Contributors

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Super Powers

At first I thought the following was an Onion headline.

Super Congress Getting Even More Super Powers In Debt Deal

Sadly, it's not.

Am I the only one that has a problem with this? I don't get it, folks. Congress is filled with intransigent members so let's put some of them on a committee and that will somehow magically work more better?

Even more perplexing is that the right (or at least many of them) are the ones pushing for this. Huh? I guess it is smaller government with only 12 people making key decisions now.

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Voices in My Head



Ah, the adolescent power fantasy on full display. Isn't Kevin Baker a fan of Allen West? Makes perfect sense.

Monday, August 01, 2011

One Giant Shit Show

Our nation's leaders have finally come together and will pass a bill at some point soon to raise the debt ceiling. The last few weeks have been one giant shit show and, now that it's all over, I thought it prudent to devote a post to the various thoughts I've had over the course of all of this. As always, I welcome your summative comments as well:)

To begin with, I am SO fucking tired of the "Washington's Broken' story line. It's not even remotely true and it's just a bunch of media drivel. Government ain't pretty, folks, and it never has been in our history. "Broken" was the Civil War, not an argument over spending and taxes. Let's declare a moratorium on this, shall we?

And while we are on the subject of whining, the professional left can go fuck themselves. They are disappointed in Obama and are "abandoning" him. To go where, exactly? Rather than wasting energy complaining, they should use that energy to go and find the 45 percent of the people in this country that don't vote and light a fire under their collective asses. Don't blame the president for the fact that he has to deal with a large bloc of completely intransigent people. Transform the Tea Party into a massive minority, send them back to their short wave radio set, and then maybe some of your wishes for government will come true. AP News had a good story on this recently.

Here's the truth: The overwhelming majority of senators and House members do what their constituents want them to do. Or, more to the point, they respond to people in their districts who bother to vote. Nothing is dearer to politicians than re-election, and most have a keen sense of when they are straying into dangerous waters.

A McClatchy-Marist poll this year found that 71 percent of registered voters want political leaders in Washington to compromise to get things done. If those voters skip key primaries, however, they may have little say in the matter.

Exactly right. Not only do these complainers have to get out and vote themselves, they have to get 10 other people to vote as well. That's how it fucking works so if you don't like the outcome, do something about it. No one said it would be easy.

Getting back to the media...what a load of shit they were during this debate. Paul Krugman absolutely nailed it perfectly in this recent piece.

News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

To me, this is essentially what happened. The current form of the GOP basically got everything they wanted. There was no additional revenue at all because of the anti-tax catechism of the right. They wouldn't even allow subsides to in the final plan even though basic economics proves that they too distort markets just like taxes. And what more proof do we need that the Bush Tax Cuts didn't work? We extended the cuts last year. Where are the jobs? In fact, our economy is stalling. That's not what I was told would happen. As Krugman notes in his piece, reality doesn't seem to matter.

From this point forward, we need to decimate the Cult of Balance. As Krugman notes,

For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.

But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

This is what I have been saying for quite some time on here and it is now time for people, and especially the media, to accept this reality. We are spending far too much time managing the fantasies of the right and coddling their paranoia. In trying to be fair and think that "everyone's a winner and correct," we are holding back our country from solving the problems we face.

We can't continue to work with people who are closet fascists. Heck, some of them aren't even in the closet. They want everything exactly their way and are, conveniently, never wrong. Krugman summarizes this well.

As you may know, President Obama initially tried to strike a “Grand Bargain” with Republicans over taxes and spending. To do so, he not only chose not to make an issue of G.O.P. extortion, he offered extraordinary concessions on Democratic priorities: an increase in the age of Medicare eligibility, sharp spending cuts and only small revenue increases. As The Times’s Nate Silver pointed out, Mr. Obama effectively staked out a position that was not only far to the right of the average voter’s preferences, it was if anything a bit to the right of the average Republican voter’s preferences.

Remember, though, he must fail...even if reality is starkly different.

We already have a centrist president. Indeed, Bruce Bartlett, who served as a policy analyst in the Reagan administration, argues that Mr. Obama is in practice a moderate conservative.

Mr. Bartlett has a point. The president, as we’ve seen, was willing, even eager, to strike a budget deal that strongly favored conservative priorities. His health reform was very similar to the reform Mitt Romney installed in Massachusetts. Romneycare, in turn, closely followed the outlines of a plan originally proposed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. And returning tax rates on high-income Americans to their level during the Roaring Nineties is hardly a socialist proposal.

While I'm not happy with the way things turned out, I'm not going to blame the president. At the end of the day, he has to govern. And when you are dealing with a large, immovable object that the American people (the ones that could be arsed to vote, that is) put into office, you have to do the best you can. He did.

This entire affair should serve as an excellent example of what the GOP is all about these days. If you don't like it, do something about it.

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Love, Liberals and Conservatives

I was reading an article about the algorithm match.com uses to make "fuzzy" matches. The interesting thing they found is that people's stated preferences often diverge quite drastically from what they actually want. That is, people say they want one thing in another person, but very frequently they will wind up marrying someone who doesn't meet all those criteria. For example, people will actually marry someone who a few years older, or black instead of white, or stocky instead of athletic, even though their preferences would have ruled that person out. The trick is to write an algorithm that will suggest dates with people the person will actually like, whom they apparently think they shouldn't.

One quote from a developer of the matching algorithm caught my eye:
Indeed, says Thombre, “the politics one is quite interesting. Conservatives are far more open to reaching out to someone with a different point of view than a liberal is.” That is, when it comes to looking for love, conservatives are more open-minded than liberals.
I generally avoid making generalizations about conservative vs. liberal personality traits, but I wondered if this was really true. The conclusion of the article's author is that "conservatives are more open-minded than liberals." This is a typical "gotcha" kind of comment that conservatives love. "Liberals think they're so tolerant, but they won't even consider marrying conservatives."

But thinking it over, I don't really think that "open-minded" is really the right word. I think "naive," "short-sighted" and "delusional" are more apropos.

I am reminded of all the conservatives (Gingrich, Limbaugh, Beck, Reagan, etc.) who have been married two, and three or more times, yet they keep carping about the sanctity of marriage. Yeah, liberals divorce too. But they're not hypocritically calling for more onerous divorce laws. There have also been many stories over the years (such as this one and this one) that find the divorce rate in liberal Massachusetts is almost half the divorce rate in conservative Texas.

There are many suggested reasons for this: shotgun weddings for unexpected pregnancies rarely work out in the long run. The conservative delusion that abstinence-based sex education is in any way useful: it takes two minutes to explain that you shouldn't screw someone you don't want kids with, don't want to get pregnant with, or get a disease from. Marriages of older and wealthier couples are less likely to result in divorce. The old conservative saw, "Liberals just live together in sin instead of getting married" (I don't know if that's true, but conservatives love to say it even though it doesn't seem to true from the out-of-wedlock birthrates). The various conservative fatwas against premarital sex, birth control, the morning after pill and abortion will tend to cause marriages of younger and poorer couples, which will more likely end in divorce.

But in all honesty, the "liberal" vs. "conservative" divide is mostly about women having more freedom vs. men having more power. If you're a self-identified liberal woman, how likely is it that you'll want to marry a self-identified conservative man who thinks you shouldn't have control over your own body, aren't fit to make your own decisions, own property, vote, hold public office, and that you should just shut up and do what you're told because that's what the bible says?

Michele Bachmann famously made some comments in a church about how the bible tells us that wives should be submissive. She studied tax law -- something she never wanted -- because her husband told her to. How could any self-respecting moderate or liberal woman even consider marrying a jerk like that? (And how could anyone elect a woman to Congress who told that story? Who's making the real decisions in Congress? Michele or Marcus?)

Then there's the whole droit du seigneur mindset that so many conservative men have: conservative Muslims and Mormons believe in multiple wives, and so many conservative men think it's okay for them to have sex with other women, before, during and after marriage, but the woman is chattel, must remain pure, yada yada yada. Real men boff lots of chicks, you know, so when a conservative luminary like Rush Limbaugh was caught at an airport with a prescription for Viagra labeled as being issued to his physician, fellow conservatives winked and nodded and give Rush the thumbs up.

My own personal experience squares with national statistics. By coincidence, both my parents and my wife's parents had six kids; four daughters and two sons each.

The most conservative daughter on my side, the second oldest, has now been divorced three times (her even more conservative ex-husband has been divorced twice now). The second-most conservative son-in-law was married once before marrying my third-oldest sister, who is not as conservative as her older sister and is still married. My brother and oldest sister will likely never marry, and the youngest daughter (the one whom my arch-conservative father disowned for marrying a Hispanic guy from Texas), is still married. My wife and I have been married for 32 years.

On my wife's side, the most conservative brother-in-law is now in a very messy divorce with the youngest and most conservative daughter. This divorce has devolved into a ugly fight over money, most of which is tied up in the family business, the house, and secret investments the husband hid from the wife, and has going on two or three years now. His very conservative family has gone through three or four equally messy divorces, beatings, visits by cops, trips to jail, and so on. These people are very well-off owners of several businesses in multiple states. The rest of my in-laws are all moderate to liberal, and have all been married for 25 to 30 years. My wife's mother died 20-odd years ago, and her father remarried.

Then there are all the obnoxious comments I hear from conservative friends and family members about "the wife" and "the old ball and chain." The whole objectification of women gets old real quick. And I really hate the way my Tea Party dad treats my mom like a servant. He was an old-school conservative (i.e., a closet racist) and now a new-school Tea Partyer, and she's apolitical.

They're still married, but it was very rocky for a couple of years when I was 8 or 9. My mother had joined the Jehovah's Witnesses, and my dad was up in arms about it. She refused to do . . . certain . . . things that the Witnesses claimed were forbidden by the bible. My dad shopped around for various religions and eventually settled on a church a block from his office (which was coincidentally owned by one of my wife's divorcing sister's in-laws). Ultimately he convinced my mom that she had to leave the Witnesses because one of the Witnesses' central tenets was that the wife had to be submissive to the husband. (Have I mentioned that I find religion to be illogical in so many ways?)

And it's not just conservative men who think that women are somehow not equal to men. I have a conservative woman friend who told me in all seriousness that she thought women were too emotional to hold elected office (during a discussion about Sarah Palin).

If you have strong political views, enough to categorize yourself as a liberal or conservative, how can you really not care what your spouse thinks about them? I suppose it's easy to imagine a conservative man saying,"Yeah, she's a stupid liberal bitch, but she's got nice tits and is a great lay. And I can just trade her for a younger model when she starts to sag. Ha ha." And it's easy to imagine a conservative woman saying, "Yeah, he's a real creep, but I just married him for his money, and the prenup expires in two years so I'll just suck it up and then soak him for child support." But it's hard to imagine a liberal man marrying a conservative woman ("Everything is Jesus this and God that, and now that we're engaged it's not like I'm asking to get the milk free forever, but I want to make sure she's not frigid") or a liberal woman marrying a conservative man ("He hates everything I believe and say and do").

So is it really open-minded to think that you can marry someone who has diametrically opposed views on so many practical issues of married life and expect the union to last in the long term? Or is is just foolish and short-sighted?

The idea that opposites attract is a fairy tale. Yeah, sometimes love conquers all. But unless two people have a basic agreement on the important issues in their lives -- kids, sex, money, religion, the role of women -- the marriage isn't going to work in the long run. So, yeah, liberal/conservative marriages will work if there's agreement on the key issues. But that reduces political affiliation to something pretty meaningless, along the lines of "I like pizza."

Conservatives also like to bitch endlessly about the rise in divorce being the fault of no-fault divorce and the economic independence of women (as if somehow forcing two people who hate each other to live together is a good solution).

The divorce rate debate totally misses the reality of history. In times past, when divorce was not easily available, outright desertion was common, as were mutually agreed separations. People were for all practical purposes divorced: they moved out, they fell in love with other people, had sex, moved in with their new loves, and many even had children, all appearing to their new neighbors to be married. In every practical sense they were divorced and remarried. And sometimes they even remarried, committing bigamy. This was usually very hard to catch, because if you moved to another town there was almost no way of finding the records of previous marriages. But recent digitization of court records from London allowed the discovery of an increase of bigamy in late 19th-century England, especially among women.

Why? That was when the modern "liberal" concept of mutual love as the basis of marriage gained primacy, instead of the conservative notion that marriage was merely an economic union with the primary purpose of procreation, often arranged by parents for monetary gain through the exchange of dowries.

The mistake that liberals do make is that mutual love is all that matters in a marriage. Conservatives are right that it is an economic and social union, often for the purpose of procreation. But the days of dowries and arranged marriages are long gone in this country, and mutual love, respect, and a desire that your spouse be happy are just as important.

And, then we get to the personality end of things. Conservatives are more likely than liberals to be demanding, critical, uncompromising, rigid, angry and spiteful. It's all well and good to talk of open-mindedness and tolerance in others, but if you're actually going to marry someone, would you really want to live with someone who displays the emotional maturity of the Tea Party members in Congress who want to throw the government under the debt-ceiling bus?

Not wanting to date conservatives doesn't make liberals intolerant. The willingness to try something that is most likely to fail spectacularly is not a hallmark of tolerance, but of foolhardiness. Liberals, especially women, will naturally be more inclined to marry a man who believes in true love and mutual respect and the right of the women to make her own decisions, rather than a man who thinks any female body will do as long she can get knocked up and do the laundry.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Fifth Largest

With all the talk on the debt lately, it seems like our country has a lot of problems. One would think that our debt is worse than other countries if you listen to the pundits. "We're going to become like Greece," is the phrase we hear most often.

Greece is actually second among the bigger economies of the world if you measure debt to GDP standing at 161 percent. We are at 95 percent of our GDP which is actually the fifth largest in the world today. So we have quite a ways to go to "become like Greece" although we might get there if people continue to be ridiculously unapologetic about dodging their taxes here as they do there.

If people really wanted to use scare tactics, they should say we could "become like Japan" which has a debt to GDP of 245 percent. Wow! Given this ridiculously high number, why are they still even functioning as a country? My buddies in the Tea Party have assured me that if we go over 100 percent, our nation will be ruined (never mind the fact that we have been over 100 percent before, have a 15 trillion dollar GDP, and have 65 trillion dollars of wealth in this country).

Given these figures and the fact that these countries, while in bad shape for a variety of reasons, are not ruined, should we completely lose our head about our debt?

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Baby, You're A Star! (A Voice Inside My Head Story)

And one more for to make it three for Thursday....

Check out this recent post from Politifact.

Comedian Victoria Jackson, a Saturday Night Live alum and tea party supporter, recently penned a column titled, "The 3 scariest things about Obama." Jackson is a regular WorldNetDaily columnist and is slated to attend the WND Tea Party at Sea cruise of Alaska later this summer.

To quote the piece, the three scary things are "private army (like Hitler), socialist (like Hitler), media control (like Hitler)."

She continues: "A clause hidden in the Obamacare bill, which is now law, gives Obama the right to form a private army. Why isn't anyone freaking out?"

My first reaction was...they have Tea Party at Sea cruises now? I suppose it fits given the demographic.

I think I'll pass on the totally insano comment about private armies in lieu of what really struck me. Apparently, if you are a D lister these days, a surefire way to get back on top is to become a right winger. Dennis Miller....Janine Turner...and now Victoria Jackson. I can't say as I blame them with the built in audience but it really makes me crack up. They don't really stand for anything anymore. They just play the hits. Here is a sample set list:

La-la-la-lamestream media
They's A Comin'!
From My Cold Dead Hands
Barack, The Magic Negro
RINOS In The Rearview
Hopey Changey Stuff (A Medley)
Missing Bush (The Good Years)
Uncertainty (All Obama's fault)

Encores:
Houston, We Have A Spending Problem
Don't Retreat, Reload (Never Surrender)

I'ts Not _______ When We Do It!

Remember Bradlee Dean? Well, apparently he just filed a 50 million dollar lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for defamation of character.

I don't get it. I thought conservatives were all about TORT Reform and against frivolous lawsuits. Oh well...

Perfect


Any of those people below him regular readers of mine?

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Disgusting Stew

Take a look at this article from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (in order to read it you must give them your email...sorry)

But a crowd of more than 500 -- far larger than the ones most candidates attract on the Iowa campaign circuit -- sat in rapt attention as Bachmann told the story of how she confessed her sins and found Christ as a teenager in Minnesota. She received a standing ovation.

"It was just a wonderful witness," said First Assembly of God church member Mark Linebach, who described himself as spellbound by the telegenic congresswoman. "She is 100 percent comfortable in the setting of a church."

My first thought upon reading this was that I think it's about time we reviewed the tax exempt status of some of these churches. There was nothing religious about this visit at all. It was purely political.

My second thought was complete disbelief at how so many people don't grasp the simple fact of how hauntingly close this is to Muslim extremism.

"Michele wants Iowans to see her faith as a major part of her decisionmaking process," said Steve Deace, a Christian broadcaster who has had her on his radio show in central Iowa. "It's wise of her to do that."

I'm a Christian but I have no problem voting for an atheist for president. My faith in Jesus doesn't extend to civil religion and that is exactly the cancer that has taken over a large part of our culture. Somehow both of them have become mixed up in this disgusting stew that bears no resemblance whatsoever to our democracy nor Christianity.

When I talk about True Believers, these are the people of which I speak. These are the "voices inside my head." There is no doubt in my mind that these people want a fascist culture in which there is no compromise and no room for individual thought and freedom. They may say that they are for less government but that is a complete lie. In fact, the opposite is true. They want everyone marching in lock step in a newly founded theocracy.

What we are seeing with Ms. Bachmann right now could be the start of that. I doubt she will get very far in a national election but the simple fact that she has people following her should give us all pause. We don't want people like her in leadership in this country.

History has shown us it always leads to the same place.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Conservatives Don't Get America

Conservatives like Herman Cain, who wants to prevent mosques from being built in the United States, and the right-wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, who murdered dozens of people last weekend, are afraid free and open societies like America and Norway will be invaded by Muslims who will institute Sharia law.

Conservatives just don't seem to get how America works and what makes it a great country. As immigrants come here the vast majority quickly comes to appreciate the freedom to live their lives as they choose. Sure, some first-generation sticks in the mud will never change, and there will always be some fruitcakes who want to revert to the Middle Ages.

But over time the children -- and especially the daughters -- of even the most conservative Muslims will become disillusioned with the oppression of women, the crazy dress codes, the hatred, and they'll join the American mainstream. They'll see the lives that the rest of us live and they'll want that too. Unless, of course, we treat them like animals, and make them feel hated and hunted.

Furthermore, all Islamic sects are not the same -- the Sunni and Shia sects are constantly battling it out. But more importantly, Turkish Islam is very different from Saudi Islam. The majority of Turks are Muslims, but the government is secular and Sharia is not the law of the land. American Islam will be more like Turkey's than Pakistan's.

For generations people like Cain have worried about the influence of new minorities. The same sentiments were held against former slaves, Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Chinese, Japanese, Hispanics and on and on. And religion has always been touchy -- Jews certainly understand this, and as recently as 1960 people seriously questioned whether a Catholic could be president and hold the United States' interests above those of the Vatican.

But over time those minority ethnicities and religions have been stirred into the melting pot of America. Their children have ultimately become full-fledged Americans, learned English and forgotten their parents' native tongues. And at the same time they've brought new things that the rest of us have come to accept as normal: pizza, Kung Pao chicken, sushi, reggae, hip-hop, jazz, and on and on.

The United States is a liberal democracy, something that even conservatives like George Bush and Dick Cheney think is a good thing -- they invaded Iraq to create a liberal democracy in the Middle East. Why? History tells us that conservative regimes are ultimately controlling and repressive. They don't tolerate differences and change, and as they gain more and more power anyone who strays from the prescribed orthodoxy is harshly punished. These escalate into internecine conflicts that cause society to splinter and disintegrate.

Freedom and tolerance of differences are the strengths of our society. Yes, these freedoms pose some risks. There will be a few bad Muslim apples who kill their fellow Americans, just as there have been bad Christian apples like Tim McVeigh and Eric Rudolph who killed and maimed hundreds of their fellow citizens.

But conservatives should understand and accept those risks. They're the ones who believe everyone should own a gun, and if a few innocent bystanders get killed when someone is exercising their second amendment rights, well that's the price of freedom.

Why does Herman Cain put more stock in the second amendment than the first? The first amendment says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.*
Herman Cain wants to prevent Muslims from peaceably assembling for the purposes of religious worship. Does Cain have so little faith in the strength of our way of life and our Constitution that he has to trash it in order to protect it? Does he really believe that there could ever be enough Muslims in this country to totally overwhelm the rest of us, enough to amend the Constitution and establish Sharia law, or to overthrow our government by force of arms? Or is he just parroting Republican talking points to cynically exploit the fear people feel after 20 years of terrorism at the hands of Al Qaeda?

Anders Breivik's fears over immigration and multiculturalism are almost understandable. He comes from an ethnically homogeneous country where for centuries almost everyone belonged to the same church. There's no history of immigration and the melting pot in Norway. But Herman Cain should know better than this, being a black man whose ancestors may well have been enslaved by his fellow men.

Yet Cain is tuned to the same crazy radio station that broadcasts intolerance and hate that Breivik is. The difference is that Cain has the volume turned up half way, whereas Breivik has it all the way up to 11.


*And weaseling out of the first amendment by saying it's okay for the states to deny those rights is wrong on legal, practical, moral and ethical reasons, and is the height of hypocrisy.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Take a look at his chart.


















The right is constantly telling us that higher taxes means job killers. But the United States has lower taxes (as a percentage of GDP) than many other countries as we can clearly see here and many of them have lower unemployment rates. Denmark, for example, has close to 50 percent taxes to GDP and yet unemployment stands at 6 percent. From the Heritage Foundation:

With its economy open to global trade and investment, Denmark is among the world leaders in business freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, and freedom from corruption. The overall regulatory and legal environment, transparent and efficient, encourages entrepreneurial activity. Banking is guided by sensible regulations and prudent lending practices. Monetary stability is well maintained, with inflationary pressures under control.

Even with all of those taxes? Wow, that doesn't really fit the fictional narrative at all, does it? In fact, it ranks one spot higher than the US on the Economic Freedom matrix set up by the Heritage Foundation.

Let's take a look at Sweden. Sweden has slightly lower taxes (47 percent of GDP) yet has 8 percent unemployment). According to the Heritage Foundation, Sweden also has an "efficient regulatory framework strongly facilitates entrepreneurial activity, allowing business formation and operation in Sweden to be dynamic and innovative" earning it a score of 95 percent in regards to business freedom. Sweden has all of this despite higher taxes.

Higher taxes do not necessarily mean job killers. This is a lie that really needs to put in the fucking ground. It's sole purpose is meant to bamboozle frightened people out of their vote. I have no problem giving on the spending side of the equation. It's time for you folks on the right to give on the revenue side so we can adequately address our debt issues.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

It Ain't Trickling...

I was sitting around with a friend recently and the topic of trickle-down economics came up. He said he's conservative, but agreed generally that the policy hadn't made any real effect on employment. Many corporations are experiencing huge profits, but aren't hiring. But, he said, it might be working a little.

He told me about a machinist friend who had been laid off. The guy has had an interest in flying model planes. That landed him a job with a local millionaire who has a hobby of racing full-sized planes. This millionaire has a crew of 10 guys who build and maintain the equipment. It's a dream job for the machinist, and some day they might turn this rich guy's multi-million dollar hobby into a business (supplying other rich guys with plane parts, I suppose).

I don't know how the rich guy makes his money or any of the details of how he does his racing. The details don't really matter because anyone who's rich can set his life up the way I'm describing. But let's say he's set up the racing gig as a business because he can win prize money and has "business expenses." Since he has so much time to race planes, it's obvious he isn't working any more. So let's say he's a typical trust-fund baby, who inherited his wealth from daddy, or he's a retired CEO who still got loads of stock options when he was fired for driving the company into the ground.

Since he's able to race planes, he obviously has millions of dollars a year in disposable income, all of it coming from long-term investments in the stock market and qualified dividends. Let's say he also has some investments in tax-free municipal bonds (diversity is good).

He hires a personal broker to do all the work of investing his money (which he can write off), and all this income is taxed at the 15% long-term capital gains tax rate, and is not subject to payroll taxes.

Now let's say this rich guy also has a second home in Florida. Both multi-million dollar houses are mortgaged. He spends most of his time flying around the country in his plane to races ("on business"), and claims citizenship in Florida because it has no income taxes. He incorporated his "business" in a third state that has the lowest possible corporate tax rate. Or if he's really daring, he'll incorporate in another country and further reduce American taxes.

His total tax liability will be that 15% tax rate on his "investment" income, plus whatever "income" he earns as prize money in the races, minus the "business expenditures" in the salaries of the guys he hires to work on his planes. Likely he'll be running at break-even or a loss every year (this is just a hobby, after all), so he'll basically pay no taxes on any winnings. He may even be able to reduce his tax liabilities further if he really tries to max out his racing expenses, but he'll have to be careful to avoid doing so in too many years out of five, otherwise he'll get audited. He'll also pay property taxes on his homes, but that'll be reduced by the interest deduction he gets on both mortgages.

Now to the machinist who he hired. Let's say he's a regular guy making $50K, living in an apartment (he lost his house in the bubble), and will pay federal taxes at a rate somewhere around 18-20%. He pays payroll taxes at 4.2% this year (down temporarily from 6.2%). He lives in Minnesota so he pays state taxes at 7%. He gets no mortgage interest deduction because he's living in an apartment.

We'll ignore the sales tax the two guys pay, even though the machinist will be paying a much higher percentage of his income as sales tax.

The rich guy putts around in a plane all day for the hell of it, while the machinist works his butt off so the rich guy can putt around. Guess who pays the bigger percentage of his income in taxes? The 15% the rich guy pays is half the rate of the 30% the machinist pays. Warren Buffett made this same sort of comparison between himself and his secretary several years ago. And it's still just as outrageous today.

The justification for low long-term capital gains tax rates is to encourage entrepreneurs to invest in new job-creating enterprises. But we're not seeing that. The rich are buying planes and yachts and racking up big bills at Tiffany's. They're not investing in new business opportunities here in the States, as unemployment has been stuck at basically the same rate for years now. Renewing the Bush tax cuts last year removed the "doubt" that conservatives claimed had been holding back business investment, but they haven't start hiring en masse. Now the story is that the debt is causing "doubt," but the truth is that as long as there are countries that have a lower standard of living than the United States, our businesses are going to continue to expand their workforces overseas instead of at home -- as long as our tax policies encourage them to do so.

Conservatives love to talk about how lazy and worthless people on welfare are. But, honestly, how can you defend taxing the wealthiest people -- who can literally sit around all day and do absolutely nothing -- at half the rate that people who have to sweat and bleed for every penny?

The logical conclusion of Bush-era tax policies will ultimately be a new idle rich class, similar to the nobility of old, where the children of the wealthy never work a day in their lives, and CEOs live like kings even after making colossal blunders that cost thousands of people their livelihoods.

The low capital gains tax rate is the most immoral thing about our tax system. It devalues honest work and promotes lazy money-grubbing.

The Bush tax cuts are now scheduled to expire in 2013. At that point the "qualified" dividend tax rate will return to the regular income tax rate, and the capital gains rate will go to up 20%. I can only hope that the fight over the deficit brings some sense into the Republicans in the House, and we get rid of the special treatment the wealthy are receiving sooner rather than later.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

The Massacre In Norway

The recent massacre in Norway should be a wake up call to the rest of the world. As Nikto and I have been saying for quite some time, the people that commit these despicable acts these days are generally conservative. Christian...Islamic...Atheist...doesn't matter...conservative.

Anders Behring Brevik, one of the suspects they have in custody, belongs to a right wing extremist group and is a fierce nationalist. He has written posts on the web that are critical of Islam, lists his religion as Christian and his politics as conservative. He also enjoys playing "World of Warcraft" and the book "1984" by George Orwell. Combine all of these things together and you pretty much have your garden variety right wing blogger.

An important difference to take note of, however, between right wing extremists around the world and in this country is perhaps the naivete of a country like Norway. Gun ownership is allowed in Norway and Mr. Brevik apparently registered his Glock under one of the extremist group names. Something like that would raise red flags in our country. Why it wasn't there demonstrates a lack of understanding of what these people are capable of which is odd considering the problems they have had in the past with such groups. I'm also at a loss as to why, if gun ownership is allowed, people didn't have any on the island. The shooting spree could have been halted a lot sooner.

I have to say, though, that I think it is doubtful that this sort of ideologically obvious attack would happen here in the current political climate. It has become very apparent that our right wing groups are kept pretty much in line by their masters and our government, specifically the DHS. The leaders of the conservative movement in this country (Kochs, Norquist etc) know that they would very quickly lose power and leverage if any sort of violent act was tied to their ideology. Essentially, they'd be done. And the Department of Homeland Security keeps fairly good tabs on what these groups are up to and it all seems very low level these days largely due to the aforementioned reasons.

I guess I'm hoping that countries in Europe get the message after this horrific nightmare and being to take steps to keep people like this in check. Their rose colored glasses need to be tossed in the garbage.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Porn a Good Thing?

The long-running joke about the Internet is that it was developed as a porn-delivery system. Conservatives have been fretting about this furiously. But it turns out that porn may actually be a good thing.

“Rates of rapes and sexual assault in the U.S. are at their lowest levels since the 1960s,” says Christopher J. Ferguson, a professor of psychology and criminal justice at Texas A&M International University. The same goes for other countries: as access to pornography grew in once restrictive Japan, China and Denmark in the past 40 years, rape statistics plummeted. Within the U.S., the states with the least Internet access between 1980 and 2000—and therefore the least access to Internet pornography—experienced a 53 percent increase in rape incidence, whereas the states with the most access experienced a 27 percent drop in the number of reported rapes, according to a paper published in 2006 by Anthony D’Amato, a law professor at Northwestern University.
Jon Stewart was right!

Thursday, July 21, 2011

From A Giggle To A Chuckle To A Deep Belly Laugh

Imagine my delight when I cracked open my paper this morning and saw this headline.

Radio host gets charged in Ponzi scheme

Conservative radio show host Pat Kiley claims he was just reading from a script when he told his worldwide radio audience in weekly broadcasts that he was a senior financial adviser and they could avoid financial Armageddon by entrusting him and his business partners with their money.

Don't give your money to the evil Gubmint. Give it to us!!

But federal authorities say he did much more than that. In an indictment unsealed Wednesday, Kiley was portrayed as an integral figure in the $194 million Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme that defrauded more than 700 investors.

Kiley's program, "Follow the Money," was carried on more than 200 stations nationwide, including KSTP Radio (1500 AM), and on the Worldwide Christian Radio network. He called his listeners "truth seekers" and drew them in, rich and poor alike, with promises of financial security, just as the bottom began to drop away from the stock market.

Oh no. Say it ain't so. Of course, this is even the best part of this story.

In court, Kiley told U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Keyes that he had "probably $9 to $10" in the bank, $11 in cash and an as-yet uncashed Social Security check, "which I live off of."

I thought it was Social Security that was the Ponzi Scheme. Now he says that he's living off of it? Pardon me for just a moment...

BWAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHA!!!!!

Maybe the "Gubmint" does know how to handle money better than the private sector. They always come crawling back to it, don't they?

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

What Would Reagan Do?



A fine example of how the image of Reagan and the reality of Reagan are in direct conflict. If Reagan were president now and asking for the same things that President Obama is asking for regarding our finances, it would be alright because he is REAGAN!! But since it is Obama, it must be bad.

Sad, but not surprising. Like they do with Jesus Christ, the right makes up whatever fiction they want to create in order to further their (dangerous) beliefs.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

A Deal?

It looks like we might be moving closer to a deal regarding the debt ceiling, the debt, spending cuts, and taxes. President Obama and several senators on both sides of the aisle are embracing the "Gang of Six" plan which is considered the grand bargain that the president was looking for for the last few weeks.

The question is how the House will respond. Not well is my guess. Hence, the symbolic vote of a balanced budget vote this week. Much of this is nauseating political theater but it's going to be interesting to see if the GOP can pass up an opportunity like this one. This plan limits the growth of Medicare and Social Security which is vital to reducing the debt we currently hold.

The right has been squawking about this for decades. Will they break their purity pledge on taxes to fulfill their life long dream? Hmmm...

Monday, July 18, 2011

Cancer in Murdoch's Empire Metastasizing

Now we've learn that Murdoch has been paying off people to keep quiet about his illegal and monopolistic activities on this side of the pond as well. Hundreds of millions of dollars of hush money and his control over much of the news media have kept these stories out of the public eye for years.

According to a New York Times article, in 2009 a Murdoch subsidiary, News America Marketing, was involved with computer hacking against a competitor, as well as monopolistic activity. The company is involved in newspaper advertising inserts. After this and other legal entanglements, NAM wound up paying more than half a billion dollars in legal judgments and pay-offs to other companies to drop their lawsuits.

The CEO of NAM, Paul V. Carlucci, reportedly required his employees to watch a scene from The Untouchables in which Al Capone beats a man to death with a baseball bat. This, apparently, best illustrated his business philosophy.

One would assume that a guy like that would be tossed out after costing the company so much money. But no. Carlucci became publisher of The New York Post, and continues to lead News America.

(Why do so many conservatives like Jack Abramoff and Carlucci like to pretend to be gangsters?)

Then there are the two Scotland Yard officials who resigned over the weekend because of their involvement with Murdoch's companies and their attempts to influence the investigations of their crimes. Apparently there has been a long history of coverups with Murdoch.

We can only hope that, as it was with Watergate, the coverup will get the guys at the top even if the actual crimes they incited didn't.

Years back it used to be illegal for one organization to own newspapers and TV stations in the same town. And there was a limit on the number of media outlets one company could own. But Murdoch has successfully lobbied to remove these restrictions so he could build his media empire. It still is illegal for foreigners to own American TV stations, which is why Murdoch became an American citizen. Not because he believed in the American way, but because he wants to buy our country out from under us.

Notice how the roll-back of regulations on media ownership have benefited the right-wing's biggest booster and the official propaganda arm of the Republican Party, Fox News (official because Dick Cheney required only Fox News to be shown in his presence)?

Conservatives are always worried about too much power being concentrated in the hands of the government. Why aren't they concerned about too much power in the hands of guys like Rupert Murdoch, who is an American by convenience only?

At least with government we can vote for the guys, and effect real change. (Remember the 2008 and 2010 elections? It puts the lie to the idea that it doesn't matter who you vote for. Your vote really does count.) With international corporate monopolies like News Corp, Sony, Merck, Exxon, BP, etc., the only control we have over them is what government can do through regulation and taxation.

And conservatives are doing everything they can do to eliminate what few remaining regulations and taxes there are that restrain people like Rupert Murdoch.

We need to put stop the growth of international media conglomerates like News Corp and Comcast/NBC/Universal. These monopolies are corrupting our police, our laws and even our mindset -- reality TV as pushed by Murdoch and his ilk is a blight on the soul of humanity. They need to be broken up before they do irreparable damage to this country and the world.

Stunning

Sean Hoare, the man who blew the whistle on the Murdoch phone hacking scandal, has been found dead. Police say that there was nothing suspicious about the death.

Are these the same police who are resigning in the wake of this scandal? Holy crap does this thing keep getting more fucked up...

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Are These Numbers Accurate?

Take a look at these numbers.

2001 – $5.871 trillion in debt
2008 – $10.640 trillion in debt

Jan 31st 2009 = $10.569 trillion in debt
Jan 31st 2011 = $14.131 tr­­illion in debt

But of the $3.56-tril­­lion increase, 98% was carry over from Bush programs:

Bush: $910-billi­­on = Interest on Debt 2009/2011
Bush: $360-billi­­on = Iraq War Spending 2009/2011
Bush: $319-billi­­on = TARP/Bailo­­ut Balance from 2008 (as of May 2010)
Bush: $419-billi­­on = Bush Recession Caused Drop in taxes
Bush: $190-billi­­on = Bush Medicare Drug Program 2009/2011
Bush: $211-billi­­on = Bush Meicare Part-D 2009/2011
Bush: $771-billi­­on = Bush Tax Cuts 2009/2011

So that means...

Bush’s contributi­­on:

2001 to 2008: $4.769-tri­­llion
2009 to 2010: $3.181-tri­­llion

Total: $7.950-tri­­llion

Increase Since 2001 = $14.131 – $5.871 = $8.26-tril­­lion

Bush’s contributi­­on: $7.950-tri­­llion / $8.26-tril­­lion = 96%

Increase caused By Bush’s Programs: 96%
Increase caused by Obama’s Programs: 4%

My simple question is...are these numbers accurate? And, if so, why is Obama's spending portrayed as much worse when the numbers show quite clearly that it has not been worse.