income growth. This is an inseparable effect of wealth over-concentration. The debt problem and the wealth concentration problem are one and the same. One's liability is another's asset. The balance sheet must balance -- even when the assets aren't worth anything.

Just had to share this from Mother Jones

KEVIN DRUM

Zombie Lies: Taxes and Small Businesses

—By Kevin Drum

| Tue Sep. 20, 2011 1:55 PM PDT

A loyal reader had the misfortune of hearing Rep. Phil Gingrey (R–Ga.) blather on the radio this morning about the woeful effect that a tax hike on the rich would have on "the small business owners and job creators." He asks, "Can you please do a post providing us with an evidence-based response to this? I have little doubt that most small business owners are pulling in less than 250K and that most people making over 250K aren’t small business owners, but my hunch doesn’t have much credibility."

But his hunch is exactly right! In fact, this is a zombie lie, and as you might expect with a zombie lie, I've written about it before. So here's a reprint of what I wrote 14 months ago, suitably updated with shiny new quotes making the same old complaints:

---

Back in the day, one of the key Republican arguments against the estate tax was that it forced hardworking, salt-of-the-earth children of small farmers to sell the family plot in order to pay their taxes after dad died. It was a sad story, but with one problem: no one could findeven a single small farmer who had been forced to liquidate in order to satisfy Uncle Sam's voracious maw. Even the American Farm Bureau Federation was eventually forced to admit that it couldn't come up with a single example, and a few years later the Congressional Budget Office estimated that under the now-current exemption level, only a tiny handful of small farms were likely to owe any estate tax to begin with — and of those, only about a dozen lacked the assets to pay their taxes. And even those dozen had 14 years to pay the bill as long as the kids kept running the farm. In other words, the story was a fraud from beginning to end.

Good times. Today, though, we're getting a rerun. The subject at hand is President Obama's proposal to tax the rich at slightly higher rates, and the question is who exactly this will hurt. The obvious answer is, "the rich," but it turns out that, just as there are small farmers begging for our sympathy, there are small rich too: namely an alleged army of hardworking, salt-of-the-earth small business owners who would also end up paying higher tax rates. "Don't forget the fact that most small businesses file taxes as individuals," Rep. Paul Ryan said earnestly on Fox News this weekend. "So when you are raising these top tax rates, you're raising taxes on these job creators."

My correspondent wants an evidence-based response to this, so let's give him one. Step 1: The biggest part of Obama's plan is to let the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire. The Brookings Tax Policy Center took a look at this last year and estimated that only 1.9% of small businesses are in the two top brackets that would be affected by repeal of the Bush tax cuts. That's a little better than the dozen small farms affected by the estate tax, but not by much.

Step 2: About half of that 1.9% aren't really small business owners at all. They're high-income investors who get part of their income from investments in small businesses. So we're down to about 1% of small businesses that would be affected.

Step 3: The top brackets are just that: brackets. When the top rate goes up, it doesn't affect your entire income, just the portion in the top bracket. So if the top rate goes back up from 35% to 39.6%, it only affects the portion of income above approximately $400,000. A small business owner making $500,000 would see an increase of about $5,000. This is a fairly modest amount for someone making a half million dollars, and anything higher than that is hardly a "small" business to begin with. And the marginal effect is even smaller for the second highest bracket. And the proposed "millionaire's tax" would — of course — affect only people making more than a million dollars.

So that's the case. Raising taxes on the rich at the level Obama is talking about affects only a tiny number of small businesses; it doesn't affect them very much; and it generates revenues of several hundred billion dollars. If the only thing you care about is keeping taxes low for rich people, you won't be convinced. For the rest of us, it's a no-brainer.

Ron Suskind misleading quote

Many of us have heard about Ron Suskind's book which deals with the Obama Administration based upon 700 hours of interviews with folk including the president. The one making the press is, "this place would be in our for a hostile workplace...Because it actually fit all of the classical legal requirements of a genuinely hostile workplace to women." by Anita Dunn. According to an interview by the Washington Post, what she really said was, "I said, if it weren't for the president, this place would be in our for a hostile workplace...Because it actually fit all of the classical legal requirements of a genuinely hostile workplace to women."


She was quoted out of context and told the Post that she told Suskind "point blank" that the White House was not a hostile work environment.

Class Warfare? You Bethca!

It takes a lot o chutzpa for the right to call President Obama’s jobs plan with increasing taxes on the millionaires and billionaires, class warfare. There truly has been class warfare for the last 30 plus years with trickle down economics. The middle and lower classes are supposed to be elated by getting the bread crumbs from the rich while they grow richer and richer. This folk are really out of touch. Following is a chart from Mother Jones showing that that the vast majority wants these tax increases on the rich. Also remember the tax increase affects only .3% of the country.

Also remember this is not a progressive increase, which I think it should be, it just brings them into line with other tax payers.

Who Attended the Republican Debates?

The candidates did candidate things at the recent Republican debates. They put each other down and demeaned each other. Only one of them there seems to have any sense at all.

I suppose that is politics, but who were these people who applauded Rick Perry when it was pointed out how many had been put to death in his state. Who were the folk who applauded Ron Paul when it was implied the just let the poor folk who can’t afford health care die? That’s just plain sick. And why on earth do these, who want to be leaders of a country not respond to this most inappropriate reaction.

If they represent the supporters of the Republican party, the Republican party is in worse condition than I thought. 

Middle Class Delusions

I think a lot of middle class Americans have been sold a bill of goods by the right and a bit by the left. I think that they believe that they are carrying the weight of “freeloaders” on their tax paying backs. They have come to believe that they are self made people who through their own hard work have attained a level of success that the government threatens to take away through taxes that go to entitlement programs. Thus, ideas like raising taxes for the rich, they see as a threat to themselves and they become antigovernment.

What they forget is how they have benefited from the government programs that have enabled them to get where they are. You have to begin with education, which has become the whipping boy for many politicos. Yet education is a government program that enables all of us to reach a level of competency that enables us to get jobs. That is from primary and secondary schools to higher education. That education exists because of taxes. In higher education the tax base has eroded over the years costing students more and more to attend colleges, but still they rely on government and endowment dollars. We need more tax dollars to maintain what we used to have in this country in order to remain competitive in the world economy.

There is also a belief among many of the middle class that profit based medical care is far superior to public based, taxed, medical care. However, there is no evidence of this, just compare our system to those who have gone to public health care systems, they are better for the majority of people and cost far far less. This has become one of the biggest drains on the economy and our future is very bleak if we continue to use a profit based system. Ron Paul has an insane argument that in the good old days doctors just took care of folk who couldn’t afford care. He believes Medicare is unconstitutional.  See http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/ron-pauls-health-solutions-fail  to see to fallacy of his argument.

Many still believe in the protestant ethic that if you work hard you will get rewarded and those who are laggards will be punished by poverty. I’ve talked before about how the wisdom writers of scripture rejected this in their day, and it makes just as little sense today. Sure, we should make use of our talents and use them for personal but also the public good. Hard workers don’t always succeed because of unforeseen problems, that is why we have government safety nets to protect these people. There will always be people who abuse that safety net system, but they are peanuts in comparison to the very rich who have abused the entire government system of tax breaks and incentives for their personal fortunes.

We in the middle class are shrinking as a group as the current supply side economic policies dominate the land. The poor are growing in numbers and the ultra rich own half the wealth of the country; acquired money they did not work for but have manipulated the government to get more than their share of the wealth of the country. We have a regressive tax system that favors the ultra rich. The enlightened middle class, those who realize how the redistribution of wealth has hurt the country, need to take back the government.

I believe it begins with campaign reform where the rich cannot buy governmental leaders. We also must bring back types of New Deal Policies that rescued the country when this same imbalance of wealth took place in the 30’s. The right complained about them then, but they worked. We need to implement them again but with a large enough stimulus plan that puts people back to work. And they need adequate regulations so that those who create the problems do not benefit from the rescue but are held accountable for their abuse.

We need leadership that will stand up for the middle class and for the common good of our society. Corporate America seems to own the Republican party, the major banks have a significant control of the Democratic  Party, and the Tea Party has just be sold a bill of nonsensical ideas. We need new leadership, or at least make the current leadership more progressive minded. I only wish I knew how to do it.

Cultural Myopia

(This is really in response the PK's previous entry.)

Amen and halleluiah brother Paul. Dead on as usual. I do not believe in the veneration of the past, though they do teach us and that is important. The founding fathers did find compromise in spite of the differences and a few duels. I think it was good they still didn’t agree on what the meaning of the general welfare, as it allowed for growth on constitutional thinking. But they also had the advantage of a largely disenfranchised uninterested general population. But they were thinkers. The Federalist Papers are fascinating as they were think pieces. Today’s media mainly reports the activities on anti or non thinkers.

I often hearken back to the days of my youth, the Eisenhower, Kennedy era; times of growth and with Kennedy's new vision and verve. But I also hated those times because they were oppressive in terms in everyone had to be the same. We went to church because everyone went to church and if you didn’t folk would not likely use your business; there were social mandates galore which made no sense. But now we have anomie, whereas now folk have their mental motor governors completely removed and feel no responsibility to anyone. Me, me, me all the way home.

What we can see and learn is that Keynesian, demand-side economics works and supply side economics doesn’t work. Unfortunately it seems the general population has no clue as to what that means. It should be clear that our quality of life has lessened, but there are enough folk, voter types, where that is not their reality. They let outdated ideological ideas interfere with common sense and real study of the issues.

I would hope that the MoveOn organization or some progressive group, could help be a vehicle to respond to the irrationality of the Tea Party and the like. But I do not see the media giving them any coverage at all.

http://front.moveon.org/

Can the country unite on anything rational? I don't know. We have had our possibilities, following 9/11 when we could focus our anger elsewhere, and after the election of President Obama and the world saw hope for us. Now???

The Central Fallacy

To take up the very notion of Tentherism invites the central fallacy that drives this and other thinking that harkens to some supposedly ideal past 'age'. The central fallacy in the thinking presupposes that the Founding Fathers all thought the same things.

Horsefeathers. There have always been, and will always be, conservatives and liberals in one form or another. The viewpoints are direct by-products of our dual nature as individuals vs. society. Immediately after the Constitution was inked some of the Founding Fathers still did not agree amongst themselves what 'promote the general welfare' really meant, or what that was restricted to.

Tentherism and similar types of 'originalism' buy into the central fallacy in part because it avoids having to actually think or consider the merits of any given idea. It's much like clinging to a totally literal interpretation of Genesis. A fool's errand from start to finish.

Tentherism: What if the Tea Party Wins

The following information comes from the Center for America Progress blog site which you can access at the following address/link for the full story which I believe is well worth reading in its entirety. The title of the piece is “What If the Tea Party Wins?” It gives a very complete analysis of just what the agenda of the Tea Party is, what it is based upon, and its implications. Some of this I hinted in the previous article which I wrote before finding this blog. 

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/09/tea_party_constitution.html

The work of the Tea Party is vividly depicted as work that threatens the Republic as we know it. We are aware of Rep Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) to phase out Medicare and that many others view the constitution a very limited way that would eliminate most of the social progress of the 20^th century. This is the list the blog cites as some of the things that would disappear under their constitution interpretation.

§  Social Security and Medicare

§  Medicaid, children's health insurance, and other health care programs

§  All federal education programs

§  All federal antipoverty programs

§  Federal disaster relief

§  Federal food safety inspections and other food safety programs

§  Child labor laws, the minimum wage, overtime, and other labor protections

§  Federal civil rights laws

The Tea Party focuses upon the 10^th Amendment (tentherism).  “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”

Again, I encourage to go to the link to get all the particulars on who this works.

Ian Millhiser, the author of this piece, concludes this desire to repeal the work of the 20^th century is not new, Eisenhower described them 60 years ago, “Their numbers [were] negligible and they are stupid.” 

The problem is they are no longer small numbers and they threaten practically everyone in the country.

I believe it is the worst form of radicalism this country has ever seen. This misled and delusional group has been used well as a pawn of the ultra rich in the country to spread continued fear and their tight grip on all elected officials.

Read the link and decide for yourself.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/09/tea_party_constitution.html

Anti-intellectualism in America

If you haven’t read Paul K’s comments on “Why do we reject rationality in national debate” blog piece, please do. He’s right on point as usual.

There is no better representation of this than the Tea Party propaganda. The Tea Party has seized upon the Constitution as their document to justify all types of right wing ideas. For example, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has declared unconstitutional: the departments of Education and Housing and Urban development, child labor laws, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, all federal anti-poverty programs, Medicaid, Medicare, Social security, and the Food and Drug Administration. (Mother Jones, today).

This is Constitution Day which was created in 2004 by Sen. Robert Byrd (D), and the Tea Party is using it as an excuse to promote their causes. They are being confronted by Constitutional Accountability Center  and other progressives. Doug Kendall, said this week, “It seems the Tea Party thinks the entire 20^th century is unconstitutional.”

It seems to me that there has always been a bit of anti-intellectualism in the country. I remember the presidential race between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, where Stevenson was seen as just too intellectual for the presidency. I didn’t understand it then nor do I understand it now.

This being Constitution Day, it makes me marvel all the more of the intellectual achievements of the founding fathers, who, for the most part were intellectuals. They were not the majority and elections were generally won by who supplied the most booze on Election Day in their times. But they were the leaders of the country who found a way to work with each other to create that little document, the Constitution. And, they knew it was not intended to be a static document but a dynamic one intended to change with the growth of the country. Though I doubt they had a clue of what we would become today.

I still hold out hope for reason to reign in spite of evidence to the contrary. But I get that hope from reading books by good thinkers and reporters today, not from newspapers, and the TV news coverage. But it appears that right is just becoming more and more extreme in their views.

Just a footnote ~ Rich Perry, a man with nice hair and good teeth, but by no means an intellectual has named Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Rudy Giuliani, Yang Jiechi (Chinese ambassador) Sunl Dutt (Bollywood actor and member of Indian parliament), Russell Crowe, Chris Knight, Serge Borlee (Lance Armstrong’s Belgian bodyguard), Dhani Jones (linebacker for Cincinnati Bengals) and tennis player Pete Sampras as honorary Texans.

Enough said.

Your NRA at Work

If you are a gun totin’ right to bare arms, shootem’ up type of guy or gal, you’ll be glad to know that the NRA in Florida drafted legislature denying doctors the right to talk to patients about whether they have guns at home. You know, dangerous things like, “Do you have them and if so, are they locked up so your children won’t find them and …well, you know.”  Under the sneaky guise of health risks. The NRA wrote the law and the law makers passed it.

Then, wouldn’t you know it, some sneaky doctors got together, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Physicians, got together as asked a federal judge to block the law. They had the audacity to say it violated their 1^st amendment right to free speech.

The NRA fought hard saying doctors should just do medical care (I suppose like mending gunshot wounds) not give moral judgments.

Here’s the amazing part, the judge ruled in favor of the doctors.

At issue in this litigation is a law directed at maintaining patients' privacy rights regarding firearm ownership within the context of the doctor-patient relationship. In effect, however, the law curtails practitioners' ability to inquire about whether patients own firearms and burdens their ability to deliver a firearm safety message to patients, under certain circumstances.

Only in America

A New Coliseum

Remember the good old days when Christians were being fed to the lions in the Roman coliseum and the people would stand and cheer and probably drink a nice red wine?

Well, maybe there still here. Texas governor Rick Perry in last week’s GOP debate on MSNBC was applauded when it was announced he had presided over 234 executions. In a few days it will likely be 235 if Duane Buck is executed. He is the one where the prosecutor arguing that being black “Increases future dangerousness” at his sentencing hearing.

Then we have the CNN Tea Party debate where folk shouted “yes” at the prospect of letting those who can’t afford health insurance die.

Bachmann accuses Perry of forcing young girls to take a safe and effective vaccine to present sexually transmitted diseases that lead to cervical cancer.

Perry and Romney keep seeing who can outdo the other in condemning social security. But then Republicans historically have opposed social security.

Texas governors love to tell how wonderful their state is in having better employment and how they grow jobs in their state. They don’t talk about the  high rates of minimum wage or below minimum wage jobs that they have the most of or that half their students don’t graduate from high school.

Paul then complains that taxes have doubled since Perry has been in office an debt has tripled. Texas has no state tax.

Perry talks about Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme”, that won’t exist for today’s 25 & 30 year olds. No data supports that supposition.

House Republicans introduced the “American Jobs Act” others call it, “Corporate Freeloaders Act.” This is the Republican version of President Obama’s jobs plan. It has one provision: no infrastructure spending, no payroll tax cuts, no assistance to states to hire teachers and police; its provision is to reducing corporate tax rate to zero.

Of course, they all jumped on Obama with misinformation and twisted data.

The Roman empire had its coliseum and lion eating Christians. The extreme right would expand it to non-Christians, non whites, aliens, poor folk, unions, scientists, middle classes. There is going to have to be one really big area, with a few ultra rich folk sitting in the seats pointing their thumbs down.

Sick!