Jim Jones 2012 / 8-14-11

I used to shake my fits at their antics, roll my eyes at their lies.

Now I just feel pity for them.

The Republican candidates for president, that's who.

Last week at the Iowa debate, they were offered a hypothetical situation in which they could defeat the deficit by passing ten times as many spending cuts as tax raises. (Ten times!) They were asked to raise their hand if they would oppose such a deal.

Hey, guess what? They all raised their hands, like the dutiful little unthinking boys and girls they've become.

Because they've been brainwashed, you see.

(I know the real answer is somewhat different. It's political suicide to declare any kind of support for any kind of tax increase with primary season just around the corner. The R's had no choice, from a strategic standpoint. Adorably, Tim Pawlenty -- who has since dropped out, to which I must add a punctuationally illegal exclamation point! -- hesitated. He recovered and shot his arm up too. But what an cute little almost-thinker he was, if only for a moment. Seriously. He quit the race three days later.)

Anyway, the brainwashed thing makes so much sense. Because here's what the Republicans said no to Thursday night: eliminating the national debt.

They didn't just say no to balancing the budget and living with the $14.6 trillion or so we now owe, paying our minimum balance of $500 billion (!!!!) every year, never getting anywhere in the long term. They said no to turning that entire balance, the one we've spent our history accumulating, into zero.

All $14.6 trillion, gone. They declined that offer.

Analogy time. They said no to this domestic situation:

I make $60,000 a year. Pleasant salary for a single guy.

Well... I pay $20,000 for housing, $10,000 in taxes, $30,000 to survive, and I'm also on the hook for $5,000 annually in the form of minimum payments on my credit cards. How long will I last at this rate? Hm.

But look! I am offered another part-time job that will cause me to make a little less at my old job, and will cut into my leisure time because I'll be working more hours, but my income will increase overall to $75,000. I'll be able to pay off my cards AND save a little each month AND treat myself to something nice again. A vacation? A new home theater? A motorcycle.

Do I say no to the second job? Not only would I be able to pay off my credit cards, but I would be able to start setting myself up for life.

And I could always quit after my financial house is back in order. The second job, the extra revenue -- I won't always need it. I just am in kind of a bind right now, and it would come in awfully handy.

Analogy over. Reality now: Instituting a new tax bracket on ultra-wealthy Americans would raise about $800 billion over the next decade. (Got some numbers from here, so I'm not totally guessing.)

Couple that with the $8 trillion in cuts that come bundled with the extra revenue, and that pesky debt plus its annoying interest is halfway gone within ten years. Not only that, but you're running a surplus now. Within another decade, the entire debt has disappeared, and you could choose to lower tax rates or expand your safety net. Both, even.

Oh, but it gets better.

You don't need a 10-to-1 cuts-to-taxes ratio to get there. 4-1 is enough. And you can cross off the debt in less than one decade. Just let the Bush tax cuts expire next year, as they are scheduled to. The federal coffers will ka-ching to the tune of $3.6 trillion more in the next ten years. And $14.4 trillion in cuts come packaged with that, remember. That's a total of $18 trillion.

Debt gone.

To recap: the Republican candidates are so committed to lower taxes that they wouldn't even raise taxes if it were only on the richest one percent of taxpayers, only by a handful of percentage points, and even if it led to reducing the national debt to zero.

Like the headline says: Jim Jones 2012, everyone!

Domestic Terrorism / 8-9-11

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Filibuster) says things like this,

"In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling, it will not be clean anymore,"

it's not hard to get at his meaning. The debt ceiling fight is far from over, y'all. Don't expect us to roll over next time. We take the long-term economic health of the country seriously, and we will fight to restrain spending every chance we get.

In a way, I like hearing him say that. Measures have to be taken to combat our mounting debt. The conversation needs to be had on a regular basis, so that we don't keep kicking the proverbial can down the proverbial road for as far as the proverbial eye can see. For sure, I don't believe him for a second when he implies that President Red Meat Republican would face a similar showdown. Yet he makes it sound like future debt increases will run into similar roadblocks as we saw this summer. And this in very plain language.

Now, when McConnell says things like this, in the same interview,

"I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn't think that. What we did learn is this: it's a hostage that's worth ransoming,"

you just have to first admire the man's candor, then shake your head in consternation, then begin to unpack the unsavory things you just read. You have to. It's required.

Unpacking:

"some of our members" = Tea Party wing.

"a hostage you might take a chance at shooting" = if they didn't get their way, they were ready to wreck the economy. Our economy, and by extension, the planet's. Be assured that as the U.S. economy goes, so does the world's. What else could "the hostage" be?

"Most of us" = People who actually make the decisions. (This is comforting. At least the Senate leader understands that the TP can not be trusted with serious adult policymaking.)

"it's a hostage worth ransoming." = We're still very excited, as a party, to continue to use the threat of economic meltdown to get our way. After all, we got most of what we wanted, because the President had the good sense to pay most of our demands. He saw default as an actual calamity. Not a tool to make policy. Given a totally awesome win-win choice between Dollarmageddon and partial capitulation, he chose the latter.

Don't be fooled: an actual default on our obligations would bring about serious calamity. Interest rates would immediately leap. Bankruptcies and foreclosures would skyrocket in number. And the end result would be a downgrade of the country's credit that would actually add trillions of dollars to the deficit by bumping up the amount of interest the government pays on its loans.

The interest, annually, on our debt is between $400 and $430 billion, depending on when and where you check. Yes, that's just the interest. Should the rate rise four percentage points (and here I'm getting my numbers from the Congressional Budget Office), that number would pass $500 billion in 2012 and $1 trillion in 2015.

Replay: interest rates up 4 percent. Government now faces a choice between gutting the military, the safety net, or raising taxes in the midst of the toughest economic times in 70 years.

Well, what if interest rates climb 6 points? Are we then done, as a nation, economically? We wouldn't be able to afford, oh, anything, or pay our debts, and the bottom half of the middle class would cease to exist. Eaten alive by interest. With no significant social programs to fall back on.

Then what?

So, that's the hostage situation McConnell and the rest of the Republicans in Congress are OPENLY admitting they will recreate. Hostage: their word. Not mine. But at least you get to BE the hostage.

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2011 Republican Party.

Madison, Egypt / 2-21-11

Tunisia and Egypt threw off their Dictator-Presidents earlier this month. Hundreds of protesters perished last weekend in Libya; the carnage there continues today.

Why?

It's simple. They've been oppressed for decades. Centuries.

All they want is some freedom. Self-governance. Civil liberties. Economic freedoms. More guaranteed rights. Just like the ones a lot of other humans enjoy. Freedom engenders a righteous envy.

Most basically, they want more flavors of liberty.

It makes perfect sense: Freedom is delicious. Far from blaming Tunisians, Egyptians and now Libyans for causing trouble, we admire their efforts and wish them success.

Meanwhile, nobody has died in Wisconsin (U.S.A.) during the week of protests against Governor Scott Walker's plan to remove certain collective bargaining rights from nurses, firefighters, teachers and cops.

And Mr. Walker has only been in office eight weeks. He's not yet eligible for dictator status anyway.

Plus, he's not proposing to suspend religious freedom. Or curtail free speech. Or revoke the Second Amendment. He's just trying to break unions.

But this is where comfort might come from tonight: Human beings a continent and a half away are selflessly shedding their own blood, in pursuit of more rights. And thankfully, respecting their sacrifice, enough of us in this freest of nations continue to resist those who would nudge us (even if only a little) back toward the ugly place from which so many North Africans are trying to flee.

Carry on, Wisconsin protesters. And any lovers of liberty worldwide, you too.

Give Me Taxes Or Give Me Death, Part II / 9-14-10

Well well, look who's not really serious about the deficit after all.

Republicans screaming "Save the tax cuts for the rich," that's who.

Summary: Bush tax cuts for everyone are set to expire at the end of the year. President Obama wants them to expire - for those individuals or families making more than $250k, but not for the middle class. He's fine with extending that portion of the tax cut. Republicans say they'll fight that course of action if congressional Democrats try it. The tax cuts will expire for everyone and tax rates will return to 1999 levels if no agreement is reached.

It is that simple. All other commentary is helpful, but not crucial. It comes down to, whose side are you on? And most the D's are, yet again, as almost always, on the side of 98 percent of the population, and all the R's are, yet again, as almost always, on the side of 2 percent of the population. (Follow the link. Do it.)

Looking at pure numbers, the President shouldn't have a terrible time selling his preference to Americans, except that his White House couldn't make itself look good if it invented cold fusion and brokered permanent peace in the Middle East while solving world hunger on the side.

All BHO has to say is something like this, right?

"We were a more prosperous, more responsible nation while President Clinton was in office. I believe the tax rates that were reasonable in the nineties remain reasonable now for our wealthiest citizens. George Bush's tax cuts were reckless and unnecessary, and should they survive, they would grow the deficit to an even more dangerous level. You can't have it both ways, my conservative friends. You can't spend the last two years harping on the deficit your party's presidents created, then decline to raise revenue when the opportunity presents itself in the natural way it has. Either you're for deficit reduction or against it. Time to choose. I've chosen my route, and I am proud of it, and I trust the American people to support a more responsible course of action than the one they've grown accustomed to seeing from their leaders.

"Therefore, you will join me in letting the tax cuts expire for only the wealthiest Americans. Or you will show yourselves to be the deficit enablers you have been for the past 30 years."

Instead, we got:

"But we’re still in this wrestling match with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell about the last 2 to 3 percent, where, on average, we’d be giving them $100,000 for people making a million dollars or more — which in and of itself would be OK, except to do it, we’d have to borrow $700 billion over the course of 10 years. And we just can’t afford it."

It's a start. But we're not in a wrestling match, Mr. President. A power struggle you should be winning, but aren't. Yet. Partly because there are five numbers in that sentence. And while I followed what you were saying, most people tuned you out after $100,000, before you got to the important part: the "we just can't afford it" part. That's the lead. People understand "we can't afford it." Nowadays, it rings true and urgent. Start there, mix in a jab about how Republicans only care about the deficit when it gives them an excuse to block legislation aimed to help the middle class, then give numbers for support.

(I sound arrogant, but mostly I'm just annoyed with how the facts and public opinion are on the D's side and yet the fight goes on.)

Here are some more encouraging responses from Democrats, all from Massachusetts.

Rep. Michael Capuano: “We either have to give Republicans everything they want or they’ll take their ball and go home? Well, go home then."

Rep. Jim McGovern: “I would be happy to listen to any ideas that my Republican friends have that won’t explode the deficit and which would actually help create jobs — like tax credits for small businesses and incentives for manufacturing.’’

Rep. Richard Neal, a key member of the House Ways and Means Committee: “If there’s a compromise that we can live with that protects the middle class, I’m open to it,’’ adding he wants to dedicate revenue from expiring tax cuts to begin to pay down Iraq war debt.

Let's see if THAT message gets out.

Give Me Taxes Or Give Me Death / 9-5-10

There are only three options left.

Either we:

1. Raise taxes to pay for our social programs;
2. Reduce entitlement benefits drastically for all citizens, beginning now;
3. Install some combination of 1. and 2.

All other paths, including our elected officials' perennial favorite, 4. Stay The Course, lead to financial ruin and the end of the nation as we know it.

I'm sick and tired of 4.

I want 1.

I want more taxes, and I want them yesterday. I want the rich to pay more than the non-rich, because the reverse is cruel and ineffective. And I want the media to expose relentlessly how lower taxes are only possible if we aggressively slash Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and every other bit of spending the government undertakes.

There exists no option 5., called "Cut taxes and pretend we can save money in the great 'elsewhere' of the federal budget. Like foreign aid. Or 'waste.' Or earmarks. Or pork." That plan's not viable, not possible, and it's high time its predetermined failure was properly publicized. We can't have social programs and low taxes. And anyone who claims otherwise should be ridiculed as an untrustworthy power-hungry liar. There is no room in the budget for that reckless financial fantasy.

Anyone who claims we can trim government revenues without touching the social safety net's benefits is unfit to lead the country.

I have numbers.

Medicare/Medicaid costs 779 billion annually.
Social Security costs 694 billion.
National defense and wars set us back 680 billion.
Federal pensions: 195 billion.
Foreign aid checks in between 20 and 25 billion.
Earmarks? 17 billion.

(These stats can be found all over the Internet at all sorts of nonpartisan places. You can dislike them, but you can't quibble with them.)

If every earmark and all bits of foreign aid were eliminated from the budget every year, we'd make a hole in the overall debt of less than one-third of percent, which would be instantly gobbled up the following year by the interest on our new debt anyway. That's assuming we kept tax rates stable.

The government (federal and state) receives about $3.34 trillion annually in taxes. The debt has grown by at least $500 billion annually since 2003.

We need to pay more taxes, or we need to tell our seniors and our poor to forget half their entitlements.

Or we could not go to war, ever. Or defend ourselves against anyone, ever. Or provide any basic services, ever.

Only a combination of higher taxes and lower benefits, or simply higher taxes, will save the nation from insolvency, followed by skyrocketing interest rates, followed by partition of the United States of America.

I like America. I love America. I don't wish her death. I'd like my grandkids to be Americans, not Pacificans.

Either way, if we want the country we have, we're going to get higher taxes. And if that's going to happen, I'd just as soon we were the kind of people who support their citizens appropriately in their infirmity and old age.

I am completely, unapologetically requesting to have my taxes raised as soon as possible. Well, not just mine. Everyone's. Mine don't stand much of a chance in a cage match with a $20 trillion, $30 trillion, $60 trillion national debt. (We're at 13.4 trillion and counting.)

I'm not poor. I won't win some sort of personal mini-lottery from a system that ensures survival of the safety net.

I'm also not rich. I can't afford a lot more in taxes. I can barely afford the ones I have to pay right now.

I'm also not at all bothered by the prospect of system fraud. I believe we should catch welfare cheats and Social Security scammers, make them perform loads of community service and fine them heftily, because I'm willing to let the police chase down the guy who does 55 mph in my residential neighborhood rather than petitioning to have the speed limits revoked.

I am bothered, now to the point of seething anger, by the notion that our present borrowing levels and deficits are OK.

I am bothered tenfold by the notion that REDUCING the government's revenue is somehow the answer. Especially when a politician says -- lies -- that we can trim the fat from a bloated budget while cutting taxes. Unless that politician specifically calls for steep cuts in our entitlements programs alongside those irresponsible tax cuts (and I mean steep cuts, on the order of 30 or 40 percent), then you can assume said politician is misleading you.

It is critical that persons with megaphones call out those who would lead America to the financial precipice. And that we call out the media for not doing its job in this arena. Its job, in this case? Forcing politicians to address the issue, but not in generalities. Asking the questions that expose empty promises and unrealistic so-called solutions.

Is my anger visible enough?

Anyway. When my debt reaches dangerous levels, and it has done so at times because my career path has been... voluptuous, those are the times I curtail my spending, rework the terms of the debt if I can, and find ways to make more money. If I don't end up doing at least one of those things quite well (and probably two at a time are necessary), I run the risk of losing my house, my cars, then being forced to skip two meals a day, and even then, I might still be crushed under the consequences if I'm not careful.

While I realize personal finance guidelines don't always apply on a national scale, the moral from the previous paragraph is that there is a limit to how much debt you can handle without it crippling you. If one individual finds that tipping point, trips over it carelessly and is broken by the circumstances, that's a tragedy. If that were to happen to a whole country, we'd need a new word to describe such an inconceivable event.

Why would we even want to come close to that point?

I will enthusiastically support an influential politician who realizes I can handle the truth, then tells me something like this:

"The days of easy entitlements are over. Financial realities dictate that we must cut benefits and raise taxes, or risk our very sovereignty. Prudence dictates that we start down that road sooner rather than later.

"I wish it were not so, but wishing won't make the facts go away. I am no longer willing to pretend that a crisis does not loom on the horizon. Please join me in an era of sacrifice that will strengthen the long-term financial prospects of the Unites States of America while preserving the principles for which she stands.

"If you want to be mad at me for telling it like it is, go ahead. But I'm going to be part of the solution, not the problem, and the solution incorporates, without a doubt, higher taxes for all Americans. My hope is that you, whether you consider yourself liberal or conservative or in between or neither, that you will journey with me down the road that saves our very nation. Thank you."

Of course, I'm not holding my breath.

Things that go "bong" in the night / 5-8-09

The rumors are all true: I've never smoked any weed. Never touched any illegal drugs, and I mean that literally. Caught a whiff of a joint once in an adjacent room. Didn't inhale.

But people, come on, really, can't we just stop prosecuting Americans who smoke pot?

I will leave the moral dimension of the argument for another day. I will leave the dilemma of impaired drivers by the wayside. For now. What I WILL do is talk about finances.

It costs this nation about $8 billion annually in prosecution costs and another billion in incarceration to wage war on potheads.

Certainly, mandated treatment is a real cost. Surely there exists a burden on business, when employees are jailed and/or terminated for weed-related offenses.

And think of the other side of the balance sheet: all that lost revenue. The grass tax. It's not just a catchy slogan. It could pay for programs. In a real shocker, California is considering this course of action.

Oh, and you want to make a real impact in the long-term budget, Mr. President? Legalize weed. (He's not going to do it. But maybe someday, someone in power will have the balls or the ovaries to try.)

And by the way, this crackdown on pot users, how well is it working? This well: 94 million of us are or have been users. But now I'm in Tangentville, and I semi-promised to argue for legalization on financial merits only. It'll take an awfully good counterargument to change my mind, but bring it on.

Bonus item: A variety of polls shows a variety of levels of support for legalization. What these polls don't show is that the issue is cut-and-dried.

Finally, a bit of full disclosure is in order: This post was not sponsored by Frito-Lay.