The great tax compromise: falling out of love with Obama (cont.)
Many Democrats in Congress are finally expressing their rage at Obama, an anger been growing for quite some time and seems to have reached a (temporary?) head with the tax cut compromise. Major Democratic donors are not happy either; some say they’ll even sit on the sidelines in 2012:
“I do not plan to support Obama and his reelection effort,” said Utah-based hedge fund manager Art Lipson, who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party and its allies in recent elections. He views the tax-cut compromise as a giveaway to Republicans that will increase the deficit.
“He’s got many great qualities, but he is not a fighter,” Lipson said of the president. “I’ve met with many donors and the level of disappointment is extreme.”
Somehow, I don’t think it’s the increased deficit that really concerns these donors. They were and are only too happy to increase it for other reasons—just not for things that make Republicans happy.
And I wonder which elements of the recommended changes in entitlements that would really decrease the deficit are the ones they’d support if Obama were so bold as to champion them. I suspect the cuts they’d like would mainly have to do with defense. And it remains to be seen, of course, how serious Republicans will be about cutting the deficit when they control Congress starting in January. If not, they’ve chosen stimulus at the expense of a deficit that will swell, which was not the bargain voters thought they were making by electing them last month.
A while back I wrote this piece on the left’s falling out of love with Obama. In my earlier post, I compared the phenomenon to that of the lovers in Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” who are manipulated by Puck placing magical drops in their eyes that cause them to fall in love with the first being they see on awakening. When he later administers the antidote, they can’t understand what they ever saw in their erstwhile beloved. This is the situation we have here, despite the fact that, as Krauthammer notes, Obama really won the deal if you look at it as a way to get a stimulus going that might help the economy by 2012, although at great cost. But that’s not the way liberal Democrats look at it.
I’ve located the passage from the play that says it all, and quite succinctly:
TITANIA
My Oberon! what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.OBERON
There lies your love.
TITANIA
How came these things to pass?
O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!
“[Lipson] views the tax-cut compromise as a giveaway to Republicans that will increase the deficit.”
A deficit that the Democrat White House and Congress did their damnedest to grow, grow, and grow even more. A Cloward-Piven deficit.
This brings to my mind the so-called War on Poverty, created, again by Democrats, with steely deliberation and determination until now our country is half-populated by the poor pitiful poor whom we are just big meanies if we don’t want our tax dollars going out to them. The Cloward-Piven poor.
Neither the deficit nor the poverty was necessary, but for at least the past 50 years Democrats have been falling all over themselves in an effort to destroy human wealth and to augment human misery, simply in order to get and keep themselves in power.
How can a successful hedge fund manager be that uneducated about fiscal realities? Really! The proverbial bag of hammers would leave the guy in the dust.
Well, I shouldn’t be too hard on the guy. He probably has an M.B.A. from Harvard just like you-know-who. And he gave hundreds of thousands to Democrats? Ouch.
OK, Mr. genius hedge fund guy. There is a well known chart. It shows over the last century excluding WWII that, high taxes or low taxes, the government got 20% of GDP. 20% during the 90% years and 20% during the 28% years.
This means, oh financial hedge fund wizard, that if tax rates are really low and everybody is working his ass off to make an extra buck, starting a business, expanding a business, hiring more people, that everybody is going to do better and the GDP, of which the government is getting 20%, rain or shine, is going to get bigger, so the government’s take is going to get bigger too.
This might also mean that some really productive folks might get to make and keep more money. The rich people hollering about paying their fair share are welcome to write the Treasury a check. But they don’t. They don’t pay any taxes on their wealth, either. Only their earnings, which are sheltered nine ways from Sunday. How much dough you figure is squirreled away in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?
This irrational hatred of people who do well may just do us in. This country was built by people who wanted to emulate the successful, not lynch them.
But, Mr. Hedge Fund Genius, if you’re going to be an idiot at least be smart about it. When they raise the estate tax Bill Gates and Warren Buffet won’t pay the extra tax. Your kids will.
“I do not plan to support Obama and his reelection effort,” said Utah-based hedge fund manager Art Lipson
Good, I can be first to say raaaaaaaaaaacist!
Suck it up, Lipson. Obama is your golden child. Unless he voluntarily does not seek reelection, you can forget about having a different Democrat candidate.
Even if he chooses to be a 1 termer, there is still a high probability that blacks will sit out the 2012 election, unless there’s another black at the head of the ticket.
looks like the reset button barry sent clinton with backfired, they are loading for bear
Nuclear warheads ready for Bulava missile as test program picks up steam
en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20101207/161664867.html
seems like his friends across the ocean are falling out of love fast..
“say the movement of warheads to facilities bordering NATO allies appeared to run counter to pledges made by Moscow starting in 1991 to pull tactical nuclear weapons back from frontier posts and to reduce their numbers.” WSJ
[remember, if Obama turns out not to be valid, any treaty he signed and any agreement is worthless]
“Being a NATO member, of course, someone could say, ‘Don’t worry,’” fretted Azubalis. “But when you’re living in the neighborhood, you should always be more cautious. American officials expressed worry but they also don’t know too much about where the weapons are and the conditions under which they are kept.”
[maybe they have shipped some through the Mexican tunnels?]
According to US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, a February 2010 cable quoted Defense Secretary Robert Gates as telling a French official that Russia is an “oligarchy run by the security services.”
Bill Clinton’s part:
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The scariest thing here is the new voice, the new character, the newly arrived blackguard: the socialist. One cannot reasonably argue that these people are anything but. They are here. They consider your money, their money. Well, actually, the government gets it first, but that’s just a little procedural thing.
There’s a bit of irony: Recently, there was a discussion about Stanly Kurtz’s book, “Radical-in-Chief,” and the idea was that conservatives needed to show that Obama is a liar, does not do what he says he will do, and is, indeed, a socialist.
But the bear blew first! That is, Obama is shown to be a liar and does not do what he says he will do, not to conservatives, but to socialists.
We conservatives say he is a socialist. The socialists say he’s not a socialist. And both sides agree he is a liar.
As a test case i propose republicans put forth a bill that would tax all lottery winnings run by states at triple the current rate. I mean so that even a dollar winning ticket yields somewhere around 28 cents, Then lets let all Americans hear first hand the argument from lottery officials about how their decimated enterprises can’t afford to go back to the old rate.
Funny thing is, i believe there are plenty of brain dead democrats who would settle for a decimated intake from lotteries if faced with such a scenario. They have principles you know. Such as thou shalt never reduce taxes, factor in human nature or examine bottom lines.
Obama had two sets of promises to keep for his base. The first was the set of promises he explicitly expressed, which were extravagant enough.
The second set were those that his supporters imagined that he made as they shaped his personality in their minds. One famous example was the expressed by supporter Peggy Joseph who believeat that Obama would put gas in har car and pay her mortgage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI
Obama and his team would have seen this coming if they had had a grip on reality themselves.
Art Lipson: racist?
That must be so. After all, liberal pundits have been explaining for at least a year that there cannot possibly be any rational basis for opposing Obama’s agenda; therefore, they say, anybody who does so must be a racist.
Art Lipson: racist. QED.
I didn’t know they had hedge funds in Utah.
Krauthammer is just wrong. He’s got an assumption buried within his reasoning that is toxic – that the compromise actually might improve the economy and benefit Obama’s reelection prospects.
In fact if the Republicans are successful i.e. they cut or limit taxes and cut spending and limit new regulatory initiatives by the left, then the economy will improve and unemployment will decline. We all benefit. Another big beneficiary will be Obama. To the extent his worldview is defeated by his political adversaries the more likely he will convince enough independents (that he had something to do with the improvements) to keep him around.
However, that a risk the Republicans will have to take if they want to deserve to be trusted with more power.
The alternative that they should deliberately keep the economy sick in order to ensure a Republican president is unacceptable and a sure pathway to (deserve) getting thrown out of power.
I didn’t know they had hedge funds in Utah.
With this sort of financial acumen, they may not have one for long.
When I watched Sarah Palin shoot the caribou, I noticed she had no hesitation. In fact, she was so anxious to get him that she was gearing up to fire from the standing position–a position not nearly as accurate as using a rest in the sitting or prone position.
She’s a killer. And that’s a good thing. Ever had the feel of a good bolt action rifle in your hands? That’s what I call executive experience. And its going to take someone who can’t wait to get at things which other people are afraid of: like going after entitlements.
@Curtis: With no disrespect to her femininity, Palin is more man than Obama could ever be. And more adult too.
Palin is more man than Obama could ever be. And more adult too.
High praise indeed.
@Occam’s: Well, not really if you think about it. 🙂
Irony, ConceptJunkie, irony!
The tax compromise should be viewed as a triumph of democratic politics and an expression of popular sovereignty. Each side got something; each side gave something. This is the only way the upcoming civil war will be averted. If one side is rendered completely hapless, that side will revert to war as politics.
In the Civil war the issue was slavery. And the country could not go on with slavery. In this instant “pre-war” the issue is socialism. However, the big difference is that socialism is not yet entrenched as the law of the land like slavery was. Close, yes. But not quite. And there is a movement away from not towards socialism.
It may yet be possible to defeat the home-grown socialists; this is the gift our founding fathers gave us: a system which incorporates compromise and prevents, until the last possible moment, war.
But the momentum is still on the side of the socialists and we must gainsay that momentum by trenching a new line in education. Slowly and surely, at the grass roots level, as parents becoming involved, we can do it.
But if we think that we can win the war at the political level while not training up a new generation of free men and free women, we delude ourselves and give to our children a future full of fear.
Curtis said, “The tax compromise should be viewed as a triumph of democratic politics and an expression of popular sovereignty.”
Yep. Until you dig into the details. I just watched Greta interview Representative Jeff Flake (R -Arizona). It turns out that the Dems have not only got their year of unemployment benefits in there, but another $150 billion of special interest tax breaks and pork. So, it is actually another $200 billion added to the deficit before the new Congress gets seated. Conservative Repubs like Flake are going to vote against this thing and then put reinstating the Bush tax rates (And nothing else!) on the agenda for their first action in January. If that’s what happens, it will be a bookkeeping headache, but it won’t increase the debt by $200 billion as the present compromise does.
Congress is taking a four day weekend. I’m guessing the far left and far right are going to marshall their votes against this thing and it may not pass. If that happens, it’ll play havoc with the markets for a few days, but I would rather see a straight up vote on reinstating the Bush tax rates without all the lard, rather than this hydra headed compromise.
Definitely, a straight up vote which defeats this bill is best. Then, the new Congress can pass extending the current tax code without extending the unemployment benefits to those “who through no fault of their own” are unemployed. (I could extend that “through no fault of my own” defense to just about anything, but a modicum of respect for people’s time prevents me.)
However, what we have seen is that usually, and unlike the last two years, each side can’t get everything it wanst. Numerous examples may abound as to when that is not advantageous, but in general, it has meant a republic which has endured.
With her resignation as governor I stopped being a Palin supporter, but I give her credit for supporting of the Ryan Roadmap, i.e. for not flinching from the issue.
Who else will speak out? Mitt? Huck? Anybody?
gs, back in colonial days, when Washington fought a guerrilla action, would you have excoriated him as you do Palin?
If you were placed in a position where someone could throw darts at you continuously, and you knew it was death for you to remain, would you remain? Obviously it hasn’t meant death for Alaska. It remains. It’s still good. It’s still going strong.
I don’t get it. You seem like someone who would more agree with the statement, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” than “My country, my body.” So it appears to me your anger at Palin’s abdication of responsibility (and that is characterizing most distastefully to me) has a deeper and unrevealed source other than “she abdicated her responsibility.” I admit, I suspect PDS. Initiated and encouraged by the media.
Raising the Washington meme again: Was he wrong to refuse a third term? History has affirmed that among his great character traits was humility–that is to realize that nations do not depend on cults of personality.
In fact, the truth may be, that she did a service, not a disservice, by her renunciation.
I leave you the field.
How did this thread turn to Palin? The problem with Obama is that he never wanted to be the President. He wanted to be seen as the President. He wanted the big jet. He wanted the cameras and the adulation. Imagine his surprise when he go to that office that has no corners and found that he had to do actual work.
Obama has never had to do work before. He doesn’t know how and there is no hard bitten foreman to teach him how to work.
Palin, OTOH, has no future in electoral politics. The Donks hate her more than they hated George W. Bush. The Republican establishment hate her almost as much. she went after and got some of the crooked Republicans in the old boy network in Alaska.They can’t take the chance she’d do the same thing in Washington, DC.
Peter: Regarding Palin, I can see you’re still up to making baseless assertions, unless, of course you have a crystal ball and can see the future.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/while-whacking-left-obama_n_794061.html
check out comments as posted by moonbattery
but a few weeks before the big pusch soros in an interview gave them permission to attack Obama…
[media matters refutes things as they assume their readers did not notice that mr beck was playing video interviews, not editorial interpretation]
George Soros says Obama must go
english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/22-11-2010/115867-george_soros-0/
Last Tuesday, November 16 , Soros told financiers of the Democratic party that Obama must go. The liberal “Huffington Post” quoted Soros as saying:
“…if this president can’t do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.”
after that, you can watch the machine move collectively to do that and turn on obama…
if you never caught, or remembered this point, then you would think that it was some natural way, and would sit there imagining ways it naturally happens and why it would be reasonable, and you would not realize what a collective response is (like Dowd being celebrated for how she wraps the party line so you read it, not how she actually thinks for herself. you may think she is celebrated as a thinker, but she is really celebrated for her curtain hanging making pretty left collective thought)
this is how cultural mass points are created vs actually happen (you can see in pelosi the surprise that any natural things happen and the assumption that ALL such actions are contrived through such bias injection by coordination)
We used to know concepts like false sincerity…
Curtis, if you are shooting game in the Alaskan snow, being able to shoot standing has certain advantages over shooting kneeling, seated, or prone. You’ll get enough cold snow on you over the course of a day.
Peter, OTOH, has no future in political writing.