Monday Musings: August 23, 2010

Maven will be traveling this week, and back - regaling you with her usual Liberal diatribes and goodies - next Monday.

In the meantime, enjoy the following:

Here’s a revealing way of looking at that canyon-like disconnect that is ‘conservative’ ‘thinking’ - from Apple of Doubt:

Liberals: X is an even bigger problem now. The solution -Y3- is an urgent national priority.

Conservatives: The Founders would hate Y3. It’s European. In other words, socialist. Why doesn’t anyone care about how many people Mao killed?

Voters: Yeah, why doesn’t anyone care about how many people Mao killed? And Y3 is a flawed solution. On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be any conservative alternative for addressing X. And we’re sorta worried about X.

Oh, if you haven’t already clicked on the Government Is Good widget in the sidebar, please do so, and noodle around there. It’s great stuff to use on your next TeaNut. I encourage you to ‘Like’ Government is Good on Facebook, too. Let’s get the word out!

Finally, here’s a dynamite op-ed piece from Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman. Use it as a talking point the next time your TeaNut neighbor starts whining about deficits and tax cuts:

Now That’s Rich

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: August 22, 2010

We need to pinch pennies these days. Don’t you know we have a budget deficit? For months that has been the word from Republicans and conservative Democrats, who have rejected every suggestion that we do more to avoid deep cuts in public services and help the ailing economy.

But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.

What — you haven’t heard about this proposal? Actually, you have: I’m talking about demands that we make all of the Bush tax cuts, not just those for the middle class, permanent.

Some background: Back in 2001, when the first set of Bush tax cuts was rammed through Congress, the legislation was written with a peculiar provision — namely, that the whole thing would expire, with tax rates reverting to 2000 levels, on the last day of 2010.

Why the cutoff date? In part, it was used to disguise the fiscal irresponsibility of the tax cuts: lopping off that last year reduced the headline cost of the cuts, because such costs are normally calculated over a 10-year period. It also allowed the Bush administration to pass the tax cuts using reconciliation — yes, the same procedure that Republicans denounced when it was used to enact health reform — while sidestepping rules designed to prevent the use of that procedure to increase long-run budget deficits.

Obviously, the idea was to go back at a later date and make those tax cuts permanent. But things didn’t go according to plan. And now the witching hour is upon us.

So what’s the choice now? The Obama administration wants to preserve those parts of the original tax cuts that mainly benefit the middle class — which is an expensive proposition in its own right — but to let those provisions benefiting only people with very high incomes expire on schedule. Republicans, with support from some conservative Democrats, want to keep the whole thing.

And there’s a real chance that Republicans will get what they want. That’s a demonstration, if anyone needed one, that our political culture has become not just dysfunctional but deeply corrupt.

What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. For the sake of comparison, it took months of hard negotiations to get Congressional approval for a mere $26 billion in desperately needed aid to state and local governments.

And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent. Take a group of 1,000 randomly selected Americans, and pick the one with the highest income; he’s going to get the majority of that group’s tax break. And the average tax break for those lucky few — the poorest members of the group have annual incomes of more than $2 million, and the average member makes more than $7 million a year — would be $3 million over the course of the next decade.

How can this kind of giveaway be justified at a time when politicians claim to care about budget deficits? Well, history is repeating itself. The original campaign for the Bush tax cuts relied on deception and dishonesty. In fact, my first suspicions that we were being misled into invading Iraq were based on the resemblance between the campaign for war and the campaign for tax cuts the previous year. And sure enough, that same trademark deception and dishonesty is being deployed on behalf of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

So, for example, we’re told that it’s all about helping small business; but only a tiny fraction of small-business owners would receive any tax break at all. And how many small-business owners do you know making several million a year?

Or we’re told that it’s about helping the economy recover. But it’s hard to think of a less cost-effective way to help the economy than giving money to people who already have plenty, and aren’t likely to spend a windfall.

No, this has nothing to do with sound economic policy. Instead, as I said, it’s about a dysfunctional and corrupt political culture, in which Congress won’t take action to revive the economy, pleads poverty when it comes to protecting the jobs of schoolteachers and firefighters, but declares cost no object when it comes to sparing the already wealthy even the slightest financial inconvenience.

So far, the Obama administration is standing firm against this outrage. Let’s hope that it prevails in its fight. Otherwise, it will be hard not to lose all faith in America’s future.

-maven

Making the case for needing government

I don’t know about you, but I’m thoroughly sick of the tired Tea Bag/Conservative/Libertarian whining about there being far too much government in our lives. They would have you believe that free markets solve everything.

Yup, like lowering the cost of health care.

Whether you believe in Hobbes’ or Locke’s view of government and why it came into being, they both thought it was necessary. Locke’s was the philosophy that Jeffersonian ‘Democracy’ (large D intentional) was founded upon:

The national government is a dangerous necessity to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community; it should be watched closely and circumscribed in its powers. Most Anti-Federalists from 1787-88 joined the Jeffersonians.  

This very fact, when held up to the current Tea Party rants against the government that their beloved ‘Founders’ believed was so necessary, puzzles me greatly.

That so many Americans, who have benefited so handsomely over the decades and generations, from this government by the people and for the people, could wish it away rather than fix it baffles me.

So, I went around the internet looking for reasons that government is good.

This is going to be one of my themes in the coming months on this blog.

A case of needing govenment, and perhaps more government, certainly not less.

Here I go again, flying in the face of ‘conventional’ wisdom - if you are of the ‘conservative’ persuation - and challenging assumptions.

We all go about our daily grind, bitching about the taxes we pay, and forgetting how much we get in return - that we take for granted - on a daily basis from that awful, intrusive government.

Here is an interesting excerpt from a website I’m intrigued with - Government is Good:

Ask yourself this question: “What has government done for me lately?”

Click to read more ...