Playing Chicken (Meanwhile, On the Tarmac in Prague . . .) December 2, 2010March 19, 2017 LET’S GIVE EVERYONE A TAX CUT ON THEIR FIRST $250,000 Well, that’s what we’ve already proposed. Not good enough, say the Republicans. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars? Why, “you can’t even keep clean on two hundred fifty thousand dollars.” So said Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, Ogden Mills, once upon a fat-cat Republican time. (Actually, he said it about $50,000. But $50,000 back then was the equivalent of $600,000 today.) Vince DeHart: “The Republicans are skillful at obstructing the greater good to serve the narrow interests of their power base, while managing to convince a sizable part of the electorate that the other side is to blame. This whole ‘we get our way or we won’t play’ strategy they’ve announced is just too much. I’d like to see the Democrats borrow a page from their playbook. The thing about eliminating the tax cuts for the wealthy is that we don’t have to vote on extending them. The expiration is part of the legislation enacted under Bush.” ☞ Vince suggests we call their bluff. When Bush and the Republican Congress wrote their law, they specifically required the tax cuts to expire at the end of this year. So if we have to play a game of chicken, let’s play it. And focus the nation’s attention on just what the Republicans are doing here. We’re willing to compromise and go 98% of the way, extending them for everyone on their first $250,00 of income. They are saying that’s not good enough – that absolutely nothing can get done – on the START treaty or extending unemployment benefits or anything else – unless we agree to borrow $70 billion a year from the Chinese or whomever so that the best off will get a tax break not just on their first $250,000 in income, but on their next $250,000 or $250 million as well. I’m with Vince. Bring it on. If they won’t vote on giving everyone a break on the first $250,000, so be it. Let everyone’s taxes go up January 1, per the Bush/Republican tax law, and let the Republicans explain why. BOREALIS Tom Fenton: “Before the year runs out could you please post your musings on intriguing BOREF? Once again in 2010 the hype cranked out of Gibraltar falls far short. The Cox box for aircraft landing gears languishes (can we really get excited over a deal to develop it further in the Czech Republic?) and I’m willing to bet even Boeing’s Dreamliner will fly commercially before this WheelTug contraption takes off (if ever). As you predicted, this should be bought only with money one can afford to lose – and I am!” ☞ Well, I appreciate your good humor, which is certainly the only investment posture to take with BOREF. (Sing it, Ella!) But funny you should mention the Czech Republic. Did you know that I majored in Slavic Languages and Literatures in college? Or that I took Czech? Well, I took it for only one day (what do you mean all words are stressed on the first syllable, “except those that are also stressed on the second” – are you supposed to shout the whole word?), so I have no clue what they are saying here in Prague on this past Sunday’s evening news. But if you look closely around minutes 17-19, you will see a cold, slick, icy runway* and a plane taxiing around, and its pilot being interviewed, and a little joystick control panel labeled “WheelTug” . . . and I think the translation is, “don’t sell your Borealis.” Not just yet, anyway. Press release to follow. *There was concern that our motor, designed for the nose wheel, would lack sufficient traction on wet or icy runways to pull the plane around. Unless the captain got everyone to crowd into the cockpit to weigh the plane down. But as you can see from the video, that may not be a problem. As I say: press release to follow.
Yesterday December 1, 2010March 19, 2017 Hey! We got the first food safety reform in 80 years yesterday! There’s now less chance (for example) that your child will become ill or die of food poisoning. And we got such a strong launch of the Don’t Ask / Don’t Tell debate yesterday (see below), it’s hard to believe a few Republicans won’t come along to get this done, too. True, the Republicans yesterday blocked the extension of unemployment benefits – they refuse to help families desperate to feed their kids unless we also help small business owners like the Koch billionaires. (Read on.) And, true, they plan to block the renewal of the START treaty, even though former Republican Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James Baker along with the ranking Republican on of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, strongly urge support. But I inherited the happy gene, and I think we’re going to get those through, too, along with extension of tax cuts on income below $250,000. We’ll see. As maddeningly difficult as the Republicans have made it, and as angry and disappointed as so many people are . . . on the one hand, because they don’t see our problems as having been 30 years’ in the making and partly our own fault for over-consuming and under-taxing; and on the other, more immediate, hand, because they don’t accept that Obama is not king, and that 60 Senate votes really are required to pass any legislation (and 67 to ratify a treaty) . . . there is actually quite a lot to feel pretty good about as the second year of the Obama presidency winds down. We avoided a depression and business is slowly coming back; we made a good start at reforming the health care system after 80 years of trying; we enacted meaningful financial reform, credit card reform, education reform, and tobacco regulation; we regained much of our lost standing in the world and signed a treaty with Russia decommissioning 700 more nukes on each side; we encouraged stem cell research and seeded dozens of potential home-run alternative energy innovations; passed the Lily Ledbetter fair pay act and the Matthew Shepard hate crimes legislation. Our 2010 deficit came in lower than the 2009 deficit we were handed (the 2009 fiscal year started October, 2008, even before Obama was elected); and, by end-running a Republican filibuster, we’ve managed to set up, by Executive Order, a bipartisan Deficit Reduction Commission that had actually been a Republican proposal until Obama signed on to it, to start getting the budget far closer to balance (just as President Clinton, swimming against the Republican tax-cuts-for-the-rich tide, did). And look at this good news: The TARP was castigated as a $700 billion bailout. In fact, per the CBO, it’s turning out to have been more like a $25 billion bailout. (In that regard, I commend to you Hank Paulson’s On the Brink, recounting the events leading up to and following the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse and near meltdown of the global financial system. He gives high praise to President Bush and to Congress, especially my friend Barney Frank, for doing what needed to be done. I think you will be hard-pressed to come away thinking that he and his colleagues failed to serve their country well, or that he had any conscious or subconscious desire to see his former rival Lehman Brothers fail.*) *Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail tells much the same tale through different eyes. And the auto bailout worked, too! (See Steve Rattner’s Overhaul, another example of government intervention that most Republicans opposed – working, in this case to save hundreds of thousands of jobs at what will ultimately be little or no cost to the taxpayer.) And so today, I am, at once: . . . going out of my mind at the way the Republicans are insisting we borrow $70 billion a year to extend tax cuts on income above $250,000 (even as they decry the giant National Debt that Reagan, Bush and Bush left us with) – and pretending this is smart economics (see below); . . . truly saddened at all the good incumbents who were thrown out of office last month (and fearful of the consequences); . . . and yet, at the same time, awfully proud of the enormous amount Obama and his team have accomplished, even though they, and most of the readers of this page, wish it had been even more. SMALL BUSINESS Rob Brown: “I marvel at the irrationality of extending tax cuts to the over $250K income crowd, especially for the stated reasons of the proponents. I meant to write a couple of months back after seeing an Olbermann segment re the ‘small business’ issue. The gist was that the definition being used for ‘small business’ included S Corporations. The de facto definition resolved to: small business meant ‘a small number of owners.’ They showcased a number of examples of huge S-Corp companies that no one would ever associate with the small business category. My favorite: Bechtel, the largest construction company in the US.” ☞ Other small business owners: the billionaire Koch brothers, who financed much of the Republican electoral success. The Republicans are absolutely determined to borrow the money from the Chinese or whoever will lend it to us to extend the tax cuts on income above $250,000. They claim it’s simply to help “small business” – “the job creators” – but as has been noted over and over, that’s just a crock. (I beg you again: if you disagree, please click and scroll down to items #1-#5 under Mitch McConnell.) GO AHEAD – TELL I’m sure you’ve heard the news . . . and I’m sure John McCain is still trying to thwart the will of the Commander in Chief, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a majority of the American people . . . but here it is, from the just-released report: Based on all we saw and heard, our assessment is that, when coupled with the prompt implementation of the recommendations we offer below, the risk of repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to overall military effectiveness is low. We conclude that, while a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will likely, in the short term, bring about some limited and isolated disruption to unit cohesion and retention, we do not believe this disruption will be widespread or long-lasting, and can be adequately addressed by the recommendations we offer below. Longer term, with a continued and sustained commitment to core values of leadership, professionalism, and respect for all, we are convinced that the U.S. military can adjust and accommodate this change, just as it has others in history. ☞ Amen.