To Penigma Readers - Happy Thanksgiving

I count among my blessings the freedom and opportunity to write here, and the blessings of sharing that experience with readers and especially my co-bloggers.

In gratitude for what I have, it is appropriate on Thanksgiving to think about also giving back, of being the person other people are grateful to have in their lives too.

Happy Thanksgiving, and thank YOU.

The Real Problem

One of the best articles I've seen in a long time on government

I would predict that the Democrats will turn out to be the more adaptive, the more flexible, the quicker to let go of dead or failed ideas, and that the Republicans will simply fail, fail, fail through a refusal to accept the ways in which they have failed ideas.  So far, they've only doubled down, and tried to blame others for their own failings and failures.

IF you are at all familiar with our history, you know that when wealth and income are disproportionately redistributed to the extremely wealthy, with record high productivity by labor being unrewarded for that productivity (stagnant or declining wages, decreasing benefits including both health care and retirement funding), this mirrors the debacle of the gilded age in the latter 19th century and earliest years of the 20th century. That unfair distribution results in limited growth for the economy, catastrophic boom and bust cycles which are further destructive as we saw with the 2007/2008 economic crash and the earlier big crash of 1929 that resulted in the great depression. This is also consistent with rip offs we have seen through dirty dealing, dishonest business practices, unchecked ponzi scheming and general swindling. We see it in the effort to steal from creditors by hiding money prior to declaring bankruptcy, with the executives at Hostess giving themselves huge raises, as much as 300% increases in compensation, where there is NO merit basis for any raises whatsoever, and where hedge fund vulture capitalism has held sway extracting all value out of a viable company -- and then blaming the problems of their mismanagment and greed on labor.

I would encourage every reader of penigma to become familiar with a largely unsung American hero of our economic growth, Ferdinand Pecora, from the 1930s and the Pecora Investigation.  Learn that history, and then understand why and how we need to apply those same lessons NOW, understand why we need a vigorous middle class to continue to be a thriving nation with a healthy, growing economy, and why that is NOT accomplished by putting more money in the pockets of the 1% to 2% the right wrongly defines as job creators.  WE are the job creators, through demand and innovation, not the 1% or top 2%.  We need a fair and stable playing field, and we get that through sound taxation policy which is NOT Republican tax policy, and we need it through more regulation and enforcement. 

Most of all we need to stop mischaracterizing taxation or an appropriate size government by calling it too large.  We have a large nation, and serving that size nation adequately can not happen through too small government.  The problem is not the 47% who Romney demonized and denigrated; the problem is the 47% who voted for Romney and the failure of the party dogma that would select either Romney or McCain or Bush or the planks of their platform that is so wrong for Ameica, that has failed to learn the lessons of the failure of the gilded age and wealth inequality. Instead, they are attempting to completely undermine our democracy on behalf of the 1%.

Dead ideas on taxes





As the “fiscal cliff” drama heads toward its climax between Thanksgiving and Christmas, each party is in the grip of a dead idea on taxes that warps the conversation. That means that no matter who “wins” this showdown, the parties’ antique thinking guarantees that any deal they strike will be merely the first of much bigger future adjustments as the baby boomers retire. To see why, it’s useful to think of the United States’ tax debate as being trapped between the cobwebs cluttering Grover Norquist’s mind and those clouding Gov. Jerry Brown’s.

Norquist’s dead idea is that we can fund the federal government in an aging United States without higher taxes. Republicans love to say federal taxes should be what they’ve always been in the post World War II period — around 18 or 19 percent of GDP. That’s why they want spending to come down from today’s recession-inflated 24 percent of GDP toward post-war norms of around 20 percent. (Revenue has fallen off a true fiscal cliff to 15 percent of GDP, thanks to the sluggish economy). Balance the budget around 19 percent of GDP, Republicans say, and call it a day.

The flaw in this reasoning is that we’re on the verge of doubling the number of seniors on Social Security and Medicare. Ronald Reagan ran government at 22 percent of GDP when the United States’ population was much younger. Even after we take steps to slow the growth of our health and pension programs (which we must), it’s impossible to fund the boomers retirement at historic levels of taxation and balance the budget without decimating government activities devoted to non-elderly purposes — including the R&D and infrastructure that help propel future growth.

Sorry Grover — in an aging America, federal spending, and taxes, are destined to rise.

The Norquist-Paul Ryan reaction is to deny math and demography. They want to use this “historical norm” tax limitation and our aging population to force big cuts in the rest of what government does. But their equally powerful motivation is political: they desperately want to preserve the tax issue as the chief way voters can distinguish what Republicans stand for.

After all, if Republicans don’t stand for lower taxes, what contrast do they have with Democrats? How can they contest elections? Ever since 1980, when Reagan put tax cuts at the heart of the GOP agenda, the party’s had a great ride on the issue. But the aging of the population means this centerpiece of Republican economic “thinking” is now totally divorced from reality.

If Republicans can’t run on tax cuts, they’ll actually have to come up with other policies to improve Americans’ lives. As we’ve seen in their flailing since the election, the party is so out of practice at doing this that they’re not sure where to begin. But despite Norquist’s death rattles, the GOP ultimately has no choice.

Democrats have a dead idea on taxes, too: the notion that we can put our fiscal house in order only by raising taxes on top earners. Obama ran hard on this myth, but the prizewinner this year is Gov. Jerry Brown, whose Proposition 30 raises marginal income tax rates on top earners in California to a whopping 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation.

To be fair, Brown knows that relying so heavily on a handful of taxpayers is bad policy. His original plan was to raise sales taxes as part of a broader budget patch, but the teacher’s union planned a rival ballot measure aimed squarely at the rich. Wealthy attorney Molly Munger backed her own tax plan as well (that’s what we do out here in California — everyone who’s anyone tries to govern by proposition).

Brown reckoned that if there were three tax hikes on the ballot, they’d all fail. So he cut a deal with the unions to get behind one that resembled theirs. “He came to this compromise because he had no other political choice,” says Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.

As a result, while Prop 30’s passage saves schools from devastating cuts for the time being, Brown has planted the seeds of future trouble. Follow the numbers: let’s say federal tax rates on top earners go back to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. Add in Obamacare’s new 3.8 percent tax on investment income and new 1 percent higher Medicare payroll tax on the same folks. Then toss in new top state rates of 11.3 to 13.3 percent (up from 9.3 and 10.3), and presto! Marginal tax rates for self-employed people in California earning $300,000 and up (who pick up both “sides” of the payroll tax on a chunk of their earnings) could reach 55 percent or more.

That’s dicey. It will almost certainly affect incentives and behavior. Yet Prop 30’s new inflow of $7 billion a year in a $100 billion budget won’t fix the state’s long-term budget woes, which are driven by spiraling health costs and massive unfunded health and pension benefits — not to mention sweetheart deals like those won by the powerful unionized prison guards, on whose slim ranks California now showers three times more cash each year than it devotes to its system of higher education.

The point? At both the state and federal level, middle class benefits and government services can’t be funded in a sustainable way just by ratcheting taxes ever higher on the top. Eventually middle class benefits and services must be supported by the middle class.

So we’ll need higher taxes, Grover, but not just on the rich, Jerry.

Neither party is ready to give up its dead idea yet. Which means we won’t get the debate we need anytime soon. That debate is this: Given that tax hikes in an aging United States are inevitable — including on the middle class — what’s the best and fairest way to do this with the least harm to economic growth?

This is the real “tax reform” conversation we need, and it would take us far beyond the approved Simpson-Bowles vocabulary that limits tax reform to the mantra of “lowering rates and broadening the base.” For starters, in an aging America we should be looking at slashing payroll and corporate taxes to boost jobs and growth and raising taxes on consumption, dirty energy and financial securities transactions to fund the government we want.

Whether we avert, postpone or go off the cliff next month — or some blend of all three — this is the conversation we’ll still need to get to in a few years.

And yet the right continues to whine about elections and Democrats

The GOP is anti-Science, and that explains why they habitually just make it up

Choke on this, John McCain; you marginalized yourself in 2008.  Keep making unwarranted statements about Ambassador Rice, and you will only continue to be discredited and insignificant.

Lincoln would be APALLED at modern Republicans, who share nothing with him or his party back in the day

In other words, Republicans

And didn't Governor Jindal just complain about dumbing down the GOP?

The technical termm for what Rubio is doing is PANDERING.  I'm not a scientist either, but I knew the answer.  That is what good education does, teaches you fact from fiction, or in this case, factoids from fact-turds.

Stop electing stupid conservatives; stupid is a disqualifying deficiency, and among other things should debar someone from sitting on the Senate SCIENCE committee.





 

If I'm any kind of conservative, it's an Eisenhower Republican kind

Hint - like beauty, it is something skin deep......

Today in history 149 years ago - the Gettysburg Address

This anniversary could not be more appropriate as ignorant, shallow, foolish people bring up stupid issues of secession.
Shame on them, and never more so than on this anniversary.

How appropriate that it was Texas v. White that decided and affirmed the civil war determined states may not leave the union by simple declaration - or petition, but that rather in the same way that a state had the approval of the other states to join the Union, they must have the formal consent of those other states that form the United States to leave that Union.

From that decision, by way of Wikipedia: The following are excerpts from the majority decision made by the Supreme Court Justices.

The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to 'be perpetual.' And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained 'to form a more perfect Union.' It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?^[7]

 When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.^[7]

Considered therefore as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State, as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired. It certainly follows that the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union. If this were otherwise, the State must have become foreign, and her citizens foreigners. The war must have ceased to be a war for the suppression of rebellion, and must have become a war for conquest and subjugation.^[7]

The authority for the performance of the first had been found in the power to suppress insurrection and carry on war; for the performance of the second, authority was derived from the obligation of the United States to guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government. The latter, indeed, in the case of a rebellion which involves the government of a State and for the time excludes the National authority from its limits, seems to be a necessary complement to the former.^[7]

It is not necessary to attempt any exact definitions within which the acts of such a State government must be treated as valid or invalid. It may be said, perhaps with sufficient accuracy, that acts necessary to peace and good order among citizens, such for example, as acts sanctioning and protecting marriage and the domestic relations, governing the course of descents, regulating the conveyance and transfer of property, real and personal, and providing remedies for injuries to person and estate, and other similar acts, which would be valid if emanating from a lawful government must be regarded in general as valid when proceeding from an actual, though unlawful, government, and that acts in furtherance or support of rebellion against the United States, or intended to defeat the just rights of citizens, and other acts of like nature, must, in general, be regarded as invalid and void.^[7]

Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

THIS is what we need, not more give-aways to the rich, WHO DO NOT CREATE JOBS

Speaking Instead, Truth to Power

Fox News is not information, it is not factual, it is - like so many other right wing media sources - pure propaganda.

I love this; it is a brilliant intersection of science and religion

Take the Pledge

Republicans are reinventing Christiainity, as a bad parody of the original

First we have the Conservatives re-writing the Bible.

Then this, which seems to appeal to all the worst Ayn-Randian aspects of the right, and very little real Christianity in it.

This is not education; this is obscenity

The Trail of Tears had no redeeming value, least of all was it justified or valuable in any way in imposing Christianity on native people. That is not and has never been a desirable outcome.  People must be free to come to whatever religion - or absence of religion - they wish to embrace.  Abusing people, either through slavery or through actions like this, which is a stain on the history of this country, is not EVER justified by religion, and should not be allowed or taught as legitimate history in any school in the United States.  This is the worst, most obscene kind of incredibly ugly revisionist history.  It is the kind of ignorance promoted by terrible, ill-educated fanatics like Tea Party Theocratic Michele Bachmann and failed Congressional candidate Allen Quist.  These people MUST be defeated in every case in every Local, State and Federal election in every U.S. state and territory.

Shame on Louisiana; they are compounding a terrible episode in U.S. history by adding insult to injury. This is not education; it is bigoted religious propaganda, it is teaching ignorance. SHAME!

We might just find that many uncorrupted clear thinking Republican

We know that there are new freshman Republican members of Congress who have refused to sign the Grover Norquist pledge. Let us hope there are enough others who recognize the failure of the policies and assumptions of that pledge to make good, balanced policy instead of the right wing epic failure of 2010 - 2012.

Wallyworld Alternate Reality

Do we really need to subsidize the Walton family that owns WalMart? REALLY?