Where Your Tax Money Really Goes

Don't file that copy of your W2 yet; you'll need those numbers to calculate your Tax Receipt.

It's a quick way to find out just how much you personally are paying for each part of the federal budget.

Have you ever wondered how much of your own tax dollars actually go to support foreign aid? To support education? Well, now you can find out – and you might be surprised.

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama promised that this year, for the first time, American taxpayers would be able to go online and see exactly how their federal tax dollars are spent.

So today, we’re announcing the first-ever federal taxpayer receipt.

Just enter a few pieces of information about your taxes, and the taxpayer receipt will give you a breakdown of how your tax dollars are spent on priorities like education, veteran’s benefits, or health care.

Click here to calculate your receipt.

A Reality-Based Budget is a People's Budget

The elephant in the room that both Democrats and Republicans are desperately ignoring and hoping you won't notice is this:

President Obama's proposed budget is far to the right of anything resembling a budget that acknowledges economic reality.

That reality demands a budget that eschews spending cuts in favor of massive deficit spending to create 10 million infrastructure jobs, returns tax rates for the rich to those of the Reagan administration, and saves hundreds of billions by ending the criminal clusterfucks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

And such a budget actually exists! It has been submitted as a bill on the floor of the House of Representatives, and has more than 50 cosponsors.

Katrina vanden Heuvel at The Nation:

Yet in many ways his approach continues to legitimize the inside-the-beltway consensus that spending cuts must lead the way toward achieving fiscal responsibility. Just as the Simpson-Bowles Commission proposes, for every $1 raised by closing tax loopholes on wealthy Americans, the President proposes $2 in spending cuts. Two-thirds of those cuts would come from education, health and other social programs, while only one-third comes from the military budget. While the president speaks eloquently of his vision of “shared sacrifice,” in reality it is still a budget that hits the poor and the middle-class hardest while wealthy Americans and the military are asked to sacrifice far less.

An alternative approach that deserves more attention is the “People’s Budget” offered by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). It will be introduced in the House on Thursday and it is the strongest rebuke—in the form of an amendment—to the unconscionable “Ryan Budget” for FY 2012. It’s a budget that gives the people—according to poll after poll—exactly what they want (something which shouldn’t be a rarity in a healthy, vibrant democracy).

The People’s Budget lays out what a robust progressive agenda looks like. It protects an already frayed social net and promotes a progressive tax policy that makes millionaires, billionaires, and big corporations pay their fair share. It doesn’t stop at cutting the low-hanging fruit at the Pentagon, instead it brings our troops home from two wars that cost trillions of dollars and do nothing to make the US safer, and resets and rethinks what real security means in the 21st century.

“The People’s Budget generates a government surplus by 2021 by closing tax loopholes, ending corporate giveaways to oil, gas and nuclear entities, bringing our troops home, and creating jobs that expand the American tax base,” said Representative Raúl Grijalva, co-chair of the CPC. “This is a sensible solution that listens to what the American people have said about where our budget priorities should be.”

SNIP

President Obama’s speech this week starts to move the budget debate in the right direction. But it’s up to the people and allies inside Congress to take the struggle to the next level, turning the tide on our democracy deficit which has produced—as Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently put it—a country “of the one percent, for the one percent, and by the one percent.”

Read the whole thing.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?

Join "Tax Day Make Them Pay" Protests Monday

Putting off mailing your federal taxes until the last minute on Monday? Make it an EVENT by joining a Tax Day Make Them Pay protest in your town.

Here's just one of several in Kentucky:

On Tax Day, Lexington-Frankfort Area Residents To Protest Corporate Tax Dodger Chase Bank

After Gathering at the U. S. Post Office on Nandino Boulevard

Participants At "Make Them Pay" Event To Deliver Tax Bill To Chase Bank

On Monday, April 18, Tax Day, Lexington-Frankfort Area residents will protest at the
U. S. Post office across Nandino Boulevard from Chase Bank and urge Chase Bank to pay their fair share of taxes.

The event is part of a nationwide Tax Day campaign called "Make Them Pay." Events similar to the one in the Lexington-Frankfort Area are taking place all over the country targeting "The Deadbeat Dozen"—GE, Bank of America, Google, BP, Amazon, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Boeing, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Chase—wealthy corporations that are doing everything in their power to avoid paying taxes in America.

"During these difficult economic times, when all Americans are being asked to sacrifice, it is simply wrong that Chase Bank is shirking their American duty to pay their taxes," said business owner Rikka Wallin. "We are protesting on Tax Day because corporate tax dodgers have a responsibility to our community and our nation to pay their fair share. We pay our taxes. Chase Bank should too."

Click here to find a Moveon Tax Day Make Them Pay event in your town.

"The Power of Shamelessness"

Kevin Drum explains how repugs get away with the most outrageous lies:

Cantor's tweet is almost comically shameless, but it's also one of the reasons that Republicans continue to get credit for their economic policies even though their economic policies are routinely disastrous. It's because they're willing to be shameless and they don't really care if anyone calls them on it.

Paul Ryan's plan to shrink the federal government and gut Medicare is called....."The Path to Prosperity." Of course it is. Every Republican plan is called something like that. It's shameless! The Reagan boom? All due to lower marginal tax rates, just like they predicted. The Clinton boom years? A delayed reaction to the Reagan era. Healthy corporate earnings in the aughts? All due to Republican reductions in capital gains taxes. Privatizing Social Security? It's all about encouraging capital formation and growing the economy. Fighting bank regulation? They just want to reduce regulatory uncertainty and allow the economy to boom. Etc. etc. And there are always plenty of think tank analyses to back this stuff up with hard numbers.

It seems laughable, but it's not. If you say that your policies are responsible for economic growth enough times, people will believe it. Nobody really understands this stuff, after all. And the more confidently and shamelessly you say it, the more believers you'll have. So why shouldn't Cantor claim that Republicans are responsible for all the job growth since January? Liberal bloggers will mock, but that's nothing to be afraid of. Not as long as the steady stream of shamelessness keeps convincing people that Republican policies are putting us back on the right economic track. And it does.

“We Can Live Within Our Means and Live Up to the Values We Share as Americans”

We don't know about you, Mr. President, but our values do not include sacrificing 15 million Americans without jobs to the filthy rich and the deficit hyenas.



Full transcript here.

That's What I Want to Hear From the Democratic Minority

I believe there was some concern back in January that Rep. Elijah Cummings would not be a strong enough opponent to stand up to repug Darrell Issa, new chair of the Government Oversight Committee.

TPM:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), on Capitol Hill for a hearing held by the House Oversight Committee on state budgets, had yet to even speak before Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) ripped into the Republican leader's anti-union record.

"I strongly oppose efforts to falsely blame middle-class American workers for these current economic problems," Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said in his opening statement. "This recession was not caused by them. Working America - fire fighters, teachers and nurses - are not responsible for the reckless actions of Wall Street, which led to this crisis in the first place."

Cummings said he also "strongly object[s] to efforts by politicians who try to use the current economic downturn to strip American workers of their rights - the right to negotiate working conditions that are safe, the right to negotiate due process protections against being fired arbitrarily, and the right to negotiate fair pay for an honest day's work."

Concerns laid to rest.

House Repugs Vote to Kill Medicare

All but four of them. And every single Democratic representative voted against Paul Ryan's Lords-and-serfs budget.

So take a good hard look at the Kentucky Congressmen who just voted to install real death panels for your parents and for you: Ed Whitfield, Brett Guthrie, Geoff Davis and Hal Rogers. No more low-cost, high-efficiency Medicare seniors love so much. Into the private health insurance ghetto, all of 'em!

Steve Benen:

LIKE LEMMINGS OFF A CLIFF.... House Republicans, after a very brief debate and a week of consideration, actually voted to pass Paul Ryan's radical budget plan this afternoon. The final vote was 235 to 193. No Democrats voted for the measure, and despite some GOP anxiety going into the vote, only four Republicans had the nerve to vote against it.

The GOP leadership and Paul Ryan are no doubt pleased with themselves for pushing this extremist proposal through the House so quickly, with a largely unified caucus. As it turns out, perhaps the only people even happier with the outcome are House Democrats.

For anyone who takes these matters seriously, the Ryan plan is a radical mess. Its numbers don't add up and it's based on fraudulent expectations. It eliminates Medicare, guts Medicaid, slashes funding for key domestic priorities, and lavishes another massive tax break on millionaires and billionaires. The whole initiative is sold as a deficit reduction plan, but it doesn't actually reduce the deficit -- it just shrinks government and transfers wealth from the bottom up, imposing cruelty on elderly, disabled, and working families.

But nearly every single Republican in the chamber voted for it anyway. A year after running a campaign agenda that bashed Democrats for Medicare reductions, practically the entirety of the House GOP just voted to privatize Medicare out of existence.

Democrats can barely believe their good fortune.

SNIP

Not only did 98% of the House Republican caucus agree to take the leap off this cliff, they did so knowing full well that this budget plan has absolutely no chance whatsoever of passing the Senate.

It's likely Americans won't watch today's developments especially closely. There's been very little national debate about this budget plan -- it was only introduced last week -- and the public doesn't realize exactly what this agenda includes.

But it's Democrats' job to remind Americans about this remarkable vote every day for the next year and a half. By all indications, Dems are eager to do just that.

A budget bill so terrible that even Conservatard DINO/Blue Dog Coward Ben Chandler voted against it.

So terrible that all by itself it could guarantee Democratic landslides next year in the House, the Senate and the White House.

If, that is, the Democratic Party can bring itself to actually play offense - and hard - in an election campaign.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?

It's Not the Politics; It's the Lies

I am a longtime advocate of the proposition that a reporter's or news organization's personal biases are irrelevant as long as professionalism, facts and reality trump those biases.

The abomination known as Fox News actually supports my case.

Eric Alterman at The Nation:

Remember, Fox continually insists that while Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly are “opinion” shows, its news programs can be trusted to play it straight. So again, the naïve among us might imagine that its executives would evince some discomfort with the network’s managing editor admitting to being a proud and purposeful liar. Alas, nobody at Fox appeared to notice—not even anchor Bret Baier, who, just a week before Media Matters broke the story of the taped Sammon cruise confession, had gone on The Daily Show to humiliate himself with the argument that at Fox, “we respect the viewers’ ability to discern” between opinion and hard news.

These events demonstrate yet again that the problem with Fox is not that it’s conservative. It’s that it lies. Any discussion of its role in American political life is itself a lie if it rests on that foundation. When a “real” journalist—as Baier appears to imagine himself—lends his name to Fox, he is simply empowering these lies. When journalists from media enterprises that profess to value truth defend Fox—as Jake Tapper of ABC News did in response to the Obama administration’s unsuccessful 2009 attempt to isolate it from the other networks—they are enabling its lies. And when politicians, pundits and anyone else not formally employed by Rupert Murdoch or Roger Ailes appear on Fox without pointing out that they are there to tell the truth for once, then they, too, are participating in a scam at the bottom of which is not only the comforting of the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us but also the undermining of our democracy under the weight of a teetering tower of lies.

Just ask Bill Sammon. He’ll tell you the truth, for sure…

Read the whole thing.

Liberal, My Ass

If you're a man who sucks cock, you're gay. And if you're a Democrat who proposes cutting Social Security, you are a DINO, not a liberal.

Yep, the Catfood Commission's plan to kill Social Security in the name of reducing a deficit that is not affected at all by Social Security is still alive, and it's being promoted by none other than supposed liberal Senator Dick Durbin.

Digby quotes Politico:

Social Security reform and boosting government revenues are among the provisions that could be included in a deficit-reduction package being negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators.

The so-called “Gang of Six” is expected to unveil its proposals after the congressional Easter break, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, told reporters at a breakfast meeting hosted by Bloomberg News.

“If we can pull it off, we are the only bipartisan show in town. I think that means something,” he said.

The proposal would represent yet another option in a cacophonous debate over government spending and reducing the nation’s deficit that is just beginning in Washington.

The House on Friday is scheduled to begin debate on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s proposal to trim more than $6 trillion over the next 10 years by revamping Medicare and Medicaid, slashing other entitlement programs, and cutting taxes.

SNIP

Durbin wouldn’t disclose specific proposals in the Senate measure, but said it will borrow significantly from the report issued by the president’s bipartisan deficit reduction commission last year.

If the Democratic Party doesn't stand for protecting Social Security, it stands for nothing at all.

It's the Money That Matters

There is an unseemly amount of swooning among "progressives" over President Obama's strong defense of liberal values and in particular the social safety net.

The Rude Pundit reminds us that we've been fooled by Barry's pretty words in the past and may yet be again.

And Digby looks more carefully at the numbers.

CBPP gives a good overview of the president's plan here. It's worth reading for both the good points and the bad points. This is the conclusion:

The President’s plan represents an important step forward in the debate. But it should be recognized that this plan is a rather conservative one, significantly to the right of the Rivlin-Domenici plan. While we worry about some particular elements of the President’s plan, we worry much more that the deficit-reduction process that’s now starting could produce an outcome that is well to the right of the already centrist-to-moderately-conservative Obama proposal, by reducing its modest revenue increases and cutting more deeply into effective programs that are vital to millions of Americans.

The "revenue increases" are very dicey in my opinion. They are based on a reformation of the tax code that includes the elimination of middle class deductions like the mortgage interest deduction which is hardly likely to pass, and the closing of corporate loopholes which will be deftly reinstated in new forms by lobbyists. But what strikes me as the strangest thing about it is that it seems to have baked into it the idea that it must also contain lower tax rates, which strikes me as bizarre if the intent is to close the deficit.

I realize that it may make it all more politically enticing to the right, but if they can't actually raise taxes then the ratio of cuts to revenue is very likely to be far higher than 3:1 when all is said and done. This revenue side of the equation is the major weak spot in all these "deficit" plans. The press should quiz the politicians very, very closely about just what they mean when they sign on to "raising revenue" and ask them why they think it's necessary to lower rates as part of the package. The answers will be interesting.

House repugs got well and truly rolled by the White House in last week's 2011 budget deal. They are not likely to fall for that trick again.

We should take that lesson to heart and not take the White House's promises or fancy math at face value, either.

I, too, am heartened to finally hear President Obama say something appealing to those of us who are neither repugs nor fatcats.

But if I have to accept words that contradict the real budget numbers, I'd rather see a budget that actually reflects liberal values like this one does, accompanied by all the dirty-fucking-hippie insults he cares to hurl, than one that continues to transfer money from workers to the wealthy albeit wreathed in eloquent paeans to the soon-to-be-extinct middle class.

IMF: US Debt Is An Emergency

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

This would be the same IMF that has destroyed the economies of developing nations in Africa, South America and Asia by promoting monster infrastructure schemes that ruined the environment and social structure while plunging the countries into massive - wait for it - public debt.

Yeah. If the IMF claims the U.S. public debt is a problem, I'd say it's safe to ignore the debt for the foreseeable future.

TPM:

In what The Financial Times describes as an "unusually stern rebuke," the International Monetary Fund says that the United States "urgently" needs a "credible strategy to stabilize public debt."

An IMF analysis points to the United States as the world's "only large advanced economy" - with the exception of earthquake-ravaged Japan - that's looking at an increased deficit this year.

The United States is looking at the permanent loss of 10 million jobs that is maintaining an unacceptable level of unemployment - 8.8 percent officially and 19 percent including part-timers and the underemployed.

In the face of that job deficit, the budget deficit is worse than irrelevant; the budget deficit is entirely insufficent. What the U.S. economy desperately needs is $2 trillion in job-creating stimulus. The best way to get that money is to force obscenely wealthy individuals and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. Short of that, adding $2 trillion in job creation to the deficit in the short-term is actually the fastest and most effective way to reduce the deficit and the debt in the long run.

The IMF knows that. But it is, as always, doing the bidding of the global banking system to force middle-class-killing austerity on everyone.

Yep, "fucking retarded" pretty much covers it

If you wonder why I keep saying that Obama really wants to turn America into Haiti, with a tiny aristocracy feeding off the dirt-poor masses, this is why.

First, Zandar has an interesting new poll:

Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling finds that numbers among fickle independent voters have decisively turned against the Republicans in Congress.

Good news, right? Except then we see this from Blue Texan at Firedoglake:

White House Strategy Fail: Appeal to Independents by Giving Repugs Everything They Want

Interesting piece in The Hill this morning which potentially sheds some light on what the White House is thinking with their repeated caves to the GOP.

The White House hopes its checklist of deals will be particularly appealing to independent voters whom Obama will need to win a second term. Polling suggests independents soured on Obama during his first two years in office, but this group of voters is generally viewed as more interested than are Democrats and Republicans in seeing the two parties work together to find results.

In 2008, Obama won independents by eight points in 2008. He’s now down 12. That’s a 20-point swing. I’m not sure why it hasn’t occurred to the White House that one reason might be that independents don’t much care for the Republicans “ideas” — which is why they gave Democrats big majorities in ’06 and ’08 in the first place. Oh well.

If Obama can add the debt ceiling to his list of accomplishments, the next fight will be about spending in 2012 and beyond. This battle is expected to introduce debates over entitlement reforms, with Obama expected to give a sense of his opening position in a speech on Wednesday.

If the last two-plus years are any guide, the president will find a way to bend just enough that he gets the deal. And like he did with the budget battle, Obama will quietly add another item to his list of results even as Republicans claim victory.

So while Republicans will spend the next year and a half blasting Obama as AWOL, White House officials say the president will continue to speak softly and carry a big checklist of accomplishments.

Wow, this is just f***ing retarded.

First of all, does anyone think people outside of the District of Columbia even know what the debt ceiling is, let alone consider will consider it an “accomplishment” of Obama’s if the country doesn’t default on its obligations? Seriously?

I can just see the ads now. “Re-elect the President — he raised the debt ceiling!”

Also, Republicans keep claiming victory because they’re getting pretty much everything they want, and they know it — and so do independents — which (again) is why Obama is losing them.

So the White House’s strategy seems to be: give your base the finger (losing 15-20% of Democrats in the process) while pissing off left-leaning independents — all to appeal to the sliver of right-leaning independents that will think raising the debt ceiling is an accomplishment.

Good luck with that, guys.

Number 101

Kentucky's 101st sacrifice to the maw of the Afghanistan-Iraq clusterfuck - and the first since September 30 - is a 21-year-old from Northern Kentucky.

Pvt. Brandon T. Pickering, 21, of Fort Thomas, Ky., died April 10 in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with small arms fire and a rocket propelled grenade in Wardak province, Afghanistan, April 8. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Polk, La.

Last weekend, there was hope he would survive:

A 2008 graduate of Highlands High School has been hurt in Afghanistan. Sources tell FOX19 that Brandon Pickering, 21, was serving in the infantry in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Friends and family say Pickering was injured in the line of duty either Friday or Saturday. He was transported to Germany for treatment. His family was able to go to Germany to be with him.

The principal of Highlands High School, Bran Robinson, said this is the first time a student from the school has been hurt in Afghanistan.

"Brandon is one of those unassuming young men with a big heart," said Robinson. "It's not something that would be a surprise to those who knew Brandon, people who knew that he would go out there and have that sense of duty and dedication, and that he would give back in such a way."

Negotiating By Dummies

So you're haggling over the price of a car. You absolutely have to sell the car before May 15, because you need the money to make a mortgage payment to stave off foreclosure. So you're willing to come down on the price some, even though you need every dime you can get if you're going to make that payment.

The prospective buyer knows your predicament, and he's going to take full advantage of it to force you to accept a price far less than what you really need.

Only now you find out that the buyer is in a predicament, too. Turns out that his wife, who's the breadwinner in the family and is providing the money for the car, is insisting that he stop haggling and just pay whatever you want, because she wants the car right now and doesn't care what it costs.

What do you do? If you're President Obama, you immediately tell the buyer that you'll accept even less than his lowest offer, even though that means losing your house and being tossed out into the street.

Wait - what?

Yep.

Wall Street financiers have given their fully-owned-and-operated subsidiary John Boehner his marching orders on the debt ceiling - stop fucking around and just raise the goddamn thing and do it right now.

President Obama could just sit back and wait for Boehner to follow orders. He could even threaten to veto the debt-ceiling bill unless Boehner accepts a $2 trillion all-jobs new stimulus, funded by tripling taxes on all income over $1 million.

Obama's in the catbird seat on the debt ceiling. Boehner HAS TO raise the debt ceiling or suffer the Wrath of his Corporate Owners. So what does he do?

He agrees to even more spending cuts before Boehner raises the debt ceiling.

This is not 11-dimensional chess. This is not preparing a mark to fall for a giant bluff. This is not loss-leading with small stuff in order to win the big fight down the road.

This is folding a winning hand. This is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

This is deliberately destroying the last chance to prevent America from becoming Haiti.

Not Bad, But How Much Will He Bargain Away?

Krugman nails it:

Overall, way better than the rumors and trial balloons. I can live with this. And whatever the pundits may say, it was much, much more serious than the Ryan “plan”.

Update: I should probably say, I could live with this as an end result. If this becomes the left pole, and the center is halfway between this and Ryan, then no — better to pursue the zero option of just doing nothing and letting the Bush tax cuts as a whole expire.

Transcript here.

Then read Scott Lemieux on You Can't Make a Deficit Deal With People Who Don't Care About the Deficit.

Freakazoid License Plate Really All About the Money

Bad enough that the Commonwealth of Kentucky is confiscating my hard-earned tax dollars to produce an unconstitutionally religious license plate.

But at least they refrained from using it to actually fund freakazoid fraud.

From the Herald:

A Franklin Circuit Court judge ruled Tuesday that an anti-pornography group can not sponsor a specialty license plate with the motto “In God We Trust.”

Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana, a Louisville-based nonprofit, had petitioned the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet in 2008 to sponsor the “In God We Trust” license plate. The cabinet denied the petition, saying that ROCK promotes religion, making the organization ineligible to sponsor a license plate under state law.

In its application, ROCK said it was going to use money from the sales of the plate to raise awareness about harm caused by pornography and the sex industry.

SNIP

In the ruling released Tuesday, Franklin Circuit Court Judge Phillip Shepherd said the cabinet followed state regulations when it denied the application for the specialty plate. Shepherd noted that other specialty license plates have a logo or indicate a cause which the driver supports.

“The phrase ‘In God We Trust’ does not indicate to anyone who views the plate that the holder of the specialty plate supports the goal of abolishing pornography and the sex industry in the Commonwealth,” Shepherd wrote.

SNIP

In December, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet announced that the “In God We Trust” plates will be standard-issue, not specialty plates, selling for the same $21 fee that most Kentucky license plates cost. The plates became available in January.

Some Shameless Speculation About Today's Budget Speech

Blue Girl has a point, but with the idea of preparing for the worst, let's begin with Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Great. So now an insanely reactionary destroy-the-welfare-state-to-fund-upper-class-tax-cuts plan is the Republican view, and a highly reactionary slash-spending-to-preserve-upper-class-tax-cuts plan is the Democratic view. Even if the Catfood Commission can’t pass, the politics are nearly as bad as the policy merits. The Catfood Commission report contains tons of unpopular stuff, and nobody actually cares about the deficit. If Obama endorses it, it’s absolutely indefensible.

But wait! Obama's actually going to tack left, calling for raising taxes. No, I don't believe it either - it's kabuki to quiet the dirty fucking hippies before he punches us again.

So maybe, maybe not, but just in case, this is why simpson-bowles is almost as bad as the Ryan Plan:

From Digby

So this is it:

Obama turns to his bipartisan deficit commission’s blueprint for reducing debt

Keep in mind that there was no deficit commission report. They couldn't reach the required consensus. I'm guessing Obama figures he can get this one through the way Clinton got NAFTA. I guess we'll see.

Meanwhile, perhaps it's time to take a look back at the Simpson-Bowles plan. I am going to simply reprint this article by Dean Baker so that you will read it:

The country in which most people live is experiencing an economic disaster. More than 25 million people are unemployed, underemployed, or have given up looking for work altogether. Tens of millions are now underwater on their mortgages, with millions facing the imminent loss of their homes. Furthermore, there is little prospect that the situation will improve anytime soon.

Many fewer live in the other America, the world of Wall Street and Washington lobbyists. This is where you’ll find former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson and investment banker-turned-Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission, which on Wednesday outlined its plans for what it calls “fiscal responsibility.” In their world the key fact is that, today, corporate profits are back to their pre-recession peaks. As long as the bonuses on Wall Street are again hitting record highs, the economy must be just fine, so what else is there to do but worry about deficits?

It would be hard to understand how ostensibly serious people could be concerned about the deficit right now, unless we realize that they stand apart from the economic calamity that has engulfed most of the country. The suffering caused by this recession simply does not register on their radar screens.

This is not just a moral complaint, although it is troubling that the people most responsible for the economic wreckage are doing just fine. More important is that there is no evidence that Simpson, Bowles, and the rest of the deficit cutters have the slightest understanding of the economy. If they did they would be looking at the deficit in a completely different way.

First, the current deficit should not even be viewed as a problem. Yes, a deficit of $1.4 trillion is big, but this is a direct result of the loss of demand stemming from the collapse of an $8 trillion housing bubble. This bubble was driving the economy until its collapse. There were two channels through which the bubble generated demand in the economy: bubble-inflated house prices led to a boom in construction, bubble-inflated wealth led consumers to increase their spending, pushing saving rates to almost zero.

This demand has disappeared now that the bubble has deflated. The economy has lost more than $600 billion in annual construction demand as builders cut back in response to an enormous over-supply of both residential and non-residential property. Similarly, consumption has plummeted. This left an enormous gap in demand that, at least in the near-term, can only be filled by the government. If the government were to spend less—say it instantly balanced its budget—the primary result would be a further decline in demand and more job loss.

We are in a peculiar situation where the main problem for the economy is a lack of demand. More demand will mean more growth and more jobs. Government must supply demand because there is no other entity that can step forward to do it—unless someone gets very good at counterfeiting hundred dollar bills.

The failure to understand current deficits also leads to a misunderstanding of the debt burden. Simpson and Bowles raise fears of an exploding debt reaching 90 percent of GDP by the end of the decade. They have raised the prospect of a crushing interest burden facing future generations of taxpayers.

Simpson and Bowles decided to include cuts to Social Security in the mix, even though Social Security has not contributed to the deficit.

But there is no real basis for this concern. There is no reason that the Fed can’t just buy this debt (as it is largely doing) and hold it indefinitely. If the Fed holds the debt, there is no interest burden for future taxpayers. The Fed refunds its interest earnings to the Treasury every year. Last year the Fed refunded almost $80 billion in interest to the Treasury, nearly 40 percent of the country’s net interest burden. And the Fed has other tools to ensure that the expansion of the monetary base required to purchase the debt does not lead to inflation.

This means that the country really has no near-term or even mid-term deficit problem. The current deficit is a positive. In fact, if it were larger we would have more jobs and growth. Furthermore, there is no reason that the debt being accumulated at present should pose any interest burden on future generations. In this vein, it is worth noting that Japan’s central bank holds debt amounting to almost 100 percent of that country’s GDP. As a result, Japan’s interest burden is considerably smaller than the United States’s, even though Japan’s debt is almost four times as large relative to the size of its economy.

Over the longer term the United States is projected to face a deficit problem, but this is almost entirely attributable to the explosive rate at which private-sector health-care costs are likely to grow. More than half of health-care costs are paid by the government, hence the public budgetary impact of our private system.

Of course, those increasing costs will lead to enormous problems for the private sector, too. Rapidly rising health-care costs were a big part of the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies. If per-person health-care costs in the United States were the same as in Canada, then General Motors’ profits would have been $20 billion higher over the last decade. If, on the other hand, health-care costs follow the projected path, we will have many more General Motors and Chryslers.

Simpson and Bowles’s report seeks saving in public-sector health programs, primarily by making patients pay more for care. But there is no discussion of the private health-care system that is the root of the problem.

To no one’s surprise the co-chairs decided to include cuts to Social Security in the mix, even though Social Security has not contributed to the deficit. The program has a designated payroll tax and is prohibited from spending beyond the money provided by the tax. It is structurally impossible for the program to affect the deficit.

The Simpson-Bowles approach involves raising the retirement age, cutting benefits for middle- and higher-income workers, and reducing the annual cost-of-living adjustment so that retirees would no longer see their benefits rise in step with the consumer price index (CPI). Raising the retirement age seems more than a bit unfair, since most of the gains in life expectancy have been going to workers in the top half of the income distribution. Workers in the bottom half have seen minimal gains in life expectancy over the last three decades.

The cuts in the benefit formula will hit anyone who has average wage earnings over their lifetime of more than $36,000. This is not most people’s definition of affluent.

Simpson and Bowles do not seem interested in accuracy; they want to cut benefits.

Finally, the co-chairs want to peg the cost-of-living adjustment to a new CPI that regularly shows a lower rate of inflation than the current measure. The gap is about 0.3 percent, which means that benefits will rise by about 0.3 percent less rapidly than would otherwise be the case.

This effect seems small, but it adds up over time. A retiree who collecting benefits for ten years would have a benefit in their tenth years that was 3.0 percent lower than would otherwise be the case. After 20 years the gap would be 6.0 percent and after thirty years the gap would be 9.0 percent. This policy has the effect of hitting the oldest hardest. These are precisely the people (mostly women) with the least resources.

It is often argued that the new CPI would be a better measure of inflation, but if we are concerned about actually measuring the cost of living for retirees, Simpson and Bowles could have recommended that Congress use a measure constructed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics explicitly to measure the increase in the cost of living for the elderly. This CPI for the elderly consistently shows a rate of inflation that is 0.2-0.4 above the standard CPI that is used now. But Simpson and Bowles do not seem interested in accuracy; they want to cut benefits.

There is one item worth noting for its absence. Simpson and Bowles apparently never considered a Wall Street financial-speculation tax. This is an obvious source of revenue that even the International Monetary Fund is now advocating in recognition of the enormous amount of waste and rents in the financial sector. It is possible to raise large amounts of revenue from such a tax.

University of Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin and I calculated the potential revenue at more than $100 billion a year, with little impact on productive economic activity. The main impact would be to reduce the shuffling of financial assets. The refusal to consider this source of revenue is striking since at least one member of the commission has been a vocal advocate of financial-speculation taxes. Bowles is a director of Morgan Stanley, one of the Wall Street banks that would be seriously affected by such a tax.

There are some positive items in the report. It would limit the mortgage interest-rate deduction and get rid of the deduction for “cafeteria” benefit plans. But the report is fatally flawed because its authors, principally Simpson and Bowles, never seriously reflected on their basic economic assumptions. It would be best if this is yet another one of those Washington commissions that is quickly forgotten.

Sadly, it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Tune in this afternoon at 1:35 p.m. to find out what really happens.

Big Democratic Victory, You Betcha

Budget Cut Details Released

Science, education, environment and health care top cut list from Friday's shutdown-averting budget deal.

--Josh Marshall

On Left-Wing Purism

"Purists" are usually defined by the phrase "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good."

The classic electoral example is the 2000 election, when liberals dissatisfied with Al Gore's DLC centrism (which today is far, far to the left) voted for Ralph Nader. Gore did win the election - both the popular and electoral vote - but Nader votes in Florida narrowed his victory to the point that the Supreme Court could steal it for Bush.

This is left-wing purism: Down With Tyranny writing:

(It's easy for me to say, living in California, but there is nothing that would ever make me vote for Obama again, not a Palin, a Bachmann, a Newt... not even Huckabee or Pence.)

Anything short of that - up to and including "Barack Obama is murdering the New Deal and condemning 99 percent of Americans to serfdom" - is patriotic defense of liberalism and American Values.

As for me, nothing could make me NOT vote for Obama again, if only because his being president drives the repugs completely insane.

But I don't have to - and won't - be a cheerleader.

Between the tax cut deal in December and the kill-the-middle-class budget deal on Friday, Obama has pushed the Overton window so far to the right that now we have purists defined as those who refuse to accept the absolutely, horrifically catastrophic in place of the barely acceptable.

A recessionary budget that contains nothing but economy-destroying program cuts and criminal tax cuts, that completely ignores the desperate need for massive spending to rescue the economy, that pretends the extinction of 10 million jobs never happened is not "good." It's not "OK." It's not even "the bare minimum."

It's a fucking class war crime. It's economic genocide on every person in this country who is not a millionaire.

How bad is the compromise budget for the rest of 2011? Down with Tyranny on just what Obama gave away.

Ryan vs. Reality: The Liberal Budget Alternative

From now on, the response to President Obama's speeches need to come not from the repugs, who are writing his script, but from the real opposition to Obama's Lords-and-serfs plan: liberals.

Digby:

Jonathan Cohn makes the good point that Obama's speech on Wednesday is unfortunately going to be seen as the left most position in the debate which makes a compromise between his plan and Ryan's the "juuust right" sweet spot. Cohn rightly suggests that tit would be helpful to have a leftward plan that incorporates left wing values the same way Ryan's plan incorporates Ayn Rand's wet dreams.

An equally extreme proposal on the left would balance the budget, first, by raising new taxes--on everybody and, most likely, with particular levies on carbon. I doubt Obama will endorse either idea in his speech. A seriously left-wing proposal would also seek to reduce overall health care costs (as well as those incurred by the government and individuals) more aggressively than the Affordable Care Act does, by using the kind of blunt, global price controls you get in single-payer systems. In other words, a truly left-wing alternative on health care reform might actually justify the label “government-run health care.”

A compromise that represented a middle ground between that kind of plan and Ryan’s might be worth contemplating. But you'll find nothing along those lines in the debate right now. Yes, a number of liberal plans are circulating, the most detailed of which is probably the “Our Fiscal Future" proposal from Demos*, the Century Fund, and the Economic Policy Institute. And it would be helpful indeed if plans like this got more attention, as Representative Jan Schakowsky and the Congressional Progressive Caucus have been urging. But “Our Fiscal Future” doesn't call for system-wide health care price controls; it merely calls for creating a public option, as the architects of the Affordable Care Act originally envisioned. In that respect, and others, the current liberal alternatives are closer to what I'd consider the political mainstream than either my imaginary left-wing plan or Ryan's not-so-imaginary right-wing alternative.

He's right, of course. The leftward position is tepid market-oriented compromises coming out of the gate. Better than Ryan, of course. But hardly a position that could balance the rightward yank that Ryan and the Simpson Bowles atrocity have given us or serve as an opening ante. The problem, unfortunately, is that when anyone sets forth a truly liberal plan like Cohn proposes, they are not only met with shrieks of horror from conservatives, establishment liberals and Democratic third-way centrists stalk them like a pack of hyenas and marginalize them as outside the "mainstream" and assure everyone who will listen that they are not "serious." You may have noticed that Paul Ryan's lunacy is not similarly treated by his own. Indeed, it's not even similarly treated that way by liberals. Just try to imagine a plan like the one Cohn describes being hailed as "courageous" (even though it surely would be.) Yeah, I know. Shrill.

The fact is that there is no liberal establishment willing to validate liberalism. Indeed, for reasons only they can tell us, they almost always go out of their way to exclude anyone who can readily be identified as a person of the left and rush before the cameras and into print to reassure America that they have no support. I have my theories about why that might be, but suffice to say it's a fairly easily documented phenomenon. There is simply no space in the establishment political dialog for explicitly left policy or rhetoric.

Ask and ye shall receive! There IS a liberal alternative. It's not quite as left as I would like, but it's a huge step in the correct direction.

Karoli at Crooks and Liars:

While the media go on and on about how Paul Ryan's budget is so serious and courageous that the President "must respond" to it (see the clip above where Fox's Stuart Varney employs the 'crisis' budget strategy), a truly progressive proposal has been released.

Unlike Ryan's proposal, which takes us all the way through 2040 before the deficit is eliminated, this budget puts us on solid footing by 2021, with a fully balanced budget by 2014. Here are some specifics:

The CPC proposal (PDF)

• Eliminates the deficits and creates a surplus by 2021
• Puts America back to work with a “Make it in America” jobs program
• Protects the social safety net
• Ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Is FAIR (Fixing America’s Inequality Responsibly)

What the proposal accomplishes:

• Primary budget balance by 2014.
• Budget surplus by 2021.
• Reduces public debt as a share of GDP to 64.4% by 2021, down 16.9 percentage points from
a baseline fully adjusted for both the doc fix and the AMT patch.
• Reduces deficits by $5.7 trillion over 2012-21
• Both outlays and revenue equal 22.3% of GDP by 2021

Real courage involves raising taxes and explaining that we can't pay for wars without a cost attached. Real courage involves protecting our most vulnerable and asking those with much to give a fair share.

This budget is a courageous budget. Not Ryan's. Yet, there hasn't been so much as a peep from the mainstream media about this alternatives. Gosh, I wonder why not.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?

Let's Just Adopt Repug Tactics

See, liberals have been going about this all wrong. Using facts and real numbers and logic and reasoning apparently makes no impression whatsoever on Obama and congressional democrats.

Repugs, however, get whatever they want - no matter how horrific and destructive - by making ludicrous threats that nobody with a grain of sense believes.

Liberals should adopt this tactic: make empty threats that would embarrass a kindergartner while demanding monster, nation-transforming budget revisions.

"Raise taxes on all income over 1 million dollars to 90 percent and force corporations to pay full taxes - no loopholes - on income for the past 20 years, or .... we'll tell everybody that you eat boogers!"

"Replace the Affordable Care Act with Medicare for All, to be funded by a one-time 100 percent windfall tax on Big Pharma and Big Insurance, or ..... we'll make fun of the way you dance!"

"Cancel all tax breaks and subsidies for all fossil fuel, nukes and ethanol, and use that money for a breakneck renewable energy Manhattan Project to make the U.S. carbon-free in 10 years, or .... we'll give you a wedgie you'll never forget!"

"Cancel all other tax breaks and subsidies for corporations and use that money to create 10 million jobs rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, or .... "we'll tell on you!"

Hey, it works for Boehner.

At the very least, it might teach Obama that the proper response to empty threats is not pleading "I'll give you whatever you want, just don't do that!" but rather laughing derisively and saying "Go ahead."

Simple Answers to Naive Questions

Ari Berman in The Nation writes "Why President Obama is losing the budget fight."

Ari, sweetie: you of all people know that Obama is not losing the budget fight. He's getting exactly what he wants: massive tax cuts for the rich, free passes from prosecution for corporations, catastrophic cuts in social spending and a democratic electorate so shell-shocked they won't even notice him eliminate Medicare and Social Security on Wednesday.

At TPM, Josh Marshall writes:

I'm not convinced yet that this was quite the defeat for the president that a lot of people are claiming.

No, Josh - this was not a defeat for the president at all. It was a victory for him. The defeat was for the 99 percent of Americans who are not already obscenely wealthy. But nobody in Washington with any power gives a flying fuck about us.

Contemplating Shutdown

You know they're going to do this again - why wouldn't they, when it's worked for them Every. Single. Time.?

When they do, remember this.

And don't you ever dare even think about calling us cynical, because next to Wonkette Editor Ken Layne, we are Polly-fucking-anna.

So why is the “World’s Greatest Nation of Health Care” about to shut down, again? Right, because crybaby jerkwad John Boehner hates evil womenfolk so much and all his misogynist closet-case Republican donors hate women so much and did you know what is gross? A woman, with her “lady parts” and all wanting to “not have crotch cancer” or whatever. Ladies are disgusting, because if you need to put a penis somewhere, what on earth is wrong with a young boy’s mouth? And these gross things, the womens, think they will get some kind of “contraception” or “cancer screening” even though they are poor? Jezebels! Burn in hell with cancer, Jezebels! Whores of Babylon!

As many of the “policy bloggers” are typing today, Planned Parenthood is basically the entire reason the gaylord Republicans are going to shut down the United States Government (except for the war killin’ part). Even though just 3% of Planned Parenthood’s budget is spent on abortion — and none of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding, obviously — the point is that some gal somewhere might get some idears about how she could think she’s so high falutin’ she’ll go see the old coat-hanger doc without the menfolk’s permission. And people wonder why we have domestic violence!

Anyway, we hope America is shut down not just for a while, but for good. Forever. We would like to nail John Boehner to the United States entrance sign, wherever it is. (Over a young boy’s crying mouth?) And then we would paint on John Boehner’s beautiful dapper suit, “CLOSED FOREVER.” This would be both a sign and a symbol.

You know who might make good use of this country? THE RED COMMUNIST CHINESE. At least they know how to run a business.

And they LOVE abortion. That puts them higher on my list than the repugs AND Obama.

Way Too Much Fun With Gas Prices

Wonkette posted about gas prices, and commenters anniegetyerfun and SayItWithWookies got carried away.

anniegetyerfun

$3.76! Luxury! It costs a minimum of $4 a gallon in the Seattle area, and we have to refine it ourselves, using nothing but bendy straws and a filter from a goldfish tank.

SayItWithWookies

Bendy straws? Luxury! Here we use two rusty tomato cans and a sterno, and we do it by a light powered by three potatoes strung together. And we like it that way.

anniegetyerfun

You can afford string for your potatoes? We have to shave our heads and weave our own rope on a loom constructed from the rusty car parts from the autos we can no longer afford to drive. But do we complain? No.

SayItWithWookies

You have a loom? Oh, pardon me you highness -- when we need twine we make it by rubbing cat hair between our palms, in spite of our terrible allergies and the constant pain from when the cat scratches us because we're shaving it with a rusty Bic disposable. But we're a proud people and that's how it's always been done.

anniegetyerfun

Oh, I didn't realize that you lived in an area where keeping pets was the norm. That must be nice. We ate all of our cats last winter, of course, as well as our rusty Bic razors. We really had to chew to get those down, but it was filling, and we gave thanks, like we were taught, for our bounty.

SayItWithWookies

Well we only keep the cats because they prevent the rats from following us home from the dump where we forage for banana peels and okra stems for our Sunday dinner. Ever since little Billy's nose was eaten off by the rats one night we've had to keep them. Of course they're feral, and possibly rabid, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

It's probably still going on ....

Losing the Argument

This budget deal, its consequences and ramifications, is an elephant (in more than one way) that has to be consumed in many small pieces.

Zandar begins:

So, Obama went all pragmatic instead of all cowboy, and a deal was reached. A shutdown was averted, and Obama does look, well, presidential. They say a deal that everybody hates is a fair one.

But the stakes in the next few months will have a hell of a lot more zeroes attached to them. We get to go through all this again heading into the summer.

[UPDATE] BooMan's take is excellent.

I notice a lot of commenters here are taking the position that the Republicans came out ahead in these negotiations. In a certain basic sense, they did. But most of that was baked in the cake the moment they took over the House by gaining an historic 63 seats. Despite all the angst over the slashing of discretionary spending (this was the biggest one-year cut in history), this battle was over a tiny sliver of the overall budget. The big battles over entitlement spending loom on the horizon, and the Republicans expended a tremendous amount of political capital to get a very small victory. You can count on them to threaten a government shutdown at least two more times this year. First, they'll threaten to default on our debt, and then they'll threaten "no deal" on the 2012 budget. They were wise enough not to close the government on the first and smallest fight, but they'll pay a higher political price every time they hold the government hostage.

We all complain about the Democrats' lack of unity and fighting spirit, but they finished these negotiations completely unified and on message. Yesterday was the best performance by the Democrats that I've seen in years. They blistered the Republicans for wanting to shut down the government to prevent cancer screenings and breast exams, and they did it in a very bold and coordinated way. It showed the power of the presidency when he decides to draw a line and he actually has the undivided support of his party. They were well-prepared for a government shutdown, and that bodes well for later battles.

And that is a very fair argument. But if we're calling cutting government social spending in a recession and it taking Republicans threatening to shut the government down before the Dems can finally be unified and on message as the "best performance in years" we're in deep and abiding fecal matter.

[UPDATE 2] To clarify, the argument in Washington is not "How do we strengthen our economy with the government as spender of last resort" but "How much government spending do we feed to the Tea Party wolves to make it through to the 2012 elections." There's nobody talking about how to pull us out of the hole we're in. It's only how much the American people are going to have to tighten their belts again to give tax cuts to the people at the top.

We have decisively lost the "spend or cut" argument. The argument is now how much we will lose. Obama will be blamed for that loss even as Republicans call for more sacrifice from 95% of Americans in the name of the wealthy at the top.

If Obama Cured Cancer, What Would Repugs Say?

Before I get into the kill-me-now details of the federal budget, let's have a chuckle at the GOP's expense, courtesy of Steve Weinstein at Crooks and Liars:

The headlines screamed: Barack Obama Discovers Cure for Cancer.

While throngs in capitals across the globe spontaneously massed to cheer the president’s astounding stamp on the history of humankind, the GOP stampeded to Twitter to spit their disgust at ObamaCure:

WTHuckabee: If you examine the anti-colonial views of the Mau Mau shamans in Kenya, you will discover that they too sought out cures for cancer. #witchdoctor

DonaldChump: I know his mother left him with this animus toward cancer, which is admirable and all. But what she didn’t leave him with was an actual birth certificate. #WatchMyShow!

SpeakerOfTheLobbyists: The American people sent us here to repeal this job-killing ObamaCure. Did I mention we’re broke? And the American people want us to cut Planned Parenthood more than cancer. #SoBeIt

Palinoscopy: ObamaCure is an outrageous blood libel, a Death Panel on the inalienable rights of our Real American PharmaCorps. to sell common sense conservative drugs. #MuslimBrotherhoodHatesCancerToo

RandAppall: The Constitution does not permit the president to Declare War on cancer without the debate & consent of Congress. #OrAquaBuddha

TheRyanBludgeonIt: We do not have a cancer problem. We have a spending on cancer problem. Cut taxes on small businesses like Koch & the free market will generate millions of new cancer cures. #AndMillionsOfNewCancerCustomers #FromPollution

aBeckalypseNow: Of course Barack Obama doesn’t want people to die from cancer. That will enable the higher birth rates in the Muslim world to sweep across this Earth like a Sendai tsunami. #BuyGold.

Read the whole thing.

The Civil War You Didn't Learn About in School

I learned Civil War "history" not 50 miles from this site near Simpsonville, but heard not a word of this battle so close to home. Probably because it didn't fit into the "Gone With the Wind" version of the Civil War taught in Kentucky schools back then.

Now I know where I'll be picnicking on Memorial Day.

From the Courier:

When Mary L. Bailey's grandmother would take her to a Simpsonville cemetery to decorate their relatives' graves, the older woman would point out where a group of African-American soldiers in the Civil War were buried after being killed in a Confederate ambush.

On Sunday, Bailey, 80, returned to the site for a ceremony to dedicate a memorial to those solders, slain months after they turned from slaves into Union soldiers.

Read the whole thing.

Budget Betrayal

Not a single member of Kentucky's U.S. House delegation voted against the middle-class-economy-destroying budget "compromise" shortly after midnight Saturday. All four republicans voted for a budget that betrayed repug promises of cuts that would kill the social safety net, and both Democrats voted for a budget that strips the middle-class naked and homeless in order to enrich the obscenely wealthy.

Down With Tyranny:

It passed 40 minutes late, 348-70. 208 Republicans plus 140 Democrats probably guaranteeing a double-dip recession. For 28 radical right nihilists-- your Bachmanns, Gohmerts, Brouns, Chaffetzes... Joe "You Lie" Wilson, that crowd-- the cutbacks weren't severe enough; they voted NO. 42 Democrats also voted NO. Like Anthony Weiner (D-NY).

And, as Digby just pointed out this morning, the process left the Republicans stronger and united, not downhearted and in disarray, the way the Democrats are. "The Tea Party," she writes, "is just another word for 'conservative Republican.' Boehner used them, they didn't use him. A good leader knows how to manage expectations and Boehner turns out to be very good at it. He came in with a low number, then 'capitulated' to his base and raised it over and over again. He couldn't quite come through on getting rid of funding for cervical cancer screening and birth control (Tea Party priorities, apparently) but promised to bring it up again and again in the endless budget battles to come. What's not to like? And this is enough to make them giddy-- and is, after all, the whole point: The agreement would cut about $38 billion from the 2010 budget baseline and $78.5 billion from President Obama's 2011 budget proposal."

The Democrats who voted against the kabuki-compromise, by and large, come from working class districts and represent working class sensibilities. Although trusted figures, like Donna Edwards (who represents a district with a higher proportion of government employees than any in the country) and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Raúl Grijalva, voted to avert a shutdown, the 42 Democrats who voted against Obama felt they could not go along with the wrenching cuts and that giving in to Republican hostage-taking would just embolden them in the future in their battles to dismantle Social Security and Medicare. Tammy Baldwin represents Madison, Wisconsin, where the American spirit happens to be highest of anywhere in the country fright now. She voted NO.

Inspiration for Next Weekend's Days of Resistance

As I posted yesterday, April 15-18 will see demonstrations around the country against corporations who cheat to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Two weeks aga, March 26, was a USUncut Day of Action against those corporations, and Allison Kilkenny at The Nation has a roundup of links to photos and videos.

Video and photos from US Uncut’s forty nationwide protests are beginning to come in. Perhaps the liveliest chapter is US Uncut DC, whose 100+ members shut down a Bank of America branch on Saturday. Reportedly, the bank managers pulled a fire alarm as action began at the protest. This is not the first time the franchise has successfully shut down BoA’s operations.

Other states decided to target different corporate tax dodgers. In 2009 and 2010, Verizon reported $24.2 billion in pretax income, but the company hasn’t paid a penny in taxes on that revenue, so in Ohio members of the “Citizens’ Revenue Service” went to a local Verizon store in order to collect the taxes on behalf of the American people.

More videos and photos from Chicago (where a protester alleges BoA told her she could not close down her account ‘because she’s a protester’), Wisconsin, New Jersey and Michigan have also been posted on the US Uncut website, Youtube and Twitter.

Still, there are other protests that haven’t publicly posted photos or videos yet. In Boston, protesters performed street theater, including a sketch with music that was written about billionaires vs. citizens, of course with the citizens winning in the end. In Tennessee, activists gathered to ask why BoA pays less in taxes than an average American household, and I attended US Uncut NYC’s protest, where I witnessed a police officer shove a completely peaceful activist inside a Bank of America.

Several branches that held protests and haven’t had the opportunity to upload video and photos yet have contacted me, so I’ll be updating the blog throughout the week with those events.

More links, stories and a song here.

Remember: Next weekend, April 15 through April 18, your friends and neighbors will hold protests in communities all over the country to demand that the obscenely wealthy and the tax-avoiding corporations pay their fair share.

Click here to find an April 15-18 USUncut Corporate Tax Cheats Are Cheating America event near you.

Click here to find a Moveon Tax Day Make Them Pay event in your town.

Farmer Divorce News Helps the GOP Ticket

First, kudos to Media Czech for beating everybody - including the MSM - on this story.

Rebecca Farmer, the wife KY Commissioner of Agriculture and current Lt. Governor candidate on the GOP ticket Richie Farmer, filed for divorce this Tuesday, April 5th, according to documents obtained by Barefoot and Progressive at the Franklin County Circuit Court Clerk's office.

The petitioner states in the filing that "the marriage between the Petitioner and the Respondent is irretrievably broken and there exists no reasonable prospect of reconciliation."

You bet there's lots, lots more to come - follow it here.

Secondly, the more revelations about sins committed by repugs, the more the freakazoids love them.

Maybe you have to be a born-again to really get this, but when the freakazoids say "hate the sin, love the sinner" they really mean it.

Saved is saved. Once you confess your sins and bring Jesus into your heart - preferably in front of a large congregation on Sunday morning - you are saved forever. No matter what sins you commit for the rest of your life, as long as you publicly express remorse, you are eternally forgiven and welcomed back into the fold.

This is what the parable of the Prodigal Son really means to modern freakazoids. The more you sin and repent, the more ecstatically you are welcomed back into the fold. Even if it's the same sin, over and over and over again. Repent publicly, and you are washed clean in the blood of the lamb.

This is how freakazoids can support, give money to and vote for the most corrupt, sinful repug candidates out there, while insisting that Democratic candidates who have led blameless, self-sacrificing lives embodying New Testament values are evil commie muslin terrists who must be destroyed.

It's about the appearance, not the substance.

Yes, it's a racket. The most successful racket ever invented.

The Williams-Farmer gubernatorial ticket just got quite a boost.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

No Money for Healthcare, But a Blank Check for the Freakazoids

Balls and strikes, baby - balls and strikes.

Scott Lemieux on Monday:

One of the trademarks of the Roberts Court has been to find ways around precedents without explicitly overruling them. One area where this has been particularly evident is with respect to the ability of taxpayers to bring suits alleging violations of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. In the American system of constitutional law, federal courts can only hear cases if a litigant establishes "standing," that is, enough personal interest in the case that there is a legitimate "case or controversy" for the courts to revolve under Article III.

While taxpayers generally don't have standing to bring suits based on their status as taxpayers, the landmark Flast v. Cohen decision created an exception, allowing taxpayers to sue to prevent governments from illegally subsidizing religion in some circumstances. In 2007, the Roberts Court all but overruled Flast, arguing that because the program being challenged involved executive rather than legislative subsidies, taxpayers couldn't challenge the program. Precisely because the distinction was so specious, it's not clear under what circumstances the Roberts Court would find taxpayers have standing.

Today, the Court continues this trend. In yet another distinction without a meaningful difference, the court's five Republican appointees held (through Kennedy) that because an Arizona religious subsidy was a tax credit rather than a direct expenditure, Arizona taxpayers lacked the standing to challenge it. In her first major dissent, Kagan notes the obvious flaws in this reasoning:

Today’s decision devastates taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases. The government, after all, often uses tax expenditures to subsidize favored persons and activities. Still more, the government almost always has this option. Appropriations and tax subsidies are readily interchangeable; what is a cash grant today can be a tax break tomorrow. The Court’s opinion thus offers a roadmap—more truly, just a one-step instruction—to any government that wishes to insulate its financing of religious activity from legal challenge. Structure the funding as a tax expenditure, and Flast will not stand in the way. No taxpayer will have standing to object. However blatantly the government may violate the Establishment Clause, taxpayers cannot gain access to the federal courts.

And by ravaging Flast in this way, today’s decision damages one of this Nation’s defining constitutional commitments.

Among other things, the case is an object lesson in the general vacuity of "minimalism." It would be much more honest for the Court to just overturn Flast v. Cohen outright rather than bleed it to death with this ridiculous hair-splitting.

Read the whole thing.

Not Millionaires; Exploited Workers

A million or two bucks a year sounds like pretty good pay.

But what if you had all of four years to earn every last dime you needed to live on for the rest of your life?

What if the work you had to do for that for four years was likely to leave you disabled for life, unable to work at another job, unable to afford health care, likely to die 20 years earlier than other people your age, and likely to spend your last decade senile from brain damage?

What if you demanded a better deal from your employer, and people who supported you in your work criticized you for being selfish?

Dave Zirn in The Nation:

Beyond all the self-pity and spin coming from the offices of National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell, here is the naked truth: we face a lockout and the prospect of no pro football in 2011 because the union made a three-word demand that would not have cost the owners a dime—open your books.

DeMaurice Smith and the NFL Players Association wanted access to ten years of financial audits so they could see why the most successful sports league on earth was claiming to be financially embattled. They wanted to know why the owners could feel justified in asking for 18 percent cuts in player compensation. They wanted to know why—despite all we now know about the brutal hazards of the sport—the owners could insist on adding two more regular-season games. But the owners refused to open the books, offering instead, as the NFLPA described it, “a single sheet of paper with two numbers on it.” This single sheet would be available to the union only after being vetted by an independent third party.

It’s unclear why the owners have made a deal-breaking fetish of financial secrecy. We can only assume that the books would not be flattered by the light of day. We don’t know if their private ledgers would provoke the IRS into giving them something less pleasant than a body cavity search. We don’t know if the audits would demonstrate that owners leveraged their franchises and then took a bath in the 2008 economic crash. We don’t know if individual NFL owners—like their Major League Baseball counterparts—lied to local governments so they could get more taxpayer cash for stadiums. Given the financial state of baseball’s New York Mets, whose owners flushed their liquidity by partnering up with Bernie Madoff, we should be forgiven for fearing the worst.

The NFLPA also offered to consider various benefit cuts in return for an ownership stake in the teams. The owners responded as if the players had arrived at negotiations wearing white after Labor Day. NFL outside counsel Bob Batterman reportedly responded, “My clients aren’t interested in being partners with your guys.” It’s this kind of plutocratic contempt that’s poisoned the well.

The Players Association, feeling derided and disrespected, has now decertified the union so it can sue the league and forestall the owners from shutting down the sport. As a certified union, NFLPA is forbidden from suing the league and owners are shielded from labor law violations. But as a decertified trade association, it can bring lawsuits on everything from the lockout to the legality of the NFL draft. Litigation isn’t pretty, but going to the courts means the NFLPA can get an injunction and stop the lockout.

Fans, labor activists and progressives should stand proudly with the players. It’s a lockout, not a strike. The NFLPA has said repeatedly that its members will play under the existing contract until a new agreement is reached.

A March lockout might mean little to fans, but for players it constitutes a direct threat to their health: an off-season lockout means they will have no access to team trainers, doctors or physical therapists. Remember, this is a league with a 100 percent injury rate. A March lockout also means that healthcare for players and their families is officially cut off. One player’s pregnant wife had her delivery induced before the lockout deadline so it would be covered by the NFL’s health plan.

A common accusation in this dispute, as in most pro sports labor wars, is that this is just “billionaires versus millionaires.” That is a ridiculous assertion of moral, not to mention economic, equivalency. Here’s the reality: you have some of the richest people in the United States—people with generational wealth, people whose children’s children make Tucker Carlson look like Big Bill Haywood—going against a workforce with careers that last just 3.6 years on average.

It’s a workforce that draws almost exclusively from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds. It’s a workforce that will die some twenty years earlier than the typical American male. As Jaclyn Fujita, wife of NFL player Scott Fujita, wrote, “I don’t know that we were fully aware of the ultimate reality of the National Football League. We learned the hard way that he would work his ass into the ground, playing every defensive down and special teams, and would be the lowest paid man on the roster. That he would experience multiple concussions, but remain on the field. That he would suffer full ligament tears and shouldn’t have been walking, but team doctors would tell him it was a ‘minor sprain’ and should still play. That even though you have given your heart and soul to a team, they can easily replace you with a rookie who has never played in the NFL before” [see Zirin, “Wish of an NFL Wife”].

Last I checked, no one except the seriously maladjusted goes to games to eyeball the owners’ box, no matter what megalomaniacs like Jerry Jones think. The players are the game, but they are being treated like pieces of equipment.

Players are demanding to see the owners’ financial ledgers, to choose their own doctors and, for the first time in NFL history, to be treated like grown men. It’s remarkable that these twenty-first-century gladiators are praised by the media when they show so-called “manhood” on the field by playing through pain but are derided when they refuse to be treated like children.

This is happening for one reason and one reason only. The owners want to show the players who’s boss. But it won’t just be the players who get hurt. Every stadium concession worker, every restaurant worker, every last person who, in these dyspeptic times, depends on the stadium to eke out a living will be affected.

The NFL Players Association understands that it needs solidarity from working people to win. That’s why it has issued statements supporting everyone from the public sector workers in Wisconsin to the trade unionists of Egypt. The players know what side they’re on. We should too.

Join the Resistance

No, we're not giving in and we're not giving up and we're not giving an inch to the rich parasites.

Next weekend, April 15 through April 18, your friends and neighbors will hold protests in communities all over the country to demand that the obscenely wealthy and the tax-avoiding corporations pay their fair share.

Click here to find an April 15-18 USUncut Corporate Tax Cheats Are Cheating America event near you.

Click here to find a Moveon Tax Day Make Them Pay event in your town.

Need inspiration? Chris Hedges at truthdig:

The phrase consent of the governed has been turned into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. Civil Disobedience is the only tool we have left.

We will not halt the laying off of teachers and other public employees, the slashing of unemployment benefits, the closing of public libraries, the reduction of student loans, the foreclosures, the gutting of public education and early childhood programs or the dismantling of basic social services such as heating assistance for the elderly until we start to carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience against the financial institutions responsible for our debacle. The banks and Wall Street, which have erected the corporate state to serve their interests at our expense, caused the financial crisis. The bankers and their lobbyists crafted tax havens that account for up to $1 trillion in tax revenue lost every decade. They rewrote tax laws so the nation’s most profitable corporations, including Bank of America, could avoid paying any federal taxes. They engaged in massive fraud and deception that wiped out an estimated $40 trillion in global wealth. The banks are the ones that should be made to pay for the financial collapse. Not us. And for this reason at 11 a.m. April 15 I will join protesters in Union Square in New York City in front of the Bank of America.

“The political process no longer works,” Kevin Zeese, the director of Prosperity Agenda and one of the organizers of the April 15 event, told me. “The economy is controlled by a handful of economic elites. The necessities of most Americans are no longer being met. The only way to change this is to shift the power to a culture of resistance. This will be the first in a series of events we will organize to help give people control of their economic and political life.”

SNIP

Civil disobedience, such as that described in the bail-in video or the upcoming protest in Union Square, is the only tool we have left. A fourth of the country’s largest corporations—including General Electric, ExxonMobil and Bank of America—paid no federal income taxes in 2010. But at the same time these corporations operate as if they have a divine right to hundreds of billions in taxpayer subsidies. Bank of America was handed $45 billion—that is billion with a B—in federal bailout funds. Bank of America takes this money—money you and I paid in taxes—and hides it along with its profits in some 115 offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes. One assumes the bank’s legions of accountants are busy making sure the corporation will not pay federal taxes again this year. Imagine if you or I tried that.

“If Bank of America paid their fair share of taxes, planned cuts of $1.7 billion in early childhood education, including Head Start & Title 1, would not be needed,” Zeese pointed out. “Bank of America avoids paying taxes by using subsidiaries in offshore tax havens. To eliminate their taxes, they reinvest proceeds overseas, instead of bringing the dollars home, thereby undermining the U.S. economy and avoiding federal taxes. Big Finance, like Bank of America, contributes to record deficits that are resulting in massive cuts to basic services in federal and state governments.”

The big banks and corporations are parasites. They greedily devour the entrails of the nation in a quest for profit, thrusting us all into serfdom and polluting and poisoning the ecosystem that sustains the human species. They have gobbled up more than a trillion dollars from the Department of Treasury and the Federal Reserve and created tiny enclaves of wealth and privilege where corporate managers replicate the decadence of the Forbidden City and Versailles. Those outside the gates, however, struggle to find work and watch helplessly as food and commodity prices rocket upward. The owners of one out of seven houses are now behind on their mortgage payments. In 2010 there were 3.8 million foreclosure filings and bank repossessions topped 2.8 million, a 2 percent increase over 2009 and a 23 percent increase over 2008. This record looks set to be broken in 2011. And no one in the Congress, the Obama White House, the courts or the press, all beholden to corporate money, will step in to stop or denounce the assault on families. Our ruling elite, including Barack Obama, are courtiers, shameless hedonists of power, who kneel before Wall Street and daily sell us out. The top corporate plutocrats are pulling down $900,000 an hour while one in four children depends on food stamps to eat.

We don’t need leaders. We don’t need directives from above. We don’t need formal organizations. We don’t need to waste our time appealing to the Democratic Party or writing letters to the editor. We don’t need more diatribes on the Internet. We need to physically get into the public square and create a mass movement. We need you and a few of your neighbors to begin it. We need you to walk down to your Bank of America branch and protest. We need you to come to Union Square. And once you do that you begin to create a force these elites always desperately try to snuff out—resistance.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?

He Told Us So

I finally got around to reading Markos Moulitsas' American Taliban. If you haven't read it, turn off the computer right now, go get a copy, start reading and don't do anything else until you finish. It's only 237 pages and you won't be able to put it down anyway.

It's been out for less than a year, and already events have proven Moulitsas dead-on right and all the critics who berated him for overreaching by comparing wingnut freakazoids to the Taliban Dead. Wrong.

He warned about deadly violence, and we got the murder of a federal judge and attempted murder of a Congresswoman. He warned about obsessive control of other people's sex lives, and we got draconian anti-abortion laws. He warned about misogyny, and we got budget cuts aimed at destroying women. He warned about bloodthirsty warmongering, and we got secret military operations in Pakistan, Yemen and now Libya. He warned about anti-science, anti-facts crusades, and we got massive attacks on public education.

This book, condemned even by supposed liberals for being so rude, if anything actually understated the case.

The Af-Pak Taliban and their muslim fellow-travelers are a pathetic joke compared to the Xian American Taliban. It is the American Taliban that is the genuine existential threat to American liberty and democracy.

As Moulitsas concluded:

We understate the danger posted by their demands for uniformity of thought - their thought - at our own peril. By polluting out knowledge with misinformation and doubt, they create a climate of distrust around reason itself. By intimidating free and independent thinkers, they smother not just dissent by habits of thought that lead to creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. They long for a citzenry that is equal parts frighteed, ignorant, military and dogmatic, a citizenry eager to hand over the reins of power in exchange for the illusion of certainty and security.

Whether they succeed or not, whether the American experiment scceeds or not, may largely depend on men and women who are willing to relentlessly call out ignorance, who are willing to stand up to protect democratic ideals and processes, and who fight, dain and day out, to resist the imposition of a bloodthirsty, repressive, dogmatic worldview.

Recognizing the kinship between Islamic extremists and their American Taliban cousins may be only a first step in rolling them back, but it's the foundational one.