Satan, Oprah, Perry, Hitler And the Statue of Liberty July 15, 2011March 24, 2017 Yesterday I mentioned Oprah’s link to Satan. This stuff is beyond nuts, of course – like the Rapture Index or anyone taking the Book of Mormon literally (“it is a . . . metaphor,” one of the newly-saved Ugandans explains impatiently near the end of the hit Broadway musical). But here is the sitting Governor of Texas, Rick Perry – who may be jumping into the race for President – linked to Satanic-conspiracy-theorists. (Did you know that the Statue of Liberty is a demonic idol?) Watch, and revel in your sanity.
A Good News Video July 14, 2011March 24, 2017 It now looks as though Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is on board to raise the debt ceiling but that the Republican House really might allow the country to go into default, with devastating consequences to rich and poor alike. I assume not, but they insist they will not accept the McConnell proposal. However the immediate crisis is resolved, the Republicans refuse to work with the President to tackle our long-term problems if that would mean anyone – even billionaires – having to pay anything to tackle our long-term problems. Their solution was the Paul Ryan budget: turn Medicare over to private insurance companies and let seniors pay an extra $6,000 a year for coverage, which is not a tax increase on tens of millions of seniors, just the free market working its magic. (See the difference?) It seems incredible that the Republicans refuse even to have the hedge fund manager who makes $100 million pay at the same marginal tax rate as his receptionist, but they really, really, really publicly state that this is a deal breaker – on the grounds that the hedge fund manager is a job creator. The wealthy are job creators. They must not be taxed as they were under Clinton, when 23 million new jobs were created. They must be taxed as they were under Bush, and as they still are, when no new jobs were created at all. Or maybe the notion is that, in the case of hedge fund managers, they will create jobs as they commission the construction of new yachts. But the first problem is that those jobs will be in Turkey. And the second problem is that what this country needs is not more yachts but infrastructural change that would lead to, for example, energy independence. It is that kind of big goal that we need – energy independence! – and that will require a couple of decades of emphasis on publicly funded private construction (when was the last time a billionaire built or repaired a bridge? other than across his koi pond?) – which means more public spending (via your tax payments) and somewhat less private spending (via your MasterCard). So, no, because of higher taxes you may not get to build the new yacht after all (sorry, Turkey). But, as a consolation, your country and your children get to have a future. And people seem to be getting it. That maybe the best-off, especially, should be chipping in at a time of national crisis. That maybe the Republican approach of obstructing everything is not constructive. In that context – the context of people ‘getting it’ – there’s this encouraging report from Jim Messina, who chairs the President’s reelection campaign. Look how many people have signed up. Look how many people have given $83 million, at an average of $69 each. It’s going to be hard, but we just may be able to ‘win the future’ despite the truly astonishing Republican efforts to block absolutely anything the President wants to do – including ideas they themselves proposed once the President accepts them (like the bipartisan deficit reduction committee). For all the wealth of the Koch brothers and of the corporate contributions that the Supreme Court has decided should be unchecked – and that it has decreed may remain secret* – for all that, and for all the zeal of pastors who consider Oprah an agent of Satan, and of well-meaning Tea Partyers who are angry and frightened and have bought the government-is-the-problem line (‘and it better keep its hands the hell off my Medicare!’) and who believe Iraq attacked us on 9/11 – for all that, we just might still win. And continue to make progress, albeit a lot slower than we’d like, toward investing in a brighter, fairer future. Watch Jim Messina’s brief video and be cheered. *masquerading as ‘Citizens for Gun Safety’ even if it were funded by gun makers determined to allow concealed weapons in saloons . . . or ‘Citizens for Healthy Children’ even if it were funded to elect Republicans who voted repeatedly against health coverage for children.
Two Videos That Could Try Your Sense of Humor July 13, 2011March 24, 2017 “A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road.” – Henry Ward Beecher There are your limericks, your two-guys-walk-into-a-bar, your knock-knocks, and your paraprosdokians. In the latter, some simple thought takes an unexpected turn. This list has been making its way around the Internet: 1. “Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.” 2. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience. 3. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on my list. 4. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. 5. If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong. 6. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public. 7. War does not determine who is right – only who is left. 8. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. 9. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station. 10. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman. 11. I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness. 16. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice. 17. You’re never too old to learn something stupid. 18. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target. 19. Hospitality is making your guests feel at home even when you wish they were. 20. When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water. KARMAGEDDON This clip from Monday’s Rachel Maddow starts out with carmageddon – L.A. is about to shut down a 10-mile stretch of one of its freeways to widen it – but then connects it to the debt ceiling crisis with (at minute 4) must-watch footage of Mitch Daniels – then George W. Bush’s Budget Director – explaining on Meet The Press why the debt ceiling had to be raised. Today’s Republican leadership voted to do so 19 times during the Bush years. But now that Obama is in . . . well, watch the clip. The wealthy are job creators. They must not be taxed as they were under Clinton, when the job creators created 23 million new jobs. They must be taxed as they were under Bush, when they created almost none at all. McCONNELL V. OBAMA Finally, there is this 5-minute CBS Evening news interview with President Obama. If you missed it, it may leave you gasping for a paraprosdokian . . . yet feeling, I think, that we have a President so calm and thoughtful and sensible that 80% of the country will agree with him. Which just might be enough to get the Republicans to do what’s right for the country. So we could have a positive resolution to all this yet.
On Strike July 12, 2011March 24, 2017 No, no, no, no, no. I’m not writing a column until you watch the Clinton speech excerpted yesterday. (What’s that? You say you did watch it? Well, did you forward it to everyone you know? Especially anyone you know in college? And urge them to do the same?) You may think this is a cheap summer trick to keep from having to post a column when it’s so gorgeous out here at the beach – and it is that. But really – people need to understand what’s going on. And if Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann strike some as too shrill, which on occasion they are, though in the main they are exceptionally good . . . or if Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert strike them as too bleeping profane or snide or whatever, though they are hugely brilliant and patriotic . . . well, then, this is perfect: President Clinton’s manner is thoughtful and understated; he isn’t running for anything; he gave us eight years of peace and prosperity; he left his successor with a surplus; and he has done more global good since leaving office than any other ex-president, ever. So he just may be worth listening to. Watch the whole thing. And then find a way to get others to watch. And remember: The wealthy are job creators. They must not be taxed as they were under Clinton, when we created 23 million new jobs. They must be taxed as they were under Bush, when we created almost none at all. TTNP Suggested here last Tuesday at $1.77, closed yesterday up a bit (not as big a bit as hoped) at $1.97. Guru: “Data were as expected and could not have been better. The phase III hit its primary endpoint with a very low p value measured both by the protocol-specified primary endpoint and by the recent FDA requested primary analysis. The market cap is not much more than $100 million – should be two to three times that.” Of course, “should be” and “will be” are but loosely related concepts.
Don’t Tax the Rich; Don’t Let the Poor Vote; Confuse Everybody Else July 11, 2011March 24, 2017 The wealthy are job creators. They must not be taxed as they were under Clinton, when we created 23 million new jobs. They must be taxed as they were under Bush, when we created almost none at all. I think I’m going to repeat that every day until the best-off – especially hedge fund managers – are completely protected from any shared sacrifice whatsoever. This is the Republican mantra, this is Morning Joe Scarborough’s mantra, this is the Fox News Rupert Murdoch mantra – so now it will be mine. In fact, I think we should go back to the days when only white men with property were allowed to vote. But – that being politically incorrect – at least the Republicans are making modern-day strides in that direction: The Bush Supreme Court now allows the rich – and rich corporations – unlimited influence over elections, with the ability to swamp the airwaves with disinformation while keeping their identity secret (you may be Exxon, but you can call yourself “Everyday Citizens to Protect Wildlife”) and without penalty for distortion (if your tax cuts will benefit mainly the top 1%, just say “by far the vast majority” of your tax cuts will benefit “people at the bottom of the economic ladder”). Republican governors and legislative chambers are doing all they can to keep the poor, the young, and the disabled from voting – because those constituencies tend to vote Democrat. Here’s a 3-minute clip with the latest example from Ohio. You will be astonished. (Or these, days, maybe not.) PRESIDENT CLINTON Have you watched this speech? Our country is in real trouble so try to find time . . . even if it means postponing a truly wonderful summer movie, like Midnight in Paris or X-Men: First Class. (You need to find time for the speech and these wonderful movies.) On the economy, President Clinton argues that budget-slashing is not appropriate until the economy is growing again. Even the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission agrees. Otherwise, you run the risk of a vicious cycle: austerity that leads to even rougher economic times that lead to even less tax revenue that leads to even bigger budget deficits that require even greater cutting . . . and down and down you spiral. No! First you put people to work doing what desperately needs doing (modernizing our infrastructure). Then, once the economy gets a head of steam, you can begin to reduce the deficit. Having himself inherited a recession – and a deficit – and having left his successor “surpluses as far as the eye can see,” President Clinton may have more credibility in this area than first-term Tea Party Congressmen. And yet, he notes, “The Republicans who control the House and have a lot of votes in the Senate have now decided – having quadrupled the Debt in the 12 years before I took office and doubled it after I left – that it’s all of a sudden the biggest problem in the world.” So listen to President Clinton on the economy. He says, “Everybody knows the stimulus was a failure. Except it wasn’t. The hole blown in the economy was about $3 trillion deep; the stimulus was $800 billion; even Albert Einstein couldn’t fill a $3 trillion hole with $800 billion.” So now is not the time to be talking short-term spending cuts – even though it’s a good time to be talking long-term adjustments. “The current governing philosophy of the Republicans in Congress,” President Clinton told the 1,000 college students in his audience, “is that America would be just fine if we could weaken the government more. The government is the source of all of our problems. There’s no such thing as a good tax, no such thing as a bad tax cut; no such thing as a good regulation, no such thing as a bad deregulation. This idea that the government is the source of all America’s problems would strike the Founding Fathers as passing strange. But it has had a great hold on America since the election in 1980.” You need to watch the the whole thing. There’s so much wisdom and perspective. And just plain old things you may not have known. (“When Barack Obama took office, America had exactly 2% of the market for these high-powered batteries that are necessary to run hybrid-electric and all-electric cars. Because the Democratic Congress had previously provided a tax credit when they took office in 2007 for new green manufacturing jobs, and then in 2009 it was turned into the cash equivalent of a tax credit for start-ups, since a new business has no taxable income against which to claim a credit . . . [and two years later] America had 20% of the world market. From two to twenty in less than two years, with 30 new factories built or under construction, 18 in Michigan. But it was a secret to most voters. If you knew it and you didn’t tell people, you were part of the problem.”) (“The student loan program used to work like this: students would get their loans from banks, the government would guarantee 90%. The new program works like this: the government sets aside a reserve, loans the money direct . . . so the interest rates are lower, first. Secondly, every student in America will now have the option of repaying their student loan as a small fixed percentage of their income for up to 20 years. This is huge. This means nobody ever has to drop out of college again because of the cost. And when you get out of school, if you want to wait a couple years to take a public service job, if you want to be a teacher or go into some other kind of community service, your loan obligation will be determined by your job not the other way around. This is a massive thing! And, to boot, it saves $60 billion in government subsidies to banks, $40 billion of which is put into guaranteeing for the next decade that Pell grants and work-study programs and everything else keep up with inflation, the other twenty reduces the deficit by $20 billion. The Republicans propose to repeal that.”) Did you know that we remain first in the world in the percentage of students going to college but have fallen from first to ninth in the percentage graduating with a four-year degree – “a calamitous development” – and “what does that tell you about the impact of cost?” “They actually won seats in Congress saying [in effect], ‘vote for us, we’ll make student loans more expensive and harder to repay and by the way, we’ll increase the deficit.’” But – and here he raises his voice and accompanies each syllable with a finger wag – “no-bod-y knew – and you cannot turn truth into power if you do not know.” Which is why Fox and the Koch brothers and the Citizens United case are so important. If you can flood the airwaves with disinformation, you can keep people from knowing. Or persuade them of “death panels” or that Iraq attacked us on 9/11. It’s enough to elect leaders who will put the interests of the rich and powerful ahead of the common good. It can lead to war. It can lead to depression. It matters. And it’s why there is such a concerted effort to make it hard for the young and disadvantaged to register and vote. That’s what you do if you want to tilt the outcome in favor of the rich and powerful. “From World War II to 1980,” Clinton told the students in his audience, “the bottom 90% of us consistently took home 65% of national income, the top 10% took home 35%, the top 1% took home 9%.* That was enough inequality to reward hard work, creativity, and good ideas. Look how it’s changed since 1980, under the [government-is-the-problem, tax-cuts-for-the-rich] theory. The bottom 90% share of national income has dropped from 65% to 52%, the top 10% has gone from 35% to 48%, the top 1% has gone to 22%.” He talks about health care. He talks about the role of corporations. “It’s not true that government will mess up a two-car parade,” he says, giving a great example. There’s so much here. Watch the whole thing. And then find a way to get others to watch. “One of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today,” he says, “is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you [college students] from voting next time. There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the other Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.” Watch the whole thing. And then find a way to get others to watch. *Doesn’t add to 100% because that third number – the top 1% — is included in the second number. Another way of phrasing this: the bottom 90% took home 65%, the next 9% took home 26% and the top 1% took home 9% = 100%.
Infrastructure July 8, 2011March 24, 2017 Two nights ago Rachel Maddow had a clip about how Oklahoma’s Senator Inhofe nearly killed a bunch of people landing his plane on a closed runway, provoking little more than a light slap on the wrist from the F.A.A. – yet is attacking the F.A.A. anyway. A trivial bit of arrogance, perhaps, but one more example of a highly effective Republican tactic: turning reality on its head. Nearly kill a bunch of people? Attack the F.A.A. Running against a war hero? Mock his medals. Want to slash taxes for the best-off? Assert – with a straight face! – that “by far the vast majority” of your tax cuts will go to “people at the bottom of the economic ladder.” And then came this must-see segment on infrastructure. How we rank 23rd in the world – and falling. How the President wants to put people to work with investments to reverse that decline. How the Republicans want to block that. Our country’s future is at stake in these debates. It’s worth taking a few minutes to watch. Have a great weekend. And remember: the wealthy are job creators. They must not be taxed as they were under Clinton, when we created 23 million new jobs. They must be taxed as they were under Bush, when we created almost none at all.
Watch This 30-Second Spot July 7, 2011March 24, 2017 Here it is in 30 seconds: “You can’t rebuild America if you tear down the middle class.” The Republicans have made it clear from the get-go – explicitly – that their number-one priority is Obama’s failure. Why? Is it because he wanted to start an educational race to the top? Or because he hoped to take out Bin laden? No. Is it because he wanted to reform the financial system and establish a consumer financial protection bureau? No. Was their concern that he wanted every American to have access to affordable health care, along the lines of the Mitt Romney model? That he wanted to save the U.S. auto industry? That he wanted to wind down combat operations in Iraq? That he wanted to empanel a bipartisan budget deficit commission (their idea)? Or establish a free-market cap-and-trade system (their idea)? Or modernize our decaying infrastructure? Were they alarmed that a Nobel-prize winning physicist was named to head the Department of Energy or that investments were made to help the private sector fund potentially game-changing energy technologies? Nope. None of that. Could they have wanted his Presidency to fail because he would sign the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act or initiate an anti-bullying campaign or encourage potentially life-saving embryonic stem cell research or appoint non-white-male-conservatives to the Supreme Court? Or include gays and lesbians and transgender citizens in his vision of America? Because he hoped to tighten tobacco regulation or check the sale of assault weapons at gun shows? Well, we may be getting a little warmer, but still no. They have wanted him to fail (remember their cheering when Chicago failed in its Olympic bid?) because they want their power back – an inclination natural to both parties – and because they want to protect the rich and powerful (an inclination natural only to one). The rich must not be taxed.* Corporations must not be regulated. Government is bad, especially to the extent it gives power or rights to the non-wealthy. That’s the nub of it. To win, they need unemployment to be high and the economy stalled. And the rest of us are caught in the crossfire. Have a nice day. *Or at least be protected from the tax rates they suffered under Clinton (let alone Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter – or even Reagan, who set the tax on investment income at 28%, nearly double George W. Bush’s 15% rate.
The Key Is What We Spend Our Money +On+ July 6, 2011March 24, 2017 20 QUESTIONS, 21st CENTURY STYLE Stephen Willey: “This genius knew everyone but you, so I updated his data base. Try it; it’s fun to stump.” ☞ I tried Attila the Hun. The most remarkable thing was not that it got it, but that I was the 2,321st to try Attila. When I tried me, after 20 questions the genius guessed . . . Anthony Weiner. Ten questions later . . . Larry Summers. Ten later still . . . David Brooks. Oh, well. TAX AND INVEST VERSUS BORROW AND SPEND What if we had less money in our pockets to buy new clothes (made in China) and to feed our $5/day Starbucks habit ($1,825 a year) – because our taxes were higher? It would crimp the Chinese apparel manufacturers, but the Chinese would still have lots of work to do just getting all their own citizens well clothed, fed, and housed (and a huge cash surplus to buy stuff from us they need to do it). Starbucks might need 20% fewer baristas to meet the reduced demand, but those baristas could find jobs – if they could find jobs – doing something more fundamental to the nation’s long-term success than brewing macchiatos. Like helping to caulk 100 million homes and commercial structures (on which work could start tomorrow) or helping to pave our roads with solar panels (which may or may not ever prove out as an effective way to go all-solar, but is thrilling to contemplate). THE KEY IS WHAT WE SPEND OUR MONEY +ON+ Tom Zimoski: “As you are a big booster of Obama, I think many of your readers would be interested in your reaction to these comments by Paul Krugman on Saturday’s radio address.” Barack Herbert Hoover Obama By Paul Krugman From today’s radio address: “Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.” Yep, the false government-family equivalence, the myth of expansionary austerity, and the confidence fairy, all in just two sentences. Read this and this to see why he’s wrong. This is truly a tragedy: the great progressive hope (well, I did warn people) is falling all over himself to endorse right-wing economic fallacies. ☞ I think there are a lot of things operating here. Yes, we do need to get our long-term economic glide path stabilized . . . which in the case of Social Security simply means some pretty painless actuarial tweaks. (See this column from 2005 with my suggestions.) As a nation – I repeat – we need to be spending less on Starbucks (God love them) and more on infrastructure. So we need to raise taxes. Higher taxes mean less money for shopping malls but more for reducing our energy imports. We’ve neglected infrastructure for decades now and weren’t nearly ambitious enough in the first stimulus package. (Guess which party stood in the way.) Making long-term plans to modernize our physical plant will, over time, put millions of people to work doing things that crucially need doing (work done primarily by the private sector). If we do this . . . even as, yes, we make long-term actuarial tweaks to Social Security (and, less easily, bend the health care cost curve, on which we’ve finally at least made a start), then it needn’t be a Herbert Hoover scenario at all. And once we do get back on track – and if the pace of technological progress makes possible the undreamed of prosperity that it well may – then in a decade or two we might be able to cancel those Social Security tweaks and perhaps even make the benefits richer. But for now, we need to signal to the markets that we WILL get our house in order in the years to come . . . even as we emphasize education, innovation, and infrastructure, which are the seed corn of our future economic harvest. I think the President and Professor Krugman – both heroes – might agree on that.
Listen July 5, 2011March 24, 2017 LISTEN TO THE PRESIDENT FOR FOUR MINUTES Sometimes, we wish he were pounding the table or stamping his foot. Yet at the end of the day, quiet and calm can sometimes speak louder. Listen. LISTEN TO RACHEL ON MINNESOTA This clip is longer, so if you don’t have time to watch the first six or eight minutes, here’s the executive summary: the Republicans seem to actually want to shut down the government (one hint: their enthusiastic chant, “shut it down! shut it down!”) and are now making budget negotiations contingent on things like restricting stem cell research (lest a blastocyst be harmed in pursuit of saving actual, fully formed adult lives). Yikes. More on our economic path tomorrow. Today, as New York’s adoption of marriage equality continues to reverberate . . . DAVD FRUM: “I WAS WRONG ABOUT SAME-SEX MARRIAGE” Conservative David Frum long opposed same-sex marriage – as some of your friends and relatives, especially the older ones, probably still do. It’s not a concept that gains near immediate enthusiastic acceptance as, say, color TV or “going to the moon” once did. Please forward his current thinking to those friends and relatives. It will be a sign of respect: that you respect their concerns and their willingness to consider new information, as David Frum did. (“The case against same-sex marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed its test.”) They might even reach the same conclusion. NEW YORK TIMES: HE SURE WAS From an editorial last week: . . . Any Congress with a real respect for personal freedom would repeal [The Defense of Marriage Act]. That, of course, does not describe the current Congress, where many members talk a great deal about freedom but apply it mainly to businesses and gun owners. . . . GET RID OF MARRIAGE? Peter Kaczowka: “We need to eliminate marriage. Marriage is a government subsidy program, a form of discrimination against single people. The state should not be in the business of blessing unions. I favor banning discrimination on the basis of marital status: no spousal Social Security benefits or tax breaks. I’d ask: gay or straight, should people be marrying for money, not love? Government marriage subsidies cloud the issue, reduce the commitment being made.” ☞ An interesting perspective, for sure. But I think we have more pressing problems than to try to reach consensus on this – and I don’t discredit the other side of the argument: namely, that society has an interest in encouraging committed relationships. Whereas I don’t see ANY valid “other side” to allowing all couples this legal status except gay ones. MAN-TO-MANDATORY MARRIAGE Russell Bell: “Remember Dave Barry’s comment? ‘I was against gay marriage until I realized I didn’t have to get one?’ Now comes Onion Radio News: ‘Massachusetts Supreme Court Orders All Citizens To Gay Marry.’” ☞ Note to cave-dwellers: The Onion is . . . satire. TTNP / DVAX / DYAX At Guru’s suggestion – and only with money I can truly afford to lose – I am now the proud owner of TTNP at a bit more than $1.77 a share and of DVAX at a bit more than $2.77 a share, hoping for good news on one or both in the next little while. (Famous last words.) Separately, selling one with a similar symbol, at about $2, that didn’t work out – DYAX, suggested almost two years ago, at $3.17.
Worried, Married, and Calling for Free An Acrostic July 1, 2011March 24, 2017 I’M WORRIED The Republicans say we cannot allow the Bush tax cuts to expire because we cannot have American millionaires and billionaires taxed as they were under Clinton/Gore . . . because – although the economy was great in those years for millionaires and billionaires (and tons of new businesses were started) – Republicans simply will not allow it. They are Republicans. They only lower taxes – when times are good (because taxes are too high) and when times are bad (because unemployment is too high) and when times are anything else (because who doesn’t like lower taxes?). It’s their brand. They applauded the huge Reagan military build-up but didn’t want to pay for it (the National Debt quadrupled under Reagan/Bush-41). They applauded the war in Iraq but didn’t want to pay for it (the National Debt doubled under Bush-43). And now we have a debt per capita the same size as the one in Greece (about $45,000 for every man, woman, and child) and the way to finally restore fiscal prudence, say the Republicans, is to . . . keep taxes for the wealthy dramatically lower than they were under Eisenhower or Nixon or even Reagan, because . . . who doesn’t like low taxes? It’s their brand. And it’s their hoped-for route back to even more power because it is likely to lead to an economy so bad that voters will demand change – even though that would mean handing the reins back to the crowd who got us into this mess in the first place. Rachel Maddow had a “Charlie Brown” segment last night showing how the Republicans come up with good ideas – the market-based cap-and-trade solution, the individual-mandate solution, the bipartisan budget commission solution, a sliver of revenue enhancement – and when the President accepts them . . . whoosh, they’re gone! They turn against their own ideas. It does not bode well. SHE’S WORRIED Friend of this page Janet Tavakoli Huff-posted this troubling piece: If a drunk driver crashed his speeding rental car into your house and killed your spouse, you would be outraged if law enforcers took bribes and refused to give the driver a blood test. If the judge then gave the killer a small fine and ordered you to pay the fine and pay for all the damages, you’d be outraged. If the government then handed the drunk-driver keys to a bigger faster rental car, handed the drunk driver an even bigger bottle of whiskey, and then gave you the rental bill; you’d storm Washington, blizzard elected officials with protests and organize friends and associates to vote these malefactors, the elected officials that betrayed your trust, out of office. Yet, we’ve remained largely silent in the face of the same sort of behavior by Wall Street and Washington. Bonus-seeking bankers crashed into Main Street’s economy and ran control frauds within banks that would have failed without taxpayer bailouts. Bureaucrats and elected officials bailed them out without demanding consequences. Bankers are revving their engines again in credit derivatives, currency derivatives, and commodities trades. “Financial reform” addresses none of the latter problems. Arianna Huffington’s Third World America: How Our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream explains that the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the bank bailout package also known as TARP, allotted only $72 billion to infrastructure projects. Another feature of the bill was to have banks agree to lend money to medium and small sized businesses to stimulate the economy. That didn’t happen . . . The number one stimulus for any economy is not consumer spending, although that is a powerful secondary effect. The number one stimulus is capital spending, investment in the production of real goods and consumables. As Third World America explains: “There were three flaws with the old economy that has crashed. It favored consumption over production, debt over small savings, and environmental damage over environmental renewal.” Our ongoing bank bailouts included the mispricing of around $4 trillion of toxic assets that the banks cannot afford to honestly price, since bank capital would be wiped out sparking another global financial meltdown. We continue to provide cheap taxpayer funding through the Fed. New accounting rules allow banks to cover-up the low price of impaired assets, and government debt guarantees provide ongoing subsidies to banks that have a value of trillions of dollars. . . . Beyond the banks, we have fiscal mismanagement and corruption that plagues middle class taxpayers. I happen to live in Illinois, the best example of this in the nation. Cook County encompasses Chicago and some of its surrounding suburbs. This week, the Cook County Treasurer discovered “stunning” debt. This debt isn’t new, but apparently our officials are now properly terrified. Our total debt for the municipality, education, county, sanitary, park, fire, township, library and special services is now $108 billion. That means the debt per person in Chicago exceeds $23,700 or more than $63,500 per household, and that is just local debt. . . . We’re not doing better on a national level. Americans owe almost $166,600 per household or around $45,000 per person (Greek citizens owe $44,000 per person). That’s on top of our local debt. David Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general, says it’s even worse than that. When he takes into account future obligations for Medicare, Social Security, Federal debt, Military retirement, Civil servant retirement, and more, we owe $546,663 per household. That doesn’t even include your local debt — it may not be as bad as if you lived in Illinois, but it’s substantial nonetheless — and personal debt including mortgages and consumer debt that average more than $120,000 per household. We’re told we are a great country and we can “grow our way out of it.” Exactly how does that occur, when jobs are going overseas, taxes for the wealthiest in our country are uncollectible after exploiting tax breaks, and programs for investment in infrastructure and production are virtually nonexistent? America’s biggest problem by far is that capital spending in new production facilities that create jobs and real products never occurred, not even after trillions of dollars were thrown at banks in the global financial system. . . . ☞ All this can be fixed if we put our minds to it, and part of the solution is taxes – both to fund infrastructure projects that will strengthen our country and put people back to work and also, ultimately, to lower the deficit. Watch the Maddow clip, referenced above, and decide for yourself whether the Republican leadership are working to solve our problems. MARRIAGE In multi-colored chalk, on a display outside a store in Cape Neddick, Maine: “If you don’t like gay marriage, blame straight people. They’re the ones who keep having gay babies.” VIBER – RATED The estimable Alan Rogowsky: “Have you downloaded Viber? Free calls to anyone anywhere who has it as well. Nice for international calling and more seamless than Skype. I ‘viber’ (and Skype) with my partner in St. Maarten constantly. I also have pals in Moscow, Sydney, Jerusalem and Paris who now use Viber. Makes a huge difference to be able to call cellphone to cellphone at no charge whatsoever. By the way, VTOK (which accesses Google Voice) is similar and adds video to the mix as well.” “When you use Viber” (says Viber itself) “your phone calls to any other Viber user are free, and the sound quality is much better than a regular call. You can call any Viber user, anywhere in the world, for free. All Viber features are 100% FREE and do not require any additional ‘in application’ purchase.” Early reviews were somewhat mixed, but if you have an iPhone or iPad, you might want to check it out. Not only is it free, at least for now it’s even free of advertising. JOHN LEEDS’ ACROSTIC And finally, to start this holiday weekend, an acrostic – a poem the first letter of each line of which, when read from top to bottom, forms a word or phrase. John Leeds: “Here’s the only acrostic I wrote that I like (it’s rare I try them.) It came from a rooster that moved into my neighborhood and would wake me predawn. I caught him, released him at my wife’s protests, then protested to her he was destroying my sleep, and SHE recaught him on a predawn raid, chasing him around the neighborhood: Red-legged raucous feathered flying beast Of all your faults, your crowing I like least On whim, I like your spunk and verve Some days I rue your o’ersized nerve That you could live but quietly Enters often in my mind. Don’t you see, Rooster? You and I are a couple from hell So if I eat you, please don’t tell. “And no, I didn’t really eat him, just moved him to a spot in a different part of town where I hoped he’d survive the winter. He vanished in a huge snowstorm, but I suspect we’ll meet again.” Have a great weekend.