Scarborough: "BWWAAAAHAHA! We Can't Have Higher Taxes!"

Joe Scarborough this morning broke into a hissy fit and almost cried at the mere mention (by 'Morning Joe' guest Al Sharpton) that Obama wants a balanced approach to the deficit problem and that means more taxes. Sharpton made the accurate point that Obama had already ceded $650b as part of the fiscal cliff deal, and that had come down from $1.2 trillion.  Meanwhile, over $1.2 trillion in spending cuts had already been made last year. The time was now for MORE taxes, not less.

But why the crying, pissing and moaning from Repukes? THEY are the ones, after all (see graphs) that let deficit spending explode under Bush Jr's reign, for both tax cuts that mainly benefited the wealthy, and unpaid for wars.  While these cretins incessantly demanded TWO "wars" (actually occupations), they never insisted that anyone actually sacrifice to pay for them!

Meanwhile, I not long ago received in the mail (from my first cousin) two war ration books issued to my mom back in 1941 when she was just 19. The ration book allowed access to certain provisions, but with limits. Each book had born a number of war ration stamps which could be used to buy special goods, such as meat, bread, butter etc. The person had to sign and date each time such stamps were accessed for purchase, such that it had been legitimate, with this representation made formally (under penalty of perjury) to the Office of Price Administration. Evidently, mom had three ration stamps left at this point. (Old recovered letters from my grandmother to her son (fighting in Europe), dated 1943-44 noted some meat supplies, such as ham, beef and bacon, were running low by then.)

To me, the war ration book embodied sacrifice of the citizen in the war effort. That, along with increased taxes, disclosed it was a real war as opposed to a fraud and mockery perpetrated for the sake of lining the pockets of defense contractors and padding the payrolls of certain congressonal districts - as occurs now.

But all Americans are aware of anymore are the frauds and make-up "wars" for which no sacrifice is expected, not even higher taxes,  far less ration books with war ration stamps. And so we have a populace for which basically the events in Afghanistan (and earlier Iraq) only existed on a fantasy or unreal level if they existed at all. No surprise there!

But what Americans ought  to be processing is that those recent wars of choice exacted a cost, along with the atrocious tax cuts,  at a time taxes ought to have been raised!  The twin tables, again, show the whole sordid picture and what has really dug us into the existing deficit hole, which the "Simpson Bowlers" and Repukes now propose to extricate us from, via Catfood 2.0 perpetrated on our seniors. (See e.g. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/48217/youve-heard-of-the-birthers-now-meet-the-simpson-bowlers )

Now, logically, since the Repukes dug us into this debt hole by refusal to approve adequate revenue, for both the "wars" and tax cuts (as well as their insane 2003 prescription drug bill - more a giveaway to  Big PhRma), then it is logical that increased revenue must be the way to dig us out of the debt mess.  As a New York Times op-ed put it today, the first major tax hits....errr....hikes.... must come from the hides of those who benefited most from the Bush tax cuts during the "war" years:

"Those taxpayers are the same ones who benefited most from Bush-era tax breaks and who continue to pay low taxes. Even with recent increases, the new top rate of 39.6 percent is historically low; investment income is still taxed at special low rates; and the heirs of multimillion-dollar estates face lower taxes than at almost any time in modern memory."


Incredibly,  despite these facts, the Repukes are resisting any cuts to defense, this despite the fact that they haven't - up to now - paid for any of their earlier defense spending shenanigans. They let TWO "wars" go unfunded, during supposed "war time" - a big hoot if there ever was one- plus they've not paid for the two sets of Bush tax cuts that already produced $3.2 trillion in deficits even before Obama got into office.

These miscreants demand this perfidy despite the fact it would impose "brutalizing cuts in non-defense discretionary areas like education, environment..already set to see their lowest share of the budget since 1950" according to the NY Times op-ed.   The education hits may well mean thousands of college students can't obtain affordable loans. The cuts to the EPA will mean our water here in Colorado, for example, will not be checked for contamination from the recent discovery of nuclear-polluted tailings, or from fracked effluent with xylene, benzene etc. backed up into our aquifers. Hello, more cancers!

The TIMES makes the additional sound point that:

"Raising taxes at the top is neither punitive nor gratuitous. It is a needed step, both to achieve near-term budget goals and to lay the foundation for a healthy budget in the future. As the economy strengthens and the population ages, more taxes will be needed from further down the income scale, both to meet foreseeable commitments, especially health care, as well as unforeseeable developments, from wars to technological challenges"


Will the Repukes pay attention? I doubt it, despite the fact that recent polls all disclose the public is on the side of Obama's solutions not the Tea-Party tainted Repuke House. For example, A USA Today/Pew Research poll released Thursday shows Obama with a strong lead over Republicans in Congress on gun policies (45-39 percent), the budget deficit (45-38 percent), immigration (50-33 percent) and even climate change (47-26 percent). When this news came out it prompted Scarborough to cry out two days ago: "We're gettin' our butts beat by Obama!"  Yeah, Joe! Deal with it!


Meanwhile, a Bloomberg poll from Wednesday had similar findings, with Obama’s approval ratings reaching a 3-year high at 55 percent, while just 35 percent have a favorable view of Republicans. From Bloomberg:


"Americans by 49 percent to 44 percent believe Obama’s proposals for government spending  on infrastructure, education and alternative energy are more likely to create jobs than Republican calls to cut spending and taxes to build business confidence and spur employment."

Now, this ought not come as a shock for anyone with more than air between the ears! I mean, as one wit aptly put it a year ago, referring to the European austerity measures: "Look, it's silly to think you can run a race faster if you cut off one of your feet!"

Adding to Republican troubles: 43 percent of Americans blame Republicans for what’s wrong in Washington, compared with 34 percent who blame Obama.

If any Americans read the recent TIME story concerning the F-35 waste ( Feb. 25, 'The Most Expensive Weapon Ever Built’ ,p. 26), they'd also be asking why have that white elephant when cutting it would mean so much more benefit for the nation, in all domestic spheres. The Repuke answer is "We need to be strong on defense!" but that's a red herring. What they really want is military jobs for their own districts- they care nothing about real national sacrifice, not like during a REAL war (WWII) which saw my mom using ration books and her family paying higher taxes! You can't have a real war and not have a broad spectrum of citizen-public sacrifice, particularly to PAY for said war. Otherwise, you have a shameless farce and one costing lives and wasting treasure unnecessarily!


Bottom line: the shtick of Repukes and their pro-Southern extremist party has been well known since the 1960s: Bleed the government coffers dry using bloated military spending and tax cuts, then demand the next Dem president cut all domestic spending on account of the deficits the war mongers-tax cutters generated.

But I believe too many people are much wiser now, especially as most of us have the first hand evidence - whether from ration books of WWII, or from deficit charts today - to isolate the frauds from the real McCoys. And the Repukes are frauds!

Miscast Economic Questions from A Media Neoliberal

The WaPo’s Ruth Marcus, in a recent column, posed several “mock debate” questions for Barack Obama, obviously trying her best to be too clever by half. But this Neoliberal denizen of the corpora-media merely came away appearing half clever. The two ‘questions’ I will focus on concern Obama’s “deficit commission” and the Ryan-Romney Medicare voucher system.

Let’s then cut to the chase with Marcus’ first question:`

“President Obama, you have been criticized for not supporting the recommendations of your own fiscal commission. Why didn’t you? Do you regret that choice?”

Answering for Obama:

I am certain he does on further investigation!

The “recommendations” Marcus is referring to are actually private proposals put forward by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of the Simpson-Bowles Commission. Those proposals would cut Social Security through a variety of means, would cap the Medicare budget (which is effectively the same as cutting it), and - once you cut through all the doubletalk - would actually cut tax rates for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, while raising them dramatically for everyone else.

Apart from the negative economic justice aspects, which play to a Neoliberal market imperative, there is the underlying rot and corruption of the persons, networks, groups behind it – which (based on Michelle Obama’s convention speech) I cannot believe Barack knew about before he appointed this duo.

Simpson is a former Republican Senator who (during the budget impasse in 2010-11) also insulted the Social security program and those on it, once referring to it as “310 million teats” – implying those dependent on it are moochers or slouches, n’er do wells. Simpson never ought to have been appointed to ANY commission, including oversight of hog farms.

Meanwhile Ernest Bowles is an ex-Democratic staffer and Morgan Stanley Director. In addition, a champion of the Neoliberal ethic that people ought not be dependent on “entitlements” but earn their keep via their own hard work or investment acumen. In any case, citizens are expected to rely wholeheartedly on personal initiative and industry not government “handouts” (Despite the fact, as noted in the latest TIME – ‘One Nation Subsidized’ – 99% of the country already depends on such “handouts”)

More to the point regarding incipient corruption, both Simpson and Bowles are longtime allies of conservative hedge fund billionaire and former Nixon Cabinet member Peter G. Peterson, a long-time adversary of Social Security, Medicare, and government's rightful role in our society. Peterson-funded organizations provided staffers, as well as ideological guidance, to the Simpson Bowles Commission.

This alone, had Obama known of their background, ought to have led him to quash it one time and either initiate a re-do or put it aside altogether (I favored the latter)

Those staffers worked under the direction of David Walker, who was CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation until he left to lead an affiliated Peterson organization called “The Comeback America Initiative”. Who is David Walker? He's a former Comptroller General of the United States, a longtime Peterson operative, and a featured figure in the rabidly anti-Obama film (“Obama’s America”), just released by Dinesh D'Souza, the far-right apparatchik whose attack book against the President was hilariously entitled The Roots of Obama's Rage.

Worse, Walker is given five minutes or so in the dastardly movie, wherein he disses the leader who allowed Walker's own staffers to affix the Presidential seal to their own work! Some fucking gratitude!

In other words, NONE of the primary subjects involved in the Simpson-Bowles commission have the nation’s interests at heart, certainly not the Middle Class interests! This is another reason I winced on watching Biden’s and Obama’s convention speeches and references to this commission – as if conferring some bipartisan reasonable patina. No, it was a major mistake. Fortunately, it didn’t matter at the time, since most viewers were not remotely aware of the background of the players in the commission.

But this is a big reason it’s advisable for no Democratic candidate to mention it any more, lest the background and connections to the anti-Obama filth and muckrakers be exposed, as well as the base objectives of the Peterson group. This is also why I’m convinced Obama appointed his commission without realizing the background and why he MUST disown it now, he must “abort” it as an infant mutant that cannot be allowed to survive.

The Peterson network is determined to foment hysteria about something that is not our most urgent economic problem. As Joe Firestone notes, government spending (as a percentage of GDP) has been higher in this country at other points in history, and many economically healthy countries spend more.

Hopefully, this addresses Ruthie’s concerns.

Her next question is equally lame:

“President Obama, you have denounced Gov. Romney’s Medicare plan for putting too much risk on seniors. But isn’t the idea of providing subsidies, adjusted for health status and income, to let individuals purchase insurance on well-regulated exchanges, just like Obamacare, except with a public option in the form of letting seniors buy into traditional Medicare?”

My Response:

What Marcus refers to as Romney’s “subsidies” are really vouchers. They represent a limited amount of money allocated each senior and for which he is responsible for getting his own insurance. There is NO assurance, however, that any senior will be accepted by a private insurance plan and in fact there’s no mandate for any private insurance company to do so. This is how the Obama plan for medical exchanges differs from Romney’s. On Obama’s exchanges as spelled out in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, any person will ultimately get insurance. On Romney’s exchanges, no similar guarantee is offered. As a senior you may, or may not be accepted.

As for what Marcus calls Romney’s “public option” (i.e. to remain on traditional Medicare) this would not be the same as using traditional Medicare (as opposed to Medicare Advantage) under Obama. Let’s also bear in mind this “option” was only added after D-Ron Wyden (OR) suggested it, whereupon it mutated to the “Ryan-Wyden plan” but there’s no assurance it’ll be retained if Romney and Ryan are elected. Why keep a “half Dem” plan?

Even if it is retained, seniors will be at a disadvantage because as hundreds of billions worth of vouchers for the private plans are doled out, traditional Medicare will be weakened. This is given that the voucher money (which would ordinarily have gone to support Medicare) is now funneled into “private premium support”. Thus, it will become insolvent even more rapidly and force major cuts in the benefits now provided for. These cuts will most likely arise by eliminating a spectrum of procedures currently covered under Medicare (at least at the 80% co-share rate), including cardiac stents, hip replacements and prostate cancer treatments. Also look for beneficiaries to have to pay for all the preventive services now covered under the Affordable Care Act, including: colonoscopies, mammograms, PSA tests, prostate biopsies etc.

To believe that Romney’s vouchers and Obama’s health plan as it applies to Medicare are anywhere close to being the same is to be totally deluded. But then delusion is the alternate reality within which the Neolibs operate. Look at the mythical "fiscal cliff" , for example, which they've now blown into some nefarious monster resembling an economic Kraken!