OK, It's Been 8 Days Since Newtown: Now Can We Talk About Gun Control?

The Newtown Connecticutt massacre is awful, obviously.  It's hard to think about what it means for the families involved, so I tend to turn off the human interest stories and coverage of funerals for six year olds- too tough to handle.

But this event seems to have struck a nerve and revived talk of gun control.  As my regular readers know, I believe the NRA has already achieved utter and total victory in the battle for gun control legislation.  I thought it was strange to see them in such utter hysterical overload over a possible Obama victory, as the president had given absolutely no indication that he was even thinking about introducing legislation to outlaw guns.  In my discussions with people I always mocked the paranoia of an organization that was so incredibly successful in implementing its agenda but still saw secret cabals around every corner plotting to take their guns.

But now I have to re-evaluate my mockery.  I still believe that Democrats had no secret plans to initiate gun laws, but it now looks possible that they may try to do so in light of Newtown.  I guess the NRA will claim that they were just waiting for their opportunity, but I don't think that's true.  Nevertheless, could there ever be a better argument for banning assault weapons than we just had eight days ago?

See this photo from Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Wow. The article accomanying it makes  a comparison between the NRA and pro-slavery organizations before the Civil War (quite a juxtaposition with my own comparison of the NRA to AIPAC!), saying that both had managed to succeed in their main goal, but then overreached leading to their disempowerment.  In America in the 1850s, those in power were not interested in taking on the slaveowners, and northerners were content to leave southerners alone.  But southerners kept insisting on slavery in the west, in new states, rights to have their slaves when traveling in the north, etc.  Then they opposed Douglas in the 1860 presidential elections because he wasn't pro-slavery enough for them, which swung the election to Lincoln.

Maybe the NRA has indeed overreached.  After all, most gun owners see no need for semi-automatic assault weapons, which have no hunting function.  Most sensible people understand that there's nothing wrong with background checks to limit guns getting into the hands of the mentally ill and criminals.  But the NRA is really tone-deaf around these issues.  And then to hear them come out with this yesterday:

We need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work -- and by that I mean armed security
 

Methinks Wayne LaPierre has been watching too many Hollywood action movies.  I like those movies too, but I don't think they have lessons for us in real life. 

I've always been in favor of more gun control, but sanguine about ever getting them passed in the US in the near future.  Maybe that's going to change.  And don't worry, you right wing gun-nuts: there's still nobody coming to take your hunting rifles- that's never going to happen.

The Republican Party's Coming Takeover by the Wingnuts- Should I Be Happy or Scared?

Congressman Tom Price (R-GA)

This article really struck me, from National Review.  It's about a little-known Georgia congressman who may be getting ready to challenge John Boehner if he agrees to any tax hikes as part of the fiscal cliff deal:

For the moment, those who know Price well say he’s not eager to begin fighting Boehner, but he is ready to speak out, should the debt talks get messy. “He is hoping for the best, hoping taxes don’t go up with any fiscal-cliff deal,” says a Price ally. “But if Republican leaders make a mistake on taxes, he wants conservatives to battle.”
 

Hoping taxes don't go up in the deal?!  That's completely impossible at this point- the only question is how far up they're going.  Democrats won the 2012 election with a promise to raise tax rates on the wealthy, and they hold all the leverage- there's just no plausible way to avoid tax hikes, given that the low taxes in place now expire in 22 days, so no action leads to higher taxes.

Boehner seems to be interested in making a deal though, to avert the recession that would result from the expiration of the tax cuts combined with the self-imposed spending cuts from the 2011 Debt Ceiling fight.  And it looks like if he does that, Republicans are going to purge him from power and put in a Real Conservative like the aforementioned Price.

So a liberal like me has a dilemma.  One one hand, if the GOP takeaway from the last election is that they need to move even further to the right, I'm kind of excited for Democrats to win the next few elections too, and continue to implement a center-left agenda unencumbered by any time out of power.  I don't think Americans are going to elect people like Rick Santorum or Jim DeMint to lots of Senate seats or to the Presidency.

On the other hand, though, what if they win one?  2010 showed that with the right strategy, combined with the right amount of Democratic wuss-ism and some bad economic conditions, they can win no matter how crazy they are.  I think we'd only have to suffer for 2-4 years before they're thrown out on their asses after trying to destroy Medicare, but they could do a lot of damage.

Tough call.

The Breathtaking Idiocy of Charles Krauthammer

Not one of my favorite pundits

This Jon Chait destruction of Charles Krauthammer's latest column is great.

Krauthammer begins his column by sneering at Obama’s “landslide 2.8 point victory margin.” In fact, with votes still being tabulated, Obama is currently leading by 3.6% and rising — a reasonably healthy lead in comparison with, say, the 2.4 percent victory for George W. Bush in 2004, which Krauthammer at the time called “a large majority, or a significant majority.”
 

Chait goes on to take apart Krauthammer's piece point by point, but I think he understates the part that really took my breath away.  Krauthammer finishes his op-ed, most of which is dedicated to criticism of Obama for his refusal to engage in real deficit reduction through cutting entitlements, with this:

 What should Republicans do? Stop giving stuff away. If Obama remains intransigent, let him be the one to take us over the cliff. And then let the new House, which is sworn in weeks before the president, immediately introduce and pass a full across-the-board restoration of the George W. Bush tax cuts.
 

Whhhaaaaaaa????? The main body of the piece makes a pretty reasonale-sounding case that Obama and Democrats don't care about the federal deficit and are leading us toward a "European-like collapse under the burden of unsustainable debt".  Then he concludes with a demand that Republicans restore all the Bush tax cuts, which will make the deficit and debt worse!

Paul Krugman has been making the point lately that it's understandable that the average American doesn't understand the details of the "fiscal cliff".  But it's inexcusable that news organizations and professional politicians don't understand that going over the fiscal cliff is bad not because it will increase the deficit, but because it will shrink the deficit too fast and cause a recession.  So here we have Charles Krauthammer, noted professional pundit for many years, showing that he doesn't understand this pretty simple point. 

Or perhaps he does understand after all and is just a cynical pundit intentionally misleading his followers. Nah, probably just a moron.

So the Debt Ceiling is Next- Oy

The Speaker of the House now says that every time we come up against the Debt Ceiling he's going to demand big spending cuts again.  It looks like there will be a regular taking of hostages moving forward.

Here's what gets missed: the Debt Ceiling needs to go up whenever the US is running any deficit.  Remember that the Debt Ceiling is about total federal debt, and the only way that goes down is if the US runs a surplus.  The last time the US ran a surplus was in 2000, when taxes were substantially higher for the middle class as well as the wealthy.  (Hmm, I wonder what happened then?)

So the federal deficit has been going down recently, but not to zero.  There's no possible way to get it to zero in the short term.  That means that the Debt Ceiling will have to keep going up.  It's baked into the cake of the system.  People have to keep in mind the difference between deficits and debt.

Furthermore, keep in mind that this isn't "President Obama's Debt Ceiling"- Congress passes budgets, which are the only thing that determine the Debt Ceiling.  Every year the House and Senate get to pass budgets- that's when they work on this stuff.

I really hope this isn't too complicated to explain to the American people, and I really hope that the press is able to remember this fact when reporting on it.  If the Republicans in the House use the Debt Ceiling to destroy the economy, they must be made to pay.  And the administration can not give in to hostage taking.

Filibuster Nonsense

Please, please Harry Reid, please make sure the Senate is a functional institution!  The subject of the weekend seems to be the filibuster and possible reform thereof.

As people who follow this know, Republicans have responded to being in the minority in the Senate by using the filibuster at a record pace.  While the filibuster was used by both parties in the past, it was used to block specific legislation or nominations- now it's being used to just plug up all business in the Senate.  It's perfectly legal, but it's clearly an escalation by Republicans to a total war philosophy of legislation.

I've said before that the filibuster needed to go, and that if the Republicans managed to sweep the presidency and the Senate in 2012 they would certainly have ended the filibuster when the Democrats began using the tactics that Republicans have been using since 2009.

But as I watch commentary on TV regarding the filibuster, I realize how wonkish this is- Americans just aren't interested in this kind of minutae.  They don't want to hear about why Congress doesn't do anything; they don't want to hear whining about how the majority's hands are tied.  They want action.

So here's what's needed: Democrats need to get 51 votes together and change the rules in any way that will make things functional in the Senate.  They need to ignore disingenuous Republican complaints and do what's needed.

Look, no huge legislation is going to come out of this anyway- the House is still controlled by the GOP after all- but I can picture the next Supreme Court nomination, and I don't see why the next step for Republicans will be to block any liberal nominee to the court.  This just can't be allowed to happen.  So please, Harry Reid, have a backbone!

The Perils of Policy Victory

Chart From Slate

Most of what I write is recycled dreck from other liberal writers ("Hey there, CannonFoundry, no we love you and know you're really original!"), but every once in a while I come up with an original though.  Here's one I was proud of, in which I compare the problems of AIPAC and the NRA- two organizations that are cursed by their amazing success in implementing their agendas in the USA.  With support for Israel just about unopposed in Congress, and with gun control on nobody's agenda in the US, these organizations have to come up with new goals to justify their continued existence.

So I thought of another example of this phenomenon.  It was suggested to me by this Bruce Bartlett article

I had written an op-ed for the New York Times in 2007 suggesting that it was time to retire “supply-side economics” as a school of thought. Having been deeply involved in its development, I felt that everything important the supply-siders had to say had now been fully incorporated into mainstream economics... I said the supply-siders should declare victory and go home.
 

To look at it another way, tax rates were in the stratosphere throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and Ronald Reagan and the Supply Siders came in during the '80s and totally changed the dynamic on taxes.  Although marginal tax rates have wandered up and down since 1981, they've never come close to the 50+% top marginal rate that prevailed before that time, and such a rate isn't even being considered by either party.  Hell, even I, more liberal than nearly everyone in Congress, don't support a top tax rate that high. 

So the Reaganites have won on this: historically low taxes are now the new normal.  And yet Republicans continue to double down on lowering taxes.  No matter how low taxes go, they're still way too high according to the Right.  They don't know how to declare victory and continue on to something else.  Like the NRA desperately inventing conspiracy theories, they just can't figure out how to move on.

Oh, and look at the accompanying chart, which shows that marginal tax rates have no apparent effect on economic growth!

Fiscal "Cliff" Reminders

So Washington continues to jockey for negotiating position on the upcoming changes in tax and spending levels that kick in January 1.  Summing up where I stand:

• The whole conversation continues to get sidetracked in ways that make no sense.  The hysteria about the Fiscal Cliff seems to blend in with hysteria about the allegedly ballooning deficit (I say "allegedly" because the deficit has been going down the last two years, though it's still very high).  People seem to forget that if congress does nothing and allows the sequester to happen and the Bush tax cuts to expire and doesn't do the annual Medicare "doc fix", then the deficit problem in the short to medium term is just about totally solved.  In other words, jumping off the Fiscal Cliff would be good for the deficit.
• But that doesn't mean it would be good for the economy- it seems like economists from all over the political spectrum agree that so much austerity at one time, with an economy still very fragile, could drive the US back into recession.  All one needs to look at for evidence is what happened in Spain, Greece, Ireland, and the UK when they hiked taxes and cut spending all at once in a bad economy- it got much worse.
• Americans just don't seem to understand this- we equate deficit problem with job market problems, when in fact the difficulty is that higher deficits help the job market- if we fix one problem, we worsen the other.
• What's eventually needed on the tax side is really a middle class tax hike along with the upper class tax hike.  We need Clinton-era rates across the board.  That's not a very exciting platform to run on for Democrats, though, so I can understand Obama's refusal to consider it.  Still, no deficit is likely to be solved in the long run without more revenue from the middle.  I'm fine with putting off that revenue hike until the economy is cooking, but I fear a permanent tax cut for the middle class, leaving the government underfunded in the long term.
• I would really like a liberal position to enter the conversation on entitlements.  Social Security is not a mess; it just needs tweaks.  All the tweaks I hear about involve fewer benefits for recipients down the road.  At the same time, there's a very easy tweak right in front of us: raise the ceiling of income subject to social security taxes.  Right now incomes over $106,000 aren't subject to social security taxes.  Raise that to something higher, and the program becomes solvent just like that, and elderly people can continue to live with some dignity. 
• Medicare is a much harder problem to solve.  But it would be a mistake to solve it by offloading all the cost to Seniors who can't pay it.  Especially when we haven't tried much else to rein the costs in.

In Which I Grapple with the Israel-Gaza Mess

My readers know that while I'm an unapologetic liberal on nearly all issues, I'm sometimes conflicted by the actions of the place I love the most, Israel.  The source of my conflict is that the political Left is generally on the side of Palestinians in the conflict.  This is understandable- the Left has a knee-jerk affinity for the underdog in any conflict, and concern is first felt for the oppressed, not the powerful.

I feel that way too, about many issues; I look for reasons to support factory workers over their bosses in labor disputes.  I am tremendously concerned about the overuse of military and surveillance power by the US.  I prefer that my sports teams win as a scrappy underdogs than as awesome powerhouses (though there I'll take the powerhouses too, but the Pats 2001 season was way better than 2004 for example).

But when it comes to Israel, I've been there, I'm in awe of what the Pioneers did to build the state (when the Jews really were the underdogs), and I know how important Israel is to Jews everywhere. I've often said that it would have been interesting if I had been in college, when I was full of Leftist fervor, when Israel was in the news.  It wasn't though- my college days were spent protesting Apartheid and Salvadoran killing squads, while Israel was relatively quiet.

So that's a roundabout introduction to my position in the current conflict, in which I wholeheartedly support Israel, but with some qualms about the use of power there.  To be clear, Israel has a right to defend itself from rocket fire coming from the territories, and there's no question that Hamas is not a partner for peace.  I don't think anything Israel does at this juncture will lead to peace any time soon.

But that doesn't mean that anything goes.

This story is troubling.  An Israeli missile destroys a home and kills more than ten members of a family.  Here's another one.  I thought I read one a few days ago about a militant who was killed in his home along with many members of his family, but I can't find that now.

Israel has a right to defend itself.  It has no right to send missiles at civilian homes, knowing that many civilians will be killed.  If Hamas is using people as "human shields", these issues get difficult, but Israel still has a responsibility to do everything possible to avoid killing civilians.  US drone attacks in Afghanistan present the same problem- blowing up the home of a Taliban commander, killing him along with his whole family and the two families that live on either side is totally unethical (even more so in Afghanistan, where Taliban are no real threat to the US, as Hamas certainly is to Israel).

It's to Israel's credit that while its enemy intentionally targets civilians, Israel kills them only by accident or when it's unavoidable.  But that doesn't seem entirely true right now.  I don't think it's worth it to kill a mid-level Hamas officer if we have to take out a dozen innocents along with him.

Thank God for the cease fire anyway- it was announced today.

I may have more to say on this later.  Now I'm just hopeful that hostilities will be kept to a minimum going forward.

First Take on a (Possibly) Approaching War in Gaza

Today Israel finally responded to the recent increase in rocket attacks launched from Gaza toward southern Israel by killing an important Hamas military leader in an air strike.  My zionist friends immediately look quite critically toward the media reports- when they say that Israel "escalated" the conflict, how prominently do they mention that militants have been launching 150 rockets a day into southern Israel over recent days?

So here's my take: Israel has every right to defend itself.  There is really no moral problem with using deadly force in response to unprovoked attacks on civilians.  Any country in the world would do the same.  The assassination of the Gaza military leader Ahmad Al-Jabari is completely justified.  Israelis have no responsibility to sit and wait for its citizens to be killed before responding.

BUT..... what is the goal of a Gaza attack?  What is the exit strategy?  Saying that the actions there are justified isn't the same thing as saying that they're wise.  The unfortunate truth is that no military action, including ignoring the situation, will totally stop Gazans from launching rockets into Israel.  If they keep launching them, eventually a rocket is going to kill Israelis.  This is unacceptable, but I'm not sure it's avoidable.

So this isn't an argument against military action exactly.  Just a caution that, while it feels good to finally take action in defense of the country, the next steps have to be thought through carefully.  I'm not sure the Israeli government is doing that.

Why the Republicans Lost

So my favorite right wingnut correspondent sent me a message whining that this Obama victory means that the "takers" now outnumber the "makers".  So that my family and friends can see what I respond to, I've decided to give my correspondent this forum.  Here's what he wrote (I'm keeping the colors and underlining and huge font, as it's really part of the message):

The Hispanics wanted millions of people who came here illegally to be given a Pardon, not to be sent home as our existing law requires.

He decided to violate the law unilaterally and gave them a Pardon a few months before the election. VOTE OBAMA!

That sets a good example for anyone in the world who wants to enjoy all that America offers.

DON'T BOTHER STANDING IN LINE LIKE OUR GRANDPARENTS DID,,,SNEAK IN!

The Blacks who were faced with the prospect that Romney would take away their Unemployment checks and several other "free" things like Food Stamps had no choice but to keep Obama printing the Tax Payer money they wanted. VOTE OBAMA!

The Single Women wanted "free" Birth Control Pills and Abortions were scared of Romney taking the Tax Payer funded stuff away.

VOTE OBAMA!

Then there's the Unemployed millions, the Food Stamp Millions, the Welfare Millions the so-called Disability millions.

Heck, they were so scared Romney would make them actually be responsible citizens and earn their own money, they tried to vote twice!

VOTE OBAMA!

There are others who actually work and pay taxes. Union Workers, Government Employees, Socialists and yes,,a few thousand Communists and the die-hard Liberals who think the Euro-Zone (who incidentally are worse off than we are) is the kind of Government we need here.

 

You're probably asking why I bother responding to this drivel.  I ask myself the same question very often, but this is a failing of mine I guess- I can't leave well enough alone.  So here's my response, lightly edited:

See, what you and your ilk fail to understand is that this very attitude is the reason you lost this very winnable election.

I was just talking to a work colleague about this today. He is a successful psychiatrist, makes good money, and he is Latino.  He told me that Latinos are really excited about this election because they know they were the difference, and he says the Republicans won't do any better with them and not because of immigration. It's because when he hears people like Romney (and you if he heard you) talk, it's just clear to him that you have no respect for his people and believe that he should be scrubbing floors, not practicing medicine. He said "they think we want to collect checks from the government! But we want to work!" He describes his 12 year old daughter asking him "but Daddy, don't you like Republicans, because you'll make more money?", and he responded to her, in a teaching moment "No, because I care about the whole country and about other people, not just about my own paycheck".

You worry that welfare-collecting junkies are voting Democrat because of the gravy train. But you're missing an important point: people don't like being told that they're lazy leeches. If your party keeps telling Latinos that they're lazy leeches, then they're not going to vote for you. If you tell gays that they're perverts, they're not going to vote for you. If you tell single women that they're sluts, they're not going to vote for you.

Now I don't happent to think this is the end of the Republican party; I think your leaders will adjust and will find a way to make the bigots less prominent so they can find a way to a majority again. People like you, though, are the ones who are going to be shut down because your message is a guarantee of a permanent minority.

You are fundamentally and completely wrong about this army of the 47% voting for government benefits. Maybe you haven't spent much time lately with poor people, but I do it a lot in my work. Let me tell you, people on TANF and SSDI are not rolling in dough and driving Escalades- most of them want good jobs that pay a living wage, because life on the dole is really sucky. Your guys talk about jobs, but want to lower minimum wage so workers won't be able to live on their salaries. You want to destroy unions completely so factory workers will make the same crap wages as other unskilled workers. If you cared about poor people and wanted them to work instead of collect welfare, then you'd be in favor of making sure that it's worthwhile to work- but you don't.

Anyway, your lack of understanding is working fine for me! Keep it up, and you'll keep losing.

UPDATE: Matt Taibbi says much of the same thing as me here.

A Perfect Example of the Right's Epistemic Closure

Karl Rove's meltdown on Fox last night was wonderful for those of us who can't resist a little schadenfreude for the right.  Right after the Fox News desk called Ohio for Obama, ending the drama, Rove reignited it by insisting that in fact Ohio was not definitely in Obama's column- this dispute was aired live on the station.

It seems to me that you have a great example of what has happened to the conservative mind.  Dick Morris succumbed to it too- they live so completely in their bubble that they can't conceive that their conventional wisdom is wrong, and it no amount of data will change their minds.

Two other examples:

• Climate change, which is basically a settled scientific issue, is just not believed by the Right. It doesn't matter how many studies there are, or how many record heat waves, or how many extreme weather events, the entire mainstream right now denies that climate change is real.
• The belief that tax cuts pay for themselves, the so-called Laffer Theory, continues in many corners in spite of all evidence.
• When Reagan/Bush I/Clinton raised taxes to balance the budget, the economy nevertheless boomed.  When Bush II cut taxes to spur growth, nothing of the kind happened.  There is zero evidence to suggest that minor changes in marginal tax rates strongly affects economic growth.  Nevertheless, the right persists in believing that another round of tax cuts will do the trick.

Epistemic Closure.  They just can't believe anything that doesn't meet their preconceived notions.  If these guys ever manage to take power again, I'm not very optimistic about their ability to be analytical.

UPDATE: The Romney campaign itself was locked in this same epistemic closure.  This report notes how shocked the main players all were- didn't they bother reading the independent polling?

A Quick Point About Deficits and Jobs Growth

It gets a little frustrating hearing conservatives complain on the one hand that the deficit needs to be brought under control, and on the other hand that job growth is too stagnant due to government policy.

Frustrating because in a demand-caused recession those two goals are in tension.  We could choose a truly massive stimulus policy, and that would lead to lots of job growth, getting us out of the doldrums much faster (this is what Krugman and other liberals wanted)- but this would involve increased deficits.  Or we could choose to close the deficit faster, cut spending severely, and head toward a balanced budget (as conservatives want, or as the Bowles-Simpson plan recommends), but that would almost certainly curtail job growth.

Yes, that's Keynesian theory at work.  Obama has settled on a middle course, pushing less stimulus than some wanted, and then pivoting to deficit reduction to placate conservatives.  Obviously, this didn't placate conservatives, but that's what he wanted to do.

But this middle course of mild stimulus has performed the way Keynesians expected- there has been no double dip, as is happening in much of Europe where there was little or no stimulus.

I know, I know..... conservatives now deny that Keynes was right about anything.  I guess when they're out of office they forget all about their past support of stimulus.  Sigh....

In the Self-Hatred Department

Oh My God.  The Log Cabin Republicans are endorsing Mitt Romney for president.  Here's the most heart-stopping line from the article:

In interviews with HuffPost over the past several months, members of Log Cabin have said that while they are troubled by Romney's positions on the gay rights issues of the day, they feel that deep down inside, Romney is a friend to gay people. As one Log Cabin Republican board member explained at the Republican National Convention this year, “We don’t listen to what a candidate actually says. We try to feel where they seem to stand.”
 

Is this not the very definition of denial?

Look, I can understand the dilemna of a gay person who is also a fiscal conservative.  The Democrats really do want to spend more government money than Republicans do.  But when the people who agree with you on the budget also consider you less than human, and continue to support legislation making it impossible to marry or have other rights, isn't that a little more important than keeping your marginal tax rate below 40%?

And then, in a similar vein, here's David Frum, the apostate Republican, explaining why he's voting for Romney even though he thinks the party has gone crazy.  The notable passage for me is here:

The question over his head is not a question about [Romney] at all. It's a question about his party - and that question is the same whether Romney wins or loses. The congressional Republicans have shown themselves a destructive and irrational force in American politics. But we won't reform the congressional GOP by re-electing President Obama. If anything, an Obama re-election will not only aggravate the extremism of the congressional GOP, but also empower them: an Obama re-election raises the odds in favor of big sixth-year sweep for the congressional GOP - and very possibly a seventh-year impeachment. A Romney election will at least discourage the congressional GOP from deliberately pushing the US into recession in 2013. Added bonus: a Romney presidency likely means that the congressional GOP will lose seats in 2014, as they deserve.

Huh?  A Republican victory will end up, through some sort of 7-dimensional chess game, chastising them in 2014 to change their ways???  That's a lot of gymnastics to obscure the truth, which is that the best way to get the Republican party to return to the planet Earth is for them to suffer defeat- now. Any victory for the Tea Party is just that- a victory for the Tea Party.

Electoral Predictions, and a quick thought

It's been a while since I've blogged, and I apologize to all my loyal fans out there for the delay.

Actually, politics is a bit boring now, which is an odd thing to say given that the election is three days away and everything is in high gear.  But the reality is that everything has been said, all the points have been made, and we're just recycling the same old arguments.

So during this, probably my last blog post before the 2012 elections, here are some predictions:

• Barack Obama will win the election.  This isn't any kind of brilliant analysis.  It's just that fact-based aggregators of polls are all saying that state-by-state polling indicates a small but solid lead in Ohio for Obama, and lots of virtual ties in other key states like Florida.  Romney has to sweep these to win, and that isn't likely.  It looks like Obama could well lose the popular vote, which would be a fitting bookend to 2000.  I might get a sort of sick pleasure out of the hypocritical Republican talking points that would inevitably follow, touting Obama's illegitimacy.
• It looks like the Democrats are going to keep the Senate, which is shocking because they are defending many more seats than the Republicans (the Democratic sweep in 2006 means that all those seats are up in 2012).  Somehow, Republicans have squandered many seats they could have had by nominating extreme candidates, spouting incredibly extreme views on abortion among other things. 
• Here in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown are in a tight battle.  But it looks like Warren is going to pull it out according to polls.  I'm surprised about this; anecdotally, I know a lot of people who are Brown supporters.  It seems like he's done a great job positioning himself as the centrist, "bipartisan" senator.  But I guess moderate liberals in Massachusetts have bought Warren's argument that the national Republican party is so extreme that we just have to have a Democratic controlled Senate.  I'm pleasantly surprised to see that message working.

I guess those predictions are kind of boring, though- just my reflection of the current polling data.  GEEK!!!!

This election is really important, though.  I guess we say that about every election.  But an Obama defeat means that the health care act will be gutted before it gets to really take hold.  This is the last major piece of the liberal welfare state, and once it's established I think it will be very hard to repeal. This is the GOP's last chance to take it out before it starts.

A Quick Thought About the Right Wing Narrative

After watching the debates and seeing the consequent poll results of the Romney win in debate one (a huge surge) and the subsequent Obama wins (stopping the bleeding but not surging back) I'm starting to wonder if the President's poor performance in the first debate was less important than it seemed to be at the time.  Here's what I mean:

Romney campaigned right up until the first debate on the hard right, picking Paul Ryan as VP after continually tacking right to fend off Gingrich, Perry, Santorum, et al during primary season.  This wasn't working, as polls showed pretty clearly.  At the start of the debates, Obama seemed to be pulling away toward a comfortable win and we were talking about how the Tea Party types were going to blame Romney for not being right wing enough to win the election when the truth was going to be the exact opposite.  We also predicted that the base wouldn't allow Romney to tack to the center, as they feared his moderate past.

But then Romney did tack to the center in the first debate.  This caught Obama flat-footed, but I wonder now if that was less important than the fact that when low-information voters started paying attention, they were introduced to this very reasonable-sounding guy, and couldn't understand what all the Romney-bashing had been about.  Even a strong Obama performance in that debate would not have changed this dynamic- Mitt introduced himself to low-info undecideds, and they liked him.  Heck, he hasn't sounded that bad to me in the debates- if that guy were running things I might not fear for the future of the Republic (except for the tax plan- that's still crazy).

And of course the party base has decided to give Mitt a complete pass on the toned-down chest-thumping, as their own terror about another Obama term is definitely worse than a moderate Republican- or they just figure he's lying now so they don't care what he says.

But Romney still may lose the election, and if he does I'm guessing that the far right people who are now ascendent in the GOP are going to blame his moderation for the loss.  But that will be exactly the opposite of reality, which is that running far right was sending him down to a pretty convincing defeat, while running as a moderate is the source of his recent resurgence.  I don't know how to see it any other way.

Predictions Again

Yes, it's me again!

Jonathan Chait has a lengthy article predicting what will happen in Washington depending on who wins the presidency in November.  Great inside baseball here, and the analysis really rings true for me.  Too much to exerpt, but if you have a few minutes I suggest you click on the link.

While Chait covers tax policy very comprehensively, he doesn't predict the outcome for the economy. I've been doing this from time to time, going on record with my opinion, and intend to return with a big "I told you so" later on.  My recovery predictions last month are here.

Since then, however, we've had good economic news (even if conservatives insist on claiming it's all lies).  Unemployment is under 8% in the latest jobs report, and other numbers look good too.

So my prediction that the economy is going to continue getting better between 2013 and 2017 still looks good.  No matter the outcome next month, the next president is going to preside over a steady improvement and will get the credit for it.

Another big change since September is that Romney has finally done his Etch A Sketch to the center, and is giving signals that he won't implement the full Ryan plan when he comes into office.  In my opinion, this is the major reason for his resurgence in the polls.  (The dominant narrative was that Obama's terrible performance in the first debate was the cause, but now that the President kicked butt in debate #2 and hasn't seen much rebound from it, I'm moving over to a different narrative- Romney's pivot to the center was the real key- he sounded reasonable, indicated he might govern as a moderate, and that's won over some independents who were turned off by the hard right turn during the primaries).  So it seems really unlikely now that President Romney will implement the severe austerity budget that is the most plausible way Republicans could damage the recovery.  More and more it's clear that they're going to take their tax cuts and run up the deficit, leading to Keynesian stimulus that should work pretty well (while they gut the safety net and make life miserable for the poor, but that won't stall the recovery for the rest of us).

So the stakes are high in this presidential election, but not for economic recovery.  Either way, we're going to have continued economic growth.  The important things we're fighting for are:

• Who gets credit for the growth
• What happens to universal health care (if Romney wins, ObamaCare gets repealed and there won't be universal health care for another generation)
• Who bears the tax burden (taxes on the rich are going way down under Romney.  Taxes on the poor are likely to go up to respond to this "47%" rhetoric we keep hearing)
• Deficit reduction- sounds crazy given the campaign rhetoric, but under Democrats the deficit will be brought under control thanks to the expiring Bush tax cuts.  Under Republicans those tax cuts will be renewed and maybe even expanded, and even with the recovery increasing tax revenues it won't be enough to make up for those cuts- deficits have gone up under Republicans since Reagan, and that won't change this time.

So yeah, this election really matters, even if recovery is coming either way.

Abortion and the MA Senate Race

Lately I've been seeing lots of television ads in Massachusetts from the dueling Senate candidates.  Elizabeth Warren has been criticizing Scott Brown for his votes against equal pay for women and against the pro-choice Supreme Court justice.

Scott Brown has responded with an ad featuring his wife insisting that he is pro-choice and is being unfairly painted.

And she has a point- Scott Brown has a history that is consistently pro-choice, unlike many Republican politicians around the country.

But here's the problem: being pro-choice in his heart does the country no good.  The battle for a woman's right to choose what to do with her womb is being waged in the courts most of all, and the makeup of the Supreme Court is the single most important way to protect this right.  Scott Brown voted against Elena Kagan's nomination, and would presumably vote in favor of a pro-life justice proposed by a President Romney.

The fact is, it doesn't mean anything to be pro-choice if you won't use your vote to do anything about it. 

"It's not who I am underneath, it's what I do that defines me".

Bain Capital- Not Job Creators

David Stockman, famous for his work in the Reagan administration and subsequent admission that "trickle down" economics doesn't work, has penned a long and dense piece about Bain Capital and the business models behind private equity.  The lead paragraph:

Bain Capital is a product of the Great Deformation. It has garnered fabulous winnings through leveraged speculation in financial markets that have been perverted and deformed by decades of money printing and Wall Street coddling by the Fed. So Bain’s billions of profits were not rewards for capitalist creation; they were mainly windfalls collected from gambling in markets that were rigged to rise.
 

It goes on to describe how Bain's really big windfalls, the 10 deals that together comprised 75% of investor profits, were mostly inside deals that screwed lenders and suckers who bought IPO shares at inflated prices after Bain had loaded the companies up with so much debt that they couldn't possibly survive in the long term.

The startling fact is that four of the 10 Bain Capital home runs ended up in bankruptcy, and for an obvious reason: Bain got its money out at the top of the Greenspan boom in the late 1990s and then these companies hit the wall during the 2000-02 downturn, weighed down by the massive load of debt Bain had bequeathed them. In fact, nearly $600 million, or one third of the profits earned by the home-run companies, had been extracted from the hide of these four eventual debt zombies...

The Bain Capital investments here reviewed accounted for $1.4 billion or 60 percent of the fund’s profits over 15 years, by my calculations. Four of them ended in bankruptcy; one was an inside job and fast flip; one was essentially a massive M&A brokerage fee; and the seventh and largest gain—the Italian Job—amounted to a veritable freak of financial nature.

In short, this is a record about a dangerous form of leveraged gambling that has been enabled by the failed central banking and taxing policies of the state. That it should be offered as evidence that Mitt Romney is a deeply experienced capitalist entrepreneur and job creator is surely a testament to the financial deformations of our times.

The article gives fascinating details.

I want to be clear about my position: Congratulations to Romney and Bain for exploiting these rules and making tons of money by finding suckers to lend to them and then to buy stock in their IPOs. It's not apparently illegal, and under our capitalist ethos I guess it isn't even really immoral. But it does sound like another aspect of the crony capitalism that many (rightly) decry, and it doesn't seem to imply any understanding of how a government creates jobs. I'd feel better about Romney if he were saying: "all these deals enriched me but didn't really improve our economy or society- as president I'll know how to put a stop to these games so investing gets better at creating value for the middle class". That's obviously not his message.

 

Can We Cut the BS on the Romney-Ryan Tax Plan?

Joe Biden having a stroke because he can't
get Paul Ryan to say anything truthful
 

When I ask the question in the title above, what I mean is this: Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney have spent a great deal of energy trying to tell us that they plan to do the following:

1. Lower tax rates
2. Through tax deductions, keep the tax burden the same on the wealthy
3. Not raise taxes on the middle class
4. Not increase the deficit
5. Increase defense spending
6. Keep taking care of the poorest of the poor

To anyone with basic math skills, this is obviously impossible.  Democrats keep focusing on various parts of this plan- it's hard to argue it since the details are really vague- so they've been talking about how this means middle class taxes will have to go up (i.e. #3 above will have to be given up).

Naturally, Republicans disupte this, by claiming that the laws of Mathematics have been changed... or something.

But really, Republicans are right in a sense.  They're not going to raise taxes on the middle class, which would pretty much end them as a viable party in the US.  But it's simple, really: it's number 4 that will be ignored.  Think about it: when have Republicans every cared about deficits once they're in charge?

The interesting part of that is that increased deficits is exactly what liberals have been calling for the past few years, and should help goose the recovery.  So if Republicans win and institute their plan the way I expect, it might actually succeed- but not because of the wondrous tax cuts; it will work because of good old-fashioned Keynesian deficit spending.  The problem is that once we're in recovery we'll have a structural deficit that will be very hard to close- and I'll have to listen to insufferable Republicans tell me how tax cuts worked like magic again.

David Frum writes about how Mitt Romney's tax plan is going to hurt those just below the top 1%:

Romney adviser Martin Feldstein, one of America’s most distinguished tax economists, recently crunched the numbers of the Romney tax plan in The Wall Street Journal.

Against those who claim that Romney’s tax plan is arithmetically impossible, Feldstein argues it could be done. All it would take is a 30 percent -reduction in the tax deductions available to everybody reporting taxable income of more than $100,000.
 

In other words, a big tax cut of greatest value to those earning more than $500,000 a year (the people who pay the top rate on the majority of their income) will be offset by a tax increase that will fall most heavily on those who earn between $100,000 and $300,000 of taxable income.

...When Mitt Romney talks of capping itemized deductions at $17,000 to finance a cut in the top rate of federal income tax to 28 percent, he is talking about paying for a tax cut for the Porsche customer with a tax increase on the Porsche salesman. Both may be “rich” from the point of view of the typical American worker. But they are not rich in anything like the same way.
 

I like the line about the Porsche salesman.  But Frum misses something that should be obvious to anyone who has observed Republicans over the past two decades: those deductions are never going to be capped.

Once in power, Republicans are great at giving out the candy (tax cuts for the wealthy and the poor, Medicare Part D, lots of military spending), but not nearly so good at cutting out the fat that they're so good at talking about while campaigning.

So don't worry, Porsche salesmen!  President Mitt Romney will never be able to get rid of the mortgage deduction, and in fact he'll barely make a half-hearted effort at making his tax plan revenue neutral.  It will be tax cuts for the whole top 5%, spending cuts on programs for the poor that will barely make a dent in the grand scheme of themes, and then enormous deficits as far as the eye can see.  I wonder what the Tea Party will say then?

Leeches!

My wingnut Right correspondent sent me an article starting with this factoid:

63.7 million Americans received either welfare benefits, Social Security, or support for higher education

 

I think the point is a riff on the "47%" meme, that too many Americans are sucking off the government teet.  But there are a few problems with this line of reasoning:

Social Security benefits come from the SS Trust Fund, which is funded by.... wait for it.... Social Security taxes, not regular federal income taxes. As the original author of this factoid must know, many more than 53% of Americans pay SS taxes.

So including Social Security benefits in that riff makes no sense.  Next, we're talking about support for higher education.  So now conservatives are suggesting that the government should not be helping low income students go to college? Let's break that down a little:

I know the far Right sees poor people in menial jobs as leeches sucking off the teet of the rest of us. I don't agree that the person who cleans toilets should be apologizing to her boss for not paying enough taxes, but let's leave that aside for the moment. Now let's say this toilet cleaning lady has a son, who wants to get an education so he can contribute more taxes to society and make a life for himself. As we know, people without a college education have very little chance of climbing out of poverty. As we also know, college tuitions are MUCH higher than they were in the old days, completely unaffordable for all but the wealthy.

Now let's say the cleaning lady's son is a nice kid and a hard-working person, but not a genius. He's not smart enough to get a scholarship to a prestigious place, and of course his mother couldn't send him to Costa Rica for cool service projects to pad his resume, so he can only get into a low level state school or a private school with no scholarship aid.

Here's my question for anyone trying to defend this line of reasoning: what is this kid supposed to do if he can't get a government loan or grant to help him go to college? There are tens of millions of kids like that, and they can't all get private charity and they're not all geniuses who can get scholarships to Yale.  Is there some other suggestion for kids like that? If his mother contributes $5 in taxes, would that make anyone feel better?

My conservative correspondent hates it when I call him and his kind heartless bastards, but here they are telling me that people getting government help for education are screwing the rest of us. The apparent solution is for this kid to flip burgers his whole life, or work hard until he's assistant manager of McDonald's, which is as far as he'll get without college. And then they'll still spit on him because he won't be paying much in taxes, but they won't give him another way out.

Everyone can't be rich, after all.  It seems like the new right wing won't be satisfied until we've recreated pre-revolutionary France with a permanent underclass and a permanent ruling and wealthy class.  I don't particularly like the way that society ended.

 

The Case Against Scott Brown

I think I've said this before on this blog that the problem for Democrats with respect to the Massachusetts senate race is that Scott Brown, the incumbent, is not crazy.  He is pro-choice.  He voted for Dodd-Frank financial reform.  Unlike many national Republicans who take great pride in their refusal to compromise with Godless Socialist Democrats, Brown is touting his centrist credentials.  Beyond that, Brown is a really talented politician- he's comfortable on camera, comes off as a Regular Guy, and has the right mix of nice guy and tough guy on the stump and in debates.

So what's my problem with Scott Brown?  As should be obvious to anyone who reads this blog, I'm kind of partisan, and I want lots of Democrats in Congress.  But what about Brown specifically?  Here's my anti-Scott Brown case:

• The national Republican party is really crazy.  It's true that Scott Brown isn't crazy, but at the end of the day he's stil a vote for Mitch McConnell as majority leader of the Senate.  If Republicans are in control of the Senate, most Massachusetts voters agree that would be very bad for the country.  In the last debate with Elizabeth Warren, the moderator tried to pin him down on whether or not he would vote for McConnell as majority leader, and he repeatedly demurred.  He's trying to run away from the national party; we shouldn't let him.
• Although Brown voted for Dodd-Frank, the price of his vote was steep.  He insisted that the funds to pay for the bill come from taxpayers instead of from the banks, as Democrats wanted. I really don't understand how any thinking person can believe that after nearly destroying the economy, the quite-necessary regulation drafted to try to stop a recurrence shouldn't be paid for by fees from that industry.  This is a reminder of how far into the pocket of the financial industry the Republican party has moved.
• While Brown is pro-choice, he's never indicated that he'll refuse to vote for a Supreme Court justice chosen by a Republican president.  That's where the abortion battles are being fought; it does no good to have a pro-choice Senator if he's going to vote for an anti-choice judge.
• I don't mean to leave Brown's opponent out of this post; Elizabeth Warren is a pretty good candidate!  She's thoughtful, intelligent, hard-working, and a true advocate for consumers and those who are victims of corporations engaging in crony capitalism.  I won't go deeper into this point, as this post is about Brown, not her, but I would feel really proud to have her as my Senator.  Her viral rift that inspired Obama's "you didn't build that" clip was brilliantly framed:

Look, if Scott Brown switched parties and became a moderate Democrat, I'd still prefer a liberal, but I'd accept him as reasonable enough.  But we really can't afford another Republican vote in the Senate.

The Presidential Debate: Romney Smack-Down

Who looks interested, and who looks like he'd rather be somewhere else?

Wow.  I figured there wouldn't be much news from the debate last night.  I mean, the craft of televised presidential debating has been advanced quite a bit over the years.  The candidates are usually so well prepared that they're never really surprised.  They know that the way to deal with an embarassing question is just to change the subject, and most politicians are pretty good at that.  If I had any concern, it was that a gaffe might be created by the right wing machine out of an innocent comment- I'd been reading about how, for example, Al Gore's "sighs" were basically an invention of the national media, even though flash-polls of regular voters never noticed them.  Once the media gets a narrative, they don't usually let go, and that can be hard to predict or control.

But instead what we got was a no-show by the President.  The depths of my rage about this are surprising to me.  This morning I was driving to work and listening to a clip of Obama at the debate, and I started screaming at the radio for him to wake the F--- up, missing my exit.  Say it, Samuel L:

Anyway, I feel like I felt in 2010 when Martha Coakley lost the MA senate election to Scott Brown. In that campaign, Coakley won a very competitive primary battle to fill Ted Kennedy's seat, and apparently expected a coronation against Brown.  Her whole strategy was negative and hostile, she was a lackluster compaigner, and Brown turned out to be a very talented politician.  He snuck up and won the election, and I saved all my anger for Coakley.  The stakes are really high here, and the politicians who run for election shouldn't care about it less than the activists who support them.

That doesn't mean I blame every Democrat for losing elections.  This year in Massachusetts, for example, Brown is running against Elizabeth Warren.  Now he's the incumbent, and he's proven to be a great retail politician who connects well with voters.  He's not crazy like many of his fellow Republicans around the country.  Warren has a good chance to beat him, but Brown has a great chance to hold the seat.  But at least Warren is bringing it with everything she's got- she's campaigning hard, she's putting out the right message, but it's a tough race and I won't be mad at her if she loses.

But the President is another matter; Obama was a competent debater in 2008, both in the primaries and in the general election.  It's not like Romney is some kind of Master up there- he's good, but he left plenty of openings.  Most notably, Romney really pulled his Etch-A-Sketch last night- every time Obama brought up an unpopular position of the GOP, Romney claimed not to hold it, in opposition to his party's platform and everything he's said on the stump and while campaigning.  All the President had to do was call him on it, and he just didn't!

So there are two more presidential debates, and Obama needs to be a lot more combative.  I'm not goign to psychoanalyze the guy from afar, but he needs to figure out why he seemed so disinterested and passive last night.  If he doesn't improve on that performance, then he deserves to lose the election. 

But that doesn't mean the rest of us deserve to be stuck with Mitt Romney and the Crazies as President.  Wake the F--- Up, Mr. President, Wake the F--- up!

The Fiscal Cliff- A Quick Note

OK, OK, I'm convinced that the "Fiscal Cliff" at the end of this year is going to be a problem.  Previously I had said that I looked forward to tax rates returning to Clinton-era levels.  But liberal economists are joining conservatives in saying that this would be very bad for the economy while it's still doing so poorly.

Of course liberals have different reasons than conservatives for saying this.  Conservatives have been saying that tax hikes are always bad, no matter what the rates before and no matter what problem they're trying to solve (hell, Paul Ryan is still trying to convince us that the deficit problem can be solved with tax cuts, which would do the exact opposite).

So I do want taxes returned to previous levels, with which our government can be sustained.  But it can't really happen on the middle class yet- a tax hike will be anti-stimulative.  That will be fine when unemployment is back below 6%, but not now.

The problem is that I don't trust the Democrats on this issue, and I fear they'll make the Bush tax cuts permanent in their negotiations with a hard-line GOP.  I sure hope they can keep their eyes on this tax prize.

On Gratefulness and Cluelessness

Last weekend my son had a bar mitzvah, obviously a huge event in the life of my family.  I managed to avoid any national or local politics in my speech welcoming the guests, but the thoughts managed to creep into my consciousness.  So bear with me:

Reflecting on the life of my family, I realize how incredibly lucky we are.  My children are doing well and making me proud every day.  I love my wife.  I stress about money, but we have enough to live comfortably.  I have a great extended family (some so awesome that they even read this blog!) and warm and caring friends.  In my talk I said:

So in some ways I think a Life Well Lived is one in which we’re grateful for all the good fortune we’ve had
 

And here's where I veer into the political.  I read this today from David Frum.  The post started by quoting a particularly hateful rant from Michelle Malkin about the 47%:

The question is not to deplore, but to understand. Where do emotions like these come from? How is it that so many who seem to be such golden winners of life's lottery manage to generate so much hatred, fear, and contempt for those who have fared less well? It would make an ugly kind of sense if such rage were expressed by those who had less against those who had more. But who stands at the highest window in the building to drop slop onto the heads of the unfortunates standing 10 or 12 stories below?
 

Exactly.  In a similar vein, we hear the Romneys talk about how hard they've worked to get what they have.  Ann Romney famously explained that in graduate school they were forced to live off the meager income from some stock given to him by his father.  It seems like Mitt and the many of the 1% are convinced that their enormous wealth is ironclad proof of their virtue.  That's one of the things that's so striking about the secret Romney video- the audience of wealthy donors are all buying into the meme that "the 47%" are moochers living off the public trough.  Some of us thought that the whole thing about how the "tipping point" is being reached and the poor are going to start voting for handouts from the rich was just a cynical argument for the rubes- but no!  The plutocrats at that Romney fundraiser really believe it!

I think it was Ann Richards who said about George W. Bush: "Poor George! He was born on 3rd base and thought he hit a triple".  I think Mitt Romney also thinks he hit a triple- certainly he's trying to convince us all that he worked hard for all he had, and came from nothing.  This from a guy whose father was president of an auto company!

Now I'm not quite as lucky financially as Mitt Romney.  But I'm pretty damn lucky.  Hell, I was born on 2nd base, a relative winner in the historical lottery.  But at least I don't believe I hit a double.

Maybe one of the things that drives people to become filthy rich is that they're never satisfied with what they've got.  But I think it's a little sad, never to be happy and grateful with what we've been given.  We've all got problems- the Romney family is dealing with Ann's Multiple Sclerosis after all- but when you balance it all out, most people in the 1% have it incredibly good and getting better.  Why are they so angry at the rest of us?

"You Didn't Build That" Foolishness

A friend pointed me to this silly video

The whole "you didn't build that" thing is basically a Truism. This video even highlights the truism in a way- of course we're talking about a little school girl, but let's take that example anyway. In fact, it's quite true that she couldn't build her school project without the raw materials (which someone else paid for). The acknowledgment of that fact isn't even controversial. When you look at the right wing argument in this light, it's totally ridiculous- OF COURSE businesses use the roads, police forces, education systems, and copyright laws of the government to enhance their ability to build their businesses. Obviously the little girl couldn't build her project if she didn't have the support of the school, her parents, etc. That such a banal point has been blown up into the centerpiece of the Republican attack machine just shows how pathetic their campaign and program is right now.

Poor Mitt

Mitt Romney appears to be sinking; polls show Obama pulling out to a significant lead.  In swing states he may be pulling away.  And Republicans are starting to point fingers and give advice about what Romney has to do to change things around.

But as I see things, it's not his fault.   Well, kind of not his fault... in a way.  .....Maybe it's more accurate to say that he has no plausible way out of his predicament.

Here's what I mean: the only way Romney could win the GOP nomination was to move hard right in order to fend off the parade of true right wingers threatening him.  He probably wanted to shift to the center for the general election, but the True Believers knew that was the plan and they worked hard to box him in so he couldn't do so.

So he tied himself to Paul Ryan and the extreme economic wing of the party, and he can't extricate himself.  He's committed to policies (tax cuts for millionaires, changing Medicare to a voucher program, a tax plan that would require either huge deficits or tax hikes on the middle class to add up, maximalist position on abortion and birth control) that are generally unpopular.  He hoped he could win the election by staying vague about these plans and hoping people hating on Obama would be enough to bring him victory.

But it's not working.  People want specifics.  And Mitt Romney's actual specifics are either unpopular or don't add up.  He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

It's too bad that partisan Republicans will only blame their flawed candidates instead of their flawed policies. (I don't doubt partisan Democrats would do the same in a similar situation).  McCain didn't lose in 2008 because of anything he said or any kind of strategy he employed; he lost because the economy was in tatters and it was clear that Republican policies had caused it.  Romney isn't a very good politician, I grant you, but he's also stuck with a really unpopular set of policies.

[This will be a very embarrassing post if Romney ends up winning in November]

Now THAT's a Gaffe!

Mitt Romney really stepped in it here:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.  [M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
 

Wow.  Now I've been hearing this crap about how the bottom half of Americans pay no taxes in the Right Wing Chamber for a while.  The theory is that Democrats' strategy is to get most of American dependent on government transfer payments so they'll vote for liberals, destroying the country in the process by taxing the job creators to death.

The 47% number fits the style of Romney-Ryan.  It's not an absolute lie, just totally misleading.

• The number refers to the percentage of American who pay federal income taxes.  Many many more pay payroll taxes and local taxes, and of course everyone pays sales taxes.
• A big percentage of the 47% are Senior Citizens, who pay nothing because Social Security payouts are exempt.  But of course most of them have paid lots of taxes throughout their lives.
• Another big chunk of the 47% are young people- students, low-wage workers who will soon be making enough money to crack the taxing barrier.  These people will be paying federal income taxes in the future.
• Some are even multi-millionaires who had big paper losses and can carry over their capital loss, paying no income taxes in some years.  Heck, Mitt Romney himself might even be in that category!

The interesting, almost diabolical thing here is that those in the above categories don't think of themselves as part of the 47%, so Republicans hope they'll get all outraged too, even though this is aimed at them!  Maybe it will work, but I doubt it.

Krugman puts up this helpful graph:


So from ages 25 to 57 the percentage of Americans paying federal income taxes is around 70%.  Include payroll taxes and it's more like 82%.

Krugman's commentary in his next post makes the point that what's going on here is that the intellectuals in the movement made up this meme to hoodwink and rile up the masses, only to find out that even the supposedly sophisticated Wall Street guys have come to believe it too!

Jon Chait is great on this stuff too, noting that Romney surprised him in that he clearly believes this stuff sincerely- Chait insists this isn't a pander to the audience, but looks more like his true beliefs.

I know that if Romney loses the election, then right wingers are going to blame the candidate, but really this is all about the right wing; Romney has had to move so far right that he's just over the cliff.  If he says what the nuts want, he sounds like a nut.  But he's too boxed in to "etch a sketch" back to the center with any credibility.  I almost felt sorry for the guy, who seems to have no plausible message exept to tear down Obama.  But after hearing this, I'm with Chait- he really believes it.  I guess you're really a good pandering flip-flopper when you actually believe what you've flopped to.

9/11/01 Thoughts

I didn't know anyone who died on that day.  But it's the Moment of communality for my generation.  The Greatest Generation had Pearl Harbor.  The Boomers had the JFK assassination.  And we have 9/11.

I'm always struck by the nihilism of the terrorist mindset, the sheer pointlessness of the whole operation.  Yes, they succeeded spectacularly in killing lots of Americans, but on the other hand their attack served no military purpose, brought Al Qaeda no closer to the Caliphate that they desire, and in fact set back the organization and its supporters in the Taliban, as they brought down the might of a focused United States upon them.  They lashed out in an angry rage, but the actions seem really ill-considered even for their own cause.

I don't think it's helpful to talk about "evil" when confronting the mindset of the hijackers.  I think "twisted" covers it better.  Somehow they convinced themselves that what they were doing was not only not evil, but in fact morally just and righteous.  Among this subset of radical Islamists, morality has been altered beyond recognition as a way to focus their rage (some of it legitimate) over their station and the relative lack of power of their people.  Maybe that's what Evil is, after all.

Anyway, no political statements here.  Innocent people shouldn't be made to die for a cause.  Any cause for which innocents are intentionally targeted is inherently immoral.

Mitt Romney Believes in Stimulus After All!

It's true.  Mitt Romney believes in the virtues of government spending to boost the economy..... as long as the spending is on the military.  He's running a series of ads in swing states slamming the President for cutting military spending, and promises to boost defense spending.  We're familiar with some of the reasoning- it's important that America remain the strongest country in the world.  Heck, the military is like other departments in that there is always more need if the money is out there.

But that's not the only argument.

The one running in Virginia, near me, says: “Here in Virginia, we’re not better off under President Obama. His defense cuts threaten over 130,000 jobs—lowering home values, putting families at risk.” Similar ads in other states complain that Obama’s reductions in military spending threaten 20,000 jobs in Colorado, 20,000 in Ohio, and “thousands more” in Florida and North Carolina.
 

So the Pentagon is a jobs program too.

Now don't get me wrong- I actually agree with Mitt that increased military spending would boost the economy- it's stimulative.   But increasing the number of postal workers would stimulate too.  Same with teachers, firefighters, policemen, and IRS workers.  In other words, government spending can stimulate a demand-constrained economy like ours.  Mitt Romney- Keynesian hero!

But in the hermetically-sealed bubble of the Republican party, only defense spending can add jobs, while other spending actually kills jobs.  If Republicans want to use the government to add jobs, it has to involve blowing stuff up, or it just doesn't rate.