Income Inequality

It's not a good term, because it's too easy for RWS™ and teabaggRs to take the real significance and distort it. Same with "redistribution." Scary. Communiss. Or maybe it's not that it's not a good term; it's that in the US, thanks to purposefully polarizing propaganda, it's become impossible to have a real conversation about important stuff.

The problem with income inequality is not income inequality; and the people who are trying to begin a discussion about it are not (well, maybe one or three are, but not generally) saying it's wrong, per se, that some are more successful than others. Few are arguing that capitalism is inherently wrong. At its most basic, the question is what is a society? What, in the US, does it mean to be part of a community? Are we? Should we be? Can you say "interconnected" and not be ridiculed as a new-age communohippantiamericanchardonnayliberal? Is the party of evolution-denial advocating a purely Darwinian society?

Talk about changing taxation so that the wealthy pay more than they are now, and there's a reflexive response from the right that you're "punishing success." "Taxing the job-creators." A pot-smoking lazy unemployed ingrate, demanding something for nothing.

But it's not about that. It's about a really basic issue, one that has become, like so much else in our politics, a parody of itself: the party of patriotism, of loving America so much it wants you to leave it, cannot think of America as a society; the family-values people don't think of America as a family. They don't, in short, think of America as America.

It's not that some people (many, many people, as it turns out) have to get along with less. I, and most people, I'd say, accept that it's impossible for everyone to be equally successful in a capitalist society. But the corollary of that is that not all people who are barely making it are in that situation because of failure of effort; it's how the system works. Or has come to work. And the question is to what extent those who are making it bigtime have an obligation -- or, to put in another way, have, in order to maintain their status, an empirical need if no moral reason -- to put more money back into the system than they currently are, in order for it to continue to exist and keep their larders larded. It's not morality. It's not ideology.

It's math.

The RWS™ and foxophiles of the world can pretend that it's about income redistribution for its own sake; they can snicker sneeringly and rage righteously and figure you'll buy it. They can simplify and distort, can claim that by definition even raising the issue is a bad thing, while ignoring the biggest income redistribution of all, occurring over the last few decades, ever since Saint Ronnie cut taxes on the wealthy. Their huffing, effective as it is on teabaggers and the rest of the willing self-destroyers, begs the question: what do we need, as a society, to survive? Where will the money come from to pay for it? By now, all parties have agreed that cuts are needed: the Dems on the committee of doom (for, because of R intransigence and cynicism, it is doomed to fail) have come up with trillions in spending reduction. Way more, in my opinion, than is consistent with securing our future, to the extent that that future depends on health care and roads and bridges and dams and colleges and high schools and teachers and cops and consumer safety and environmental protection and research and alternative energy consumption and carbon reduction and gods know what else I'm not thinking of at the moment.

If we choose economic policy that's only about cutting spending (except in defense, of course), and if that means, mathematically, that we'll have to give up on all those things I listed above (because that's where the proposed cuts are), is that a recipe for viability or is it long-term suicide? Can questions be asked without dismissing them as class warfare? Can we talk about it with the best long-term interests of the country, and not political power, in mind?

Rs refuse to increase any taxes at all on the very wealthy, while proposing preposterous tax reform that, without exception, raises taxes on the middle and lower classes, while, because of their huge additional cuts for the wealthy, netting enormously less than the present revenue. Singing the tune of the corporate wealth that pays for their elections, they've never quite answered the question: if cutting taxes on the wealthy creates jobs, where the f*ck are the jobs, in this, the lowest tax climate in decades?

This issue is not, despite what Foxobeckians want you to believe (and have convinced their sheep, like giving candy to a baby), about taking money from the rich and handing it out to the poor, neither as a matter of fact nor of some Beck-dreamt Marxism. (In fact, for Republicans -- unbelievable as it may be, it's quite the opposite.) It's about addressing reality: the country is crumbling. It's losing its edge. We're failing to educate, to innovate, to build. To provide health care. Because, to preserve the imbalance in taxation, services of all sorts are being cut back, painfully, state by state and nationally. Meanwhile the money that might pay to reverse the trend is sequestered among relatively few and, if Rs get their way, will remain there. Because, they believe, that government governs best which governs least. It's gospel, like, well, you know... And, like all R claims and fairy tales, it fits on a bumper sticker.

To the questions what does it mean to live in a society, to depend on and benefit from the work of others; what are the financial responsibilities that derive; what obligations have we to secure the future; can you fix what's wrong without increasing spending in some areas; is our current path of cutting critical spending and not seeking more revenue sustainable (forget about moral) they change the subject. Because they're fine, thanks, and don't need to think about it. It's communism, they say, handing the cue card to Fox "news" and heading for the door.

Tax Reality

From the article:

This chart should be ingrained in the mind of anybody who cares about fiscal policy. The main things to note:

• Federal taxes are the lowest in 60 years, which gives you a pretty good idea of why America’s long-term debt ratios are a big problem. If the taxes reverted to somewhere near their historical mean, the problem would be solved at a stroke.
• Income taxes, in particular, both personal and corporate, are low and falling. That trend is not sustainable.
• Employment taxes, by contrast—the regressive bit of the fiscal structure—are bearing a large and increasing share of the brunt. Any time that somebody starts complaining about how the poor don’t pay income tax, point them to this chart. Income taxes are just one part of the pie, and everybody with a job pays employment taxes.
• There aren’t any wealth taxes, but the closest thing we’ve got—estate and gift taxes—have shrunk to zero, after contributing a non-negligible amount to the public fisc in earlier decades.

If you were structuring a tax code from scratch, it would look nothing like this. But the problem is that tax hikes seem to be politically impossible no matter which party is in power. And since any revamp of the tax code would involve tax hikes somewhere, I fear we’re fiscally doomed.

And yet, sadly, when it was time to point it out and stand firm, Obama caved. I don't think it'll help the country (yes, he said he did it to get some other "compromises") and I'm sure it won't help him. The facts -- even public opinion! -- were on his side. He could have made it as clear as Moosekiller Palin's unfamiliarity with a rifle that the R policies are unsustainable, that they favor the wealthy over the most basic needs of everyone else.

If it were really true that the compromise was the only way to get the other things he wanted, it'd be one thing; but it's hard to believe that a man who at one time had the rhetorical powers to convince people of the right thing couldn't have stood up to the bullying, called out the Rs, and drawn a line.

God knows they couldn't get any less helpful.

[Added: here's a contra-view, from a conservative who thinks Obama got the upper hand. I wish it were true.]

[Soon thereafter, there appear some very strong dissents to the "upper hand" proposition.]

Death Spiral

This is the beginning and the end, from which there's no finding our way back.

All over the United States, community college enrollments have surged with unemployed and underemployed people seeking new skills.

But just as workers have turned to community colleges, states have cut their budgets, forcing the institutions to turn away legions of students and stymieing the efforts to retrain the workforce.

Unemployment is highest among the nation's lesser-educated workers, and for them, community colleges offer a critical pathway to new jobs: Classes are open, relatively cheap and often tailored to picking up job skills.

The process of retraining these workers is considered vital to rebuilding the economy.

It'll get worse. In my state, incomprehensibly, people voted down an initiative that would have created an income tax (we currently have only sales taxes and property taxes) only for the very wealthy. Lowering property taxes for everyone, increasing taxes on families making more than $500 400K (corrected, embarrassingly, via Frank), it would have raised two billion for education.

It was trounced.

The reborn Republican party, enabled by teabaggerism, is not just about the ignoring of education. It's the derision of it, proudly. Along with the supplanting of it by biblical literalism. The consequences are already profound, and we ain't seen nuthin' yet.

I guess we can drive around potholes; oil won't run out for a few more decades. But the end of education is fast suicide. We have been overtaken by the false notion, promulgated by Reagan, taken to a destructive extreme by George W. Bush, and now the basis for current Republicanism, that we don't need to pay for anything, that all spending by the government is bad, that people ought to fend for themselves. That it is ruinous to our country, obvious to anyone willing to have a look, is of no importance. I got mine, f*ck you, I don't care. Credit to teabaggers for being willing to be explicit about it. Shame to everyone else for buying in, while trying to paint it as patriotism; or, worse, to call it Christianity.

What it is is rationalized selfishness. What it is is a death spiral.

Simply Amazing

Unbefrickinglievable.

This is absolutely typical of the Rs running for election or, in the case of diaper-boy, reëlection. And they're gonna win! How many idiocies or falsehoods can you count in that brief exchange? And he's far from alone in his view that we needn't pay for tax cuts. Nor does the fact that Rs never have done so seem to bother those ready to vote for them on grounds of some imaginary "fiscal responsibility." That's like voting for the North Side gang because you believe in gun control.

And even if it were true that the stimulus failed, when virtually all economists, the CBO, and the two-faced Republicans who've asked for stimulus money for their constituencies, have said otherwise, the guy listed nothing but one-offs, adding up to a piddly fraction of the deficit for a single-year.

Well, tomorrow we'll find out how gullible the American voter has become, and, shortly thereafter (because we already know the answer to that one) we'll be able to see what happens when proven-to-be-unworkable solutions are once again, in some sort of childlike desire (for, after all, who is it that likes to have tea parties?) for magically easy answers, are applied to our economy.

Summers, in college, I worked on a construction crew. One job was bucking up and limbing down Doug Firs pushed over like teabaggers by a D-9. Waiting between falls, I'd sharpen my double-bladed axe to razortude; once, bored, I used that axe to try to whittle wood. Big axe, sharp, unwieldy. Small wood, dull mind, unthinking. Holding the wood in my left hand, the axe in my right, I tried a whit, slipped the axe off the wood and zoomed it by my left thumb. Wow, I thought. That was really stupid. Could have cut myself, bad.

At which point I resumed whittling, zoomed my thumb, and cut it, bad.

How did I ever become a Democrat?

Why I'll Vote

It's typical election year stuff, but it happens to be true. More importantly, as President Obama said yesterday, Republican/teabagger tax plans threaten the death coup of our country. (He didn't put it quite like that.) With another $700 billion added to the deficit as the full continuation of all of the Bush tax cuts would do, we'd simply have no way to address our most central problems. Forget about infrastructure or climate change. Perhaps most disastrous of all, forget about addressing the steady decline in our education.

This, as the President did say, is not just about money. It's about our national security and our future. There's simply no way to get there if we follow the path of the fiscally irresponsible teabaggers and the selfish and cynical Republican leaders. It's simple math.

Which is the problem: a party that as policy rejects science, and as promised would substitute the Bible for the Constitution can't be expected to do even the most rudimentary calculations. Like, you know, arithmetic.

Bartlett Pares

I have occasionally noted that there remain a few sensible Republicans. Within that vanishingly small group is Bruce Bartlett, Reagan's chief economic adviser, to whom I've referred in the past. He keeps pouring the cold water of truth on the hot fire of right-wing rhetoric. Recently, titled "Reagan's Tax Increases," there's this:

It may come as a surprise to some people that once upon a time in the not-too-distant past Republicans actually cared enough about budget deficits that they thought raising taxes was necessary to bring them down. Today, Republicans believe that deficits are nothing more than something to ignore when they are in power and to bludgeon Democrats with when they are out of power.

That followed a statement, illustrated below, that made reference to:

the many tax increases supported and signed into law by Ronald Reagan, which eventually took back half of the 1981 tax cut

Some things in politics are simply so obvious that they ought not need stating. For example: to achieve sustainable fiscal sanity, we'll need a combination of tax hikes and spending reduction. Or this: health care reform will eventually require some form of public option that does not rely on insurance companies, and it will also need to include some sort of prioritizing of spending. Or this: lasting peace in the Middle East will include the relinquishing of some settlements and territory by Israel and the sharing of Jerusalem by the Palestinians.

What is in question is whether there will ever be politicians with the brains and guts and honor to say what does need to be said, and to do what needs doing. Sadly, it doesn't seem to matter that we have a president willing and able. He seems drowned in the din raised by the RWS™ and smothered by the cynicism of the current Republican leaders and the teabaggers to whom they pander. Truth and sanity have no place at their table. And as for the Democrats, strength and bravery have none at theirs.

Adult Toys

Let's not talk solutions, he pleads, while saying we need adult conversation. Un-fricking-believable. This from the party of "Death Panels," "Killing Grandma," and pledges to return to the failed theory of trickle-down economics, brought to us four decades ago, by Ronald Reagan. This from the party that still contends, a lá Ronnie (as if it didn't fail miserably when he tried), that they'll balance the budget while adding nearly four trillion bucks more in tax-cut debt, while increasing defense spending. This, from the party that wants, in effect, to return us to the hand-cranked Model T and its broken arms.

This from the party that calls global climate change a deliberate hoax, an anti-capitalist plot. (Care for some lemonade, Los Angeles?)

John Boner is saying let's scare the people into voting for us (ed note: hating Muslims is the best way, of course, but with the right lies, the economy can work, too). Then, we'll ignore real solutions just like we always have. Note also his reference to "consequences." In other words, in the poisoned pool into which they've dragged us, any policy statement that even remotely gets close to reality is doomed to failure.

He should know. Because when Barack Obama made serious proposals to address medical costs in ways that Republicans would have surely proposed themselves had they been in power, they railed to the heavens and, charitably, mischaracterized them shamelessly. What does that leave them? "Well, huh huh, y'know that was just to trash that black guy terrorist illegitimate president. Really, we need to do that stuff, so never mind what we said. Huh huh. You weren't dumb enough to believe what we said then, were you, when we were just kidding? This time it's for reals. Really. Trust us to do the right thing."

Adult conversation. After making disinformation and demagoguery the coin of the realm. After actively avoiding (the linked article is by a conservative) talking about what they'd really do, and what it'd mean for the country.

Adult conversation. Right. That might be the most dishonest thing the guy has ever said, and that's saying a hell of a lot.

Hook, Line, And Sinker

Speaking of bullshit (and I was) there's the latest exercise in deception known as the Republican "Pledge To America." I don't doubt that teabaggers will love it, because it's exactly their thing: lots of hot words with no cold details.

Even some conservatives are calling it out.

Given the gravity of the debt crisis, this is the most fiscally irresponsible document ever offered by the GOP. It is to the far right of Reagan, who raised taxes and eventually cut defense, and helped reform social security to ensure its longterm viability. It is an act of vandalism against the fiscal balance of the US, and in this global economic climate, a recipe for a double-dip recession and default. It is the opposite of responsible conservatism.

Andrew Sullivan is a reasonable guy. Then there's this, titled "Perhaps The Most Ridiculous Things To Come Out Of Washington Since George McClellan," from one of the more crazy with a capitol "K" RWS™ bloggers:

These 21 pages tell you lots of things, some contradictory things, but mostly this: it is a serious (ed. note: I assume he meant "series") of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes in search of unanimity among House Republicans because the House GOP does not have the fortitude to lead boldly in opposition to Barack Obama...

...This document proves the GOP is more focused on the acquisition of power than the advocacy of long term sound public policy. All the good stuff in it is stuff we expect them to do. What is not in it is more than a little telling that the House GOP has not learned much of anything from 2006.

It's the same old crap: cut taxes, add military spending, and miraculously balance the budget; ie, Reaganomics, so accurately called by the first George Bush, "voodoo economics." Was then, is now.

What makes the above conservatives so foamy at the mouthy is that it completely avoids spelling out any cuts that would be made to achieve balance, except to end the stimulus money, which is already scheduled to end. As usual, it avoids stating the consequences of their tax policies, or their vision for what government should actually do, and not do. The reason, of course, is that no one would buy it if it were laid out for all to see. More than that: congressional Rs don't actually want to do what they say they do. They've never done it. There's only one president in memory who actually did produce a balanced budget and a healthy economy. Then he blew it. (Well, it wasn't he who did the actual blowing.)

The pledge is as bogus as it is cynical. It's as empty as it is dishonest. It's weak tea.

Which means it'll work like a charm for its intended purpose, which is most certainly NOT to restore fiscal balance: hook the teabaggers, line the pockets of the powers behind the curtain, and sink the rest of the country.

Will we ever see a serious conversation about government from these people?