POSITIVE RESPONSES TO THE TAX CUT PLAN

Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics and economists at JPMorgan Chase have projected that the cuts will result in a notable increase in GDP and even the CBPP  and CAP think the cuts should be approved.

RADIO TIDBITS

Today on Bill Bennett's radio show, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation was a guest and claimed that $950 billion a year is being spent on the poor by the Federal government and that this spending is a greater threat to the budget than Social Security or Medicare.   Rector doesn't break down the 950 but it's hard to believe that number when the entire DHHS 2010 budget for TANF is only $17 billion.

THE TEENIEST PUSH BACK

Pres. Obama's group Organizing For America sent me an e-mail that linked to his defense of his cave-in to the GOP reactionaries.   I unsubscribed and in the box asking why?, I put "No backbone."

UPDATE: Mike Stark also unsubscribed and so did another Kosser.

HAYEK COULDN'T ADMIT HE WAS WRONG

The Road to Serfdom (1944) was written to warn about the dire consequences of the Labour Party taking power in Britain after WW II and it was clearly wrong in its predictions.  In his 1956 preface, Hayek did not budge an inch from his claims:

Of couse, six years of socialist government in England have not produced anything resembling a totalitarian state. But those who argue that this has disproved the thesis of The Road to Serfdom have really missed one of its main points: that the most important change which extensive gtovernment control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people. This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps over one or two generations.

Twenty years later in 1976, he still refused to admit that he was wrong.

THE NAME ALONE IS WORTH LINKING TO

John Cassidy has an interesting article in the New Yorker on the banksters and includes a wonderful name:

The Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality

MAYBE I OVER-REACTED

(h/t E.D. Kain)

David Leonhardt of the NYT argues that the agreement Pres. Obama made will have a truly stimulative effect:

Subtract the $400 billion cost of the Bush tax cuts. Subtract another $140 billion or so, which is the cost of extending the Alternative Minimum Tax patch (and almost certainly would have happened regardless). You’re then left with more than $300 billion in net stimulus over two years. And while that sum will not be enough to fix the economy all by itself, it is serious money.

HOW BAD WAS THE TAX CUT DEAL?

Really bad...Grover Norquist thinks it's a big win for the GOP.

UPDATE: A little solace: Mark "Foamer" Levin thinks it's a bad deal.

OK, THE TAX CUTS AREN'T ENTIRELY WORTHLESS

Or so Paul Krugman found out:

A few months ago, the Congressional Budget Office released a report on the impact of various tax options. A two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts, it estimated, would lower the unemployment rate next year by between 0.1 and 0.3 percentage points compared with what it would be if the tax cuts were allowed to expire; the effect would be about twice as large in 2012.

THE REAL EDWARD BERNAYS

Glenn Beck has found yet another "progressive" who is behind another grave threat to Beck's version of America: Edward Bernays, one of the founders of modern public relations practice.  I just finished reading his 1923 book,Crystallizing Public Opinion, and I didn't find anything radical.  In fact, Bernays expresses concern about "the dangers of interference by the public in the conduct of the industry," (p. 44) not exactly a Marxist fear.

On the other hand, I did find a early formulation of what is now known as "epistemic closure":

The average citizen is the world's most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own "logic-proof compartments," his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction. (Bernays, p. 122)

I FIND AN ANSWER ABOUT RECONCILIATION

Below I wondered why the Dems didn't use the reconciliation process to deal with the Bush tax cuts and now Ezra Klein has provided two answers:

1) The Dems could only do this at the very beginning of the budget process and they failed to do so.

2) After the Bush tax cuts were passed through reconciliation, the Dems made a new rule that no reconciliation bill can increase the deficit.  That would make retaining any of the cuts out of the question.

GIVE ME THAT OLD TIME RELIGION

The Fundies and the Baggers believe they have grasped the Eternal Truths and I find that terribly self-centered because of all the different beliefs that came before.  In order to get a sense of how long humans have had some sort of religious belief, I need to refer to this table from The neolithic revolution in the Near East : transforming the human landscape by Alan H. Simmons, page 37:

Table 3.3 Estimated paleoenvironmental reconstruction

Approximate Dates                                                                             Approximate

(BP, uncalibrated)/Event         Conditions                                           Cultural Correlate

20,000-14,500 (LGM)                Cold and dry; hilly coastal areas              Kebaran

have winter precipitation and

forests

14,500-13,500                          Precipitation slowly increases              Geometric Kebaran;

Mushabian

13,500-13,000                          More rapid precipitation                           Early Natufian

increase

13,000-12,800?                    Short cold dry pulse

11,500                                        Peak of precipitation

11,000-10,000                          Cold and dry; retractions of                     Late Natufian;

(Younger Dryas)                     favorable Mediterranean                         Harifian

vegetation

10,300                                     Return of pluvial conditions;                    PPNA

very wet in northern Levant and

Anatolia, but precipitation in

central and southern Levant

does not reach previous peak

10,000-9000                               Increase in precipitation,

especially in northern and eastern Near East

9000-8000                               Rainfall higher than present day,            PPNB

but decreasing precipitation

toward 8,000

7400-7200                               Sudden cooling and decrease in             End of PPN

rainfall intensity; similar to

Younger Dryas?

7200-6000                               Generally more favorable than                PN

today

6000-onward                           Warmer and drier than                      End of PN —

previously but similar to today               post-Neolithic

Sources: Based primarily on Bar-Yosef (1995:518, 1998a: I61); Bar-Mathews et al. (1999); and Weiss (2000:75).

These dates have not been converted into calendar years but if they were, they would range from 2,200 to 1,200 years EARLIER (Simmons, page 7).

The Natufian period  is generally agreed to have lasted some 2,500 or more years.

Now, here's data that I think is important:

The treatment of the dead was not restricted solely to burials. At Wadi Hammeh 27, for example, site deposits contained several burnt skull fragments (Edwards 1991:146). At 'Ain Mallaha, various body elements, such as crania, were lying on the floors of separate structures (Perrot 1966a:445). At other sites, such as Hayonim Cave and Nahal Oren, the removal of the skull, with or without the mandible, became common (Valla 1998:176-177). (Simmons, page 76)

This special treatment of the skull of the deceased lasted well beyond the Natufian era into the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPNA and PPNB) eras (Simmons, page 152), which together lasted over 3,000 years.

So, the various skull rituals lasted at least 5,500 years, a span much. much longer than the Judeo-Christian tradition.

HAS OBAMA PAVED THE WAY FOR THE NEXT HOOVER?

The inadequacy of the stimulus bill will haunt us next year as states,counties and cities cut back on spending to deal with their enormous debts.   This will most likely lead to more unemployment and more fuel for the idiots who still believe in the Free Market Fairy.

BREWERCARE IN ARIZONA IS GETTING SOME ATTENTION

The NY Times has covered the story of Medicaid patients being condemned to death by the restrictions the Republicans have placed on coverage and one of its columnists has also written about it.  What I found most objectionable is this lie by Gov. Brewer:

The Republican governor has in turn blamed “Obamacare,” meaning the federal health care overhaul, for the transplant cuts even though the Arizona vote came in March, before President Obama signed that bill into law.

For me, this is enough to remove her from office and that can be done by recall in Arizona.

THIS MIGHT BE THE KRAZY POST OF THE YEAR

It's from whoknows999 on this POLITICO thread:

#563
Dec. 4, 2010 - 4:46 PM EST

getalife: Dec. 4, 2010 - 4:42 PM EST

Tax cuts and no regulations for the rich donors collapsed the economy stupid.



You are clinging to a failed ideolgy and voted gop again to lose your only source of income cons

when did we have this no regulations? seriously deluded.

failed ideology? laughable....freedom never fails...capitalism never fails....socialism fails every time...yet you still believe

ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT THE BUSH TAX CUTS

If we use January 2001 as the baseline and December 2007 (the peak of the business cycle) as the end point, we have some measure of how effective the tax cuts were.   Using just the numbers for the private sector in thousands, here are the results for those 2 months:

JAN 2001 111,634
DEC 2007 115,574

The Net Gain is 3,940 - almost 4 million additional private sector jobs over almost 6 years.  That's about 656K jobs per year, about 55 thousand a month.

Let's look at the same time frame during the Clinton years:

JAN 1993 90,824
DEC 1999 109,992

The Net Gain is 19,168 - over 19 million additional private sector jobs. That 3,194,000 per year, about 266 thousand per month.


Data from www.bls.gov

"HE'S JUST LIKE US"

I think a lot of the people who listen to and believe gasbag radio think the hosts are pretty much "regular folks."   They aren't, of course, and Alan Grayson has sent around an e-mail spreading a little reality:

Here is how much the Bush tax cuts benefit – each year – some other folks you may have heard of:

Rush Limbaugh - $2,689,135.
Glenn Beck - $1,512,352
Sean Hannity - $1,006,352
Bill O’Reilly - $914,352
Sarah Palin - $638,352
Newt Gingrich - $247,352

BECK, A CASE STUDY

Glenn Beck has compared present-day America to both the Weimar Republic and the early Roman Empire and even a Bagger should realize that there's almost nothing in common between the Rome before 1 AD and Germany in the 1920s, let alone comparing them both to America in 2010.

GASBAG FATIGUE

I've been listening to right-wing talk radio since 2001 and I'm about ready to stop because I just can't take all the lies and half-truths.   For me the main problem is that the hosts are not held accountable for all the mis- and dis- information they spew 5 days a week. 

JEEZ, MARXISTS ARE EVERYWHERE!!!

Despite all the talk about how Pres. Obama is a Marxist and about the ginormous uncertainty about Federal taxes, corporate profits are doing just fine, thank you.

Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Published: November 23, 2010
NY Times

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms.

WHY NOT USE RECONCILIATION?

The House passed a bill that would continue the Bush tax cuts for the middle class and I and others are wondering why they didn't use reconciliation so they would only need 51 votes in the Senate.

DE TOCQUEVILLE AND THE FUNDIES

One of the local religious/Bagger stations regularly plays an ad that uses this text:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers - and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce - and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution - and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

In the ad, this is attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville but according to Jack Pitney, a conservative professor at Claremont, it isn't in ANY of his writings.  Further, in Democracy in America, de Tocqueville explicitly argues against Dobsonism:

If it be easy to see that it is more particularly important in democratic ages that spiritual opinions should prevail, it is not easy to say by what means those who govern democratic nations may make them predominate. I am no believer in the prosperity any more than in the durability of official philosophies; and as to state religions, I have always held that if they be sometimes of momentary service to the interests of political power, they always sooner or later become fatal to the church. Nor do I agree with those who think that, to raise religion in the eyes of the people and to make them do honor to her spiritual doctrines, it is desirable indirectly to give her ministers a political influence which the laws deny them. I am so much alive to the almost inevitable dangers which beset religious belief whenever the clergy take part in public affairs, and I am so convinced that Christianity must be maintained at any cost in the bosom of modern democracies, that I had rather shut up the priesthood within the sanctuary than allow them to step beyond it.

RADIO TIDBITS

Milton Friedman is one of the Saints of the Free Market Fairy Church and he's on record as saying the Federal Reserves tight money policy created the Great Depression.   Today Fats Limbaugh has been criticizing the Fed for its actions to increase the money supply and a caller told him that Bernanke was doing exactly the right thing.   Fats didn't get it and he also showed that he doesn't understand the difference between fiscal policy and monetary policy.

Yesterday,  John Gibson used the "E-Word" to describe America's position in the world and this should cause the Baggers some concern because they don't seem too keen on supporting an "American Empire."

I DISAGREE WITH KEVIN & EZRA

Pres. Obama's strategy of making concessions to the GOP without getting anything from them in return has been a failure and he needs to play hardball NOW, not next year.   It is incomprehensible to me that he still says he wants to compromise despite Sen. McConnell's statement that the GOP's #1 priority is to make Obama a one-term President.

I WAS GOING TO QUOTE ORWELL BUT...

this quote from Voltaire is more appropriate:

“As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities”

This is really the problem with Beck.

MAYBE PRES. OBAMA IS OUT OF TOUCH

Over 2 years ago I noted my displeasure at candidate Obama's refusal to pay people to work for his campaign and with the failure of HAMP and the inadequacies of the stimulus bill, I'm starting to wonder if he really doesn't get how important the economy is to almost all of us.