Read Their Lips

No new taxes ever, for any reason whatsoever, except on working people and businesses looking to hire Americans.

[P]ayroll-tax cuts are the sort of tax break most likely to "get the economy moving again" during a recession. (Because they put money in the hands of people most likely to spend it and therefore boost other businesses. And on balance they lower the cost of adding new workers.) Income-tax breaks at the top end are least likely to create new demand or jobs. (Because they go to people who have a lower "marginal propensity to spend" and are more likely to park the money in the bank.)

Makes sense to me. I'd reckon that, if they made this a really big issue, Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives might start cracking the false narrative of Republican Tax Relief, kneecap support for the Bush Tax Cuts, gain some desperately needed political capital, and hammer the GOP on a fundamental economic vision for America. This situation, after all, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Barack Obama cut taxes so that working people and small businesses were the primary beneficiary. It also demonstrates that Republicans, who have literally picked "not raising taxes" as their hill to die on in the Debt Ceiling debates, are actually willing to raise taxes whenever it is politically convenient to do so.



And by "raise taxes," I'm using the GOP definition which includes: letting certain tax cuts expire, closing loopholes, ending subsidies, and the spectre of raising taxes at some future time.



So now that we've determined what kind of tax opponnents Republicans really are, all that's left is negotiating. Oh, and spreading the word to the American people before the GOP is able to work its way onto both sides of this issue as well.



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Republicans Don't Care About Spending

Worried about government spending? Worried about the deficit? Worried about a balanced budget? Worried about the national debt? Think the USA has a "spending problem" and not a "revenue problem?"



Republicans don't. Otherwise they wouldn't have been sending dozens of funding requests for government projects in their districts.



You know what, I'm down with putting people to work now and getting all these projects funded now. As long as the President publicizes the shit out of the fact that all this government spending is what Republicans ask for when the cameras are turned off. He should sign into law each district's requests and call them Republican Stimulus requests. They are the ones who made stimulus a dirty word, after all.



All that fear-mongering about the state of the country's finances is just talk-talk. They love stimulus and bringing home the bacon just as much as any other politician.



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School's Out Forever

It is time to stop beating around the bush and start talking about what these people are saying and what their goals are: Many mainstream Republicans want to de-legitimize and deconstruct public education as a concept in the United States of America.



This isn't their sole historical property, mind you. There was a time not so long ago when populist Southern Democratic governors stood in schoolhouse doors and fought public education as well. These are old questions, it is an old fight. And Democrats don't have a very good record of holding political allies responsible for the failing state of many public schools across the land.



That being said, there are two questions that must be asked about public school: Do you think that every child in the United States should be offered the opportunity to obtain a basic education? Do you think a government organization is the most effective way to deliver this basic education to the most possible children?



The current answer from the right wing continues to be "no," and "hell, no." That answer dominates the mainstream Republican Party mindset.



Let's not mince words, those kinds of beliefs are not political non-negotiables. Our own national history has often been built on the fights for universal access to basic education. It often took generations of struggle to reform school policy to include one group or another, or to fund one group the same as any other. Once one goal was acheived, it opened up a new host of problems that had to be addressed, and the political debate continued. That debate never ended, it just changed.



Right now, those answers to those two questions are winning the national debate. They are doing so because any political opposition refuses to accept that those questions make up the heart of the debate.



The current crop of Republicans is out to destroy the concept of public education in the United States of America.



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Poisoning the Food and Water

Who needs all this pesky environmentalism stuff, anyway? We're not even talking global warming climate change anymore. We're talking about all the poison within 100 miles of home.



And for the poison just outside that circle, there's still oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. But don't worry, BP assures us it has nothing to do with them.



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The Trickle

In a Tea Party Economy, Washington does not attempt to land the unusustainable house of cards economy fall softly, it just lets the collapse trickle down. By the time it gets to the local level:

State and local officials face tough hurdles for the foreseeable future as service needs will not diminish, but assistance formerly received from higher levels of government are likely to be cut. These same elected officials will have to face an electorate who feels “taxed enough already”, and aren’t likely to want to hear that the services they have been receiving have at least partially been financed by deficits in Washington D.C.

Truth hurts.



But don't worry, I'm sure the folks who play conservative on television will find some way to blame all this on Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives.



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Red Tape Hurdles

There are some oversimplified narratives our nation entertains as if the events they describe happen in a vaccum. They're usually used to deflect responsibility for a problem from those who can actuall fix the problem.



Like "Teachers are responsible for the state of public education, and blaming school administrators, school boards, state offices and state legislatures are just excuses." Or "Blighted properties exist because poor people don't take care of the large and valuable properties they own, and cities can't do anything about it."



Another big one is "Amtrak specifically and trains in general don't make money," as if laws didn't exist to specifically make their overhead more expensive and hamstring their ability to make money and possibly turn a profic.



As if the laws Amtrak must follow rained upon the organization out of the clear blue sky.



And let's not even talk about how their competition is able to "make money."



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House of Cards

You play with fire long enough, you're liable to get burned.



If your object is to get back to the pre-1929 world economy, we're well on our way and it looks like the whole world is coming with us. Of course, all of this should have been expected, because what else do you think happens when the American government - maybe the one entity with the ability to spending enough money to land the economy safely - says they're going to stop spending money? Business leaders and stock brokers know that there is no one left to spend the money. Companies aren't spending money, despite massive tax breaks, subsidies, and loopholes. Individual people aren't spending money, because they're too busy trying to make ends meet. People in other nations aren't spending money, because their economies are based of the USA spending money.



Not only that, but if you borrow money from the USA, there is the very real possibility that a completely untrustworthy political group is going to put the brakes on you getting paid back so they can further curb the spending ability of the one organization left that can still spend money.



Thanks, Tea Party! Y'all own this economy, now. While all the kids may have pushed on the antique vase that ended up broken, the kid holding the baseball bat should recieve the most scrutiny. This isn't just the Tea Party Economy, y'all, this is the exactly stated results of their policies.



For a little while, it looked like we might get let down easy. The unsustainable economy America has been building over the last two generations was finally being exposed for the fraud it was. The panic of 2007-08 evaporated trillions of dollars in Monopoly Money from the economy, to the shock of many. The nation was bleeding jobs even as real estate oversupply sent house values tumbling below what owners and developers borrowed from the banks to pay for the land. Those are the types of jobs that aren't coming back, so not only are people going to need to find new jobs, they have to discover new ways to live within their means or create new jobs on their own. The whole time, the cost of health care continues to rise, along with prices of food and energy.



Of course, few politicians were willing to say in public how screwed the country is, lest they be called out for "making the situation worse" with a dose of reality. Out of our political caste, President Obama comes the closest to the truth the most often with the most consistentcy. And while that reality might draw derision from the Professional American Left, their national influence wanes the further away you get from the New York Times editorial pages.



On the other hand, talking about reality only draws howls and hatred from the fanatic and ideologically pure Right-Wing, content to sell cultural panic for the political capital necessary to win elections. At this point, the Right-Wing's stated policy goals include returning this country to a mythical utopia of stars-and-stripes-colored unicorns and business-friendly faeries where the government is based only on the parts of the Constitution they agree with. After all, the theory goes, how bad could things have been back in the days when the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery after Paul Revere raised his guns and bells to warn the British of an insane and armed American population?



And if you think incredible historical misconceptions are very different from the historical buffoonery of Bachmann and Palin, you're just kidding yourself.



Anyone mildly versed in United States history knows that pre-1929 economics would take us back to the boom and bust cycles of pre-1929 America, where the economy didn't experience "recessions" as often as it experienced "panics." Sound good? Try this: those economic panics happened so often they had to be labeled by the year instead of the decade, and often evaporated entire regions of national economic health.



The Right-Wing political sales pitch is more American Pie than Jim Crow, Segregation, and the legacy of slavery; more Strict Constructionist than Louisiana Purchase; more "right to work" than children in the coal mines; more seperate but equal vouchers instead of public education; and more Whistlin' Dixie than the Battle Cry of Freedom that eventually mtobilized the Union for total war.



Bobby Lee might have been revered by his soldiers and, later, an America that adores tragic heroes, but Grant and Sherman came after him with more men, more guns, more ammunition, more food, railcars to move all of those things and shoes on their soldiers' feet. I think of that any time a Tea Partier from the eleven states of the Old Confederacy talk to me about government being the problem.



These howlers aren't interested in the reality of the situation with the American economy, it only matters what they can sell the loudest to the 24 hour cable news consuming public. Discussing the real problems and real solutions would be difficult professionally and would make for boring television, after all.



Well, I doubt pre-1929 America was a boring place to live, based off the history I have read. Thanks to the Tea Party Economy and the right-wing, I think we're about to get a taste of just how "exciting" that kind of life would be.



(NOTE: This was scheduled to post Monday around lunch, and then I saw that Dante had posted Monday around breakfast, so I pushed it back.)

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The Tax-Cut Gnomes

Step One: Cut Taxes
Step Two: ?
Step Three: Make Profit!

Tax cuts are supposed to be some miracle cure for economic woes, period. That's the deeply held faith of so many Republicans, Libertarians, small-l libertarians, Tea Partiers, and Right Wingers. That's what they sell in their political marketing to America.

If it was really true, where are the jobs? The United States has some of the lowest tax rates in our nation's history. Many of the states with the lowest tax rates also have the highest rates of unemployment (Georgia & Louisiana). Low taxes, tax cuts, tax loopholes, and all the subsidies our governments provide haven't been able to provide any national economic security for a decade. Jobs haven't been created or retained. Wages have only increased for the top 1%. New industries and businesses have had trouble opening. The only way the powers-that-be could pretend our nation made any economic gains in the last decade was to give us a shell game, where our whole economy become less dynamic, more dependent on cheap energy that no longer exists, a house of cards real estate bubble, and illegal labor.

In the face of all this truth, how do the right wing's political marketers reply to the burning wreckage of policy that is their biggest and most successful advertising?

Why, they double down on the bullshit and blame the economy on a make believe tax hike orchestrated by a tax cutting President, that's what.

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Separate in Inherently Unequal

We're still learning this lesson, it seems.

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Angry Liberals

Incapable of trying to contain a political loss, some House Democrats are now falling over themselves to multiply the Debt Deal fallout by using hyperbole to make themselves objects of ridicule.

Folks, the Debt Deal was an issue that was 1 part policy to 9 parts politics. This was so much theatre that I now think Washington has more to fear from a writers' strike than Hollywood. "Issues" like this only become issues because the GOP is good at playing politics and making mountains out of molehills, and the Democrats often lose at "king of the (imaginary) hill."

Think about this: after months (if not years) of Tea Party and GOP whining, pouting, getting an inch and taking a mile, victimization mythology, hyperbolic rhetoric, and marketing the snake oil of cultural and economic panic, the Democrats are the ones getting laughed at.

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Cultural Economy

I commented at Cliff's Crib that, if more people truly understood what their tax dollars paid for, our national conversation about government would be completely different.

Instead, the national conversation is awash in complete misconceptions, falsehoods, and made-up theoreticals. One of those is that "the government does not/should not provide funding for the arts." This one has been around for a while, and is a narrative often trotted out as an anecdotal example of pervasive government waste and the largeness of government size. The perception is that government pays artists to create pretty pictures or songs, and that the money never goes anywhere else. People who buy into that narrative seem to think this government money is there simply to subsidize the bohemian lifestyles of liberal, artsy types.

The truth is, arts and culture have tremendous economic impact all over the United States, and any honest discussion of the validity of government funding should take that economic impact into account.

Because if it is worth $400 million to the state of Georgia to land a KIA assembly plant, it may be worth it to the state to fund the arts and culture as well. It all depends on the return on investment per government dollar spent, and the taxpayers deserve to hear the truth about the economic impact of their tax dollars. Unfortunately, all they're getting right now are narratives and platitudes, as return on investment isn't a part of the "Big Government Waste" conversation we so often hear.

(HT: Jeffrey)

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Amateur

Georgia Public Service Commissioner Tom Echols needs to step up his game if he wants to join former Alaska governor Sarah Palin & former New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin's Chocolate Moose Party.


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Pro-Free Enterprise

Ask and ye shall recieve. In response to a comment I made last week on WalMart subsidies, Owen Courreges at Uptown Messenger examines the difference between being "pro-business" and being "pro-free enterprise."

Pro-business being another term I associate with "business friendliness," the turn of phrase preferred by so very many Southern Chambers of Commerce as they pick the pockets of some businesses to put cash in the pockets of their more invested interests.

As a Southern Liberal, I can justify subsidies and tax breaks and infrastructure investments that stand to augment all businesses in a place. The Tennessee Valley Authority made a lot of people rich while taking a lot of other people's land. It also provided power for millions. The Port of New Orleans and the Port of Savannah allow any businesses to ship their goods by sea. Farm subsidies can be gamed to make millions for agribusiness, but they've also helped stabilize food prices. There are trade offs, and the people must be vigilant and informed of where their tax dollars are going, who is using them, and who stands to benefit the most.

That's because the free enterprise system requires rules and a just playing field in order for the true market competition to work. On the other hand, using tax revenues generated by some businesses to support their competition is when the government - and their well-connected interests - violate the free market to choose the winners and the losers in unfair competition. That may be "pro-(specific)-businesses" or "business friendly," in name, but it is more akin to feudalism in practice.

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Admitting Failure

If you asked New Orleans homeowners to agree to a $200 - $250 a year increase in their property taxes, and put it to a referendum, it would likely fail. Charge the same homeowners that money to pay for a "security district" of NOPD officers, and they pony up.

I'm not worried about the arrest and incident quotas brought up in the article, no matter how problematic they may be.

What concerns me is the idea that certain areas feel the need to pay extra because they accept that normal police coverage isn't enough in this city. To me, that sets a dangerous precedent. My problem is with the entire concept, and I don't care if this is how they do it wherever else.

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Subsidizing the Arts

Author Kevin Kane recently advocated Louisiana cut subsidies for 'the arts' in the Pelican State.

If there is evidence that government support has been integral to any of these great traditions, Martin does not offer it.

Lamar quickly takes him to task:

Mardi Gras? I hate to break it to you, but it’s publicly-subsidized.

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Peach Sticker Shock

Because the Almighty cares what sticker you put on your car's license plate. Doesn't have anything better to do, really.

< / eyeroll >

This is more news about Christians falling all over themselves to prove how Christian they are to other Christians, and make those of us who don't follow their particular narrow worldview of evangelical exhibitionism know that we are doomed to the Fiery Pit.

Of course some of them are going to be agitated that they'll have to render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's by paying a $1 fee for the "In God We Trust" sticker. Customization always costs, though some of these folks would have you believe that not printing IGWT on ALL THE PLATES is somewhere in the arena of Christians getting thrown to the lions. There goes the government again, persecuting Christianists by not requiring every single car owner to agree with them.

There is, of course, little outcry that no non-religious sticker option yet exists. Because, you know, a lot of folks have bigger concerns in their lives. The end result? The Georgia DOT got the plate designs it wanted.

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Rationing

OH NOES! TEH DEATH PANELIZMS BE RATIONING MAH HEALTH CARES!!!

It sure doesn't take long to manufacture a dog-whistle, does it? Of course, Representative Gingrey phrases it like this:

Well, here are the facts: the only proposal to reform Medicare that President Obama has advanced is to employ a bureaucratic panel to ration health care. These 15 unelected individuals comprise a board called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which was first created in Obamacare. It’s empowered to make decisions about critical coverage and payment policies regarding Medicare — without having to answer to the American people.

Wow, those are pretty words. The long form of "TEH DEATH PANELIZMS!" And yet,

These distracting gimmicks have allowed Democrats to avoid discussing the dangers of IPAB and unfairly rendered many Americans ill-informed.

Which brings me to another point regarding political communication. When Democrats, progressives, and liberals lose elections because they don't think they have to convince people to agree with them, their answer is "The American People are Stupid" or "Why Do People Vote Against Their Own Interests" or "WHHAAA! Politics is Hard!!"

On the other hands, the GOP blames Americans' status as "ill-informed" due to "distracting gimmicks" from the Democrats.

Guess who wins more credibility just through phrasing? (HINT: Who controls the US House of Representatives?)

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Race to the Bottom?

MOAR SOUTHERNERZ BE TAKING URR JOABS!!!

Georgia gets ready to make a bid for the North American Audi manufacturing plant. While this might be exciting that more manufacturing is taking place in the Deep South, I despise the fact that the main discussion centers around which states will offer the most robust subsidies for these industries. According to the article, Georgia offered Kia $400M in breaks, and Tennessee offered Volkswagen $500M.

Yes, I realize that these are subsidies that include tax exemptions for taxes that wouldn't exist if the plant was built somewhere else. Hell, as a Southern Liberal, I'm all about using strategic subsidies to encourage development where appropriate. It just chaps me that people may not realize just how much of the store the state gives away to land these developments, and I definitely want the dialouge to be more honest.

People need to know, after all, how much the state is making off such a robust investment. People also need to know how this sort of thing plays with the "small government" narrative. Such expenditures are often labeled as "pork" or "bailouts" when a less politically-savvy political party makes deals of this kind.

Of course, I am glad to be proven completely correct about the root cause for the Seattle vs. South Carolina Boeing dust-up. It is all about the subsidies, baby.

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The "Message"

At what point do you start disregarding facts entirely and start arguing about made up stuff? The farcical national conversation about the Stimulus could be "Exhibit A."

For what it is worth, the Stimulus was a disaster - a political disaster, especially for Democrats and Keynesians. Facing a looming economic catastrophe as our nation's people collectively maxed out their personal debt financed by banks who were maxing out theirs, the government had to spend money it didn't have to avoid getting us into a depression. That money combined with the vaporization of several trillion dollars in Monopoly-money wealth our nation didn't actually have to create some pretty gnarly budget deficits and government debt.

But, instead of hammering home each stimulus need individually (we need $200 billion for infrastructure - who doesn't like planes, trains, and automobiles?; we need $100 billion for schools - who doesn't think children should read?; we need $2 billion for alternative energy sources - who doesn't want cheap, renewable energy? etc.) the brainiacs in charge decided to completely ignore political reality, lump everything together and not talk about it.

Opponents were suddenly free to parade the words "omnibus" and "stimulus" around while waving the total price tag aloft, declaring we were getting this money from "our children." They found endless anecdotes and examples of "pork." Some were real, some were made up, and some were actually valuable government programs that monitor things like floods. It didn't matter what it was, there was so much in the bill it forced most Americans to rely on the lazy media to tell them. We all know how that turns out.

Now, a media-savvy Democratic Congress could have owned the news cycles and won political victories for two straight years just passing parts of the whole. They probably could have got more money for the big stuff, too. All those folks who later argued "the stimulus didn't work because it wasn't big enough," political problems in their own right, simply didn't understand how to gain political support to justify those additional expenditures.

But, noooo, Nancy Pelosi had a chance to destroy the GOP opposition on a host of issues the majority of Americans already agreed with her about and decided instead to do it in a way that actually turned Americans against the program, the party, and drove them into the waiting arms of a "Tea Party" ready to capitalize off the cultural and economic panic being felt across the country. GOP governors across the land decried the bill while taking the cash, and never paid a political price for it. Why would they? They were counting millions while the "Stimulus Ins't Big Enough" crowd took to the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times and got busy telling Americans the stimulus didn't work and that they needed more money.

That moment of decision, when the Democrats decided they didn't need to convince the American voters to agree with them, was when they lost the national argument over how to do something about the economic collapse. That was the moment they decided they would never get another chance to use Keynesian theories to save this economy, and that they'd never get a political chance to recover until the GOP allowed them to have one. That was the moment they assumed blame for the "stimulus didn't work" narrative, and they are still paying for it today.

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"An Odd Protest Movement"

David Brooks at the NYT wonders if the Republicans are normal. In discussing negotiations over raising the debt limit, he praises the political victories won by the GOP, but worries they will throw all that away at the altar of the Tax-Cut religion.

[We] can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

I still think the GOP is behaving in this way to more strongly negotiate with Democrats who have proven time and again that they will give away the store in order to avoid Republican political marketing in the next election (that they will face anyway). The GOP has no reason to believe that the Democrats will draw a line in the sand and start making them pay the political price for their own policies because they haven't done so since the Kennedy administration. What evidence do the Republicans have that now will be different?

HT: Andrew Sullivan, and Patrick Appel.

But here's the problem: even if the GOP does take this nation to default, they will not pay a political price for it. They own the national narrative, and can (and will) lay it all at the feet of the Democrats. They control the redistricting process, and have built themselves safe seats under any circumstamances. Past political organization decisions on the part of the GOP (focus on suburbs, exurbs and rural areas) and Democrats (abandon suburbs, exurbs and rural areas) mean the Dems have no political infrastructure in a majority of Congressional districts. The Dems simply have no political answer to make to GOP mandated default. None.

And that gives this "odd protest movement" more leverage than they know what to do with.

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