Over the Cliff!!!

Butch and Sundance did it.  Thelma and Louise did it.  Results were mixed.

As for the fiscal cliff, it is pretty obvious that John Boehner cannot control his caucus.  Maybe, come January, the crazies will elect Paul Ryan to the office of Speaker.  You never know with those assholes.

I just listened to Obama's brief statement. He didn't say much — certainly nothing especially specific.  I was kind of hoping he would withdraw his most recent offer ($250,000 to $400,000, "chained CPI"), but he didn't.  He just expressed a little half-hearted optimism and left the room.

I suspect the Administration calculates that going over the cliff might turn out to be a net gain.  Now that Boehner's "Plan B" is dead, the last chance for Republicans dodging responsibility is gone.  Once the leap is undertaken, and tax increases and sequestration kick in, the right-wing ideologues scarcely could oppose tax cuts for the middle class because they are not extended to the very rich.

As for the sequestration, those spending cuts will kick in slowly, probably not doing a great deal of damage while Congress works to balance the demands of the defense lobby and the remainder of the human race.  I fear defense will make out better than humanity, but what the hell?  What would you expect?

Will the markets take a dive?  Uh huh.  Briefly.  As I've observed before, the markets have very little to do with real life.

Short subjects for November

Allen West, America's favorite Tea Party Negro, finally admitted he lost his bid for a second term in the House.  On the other hand, he has not yet admitted to being a moron, despite his loss to newcomer Patrick Murphy after outspending the former Republican by four to one.  Does Murphy count as a Democratic gain in the House?  Well, he's not nearly as liberal as Nixon, but then neither is Obama.

Israel is losing the media war, having killed a shitload of Gazan children while losing none of its own.  Killing children never is good PR — something to which Our President should pay attention as his drone strikes kill children in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and wherever else the CIA has been transformed into a paramilitary organization.  Just because drone strikes don't put American soldiers in peril doesn't mean they don't put America in peril.  After every strike, more people hate our guts.

The fiscal cliff, it seems, is not a cliff — it is more of a bluff.  Wall Street, apparently, has received word that nothing it will mind too much is likely to happen.  Walmart and some other megacompanies have moved up their dividend payments to late December instead of early January, so it looks like taxes on dividends really will go up.  All the stock sales that depressed the market earlier last week might mean the capital gains rate might go back up to 20%, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Timmy Geithner soon will be leaving Treasury, and far less than a few moments too soon — but who will replace him?  If Obama nominates Erskine Bowles, Obama will be further down my shit list than ever before.  How about Sheila Bair?  Hell, she's a Republican, and a hell of a lot more reasonable and intelligent than most of the Obama coterie.  Let's validate responsible Republicans.

Thanksgiving always has been my favorite holiday.  I'm looking forward to mine.  May yours be joyous.

Totally nutzzz

I was just watching the news about the craziness surrounding the Petraeus debacle, and it keeps getting more and more crazy.  I cannot pretend to understand what in hell is going on, except for the undenyable fact that men who exercise power have a hard time keeping their dicks in their pants.  Is that why Mitt Romney lost?  Not enough testosterone?

Anyway,  this morning's Times confirmed that I'm not the only one thinking that Mitt Romney's idea for a cap on deductions and credits, as mentioned in my previous post, is not such a bad idea.  Needless to say, the cap being considered is more than twice what I (and Romney, at least once) had in mind — $35,000.

So who's against it?  Well, according to the Times, universities and other major recipients of charitable contributions.  Needless to say, they want exemptions, and they'll probably get them — and that makes the whole idea useless.  The biggest beneficiaries, I'd guess, would be religious organizations — the Catholics, the Baptists, the Mormons, the Jews, the Muslims, the Scientologists, and all the other well intentioned scam artists currently enjoying tax favoritism — oh! and let's not forget 501(c)(3) organizations like Crossroads GPS.

Anyway, I guess we'll all just be distracted for a while by the escapades of generals and their lady friends.  Obama met with union and progressive leaders today.  Are they happy?  I doubt it.  Tomorrow he meets with corporate big shots.  Will they be happy?

I sure as hell hope not.

The View from the Fiscal Cliff

Yes, the "fiscal cliff" is a metaphor, but metaphors, to one extent or another, represent somebody's impression of reality.  The somebodies in question, this time around, are the Fed and the Congressional Budget Office, so their metaphor deserves a hard look.  The CBO estimates that "going over the cliff" will result in close to a 2 per cent drop in GDP — and hence a pretty substantial drop back into recession, sending unemployment back up to 9 per cent, and putting most of the long term unemployed kind of permanently out-of-luck.

Boehner is scared.  Obama is scared.  Sadly, a great many of those assholes elected to the House by undereducated rednecks are not scared at all, so it behooves us to take a look over the cliff and see what might be at the bottom.

Three factors come together at the end of the year: the end of the "Bush" tax cuts, the end of the Obama payroll tax cuts, and the dreaded "sequestration," which would cut large chunks out of the military budget and the non-"entitlement" civilian budget.  Let's have a look.

The payroll tax cuts are pure stimulus, intended to promote consumer spending, and generally expected to lapse this time around.  They are most beneficial to the working class, which is good enough reason to expect they will be the first tax cuts to go.  (Nobody seems to be talking about eliminating the cap on FICA, which would make Social Security viable for at least another generation, and probably forever.)

Sequestration takes a cleaver to places where scissors and scalpels are more appropriate, although both military and non-military budgets could stand a good look.  Anyway, it won't happen.  The whole idea of sequestration was to make things too uncomfortable for both Democrats and Republicans to let it happen.  They won't.

On to the Bush tax cuts: current talk involves increasing revenues rather than rates.  The Democrats still are making noises about raising taxes on the rich, which seems to be perfectly acceptable to the majority of Americans, who are not rich.  Personally, I like Romney's idea of putting a limit on deductions and credits, and I think his $17,000 suggestion might be in the right neighborhood.

Too big a MacMansion?  Tough.  If you live in a smaller house, you can deduct all the mortgage interest.  Too many kids?  Tough.  Try a little birth control — and, if contraception violates your religious beliefs, there's always abstinence.  Granted, limited charitable deductions may be a little tough on certain ballet companies and museums, but it wouldn't inhibit my regular contributions to Doctors Without Borders (deductible), ACLU (non-deductible), public TV and radio (deductible), or the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (definitely not deductible.)

It is starting to sound like Obama might resist wimping out this time around — which is to say, he might be willing to let all the Bush tax cuts expire if the Tea Party assholes push him against the wall.  Let's hope his balls have re-descended now that he doesn't have to worry about re-election.

(Let's also hope that Timmy Geithner's replacement never met Robert Rubin.)

Oh, bloody hell

It seems that war "hero" and current CIA director David Petraeus has been doing some extramarital screwing around.  So what?  His wife probably is a lovely woman, but she has all the physical appeal of the Pillsbury doughboy.  Yes, I'm a little curious to learn a bit about the "biographer" he's been shagging, but, what the hell?  Our curiosity need not be satisfied, and seeing Petraeus gone, all by itself, is just fine with me.

Also gone, it seems, will be Hillary Clinton, who has been doing a very competent job, and Timmy Geithner, who has been pretty much a disaster.  I want to see the ass ends of the entire Robert Rubin team swirling around the toilet on their ways towards sewerland.  Granted, I don't expect to see Robert Reich appointed to Treasury, much less Joseph Stigletz, albeit I'm pretty sure neither of them is illicitly banging any biographers and/or pole dancers.

So, as we approach the alleged fiscal cliff, we just must hold our breaths.  Boehner is making noises like he's hanging tough; the Tea Party types re-elected to the House have no political reasons to change position given the genetic deficiencies of their supporters; and Obama long has appeared far too amenable to bargaining away the safety net for the sake of Wall Street.  All our hopes must be placed in the hope that the president might have a backbone somewhere within his slippery political exoskeleton, and a couple of genuine "community organizer" inclinations.

Oh, bloody hell.

The Day After

Jill Stein will not be our president any time soon, but I'm still more than a little pleased this morning.  Obamacare will survive.  Flawed as it is, it's better than nothing, and if a few states decide to offer public options it may grow into something much better.

Elizabeth Warren defeated Scott Brown in Massachusetts, so in January ordinary people will have a real voice in the Senate, and I will have a crush on a sitting Senator.  Bernie Sanders blew away the competition, despite major expenditure of PAC money against him.

Speaking of PAC money, I'm especially pleased that Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, Linda McMahon, and all the mysterious rich people who are behind Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS threw away hundreds of millions of dollars to accomplish virtually nothing.  Things remain pretty much as they were, most likely including political gridlock.  Crossroads GPS couldn't even manage to oust my local Congressman in a tightly contested race, despite a spate of truly hideous attack ads.

Will we go over the fiscal cliff?  I guess we have to wait and see.  I'm pretty sure, though, that Obama will be somewhat less inclined to "compromise" than he may have been in his first term — and since the lame duck Congress will not be much different from the incoming Congress, we may get an early deal.