Progressive Viewpoints

Myth busting "taxing breathing"

There's no arguing the emotional appeal of the right when they complain that the individual mandate in the healthcare reform act amounts to, for the first time in human history, "taxing breathing" (although they use the phrase for other things they don't like too).   They are so good at that kind of stuff.  Wow, how "unfair"!

But let's be honest: Yes, you can "choose" to not pay income tax by not making any money, and you can "choose" to not pay property taxes by not owning real-estate and also not renting from someone who owns property, and you can "choose" to not pay sales tax by not buying anything, and you can "choose" not to pay fuel taxes by never going anywhere in motorized transport or using anything that used motorized transport.

But no one willingly chooses that life of extreme poverty, privation and isolation to not make money, not buy anything, not live anywhere and not use anything.

So, take a deep breath, the "moral" argument they are making simply does not hold water.

Clip: "Just Let Her Do Her Thing"

My fear, by the way, is Bob Reich's. The fundamental reason for Palin's strength is the despair of the white working class - a despair certainly merited given the economic forces of the past couple of decades. Their jobs aren't coming back - they've gone to India and China for ever - and their wages have barely risen in a generation. And their response is to blame cultural, not economic elites - as is usually the case in America:

According to the right-wing narrative, the calamity that’s befallen the white working class is due to the global and intellectual elites who run the mainstream media, direct the government, dispense benefits to the undeserving, and dominate popular culture. (The story and targets are not substantially different from those that have fueled right-wing and fascist movements during times of economic stress for more than a century, here and abroad.)

Sarah Palin has special appeal because she wraps the story in an upbeat message. She avoids the bilious rants of Rush, Sean Hannity, and their ilk. But her cheerfulness isn’t sunny; she doesn’t promise Morning in America. She offers pure snark, and promises revenge. Over and over again she tells the same snide, sarcastic, inside joke, but in different words: “They think they can keep screwing us, but (wink, wink), we know something they don’t. We’re gonna take over and screw them.”

via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

Re: Bipartisan Blight: The Great Tax Reform Mirage

Today, in a column grandly entitled, "A Tax Reform Vision," [David] Brooks celebrates the growing beltway consensus on tax reform, suggesting that a bipartisan accord could be built around lowering tax rates, simplifying the code, and erasing most tax deductions and loopholes.

...

Only we really have played this game before. In the mid 1980s, under Ronald Reagan, civic minded Senator Bill Bradley joined with reformers to fashion a similar deal -- lower rates, eliminate egregious tax loopholes and deductions, in a revenue neutral fashion. The establishment rallied; the bill passed.

Only while the deductions were eliminated, the lobbies that created them were not. They went to work. The loopholes, tax expenditures, various dodges returned. Now the tax code is so riddled with them, that beltway pundits can call for playing the same game once more.

Only while the loopholes returned, the lower rates stayed largely in place. 

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Letter sent to OR Sen. Jeff Merkley re: Filibuster reform

To Sen. Jeff Merkley (OR):

Thank-you for taking leadership -- effective leadership -- in crafting a reform to the filibuster.  While the principle of ensuring debate and ensuring a voice for a minority was sound, the implementation has rotted the Senate for years.  And this has gidlocked our entire system, emasculating the other two branches of government and the House.

I remember driving you between events when you were making a campaign swing through Yamhill County during your election.  The filibuster was the primary thing I thought needed work if America was to move forward again, so I'm very glad to see you pursuing it so vigorously.

Thanks for your hard work finding a solution that, if implemented, would help restore representational govermnet to the Senate.

- Will

Clip: The Dickishness Of The GOP

What we've observed these past two years is a political party that knows nothing but scorched earth tactics, cannot begin to see any merits in the other party's arguments, refuses to compromise one inch on anything, and has sought from the very beginning to do nothing but destroy the Obama presidency....

The two parties are evenly spread in this 50-50 country, but only one can brook no compromise in its accelerating rush to the far right. And that is what it seems we have to contemplate for the next two years - total paralysis in the face of urgent problems as part of a game of cynical partisan brinkmanship. They simply cannot bear that another party might actually have a role to play in government....

This is not conservatism, properly understood, a disposition that respects the institutions and traditions of government, that can give as well as take, that seeks the national interest before partisan concerns, and that respects both the other branches of government and seeks to work with them. These people are not conservatives in this core civilized sense; they are partisan vandals.

via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com