It’s taxing: hikes and breaks

The New Neo Posted on by

In President Obama’s speech tonight, he will speak of “tax reform,” among other topics But the details are being closely guarded.

It’s unclear whether he will propose some sort of tax hike for the “rich,” or the expiration some of the Bush tax cuts, as many have advocated. Some say that would be an excellent way to reduce the deficit. Some say it wouldn’t matter at all, and could even make things worse because raising taxes is almost invariably followed by raising spending (see also this).

What’s a poor voter to do, except be skeptical? Actually, the two positions I cited in the paragraph above are not inherently contradictory, because the first—that higher taxes would be highly effective in deficit reduction—also presupposes that Congress will not do anything to raise spending. The second says that’s unrealistic: saying that Congress can resist using the revenue for new goodies is like saying you’ll only eat one potato chip when there’s a bag in the cupboard crying out to be consumed.

That’s the practical issue, or at least one of them. Another is whether raising taxes actually provides the expected revenue, or whether people tend to adjust their behavior accordingly to foil the government.

And then there are the philosophical questions. One of the many differences between those on the left and those on the right is that the latter think that, for the most part, when rich people earn money it belongs to them, and that if we take that away we take away a great deal of the incentive that drives prosperity. The former think that rich people have stolen the money from the rest of us and that when we take it away from them we are just reclaiming what we rightfully own. So to the left (except for rich people on the left who are just as assiduous in hiring tax lawyers to take advantage of all loopholes), taxes on the rich are an inherently good thing, and they themselves are a bunch of modern-day Robin Hoods and his not-so-merry men and women.

The progressive People’s Budget

The New Neo Posted on by

Byron York reports on the budget that the House’s Progressive Caucus would like to see passed. The caucus is not small; it contains “76 members, about 40 percent of the 192 Democrats in the House,” including Barney Frank, John Conyers, George Miller, Charles Rangel, Rosa DeLauro, Jerrold Nadler, and Louise Slaughter.

And the name of the budget that I put in my title above is not my own ironic invention; it’s theirs. Here are some of the details:

How can such fiscal miracles be accomplished? By tax increases that would make even some top Democrats gasp. Perhaps the most extraordinary is the caucus plan to raise the Social Security tax to cover nearly all of a taxpayer’s income. Right now, the tax is imposed on the first $106,000 of earnings. For people who make more than that, the caucus would tax a full 90 percent of income — no matter how high it goes. The caucus would raise the Social Security tax that employers pay as well.

The caucus would create three new individual tax brackets for the highest incomes, topping out at 47 percent. It would also raise the capital gains tax, the estate tax and corporate taxes. It would create something called a “financial crisis responsibility fee” and a “financial speculation tax.” And of course it would repeal the Bush tax cuts.

As if anyone needed reminding, the “People’s Budget” is proof that the liberal idea of budget balancing is tax, tax, tax. If you’re looking for spending cuts, you’ll find just one really big one: national defense.

York mentions that in the olden days Obama would have been one of the supporters of the plan. I have no doubt he’s right. And I agree with him that at this point Obama would oppose it for political reasons. However, since the House is in Republican control right now, the People’s Budget is so much hot air, except as an indication of what liberal Democrats would do if they had the chance and the power.

Strangely, they did have the chance and the power, last session. They had the House, the Senate, and a simpatico president. But they didn’t try to pass any budget at all. Hmmm.

Bloggers sue Huffington and AOL

The New Neo Posted on by

This news is hardly surprising: bloggers for HuffPo who didn’t share in the AOL acquisition monies are suing both Arianna Huffington and AOL in a class action suit. As I noted when the news of the sale of HuffPo first came out, “it’s interesting that there are 6,000 bloggers working for free for HuffPo, and they didn’t get a dime. We bloggers, what we do for love!”

But HuffPo is no longer a lovefest. As former HuffPo blogger and lead plaintiff Jonathan Tasini indicated to Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici during a phone call, “Tasini vowed to make Huffington ‘a pariah in the progressive community’ and said his goal is to set a precedent that writers must share in the value they create.”

The bloggers understood themselves to be volunteers; what does that mean when the product they help develop is sold for tons of money? Under contract law, not much. But the plaintiffs are not suing under contract law, their cause of action will be based on unjust enrichment.

Tasini has more to say to Arianna:

She’ll never [be invited to] speak. We will picket her home. We’re going to make it clear that, until you do justice here, your life is going to be a living hell.”…Anybody blogging for the Huffington Post now is a scab,” he says. “They’re a strike breaker. They’re producing content for somebody who is attacking workers.”

Ah, the left and its fine rhetoric. Arianna may do a rerat and end up taking refuge on the right again before this is through.

Obama the neo-deficit-hawk

The New Neo Posted on by

President Obama is set to propose his own deficit reduction plan some time later in the week. It’s a bit of a mystery exactly what will be in it, but it seems he may actually step tentatively on the third rail of entitlements (cutting with a “scalpel” rather than a “machete”—Plouffe’s words, not mine, and is that racist of Plouffe?), and propose to ratchet up taxes on his favorite cash cows, the rich.

Ah, it seems only yesterday—but it actually was about two months ago—when Obama unveiled his own budget proposal, which curiously enough avoided the issue of how to reduce the deficit. It seems it wasn’t until Paul Ryan advanced the Republican plan for deficit reduction that Obama decided to counter it with his own, although he’d had plenty of time to do so earlier.

Some Democrats are puzzled and nervous as to what’s up, as well they might be. And this sort of spin from the White House doesn’t illuminate much of anything:

Obama advisers reject any suggestion that the president has changed course or philosophy since the midterm shellacking. “It would be revisionist history to view this as a change in philosophy,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s really a change in the state of the economy. That means the actions we took in the first two years, and particularly at the beginning of the administration, are not necessary right now.”

It’s hard to imagine that could possibly be enough to counter accusations such as the following, nicely put by Rep. Eric Cantor:

…'[W]e had to bring this president kicking and screaming to the table to cut spending” in last week’s 2011 budget negotiations. “It’s really hard to believe what this White House and the president is saying.”

My take? Obama wants to seize some of the ground Ryan occupies now, because he sees the Ryan proposal as both a threat and an opportunity to push his own tax hikes and to do a little dancing around entitlements without really suggesting the hard stuff. He could barely care less about deficit reduction, but he knows it’s popular right now and after all he’s in a campaign. His top priority is getting re-elected. If the Democrats don’t like it—well, there’s still some room under that commodious bus for the lot of them.

Obama is not the least bit concerned about consistency, nor about the charge of hypocrisy. One of his earliest traits as a campaigner was turning on a dime if he thought it would be of strategic benefit to him, and he also learned that he could get away with it. Remember when he broke his campaign financing pledge back in 2007? No problem whatsoever for the press and for those voters who’d already fallen in love with him.

If he performs a similar about-face now, and suggests cuts in programs that Democrats favor, I doubt they’ll look the other way. Patience is running thin. His compromise on the temporary budget is seen by many as weakness, caving, lack of leadership. This may be seen the same way—it really depends on the details, which will be revealed soon enough.

More tremors in the forcefield: George Monbiot has some doubts

The New Neo Posted on by

There seems to be a lot of this change stuff going around—or at least, potential change.

George Monbiot—the liberal environmentalist Brit who gave his name to “moonbat”—has had what I’ve come to think of as the betrayal experience. But I’ll let him tell it—and you’ll see that he doesn’t pull his punches. The man is reeling:

Over the past fortnight I’ve made a deeply troubling discovery. The anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health. The claims we have made are ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged and wildly wrong. We have done other people, and ourselves, a terrible disservice.

It began innocently enough, in a debate Monbiot was having with one of his idols, Dr. Helen Caldicott. He asked her to produce sources for some statements she’d made about the health effects of radiation, and she obliged by coming up with mostly non-scientific stuff and one lengthy (423-page) report by the US Academy of Sciences, which Monbiot actually read. It turned out it completely contradicted what she’d said.

I wonder if Caldicott herself has ever actually looked at it. Ooops!

Then Monbiot came across the Chernobyl data by UNSCEAR, the same report I referenced here, the one that found few and relatively minor long-term health effects from the worst nuclear power plant accident ever, Chernobyl.

Monbiot goes on to compare Caldicott and her ilk to just about the worst people he can think of, climate change deniers.

Ah well, give him time.

Thoughts on the budget deal

The New Neo Posted on by

Boehner seems to have turned out to be a better negotiator than previously thought.

When Obama spoke, he sounded so relatively sincere that for a moment I allowed myself the luxury of imagining what it would have been like if he’d been the president so many people had hoped for and believed he would be, the one who truly was interested in working in a bipartisan way to solve problems. Sigh.

Now that the temporary budget is settled, the real fun begins.

Friends with (gasp!) a Republican

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a piece I really enjoyed reading.

The writer seesaws between being intolerant and respectful of her lone Republican friend. But the latter sentiment squeaks out a win. The liberal author wants to stretch herself, and she thinks her Republican friend is both smart and well-informed, although somewhat inscrutable. This creates a bit of cognitive dissonance.

I know it well, at least from observation. A number of people have said to me, “I don’t get it. You’re intelligent, and yet you’re conservative—how can it be?”

My favorite parts of the essay:

We lose something critical when we surround ourselves with people who agree with us all the time. We lose out on the wisdom of seeing the other side…

Janet’s willingness to associate with so many liberal friends — though I know she seeks refuge in chat rooms and magazines that share her beliefs — makes her a better and more interesting person. She has her beliefs challenged constantly. She is more well-read and educated in her politics than most of the liberals I know. Too many liberals I know are lazy, they have a belief system that consists of making fun of Glenn Beck and watching “The Daily Show.” Shouldn’t their beliefs be challenged, too?

This is a democracy, after all. Isn’t it worth understanding a bit more about why approximately half the country votes differently than we do? Isn’t it important that we understand why people — good and legitimate Americans, whose votes count as much as ours — like Sarah Palin?

Unfortunately, a great many people would answer, “no.”