The Politics Of Fad Diets

The GOP’s “tax and spend liberal” label notwithstanding, President Obama is apparently America’s biggest tax cutter in 60 years:

According to the Tax Policy Center, Federal taxes are lower than at any time since 1955. Obama has now reduced taxes by more than any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

According to the Orange County Register, “For the past two years, a family of four earning the median income has paid less in federal income taxes than at any time since at least 1955, according to the Tax Policy Center. All federal, state and local taxes combined are a lower percentage of per-capita income than at any time since the 1960s, according to the Tax Foundation. The highest income-tax bracket is its lowest since 1992. At 35 percent, it’s well below the 50 percent mark of much of the 1980s and the 70 percent bracket of the 1970s.”

So where are all the fucking jobs and economic growth that’s supposed to shower down upon us like manna from heaven? And how come no one ever challenges the righties on their steadfast belief in tax cuts as economic stimulus? Every time a Bob Schaeffer or Tweety or George Stuffinenvelopes interviews a GOPer about this, we get the same old line about tax cuts stimulating the economy and no one ever says, “well, it hasn’t yet!” I just don’t get it. It’s become almost ingrained in the national psyche that right wing voodoo economics works, when in fact it’s a fairy tale.

You want to know why a big swath of America votes against its own self-interest? It’s something every snake oil salesman, self-help guru and fad diet author knows: tell people what they want to hear and they’ll buy it every damn time. It doesn’t even have to work, as long as the people really, really want it to work. People want to think "the secret" to winning the lottery is to repeat some prosperity affirmation over and over. People want to think they can lose weight eating bacon and eggs and eschewing the toast and fruit. And people want to think the key to kickstarting the economy is to not pay taxes or invest in the country at all, but instead take all the goodies and let some invisible, magical force make everything alright, somehow.

This is also why right-wing Christianity is so compelling: people want to believe that Jesus preached self-reliance and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, they want to justify ignoring the human and environmental toll our standard of living exacts. We don't want to change, because we're human beings and we're more afraid of change than anything else.

Doug J has more ....

.... as does Andrew Sullivan:

The much bigger problem with the GOP plan is its view of taxes. Even though we have historically low income tax rates for high-earning individuals, even though revenues have collapsed in the recession, even though we have empirically discovered that big tax cuts have not generated more economic growth, the GOP still insists on reforming taxes not to raise revenue but to reduce it. This is where the whole thing gets surreal. The very Laffer untruth that sank America into debt in the early 1990s s one still being peddled against all the relevant evidence to guide us through the next few decades. In my view, if we maintain that ideological fantasy, the US will become a banana republic in short order.

Yes, dear. Thanks for noticing. This is why we call them “Banana Republicans.” Again: the GOP is no longer the “Daddy Party.” They’re the “tell the chumps whatever they want to hear” Party. Weave some feel-good fantasy to keep the kids happy so they can go off drinking with their buddies and gambling at the Wall Street casino.

It's not surreal, sweetie. It's pathological.

No, GE Won’t Repay Its Tax Break

The Associated Press got punk’d by the Yes Men and U.S. Uncut:

The Associated Press published a story based on a fake email press release that said General Electric would respond to criticism over the amount of taxes it avoids by repaying its entire $3.2 billion tax refund for 2010 to the U.S. Treasury Department. Both the press release and AP's story said GE would repay its tax refund on April 18, that the company would phase out its tax havens over five years and start providing one job in the U.S. for every new job it creates overseas. The hoax release quoted GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt as saying, “All seven of our foreign tax havens are entirely legal ... but Americans have made it clear that they deplore laws that enable tax avoidance. While we owe it to our shareholders to use every legal loophole to maximize returns -- we also owe something to the American people. We didn't write the laws that let us legally avoid paying taxes. Congress did. But we benefit from those laws, and now we'd like to share those benefits. We are proud to be giving something back to America, and we are proud to set an example for all industry to follow.” President Obama appointed Immelt as chairman of his outside panel of economic advisers on January 21, 2011. AP failed to verify the information in the release and withdrew its story 35 minutes after its publication. Two groups took responsibility for the hoax: the Yes Men and U.S. Uncut, saying they did it to raise awareness of U.S. corporate tax policy.

In its rush to be first, AP didn’t even bother to verify what was so obviously a bogus story. That’s a major media fail, but of course the biggest fail of all is the corporate tax policy which allows companies like GE to dodge its obligation to America to begin with. I guess after they got busted for defrauding American taxpayers back in 1985 they just found a legal way to do it.

Meanwhile, the business press is not amused:

GE shares fell 1.6% from their preopen high. Not a huge move, but enough to briefly trim GE’s market capitalization by nearly $3.5 billion.

How much of that was caused by the Yes Men? On a morning when most other companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average were pretty flat, it’s tempting to think that at least some of GE’s pullback was the result of the hoax. We may never know, but there probably are several lawyers already looking into it, either on behalf of the company or its shareholders.

The episode is also cause for concern over at the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of that agency’s many tasks is to make sure people don’t manipulate share prices, and that includes issuing false statements about publicly traded companies.

It’s far from clear whether the SEC has the bandwidth to mount an investigation. But if you were hoodwinked into selling GE stock this morning, you’d appreciate it if the regulators at least gave the Yes Men a severe tongue lashing.

Really? There are people who would sell their shares of a stock when they learned a company was going to pay its fair share of taxes, phase out overseas tax havens, and provide as many jobs in the U.S. as it does overseas?

Seriously? That would cause investors to flee a stock? I’m thinking ... no. I'm thinking MarketWatch writer Jim Jelter has fabricated a scenario he imagines existed. We'll never know because he never quotes any actual angry, duped investors. But it’s a nice little bit of hippie punching, is it not? Can’t let those young kids muck around in the marketplace, got to keep ‘em in their place. The free hand of the market demands it.

There Are Two Sides To Every Budget

I dunno, but our discourse in this country is really just too stupid. I just never understood why when we’re discussing things like budgets, government spending and tax cuts we always address these as separate things. I’m no math whiz but last time I checked, budgets are made of two things: spending AND revenue. Yet our national debate has somehow separated these things as if they are completely unrelated issues.

I just finished hearing an interview on Good Morning America with Mike Huckabee where he goes on and on about how the government is broke, state governments are broke, and we have to live within our means. We all have to tighten our belts. Right. Raising revenue wasn't even mentioned.

And then I read this rundown of Wisconsin lawmakers’ views on Gov. Walker’s controversial budget bill. Most Republicans seem to be supporting Walker despite the thousands of protestors because, hey, the state is broke:

"We have a financial crisis facing the state of $137 million in cuts that's needed to balance the budget by June 30 as we are required to do by the state's constitution and an expected deficit in the 2011-13 budget of upward of $3.5 billion in a budget that hasn't even begun," Lazich said.

And:

"I think the bill was done to cause the least amount of pain," Wynn said. "The state is broke. It's the best way to prevent a lot more tragedy."

And finally, we have Gov. Scott Walker himself, refusing to budge on the collective bargaining issue, despite wage and benefits concessions the unions have agreed to, because, he says

I want to give those local governments the tools they need to balance the budget now and in the future. They can't do that with the current collective bargaining laws in the state.

Walker has failed to adequately explain how collective bargaining prevents local governments from negotiating, or why collective bargaining is fine for some groups (police, firemen) but it’s a budget-buster for others (teachers). Oh well, we’ll just have to take that one on faith since no one in the media seems interested in asking that question either.

But no one asks about raising revenue, either. Gov. Walker signed a bill eliminating corporate taxes back in January; well, if he’s so worried about future budgets (since the unions have made concessions addressing the current one), then why did he cut revenue? Why, when we’re trying to balance budgets, is it always done on one side of the ledger sheet? You can’t cut revenue and then all of a sudden go “oh my GOD we have no money how did THAT happen?!”

I mean, I thought the whole conservative ideology was that tax cuts were stimulative. Apparently they aren’t, since we’ve been cutting taxes on people and corporations for years now and the result appears to be a fiscal crisis from the federal level on down to local governments. Guess this just proves you guys have been wrong all these years, then.

And if Walker's tax cuts are supposed to be so wonderful for the economy, then I'm sure local governments won't need to worry about ditching collective bargaining for certain groups of workers because the money will just be flooding in to government coffers.

No? Well why the hell not? Why did you cut all those taxes, then? And maybe y'all ought not have done that? Ya think?

Of course, we never draw these conclusions because we always address spending and revenue as completely separate issues when they are quite obviously part of the same conversation. I just have to wonder how the hell that happened.

We just went through a few weeks of yammering about extending the Bush tax cuts which affect the wealthiest individuals in America; now suddenly we are yammering about a national budget crisis. We have people like Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin and other conservatives talking about the need for Americans to sacrifice. Clearly, since they just supported tax cuts to the wealthy, they mean other people need to sacrifice -- not the millionaires and billionaires, the ones who can most afford it. They mean the people already living with tight belts. That's just immoral.

I mean, I’m just waiting for Diane Sawyer or Katie Couric or someone to ask Walker (or any legislator) this question: “You cut taxes and now you complain the government is broke. Did you flunk math in school?” Forget raising taxes, how about just leaving them where they are for a while?

But no one asks these questions because we always treat these two issues as if they weren’t connected. And it’s such an obvious failure on the part of the national narrative that I have to think it’s intentional. With that in mind, I direct readers to Amy Dean’s Huffington Post column today. She writes:

While the particulars of each individual battle are important, in the end this is not about one state. It is about confronting the disturbing tendency among our lawmakers to seek scapegoats rather than real solutions to our nation's most central problems.

Yes, I think that’s the nib of the nub. As long as no one slaps their forehead and says, “wow maybe we shouldn’t have tax cuts at a time when our budgets are already strapped and we’re killing sacred cows like education,” it’s so much easier to scapegoat middle class public employees and sell the idea that eliminating their rights will solve everything.

I mean, seriously. There are two issues at work here. Why are we only talking about one of them?

Another Wingnut Myth Debunked: Entrepreneurship Thrives Under Socialism

I’ve had a love affair with Norway forever, since I first visited there back in the ‘80s, which has prompted more than a few mash notes on this blog.

And now I get to write another one, thanks to Inc.'s story on entrepreneurship in Norway. It appears that, right-wing talking points notwithstanding, entrepreneurship and innovation aren’t stagnant in places like Norway, where taxes are brutally high and socialism is embraced whole-heartedly:

Norway is also full of entrepreneurs like Wiggo Dalmo. Rates of start-up creation here are among the highest in the developed world, and Norway has more entrepreneurs per capita than the United States, according to the latest report by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a Boston-based research consortium. A 2010 study released by the U.S. Small Business Administration reported a similar result: Although America remains near the top of the world in terms of entrepreneurial aspirations -- that is, the percentage of people who want to start new things—in terms of actual start-up activity, our country has fallen behind not just Norway but also Canada, Denmark, and Switzerland.

That’s gotta hurt. This flies in the face of every Republican talking point we’ve been given since, well, forever. I’m sure we won’t be hearing about the “Norwegian miracle” in the Wall Street Journal.

In fact, I actually know people who live and work in Norway. One American friend recently told me about how his Norwegian partners laughed in his face when he asked about liability insurance for the hotel they were opening. Not necessary, he was told. What about lawsuits? “Silly Americans, always with the lawsuits!” they laughed. “Why would anyone sue? If you’re hurt you go to the hospital!” Apparently Norway’s strong social safety net and socialized medicine is a better defense against frivolous lawsuits than the “tort reform” conservatives are always pushing.

Imagine that. Indeed, that appears to be what Inc.'s reporter found. It's a fascinating read, I hope you will hop over there and give the article your time. (And that goes for my wingnut friends--*cough*cough*JIM*cough*cough*--who I'm sure are dying to post Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation links here. Read the damn article first, please. Thanks.)

I found really interesting the article's discussion of taxes. Tax rates in the U.S. have basically been slashed in half over the past 30 years but what did we get for it? Zip:

But there is precious little evidence to suggest that our low taxes have done much for entrepreneurs—or even for the economy as a whole. "It's actually quite hard to say how tax policy affects the economy," says Joel Slemrod, a University of Michigan professor who served on the Council of Economic Advisers under Ronald Reagan. Slemrod says there is no statistical evidence to prove that low taxes result in economic prosperity. Some of the most prosperous countries—for instance, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, and, yes, Norway—also have some of the highest taxes. Norway, which in 2009 had the world's highest per-capita income, avoided the brunt of the financial crisis: From 2006 to 2009, its economy grew nearly 3 percent. The American economy grew less than one-tenth of a percent during the same period. Meanwhile, countries with some of the lowest taxes in Europe, like Ireland, Iceland, and Estonia, have suffered profoundly. The first two nearly went bankrupt; Estonia, the darling of antitax groups like the Cato Institute, currently has an unemployment rate of 16 percent. Its economy shrank 14 percent in 2009.

Moreover, the typical arguments peddled by business groups and in the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal— the idea, for instance, that George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 created economic growth—are problematic. The unemployment rate rose following the passage of both tax-cut packages, and economic growth during Bush's eight years in office badly lagged growth during the Clinton presidency, before the tax cuts were passed.

And so the case of Norway—one of the most entrepreneurial, most heavily taxed countries in the world—should give us pause. What if we have been wrong about taxes? What if tax cuts are nothing like weapons or textbooks? What if they don't matter as much as we think they do?

Ah yes, what if? What if “we” have been wrong, lo these many years?

It’s almost laughable. Of course “we” haven’t been wrong, but conventional Villager wisdom has been. Folks like Paul Krugman have been writing about this for years. Nobody but a bunch of Dirty Fucking Hippies have bothered to notice what a bunch of voodoo nonsense “trickle down economics” and “the Laffer Curve” are. But, ya know, don’t listen to us!

Conservative economics doesn’t work, never has, we all know it yet people keep repeating the same tired old canards about high taxes crushing entrepreneurship and killing jobs because they’re fucking children, little itty bitty babies who want their cake and candy and not their nutrition. We’re children who prefer to believe fairy tales because they feel oh so good even though they aren’t real.

No wonder the empire crumbled.

But don’t worry, America. You will never, ever have to suffer the slings and arrows of affordable healthcare, a clean environment, low unemployment, and a high standard of living like our Norwegian friends. That’s because we in America have been brainwashed for an entire generation into thinking certain things like taxes are a soul-crushing evil. Who needs taxes when we have our beloved Puritan work ethic, and “rags to riches” mythology, ammiright? The idea that America is the land of opportunity is as central to our national identity as the Stars and Stripes and National Anthem. Continually these national talismans prove to be worthless fairy tales, yet we cling to them because the idea that America is not the land of opportunity is just too painful to bear.

Norwegians have a completely different attitude toward taxes which I just can’t imagine flourishing in the United States. They don’t see it as a “punishment” the way some people, especially conservatives, do. Norwegians see taxes as an investment in their families and their country. Because they receive such high level of tangible services -- healthcare, pensions, free education (from preschool to college), robust family leave, etc. -- there’s an actual value. America never invested in itself in such a fashion; instead, what we get for our tax dollar is war. Buyers’ remorse, anyone?

This may help explain why entrepreneurship in Norway has thrived, even as it stagnates in the U.S. "The three things we as Americans worry about—education, retirement, and medical expenses—are things that Norwegians don't worry about," says Zoltan J. Acs, a professor at George Mason University and the chief economist for the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy. Acs thinks the recession in the U.S. has intensified this disparity and is part of the reason America has slipped in the past few years. When the U.S. economy is booming, the absence of guaranteed health care isn't a big concern for aspiring founders, but with unemployment near double digits, would-be entrepreneurs are more cautious. "When the middle class is shrinking, the pool of entrepreneurs is shrinking," says Acs.

I guess one could say Norway has never had to worry about being overrun by Russian tanks in the past 60 years -- I mean, since the end of World War II America has basically decided to be the world’s police force. I’m not smart enough on foreign affairs to ascertain how credible such a threat has been, anyway. But when comparing our two countries, it does seem like we got a raw deal.

Ultimately, the problem America faces is psychological. We're just completely unable to have a serious conversation about anything right now, and I don't see that changing:

Holte was fascinated by this last topic, particularly the angry opposition to President Obama's health care reform package. "It makes me laugh," he says. "Americans don't understand that you can't have a functioning economy if people aren't healthy."

Holte's American subsidiary pays annual health care premiums that make his head spin—more than $23,000 per employee for a family plan—and that make the cost of employing a software developer in the United States substantially higher than it is in Norway, even after taxes. (For a full breakdown, see "Making Payroll.") Holte is no pinko—he finds many aspects of Norwegian socialism problematic, particularly regulations about hiring and firing—but when he looks at the costs and benefits of taxes in each country, he sees no contest. Norway is worth the cost.

This makes so much sense -- in fact, it is the logic behind such things as liberals' desire for single-payer healthcare -- yet we just can't seem to have a rational conversation about these things anymore (if we ever did). Because as soon as someone tries to point out the economic impact of our lack of any reasonable social policy, America's Vuvuzela Chorus strikes up and it's all "job killing healthcare reform" and "death panels" and "Socialsim-Fascism-Nazi-baby-killer" bullshit. We never get to have a grown-up conversation! Everything immediately disintegrates into lies and bullshit.

It's killing this country and it's leaving us in the dust behind more progressive countries like Norway.

Hall Tax Hilarity

Here in Tennessee we believe that every time you levy a tax to fund a government program Jesus kills a kitten. So it’s no surprise to read in today’s fish wrap that a plan to do away with the Hall Tax has “broad support” in the legislature.

The Hall Tax is a 6% tax on investment income, dividends, and the like over $1,250 for individuals and $2,500 for couples. It’s the state income tax no one ever mentions when they brag about how Tennessee doesn’t have an income tax, because of course not everyone gets income from these sources. Mostly it's a tax on rich people and senior citizens and, well, rich senior citizens.

What I love about this story is how the legislature plans to pay for the projected $186 million loss of income:

Ramsey said he plans to pay for his proposal by eliminating the legislature's joint House and Senate oversight committees — which deal with TennCare, education, corrections and long-term care — and shifting their function to committees that have overlapping jurisdiction within each chamber.

Oh! Well that ought to cover $186 million dollars! Riiight.

Er, maybe not. But then there’s this:

Eliminating the tax would cost far more. But supporters argue that phasing out the tax would encourage retirees to move to the state, stimulating the economy and offsetting the cost with higher sales tax revenues.

Sure, because we all know folks on a fixed income are just cash cows waiting to be milked. You know, as I push my cart around the Kroger on Senior Discount Tuesdays the one thing that’s always occurred to me is that this state needs more old people.

Okay, that’s just me being snarky.

Seriously, this is a terrific idea, if for no other reason than the entertainment value. Let’s watch wealthy cities without a significant commercial base try to fund their operations without the Hall Tax. I’m thinking of places like Belle Meade, whose residents have come to expect a rather high level of service -- 16 police officers for what is basically three square miles, for example. How y’all gonna pay for that without the Hall Tax? Or what about Forest Hills, which near as I can tell is 100 percent residential. Good luck providing trash service to your 4,500 or so residents, building code and zoning enforcement and the like. I’m sure that influx of seniors with their Medicaid-funded Hoverounds will fill that budget hole nicely. If not, I'm sure the wealthy denizens of Forest Hills -- TNGOP moneybags Lee Beaman, for instance -- won't mind a teensy hike in their property taxes.

This is gonna be fun, folks!

You Will Eat Your Shit Sandwich And You Will Enjoy It

Did you watch President Obama’s news conference on the tax cut deal today? The part that really got me was where he showed how truly pissed off he is that The Left isn’t praising him on the healthcare reform bill. It slid out during the Q&A; you could really see that he expected chocolates and rose petals on healthcare reform, and is truly surprised that the Professional Left isn’t singing his Hosannahs. He actually seems to be holding a grudge about it.

I’m talking about this part:

So this notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate during healthcare. This is the public option debate all over again.

So I pass a signature piece of legislation – but because there was a provision in there they didn’t get – that would have affected just a few million and we got insurance for 340 million – that was a sign of weakness and compromise. If that is the standard by which we are measuring success we will never get anything done.

I watched it on TV and here’s how it sounded to me:

So I go to all this trouble to bring The Left everything they ever asked for, and because they didn’t get this one teeny tiny weensy little thing they’re all, like, “loser!” and “asshole!” And so that’s the thanks I get! For sticking my neck out! What a bunch of whiners!

That’s how I heard it and let me say, it pissed me off. Because the “public option” wasn’t this teeny tiny weensy little tchotcke that would have looked nice on the mantle, it was the WHOLE ENCHILADA that would keep the healthcare bill from being a sop to bloated, for-profit corporations. The public option was supposed to be the policy that helped the healthcare bill become real reform, by lowering costs and bringing viable competition to the health insurance market.

And it was also supposed to be the “compromise” position, with the Holy Grail being single payer. So when you start out at the negotiating table with your compromise position as being the bauble you happily ditch, well, that tells us you don’t really understand our position.

And here we are again, with a backroom deal over tax cuts to bazillionaires. Let me interject: I don’t recall Obama going to this effort to negotiate the public option and sell it to Democrats in Congress, in fact, I seem to recall him standing on the sidelines during the entire healthcare debate twiddling his thumbs while Congress did the heavy lifting. Dude, you never even tried.

So now your little fee-fees are hurt because we Lefties haven’t sufficiently sung your praises about healthcare reform all these months later? ? Aww. So sad! Sounds to me like you never really understood our position to begin with, what we wanted or why we wanted it.

Honestly, I’m not sure how many times Obama can diss his base and then wonder why we aren’t sufficiently impressed. It’s like he doesn’t understand why the Democrats keep losing elections. Here, I’ll make it simple for you: give us a win, for Chrissakes, and we will show up on election day, knock on doors, make phone calls, and do all the crap we did to give you the White House in the first place! Give us something to be proud of, to stand for. We will throw all of the chocolates and rose petals at your feet we can. But don’t, in the name of all that is holy, hand Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck giant tax cuts and wonder why The Left isn’t calling you the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I'm pretty sure I know how this whole thing will play out. The Republicans will slam President Obama as fiscally irresponsible, since these tax cats aren't paid for and add $900 billion to the deficit. Sure, we know no one gives a crap about deficits, but I guarantee you that in the next budget debate or election we'll suddenly be a nation of fiscal hawks all concerned about the deficit and Obama will get blamed for spending like a drunken sailor, just like he did in the run-up to the midterms. And when this round of tax cuts are set to sunset, the righties will portray Obama and the Democrats as wanting to pass a tax increase. Seen this movie before.

Then again, Congress could put on their big-boy pants and tell the President to shove it on his backroom deal. But I don't hold out much hope for that.

I'm tired of being told to suck it up.

My Last (I Hope) Gene Cranick Post

I’ve been really impressed with the discussion on my Gene Cranick threads here and here. You guys have raised some really good issues, and it’s stuff like this which makes me glad I have a blog.

I really haven’t focused much on the moral issues at play here but I do have something to say about that. To me, focusing on why Cranick didn't pay that $75 fee is almost -- almost -- as mean and heartless as focusing on how the fire started. Fires get put out whether they were caused by a lightning strike or a kid playing with matches or someone burning their trash in the backyard despite a statewide fire advisory (and let me say, this is the first I’ve heard there is a statewide fire advisory. The governor’s office might need to do a better job of getting the word out.)

Sure, if the family were indigent and couldn't afford the $75 fee then that would reveal yet another flaw in the county services. But really to say "he's a freeloader and loser trying to get something for nothing" the way Glenn Beck and a few anonymous folks over here did is just another way of piling on someone who obviously made a mistake.

What, you people never made a mistake? Ever? You’re the only ones, then. It's safe to say Mr. Cranick has learned his lesson the hard way, and has paid a terrible price for it. So shut your yaps.

On second thought, don’t shut your yaps. The Glenn Becks of the world who sanctimoniously (though accurately) claim that Mr. Cranick should have known better and whatnot prove the point we Dirty Hippies have always made: yes. There will always be people who don’t do what they’re supposed to do. That’s correct. Thank you for admitting that. Now the question is, what do we do about it?

Is it best for the community as a whole to let the man’s house burn down, possibly spreading the fire to the homes of neighbors who did do what they were supposed to do? And add a homeless family to the community’s burdens? I mean yeah you can feel all self-righteous that you were right and they were wrong and perhaps that makes you feel better but then what? Does you feeling better benefit the community more than making sure everyone has a home?

And we can take this example across a wide array of social problems. Food stamps, education, you name it. Yes it annoys the hell out of me when people come over here and blithely say “those people should just get a job!” when in case you haven’t noticed, there are no jobs. But that’s really irrelevant. There will always be people who don’t work, even as there are people who can’t. It doesn’t matter, because it’s still an issue we need to deal with.

One of my more clueless commenters claimed that, “there was a time when if you were hungry, you went out and worked to get food. Fish, plant, forage. If you didn't, you starved.” Actually, as any student of anthropology knows, that’s utter bullshit. Every culture around the globe, modern to prehistoric, has developed a way of dealing with those in the community who aren’t doing their fair share. Even those people who inhabit harsh environments -- the Inuit and the !Kung bushmen, for example -- do not let their people starve. They deal with their freeloaders in other ways: public shaming, for example. And perhaps our right-wing commenters like Glenn Beck are serving a valuable community role in this respect as being the public voice of scorn. They sure seem to have that shaming thing down. So, there's that.

Tough noogies might make some people feel better and it might have a role to play in keeping a big chunk of the population in line but it’s not the basis for an effective social policy nor does it build community. There needs to be something else in place, too.

The silver lining in all of this is that we are at least having a national debate about an issue that gets at the heart of what ails America today. Taxes, infrastructure, the role of government, privatized services, etc. I had hoped we could talk about this a little more but our media appears happy to just hit the highlights. Oh well, it seems the conversation has continued on blogs and in other media. This is a good thing.

I'm actually feeling pretty positive about all of this. And I'd like to thank Gene Cranick for -- no pun intended -- sparking a serious conversation about an important issue.

For those of you who don’t lack a cooperative gene a fund has been set up for the Cranicks. Keith Olbermann spread the word about it here.

For those of you who lack that cooperative gene, you can feel all warm and toasty that you did the right thing by paying your bills (you have, right?) and the Cranicks did not and nyah nyah nyah.

We Are All Gene Cranick

It’s been interesting to watch the story of the Tennessee house fire ricochet around the media -- and morph and change in the process.

I wrote about the Cranick fire way back on Saturday. My post generated some interesting comments; since then the story has gone national and the narrative has changed as people search to identify the bad guy.

Is the bad guy the South Fulton FD, whose firefighters stood by as the Cranick house burned with their three dogs and cat inside (and would they have sat and watched as Cranick children burned alive inside the home, not just their pets? I wonder...)? Sweetening that perspective is the growing narrative that the Cranicks simply “forgot” to pay their $75 fire protection fee. This is a new embellishment: Last weekend, let me remind you, Gene Cranick told the media:

"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.

So now it’s that he “forgot”? Well, maybe he did. Who am I to say he didn’t?

Glenn Beck portrays the Cranick family as the bad guys , mocking them with a fake Southern accent for failing to pay the $75 fee and “sponging off your neighbor's resources.” Cranick wanted something for nothing and that makes him a community parasite, says Beck. Now, we don’t know what Gene Cranick wanted -- and anyway, even if it were true, there’s really no reason to be such an asshole to someone who just lost everything. Beck needs to tone it down a notch. (Yeah, I know, dream on.)

A commenter at ThinkProgress (I can’t find the link at the moment) blames right-wing conservative voters in Obion County for setting up such a flawed system to begin with. The commenter mentioned that a mere 13-cent property tax increase would have supplied fire services county-wide. I’m not sure where that property tax information came from or if it’s even true. As Mr. Beale pointed out when we discussed it this morning, if it’s true that’s probably 13-cents per $100 of home value. If the house is worth $100,000 that’s $130 added to your taxes just for fire protection. $75 is a much better deal and is probably more affordable to a lot more people in this poor, rural area.

And then we have the conservative National Review, which sees this incident as bad for Libertarianism because it shows what we Lefties have all been saying: Libertarianism lacks morality. Writes Daniel Foster:

I’m a conservative with fairly libertarian leanings, but this is a kind of government for which I would not sign up.

Well, duh. Libertarians worship a political philosophy which views selfishness as a virtue, remember? Yeah it’s all fun and games until someone’s house burns down as the firefighters sit there, hoses at the ready, to put out the neighbors' house, should the fire spread. How do you like them apples? Apparently, we don't like them at all.

I watch and read as all of this is being chewed over and find myself fascinated at the dynamic. This is just the latest story about failure of a government institution, yet much as the Righties would like to blame Big Bad Government they can't, because this was a fee-pay fire service. And much as the Lefties would like to blame free market Libertarianism we really can't because this wasn't a privatized fire department, it was a public fire department providing service outside its basic service area for a fee.

So it's all very interesting but a lot of it misses the point. The real lesson is the one I made on Saturday, which is that we are a nation of Gene Cranicks. Nationwide communities are shuttering services very intentionally, doing with shorter school weeks, less public transit, and fewer public safety services. So we should all look at this incident as a "teachable moment" about the public good, taxes, and public services. Whether you see Gene Cranick as a victim or a parasite, now would be a good time for us to discuss the role of government in our communitieis and how much we are willing to pay for it.

I have done lots of posts on communities like Colorado City which are slashing city services as budgets get ever tighter. I suspect that those voting to cut these services are people who don't use them anyway.

I've mocked those in Nashville who claim it’s their "God-given right as a Metro taxpayer” to have as many trash carts as they want and suck up as much landfill space as they want, yet recoil in horror at a property tax increase or $35 fee for an extra cart. Sure we want the service, but we don't want to pay for it! But give some single mom food stamps or put her kids in a Head Start program and that’s socialism! Heh, it’s always socialism when the goodies go to someone else, amiright?

These folks are Glenn Beck's Gene Cranick: doing without because hey, the house isn't on fire right now anyway, and maybe it never will be, right? Let's just kick the can down the road and hopefully it will all work out. But inevitably they are the first to complain when the services they feel entitled to are no longer there.

Then we have the Left's Gene Cranick, the guy who is the victim. The guy who “forgot” to pay his fee, who “forgot” to pay attention to this stuff. Hey he offered to pay the $75 while his house was burning. Why can’t we be all like bygones and stuff, right? They forget that paying the fee ahead of time helps maintain the system so it's there when they -- or their neighbors -- need it. Maybe these folks need to speak up a little more and get a little more involved to make sure the infrastructure they want wasn't classified as "government waste" by some Libertarian type while they were off doing something else.

Maybe these folks should make an effort to vote in midterm elections. Just sayin'.

You know, folks, I think we’ve reached a critical point here. We are starting understand the true consequences of our action and our inaction. We’re starting to get that we’re all in this together. Fires spread. Entire cities have been leveled by fires which started in just one home, then grew to consume one neighborhood after the other.

It's the perfect metaphor for where we are. There are all sorts of fires: the uneducated kids from one neighborhood who become a burden on the entire community. Or the folks on Privilege Parkway who can afford to pay extra for trash collection and mowing grass: they see no problem with cutting the public works budget, do they? But guess who will be the first to complain when Unfortunate Avenue's rat infestation spreads inside their gated community? You got it.

After 30 years of "trimming government waste" we've reached a point where we've redefined "waste." Now waste is a five-day school week in some places. It's food for a single mom, or a Head Start program for her kids. It's any service we don't directly use--or aren't using right at the moment. Few stop to consider the indirect benefit we receive when others have access to them, even fewer are prudent enough to realize that the day may come when we will need those services too. These chickens will come home to roost, people. Yet so many folks have just checked out of the process completely. Fire protection? Meh. Schools? Our kids are grown!

People need to pay attention. Whether you see Gene Cranick as a victim or parasite, it doesn’t matter. Because we are all victims and we are all parasites. The fault, Horatio, is not in our politics but in ourselves. We're selfish, every last one of us. It's human nature. We want the services and don't want to pay for them, not if we don't have to. Or we don't mind paying for them but we don't want to show up at the public meeting or write our council person or Congress Critter to let them know.

We're all Gene Cranick. We "forgot" to pay for our democracy, be it with our participation or with our money.

Let's just hope the house doesn't catch on fire.

Dude You HAVE No Fire Protection

[UPDATE]:

I think there has been some misinformation out there about this story. To my knowledge, the South Fulton, TN fire department is not privatized. However, this is a very rural area, and if they are going to provide fire protection service beyond the South Fulton community out into Obion County then they charge an additional service fee. To the best of my understanding, that is how the arrangement works. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

People from metropolitan areas need to understand that rural areas do not -- can not -- maintain services out into the hinterlands. There simply is not the tax base for it. When I lived in rural Kentucky we did not have trash service, for example. You either contracted with a private company or dealt with your household waste yourself. Some people were responsible and hauled stuff to the county dump once a month. Some burned it in backyard fire pits. Some people are assholes and dump their trash by the side of the road.

Similarly, people who live in Obion County are given the option of contracting with the (public) South Fulton fire department for their fire protection or dealing with fire protection themselves.

When you live out in the sticks that's just how it is.
--------------------------------------------

Okay, I don’t mean to be flippant, but some people need to get a freaking clue:

A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late.  They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.

Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton.  But the Cranicks did not pay.

The mayor said if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.

This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn't put it out. It wasn't until that fire spread to a neighbor's property, that anyone would respond.

Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.

"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.

Yes, that was the point of the fee.

Because guess what: things like fire departments don’t grow on trees. You don’t just add water and *poof* fire trucks and trained firefighters and gear just magically appear. These things need to be paid for and maintained in advance. So they are there when you need them. If everyone waited for their homes to catch fire and then paid the fee, that would seriously muck up the system, wouldn’t it?

Now, I don’t for a minute think the fire department did the right thing here. Once Mr. Cranick said he’d “pay anything” they should have charged him double and some kind of extra service fee, got the cash upfront and then put out his house fire. Hopefully this would deter him and others like him from not having coverage.

Alternately, they could make having fire protection mandatory, like they’re doing with our health insurance coverage. Because if you make it optional and then people don’t have it when they need it and want it, they tend to whine a lot. People don’t like being forced to buy things, but Mr. Cranick might still have a house had he done so.

And then there’s this:

To give you an idea of just how intense the feelings got in this situation, soon after the fire department returned to the station, the Obion County Sheriff's Department said someone went there and assaulted one of the firefighters.

Well that’s lovely.

Look, people. Services don’t rain down out of the sky. There isn’t some great “fire protection” farm out there, just like there isn’t a “police protection tree” off in the hills. If you need the fire department or the police department, you have to pay for it. Here in Davidson County our property taxes pay for fire protection; rural areas operate a little differently but it’s the same principle.

As it happens, I know South Fulton fairly well. I used to live not too terribly far from there by rural Kentucky standards. It’s smack dab on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line, real boondocks country. We’re talking east of East Jesus. Other than some tiny little farm towns, there’s literally nothing but corn and soybean fields around there. There isn’t even a dang interstate for miles. You’re stuck in a vast expanse of farmland, and no fast way out.

This can have its charms, if you like this sort of thing; I’m not knocking it, I’m just saying, city services as we know them here in Nashville do not exist. I’m trying to be fair to Mr. Cranick; I can see how someone who lives out in the boonies like this might think fire protection is optional and perhaps not even very effective: by the time a fire truck arrives, your house might be completely gone anyway. But $75 doesn’t seem like too terribly much to pay just in case. And remember: your $75 pays to maintain a system that someone else will use.

I had to call the fire department once. It was around this time of year: fall, a breezy day, everything dry as straw. My neighbor’s lawn guy had something go wrong with the lawn mower and he was trying to fix it. Something happened and the mower coughed to life, tearing his thumb off and throwing sparks into the hedge separating our two houses. The hedge immediately caught fire. I happened to be outside at the time and heard the guy shout; I knew my hose wouldn’t reach and called 911. The fire department and ambulance came, put out the fire, found the guy’s thumb in the bushes, and packed him and his thumb off the hospital (by the way, can anyone tell me why whenever you call for an ambulance a fire truck automatically comes too?).

So as they were packing up I was chatting with one of the firefighters in my neighbor's driveway. This was right before the 2000 election and he pointed to my Gore/Lieberman campaign sign and joked, “now, if that sign was in front of this house I might not have stopped the truck!”

Ha ha that’s so fucking funny I almost forgot to laugh. Well, we see where that Bush era brand of tax cutting and Libertarian “government is the enemy” politics got us: cities like Colorado City, laying off firefighters, police officers, shutting libraries, etc.

Last week NPR talked about the national shuttering of fire stations because of budget cuts. This is irresponsible anywhere; in California -- wildfire country -- it’s insane. It's true that Gene Cranick chose not to have his fire protection, but aren't the people of these other communities really making the same choice, by not funding their fire departments? Of course they are.

This will break your heart:

That's just what led to a tragedy in San Diego earlier this summer, when relatives brought a choking 2-year-old to the fire station down their block. The station was closed that day for budget reasons. It took 9 1/2 minutes for a paramedic to arrive. The boy did not survive.

Since when did public safety become a luxury? I just don’t get it. Since when did people in San Jose or San Diego become like Tennessee’s Gene Cranick, deciding these services aren’t worth paying for until they need them?

I’m trying to get a handle on this idea that we don’t want to pay for crucial services that we aren’t personally using, like the fire department and police department or schools. Is it part of a growing national selfishness? Is it part of a national spirit or recklessness? Some delusional belief that bad stuff will never happen to us, and if it happens to someone else, so what?

I suspect it's something else. I think we've always had the "why should my money pay for so-and-so's X, Y or Z" crowd out there, but that argument used to be countered by sane people who could explain exactly why. Somehow there's a lack of rational voices stepping up at city council meetings and in the op-ed pages of their local newspaper to say hell no you can't cut the fire department budget, this stuff's important! Public safety matters! I mean how crazy is it that we've had nearly 10 years of constant fear porn about how the terrorists are wanting to kill us all yet from coast to coast we're slashing our first responders? Does this make sense to anyone?

It doesn't make sense to me.

The Party Of Tax Cuts For Millionaires

So now the Democratic Party is the party of tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires? When the hell did that happen?

Washington (CNN) – Thirty-one House Democrats, most of whom face tough re-election bids this fall, have signed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer urging them to extend expiring tax breaks for all income levels, including the wealthy.

Apparently this happened when a few Democrats started to wet their pants over the prospect of losing re-election. These 31 House Democrats want to give millionaires and billionaires tax cuts that will add $700 billion to the deficit that they claim to care so much about. Apparently the conventional wisdom is that a Bush Tax Hike® (hey, he’s the one who designed them to expire this year, remember?) is not a good idea during a down economy.

I just have one question for you people: if giving the nation’s upper 2% of income earners a tax cut was such a brilliant economic stimulus, why the fuck are we in this mess to begin with?

Paul Krugman did a nice piece explaining why high end tax cuts don’t deliver enough “bang for the buck.” If Krugman is too much of a Dirty Fucking Hippie for you, let me direct you to Moody’s:

Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush were followed by increases in the saving rate among the rich, according to data from Moody’s Analytics Inc. When taxes were raised under Bill Clinton, the saving rate fell.

So if the goal is economic stimulus, giving rich people a tax cut won’t do the trick.

But it doesn’t matter if this is good policy or not, because this isn’t about policy. This is about politics. This is about 30+ Democrats in the House who are scared they are going to lose re-election. That’s all these things are ever about: the politics, not the policy. And this is why the Democrats are in trouble. Because if we had people in Washington worried more about governing, not getting re-elected, then maybe we’d have some actual workable policies in place, not more Republican-lite crap. Maybe our economic stimulus would have been stronger and maybe our recession would have been over and maybe people would be back at work and maybe we wouldn’t be talking about letting “Bush-era tax cuts expire” but instead talking about the coming Bush Tax Hike® and maybe those 30+ Democrats wetting themselves over losing re-election might actually be in a stronger position today because the economy is stronger.

But that’s my alternate hippie liberal fantasyland. In the real world we have Democrats who think governing like Republicans is the surest way to success. Despite the fact that time and time again they are proved wrong, they keep doing it.

What a strange world we live in.

[REMINDER]: The tax cuts were set to expire so Congress could pretend they won't add to the deficit:

One of the most notable characteristics of EGTRRA is that its provisions are designed to sunset, or revert to the provisions that were in effect before it was passed. EGTRRA will sunset on January 1, 2011 unless further legislation is enacted to make its changes permanent. The sunset provision sidesteps the Byrd Rule, a Senate rule that amends the Congressional Budget Act to allow Senators to block a piece of legislation if it purports to significantly increase the federal deficit beyond a ten-year term. The sunset allowed the bill to stay within the letter of the PAYGO law while removing nearly $700 billion from amounts that would have triggered PAYGO sequestration.

It was a dodge, plain and simple. So does the deficit matter or doesn't it? Who among the Teanuts wants to take that one?

The Starve The Beast Agenda

Today’s New York Times carries a front page story about the sacred cows state and local governments are slaughtering in the face of record budget shortfalls. Hawaii closed its public schools on 17 Fridays, Colorado Springs (which I wrote about here) turned off street lights and cut its police force, and an Atlanta suburb axed its public transit system. The Times piece looks at how these cuts have drastically impacted peoples’ lives, and it’s well worth a read.

And it’s with a heavy, heavy heart that I report Camden, N.J.’s awful decision to permanently shutter its libraries. Just another tough decision in a tough economic climate.

None of this is news to me; I wrote about this exact issue last fall when Michigan stopped safety inspections of it school buses and Tennessee dropped another 84,000 people from TennCare. Drastically cutting or even eliminating vital services is the new black, a hand governments are forced to play as the sluggish economy reduces tax revenues and citizens recite their “taxed enough already” mantra and say no to new taxes. Shit needs to be paid for, and this is the end result.

It occurs to me that this is conservatives’ “mission accomplished” moment. Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich and the rest of the “small government” crowd must be high-fiving each other. They’ve achieved their fondest dream, with government shrinking so small it can’t even operate a public library, a public school, or public police force. I suppose they imagine private enterprise sailing in on a white horse to take care of these things for those who can afford it. I’m not sure what their plan is for everyone else; as we’ve seen from the past few years, they don’t seem to have one. Next stop New Deal, suckaz!

Here’s what I don’t get. While I understand why the “taxed enough already” message resonates--who likes paying taxes, right?--instead of demanding lower taxes, how come no one ever demands higher wages?

On Monday I linked to this Financial Times article on the American economy, which contained this telling information:

The slow economic strangulation of the Freemans and millions of other middle-class Americans started long before the Great Recession, which merely exacerbated the “personal recession” that ordinary Americans had been suffering for years. Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the ­multiple is above 300.

The Economics Policy Institute looked at this “median wage stagnation” way back in 2007 and came up with this neat little chart:

Looking at our current economic woes I have just one question: whatever happened to “trickle down”?

I don’t understand why people are rallying in the streets to protest taxes, which are some of the lowest in recent history (at least income taxes are), but they aren’t saying a peep about the fact that they haven’t seen a raise in 13 years -- well before our current economic woes began.

In fact, wages went down during the Bush “boom”, and few pundits or policymakers seemed to notice:

For working people, wages remain stagnant. In fact, median weekly wages, when adjusted for inflation, fell slightly for both high school and college graduates from 2000 to 2009, according to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. For high school graduates, median inflation-adjusted wages were $626 per week in 2009, compared with $629 in 2000, according to the EPI analysis. That comes to $32,552 in 2009, down from $32,708 in 2000.

For college graduates, weekly wages were $1,025 in 2009, compared with $1,030 in 2000, according to the study. Over the course of a year, that's $53,300 in 2009, down from $53,560 in 2000.

The long period of wage stagnation predated the recession.

I remember us lefty bloggers mentioning before the 2004 election that a whole bunch of people weren’t seeing squat from the Glorious Bush Economy. We were all told to be patriotic and clap louder. Anyone who dared point out that things weren’t so great for everyone was called “part of the Blame America First crowd.”

I think it's obvious that a main reason wages have stagnated is because organized labor has lost significant influence. When workers lose their voice in the debate, the results are predictable. What I don’t understand is why no one is really talking about this wage stagnation. We're always told that we need to be "pro-business" but if that never trickles down to the worker bees, what's the point?

Furthermore, last week we had another Fauxtroversy about President Obama being "anti-business" yet even that isn't true:

[...] according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, corporate profits hit $1.37 trillion in the first quarter—an all-time high. Businesses are sitting on about $2 trillion in cash reserves. Business spending jumped 20 percent last quarter, and is up by 13 percent against 2009. The Obama administration has dropped taxes for small businesses and big ones alike. Maybe the president could be anti-me for a while. I could use the money.

Heh. You and me both, buddy.

I now completely understand why the Republicans have held fast in obstructing every effort to save the economy. Under Bush they wrecked the economy, and now they aim to prolong the misery. This scores a political win by preventing Democrats from being effective, and achieves the ultimate goal of starving state and local governments of revenue, forcing deep cuts to vital services--cuts they hope will be permanent. It's small government all the way and they won’t stop until they completely unravel the New Deal. "Mission accomplished," indeed.

Making taxes the economic bogeyman of the American people has been wonderfully effective, and it's a shame liberals and organized labor haven't seized this opportunity to raise the wage issue. I guess they tried, especially during the minimum wage debate, but it never seemed to hit the national radar. I wonder why that is?

I wonder if people will ever wake up and ask the other question: "I don't want to pay more, but why can't I have more? Why do my wages never go up, even though my company's profits always do?" How come that's not part of the national debate?

Some people may agree with the Starve The Beast Agenda but they will soon learn that it was never imagined with the "small people" in mind. It was imagined for the Big Boys, the plutocrats, the "elites" they always accuse liberals of being every election. No one should be surprised when they are being told thank you for playing, now go away; for 20 years we've been sold this Libertarian bullshit line about letting business have its way and everything will be capitalist lollipops and free market unicorns. But it hasn't worked out that way. We're earning the same or even less than our parents did.

This isn't how you get ahead in the world, it's how you wreck a nation.

Tax Cuts Of The Wealthy, By The Wealthy, For The Wealthy

Bob Cesca cites the Wall Street Journal on letting the Bush tax cuts expire:



He writes:

It turns out that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire will only hurt people earning more than $300,000 per year. And it appears as if keeping the Bush tax cuts in place would force people earning $60-150,000 to pay slightly more.

Oh those poor Tea Baggers. Pwned again by their corporate overlords. You silly, silly fools.

(h/t, Libby Spencer)

Colorado Springs: Christian Libertarian Paradise

It’s hard to imagine a city more conservative than Colorado Springs. This is the home of Focus on the Family, Pastor Ted Haggard’s New Life Church, and (at least for the time being) the John Jay Institute. You don’t get more right-wing than Colorado Springs.

Naturally these folks don’t like taxes, even voting down a proposed tax increase to fund city services last year. And as expected, the city has made severe cuts to services like trash pick-up in parks, bus service, police protection, even deactivated nearly 9,000 city streetlights. Private groups have ponied up money to keep fountains running in some parks:

So a local swim club has taken over some of the pools. Volunteers pick up trash in parks. Some — meaning those who can afford it — pay extra to turn on the streetlights in front of their own houses.

The Springs, as locals call it, is a city in transition, a grand experiment in what might happen if a government really does hold the line on taxes — as some citizens demand — and starts curtailing services. No one knows what will result as government shrinks and citizens take up the slack.

Will wealthy neighborhoods thrive, while poor areas decline further? Will crime rise as cops go missing? Will charity transform Colorado Springs into a libertarian paradise?

Or will it be a colossal flop?

I think I know the answer. It seems to me we’ve been down this road before, many times. It seems to me that Americans are really, really bad at remembering their history. Will charity transform Colorado Springs into a libertarian paradise? Charity has never, ever been able to shoulder the burden of providing public services, not equitably and not over the long haul. For hundreds of years charity was supposed to do this and there’s a damn good reason we stopped relying on charity: it didn’t work. There’s not enough. It ends up being inequitable. Wealthy neighborhoods get the goodies, poor neighborhoods do not.

Wealthy people don’t bear the brunt of these cuts, the poor do:

"I was working up north in a little diner, and I had to quit because of the bus," said Joseph Williams, 18, while waiting for a Mountain Metro last week.

Added fellow passenger Rashad Lindon, 20: "There are times I have to work late, and I have to put $20 in people's gas tanks to get around. It's a pain — from having to pay $1.75, to paying $35 for a taxi, or getting somebody to pick me up."

Next, safety may become a concern. The city fire department is down 20 firefighters this year; the police department has 42 fewer cops on the streets. For both fire and police, there are no classes of recruits in training, which is unusual.

"In the last year and a half, we went from being a proactive, problem-solving to a reactive police department, to where we only go when we are called," said Pete Tomitsch, president of the Colorado Springs Police Protective Association.

"There is a lot of frustration within the department. There is a whole slew of calls we don't respond to that a year and a half ago we did."

In Libertarian Paradise, the wealthy always do well. Getting around town is never a problem because you own a car, and insurance, and mobility opens you to opportunity. The wealthy can hire private security companies to patrol their gated communities. They don’t need to go to the public swimming pool because they have private swimming pools, either at the country club or in their backyard. They can pay to have the streetlights turned on Privilege Drive whereas someone on Unfortunate Avenue cannot. Relying on charity creates Separate and very, very Unequal:

Not every neighborhood in the city, though, is streetlight- stingy. Nor is every median brown, or each park without trash cans.

So far, about 900 lights have been "adopted" by Colorado Springs residents — a fee was paid, and the light was turned back on.

In some cases, services can be restored through volunteer labor. Residents adopted more than 100 trash cans in parks by agreeing to empty them.

But which parks and which community centers will stay active? That depends on where individuals or groups are willing to step up. And private enterprise means higher fees.

Three public pools formerly run by the city are now operated by Colorado Springs Swim School, a private swim club that agreed to take on a five-year contract. Rates have gone up. Family admission at Wilson Ranch pool, for example, has vaulted from $10.50 to $20.

The swim club's efforts are surely community-minded.

"We just couldn't let it happen," said Tina Dessart, the owner of the swim school. "Our focus has been learn to swim for a long, long time. When pools shut down, drownings increase."

But the escalating costs for residents, along with other aspects of the budget cutting, are unfair, said City Councilwoman Jan Martin, who grew up in Colorado Springs.

"These medians and parks that are being adopted are in wealthy neighborhoods," she said. "We are seeing the creation of a community of haves and have nots."

Nobody could have anticipated that!

Stacking The Deck

Yeah, such a shame that renewable energy isn’t competitive. If only solar and wind could stand on its own, you know like how oil does:

But an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.

According to the most recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, released in 2005, capital investments like oil field leases and drilling equipment are taxed at an effective rate of 9 percent, significantly lower than the overall rate of 25 percent for businesses in general and lower than virtually any other industry.

And for many small and midsize oil companies, the tax on capital investments is so low that it is more than eliminated by various credits. These companies’ returns on those investments are often higher after taxes than before.

When your return on investment is higher after taxes, that's what I call a giveaway.

Here’s the part I love:

The American Petroleum Institute, an industry advocacy group, argues that even with subsidies, oil producers paid or incurred $280 billion in American income taxes from 2006 to 2008, and pay a higher percentage of their earnings in taxes than most other American corporations.

Um, so? So what? You're supposed to pay twice or three times what you do, but you want a lollipop for paying something? What, are we supposed to say thank you? Sorry dudes, that’s not how it works. Oil companies are insanely profitable. So pay what you owe and shut up.

You know, one thing I really can’t stand is hearing how solar and wind energy simply are not competitive. Right. Let’s give renewable energy the same tax deal that oil gets, ‘mmkay? And while we’re at it, let’s factor in the true cost of fueling our economy on dead dinosaurs. Let’s include the cost of the environmental damage from air pollution and climate change and oil spills. Don’t forget the $167 billion a year we spend on war to secure our access to oil in the Middle East.

Here is something worth considering:

Some of the tax breaks date back nearly a century, when they were intended to encourage exploration in an era of rudimentary technology, when costly investments frequently produced only dry holes. Because of one lingering provision from the Tariff Act of 1913, many small and midsize oil companies based in the United States can claim deductions for the lost value of tapped oil fields far beyond the amount the companies actually paid for the oil rights.

Once upon a time, oil was a new technology and the American government felt it worthwhile to encourage this nascent industry with tax incentives and tax breaks. That was a long, long time ago but it's generally how we do things. But oil is no longer a new technology, it's now the big bully on the block. Other nascent industries are coming up and the American government should be encouraging these energy technologies with comparable tax incentives and tax breaks. But any attempt to do so is met with manufactured outrage from people like the American Petroleum Institute. We have to fight tooth and nail for the smallest crumbs, and it's not anything close to comparable to what Big Oil gets.

It's time to demand some parity here.

Thank You, Taxes!

Well this is an interesting campaign. While Tea Partiers prepare to protest paying some of the lowest personal taxes in the Western World, this group asks us to take a moment on April 15 to think about all the services we take for granted every day that are paid for by our taxes.

So I took a moment to think about every service I had used today that was paid for by taxes. And let me say, it was a little mind blowing.

Here’s how my day went. I woke up at 6 a.m. and took one of my dogs for a jog down Belmont Blvd. Sidewalks! Thank you, taxes!

Then Mr. Beale (who is off work today) joined me as we walked all three of our dogs to a small pocket park in our neighborhood. Again: sidewalks! Thank you, taxes! Our sidewalks are relatively new, and we spent years walking our dogs on a street where cars zoom by determined to see us tossed in a ditch. So one more time with feeling: Thank you, taxes!

The pocket park is a public park, no admission fee, and Metro Public Works keeps it mowed and the trash cans emptied. Thank you, taxes!

And then there are the dogs themselves. Two came from Metro Animal Control, one was dumped in the woods at a Federally-owned National Recreation Area where I once worked. So I think it’s fair to say my taxes are responsible for all three of my precious pups. (Furthermore, we get them vaccinated during the Metro Health Department’s Rabies Clinic each March, which costs just $10 and is much more affordable than what the vet charges. With three dogs and seven cats, that makes a huge difference.) Thank you, taxes!

It’s spring cleaning day, so after our morning dog walk we loaded up the car with old paint, batteries, dead CFL lightbulbs, electronics, etc. and headed to Metro Recycling to drop it all off. Now the area behind our garage no longer looks like a trash dump, and I can rest easy that these toxic items will be disposed of safely and not pollute someone’s drinking water. Thank you, taxes!

Of course, we took public highways, well maintained, to get to Metro Recycling. And then there are a bunch of other “givens” -- the people I interacted with were educated, involving a public school at some point (at the very least, both Mr. Beale and I are products of public schools); the fact that we live in a free country protected by our military; police and fire protection are a mere phone call away, etc. etc. And of course I’m posting an item on a blog on the internet which exists largely thanks to taxpayer-funded DARPA. And Al Gore.

It’s something worth thinking about.

Obama Tax Cuts

[UPDATE]:

In comments, Jim rightfully points out that the "Obama tax cut calculator" I link to was based on campaign promises, not what was actually implemented in the Stimulus. Fair enough, I didn't follow all the links before throwing up my post this morning.

I don't know how different the actual tax cuts in the economic stimulus are from what was promised during the campaign (though even the Wall Street Journal referred to Obama's tax cuts as a campaign promise fulfilled.) So yes, the "calculator" tool is useless. My bad.

But the point remains valid: conservatives reveal their cognitive dissonance when they claim Obama hasn't cut taxes (or in the case of clueless Tea Baggers, pretend he's even raised them). He hasn't; 95% of Americans will be getting a tax cut for 2009.
----------------------------------

There’s a discussion going on downthread about why Obama hasn’t cut taxes, which would sprinkle fairy dust all over the economy and make everything wonderful again.

Of course, Obama has cut taxes. Tax cuts were a big part of the economic stimulus, to the tune of $300 billion, a concession to the Republicans who ended up not voting for it anyway. The Dems voted for it, it passed, and now--shocker!--they don’t get credit for it. So I don’t know why we even bothered. It's like it never happened.

The non-partisan Tax Policy Center has a neat tool where you can calculate your Obama tax cut. Check it out, it’s really cool.

Here’s what I love:

Only 12 percent of the public say that the Obama administration has lowered their taxes since coming to office, despite the fact that the White House's stimulus package cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, a new opinion survey found.

Here’s the poll. Not surprisingly, Tea Partiers were most likely to think Obama has raised their taxes, when in fact most have received a tax cut.

That certainly shows you the power of the right wing message. That’s some powerful Kool-Aid, blessed by Frank Luntz, spread by Dick Armey, and swallowed whole by a bunch of clueless idiots so desperate to hate on a Democratic president that they will believe anything they’re told.

Personally I'm not a fan of tax cuts, when our taxes are already at historic lows.

Drowning In The Bathtub

I’m old enough to remember $700 toilet seats at the Pentagon and Reagan-era calls to “cut government waste.” In fact, “cutting government waste” has become such a part of the American lexicon that no budget conversation, from the county dog catcher’s office to the massive federal budget, can take place without hearing the “government waste” mantra repeated ad nauseum.

That’s all very well and good but after nearly 30 years of hearing that canard, and with an economic downturn cutting revenue at all levels of government, we’re seeing the effects of those shorn-to-the-bone government budgets. It’s pouring out there, a deluge, and no one has a rainy day fund.

I won’t even bring up the sorry State of California, where the budget crisis is its own weird brand of wackadoodle. The people keep voting for all sorts of unfunded programs (like a $3 billion bond for stem cell research) while also voting to restrict taxation. Grow up already, people. Sooner or later you’re going to have to start paying for this stuff.

And that’s my message to people here in Tennessee (and everywhere else). After years of “cutting the fat” we’ve started cutting some pretty alarming stuff. On the local level, my 2009 Davidson County property tax statement came with this aviso:

“Due to budget restraints, we will not be mailing a courtesy reminder as we have in the past in the month of February. This will be the only statement you will receive for the 2009 tax year.”

Really? That’s the “fat” we’re trimming from the budget--sending a second property tax bill? This is on top of Metro Public Works cutting their mowing program this summer. And let me say, trying to cross Granny White Pike at Gale Lane has been a dangerous proposition when the grass is knee-high.

Even more alarmingly, Putnam County, TN, is in such dire straights it has considered doing away with county primary elections:

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- Putnam County is looking at the prospect of eliminating primary elections in hopes of saving $60,000.

On Monday night, the county commission voted 14 to 9 to ask the county parties to forgo primary elections and select candidates through private caucuses.

Primary elections are historically low-turnout, but nonetheless canceling an election for fiscal reasons sets off alarm bells with me. You tea party folks yammering about your loss of freedoms might want to consider what it means to cancel an election because the county doesn’t have the funds to stage it.

Then again, will our moribund electorate even notice?

It’s only a matter of time before this fiscal starvation starts costing people in other ways. Up in Michigan, the state budget situation is so sorry, they’ve had to stop safety inspections of school buses:

"It's not a good thing, but it's a budget reality," LeBlanc said. "I'm not sure there are viable alternatives."

I guess the free hand of the market is supposed to protect Michigan kids on their way to school from now on.

Could this happen in Tennessee? We’ve already dumped another 84,000 people from TennCare. Now the state legislature says it will permanently slash $1 billion from Tennessee’s state budget. The reason is lower revenue, but the Republican legislature thinks this is a good way to operate state government:

“I really think you need to expect and can treat these $1 billion to $1.1 billion in base reductions ... as permanent,” said Jim White, executive director of the legislature’s Fiscal Review Committee, told House leaders on Thursday. “State government is going to be smaller and different after we complete this budget year.”

Well, that’s a great talking point and it sure looks good in the press release, but how does that look in practice? Not so good, it seems:

After more than two hours of grim assessments Thursday, House Speaker Emeritus Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington, had enough. He predicted the state’s Rainy Day Fund, once at $750 million and projected to fall to $323 million in 2010-11, “is probably going to go down to zero.”

He called the removal of some TennCare recipients “heartbreaking” and said lawmakers are to blame. He also urged colleagues to look at a tax increase.

“No one has got the backbone or the guts to talk about revenue enhancement,” Rep. Naifeh complained. “That’s what we need to at least explore.”

Nope, no one has the guts or backbone, not the Republicans and not the Democrats. But it’s pretty irresponsible to view your “rainy day fund” as budgetary fat.

People are so disconnected from the services that government provides that no one notices the hypocrisy of fiscal conservatives calling for ballot initiatives over stuff like English Only and do we need a new convention center. You know, that's all very well and good but it costs money to open up the polling places and count all of those votes. Who’s gonna pay for it?

Conventional wisdom holds that tax increases during a recession are a sure way to prolong the misery. Maybe now isn't the time, but eventually we're going to have to repeal those Bush tax cuts which helped no one but the super wealthy. Didn't see any of that trickle down over the past eight years, either.

Yesterday I heard Thom Hartmann advocate a 50% tax on people making $3 million+. Rather than hurt “small businesses,” he said, it would actually grow the middle class because business owners would funnel their profits back into their businesses instead of taking home big salaries to be spent on European vacations and yachts.

Here's a handy-dandy chart of Top U.S. Federal marginal income tax rate from 1913 to 2009:



Our tax rates are among the lowest they've been in the past 100 years. Are people better off? No. Has the "Laffer Curve" fulfilled its promise of increasing revenue? No it has not. Instead we're cutting safety inspections of school buses, using up our rainy day funds, and talking about cancelling elections because governments can't afford them.

It's time for someone to be a grown up and talk about what it means to operate a state budget without a safety net.

The Morality Of Taxes, Part 2

One of my conservative commenters wrote this a few threads ago:

At least he's asking for actual charity rather than expecting the government to come to his rescue at taxpayer expense.

This is such a common refrain among conservatives: “Why should my money pay for his/her/your/their [fill in the blank] ...”

Well, there are a lot of reasons why. For one thing, it’s not in the nation’s best interests to have large numbers of poor, starving, homeless, sick, uneducated, [fill in the blank] people in our communities. It’s a security issue, it’s an economic issue, and it’s a quality of life issue. And the most efficient way to handle this is through taxes which pay for social services. Relying on charity, as has been observed in the past, denies the constant of human nature: greed.

And for people of faith, it’s a moral issue. I wrote about the morality of taxes back in 2007. And now I direct you to one of my favorite faith bloggers, The Search for Integrity, which has been on my blogroll since almost day one. He has something to say about the theology of taxes:

On whether taxpayers have responsibility for the well-being of their neighbors, by means of government programs:

In the theocratic state envisioned by the Hebrew prophets (or even, in their critique of every nation) the responsibilities of kings was clear:  plead the cause of the fatherless and widow, demand justice for the poor.  See, for example, Psalm 82:3-4:  Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless, maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.  Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. Nations were judged by how well their rulers implemented these simple principles.

In the United States of America, “we the people” (the voters and, yes, the taxpayers) are sovereign.  Therefore “we, the people” are under divine judgment if we fail to use our sovereign power to take care of the elderly, the disabled, the orphan and widows of our world.  “We, the people” as sovereign refers to our corporate role as king, which is to say, the government.  It is laudable for individual persons to do what they can by means of “charity,” but “we, the people” are not just an aggregate of individual persons.  We, together, are king, and as such are answerable to God for how well we rule.

Okay, usually I save the religious stuff for Sundays but it seems timely in light of the arguing about healthcare that’s taking place right now. The theological argument probably won’t mean much to most of the folks who visit this blog but it means something to me and it’s important element to the whole healthcare debate. Healthcare is a moral imperative and it’s an ethical issue. It’s why, as CNN has finally noticed, faith groups have joined the chorus for healthcare reform.

The moral argument isn't one we hear much of in this debate. That's curious, because our news media has not hesitated to trot out fundiegelical wackadoodles every time they need to present their idea of "modern American Christianity" on issues like gay marriage. But when it comes to a real moral issue--a war, say, or healthcare for all--suddenly people of faith aren't deemed relevant to the conversation.

Odd.

My friend Therevr offers a very concise Biblical interpretation in defense of government programs like healthcare and welfare. Conservative faith groups like the Family Research Council which oppose healthcare reform offer nothing but lies about government-funded abortion and other fearmongering. That's not very Biblical to me, but it's about what I've come to expect from the Religious Right.

The Things I Learn On The Internets

Via dday at Digby’s, I learn that apparently all of those “Viva Viagra” ads and Cialis ads and Sally Field hawking Boniva ads and ads for Abilify which I used to think was one of those words President Bush just made up and Janeane Turner hawking her fake Restasis tears and all of that pharmaceutical clutter on the TV is actually a tax deduction for Big Pharma.

WTF??? Big Pharma is getting a TAX DEDUCTION for pushing their drugs? Why? Who cooked that up?

Drug companies get a TAX DEDUCTION for running ads for their drugs. Is this true of Frosted Flakes? Audi? Xerox? Does any other company in America get subsidized for airing commercials to get America to buy their products? It's not "significant money," though, so ending this direct payout from taxpayers to drug companies got shelved.

Not significant money? In 2004 drug companies spent $4 billion on direct to consumer advertising.

Set aside for a second the hypochondria that a nightly barrage of ads telling you that you have restless leg syndrome or iron-poor blood or any of a thousand ailments induces. Set aside the self-medication and the boiling down of complex medical issues into 30-second spots showing couples running through a field. Set aside how drug ads increase demand for medications and thus the costs. Set aside that some of these ads run before the Food and Drug Administration even completes their studies of the side effects. You mean to tell me that I'm helping PAY for these things, too?

If “my tax dollars” are going to go somewhere, it sure as hell better not be to help a gazillion billion dollar industry pay to promote its product.

I still can’t believe this. I'm thinking it has to be a mistake.

[UPDATE]: dday has since learned that the deduction is as a business expense, not a straight tax deduction. That certainly changes the outrage factor on the tax issue. But I agree that direct to consumer marketing of pharmaceuticals is a really, really, really bad idea that should never have been allowed to begin with and probably should be repealed.

But it probably won't be repealed, ever, because have you seen how many freaking pharmaceutical ads are on CNN and MSNBC and the other networks these days? Not to mention the three and four page ads in magazines and newspapers, filled with all of that fine print about how you might die of oily anal discharge from your weight loss pill? If the mainstream media loses that revenue they're screwed. Since they have a dog in this fight, expect them to pull out all the stops to make sure the cash river keeps flowing.

Just a hunch.

Shiny, Happy, Taxed People

Can paying taxes make you happy? This columnist seems to think so. He looked at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's global happiness survey and noticed that the world’s top 10 happiest people also pay some of the world’s highest taxes. He observes:

Northern Europeans pay some of the highest taxes in the world. Danes pay about two-thirds of their income in taxes. Why be so happy about that? It all comes down to what you get in return.

The Encyclopedia of the Nations notes that Denmark was one of the first countries in the world to establish efficient social services with the introduction of relief for the sick, unemployed and aged.

It says social welfare programs include health insurance, health and hospital services, insurance for occupational injuries, unemployment insurance and employment exchange services. There's also old age and disability pensions, rehabilitation and nursing homes, family welfare subsidies, general public welfare and payments for military accidents. Moreover, maternity benefits are payable up to 52 weeks.

Simply, you pay for what you get. Taxes in the U.S. have taken on a pejorative association because, well, we are never really quite sure of what we get in return for paying them, other than the world's biggest military.

Healthcare and other such social services aren't built into our system. That means we have to worry more about paying for things ourselves. Worrying doesn't equate to happiness.

Well, that’s certainly interesting. I can already hear the howls of protest from the folks over at Tennessee Free: “I’m quite certain taxes won’t make me happier, you Socialist! You go ahead and pay them if you want!” I love that argument. Taxes only work if everyone pays them, you dufuses.

As the article observes, America is the world’s richest nation, yet we don’t even rank in the top 10 of happiness. So apparently money can’t buy happiness, after all.

I still jokingly refer to Norway as “the promised land,” after seeing their healthcare system first-hand last year and learning about how they handle resources like oil. It certainly would be nice to not have to worry about things like paying for healthcare, childcare, and education.

I do think the author is correct in that because so much is not built into our system, people ramp up the whine factor where taxes are concerned. The anti-tax crowd acts like a bunch of spoiled children, selectively decrying where “their” money goes. Social services like welfare, food stamps and public housing--things that take “their” money and give it to “those people” (read: poor, usually brown) are always a waste, in their view. They don't benefit from it directly, or if they do (see Joe The Plumber, Welfare Queen), they pretend they haven't because this flies in the face of the iconic "rugged individualist" we so admire.

Military spending is never a waste, and the more the better, which I never understood. But what about the gazillion other things our taxes pay for: public schools, roads, dams, inspecting and protecting the food supply, national parks, forests and wildlife refuges, disaster relief after hurricanes and earthquakes, mail delivery, keeping shipping channels and harbors open, the interstate highway system that keeps us connected ... all of these things work so seamlessly most of the time that they are easily ignored. You forget who built and maintained that road you drove to work on, unless you drove over a pothole, in which case you probably cursed it..

Heh. Try driving down some of the roads in Costa Rica then, buddy.

Anyway, if people in countries like Norway and Denmark see how they benefit personally from taxation when they go to the doctor, take their kids to school, get a free college education, care for their aging parents, etc., I wonder if Americans would, too. And I wonder if this isn’t what scares the crap out of Republicans fighting “socialized medicine” tooth and nail: they aren’t afraid it would fail, but rather that it would work, too well.

Something to think about.