Stop Me Before I Vote Again

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/1209/House-Democrats-block-GOP-Obama-tax-deal.-Is-it-dead

the melodrama intensifies !!!

now a claque of fearless house dems
resolve to block the outrage

cliff hanger mode continues

la nan to potus

"extend this "

I tend to agree, op-san.

But I don't quite agree with you description of the pwogs logic.

Isn't it the very puniness of the stakes here that ensures the pwog gestures will get made? At 50 bil, they can safely strike the pose. They wouldn't go near the issue if it were 500, or if it came with shifts in the structure of spending. I see no genuine class animus in pwogtown. Just salesmanship, as always.

What's wrong with class animus? The rich sure as hell hate the poor, what's wrong with the poor hating them back?

As Warren Buffet, Mr. Money Bags hisself once said, the rich are conducting class warfare and they're winning too.

So really, honest question... what's wrong with class animus towards the rich? What is unseemly about it?

Owen, money left in the hands of the rich is hot money. They can only spend so much on the trickle down frivolities—most of them won't—before they start looking for ways to protect and increase it. Aggregate demand here is stagnant, at best, which means investment here is a poor risk. There's already a lot of hot anxious money being pumped wherever asset increase looks good, i.e. abroad, and it's being pumped stupidly, on the same old bubble basis. That fifty billion drop in the proverbial bucket therefore has a net negative effect. I would argue that it has negative multiplier effect too. It's enough to set a few more economic dominoes to toppling, with eventual blowback here.

And fwiw, Drunk Pundit is right.

Now I do find hatred counterproductive. That's why I focus on love. If you love the obscenely wealthy, you should want them to have a nice place to live. I know I want that and it would selfish to deny them. Golden Rule, etc. As they make incredibly bad use of the hideous wealth they have at their disposal, the burdens and sorrows should be lifted. Not lifted by the neck, as one might on the Gibbet of Love, but through wholesome expropriation.

"Now I do find hatred counterproductive."

You're a better man than me Al.

Nah, I've just been listening to Wanda Jackson.

It is a challenge to love these folks (about 5 minutes 30 seconds):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtKqx0whZY0&feature=player_embedded

But the collectibles market needs the tax break extension. Have a heart guys.

eloi Al has gotten to the core here

" money left in the hands of the rich is hot money"

consider this:

no increase in uncle spending
even with the 50-80 billion extra revenue
only a change in the size of the deficit

that i contend is the likely outcome
so go ahead mr big
invest in han sweat products
for export back here

but owen don't we lose jobs in industry ??

no
mexico does

unless uncle is spending more and borrowing it all from a full monetizing fed
its folly foolery and fuck up

"What's wrong with class animus?"

nothing

this pretty nicely encapsulates pwog think

"Richard H. Serlin said...
Really the whole thing is just ugly looking.

I could see this kind of thing if it substantially decreased the odds of a President Palin in 2012, or any Republican. Then, we're getting these tax cuts anyway, and with a few trillion on top for the rich. But the whole package decreases unemployment by only a half percent or less in 2011, depending on the forecaster, and may increase it in 2012.

At least Obama could look like he tried with this package, as opposed to passing nothing, but the nothing could clearly be blamed on the Republicans for voting against. And anyway, the bad economy gets blamed on the party that holds the Whitehouse very strongly, so it's really an issue of how is the economy, or as Krugman pointed out what the trend is. Based on the forecasts, this package does little or nothing for either.

And no one anywhere has discussed whether the Fed would add less stimulus as a result of this one trillion. Why? Anyone want to explain why this seems to so obviously not be an influence on their behavior that no one mentions it?

Now, there's a number of nasty scary things about this package:

1) Obama yet again gives in to, and reinforces, the Republican narrative and ideology – the package is almost all tax cuts. This reinforces with the public an ideology which is extremely harmful, as we've seen over the past generation. Reagan, on the other hand, constantly tried to change the narrative and ideology, but Obama is always scared to do this.

2) He demoralizes the base and looks wimpy yet again, and that certainly hurts his chances in 2012.

3) If the economy is still bad in 2012 Republicans will scream, you can't raise taxes in a bad economy, and will have a lot of leverage, and perhaps success.

4) If the economy is a lot better in 2012, then they will scream, look tax cuts work, government spending of any kind doesn't and is bad. This will result in very harmful misleading of the public. And they will also scream tax cuts got us this recovery, raising taxes, and electing a Democrat who will raise taxes, will wreck the recovery.

5) Very ugly and inefficient way to stimulate the economy, almost all tax cuts, with small multipliers and little or no investment value. If you spend one trillion on mansions, yachts, and big screen TVs and vacations, that trillion disappears and you have one trillion in debt. If you instead stimulated the economy with one trillion in infrastructure, education, basic scientific research, etc., then you have trillions in additional income that those investments generate in the future. The short term stimulus really doesn't even cost you any money, because it makes you more money in the future than it costs you, in fact with a return a lot higher than the government's rock bottom borrowing rates today.

6) Krugman wrote in a post today, "On the straight economics, the tax deal is worth doing." This can really be misinterpreted. It depends what happens after the deal. If taxes will just be raised back up again to net it to zero after the slump ends then yes, it's better than doing nothing. But there's a good chance this won't happen. It will just stay added to the government's debt, decade after decade making it higher than it would otherwise be, and crowding out investment when the economy is not in a slump. Or, it could result in us balking about doing big things like free universal preschool and bachelor's degree or a "moon shot" in alternative energy, or just any high return government investment. All of this could far outweigh the half or quarter point less in unemployment in 2011, and it certainly would if there was little, no, or negative difference in saving us from a Republican president in 2011.

And this list is certainly not meant to be exhaustive "

And this list is certainly not meant to be exhaustive

God help us if there's more.

The poor things are going break their backs staggering around under the moral weight of being liberals.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-10/americans-in-poll-say-cut-deficit-with-entitlements-secured-as-rich-pay-up.html

if polls contain anything "real and solid"
they suggest folks would increase
taxes on the rich and high income types
cut the same out of entitlements
b4 facing cuts to their own entitlements
sound sensible to me

and as usual the people majority
consider the fiscal crises secondary

----------------
thesis:
as class fractions
only better off pwogs and frontier libertarians
are really afrighted by the fiscal crisis
and both for non economic reasons

one over too low taxes and thus too little sacrifice
the other over too big spending and thus too much "state"

Gibbet of Love

meet

the GALLOWS of self sacrifice

"I see no genuine class animus in pwogtown. Just salesmanship, as always."
agree

but the pwog-pol in all its showman's dissembling
still reflects in this show
the pwog-pol's pwog base
cavorting about
in all that class fraction's absurd
thundering displays
of
intent to self sacrifice

ahh the virtue of it all

self sacrficial vis a vis the tax axe
is of course no more useful
then at the ballot box of course

pwogs are always urging on each other
and us esaus
bad applications
of tom schelling's uniform multi person prisoner's dilemma

the dark side of pwoghood
is sublated in cries of equality that amount to revanchist punitive taxation
of dastardly old money bags bill
and a;las
not his effete brie eating petty potfolio grassing thoird generation off spring

the ideal pwog wants all income sources taxed equally
while income totals get taxed progressively
and they fixate of income ie flows over wealth ie stocks for remedies for stock based wrath
only populist demagogues like huey long suggest spreading "the wealth "

if u're serious about attacking the system
progressive income taxing in itself
is not a useful route
unless the tax on flow is really a disguised tax on wealth
its system sustaining not system sublating

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010124909/compassionless-conservatism

"Lost in the debate of the president's proposed "deal" with Republicans to "temporarily" extend the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a 13-month extension of the emergency extension of unemployment insurance benefits is one devastating reality. The proposed deal holds nothing for the 99ers, those Americans who have exhausted or are close to exhausting their unemployment benefits. In the proposed deal as it currently stands, the 99ers get nothing"

my comlaw/sonlaw
is involved in the 99er movement
and finds to going less then encouraging

there are bills floating about to add a new layer over the to 99 week layer now about to get extended till "the morrow "

one Senate bill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99ers

" benefit those who have exhausted all of their benefits by providing an additional 20 weeks of unemployment benefits under a Tier 5. The bill has an unemployment rate threshold of 7.5% which requires states to have an unemployment rate at 7.5% or higher to qualify"

tier 5 ???

here is the present structure about to be renewed by grace of congress

Regular Unemployment Insurance Benefits
26 weeks

Emergency Unemployment Compensation Tier 1
20 weeks more
Emergency Unemployment Compensation Tier 2
14 more
Emergency Unemployment Compensation Tier 3
13 more
Emergency Unemployment Compensation Tier 4
6 more

in addition
Extended Benefits
20 final weeks

total Number of Weeks 99

tier five i guess
might slide in either below or above
the final double dutch emergency super shit relie4f extention tier

no one is reading this but what the hell

http://www.counterpunch.org/baker12102010.html

dean baker makes sense

Good Baker column.

I get what you're saying, Owen. I get there, though it can take time. This is a minor issue compared to just about everything else. Thumping the tub over it does nothing, except possibly amplifying the screeching of the deficit panic performance artists.

"amplifying the screeching of the deficit panic performance artists."

exactly
the irony the god damn pwogs
so eager to extract ill gottens
from richie rich
scramble into that trap
reinforcing
the budget gap superstition

the fools are so afraid
of the starve the beast fallacy

b4 i sleep each nite
i mutter
" there's no connection between
expenditures and revenue "

the bi partisan linkings
are purely rhetorical
and all invoke the old chestnut
" in the long run the budget must ...
or in the long run the deficit must ..."
they both oughta be considered
about as worthless
as any other of the zillion
ass hole arguments
of that form in economics

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/10/the_obama_tax_deal_giving_the_hostage_takers_more/

dean has now u turned

his panic

the payroll tax cut part
is the thin edge of the wreck social security conspiracy

"Effectively, this deal would give us a permanent two-percentage point reduction in the payroll tax in a Washington climate very hostile to Social Security."
and so ???
what about the huge trust fund ???
why not run it down now ???

seems dean doesn't like a cut in payroll taxes
because ..u know
it will lead to benefit cuts
this i love:

"Democratic officeholders have had difficulty standing behind tax increases for the very richest people in the country. It is difficult to imagine them sticking their necks out for tax increases that will hit low and middle-income workers, especially in a context where unemployment is virtually certain to be above 8.0 percent and quite likely above 9.0 percent. This means that the reduction in Social Security taxes may not be for just one year, it may persist for the indefinite future."
gad zoooks here is the poison of the budget fetish coming home to roost

I agree with Owen. Deficits schmeficits.

"only better off pwogs and frontier libertarians
are really afrighted by the fiscal crisis
YES!

"In the long run, we're..."