Simply stupefying speechifying: Sandoval and Obama

Washington, D.C.—Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement in reaction to the President Obama’s State of the Union address:

“Tonight we heard a blueprint for how to move our country forward by investing in what works and cutting what doesn’t. We heard a vision for keeping America a global economic superpower by out-educating, out-innovating and out-building our competition. To get there, we’ll have to set aside our differences and reach across the aisle.

“In Nevada, that means working together to create good paying clean energy jobs, training our workforce with the tools needed to compete in a global economy and boosting our small business community.

“Republicans have a responsibility to work with us to create jobs instead of wasting time with pointless political stunts. Republicans should join us in looking to the future instead of refighting old battles and pressing extreme, ideological plans to end Social Security and Medicare. I hope they will join us in finding common-sense solutions to the challenges we face as a nation – to rebuild our economy today, create the jobs of the future and strengthen the middle class.”

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Sigh. Too true. The GOP leaving hard line ideology behind and joining in good faith? Good luck with that. Here’s a post-partisan tweet from Rep. Paul Broun (R-Tenn.) : “Mr. President, you don’t believe in the Constitution. You believe in socialism.” Well, we can certainly count him onboard, can’t we? All this while Obama was praising newly minted House Majority Leader, John Boehner … hero of the working class. I thought Boehner was going to burst into tears again.

Kumbaya.

Here’s one of the most hopeful parts of Obama’s speech:

“Over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change.

So tonight, I’m asking Democrats and Republicans to simplify the system. Get rid of the loopholes. Level the playing field. And use the savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years – without adding to our deficit.”

Sigh. That’s nice.

The speech tonight was masterful once again. It set out wonderful goals. It’s bound to rate highly in the popular polls. It seems to have hit all the right notes, ala Bill Clinton.

This begs the fact that the U. S. corporate tax rates are already among the lowest in the world.

“In its Paying Taxes 2009 publication, based on its 2009 Doing Business report, the World Bank-International Finance Corp. estimated that the United States has a lower effective rate of current corporate tax than that of several other nations, including Germany, Canada, India, China, Brazil, Japan, and Italy. The publication also included a figure that compared effective and statutory corporate tax rates for several G-8 and BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India, China] countries…” Media Matters

When will the average American get a clue that no corporation, not to mention the wealthiest of Americans, never, ever pay the statutory tax rate. That would be as stupid as walking up to the airline ticket counter and asking to pay the highest published fare. Then, there was that pesky GAO report citing that nearly two-thirds of American corporations paid no federal income tax. (Note the declining federal taxes paid by U. S. corporations in graph below)

Tonight we heard all the usual rhetoric … very well delivered. All designed to put the Republicans on the defensive, if that’s possible since they’re beaming in from an as yet undiscovered planet (can you say Rep. Paul Ryan, R-WI ?). Yup, we’re all gonna have flying electric cars one day, and mag-lev rail between Reno and the Bay Area. Right. We’re gonna get all this done with a “spending freeze”.

Gawd help us.

Obama starts out patting himself on the back, for what? Extending tax cuts. Tax cuts create jobs, you know. Sigh. This is simply buying into the ‘new centrism’ and GOP mythology. (Note below, that even individual tax rates in the U. S. aren’t exactly going through the roof.)

The President goes on to talk about cutting discretionary spending to levels not seen since the Eisenhower Administration. I’ve got news for the President, if Eisenhower had seen what we’re dealing with right now, he’d have increased spending. Eisenhower wasn’t stupid.

Typically, no where in the speech was it mentioned that the bulk of our “discretionary spending” is for the military-industrial complex, AKA ‘The War On Terror’, AKA wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I cite Warresisters.org, nationalpriorities.org.

Did I disagree with it all? No. I found the suggestions to consolidate redundant agencies, utilizing transparency via internet technology, and similar attempts to corral bureaucratic sprawl encouraging … just as I did with Nevada’s new Republican Governor, Brian Sandoval when he proposed the same thing. Bravo. But this is such a ‘gimme’ that a school child would have thought of it. It’s nice, but let’s get back to the hard stuff.

That hard stuff which was noticeably lacking might be summed up in these keywords: unemployment, guns, foreclosures, financial fraud, Wall Street regulation. You’d think that all was well again on the crumbling financial front. And, it is if you’re an investment house or bank. Not so much if you’re a working schmuck.

Once again, Obama did a great job looking at the big picture, having forgotten some of the themes of his campaign that particularly resonated with voters … climate change, decline of the middle class. You’d have hardly remembered, listening tonight, that last year nearly one million American families lost their home to foreclosure.

Thanks, Mr. President, for stating the obvious.

Then there was the rebuttal from Rep. Paul Ryan, R-WI. You’ve gotta hand it to the GOP on selecting this guy. He’s real purty. Shiny. New. Well spoken. Reagan-esque brown suit. The guy is really good. So obviously sincere. He’s also batty. And, his figures don’t add up. In fact, the GOP leadership isn’t sure they want to own it.

Ryan comes out of the box strong, declaring that the ‘Stimulus’ was a complete failure. Huh? Not according to anybody that matters. The stock market is back up, GDP and employment are really beginning to turn around. The loans to banks and businesses are paid back with interest. Where, Paul, is it a failure? Analysts from Moodys to the CBO have said it’s added a minimum of 1.6 million to more like 2.5 million jobs. That’s failure?

Not content to butcher the facts on the Stimulus, Ryan marches on to attempt to discredit health care reform. Uh, sorry Paul, but once again, every analyst that matters - and even the Wall Street Journal - says you’re wrong.

The Affordable Health Care Act will keep kids on their parents policies longer (saving money on premiums), small employers will see their costs relatively unchanged, employees of larger firms will see costs stay the same or go lower ( as I did with the really big airline that I get my health coverage from), people buying their own insurance can now qualify for some nifty tax credits that they couldn’t get before - lowering their costs. Yada, yada. Where is the FAIL, Paul? Where?

Under the misguided GOP plan to repeal the AHCA, more Americans would be without any health care coverage:

I’m going to do what the GOP leadership should’ve done. Ignore Rep. Michelle Bachman, R-MN. If Paul Ryan is merely batty, she’s bat shit crazy … as SailorColin, my Las Vegas correspondent would say. I don’t want to dignify her rants.

And then came SandovalCorp.

It’s probably pretty egotistical of me to assume this, but I’ll go right ahead. Were my readers wondering where my comments were last night, after another equally stupefyingly boring and predictable State of the State by Gov. Brian Sandoval? I just couldn’t do it. I sat there, head in hands, and couldn’t bring myself to do it.

To state the obvious. Governor, if this is Nevada ‘family’, you make a great case for being orphaned.

Mr. Maven and I sat there waiting in vain for SandovalCorp. to even mention that MINING (or GAMING) should step up and pay their fair share. So the reality train - which started with the video by Bob Fulkerson at PLAN - stopped just shy of Carson City.

Yes, Sandoval has a thankless job, but he wanted it badly enough to give up a comfy, cushy federal lifetime judgeship. No tears of pity here. I told Mr. Maven that my instincts are saying that GOP operatives are looking at the well-coiffed, well-spoken Hispanic Wunderkind (uh, I can’t think of a similar term except in German) with a mind to bigger and better things. If he can just hang on and not embarass himself like John Ensign.

This is supposing that Nevada can’t go further than dead-last in education. That’s good for Sandoval Corp. since he’s going to, well … gut education further. It should be embarassing to have even mentioned it.

Again, no mention of MINING. Which kinda takes a huge chunk - as in boatloads - of money out of this state every year, laboring under a tax structure that harkens back to the day of Mark Twain.

Here’s a suggestion for a new Nevada state motto:

Fuck no, we can’t.

Sigh.

-maven

Monday Musings: January 24. 2011

This should be an interesting week, what with the State of the State by newly minted Nevada governor, Brian Sandoval this evening, and the State of the Union, tomorrow night by newly minted centrist president, Barack Obama. The casual observer might walk away with the notion that half-measures, baby steps,  middle of the road, lukewarm is what will save the day. We wouldn’t want bold, decisive, “I said it, and I own it” action. Nosirree.

Keep cutting, gutting and slashing essential services like education and Medicaid - often referred to as ‘greater efficiencies’. As though that’s ever worked in the past. This is the oldest trick in the bureaucratic books. Make the little guy squeak, then he’ll be happy to have his taxes raised to get the local roads plowed - while the untouchable defense budget and the military-industrial complex goes right along fat and happy.

There are some that ‘get it’ however. PLAN (Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada), with their director, Bob Fulkerson leads the way, bearing the flag of reality. Watch and remember during tonight’s State of the State:

“No new taxes, means no solutions”. Never a truer word was uttered, Bob. As Fulkerson points out, slashing programs and budgets to reduce the states’ budget deficit, unfairly places a disproportionate share of the burden on those who can least bear it.

And this same logic extends from the local and state level to the federal and national level.

On Sunday mornings, Mr. Maven and I enjoy our coffee while watching CBS’ ‘Sunday Morning’ - and have done so since the days of it’s original host, the late Charles Kuralt. Yesterday, I thought “Oh, great. Let’s suffer through another annoying commentary by Ben Stein…”. Normally, this is where I’d go refreshen the coffee.

This cut a bit too close to the bone. When the ever-monotone, to the right of Atilla the Hun, Ben Stein thinks Obama might just be the choice of a revitalized GOP, I know we’re in trouble.

Saturday evening was interesting. We attended a MeetUp of the Reno Skeptical Society, Skeptics in the Pub. The venue has got to change - the Sierra Gold was far too noisy and, once we moved to the patio, too frigid. However, this looks to be a good group with a positive agenda - to promote the use of critical thinking/reason in our culture and community. We had 21 attendees, and were we not shivering too hard to think clearly, it would’ve been a neat opportunity for discussion, observation and discovery. I was a little ‘skeptical’ of the youthful tilt of the group, but found them to be warm and welcoming.

To this end, I’ll be posting more content related to skepticism on this blog (see the Baloney Alert category ). I hope you will consider attending with us next month. Until their website is up, you’ll have to follow them on MeetUp.

I want to let you know about a couple of upcoming events, which I plan to attend:

On Thursday, February 3, 7:00 p.m. Director of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson, author, skeptic and astronomer, will speak at the Redfield Auditorium in the Davidson Mathematics and Science Center. His topic: “The World as Seen Through the Lens of a Scientist”

deGrasse Tyson follows in the footsteps of his mentor, the late Carl Sagan, making science accessible, and encouraging critical reasoning skills. He has appeared many times on PBS’ NOVA, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show and more.

In February, date and location to be announced, the Reno Skeptics plan a showing of the BBC documentary, ‘Creation’, about the extraordinary life and times of Charles Darwin. Stay tuned.

Later tonight, we plan to watch what may become a favorite tee-vee program - and successor to ‘Boston Legal’ - Harry’s Law with Kathy Bates. We saw the series premier last week, and though the premise is a real stretch of the imagination (poverty law office and shoe store ) it’s great fun to watch Bates and her cohorts romp through it. File under: ‘improbable but entertaining’.

Also new, I’m looking forward to seeing Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais’ ‘An Idiot Abroad’. File this under ‘cruel but potentially gut-wrenchingly funny’, as they send round-headed naif Karl Pilkington (gotta love the name) to the ends of the earth- just to see what happens when Karl ‘encounters’ stuff.

On Tuesday, February 1, the Urban Institute is offering a really timely webcast:”What Policymakers, the Public, the Press, and Parents Need to Know about Economics … in 90 minutes or less”. Should be great. You can sign up at the Urban Institutes’ website, or just watch the video afterward. I’ll try and post it here. Why watch this, you ask. Because economics in the driving force behind it all, dearie. Everything that keeps you awake at night, has economics at the root. Well, most of it. Economics didn’t have anything to do with why you drank that late cuppa joe. Hmmm. Or maybe it did … while you were getting the tax receipts out of the shoe boxes.

As you may have noticed, I’ve gotten Religion. See, Brent … I can be saved. I’ve joined the Pastafarians, hence the FSM symbol. That’s the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Ladybird Kat has taken over the house, as undisputed queen, now that poor little Asta is gone. This isn’t bad except that I have to wash and change the sheets and pillow cases more often. Sneeze. This cat has the most eerie resemblance to Alfred E. “What me worry?” Newman.

Finally, I’ll be posting some yummy recipes and foodie ideas today and tomorrow, so stay tuned for that. And I’ve posted a few of my backyard birding photos to the gallery in addition to Facebook. Enjoy.

The knee is about ready to test on the slopes. Too bad there ain’t any new snow. I’m waiting for some new, as the frozen corduroy won’t be the best thing to test it out on.

Cheers. Stay employed, stay healthy.

-maven

New House rules not so slight 'sleight of hand'. Increases deficit.

The new GOP majority in the U. S. House of Representatives is busy these days - enacting a whole new set of rules that look and sound like the old Pay-As-You-Go rules, but will have the exact opposite effect. They will raise the deficit that the incoming GOP deficit hawks say they are so against. This is the same kind of smoke and mirrors that we’ve watched the GOP slam the U.S. economy - and by extension, the taxpayers - with for more than 30 years. Uh, way back to the Reagan years and the sad story of not-so-trickle-down economics.

The original 1990 Pay-As-You-Go rules, enacted as part of a greater budget bill, was intended to keep brakes on deficits. But once George W. Bush got to Washington D. C. all bets were off. They wanted to heap goodies on their friends at the top of the economic heap - while obscuring the deficit increases it would cause (what we are seeing now). So they let the PAYGO expire at the end of 2002, and then passed the Bush Tax Cuts (cleverly called the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003) and the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act.

All unfunded. All deficit busting. Enter the quickly shrinking federal surplus and ballooning deficits. You should remember that George W. Bush was, after all, a savvy businessman - having wrecked several businesses and been bailed out by his father’s friends - and couldn’t have seen this coming.

Anyway, this created sweaty-palmed fear amongst many, and the PAYGO rules were re-instated in 2007. You’d think the day had been saved, but the cracks in the budgeting process wouldn’t be hastily slapped over with chewing gum like that. The PAYGO rules were waived to enact the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 (nope that wasn’t Obama yet - lay this one on GWB) which reduced revenues and increased spending. Uh, that’s what PAYGO was designed to prevent.

Then the economy cratered. So, in order to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009) to keep us from going into a Great Depression, there had to be another emergency waiver of PAYGO.

So today, we have H. R. 5 that essentially is designed to reduce spending rather than deficits. Yes, I know … deficits were bad. But that was then.The new language reads as follows:

…it shall not be in order to consider a bill … if the provisions of such measure have the net effect of increasing mandatory spending.”

Similar language. Similar name. The same GOP smoke-and-mirrors. This is handy, since tax cuts don’t have to be balanced out with equal spending cuts or revenue increases elsewhere in the budget - and as we all know, tax cuts for our powerful and wealthy friends is what gets us re-elected. Tax cuts can now be ‘deficit financed’. Ain’t that clever?

According to OMB Watch, it gets even worse.

“Adding to the complexity and the problems created by the House Cut-Go rule is the fact that PAYGO also exists as a law. No matter what the new House rule allows, deficits induced by Congress must either be declared as the result of an emergency – a frequent occurrence – or they will result in automatic, across-the-board spending cuts to designated mandatory spending programs, including Medicare. Tax cuts that are not required to be offset by the House are automatically offset by mandatory spending cuts by law, allowing Congress to avoid the politically painful act of voting on fiscally responsible offsets.”

Swell. If you and I ran our own finances like this, we’d be in jail - much like Tom DeLay.

Rule changes also essentially allow for Rep. Paul Ryan, R-WI, Chair of the House Budget Committee, to single handedly assign spending levels for the coming fiscal year by simply ‘publishing them’. That’s way easier than going through the usual Budget Committee process, isn’t it? Budget by fiat. Hardly the warm and fuzzy bi-partisan effort we’d hoped for.

Ryan can also simply ignore the deficit increasing implications of attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (the hated ‘Obamacare’) - which according to OMB will add nearly $230 billion to the deficit over the next ten years if it were to be repealed. Fortunately, repeal is unlikely. I hope. Even better, he can also ignore the downstream deficit impacts of extending the Bush tax cuts again.

According to OMB Watch, this crazy CUT-GO rule will also gut infrastructure spending in addition to making it easier to make cuts to appropriations bills.

It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.

The Senate still has to adhere to the PAYGO rules, fortunately. However, with the House in complete disarray rules-wise, you can expect the next two years to be total gridlock.

That’s just what we don’t need now.

-maven

Friday Fish Wrap: July 2, 2010

So here I am, at the end of a productive week despite a long drive home from Las Vegas on Monday. Today, I got in a nice 10 mile bike ride and about two hours worth of gardening. I’m trying to rehab a xeric section of the yard that got neglected last year. After digging more than a half dozen holes for plants and shrubs, and hoisting bags of mulch, I was more than ready for a massage this afternoon. Yikes. I think my lower back is going to bite me by morning.

Last night, I was noodling around on the internet and came across another Sharron Angle interview, this time with Ed Pearce on KOLO, Reno’s ABC affiliate. This was on the heels of her disastrous interview with Jon Ralston. I love working with Ed Pearce, and he’s treated me well over the years. Ed is a gentle gentleman, not a Ralston-style attack pug. So, he soft balled the smiling but clueless Angle.

Since KOLO doesn’t offer embed codes, you’ll have to go to their website to view the interview.

She still managed to flub and fluster answers, although not as spectacularly as on ‘Face to Face’. Ed, always wanting to help his guest at least appear to be intelligent, tried to help. Sigh.

Since I could run the interview back and forth at my pleasure, it gave me a chance to research a couple things that she keeps going on about.

Ed Peace later wrote the following:

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