Tag Archives: taxes

Political Rants

Another bag of it.

A couple of quick swipes on the political front this week. No time to ‘splain, man … just too damn busy.

Sequester. Well, it’s here. Big surprise. Note to the President: Never tell yourself they’ll never do something THAT stupid … because they always will. I know, the sequester was a collective enterprise, strongly supported by Boehner and passed into law by his knuckle-dragging caucus. But thinking that there is some precedent this group will not break is living in a fantasy world. Wake up, people!

Another screaming success for Boehner.

Syria. Secretary Kerry is pledging additional non-lethal support to the Syrian opposition. It’s hard to know how best to approach this crisis, but I know this much – whenever we get deeply involved somewhere, particularly in that region of the world, the result is not good. (What’s the opposite of good again? Ah, yes.) No good answers here, but I know that the motives behind whatever policy we advance in Syria are not likely to benefit the Syrian people, nor the people of the region. We are obsessed with the notion of Iranian domination of the Middle East – a sentiment echoed by our principal allies in the neighborhood. Any sympathy for the opposition, I’m sure, is driven more by the desire to deny Teheran and ally and to quash what they see as a conduit to Hezbollah. However, if they think the opposition in power in Damascus would mean harmony with Israel, they should think again. The most determined fighters in their midst are Sunni jihadist-types. Just saying.

Chavez. Venezuela’s president is in a pitched battle with cancer, and I can hear some chortling around the edges. He gets very little sympathy here in El Norte. It bears remembering though that he is the first Venezuelan leader in my lifetime that has ever done anything for the poor in that country. That’s why they love him, and that’s why he deserves our sympathy and moral support. I tend to judge a person by his/her enemies as much as by his/her faults and virtues. Chavez has definitely got the right enemies. Get well soon, big mister.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Samesville.

Back again, right? Every couple of months or so we are faced with a manufactured fiscal crisis. Again, this is by design, not by necessity. The Republican party – particularly the hard core of yargle-bargle types known as the “tea party” – has long pursued the practice of enormous deficit spending while they hold the White House and austerity when they are in the opposition. This time around, it’s austerity with a vengeance. Sure, the president signed on to this sequester deal, but it was in response to another manufactured fiscal crisis, brought on by the newly-installed G.O.P. Congress in 2011. In other words, if it wasn’t the sequester, it would be the debt ceiling, or the budget, or some key appropriations bill – anything to jam up the works.

Patron saint of the whiners. There is nothing surprising about this. Grover Norquist, patron saint of the cheapskates (and clearly someone who did not like eating his peas when he was 4), articulated it quite clearly when he said, in effect, when Democrats are in power, force them to rule like Republicans. Parse out the irony (as mentioned earlier, Republicans are much more generous with presidents of their own party) and you can see the sense in what they’re doing. Of course, it goes beyond that. I think most Republicans are smart enough to know that the kinds of cuts they’re advocating will result in a second recession. That works to their political benefit. Winning is paramount to them, even (and perhaps especially) when they lose. If they can discredit a Democratic president, so much the better.

The Democrats are enablers of this continuing train wreck. They were handed the reins in 2009, and instead of meeting the financial crisis with a response of an appropriate magnitude, they allowed conservatives to talk them down to a small-bore strategy that simply was not sufficient to pull us out. The stimulus worked to the extent that it was designed to work; when the money ran out, so did the steam. Now we are in what Krugman rightly calls a depression – an economy that is not shrinking, but not really gaining ground either – and all Washington can talk about is cutting the freaking deficit. The problem is unemployment, not short-term debt. Fix one, and the other will take care of itself. Want to solve long-term debt? Stop maintaining health insurance as the province of private profit-making industry; expand Medicare and you will make it solvent.

How do you get these people to do the right thing? To borrow a phrase from V.S. Naipaul, a million mutinies now. Tell your representative and your senators that you want them to invest in the economy, not starve it.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

The way we are.

The sequester deadline is getting closer, but – unsurprisingly – we are no closer to cutting a deal to avoid draconian cuts to a full range of programs. In all honesty, if it weren’t for the domestic and veteran-support programs that would fall under that senseless cleaver, it might not be such a bad thing in that the Defense budget would finally see some reductions. Of course, as every close observer of national politics knows all too well, cuts to the DOD turn normally conservative – even Randian – Republicans into hysterical Keynesians, warning of the dire employment consequences if the Pentagon budget were slashed. There’s some truth to that … which is why it sounds so strange coming out of Republicans’ mouths. But anyway…

Hey, nitz!
Shout out to "the man".

It’s worth repeating Robert Pollin’s observation here that Pentagon spending is not the best way to create jobs. $1 million spent on defense creates roughly a dozen jobs. Spend that same money on education and you’re up into the mid twenties. So if the Republicans are simply looking for ways to generate employment through public spending, there are plenty of ways to accomplish that. Personally, I think their only concern – aside from winning elections – is for the welfare of the well-off. It’s really all they ever talk about, if you listen carefully to what they say.

It shows in what they do, too. Since 2010, they have raised my income taxes in a major way twice – twice! In 2011 they scotched the “Making Work Pay” tax credit, which was worth about $800 to couples. This past year, they ended the payroll tax holiday; refused to budge on that, too, in favor of extended breaks for people making $250,000 to $400,000 a year. W.T.F., Boehner, McConnell – what happened to your Norquistian anti-tax pledges? Oh, that’s right – I’m not rich, so it doesn’t apply to me.

Hey, nitz! Boehner! You want to fuel job growth through increased consumption? Here’s an easy way to do it. Raise taxes on the freaking rich, cut them on the poor and working class, and raise the minimum wage to at least $9 with indexing, as Obama proposed. When working people get money, it goes right back into the economy. We spend it like water … not because we’re profligate, but because we have to. Give more money to the rich, they’ll just sit on it, like they’re doing now.

Little piece of advice for you, Jack. No charge. Happy freaking Valentine’s day.

luv u,

jp