Playing Chicken

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.