Check, Please

The above, from a serious proposal, has been making the rounds among various political blogs, and I think it's an excellent idea to send an official and accurate version to every taxpayer. (Thanks, Timmyson, for reminding me.) Some would be outraged, I suppose. Everyone, though, ought to find it informative. To me, the expenses seem reasonable.

It also shows the extent to which the items over which teabaggers and other RWS™ get so exercised are almost negligible, in terms of what they want to eliminate to justify their unneeded and unjustifiable tax cuts. By which I mean the NEA, early childhood education, etc. Whereas there are some that dance around the edges of entitlement reform, the response of congressional Rs when Obama actually proposed doing something about it was to cry "death panels." Now, campaigning, when asked where they'd cut spending, they change the subject. In my state, political ads against a D Senator claim she cut billions from Medicare.

These tax-cutting budget balancers actually use attempts at addressing real numbers against those who do it. While claiming they're the ones to restore fiscal balance.

It can't be done. Not, at any rate, by teabagging.

Sadly, according to the receipt, getting rid of Congress entirely would result in barely a blip. And what a crew we'll have there if the teabagger candidates win their races.

Solution

The Bush tax cuts, which have so devastatingly plunged us into debt -- debt, by the way, over which teabaggers and the RWS™ and every R in Congress are apoplectic -- are set, by design, to expire at the end of this year. By design. By law. The way George Bush, guided, as we now know, by God, intended.

Congressional Rs are determined to stop any and every action Obama and Ds propose. They're even planning to replay Newt's greatest hit, the shutting down of government. How can we address the deficits if Rs continue to raise alarums about it but steadfastly refuse to take action? What's a Congressional D to do?

Answer: nothing.

NOTHING. Why all the machinations about Obama's plan, Bush's plans, getting something done, when doing nothing takes care of the whole ball of tax? Go home, run for reëlection, spend your time running away from health care and President Obama. Don't do a damn thing, and everything will be okay, just the way G and G planned. It's perfect. They, it turns out, were perfect. Because by doing nothing -- at which Rs have become absolute experts -- taxes revert to those of the Clinton era, deficits disappear. Gone in the trash, tossed like a breakfast teabag. And, like teabaggers after Glenn Beck, budget balance will follow without a further thought.

So, what's the problem? All Congress has to do is not a goddam thing.

War And Reason

Nice words, from a guy who, according to the RWS™, hates the troops. Actions, though, are more important.

To those who consider the president's absence from Arlington this Monday a figurative middle finger raised to veterans (and I know they are many who see it exactly that way), I'd only ask, in relation to Barack Obama's words above, how they think his actions compare to those of our previous president, in terms of providing for the needs of vets and families.

And if I were predisposed to ranting, I'd also ask: how much better might their care be -- how much better off would our county be in countless ways -- had we all, including those teabaggers professing love of country while demanding an end to "outrageous" taxation (at its lowest point in decades), agreed to a war tax (a gas tax would have been perfect, in several ways, especially if there were a way to moderate it for low income people), starting when it all began and ending when it was over?

But that would have been, you know, reasonable and proper. And it would have required a bit of sacrifice. Not exactly their cup of tea, don't you know.

Wind Bags

How many, do you suppose, of the participants in the upcoming tea-bagging parties are actually negatively impacted by President Obama's planned tax increases? My guess: other than the Fox News (sic) stars and starettes, approximately none. It's yet another example of the craven and insincere tricking the crazed and insecure into rising up against their own self-interest. Think anyone will ask them to which taxes they are objecting? "Thirty-six percent now not thirty-nine in two years" doesn't have the same je ne sais quoi as "fifty-four forty or fight."

It will never cease to amaze me; and, of course, it will never cease. You can't fix this kind of crazy. Or maybe these are the real tea-baggers, and the rest are just suckers.

Blessed with a certain failure of reality testing, many are only too happy to buy into what Fox is selling. In a country of 300 million, even if there were a million nutjobs like these it isn't much of a chunk. But insanity is motivating, so they make a lot of noise, seeing demons where none exist, believing demagoguery even as the disproving facts dangle before their eyes. Were I to address these people there's absolutely no way I could convince them of my point of view; nor could they persuade me of theirs. I have only the hope that the extrapolation is also true: that their numbers aren't growing.

And I wonder -- assuming I'm right that Obama's efforts will turn the economy around and effectively address health care, energy, and a few other things, WITHOUT sending dissenters to camps, stifling capitalism, or destroying democracy -- if at some point any of these folks and their outFoxed leaders would be able to admit they were wrong. Or, for that matter, even recognize it.
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Punishing

There's more than enough, in Republican reactions to Obama, to keep me amused. Among the most ridiculous memes currently afloat is the idea that liberals like to punish the rich. Even Andrew Sullivan, that most reasonable of conservative bloggers, buys into it. If sh*t would stay stacked, that one would be at the top of the pile.

In my view it's a question of responsibility. For one thing, the liberal leaders who propose tax increases on the wealthy are, like their conservative counterparts, wealthy. So are all those liberal Hollywood types. I don't enjoy paying taxes, but I don't begrudge it. I think I'm getting value; if not free of waste, government spending is more helpful than not. I drive on roads, I like having cops around. I prefer educated voters, no matter in which party. I think Iraq was the worst mistake any president has ever made, but I'm glad we have an army.

I recall, as a kid, my dad swearing profusely over his 90% tax rate; at the time, I believe he was making less than $30,000 a year. Completely ridiculous. Under Bill Clinton, the highest rate was 39% and at that time I was making enough to pay it. Like everyone else, I'd have preferred to pay none at all. But I reminded myself of my good fortune. Yes, I worked eighty or more hours a week to earn what I did (which, for the record, was never enough to be in Obama's proposed highest bracket), and I knew people making a hell of a lot more who, by virtue of shady tax shelters were paying way less, bragging all the way. I considered it despicable. Worse, by an immeasurable amount, than those on public assistance whom they loved to decry.

Just as there are conservatives who call for (and have accomplished) the murder of abortionists, and just as there are many more who overtly hope for Obama's failure, I don't doubt there are some liberals who believe the wealthy are undeserving because they got their wealth by oppressing their workers. Or stealing it. (One might add that, historically, there's plenty to back it up.) But the belief that we need to return to the tax rates under Clinton, when far more people were doing well, the dollar was strong, the economy was booming, and we were paying down debt instead of running it up, is hardly evidence of wanting to punish the wealthy. But it's great Limbabble.

I've said it before: I don't know where the perfect sweet spot is: 100% taxation would lead to the end of production; 0% taxation would lead to the end of government and all necessary services. The right amount is somewhere in between. Clearly, it's higher than the rates under Bush, because, demonstrably and inarguably, they've led to disastrous increases in debt and were at least part of the collapse of our economy. If it's not "fair" that the wealthy pay more in total taxes than people of lesser means, it's also not fair, as Warren Buffett said, that he paid a tax rate of 17% while his secretary paid 30%. Which is how it is for the clever rich, who manage to make most of their money via capital gains.

There's an endless number of ways to cook the numbers. Rich people pay more of the tax total than poor people because they make more money. Duh. But the bottom line is that there is an extent to which, as a country, we're in it together. There are those who, by virtue of luck, in-born intelligence, upbringing, connections, whatever, have been able to make more money than those who work just as hard and struggle more to make less. For several years I was in the former category. I never participated in tax shelters. Having chosen to be in a clinic in which the money of the higher earners subsidized those in specialties less able to produce, for my entire career I made half as much as many surgeons while doing twice as much work. Literally. It wasn't because I wanted to punish myself.

It's a strange thing to me that the party that claims a corner on the values market, that claims more patriotism than its counterpart, is the least willing to pitch in in a time of dire need. And what's being proposed is a return to the only time since well before Ronald Reagan when the economy was thriving and the budget was balanced. And we're not talking about those days of my father's 90% rates.

Not even close.

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If I Had A Ham.....

Barack Obama has said the current economic collapse is the "final verdict" on the Bush/McCain economic policies. Republicans are saying it's not the policies, it's the execution. Lowering taxes raises revenues, lowering taxes raises revenues, lowering taxes raises revenues. The only reason it's never worked is because spending was never under control. And the only reason deregulation hasn't worked is because people got greedy.

My mom used to say "If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs."

I'll stipulate: taxing at 100% would stifle the economy. You stipulate: taxing at 0% would stifle the government. Clearly, there's a range, a taxonomic sweet spot. Reagan never found it, Bush and Bush never found it. Clinton seems to have. During his presidency, the economy soared, revenues leapt, the budget was balanced. Over the objections of the Newtonian congress, with only Democrats favoring, taxes were increased. It's been argued that it was only after certain tax cuts were forced, in 1997, by the Republican congress, that the economy really took off. Well, maybe. It's interesting, though, that as soon as things started falling apart under Bush, Republicans immediately started blaming it all on Clinton. So which is it? 1997 was the reason for everything wonderful, or the 1993 plan was so evil it caused problems even after it was Reaganized?

Here's the thing: let's assume it was the 1997 Republicans that saved the economy. Maybe that was, in fact, the sweet spot. What, then, about the increased tax cuts of George Bush? Might we not all agree that he missed the zone? That a return to the tax status of 1997 might, in fact, make sense? And isn't that, after all, what Obama and the Democrats have been proposing? Get back to the tax levels which were, in fact, a compromise between Clinton's 1993 plan and the Republican push-back; and which the Republicans are touting as the real reason for Clinton's success? Seems like an easy agreement. We already made it once.

If we cut taxes, we'll balance a budget, if we cut spending. 

If we had ham, we'd have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.

Taxing Credulity

Joe Biden has said that willingness to pay one's share of taxes is patriotic. Naturally, those paragons of patriotism, those arguers for putting country first, Sarah Palin and John (I-was-a-POW-and-you-weren't) McCain, put it down like a steaming turd, and their audience laughed and roared their approval.

So let's see if I understand.

We are in a war for dubious reasons and with questionable results, mismanaged from the start, for the price-tag of, conservatively, a trillion dollars. After Republicans put into place the diabolical duo of tax cuts and deregulation, resulting in what is generally agreed to be the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression (worse, some say), another trillion dollars of our tax money (give or take a few billion) will be required to clean up the mess. Our national debt has ballooned in the last eight years by about six trillion dollars, before accounting for the aforementioned debacles. Infrastructure is crumbling. The military is depleted and degraded. We need to find and fund a way to disseminate alternatives to fossil fuels. Terrorism, despite our so-called war on it, is increasing around the world. It's no exaggeration to say the survival of our country as we know it is not at all certain.

Willingness to help pay for this, our would-be leaders to the right have told us, is laughable.

It's not hard to understand, I suppose. It's their policies, their most tightly-held beliefs, that have gotten us here. Aided, of course, by the constant declarations that everything is fine, not to worry, no need to pay our way, it's all good. Look the other way while we pick your pockets, scoop up your kids. Nothing to see here, move along, move along. So to admit now that they've screwed us to the point of possible non-viability, is to admit they've been wrong. Seriously wrong. Since Ronald Reagan (may peace be upon him.)

What, I wonder, is on the minds of those laughing and waving lipsticks while Sarah McSame sneer at Biden's suggestion? How would they define patriotism, given the crises we face everywhere we look, and absent the money to address them? Another yellow ribbon on the SUV? Another smear of Obama, another suggestion that he hates America? Would those lovers of family values (and haters of families other than their own) similarly laugh if they'd run their household into staggering debt and were told they need to tighten their belts? Wave lipsticks and run the truth-teller off their lawn?

You can put lipstick on George Bush, but it's still Sarah Palin.

Even one of John McCain's own economic advisors has said the next president will have to raise taxes, and that was BEFORE the bailout of Wall Street. Yet John McPalin laugh it off. The choice, they've said, is between "Country first, or Obama first."

Joe Biden spoke the truth. There's no way to get around raising taxes to pay for the mistakes of George Bush and those, like John McPOW, who've enabled them. Anyone who loves the country enough actually sacrifice for it (and that includes me) would admit it (and, most likely, that any hopes of spending on the other things we need are now out the window). But not John and Sarah. They laugh it off. And their audience, their conserative country-first confabulators, slap each other on the back and the band plays on.