Taxation Without Representative Debate

Over the past week, I've been doing some serious thinking about the current tax "deal" that isn't having such a successful time moving through Congress. On the one hand, there is the perception that it's a true compromise with Republicans - as it extends unemployment benefits 13 weeks and amends the payroll tax - but the larger picture is that this "deal" would continue to give breaks to "the producers" in this country that can't seem to "produce" much the last 10 years as well as will add no less than $1 trillion to the deficit over the planned extension.

Here's a few questions I have regarding this:

- Why are the alleged deficit hawks in the GOP - particularly the modern conservatives unblushed by this deal, as it completely goes against some of their key tenets: deficit reduction and protecting the middle class in America. Well, even though those are what they allege are pillars of their movement, we really haven't seen anything of the sort from them.

- Why is Obama so willing to let the GOP frame the narrative around this "deal"? They have been quite forceful with the economic lies they have been distributing to the American people. The foundation for this had already been in place, considering Republicans have not once admitted that legislation they had passed or spending they signed off on increase our debt. It's an all too common talking-point from conservatives that tax cuts don't add to the deficit. This, for lack of a more apropos term, is a complete and steaming pile of horse shit.

- Is Obama attempting a calculated chess move with this or has he been suckered in to play checkers with Boehner and McConnell? I'm guessing it's a fair amount of the later while attempting to create the perception of the former. And bringing in Clinton for a presser really isn't going to get him any friends from the GOP, precisely because his administration was - and still remains in many regards - the catalyst for much of the hyperbole coming from the modern conservative movement.

- Has Obama just assured that he will be primaried in the next presidential election? This is the question that many pundits and bloggers are simmering over at this point. Without question, the GOP are using this tax "deal" to show that it's the Democrats that are tearing each other apart. To an extent, they are right, in as much as many of us within the liberal/progressive wings of the party feel that our voices are being drowned out by this failed idea of "bi-partisanship". Many of us are willing to find some form of common ground, but not if it means continuing a program that has clearly failed.

Origins Of Speciousness

Fox"News" has been all about trying to show that the Bush Era Tax Cuts not only didn't add to the deficit, but the economy they were designed to save in the first place - which they didn't - is going to be thrown into further turmoil if they aren't extended.

Here's Dana Perino still thinking she's Bush's Press Secretary putting forth the clearly false narrative that it's the Democrats fault that the Bush Tax Cuts had an expiration date.



Considering that Republicans held majorities - albeit slim ones - in both Houses of Congress at the time this legislation was put forth, Perino's assertion essentially falls flat. And even though there would be required a certain amount of Democratic votes, the timeline of the cuts was already in the initial legislation.

The reason for this was twofold:

First, their needed to be a sunset provision in order to prevent the deficit from exploding to such an extent that the Republican could clearly be blamed for it. Not that that would matter, seeing as how upward of 86% of our debt was created by Republicans anyway.

Secondly, it was to create the alleged "trap", as Republicans are at least smart enough to know that they and their policies can't stay in power and intact forever. It was a near perfect tool to use during a Democratically controlled Washington - be it the White House or one or both Houses of Congress. Ultimately, the blame cannot and shall not fall at the feet of those that created the issue to begin with.

Holiday Breaks And Monday Morning Revelations

I did a couple of brief pieces over the long holiday weekend and did my best to stay away from as many news sources as possible. It's a drying out period that I think was long overdue.

However, I did spend quite a bit of time reflecting on all that has happened this year - and not just in politics. What I came away with is a sense that America, by and large, is even more divided now than the day after Obama was elected. From my perspective, this is due in no small part because of most American's laziness to research.

I've thought this way for a long time, yet I didn't realize the intensity of the sloth-like behavior of those that constitute some of the loudest and more extreme voices on both the left and right. The sad part of all of this is that those on the right are the ones that seems to have the upper hand in controlling the message.

This isn't just an "ignore them and they'll go away" issue, nor is it a "if you talk about them you're just legitimizing them" issue either. The problem the left - both liberals and progressives alike - has is that we tend to play too much defense rather than focusing on an offensive strategy. To put it into more simplistic terms, we can't seem to be focused enough on our goals because we feel the need to debunk any and everything coming from the conservative noise machine.

More on that later on though.

Here's what has been gracing my computer screen since I awoke this morning:

- WikiLeaks has dropped more documents that reveal some interesting, if not ultimately predictable, information about American diplomatic practices. I'm still on the fence in regards to this type of distribution of information, as it can cut both ways. That aside, it is reported over at Crooks And Liars that Fox"News" is formulating the narrative that WikiLeaks should be classified as a terrorist organization:

This makes one wonder if they have some dirt on Republicans that they are nervous is about to come out.

The Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian have had these docs for several weeks, so I'm curious as to how the vetting process was conducted and who was deciding what pages to reveal to the public. Certainly there's more in there than what will appear in your media outlet of choice. You can sift through the entire document dump here.

- When the former director of the OMB under Ronald Reagan, David Stockton, says the the modern GOP has abandoned fiscal responsibility in favor of deifying the Bush Tax Cuts, I'm wondering how deafening the silence will be from the right.

It's this sort of statement that will likely be ignored in favor of cranking up the volume on the "highest tax increase ever" meme. I'm immediately reminded of how so much of what the modern conservative movement is against, their sainted Ronnie actually accomplished during his tenure as President.

- The rhetoric from war hawks like Liz Cheney is going to get exponentially louder since North Korea launched artillery shells onto a disputed piece of land largely considered to belong to South Korea.

It's people like Cheney, Palin, McCain - and their media masters at Fox"News" - just aren't going to be happy until we launch a preemptive strike against North Korea, or Iran, or maybe even both at once. And considering they have been declaring "victory" in Iraq after the draw down of soldiers there, one has to wonder what they would consider "victory" in those countries should America actually use military force.

It certainly wouldn't be like fighting in the desert, that's for sure. This is something that conservatives simply aren't considering - the implications of attacking countries far more developed than Iraq and Afghanistan.

And Monday's just started.

Fiscal Foxes

Taxes, economics, and an alleged business anchor.



So what happened to all the investment that the top 1% earners in American did during the entirety of the Bush Tax Cuts? Where was it? What did it do?

I'll forgo the almost obvious bit about what the definition of "insanity" is, but if you kept walking the same way to school and a dog attacked you every time you went that same path, would you keep doing it?

That is essentially what Varney is advocating - a thesis that didn't pan out to start with and won't ever.

But more to the point, it seems that conservatives want more of what America has to offer but simply doesn't want to pay for it or even admit that it has to be paid for.

Deficit increases don't matter as long as you get your talking points out.

A Tale Of Two Reports

Ed Morrisey over at Hot Air claims to have gotten as exclusive look at a new report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that is, according to his death knell rhetoric, sounding an alarm that means virtually all industries are in danger because of proposed new EPA regulations.

The new standard for boilers, titled “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for Major Sources: Industrial, Commercial, and Institutional Boilers and Process Heaters” and called the Boiler MACT, creates a standard that literally no producer in the US meets at the moment. The industry group Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA) represents end-user firms that employ 750,000 in various industries, and they concur.

What happens when the installed boilers don’t meet the new standard? Factories and other facilities will have to close, putting jobs in danger and firms already hammered by the recession will lose production days — which will destroy jobs. That’s why the United Steel Workers have sounded the alarm, insisting that the EPA’s proposal will mean disaster.

Morrissey then goes on to talk about cement producers in the United States and how they would see their production output decreased by up to 15% if these regulations were put into effect.

But here's where his hysteria is misplaced. Regulations of this nature are always given time to take effect, thereby allowing various sections of industry to come into compliance. Morrissey is literally framing this in a way that gives the very misleading perception that when and if these new EPA rules take effect that the next day, virtually all factories and plants will shut down with no time given to come into compliance.

But not only are Morrissey's claims laughable, so is the study done by CIBO ( Council of Industrial Boiler Owners ) as it misleads and misrepresents the information with a junk economic model.

There's another proposal that Ed Morrissey should look into - the GOP's Two Step Job Creation Plan. The "plan" focuses on two areas: cutting spending and fully extending the Bush ear tax cuts for the top earners in the US.

According to the study, this will have just as chilling effect on jobs as Morrissey falsely believes that new EPA regulations will:

• Relative to the president’s budget request, the plan would reduce funding for domestic programs—which include
investments in infrastructure, education, and research—by 22.7%, while extending the Bush tax cuts for top earners.

• The Boehner plan would reduce the deficit by less than 5.5% in 2011.

• Because reductions in spending are larger than the tax cuts, and because tax cuts for upper-income taxpayers are poor
stimulus, the net job impact of the Boehner plan would be an estimated employment reduction of over 1 million jobs.

One would think that a body like that GOP, who is allegedly concerned about unemployment in this country, would take these factors into consideration the same as they did in their report on new EPA regulations. Apparently not.

Soak The Rich Or Hose The Middle Class?

Rand Paul's sense of economic history ( both recent and no so ) is contorted to the point that he won't even comprehend why his standpoint is irrelevant.

Skip ahead to 4:04 for the key bit.



Let's take a close look at this.

During the Eisenhower administration, the top marginal tax rate was 91%. During Nixon it was 70%, and under Clinton - when we had great economic prosperity even despite conservative Republicans attempts to shit down government and block almost everything Democrats did - it was 39.6%. And conservatives call this "tyranny"?

Is it that conservatives want their entitlement programs but not have to pay for them? Is it that they honestly believed that the Bush Tax Cuts actually benefited the American economy? According to a recent report, those tax cuts actually resulted in a net loss of income to the tune of $2.74 Trillion dollars, added $500 billion to the deficit last year - and will have an exponential effect should they be made permanent, and cost two and a half time more than Healthcare reform.

So who's getting soaked, Rand?

From all the talking points being leveled at us by people like Paul, Hannity, and a host of other people completely misrepresenting reality, we are to believe that the top 1% earners in America were given these tax breaks in order for them to reinvest into the economy. Funny, I don't recall that actually having a very good turnout now that I look back on it.

The Price Of Deception

I've found myself in many discussions with conservatives on Twitter regarding the cost of the Bush Tax Cuts and the one unifying answer that I get from them when pressed to explain why they agree with them based solely on the cost is that there "is not cost".

Seems that Mitch McConnell thinks this way as well.



As Think Progress points out, either McConnell doesn't know what he's talking about or he is attempting to defend one of the largest factors in the expansion of the deficit in the last 10 years.

In addition to incorrectly stating the effect that the expiration of the cuts would have on small businesses, McConnell basically summed up the Republican approach here, which is that cutting taxes for the rich is either free or worth exploding the deficit to implement. In reality, extending just the tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans — which President Obama has proposed allowing to expire — costs $830 billion over ten years and $36 billion next year alone.

But lets just think for a moment about why these tax cuts were implemented to begin with. The idea was that more money would be available to Americans who would reinvest into the economy, thereby preventing a recession. Anyone recall how that worked out?

So aside from McConnell's inability to be honest with those watching MTP, I think this should be asked of him - why are you so willing to continue to back a program what is widely recognized to have failed?

The Cost Of A Response

Conservatives hate talking about the Bush Tax Cuts, considering that they completely failed at what they were designed to do.



The fiscal reality that conservatives are completely ignoring is that these tax cuts will be disastrous to the country, as they have been since they were enacted.

As an exit observation here, it's readily apparent that Chris Wallace's producers told him that he needed to do a bit of "concern trolling" and not challenge John Kyl too much. After all, he clearly let him blubber on and completely dodge the question while filibustering about peripheral issues.

A Question Of Economics: Part VIII

I'm reminded about what has happened to Colorado Springs of late when I watch this video posted by Ellen over at Newshounds:



While conservatives lauded the Bush Tax Cuts, they have largely ignored the reality that they didn't do what they were intended to - stimulate the economy. But this cannot be brought up in modern socio-political discourse, as this would be "blaming Bush" for the economic ills that we are still facing today. But one has to wonder - who is at fault?

Back to Colorado Springs for a moment.

It seems that some "famous" residents of the conservative Mecca aren't too pleased with the fact that people are rightly pointing out how their ideology is fastly destroying their economic oasis:

I’m proud to call Colorado Springs home for myriad reasons — quality of life, cost of living, terrific schools, physical beauty, Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy, and great cultural amenities. For starters. The city leans conservative to libertarian, but is no monolith. There are “progressives” and Big Business statists and everything in between. Most importantly, politics does not poison and saturate every breath of the people who live here. They do not live to work. They work to live — bike, run, ski, climb, hike, play, explore, and enjoy their families.

Taxpayers in the Springs also happen to want to keep more of their hard-earned money away from government’s paws. They want the government to make do with less. Just like everyone else.

Which has led liberal outsiders to decry the city as it grapples with tough economic times.

That's Michelle Malkin attempting to defend the anti-tax status of her beloved, free-market, capitalist city. And much in the same way that the Bush Tax Cuts didn't help America in the least, a city almost literally dependant on nothing more than sales-taxes is one that was doomed to failure from it's very inception.

Not just within the city limits of Colorado Springs, but across the country, how exactly did giving more money back to the rich do anything to better the economy? In theory, from my limited understanding of how The Bush Tax Cuts were intended to work, the richer have more money to pump back into the economy and therefor we are all better off, as that money is used to re-oil the metaphorical gears of America. But that didn't happen, did it?

Many that I have debated over the past year on the cost, both literal and speculative, of the Bush Tax Cuts have stated that everyone got something back. And while this is barely true - even in the technical sense - it was the top 1% that could actually afford "keep" their money, while the remainder of the American people struggled with saving.

It can certainly be chalked up to "choice" and "responsibility" in spending, but when one has to chose between going to college and attaining a goal versus staying at home with your parent and attempting to make money working at the local factory, it really isn't much of a choice. Many people get stuck in that rut, as the affordability aspect of America has slipped further and further from people's reach.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

The point is that taxes in places like Colorado Springs are necessary to maintain services like the fire department, the police, schools, roads, and the "physical beauty" of those lovely parks that Malkin likely sits at while writing her screeds. When there is no money to maintain the city, the city fails - and Colorado Springs is a conservative experiment that failed, just like The Bush Tax Cuts.

The Cost Of Conservativism

In recent discussions on Twitter with members of the teabagger movement ( you can check out my timeline @aironlater ) it has come to light that they are completely ignoring the spending of former president George W. Bush.

While this shouldn't come as a suprise to anyone paying attention, not only are they ignoring it, but that are attempting to re-write the history and context of the infamous Bush Tax Cuts and the fact that they had a cost associated with them.

here's some relevant data if you have any questions.

The consitant and laughable shrieks of "but if somebody gave you back money, how is that a cost?" tend to show just how ill-informed these people really are.

The Bush tax cuts have contributed to revenues dropping in 2004 to the lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950, and have been a major contributor to the dramatic shift from large projected budget surpluses to projected deficits as far as the eye can see.

The tax cuts have conferred the most benefits, by far, on the highest-income households — those least in need of additional resources — at a time when income already is exceptionally concentrated at the top of the income spectrum.

The design of these tax cuts was ill-conceived, resulting in significantly less economic stimulus than could have been accomplished for the same budgetary cost. In part because the tax cuts were not as effective as alternative measures would have been, job creation during this recovery has been notably worse than in any other recovery since the end of World War II.

But don't assume that those that still trumpet the virtues and denefits of the Bush Tax Cuts are going to actually come away from this information with any change of heart. They have far too much invested in their own self-destruction to admit that they were wrong.

Some Thoughts For Your Monday Morning

- Why do people on the Right continually think that their Congressional representatives are going to vote with what their constituancy wants? This entire healthcare debate has been framed by the Right as to what "they" want, not what the voters in their districts want.

- While it is true that ACORN has problems with a handful of people ( which they have severed ties with ) there is somewhat of a hypocritical message that is being sent by conservatives - the Republican party in specific. While the Republican party, just within the last few years, has seen several sex scandals ( one involving an underage boy in the Mark Foley incident ) corporate corruption, drugs, and misuse of state funds, how do they have the right to lambast ACORN?

- Has anyone else noticed that Bill O'Reilly has been so marginalized since Glenn Beck got to Fox"News" that he's hardly a headlining act in the American psyche anymore? Sure, he's got his audience every night, but his relevance is all but gone.

- For those that watched the VMAs last night, and saw what Kanye West did to Taylor Swift, do you think that was planned? There's been some chatter on Twitter over the last few hours that it was. If so, I have to ask why? Why would West, a man that is widely known for his childish behaviors, want to continue validating those opinions? That's not exactly good marketing.

- How many blacks did you see at the "9/12" protests? I wasn't there, but I counted 2 that were interviewd by Beck. Diversity? I think not.

- And speaking of the continuing "tea-bagging" within the conservative movement, where were these same people when Bush more than doubled the national deficit? Where were they when Bush's tax cuts and the Iraq occupation cost more than double what proposed healthcare legislation will? Where were they when Bush clearly violated the Constitution, that these people claim to be scholars of, by using warrantless wiretapping on Americans?

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Some Thoughts For Your Night

- Did you realize that the Bush tax-cuts cost upwards of twice as much as the initial Obama vision of healthcare reform. And you know what, were still paying for that nonsense that did absolutely nothing for the economy.

- Conservatives favored a socialist form of healthcare for Iraq, but think it will the the death of America.

- Why does Glenn Beck think that everyone was so wonderfully happy the day after Sept. 11th?

- How can a teacher "forget" that Obama was giving a speech to school children? This happened in Nashville. Will post about it later.

- Why is it that conservatives are suddenly concerned about ACORN when the group has been around for nearly 40 years?