Month: September 2011

Debate Cliff Notes

by digby

In case you’ve missed the GOP debates, last night’s SNL gives you a pretty fair facsimile of what they’ve been like:

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Passion Play
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

This isn’t good news:

They were once among President Obama’s most loyal supporters and a potent symbol of his political brand: voters of moderate means who dug deep for the candidate and his message of hope and change, sending him $10 or $25 or $50 every few weeks or months.

But in recent months, the frustration and disillusionment that have dragged down Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have crept into the ranks of his vaunted small-donor army, underscoring the challenges he faces as he seeks to rekindle grass-roots enthusiasm for his re-election bid.

In interviews with dozens of low-dollar contributors in the past two weeks, some said they were unhappy with what they viewed as Mr. Obama’s overly conciliatory approach to Congressional Republicans. Others cited what they saw as a lack of passion in the president, or said the sour economy had drained both their enthusiasm and their pocketbooks.

The Administration’s defenders would like to have you believe that all of these dispirited donors are only unhappy because bloggers like me told them to be unhappy, and that if we all clapped a little louder, everything would be just fine.

Those people are also fools. But more importantly, they insult the intelligence of all the unhappy donors and activists who helped elect the President in 2008 in the first place. You don’t need to be brainwashed by a blogger or journalist to think that the President has been too conciliatory and too dispassionate in his approach over the last two years. You just have to have been paying even a modicum of attention.

Hopefully the President’s new aggressive tone will help lift activist spirits; I’ve already seen the positive effects locally among the Democratic base. As horrible as a Republican Presidency would be, that knowledge alone won’t be enough to motivate the President’s 2008 donors. The President has to convince them that he himself has finally become convinced of the uselessness of attempting to negotiate in good faith and reconcile differences with an opposition that simply cannot and will not be appeased except by his own destruction.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Wheelmen don’t eat quiche

By Dennis Hartley

Dick Morris’ Wet Dream

by digby

Dick Morris says:

As bad news piles up for the Democrats, I asked a top Democratic strategist if it were possible that President Obama might “pull a Lyndon Johnson” and soberly face the cameras, telling America that he has decided that the demands of partisan politics are interfering with his efforts to right our economy and that he has decided to withdraw to devote full time to our recovery. His answer: “Yes. It’s possible. If things continue as they are and have not turned around by January, it is certainly possible.”

And what then? Will the Democrats just declare the election forfeited and give it to the Republicans? Sure. That’ll happen.

One very simple rule of thumb in American politics is that if Dick Morris says something will happen, it most definitely won’t. You can make book on it.

(And how much do you want to bet that the “Democratic Strategist” he spoke with was Pat Caddell?)

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The next conservative idol
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Demonstrating the intellectual maturity of their voting base, conservative Republicans have been cycling through crush after crush like a hormonal teenager. First it was Donald Trump. Then it was Michele Bachmann. After Bachmann, Rick Perry was “the one”. Perry was supposed to be marriage material, in fact.

But after Rick Perry’s horrible debate performance, Republicans are shopping around again in an effort to avoid the boring man they will likely actually marry, Mitt Willard Romney. Today’s flavor of the week is New Jersey governor and noted jerk Chris Christie:

The Republican primary race was marked by fake candidates (Donald Trump), non-candidates (Mitch Daniels), and fringe candidates (Gary Johnson, Ron Paul) before Rick Perry got into the race. Conservatives were excited after his announcement in August; the conservative blog Hot Air declared he was the “real deal” who could forcefully attack President Obama. The American Spectator said he was “far better positioned than Romney to debate the President.” They must not have ever seen Perry debate. After his Texas swag could not carry him through Thursday’s event, some conservatives are back to pining for their fantasy candidates. Chief among them: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Perry’s halting, stumbling performance, National Review editor Rich Lowry writes at Fox News, “will stoke more speculation about… Christie possibly entering the race.” It sure did.

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin writes, “I thought there was some possibility that if the stars aligned that [Christie] might get in…. In the wake of last night’s debate, that possibility increased by a factor of 10. (Yeah, yeah, 10 times zero is zero, but it was never zero.)” The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, too, was inspired by the Orlando debate to think again about Christie. Kristol says he got an email from a “bright young conservative” saying, “I’m watching my first GOP debate…and WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!” Kristol says he’s left asking “with a month left before filing deadlines: Is that all there is?”

Yes, you sound like crazy people. You are crazy people. The only difference, my dear Republicans, is that the candidates you seriously fall in love with are finally a reflection of the true character of your voters. These are the suitors the Tea Party heart desires (for a month at a time, anyway), and they’re the suitors the Tea Party heart deserves.

As for Chris Christie? His state’s finances are out of whack, he’s corrupt, most decent people don’t like him, and he’s a bully. A man cut from true Tea Party cloth, and a man the conservative establishment will respect for at least a few weeks until they realize he can’t really bring home the bacon.

At which point their wandering hearts will dutifully stroll down the aisle with Mr. Dependable Mitt Romney, and spend the rest of their electoral lives wondering what might have been. And when Mitt Romney is defeated in 2012, the same conservatives fretting over the inadequacy of their alternatives will blame boring old Mitt for the ruin of their electoral lives, wistfully sighing “if only I’d married Michele, or Rick, or Chris…”

The conservative soul, inconstant as it may be, will always flirt with and pine for its bad boy heart throbs on the far right before making the staid choice. That’s why Chris Christie will likely jump into the race. And that’s why, when all is said and done, Mitt Romney will be accept the GOP nomination in 2012.

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The Perry primary

by digby

Michael Tomasky makes a convincing case that far from being road kill, Rick Perry is actually the likely winner of the Republican nomination.

Redstate.com, the house organ of Wingnutistan, where the headline says it all: “Perry Loses the Debate; Romney Wins but Remains Unacceptable for Conservatives.” That still strikes me as the bottom line here. Perry will study his briefing books and refrain from accusing, however accurately, his core constituents of heartlessness. But Romney can’t undo his evil socialistic Massachusetts history. The Redstate blogger wrote: “I don’t care if Perry is soft on immigration and tried to mandate a vaccination through executive order. Romney is the father of socialized medicine in America!”

The conventional counterargument, of course, is that the establishment will circle the wagons around Romney. This might happen. Even Washington conventional wisdom ends up being correct every once in a while. But I can mount a highly plausible counter-counterargument for why it may not. Nothing has happened in these past two and a half years to suggest that this Republican establishment will buck or stand up to the hard right in any way. All we’ve seen these past two years is establishment Republicans accepting one extreme demand after another.

Read the whole thing. His reasoning is sound.

I also think that Romney is a major problem among the faithful, not because of he’s the “father of socialized medicine” in America (a tribute that should actually go to Lyndon Johnson who signed Medicare into law)but because he is a Mormon and evangelicals don’t care for them. The polling, in fact, shows that Tea Partiers (who are also the Christian Right — duh) are particularly hostile to Mormons. If you add in the Romney east coast elite “Kerry factor” I think Perry can slide through, even though my personal feeling is that it’s the fact that he sounds like George W. Bush that has people freaked out. (Better Bush than Kerry?)

Either way, I’m kind of hoping for a knock down drag out primary season because it’s kind of fun watching the Republicans tear each other to pieces for a change. I only hope Palin jumps in to turn it into a real circus.

Update: Also read this piece that explains why the Republicans are going to continue to go batshit insane for a while.

This is why it’s very bad for them to win. In this state, they really are at their zenith of lunacy and when that happens in a time of crisis, very bad things can result. Yes, even worse things than those that are happening now.

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Blue America Chat: John Waltz

This guy is terrific. Click over to Crooks and Liars and meet him.

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Tax Preferences

by digby

One of the reasons I read the New York Times business section is to see their helpful financial hints for rich people who are freaking out about taxes. They know their readers, I guess. Anyway, today’s paper has an excellent representative of the genre:

If you’re among the households with earnings of $200,000 to $350,000 or so, you can be forgiven at this point for thinking that you have a giant target on your back.

This week, President Obama once again took aim at what he calls “tax preferences” for these high-income households, proposing two changes that would affect the low six-figure set starting in 2013.

First, he would let former President George W. Bush’s tax cuts expire for higher-income households. Second, he would limit the rate at which high-income taxpayers — married people with over $250,000 in household income filing a joint return and singles with more than $200,000 — can reduce their tax liability to a maximum of 28 percent. This limit would apply to all itemized deductions, among other things, if President Obama gets his way, which would have the effect of causing many people to pay more in taxes.

Forget for a moment that President Obama will almost certainly not get his way, given that even bills to help American victims of natural disasters don’t get a rubber stamp in Congress anymore. And let’s save for another day the debate over whether people with incomes like this deserve any sympathy.

What gets lost in all of the hand-wringing over the proposed tax increases is that many of the people this is aimed at wouldn’t pay a whole lot more. And families who work at it just a bit, using employer-sponsored flexible spending and other accounts to pay for things like day camp and the commuter train and visits to the therapist, could offset that 2013 tax increase and then some.

I know this will make at least some of you mad, as it does every time I bring this up, but I don’t think we should “set aside for another day” the fact that 200k per year for one person and 300k for a family is a lot of money compared to what most people make in the nation, and even in New York City. As I’ve noted before, the median income in New York is around 80k, which is less than half of this hypothetical New Yorker makes at 200k. By any average American’s standards, these people are doing very well:

The family includes a married, heterosexual couple earning $350,000 combined annually that received no raises from 2011 to 2013, lives in the suburbs of New York City and has two children. They pay $20,000 in real estate taxes each year and $24,000 in annual interest toward their mortgage, make a total of $30,000 in 401(k) contributions and give away $9,000 in charitable contributions in all three years.

Let’s assume that the annual A.M.T. patch continues to occur each year — the patch adjusts the calculation that accounts for inflation to avoid ensnaring even larger numbers of taxpayers. (That assumption is a pretty safe one, though who would have predicted that you could elect to pay no estate taxes in 2010?) With the patch, this couple will pay tax at the A.M.T. rate in 2011 and 2012. Their total federal taxes in each of those years will be $65,604.

If the Bush tax cuts expire in 2013, they’ll no longer be paying the A.M.T. rate. But their income taxes will be only $66,981, just $1,377 more than 2012.

That number does not take into account the president’s proposed 28 percent deduction limit. Ms. Trimble said that there was a lot of debate in tax circles about precisely how it would work in practice.

But if the proposal simply means that you calculate taxable income for 2013 and then pay 28 percent of it, you get $69,633, or just $4,029 more than the family would have paid in 2011 and 2012. (Also, $900 of that increase in 2013 isn’t even attributable to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts or the 28 percent cap; it comes from the recent increase in taxes on higher-net-worth households to pay for Medicare, which goes into effect in 2013.)

So the hit isn’t all that bad. And you can make it go away entirely and then some by finally signing up for (and maxing out your set-asides in) those flexible spending and other accounts for health and dependent care plus public transportation or parking. With these accounts, your employer makes it possible to put aside money before it takes out income taxes (or to make a deposit in a way that qualifies you for a deduction).

So the president’s proposal to limit deductions would ask this family to pay an addition 4k a year in taxes — except they won’t actually have to pay it because they can take advantage of loopholes designed to shelter money for health care expenses(I presume they have good health insurance already) and transportation costs. And I guess they can write off the costs of sending their kid to camp.

This is partly what the politicians are talking about when they say they want to cut “tax expenditures,” many of which were put in place as incentives to certain good behaviors and others in place of government programs, which went out of fashion some time back. Some of them are good, some of them are useless, but as long as these sorts of loopholes benefit people of these means, I don’t think they’re going anywhere. After all, most American elites are living at this level or above and most of them think of themselves as standard middle class workers. It’s very hard for me to believe these loopholes will go away permanently even with the promise of lowering tax rates. These people like them. They want them. I’m guessing we’ll see them come back almost immediately.

And once again, I ask the question: suppose we eliminate these “tax expenditures” but lower tax rates in return so that this constituent doesn’t actually have to pay higher taxes. (That’s the argument all the tax reformers are making: “simplify the tax code so we can lower rates!”) How does that close the deficit?

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Plus ca change
David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Since we could all use some humor right about now, a couple of old reminders from across the pond that conservatism is and always has been an ideology of racism, cruelty and mindlessly repeated talking points. Yes, the modern breed of American conservative has taken it to breathtaking levels recently, but the core of it has always been there:

Only the accents and euphemisms are different, really.

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In case you aren’t depressed enough today, I thought I’d share this with you so you can go into the week-end in full despair:

And not to make matters even worse, get a load of this:

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is an independent agency of the United States government that was created by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to encourage the continuation and maintenance of voluntary private defined benefit pension plans, provide timely and uninterrupted payment of pension benefits, and keep pension insurance premiums at the lowest level necessary to carry out its operations. Subject to other statutory limitations, the PBGC insurance program pays pension benefits up to the maximum guaranteed benefit set by law to participants who retire at age 65 ($54,000 a year as of 2011). The benefits payable to insured retirees who start their benefits at ages other than 65, or who elect survivor coverage, are adjusted to be equivalent in value.

During fiscal year 2010, the PBGC paid $5.6 billion in benefits to participants of failed pension plans. That year, 147 pension plans failed, and the PBGC’s deficit increased 4.5 percent to $23 billion. The PBGC has a total of $102.5 billion in obligations and $79.5 billion in assets.

Corporations are the ones who pay into this insurance fund. Does anyone feel confident that the federal government is going to be able to get them to pony up to fix that deficit, even though they are swimming in cash? I didn’t think so.

If you need any more bad news on this front, just google “pension funds” to see what’s happening to state and local retirees all over the country. To call it a mess is an understatement.

And it’s a perfect time to talk about cutting social security.

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