Monday, November 8, 2010

What We Read This Weekend

Well, it's Monday, and we're busy catching up from the weekend. Here's what we were reading:

-Ah, the internet era and our overly prudish society. Apparently, Facebook and Google are already causing issues for politicians in 2010. Shouldn't we not really care about this? I'm willing to bet that most people who actually can go on Facebook have been drunk at a party before. In fact, I'm willing to bet they've been photographed doing something distasteful and drunk at a party before. Do you know what the instances of Congressman Schock and candidate Krystal Ball tell me? They probably would have partied at the same types of places as I did if we had crossed paths, and that goes a long way towards telling me they are normal people. Why is this bad?

-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs jacked up the Indian Security at the President's meeting with their Prime Minister for trying to stop our press from going in. I must say, good. Now jack up their government for providing cheap labor for our companies who leave us.

Matt Taibbi jacks up the "popular notion" that the Democrats lost for catering to their base too much. To quote the man, in his quoting of David Sirota:
For example, I could have told you that a washed-up has-been like Evan Bayh would publish a New York Times op-ed insisting that Democrats "were too deferential to our most zealous supporters" (read: liberals) even after the Democratic Party crushed a public option, watered down Wall Street "reform," extended Bush-era civil liberties atrocities, escalated the Afghanistan War, further ballooned the defense budget and began moving to extend the Bush tax cuts.

Likewise, I could have told you that those careerists in D.C. who make their livelihood off this kind of pablum would publish a "strategy memo" in something self-importantly called "The Democratic Strategist." And I could have told you that this "strategy memo" would defend the bash-the-liberals meme with bromides about how "all of the major perspectives within the Democratic Party have a legitimate place and role in today's Democratic coalition" and about how "the present moment categorically demands a basic level of Democratic unity from every element of the coalition" (read: liberals shouldn't criticize the corporatists who destroyed the Democratic Party -- and the country).

I could have told you all of this because, as I said, it's pre-programmed. It's not spontaneous. It's not reacting to any reality out here in the real world. It's not responding to a changing country. It's pre-written, pre-conceived, pre-packaged feces sprayed at us in liquid form, all to justify a continuation of how it's always been -- and, frankly, how it probably will always be.
Amen brother. I'm tired of this narrative that "the radicals" run our party. Really, because what have they won on? Hell, what has the mainstream left won on? This President is the most successful legislative President in a generation plus, and he still had to sacrafice nearly all of his leftward movement. Another thing here too, via Bill Maher, stop equating our radicals with their's. Keith Olbermann is not Glenn Beck, he does not, even with Bush in office, speak of the President as an illegal alien, or spew any of the other rhetoric from Beck. MoveOn is not the Tea Party, in that there was no call for "second amendment remedies" from MoveOn, nor was the party quick to co-opt them. Frankly, even the Hitler name-calling, on their side the Tea Party does this, and gets visits from Congressional leaders. Enough left-hating here.

-Want a job now? Well, the foreclosure market is booming, and banks are hiring thousands of workers to process the foreclosure proceedings, all for $10-12 an hour. Sounds like a McDonalds to be frank.

-How broken is our tax code? Well Truthout dives into this debate some more. Warren Buffett says he pays too little. Check this passage out though to tell you what you need to know:
The major vehicle is George W. Bush’s 15 percent levy on long-term capital gains - the lowest since FDR’s first term - and on corporate dividends. The top 1 percent of US households owns nearly 40 percent of all privately held stock, from which the dividends flow. Similarly, the super-rich get more than half their income from capital gains, as documented by tax expert David Cay Johnston in his book “Perfectly Legal.” In the meantime, for the working middle-class, the tax rate on wages is 25 percent.
Taxing income from wealth at little more than half the rate of income from work: it’s the perfect recipe to make sure that Warren Buffett (and all the Buffett wannabes) pay effective tax rates far below what their incomes suggest.
  
Wow. And it gets better:
The tax code sets marginal rates too, and these were gutted by President Reagan in 1981 and again in 1986. He slashed the top rate from 70 to 28 percent, and made the code even less progressive by cutting the number of brackets from 15 to four. The yearning for tax simplification (fewer brackets) trumped the case for progressivity (more brackets).
There are six today, with the top four taxed at 25, 28, 33 and 35 percent - a narrow spread, easily offset by provisions like the capital gains rate. The top rate kicks in at about $400,000 of taxable income, a practice Johnston told Truthout he finds “bizarre.” It’s a long way, he argued in a recent email, from $400,000 to $1 million, $5 million, $100 million and hedge-fund billions: “Why don’t we have higher rates for those incomes?” he asked.
Yeah, if you think you're "Taxed Enough Already," HERE is why.

-ThinkProgress brings up the scary point that the GOP Congress, lead by Labor Committee Chairman John Kline and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, may in fact take the hatchet to PELL GRANTS. Yup, there are consequences to the temper-tantrum we just had in 2010. While we are likely to face a shortage of college educated labor in coming decades, the new House leadership is going to make sure we do nothing about that.

The Atlantic looks into the possibility that the GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Only in America folks, and I don't put that in a good light. "American Exceptionalism" could be replaced with "third world status" quickly.

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