Month: September 2010

To the Mondale-Phone!

Ezra Klein, 2010:The argument for taxing people who make more than $250,000 isn’t that they’re bad people, and it isn’t that they won’t notice the tax increase. It’s that we’ve got a very large budget imbalance, and we’re going to need to do a lot of things to correct it. Taxes on the rich have dropped even as the incomes of the rich have skyrocketed. So one of the obvious things to do is update the tax code to correct for that drift. But eventually, we’ll need to do much more than just increases taxes on the rich, and though politicians have tried to sell this one as a change that most Americans won’t notice and needn’t worry about, eventually, they’re going to have to start talking about changes that people will notice, and should worry about.
Walter Mondale, 1984: By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two-thirds. Let’s tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.
Lemkin, 2010: Oh for those heady, brutally honest days of the first Mondale administration.

Bait and Switch

agreatnation:

“Second, this is obviously — obviously — a setup. The whole point is to avoid a vote on the middle-class tax cuts while Democrats control the House; when and if Republicans regain control, they can refuse to let anything but a full extension reach the floor. So the goal is actually permanent extension; what they’re offering isn’t a compromise, it’s a trap.”

— Temporary Tax Cuts For The Rich? No. – NYTimes.com

Which is why I fully expect Democrats to start talking up the many benefits of compromising and offering a temporary extension of the tax cuts for the rich.

A truly crafty Democratic leadership would realize the fiscal exigency of letting all the tax cuts expire as soon as possible. Thus, you hit the GOP with stalling it now (while steadfastly offering your own package of middle class relief), and then let them block these same measures from the floor because of their desire to please the richest of the rich. A two-fer. Once the outcry reaches sufficient heights, you allow the GOP to allow a middle-class-only tax plan to reach the floor.

Naturally, this means that we’ll get full extension of everything forever and give it to the GOP using terms such as “compromise.”

[An] increasing share of national income [has] gone to the top 1 percent of earners since the 1970s, when their share was 8 percent to 9 percent. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 percent to 14 percent. In the late-’90s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005, it passed 21 percent. By 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, the richest 1 percent were taking more than 23 percent of all income.
The richest one-tenth of 1 percent, representing 130,000 households, took in more than 11 percent of total income in 2007.
That does not leave enough spending power with the rest of the population to sustain a flourishing economy.

Bob Herbert discussing Robert Reich’s book Aftershock.
Generic GOP response to everything but the last line: So what?
Generic Democrat response to everything: If we just move those deck chairs to this side, and these to that…
Generic Population response, living it, far too busy to read about it: inchoate blood rage.
Making the current situation any clearer?

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.

Governor John Winthrop founded the City of Boston on this day, Sept. 17, 1630.
The top of said hill was promptly lopped off and turned into the Back Bay. Government takeover of landfill and etc…, but at least the gambit ultimately paid off handsomely and benefits the very, very rich. So: win/win.

My concern is that she would use the agency for the purpose of promoting social justice

Senator Judd Gregg (R, NH) on what scares him about Elizabeth Warren working at the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Everyone knows that “justice” is the last thing we want out of this agency. How are the credit companies and pay-day lenders supposed to make a profit otherwise?

Wildly Different than Hitler

The relevant letter (e.g. the one containing the words “separation”, “church”, and “state”) from Thomas Jefferson to “messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.”

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. [Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from prescribing even those occasional performances of devotion, practiced indeed by the Executive of another nation as the legal head of its church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.] Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association assurances of my high respect & esteem.

(signed) Thomas Jefferson
Jan.1.1802.

Indeed, these are undeniably different in any and every sense of interpretation possible:

A.

“separation between Church & State”

B.

“separation of church and state”

Mr. Glen Urquhart, the GOP nominee for the race for Delaware’s lone House seat has attributed the latter to Hitler and the Nazi. Jefferson, you can plainly see, wanted a purely Christian republic on these shores. This is why he used the word “between.”
Adding Judeo to the Judeo-Christian formulation is simply an example of American Exceptionalism and is largely predicated on Jefferson’s own ruthless and unyielding support for the state of Israel. And, of course, there’s always a little Madison in there.

Said it once, will say it many times in the future: the facts do not matter. Plan and act accordingly.

The exact phrase ‘separation of church and state’ came out of Adolf Hitler’s mouth. That’s where it comes from. The next time your liberal friends talk about separation of church and state, ask them why they’re Nazis.

Glen Urquhart, the GOP nominee for the race for Delaware’s lone House seat.
This is the agenda. Never forget it, never doubt it.

Serious People

Obama administration: Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s tax plan […] to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for America’s millionaires and billionaires would nearly double the projected deficit by adding $4 trillion to it over the next decade. And [the GOP is] pretending that they would pay for it through a projected spending freeze, that fails to mention what they would freeze or cut, and that would only save $300 billion over that same period of time…
Senior GOP adviser’s response: It must be tough to have to work in [the administration’s] press shop and explain that letting people keep their own money is bad, and having to explain why you think the Bush administration economic policy is bad, but you want to make it permanent. Though I’m still curious: how much does their plan add to the deficit? Is it three trillion or 3.3 trillion?