Payroll tax cuts are a "get" for progressives? Who knew. When the Social Security Trustee's report comes out next year, with an actuarial gap wider than ever, I'll check back with those who think it's a win-win for progressives.
In the meantime, with consumers paying down debt like mad, I'm supposed to believe that a payroll tax cut is going to create upwards of 750,000 jobs in the next year?
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
More Tax Cut Facts - Food for Progressives?
Day 2: Obama Gets Tough
Mr. President, the time to get all "fired up" over what is going on is *before* you make a compromise. Perhaps, for as long as you need to bring opponents to heel, especially if you have public opinion at your back. What's more, it's not necessary to "win" all the votes you need, i.e. even if you don't have the votes and know it.
Why?
Because today you or your communications advisers or your strategy team have you looking defensive. If you had said the same things you said today, just four weeks ago or made a case right in the heartland for 9 million unemployed during a Thanksgiving national address to the nation, you'd be looking like a champion, today, even as you compromise.
Might be past time to review the model, the model of starting with going easy, seeking "reasonable" partners and end with getting fired up or tough looking. Might be past time to review the strategy of being part of the negotiations, instead of standing over them at least as much.
Revisit the entire assumption that to get early support or even end support, one can't start with fire or confrontation.
In other words, have a look at Ronald Reagan...
Team Obama: Unprepared for Harsh Realities of Gridlock?
It's true if their answer to being "held hostage" is to capitulate.
If the American people voted for gridlock, you can't change that, can you?
The Political Price of Creating Human Misery
Marvel, if you will, at this statement from the President:
"I'm not willing to see 2 million Americans who stand to lose their unemployment insurance at the end of this month be put in a situation where they might lose their home or their car or suffer some additional economic catastrophe." -link
How has it come to pass, in modern times, that a threat to create human misery of this magnitude has political currency in American politics, enough that it can be used to as a bargaining chip for a compromise?
when people ask for more "fight", it is to reject wholesale this frame of the debate, to stir up public opinion with persuasion, with public diplomacy, to make it harder for opponents to bluff and more likely for them to feel the need to back off, no?
Why the "I", there? Does the President believe that the GOP "earned" a mandate to create this kind of misery, based on their mid-term election success?Last, consider the timing. It implies that America cannot make hard choices during hard times. In order to deal with hard times, we have to 'compromise', we have to pass out $140 in income and estate tax-breaks-cum-debt-spending, over 24 months, in order to get maybe $80 billion in unemployment compensation, over 13 months. (Figures are my own guesstimates, but should be in the ballpark).
So, when people ask for more "fight", it is to reject wholesale this frame of the debate, to stir up public opinion with persuasion, with public diplomacy, to make it harder for opponents to bluff and more likely for them to feel the need to back off, no?
Obama's Ridiculous Political-Economic Gamble
HOPE THAT EXTENDED TRIP TO ASIA AND SHOWING FACE IN LISBON WAS WORTH THE COST IN TIME NOT SPENT ON THE DOMESTIC AGENDA
If the President thinks he just bought the election by putting jobs first and making sure that the recovery will give him "good times" in which to campaign, he might want to check that with his not-so-crack-liberal economic team:
The AFL-CIO reminded readers in a statement ... that "some 150,000 new jobs a month are needed just to keep pace with the growth in the labor force, and a stunning 11 million jobs must be generated to return to pre-recession employment levels."
There will not be an era of good feeling in 2012, in all likelihood. Even the housing market overhang will not likely be lifted, as millions of bankruptcies and the ever climbing standards to get home financing from Fannie and Freddie shut people out of the housing markets, for years (refinance or sale/purchase).
The Obama Compromise Model
Late afternoon press conferences to reneg on a major campaign promise?
All the impassioned leadership of saying, "I completely disagree with this." This is the high rhetoric that is appropriate for major, defining moments of a Presidency? Of national economic emergency? For millions of people without jobs? Of letting down the core of his base?
He avoids public confrontation, getting drawn into a 'war of words'. This saves time and, in some cases, saps the strength of the opposition.
But, in seeking compromise before confrontation, he appears to everyone to lack leadership skills. He negates his dual-role as a leader of ideas and an decided of when to compromise.
Moreover, it's now clear that he's not working well through the Senate, if someone there is going to be the tip of the spear. Harry Reid is conferring after the President makes a public statement. (In contrast, the GOP have had success rotating Senators who 'take the lead' on various issues, so that no one person can be vilified, like Reid/Pelosi have been).
Anyway, it's not worth watching the next two years. It's going to be like watching the last two quarters of a game in which your favorite team is simply outmatched.
Santa Brings Gift to GOP Early This Christmas
It is Obama.
I just read his full statement.
What, in this compromise, will the GOP not like, Mr. President?
I think they're passing the Champagne.
- The largest inter-generational wealth transfer in the history of the republic goes on at even lower estate tax rates than Bush-era (thanks Tim Geithner, for that?).
- They don't have to face-up to having an unpopular opinion with the public, w/r/t taxes on the wealthy.
- In two years, they get to run on "no tax increase", ensuring continual "renewal" of their inanity, no political reckoning of it. That makes a mockery of "temporary" as a concession.
- The Democrats become complicit in cut-tax-and-spend, losing the chance to build a fiscal brand name of their own.
I'm not even saying that votes in the Congress would have changed, with a prolonged "fight".
What I am saying is that the Democratic Party didn't "win" the political optics of making a compromise, did they?
Monday, December 6, 2010
13 months or 24 months
Apparently, the rate of job growth is going to be so unexpectedly fantastic next year, that the job-seekers who are relying on unemployment won't need to after 13 months.
But, BUT ... (wait for it)
... the stability and security of the recovery is going to need 24 months of income tax cuts.
Somehow, both of those can't be true, can they?
Do you have any idea how fast the economy needs to get growing to even have a 7% unemployment rate by this time next year? C'mon, guys! (Geithner?)
The Crux of the Compromise
CUT-TAX-AND-SPEND, NON-BUSH-43-VERSION, OBAMA VERSION
The crux of this compromise is that everyone can have everything they want, basically, and we can "afford" it, so long as we pretend it is "temporary".
In other words, nothing has changed, even if you thought you voted for that, since trickle down days or the 80s, the non-sacrifice days of Bush-43.
We're still the "exceptional" Americans, who can do everything.
Obama's Coming "Conversation with the American People"
He apparently thinks he's going to get a pass for extending the cuts, with perfunctory outrage, when it comes time to "make difficult decisions".
We're supposed to believe he's responsible or credible, after he makes himself complicit in the GOP's fiscal nonsense and economic stimulus nonsequiturs? He's got an explanation for that?
If we're in an emergency situation, then why are we dealing with tax cut rhetoric in the lame duck? How are tax cuts of this sort sufficient to the emergency?
They don't understand that they are almost guaranteed to never get it to all add up, rhetorically.
But, hey, don't listen to me, I'm the "professional left". I could get it wrong.
Why Chris Matthews is Wrong
Why wouldn't the GOP take the blame, feel the heat, as it were, not the President?
Isn't it the mission of "winning" in politics to see your ideas win in that way, too?
The President is NOT going to get "points" for being "responsible" if he doesn't go out there and sell, sell, sell himself as the responsible one in the room. As long as he cuts-taxes-and-spends in the fashion of the GOP, he gives too much ground, if he doesn't win the political fight, in terms of public opinion.
The way I look at it, they had a chance in a lifetime to take the whip-handle on the GOP's brand, to expose their overplayed hand; but they blew it with a quick-fire deal, however well conceived.
Obama Blinks
Uh, I'm not the "professional left".
Is it an absolute problem that Obama extended the income tax cuts, temporarily, for economic reasons?
No, not fully. [An estate tax at 35% with a $5 exclusion is pretty eye-popping, however...100% of all capital purchases written off - equipment spending is already near an all time high, so is that really going to be stimulated or, more importantly, add domestic jobs?]
If all you are perceived to stand for is compromise, than sooner or later people don't think you stand for anything.
What is the problem is that he never took his case to the American people. There was no support for the GOP's position in the election results, yet the Democrats didn't pressure them. Instead, they staged votes, which is easier and also a focal point, but not leadership. He should have taken them to task for it. Doing so is NOT "cheap political points".If all you are perceived to stand for is compromise, than sooner or later people don't think you stand for anything.
Unlike Reagan, Team Obama have yet to master the art of standing for something, yet being "Presidential", when it comes time to compromise or showdown.
For instance, if there are critical issues facing the nation - and they are, with millions scheduled to lose their unemployment benefits, the economic recovery dicey, and credit for housing under continual "new standards" assault from Freddie and Fannie - why didn't he address the nation? A press conference in Winston-Salem? Seriously, guys?
They have no sense of the moment. Little clear-cut vision of their role as Executive, as bully-pulpit-in-chief. Little idea how to manage expectations within their own party.
What's more, following his post-election admission that they rushed through things because of urgency and didn't take the time for 'public diplomacy', what's his excuse now? India? Lisbon? Afghanistan? This has been on the table since his campaign promise. Besides that, they are trying to do too much, still, so "the politics" of these weighty issues isn't being handled fully, in terms of the communications effort required, to support any change.
So, like George Soros, I'll just watch him muddle through, because it's clear that they still don't have their legs.
Today's Headlines from Prop8 Hearing
There is going to be so much written on this, by those better than I, I'll just offer my take:
Part-1
"Alliance Defense Fund failed to enjoin California AG, Sinks Suit on Appeal"
Part-2
"Olson to Appellate Court: Prop8 fails constitutional challenge on any and all standards for review."
"Strategery" of Court Procedure
For the record: Scotusblog on LGBT Movement Lawyers
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Prop 8 This Week - Finale or Allegro ma no troppo?
All below the cut. Long and academic-ish.
Looking at the amicus curiae of the Robbie P. George brain trust in prep for this week’s oral contest on marriage for gays in California, one observes they continue to hold the view of rival goods, rather than the more intuitive and obvious complementary goods.
They argue that there is no value neutral marriage policy (even if their quoted assertion from Michael Sandel is easily falsifiable, because the government could have other, normative grounds to bar polygyny). Who would disagree, except perhaps those who believe that the only common good that is served by ‘marriage policy’, within reason, is to facilitate private, individual goods?
They suggest there are legitimate moral purposes for a discriminatory marriage policy, but they analogize to goods that are not obviously in conflict, such as the relationship of business partners compared to personal friendships. Elsewhere, in contrast, they suggest that the purpose for a retained prejudice against gay couples is to be found in the perceived conflict of goods, i.e. down the road the perceived social linkages or norms may be lost (a consequence both in dispute and not in evidence at trial and one that could be, nevertheless, easily addressed by propagating the appropriate ethic, rather than denying or hypothesizing that so much is impossible).
They suggest that one can’t reason from a ‘fundamental right’ to marriage to gay marriage, because the concept of fundamental right is contingent on the purposes of marriage. A contingent fundamental right is hardly intuitive, because what we would think of as grounding the word “fundamental” is what we should use to judge whether restricted purposes are legitimate. Thus, we might well consider fundamental expression of innate sexuality and associated partnership, as seen by evidence and testimony in court and so obviously related to “flourishing” and “human good”, as not quite in the same category as their choice example, an artist seeking contingent self-expression through antisemitic art, who nevertheless gets defunded.
Indeed, they fail to meet the burden that the court should choose to impose on them. If they purport that there are legitimate moral purposes for discriminatory policy, it should have been proven at trial that these purposes can win the form of rationality, going beyond mere animus, reference to tradition, or belief in revealed truths. The trial record is pretty bare on this.
What’s more, it is closer to the time when the Supreme Court Justices ought to formally realize that, in finally removing “criminalization” as a penalty, they ought not to simply replace it with other forms of sad and uninspired penalties, that are often as damaging to the human spirit, even if they are not as physically threatening. This is the spirit of Romer, I think. If the court has the prescience to see the obvious complementarity of goods, we do not lose the past, we gain the future.
Their answer to these problems is not to delve into them much, but to provide a formalism: whatever the postulated legitimate and inevitable moral purposes of discriminatory marriage policy are, the court(s) should not assess them, because such purposes are only for the people to decide. (They confuse the legislature with the people, in citing Gregg v Georgia, p. 13, raising the vexing issue of judging the ‘legislative intent’ of a plebiscite and other issues besides.)
But, this is no answer, really.
If the moral purposes of the law are all left to a non-deliberative plebiscite, that makes a mockery of their statement about the majesty of the law, “instituted to preserve justice and secure the conditions under which individuals or communities can thrive or flourish” (p. 4), because a plebiscite could make a horse a Senator and more besides.
Even in that potential chaos, a court would still have to weigh competing and conflicting moral claims of the plebiscite, e.g. we want to live with equal protection and we want to discriminate against a minority (gays). To settle that question, with weighty matters at hand, a court would have to weigh consequential harms, look at the case in hand, examine the aptness of the discrimination in meeting the governmental interest, to see whether it rested on sheer animus or on supportable, evidential linkages. The trial court did that, in spades. The plaintiffs must and should win on appeal.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Major Iraq & Afghanistan Vet Group Comes Out for Repeal of DADT
They've done it. They've kept faith with their gay and lesbian colleagues, against an often derelict class of seniors.
IAVA Joins Top Military Leaders in Supporting Repeal of DADT
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