pollyannas versus cynics

            Don’t know if there’s a genetic difference between conservatives and liberals (though I recently saw one study that suggested there might be),  but they are separated by much more than just their political viewpoints. 

           

            An easy distinction to draw between the two is to label liberals as optimists and conservatives as pessimists, but those words seem insufficient to me.  From where I stand, liberal behavior seems driven by, not a belief, but something actually much deeper than that—call it an assumption—that in the end, fair play, basic human decency and an underlying, genuine devotion to the common weal will carry the day.

            Conservative behavior, again, from where I stand, seems driven likewise by an assumption that runs deeper even than a belief, to wit, that fair play, human decency and devotion to the common weal are clear evidences of naivete, and in general present opportunities to be seized. Carpe diem.

            For certain, there is a Pollyanna quality to liberal thinking, just as there is a cynical quality to conservative thinking.  In perhaps simpler terms, liberals tend to focus on what’s needed to protect the weakest; conservatives tend to focus on what’s in the best interest of the strongest.

            In today’s polarized political world, the distinction between conservatives and liberals is embodied in the two major parties—liberalism from the Democrats, conservatism from the Republicans.  Interestingly, at least since Reagan, the fundamental difference between a liberal outlook and a conservative one has resulted in democrats seeing government as a tool for promoting the common good while republicans see it as a tool for serving the self-interest of the Republican party.

            From Reagan’s proclamation that government is the problem not the solution, through the “defund the left” programs launched so successfully by Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff (yes, that Jack Abramoff), through the Newt Gincrich to Karl Rove programs to install a “permanent Republican majority,” the Republican party has shown not a lot of interest in actually governing, but quite a lot of interest in self-aggrandizement.

            Perhaps nowhere was that conservative/Republican modus operandi  more apparent than in recent skirmishes with Barack Obama.  Unfortunately, the Pollyanna quality of  liberal/Democratic thinking is equally apparent in the same skirmishes.

            Obama’s campaign for the presidency was relatively skimpy on specific programs and proposals but high on hope and a commitment to moving past the rabid partisanship that had defined Washington for at least two decades.  We chuckle all the time about athletes falling on their faces when they spend too much time “reading their press clippings,” but in a way that’s what happened with Obama.

            John Roberts had scarcely finished mangling the Oath of Office when two things happened.  Obama made clear that he wanted to work with Republicans to fashion programs that would benefit all the country, while simultaneously, the Republican congressional caucus was meeting to devise a strategy to defeat whatever Obama proposed.

            The first major initiative Obama proposed was health care reform, and he made it clear he wanted Republican input.  What he got instead was South Carolina senator Jim DeMint announcing on the floor of the Senate that the Republican strategy would be to use health care to “destroy” Obama’s presidency.

            Now let’s be clear here.  The Republicans knew they didn’t have enough votes to prevent some form of health reform package from passing.  What they could do—and in fact did do—was everything possible to delay the actual passing of the bill (could the dems get 60 votes to kill a filibuster), and, more importantly, introduce as many distortions (a public option equals socialism) and outright lies (remember death panels?) as possible in order to create enough confusion about the program that, once it was passed, it could become a 2010 mid-term election issue Republicans could exploit. That seems a pretty decent description of cynical behavior.

            Hardball politics from the Democrats would have been to put what they wanted in the bill, then introduce it for a vote every day and force the Republicans to put up or shut up.  Instead, Obama and the Democratic leadership caved and pandered and in the end passed a bill that had something in it for nearly everyone to dislike.  Why did they do that?  Perhaps because they thought what they were able to get was better for the country than nothing.

            If you are a liberal, it’s hard not to pine for the Democrats to produce again someone like Lyndon Johnson or Franklin Roosevelt, both of whom believed passionately in government FOR the people, but had in them enough of that conservative instinct for the jugular that made bashing heads and  twisting arms  something they were comfortable with.  Roosevelt was willing to pack the Supreme Court with justices who would support his agenda.  He didn’t get away with it (thankfully), but his willingness to do it sent a clear message to the opposition party and to the country that he was willing to fight for the mandate his election had given him.

            LBJ might have been a Texas rube who referred to African-Americans as “coloreds,” but he was passionately devoted to civil rights and made it very clear to Republican and Democratic congressmen alike that if they fought him on that issue, they would come to rue that action.

            Today, a liberal with balls is about as easy to find as a snowball in hell.  And conservatives?  Well, they’re united behind Mitch McConnell who says publically that the number one Republican objective is to make sure Obama is a one-term president.  Think about that.  Record unemployment, rampant foreclosures, declining median incomes, two wars, disappearing retirement incomes, skyrocketing medical costs, to name just a few problems—and the number one conservative/Republican objective is to limit Obama to one term.

            I’m not certain a one-term Obama presidency would be a bad thing.  I do however think it’s sad, and more than a little scary, that causing that to happen is important to the Republican Senate leader than any other problem the country faces.

angry or stupid

            Anger, frustration, disappointment, disillusion—all these can be powerful factors in motivating  behavior.  A creep tries to hit on your girl friend and when she rebuffs him, he slaps her around and calls her a slut.  When you hear about this, you’re overwhelmed with anger, so you grab a baseball bat and play T-ball with the creep’s head.  Watching him drop in a heap provides a real sense of gratification for you, but then the cops show up and haul you off to prison.  Unfortunately, when emotion drives our behavior, short term-gain often leads to long-term pain.           

            In the political arena, emotion-based behavior very often results in people voting against what is clearly their best interest.  I can’t help but be reminded of that when I think about some of the candidates who won big victories November 2.  The specific examples are legion, but in the interest of time and space, let me focus here on just two of them: Rand Paul and Mario Rubio.

            I was born and grew up Kentucky, so this isn’t the first time I’ve looked at a Kentucky election and wondered what the hell were they thinking about.  Kentucky is a state that basically has three industries: coal in the eastern third, horses in the central third, and bourbon everywhere.  If you head east on I-64, about the time you cross the Kentucky River, you’re in Kentucky coal country.  It’s often called mountain country, though jagged hills would probably describe it better (the tallest mountain, Black Mountain, is only about 4,800 feet high).  In some places, you’re in the foothills of the Appalachian range; in others you’re in the Cumberland range. 

            In either case, it’s an area of rugged looking hillsides and deep valleys, most of them cut by one of Kentucky’s numerous rivers and streams.  When I lived in Kentucky in the 1950’s, it was one of the most scenic areas of the country, truly a feast for the senses to drive, or better yet, hike through.  No more.

            As I said before, this is coal country—as it was in the ‘50’s.  Whether the rapaciousness of the coal industry has grown exponentially since then, or perhaps just its technological capacity, the rape of the land then is nothing compared to now.  Now, as you drive along any road in coal country, what you will see is hillside after hillside where literally the entire side of the mountain has been scraped away.  If you look high enough, you’ll also notice that in many cases, the top of the mountain has been blasted away.  And if you look at the streams and rivers running along the valley floors, you’ll see where everything that wasn’t coal has gone.

            Nor is it just the topographical environment that the coal industry has destroyed.  My oldest daughter spent a summer in the ‘90’s performing with an outdoor drama in Prestonburg, which is heart of coal country.  We went to see her and started the visit by checking into (as I recall) the one motel in town.  We unloaded the car, unpacked our bags, freshened up a little, and went back to the car to go to dinner.  We had been in the room for maybe 45 minutes.  When we got to the car, I was horrified to realize that I could literally write my name in the fine rock dust that had settled on it.  WE WERE BREATHING THAT!

            The point of this?  The people of Kentucky, including a significant majority in eastern Kentucky, elected Rand Paul who has made clear that getting rid of what federal regulatory agencies still exist  is one of his top priorities.  They voted, in other words for a man who would make it even easier for the coal industry to rape the countryside, pollute the streams, and foul the air that they have to live in and breathe.  It no doubt made them feel better when they cast their ballot to figuratively smack Washington insiders in the face, but at what cost to themselves, their children and their children’s children?

            Then there’s Rubio in Florida.  Though the number of seniors retiring in or to Florida has slowed some in recent years, Florida is still one of our grayest states, and no one gets elected to state-wide office there without polling well among seniors.  And while Rubio’s embrace of the Tea Party smacks awfully of a marriage of convenience, he did very carefully toe the Tea Party line during his run against Charlie Crist, which means that, among other things, he espoused doing away with Social Security and replacing it with private investment accounts.  This on the heels of the 401(K) debacle a couple years back in which literally thousands of people saw their retirement incomes  disappear almost literally overnight. 

            I have money in an IRA account myself, and I vividly remember two years ago watching $20-30,000 disappear from that account every quarter for a year.  I’m retired, and while I don’t depend on Social Security for my retirement income, if all I could depend on was that IRA, I’d be worried, very worried.  It’s inconceivable to me how the many, many seniors in Florida who had to have experienced, like I did, the rapid withering of a private investment account, would vote for someone who wanted to ensure that such an account would be all they had to retire on.

            At what point does anger simply become another word for stupidity?

are 10 commandments too many?

            Been thinking today about religion, which, for those of you who know me, is kind of weird.  Specifically, I was thinking about how a relatively close approximation of the 10 commandments exists in pretty much every religion, major or otherwise.  No news there,  but then I got to thinking how if you forgot—or just never knew—that Moses got his commandments from a burning bush, you might think, “damn, he was one pretty savvy dude.”  

You might think that because,  if you throw out the first four (three in the Roman Catholic version), all of which exhort us to honor only the one true God (Allah for Muslims), the  commandments (and their cousins in other religions) are really just expressions of what we might call societal common sense.  They provide a fundamental—one might even say essential—framework for people living together successfully in a social unit.  As such they constitute as much a social compact as a moral contract.

            Think about it: don’t kill (more on this in a moment), don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t cheat, honor your parents, have all come to be regarded as moral dicta because they were on Moses’ tablets and among Allah’s revelations to Mohammed, but they are also pretty clearly necessary agreements we make with one another if we want to live harmoniously with others. And that would be true even if they had no moral gravitas.

            I’m not trying to diminish the spiritual importance of these dicta, just suggesting that they would be equally important without any moral connotations at all. 

            Ah, but then there’s the first four (or three) commandments: I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other Gods before me; you shall not make for yourself any graven idols; you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain; you must remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. (The Qu’ranic equivalents are: There is no other god beside Allah; protect me and my children from worshipping idols; make not Allah’s name an excuse in your oaths against doing good; when the congregational prayer is announced on Friday, you shall hasten to the commemoration of God, and drop all business.)

            The problem with these dicta  is that they assume the existence of  an all-powerful being who takes a very personal interest in being recognized as the only one of his kind and in being worshipped in very specific ways and at a very specific time.  Why do I call that a problem?  Because it’s very hard for me to imagine what the human race gains by acceding to those exhortations if it is in fact fully committed to following the 6 or 7 commandments that follow. 

             Stay with me on this.  If I honor my father and mother (and by extension all those who earn/deserve my respect), if I never cheat or lie, if I never steal, if I never commit murder, if I never commit adultery (and by extension, never break any compact I’ve freely made with another person), would I not fully qualify as a good person?  Someone you’d welcome into your heart and home?  Someone who, and this is key, fully deserves a heavenly reward if in fact such a thing exists?

            Cut me some slack now and stay the course.  The commandments, it seems to me,  fall into two categories: one that charges us to recognize the divinity of  a superior being, and one that gives us very specific guidance about living well among our neighbors.  The second category we clearly need—indeed, couldn’t survive without.  The first, maybe not so much.

            Hindu and Buddhist religions offer a god figure considerably more laid back and less needy than the god of Christianity or Islam.  That may explain why their followers have more frequently been victims of religious persecution than instigators of it. Christianity and Islam--kind of a different story.

            You can  make a case that the Christian god and the Muslim God share so many attributes that they might easily be considered the same being.  Muslims and Christians (at least the rank and file of each) have never seen it that way.  Hence, when the Christian god leads off his commandments with “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other Gods before me,” and Allah leads off his revelations to Mohammed with “There is no other God beside Allah,” it’s easy to see the potential for conflict.

            And conflict there has been, from the beginnings of Islam in the 7^th century straight through 9/11 and today.  Lest there be any confusion, as much of that conflict has been started by  Christians as Muslims.  Witness the Crusades of the 12^th and 13^th centuries or the imperial proselytizing of the Middle East during the 19^th and 20^th  centuries.

            And how many thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of lives have been destroyed by wars over—not my god is better than your god—but over my way of worshipping OUR god is better than yours.  How many Jews have Christians killed?  How many Protestants have Catholics killed?  How many Catholics have Protestants killed?  How many Protestants have Protestants killed?   On the Muslim side, how many Shi'ites have Sunnis killed?  Or vice-versa.

            Does make one wonder what the world would be like if we all just chose to ignore the first few commandments.  Maybe, without those “I’m your god, fall down and worship me” commands at the top of the list, it wouldn’t make sense to amend Thou Shalt Not Kill to Thou Shalt Not Kill Unless .  .  . with the ellipse standing for You Try To Put Your God (Or Your Way Of Worshipping Him) Over Mine.

insurance company/health care paradox

          The newly ascendant Republican party, especially its Tea Party fringe, in a couple of months will be positioned to show off at least one of the horses most of them rode to Washington on—the repeal and replacement of the health care reform bill.  Actually, they’ll be in a position to VOTE for repeal and replace, not to in fact do it.  President Obama and the Democrats can still sustain a veto.

            I recall being surprised a little during the debate on health care reform at the unanimity of the Republican caucus in opposing it.  Why did that surprise me?  Because the health insurance industry is one of the major bankrollers of Republican members of congress (it gave over three times as much to Republican candidates as it did to Demcorats).  But what’s surprising about that, you might ask?  Surely, the insurance industry was bitterly opposed to the health care bill.

            The question that kept nagging at me was simple.  Why would the insurance industry oppose a bill that significantly strengthens the employer-based insurance system that has been a gold mine for it for decades, AND guarantees them billions in new premium revenue once the requirement that everyone have insurance (known as the individual mandate) kicks in 3 years from now?  The answer to that question, it now appears, is equally simple—the industry in fact supported a bill that included an individual mandate but excluded a public option.

            In a Newsweek article based on his book, Deadly Spin, Wendell Potter—who was one of the industry’s spinmeisters for over two decades (he was a leader in killing the Clinton health reform, the patients’ bill of rights and was one of the leaders in prepping industry lobbyists on how to “guide” construction of Obama’s bill), leads off the article by saying,

                        Conservatives who voted for congressional candidates because they

                        Pledged to repeal and replace the health-care reform law are in for

                        a rude awakening.  Once those newly elected members of Congress

                        have a little talk with the insurance company’s lobbyists and

                        executives, they will back off from that pledge.

The reason they will be counseled to back off is that the health-care reform bill, as presently constructed, will be a tremendous financial boon to the insurance industry.  The backing off may well have already started.  Have you noticed how the loud noises about the individual mandate being unconstitutional aren’t coming from Republican congressmen anymore (except of course for Tea Party wingnuts like Rand Paul), but from Republican state Attorneys-General, who, because they aren’t concentrated in Washington, are much harder for the industry to control?

            In his article, Potter argues that the industry’s only real fear about the health reform bill was that it might contain a public option which would have the effect of constraining the degree to which it could engage in premium-gouging.

            Lest one come away with the silly notion that the insurance industry backs health reform altruistically, Potter also notes that what it will be expecting its Republican friends to do is chip away at the consumer protection clauses of the bill that adversely affect the bottom line.  The industry is not happy about no longer being allowed to refuse coverage based on pre-existing conditions; it’s very unhappy about no longer being able to cancel policies when people actually get sick; it’s even more unhappy that it can no longer set annual and lifetime limits on benefits; it’s virtually livid about the requirement that, henceforth, 80 cents out of every premium dollar must go toward actual medical care; and its nearly apoplectic over the provisions that severely cut back on the billions of dollars the government has been overpaying the industry for its participation in private Medicare plans.

            As Potter puts it, “Be on the look-out for a death panel-like fearmongering campaign to scare people into thinking, erroneously, that Granny and Pawpaw will lose their government health care if Congress doesn’t restore those ‘cuts’ to Medicare.”

            My guess as to what will happen in January?  The Republicans in the House will hold hearings stocked with “expert witnesses” from conservative propaganda mills like the Heritage Foundation, and Republicans in both houses of congress will take to the floor for C-Span moments to rail against the bill.  Ultimately, and with as much fanfare as they can generate, they will toss a final piece of red meat to the lunatic fringe by introducing a bill to repeal the law that they have no intention of passing.

            Then they’ll get down to the serious business of eroding or eliminating as many consumer protections as possible. 

PERSONAL NOTE: You may have noticed that my postings have become less frequent of late.  Much to my chagrin, circumstances have required me to "unretire" till mid-December, so I don't at the moment have as much time for blogging as I'd like.  That should change in January when my rambling rants will return in force.

  

bang that lie

            There is an old bromide that a lie told often enough becomes a truth.  Unfortunately the truth of that bromide is no lie.  Case in point?  Virtually every “truth” the Republican party rode to its recent landslide legislative victory.  I thought it might be interesting (depressing might actually be a better word) to catalogue the lies Republicans, and their 24/7/365 “news” channel, have alchemized magically into truths.  Some of these I’ve alluded to at least in earlier blogs.

            OBAMACARE IS THE FIRST STEP TO SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.  To the chagrin of progressives, the health care reform package did not include a public option.  What it did do, in the short term, was outlaw the most rapacious of insurance industry practices (cancelling policies when claims are filed, denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions, forcing children off their parents’ policies the minute they leave school), and, in the long term, mandate that every one have at least a minimal level of health insurance.  Ay, there’s the socialism rub, Republicans say.   But no, what the bill says is that insurance must be purchased from private insurance companies—which sounds like quite a “free market” thing to me.  Oh, and there won't be any death panels or any rationing of health care unless the private insurers try to institute same.  In which case, there are now regulatory agencies that can tell them no.

            OBAMACARE WILL MONUMENTALLY INCREASE THE FEDERAL BUDGET DEFICIT AND ULTIMATELY THE NATIONAL DEBT.  In fact, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has said repeatedly that the health care bill will cut costs by as much as 10 billion dollars during its first decade or two, and then decrease costs at an even higher rate after that.  The CBO’s analysis, which was first released BEFORE the bill was actually passed and has been released again several times since, is that the long-term effect of the bill will be reduction of the federal budget deficit and the national debt.

            OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS HAVE CAUSED AN EXPLOSIVE INCREASE IN THE FEDERAL BUDGET DEFICIT AND MORTGAGED THE FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN.  It takes a pair of cast-iron cajones to tell this lie, but it’s been one of the most popular.  In fiscal year 2000, the last for which President Clinton was responsible, the federal budget showed an 86.4 billion dollar surplus.  In fiscal 2008, the last year for which W. was responsible, the federal budget showed a 458 billion dollar deficit.  (these figures from the Congressional Budget Office).  But that ½ trillion dollar swing into red ink actually understates Bush’s deficit creation.  The cost of his two wars, estimated in 2008 at 1 trillion dollars, isn’t reflected in any of his budgets because the entirety of both wars under Bush was fought “off-budget.”  Afghanistan and Iraq were both paid for under Bush by “supplemental appropriations,” that is, additional moneys approved by Congress AFTER that year’s budget was already in place.  Just as important, maybe more so long term, the Bush administration made no attempt to actually pay for the supplemental appropriations.  Rather, it simply borrowed the money—meaning that in the long run the cost of his wars will be substantially greater than 1 trillion dollars.

            If one needed a glaring illustration of the abject cynicism of the Republican party when it comes  to things economic, it would be hard to find a better one than the cavalier manner in which the Bush administration became the first administration ever to launch two wars and CUT taxes at the same time.  And not just cut taxes, but do so in a way that aimed 95% of the cut at the top 5% of incomes. 

            The budget deficit at the end of fiscal 2009, the first year for which Obama was responsible, was 1.4 trillion dollars.  Look, the Republicans say, in one year the  deficit increased by nearly a trillion dollars.  Can’t deny that, but let’s put it into context.  First, fiscal 2009 was the first year that the cost of two wars was actually included in the budget.  Second, the bank bailout program (TARP) was authorized under Bush in October, 2008 and half the money it authorized (350 billion) was released on Oct. 3, 2008, so it was counted as a fiscal 2009 expenditure even though Obama and the Democrats had nothing directly to do with it.  Third, even before Obama took office, it was clear the auto industry was about to implode.  The first step in bailing that industry out was taken in December, 2008 (again, fiscal 2009) by Bush when he authorized 17.4 billion dollars in emergency loans.  That figure ultimately grew to about 86 billion under Obama, but in the latter case, it came in the form of purchases of GM and Chrysler common stock by the government.  It was recently announced that GM intends to buy back over half of that stock from the government within the next few months, and all of it as soon after that as possible.  Ultimately, the Treasury will turn a profit on its investment in the auto industry.  Republican children won't have to pay for that one.

           

          Then there is the 814 billion dollar stimulus bill.  This one is in fact all on Obama and is clearly a huge factor in the 2009 budget deficit.  It’s hard to take credit for something that didn’t happen, but what didn’t happen in this case is that the world financial system and the American economy did not collapse and at least 3 million Americans didn’t lose their jobs.  True the unemployment rate climbed to and has remained in the 9.5/9.6% range, but every economic study indicates that without the stimulus package, it would be closer to 12%.  Some studies have placed the figure as high as 15%. 

           

            What the Republicans also ignore (what they generally do with facts they don’t like) is the fact that the budget deficit actually decreased from 1.4 to slightly less than 1.3 trillion in the recently concluded fiscal 2010.   Not a huge reduction, granted, but an indication that Democratic policies are beginning to move things in the right direction.  Perhaps more significant, the actual deficit represents 8.9% of the nation’s economy, down from 10% the year before.

            One last Republican hypocrisy regarding the deficit and the future they fear it will mortgage.  The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year.  Obama has proposed extending those cuts for everyone making under $250,000; the Republicans want to extend them for everyone--and to add a fix (basically an elimination) of the Alternative Minimum Tax that mostly effects the highest income earners.  Obama's plan would result in approximately a 678 billion dollar increase in federal revenue by 2020.  The Republican plan would subtract approximately 3 trillion dollars from federal revenue during the same period.  That certainly wouldn't help the economic future of our kids, but it's a great boon to the economic health of today's richest Americans.

          My brain is exploding from ferreting out all these numbers, as yours probably is from reading them, so I’m going to stop here for now.  Check back with the blog in the near future and we’ll have more things to add to the catalogue of lies the Republicans told often enough and loudly enough to make them truths for way too many.

be afraid, be very afraid

            A while back, I came across a book entitled The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank.  Its subtitle is “How Conservatives Rule,” the central premise of which is that mainstream conservatism—as refracted primarily through the prism of the Republican party—has as its central tenet establishing a government that does three things: 1) insures the consistent domination of the Republican party; 2) puts in place policies, institutions and agencies whose clear ineffectiveness drives home the key mantra of the Reagan years—that government isn’t the solution, government is the problem; 3) insures that the “bottom line” interests of business—both big and small—are protected and that the apparatchiks within the party reap significant financial benefit from doing so.

            One’s memory doesn’t have to be long to recall the early years of this decade when Tom DeLay was busy fashioning a permanent Republican hegemony in Texas by essentially buying a redistricting of the state that created a plethora of districts Democrats could scarcely run in, much less win. 

            DeLay was also a major player in the “K Street Project,” the thrust of which was to force businesses to hire only conservatives to lobby for them, and—more importantly—to contribute financial support only to conservative politicians.  While DeLay got most of the press—and ultimately the punishment—for the K Street Project, it was actually the brainchild of Grover Norquist, whose career as a Republican strategist goes back to the Reagan years when he was one of the architects of College Republicans—the group which essentially formulated the three goals listed above.

            The self-serving corruption DeLay and Norquist epitomized during the Bush years leaps to mind  now because the country has just returned control of the House to the Republicans, dealing the President what most pundits are calling a “humiliating” defeat.  It’s entirely possible, given the mood of the country, that Republicans would have taken the House under any circumstances, but the flood of money the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision made available to “independent” advocacy groups, nearly all of which were dedicated to producing attack ads on Democrats, certainly contributed.

            Frank’s book has an interesting section relevant to that which underscores the endemic quality of “anything to win” (see point 1 above) in the Republican party.  In the late 1970’s a man named Terry Dolan became director of a group called the National Conservative Political Action Committee (“nick-pac” for short). 

            Dolan’s innovation was to use nationwide direct-mail campaigns, the content of which was largely scare-mongering half-truths or outright lies, then use the money raised by those to finance local ads which themselves set new standards for viciousness and lack of truth.  Dolan bragged that he could get Mickey Mouse elected to the Senate, and once, in a public forum, told a senator to vote his way on a piece of legislation or face attack-ad consequences.

            “Groups like ours are potentially very dangerous to the political process,” he told the Washington Post.  “ We could say whatever we wanted about an opponent of a Senator Smith and the Senator wouldn’t have to say anything.  A group like ours could lie through its teeth and the candidate it helps stays clean.”

            What’s scary is that Reagan’s Republican party gladly accepted nick-pac’s work.  Indeed, with nick-pac’s help, it unseated four of the six Democratic senators it targeted in 1980.

            My point, and I’ll have more to say about this in future blogs, is that the Republican party has a history going at least as far back as Reagan, of being very cynical about the whole notion of government being a force to protect the interests of its people, viewing it rather as a system relatively easy to game for big personal profit and for the protection of the big money interests that support the Republican party and enrich its members.

            

tax cut poppycock

            Should the Republican party retake both houses of Congress (or at least one), you can expect one of their first orders of business to be making the Bush tax cuts permanent.  They will ballyhoo the fact that they want to extend all the cuts, but since over 95% of Bush’s cuts went to the top 5% of incomes, what they are really advocating is continued lower tax rates for the richest among us.

            They’ve been beating this drum long enough to recognize that advocating lower taxes for Wall Street bankers and corporate CEO’s is politically not bright, so recently they have changed their tactics and begun expressing great concern over the effect eliminating the tax cut for those making over $250,000 might have on small businesses.  Say what?

            One thing Republicans have done for some time now is expect  the public to be stupid enough to buy truly outlandish claims.  The second thing they’ve done is too frequently be right about the first thing.  Their heartfelt concern about the dire effect raising the tax rate on the super rich would have on small businesses is an excellent case in point.

            First of all, most small businesses that gross over $250K exist as some kind of corporate entity.  That means, by law, business funds and personal funds have to be kept entirely separate from one another and any change in the personal income tax rate of such a small business owner would effect his personal wealth in exactly the same way it would the wealth of a Wall Street banker or a clerk in a Wall Street bank, but would have no effect on his business at all.

            That leaves the smaller group of small business owners who do not incorporate but simply have as their personal incomes whatever is left after all expenses are deducted from their business’ gross income.  Here again, Republican concern is misplaced or perhaps deliberately deceitful.

           

            In such a case, the gross income of the business is likewise the gross income of the business owner.  And he, unless he’s stupid, will take legitimate tax deductions for inventory, rent, insurance, employee wages,  upkeep and so on—with the result being both his actual personal income and his actual taxable income.

            Let’s say our small businessman owns a construction company and is considering expanding his business by adding 10 employees.  Again, unless he’s stupid, he’s only going to go ahead with that plan if his research tells him that the gross income generated by 10 additional employees will, minus expenses, still increase his net income.  So perhaps his research indicates the new business generated by the new employees will increase his net income (which, again, is synonymous—or nearly so-- with his taxable income) by $50,000—taking him from, for simplicity, $250K to $300K.

            At present, with the Bush rates in place, that means his tax liability will be about

$99,000.  Substitute what that rate would be if the Bush tax cuts are eliminated and his tax liability would be about $108,000.  What the Republicans would have you believe is that owing an additional $9,000 in taxes (meaning his personal net income gain would be $41,000 rather than $50,000) would convince any responsible small business owner to simply forego the expansion and give up the $41K he would net.

            If this doesn’t make any sense to you, you would probably be a pretty good small business owner; if it does make sense, you should probably stick to earning a wage somewhere.