TaxScam in a nutshell

Here's what I think we need to know about the highly partisan version of tax "reform" now being pushed through the senate:

1. George W. Bush passed massive tax cuts and what we got was....permanent prosperity? Oh, wait, it was the biggest crash since the Great Depression. I'm not saying the tax cuts were the sole cause, although they did contribute to the financial bubbles that led to it. But it's obvious that tax cuts don't guarantee growth or prosperity or economic stability.

2. This is a Trojan horse. The massive transfer of wealth to those who already have it will eventually crowd out funding for things like Medicare, Medicaid, student aid, food security, housing etc.

3. There are plenty of "starve the beast" Republicans who want that to happen. They hope a crisis will force cuts to domestic programs.

4. Then there's the whole thing about adding $1.5 trillion+ to the deficit for no good reason.

5. Whatever cuts some middle class people will get is a sugar high. Those cuts are temporary, while cuts to corporations and the wealthy are permanent.

6. Due to the tilt of the programs towards the wealthy, people in 19 states, including West Virginia, will eventually pay more in 2027 than they do under current law.

7. Then there's the consequences of repealing the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, which will greatly increase the number of uninsured Americans and drive up costs for everyone else.

I mean, golly, what could possibly go wrong?

An idea whose time has gone

Austerity was all the rage and still is in some circles, especially those that favor government by artificially created crisis, like the fiscal cliff, debt ceiling blackmail and the idiotic sequester.

Here are several looks a why austerity in a weak economy is a bad idea and why more people are walking away from it. Note: some of these are wonky but you'll have that some days.

First, it isn't doing that great in Europe.

Second, groups like the Center for American Progress are walking away from the idea of a "grand bargain"/bad deal, something they had previously supported.

Third, here's why they're calling for a reset to the fiscal debate.

Fourth, it makes more sense these days to be an infrastructure hawk than a deficit hawk.

WILL HE LISTEN? Here's E.J. Dionne's advice to the president.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD. WV's high school graduation rate is improving and has now caught up to the national average.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Duly noted

Whilst driving to the glorious capitol city of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, I came upon a bumpersticker with a ribbon of indeterminate color and a picture of a set of brains. The caption read: "Support zombies."

FRIENDS OF WHOM? There is a good op-ed in today's Charleston Gazette by UMWA official and state Delegate Mike Caputo.  It asks a very basic question: where are the so-called Friends of Coal when it comes to supporting real coal miners who are at risk of losing promised benefits from Patriot Coal.

To state the extremely obvious, it's one thing to kiss up to coal companies and quite another to stand with coal miners and communities.

DEFICIT HYSTERIA gets whacked here.

URGENT FISH EATING FLYING DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

White out

I'm writing this on a borrowed computer in the midst of a Vermont snowstorm, and snowstorms are things Vermont does right. I'd like to include  picture of the snow but can't figure how to do it on this machine. However, if you picture a lot of white coming at you that should be close enough. It reminds me a bit of the section of Moby-Dick about the whiteness of the whale.

Another picture I'd like to include at some point is one of my sister in law's llama, who is quite cute. I didn't realize llamas had that big tooth thing going between their cloven lips. It makes me want to add a camelid to the Goat Rope Farm menagerie.

Otherwise, I have but one link to share and one comment to make about the long-awaited movie version of The Hobbit: what about the other half of the story?

HERE'S THE LINK. It's probably the best and most concise thing I've read about Washington's current conundrum over the economy and the national debt by friend and co-worker Arnie Alpert from New Hampshire.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: LLAMA TALL

Hard travelin'

El Cabrero is about to hit the road for a few days, so posts will be irregular for the next stretch. The good news is that this should be an interesting road trip that involves attending a nonviolence training for trainers intended for people working with the Occupy movement. I've had my share of training and being trained, but never this exact thing before.

The bad news is that air travel from and to my beloved state of West Virginia is a bit of a pain in the tuchis. On Tuesday, for example, I have to get up at 3:00 a.m. to catch a 5:30 flight. Not that I'm complaining or anything.

Meanwhile, here are a few items that caught my eye...

THESE DAYS MODERATION IS RADICAL, according to E.J. Dionne.

TAXING IDEAS. Here's Paul Krugman's latest op-ed on (real) deficit reduction.

THE NEXT CONGRESSIONAL MESS is discussed here.

AN OCCUPATION THAT NEEDS OCCUPYING: the field of economics.

AND THAT CRACKDOWN ON OCCUPY SITES...click here for more.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Just a thought

I'd like to be wrong about this, but the congressional "super committee" in charge of slashing the deficit seems to be composed of a mixture of bullies and appeasers in equal numbers. This means they are likely to spare the wealthy (the 1 percenters in the parlance of our times) and tax dodging corporations from any increased taxes while slashing the programs that help sustain the other 99 percent.

If that is the case, I think it would be a very good thing if the Occupy movement took up the cause and started kicking up some national dust, with a little help from unions and other friends. To paraphrase Che Guevara, "create two, three, many Oaklands!" (Nonviolently, of course.)

ONE NATION, DIVIDED. Here's Jim Hightower on the 99/1 thing.

VETERANS OCCUPY. This story is a day or so old but worth a look. Around the country, quite a few veterans are stepping up their involvement in the Occupy movement in the wake of the injuring of Iraq war vet Scott Olsen by police in Oakland, which helped spark that city's general strike.

THE R WORD. Here's another one on the future of the Occupy movement.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

My summer of Shelby

The R.H.O. himself.

The summer of 2011 officially ended last week and the weather is starting to act like it, for now anyway. I'll remember this season for several reasons, some pleasant, some not. The trip to Italy was cool; the constant knee pain not so much.

But aside from all that, I will remember this as my summer of Shelby. It was during this season that I listened to an unabridged recording of all three volumes of Shelby Foote's masterful Civil War trilogy.

I'm talking over 110 CDs of around an hour and 15 minutes each. If I did the math right, that comes out to 135+ hours. That's a lot of Shelby. He took up my time doing chores, driving, walking the dogs, mowing the lawn, etc.

I have mentioned before how I worship him and have been known to channel him from time to time. I love his long, rambling sentences and sharp wit. I only wish the version I listened to was read by the author. But then I'd listen to a recording of the real Shelby reading the phone book.

When you spend that much time with an author you notice things. I noticed that Shelby had a real issue with William Tecumseh Sherman, which is perhaps not so surprising from a true son of the south.

I wish I had a dollar for every time he referred to Sherman as a "red headed Ohioan." He seemed to be unable to refer to Sherman, who is bound to show up a lot in a book on the subject, without mentioned his hair color.

It made me wonder whether the divine Shelby had a thing about redheads too.

NEED A DOSE OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SANITY? Click here.

CLASS WARFARE, JUST MATH or basic morality?

THE AMERICAN LEFT and its impact on America is discussed here.

YOUR TALKING ANIMAL FIX is here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Who knew?

Image by way of wikipedia.

We interrupt Goat Rope's regularly scheduled programming due to a major news development reported this weekend on NPR which has forced El Cabrero to remake his cognitive map of the world.

According to someone who should probably know,

"Alligator wrestling is not a thinking man's sport."

And to think that all these years I was convinced you had to be really good at math to do it...

One other point to ponder about that statement...it was made to people who paid $100 to learn how to wrestle alligators. Could there be some intended or unintended irony or something there?

MASS DISTRACTION. Here's Krugman talking sense on jobs and deficits. Again.

TWO FROM LABOR. Here are two good Labor Day op-eds from the Charleston Gazette. The first is by Teamster leader Ken Hall and the second by state AFLCIO secretary treasurer Larry Matheney.

SPEAKING OF WORKERS, a new report (the easiest part of which was written by yours truly) looks at the state of working West Virginians. Here's a link to press coverage from the Gazette and the West Virginia News Service and here's a link to the report itself.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What he said, revisited

Hats off to billionaire investor Warren Buffett for his recent op-ed in the New York Times titled "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich." Here's a sample:

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

And here's the conclusion:

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

Does that make him a socialist?

MIRACLES, MATTER AND MORE. Here is the latest version of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

WORK SHARING makes sense as an alternative to mass unemployment.

MOTHER NATURE has her moments when it comes to engineering.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Beware the bananas

The staff of this blog never rests in its quest for the most interesting and relevant news stories around the world. Today's post is only the latest example.

The German paper Spiegel reports the following:

It is a nightmare scenario for any supermarket. Last Friday morning, as an employee was unloading bananas from a crate in a large grocery store in south-western Germany, a large, greyish, hairy spider about 13 centimeters long jumped out and scuttled under a shelf.

The member of staff checked the Internet for images of spiders resembling the one he had just seen, and was shocked when he found a match: a Brazilian Wandering Spider (Phoneutria nigriventer), billed as one of the world's most venomous and aggressive spiders.

(For freedom lovers, 13 centimeters is over 5 inches.)

Despite a major spider-hunt, the critter in question has not been found. Spiegel continues:

Anyone encountering it should be very careful. Amy Stewart, the author of "Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects," cites the Brazilian Wandering Spider as one of her top five worst bugs. A bite doesn't just cause severe pain, but also leads to breathing problems, paralysis and even death.

That isn't all. Stewart writes that the creature is fearless and so aggressive that it will stand on its hind legs, prepared to take on any challenger, however big.

(Spiegel is too delicate to add that the spider's bite has bizarre, unpleasant and seemingly opposite effects on the unmentionable parts of human males.)

All of this is to say, be cautious around bananas.

I ask again, is this a full service blog or what?

BUDGET BLOWHARDS discussed here.

OH GOOD. WV Senator Joe Manchin gets Koch brothers money.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Channeling Shelby

The droop.

I think I'm going to be out of control for the next few weeks. I just started listening to an unabridged recording of Shelby Foote's epic Civil War trilogy. If only it was read by the man himself, I'd be in paradise.

People who have known me for a while know that I have worshiped and have been known to attempt to channel Shelby ever since I saw Ken Burns' series on the Civil War. At any moment, I can go off on vast tangents of attempting to impersonate Shelby by relating the adventures of the fictitious Mississippi 7th during that historic conflict. Sometimes, this experience seems to be involuntary.

In my version, the men of the 7th commenced their involvement in the war with a heroic if ill advised cavalry charge on Fort Sumter, which lay more than a mile across the water of Charleston Harbor from Confederate batteries that fired on it. It was a moment of unparalleled gallantry, as Shelby might say. It goes downhill from there, but I'll try to stop now. While I can.

At times, I've even picked up various volumes by Shelby in public places and read aloud sentences chosen at random. He has the most amazing turn of a phrase, which can only be improved by hearing it in the voice of the author. One such gem that appears in the first volume refers to "the phallic droop of the Florida peninsula."

How come I can never come up with a phrase like that?

SUPPLY SIDE SNAKE OIL refuted here, for the millionth time.

SHARED SACRIFICE? Don't count on it.

MORE ON THAT here. Looks like a cave in is in progress.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Post bad book victory lap

It seemed to take forever plowing, through hundreds of pages of small print and bad prose, but I finally made it through Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

The main reason I decided to read it was that it seemed more sportsmanlike for me to take whacks at her ideology if I read some of her major works. It didn't take me too long to discover that my time would have been just as well spent taking whacks at her literary style.

What to say about it? Uhhh, it was about an architect or something.

The characters were pretty cardboard. It was a kind of morality plan pitting the Heroic Individual against the Conniving Collectivists. The relationships were really weird, including the "love"/hate connection between the architect Roark and his eventual wife Dominique. The man crush between Roark and the news magnate Wynand was even weirder, not that there was anything wrong with that.

I'm still not clear how other people messing with one's design justifies dynamiting a building that didn't belong to the dynamiter in question. And I get the feeling that the whole purpose of the book was to set up Roark's lengthy courtroom speech at the end. The character of Roark was pretty interesting when he was just an architect who wanted to do his own thing but toward the end he just became the author's mouthpiece.

I guess this was supposed to be Rand's answer to John Steinbeck. I prefer the Joads.

UPPER BIG BRANCH. Here's a Washington Post editorial on mine safety.

TAXES AND DEFICITS. If hedge fund managers paid more of the former, we'd have less of the latter.

FOR MICE AND MEN AND WOMEN TOO, here's some research about why exercise makes us feel better.

URGENT CHIMPANZEE AND DOLPHIN UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The worse, the better?

Among the books in my current pile is William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I'm only 300 pages into it, which is to say less than a third of the way through. So far it's provided a lot of food for thought.

Here's one: there is a school of thought among political extremists of various stripes that holds that the worse things are, the better they are. For example, such people think it's great when the economy or the political situation is really bad because this will presumably radicalize people and result in major change.

I don't believe there is a lot of historical evidence for this. It often works just the opposite. In the 1930s, for example, some German leftists and communists actually welcomed the Nazi rise to power on the theory that this was a temporary thing that would ultimately catapult them to power. The slogan was, "After Hitler, us." Many of them died in concentration camps.

It is true that sometimes the excesses of one's opponents creates an opening for change, but I tend to hold to the view that it's good when things are good and bad when things are bad.

UPPER BIG BRANCH. Here's an item from The Nation on the disaster fallout. And here's an editorial from the Charleston Gazette about the need for more criminal prosecutions.

A LINE IN THE SAND. Paul Krugman calls on President Obama not to cave (again) in negotiations over the debt ceiling.

TALKING SENSE. WV's senior senator Jay Rockefeller states the obvious here.

LOVE AND PAIN discussed here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What he said

Hats off to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for kicking up dust on the deficit reduction debate. Here's an extract from a recent letter of his to President Obama:

This is a pivotal moment in the history of our country. Decisions are being made about the national budget that will impact the lives of virtually every American for decades to come. As we address the issue of deficit reduction we must not ignore the painful economic reality of today – which is that the wealthiest people in our country and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well while the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing. In fact, the United States today has, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth.

Everyone understands that over the long-term we have got to reduce the deficit – a deficit that was caused mainly by Wall Street greed, tax breaks for the rich, two wars, and a prescription drug program written by the drug and insurance companies. It is absolutely imperative, however, that as we go forward with deficit reduction we completely reject the Republican approach that demands savage cuts in desperately-needed programs for working families, the elderly, the sick, our children and the poor, while not asking the wealthiest among us to contribute one penny.

Mr. President, please listen to the overwhelming majority of the American people who believe that deficit reduction must be about shared sacrifice. The wealthiest Americans and the most profitable corporations in this country must pay their fair share. At least 50 percent of any deficit reduction package must come from revenue raised by ending tax breaks for the wealthy and eliminating tax loopholes that benefit large, profitable corporations and Wall Street financial institutions. A sensible deficit reduction package must also include significant cuts to unnecessary and wasteful Pentagon spending.

Please do not yield to outrageous Republican demands that would greatly increase suffering for the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. Now is the time to stand with the tens of millions of Americans who are struggling to survive economically, not with the millionaires and billionaires who have never had it so good.

WHAT THEY SAID. Key WV legislators warn Senator Manchin about the dire consequences to the state if Medicaid is cut. Manchin has never been much of a fan of that program. Or of poor people.

ON THAT NOTE, proposed cuts to Medicare could also hurt seniors.

DARWIN. The rap version.

COOL SCIENCE ITEM here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Thought for the day

El Cabrero has no enemies, of course. Euphemisms, maybe. Still, I find this quotation amusing...and possibly useful:

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

BIG BUSTS, ECONOMICALLY SPEAKING. Here's a book review on past and present economic crises.

MORE CLIMATE CHANGE STUFF TO DENY here.

PROTECTING THE POOR. A number of national organizations urge leaders to support an approach to deficit reduction that won't increase poverty.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

How's the weather?

I've been writing and linking things about climate change and extreme weather off and of for years now, but this weather-related news item really weirded me out.

HEALTH CARE. Here are yet more reasons to oppose privatizing Medicare.

A BETTER ALTERNATIVE. Here's another item on the People's Budget, a better alternative to the slash and burn approach.

LOST IN THE SHUFFLE. Deficit mania in DC is crowding out concern for the unemployed.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

10 candles for a bad idea

Today marks the 10th anniversary of, if not the Mother, then at least the Second Cousin of All Bad Ideas, to wit the Bush tax cuts. As deficit mania drives the political herd in Washington, people around the country are taking time today to state the obvious: it's time to end the cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

In El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, some of us will be gathering at the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse in Charleston at 5:00 pm today to hold a mock Rally for the Really Rich and Bake Sale for Medicare and Medicaid.

The Bush tax cuts were supposed to pay for themselves. That explains the huge surplus we don't have. They were supposed to promote economic growth and prosperity. That explains that the Great Recession didn't really happen--what a relief. And they were supposed to create jobs. That explains why the unemployment rate today is twice what it was when they were first enacted.

FOR MORE ON THAT, click here.

HAPPIEST LANDS. The US didn't make the list.

UNHAPPY ECONOMIC MUSINGS here.

REMEMBER THE GOOD OLD DAYS when watching the Weather Channel was boring?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Double dipping

Lots of people have been talking about the disappointing job numbers released late last week. The private sector added only around 54,000 jobs, even while governments at various levels are laying people off.

Deficit mania, which has taken precedence over job creation, could well lead us back to a double dip recession. As many people have noted, something similar happened in 1937, when FDR cut back on public spending and wound up prolonging the Depression by several years.

THIS IS SWEET. Ayn Rand groupie Paul Ryan, would be executioner of Medicare, is getting some pushback from religious groups.

DESTROYING MEDICARE in order to "save" it.

MASSEYLAND. Ken Ward takes a hard look at Massey Energy's board of directors here.

MARCHING TO BLAIR. I hope nobody gets hurt this week.

WAXING ROMANTIC. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

THE MAGIC NUMBER for friends may be 150.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Done deal

It looks like the sale of Massey Energy to Alpha Natural Resources is a done deal. Legal challenges to the sale have been turned back, while shareholders voted yesterday to approve it.

It really is the end of an era. For decades, Massey was a massive presence in West Virginia, not only in the coal industry, but in state politics, the media, and the courts. Its former CEO Don Blankenship was the face of Big Coal.

My initial reaction was to view the sale as a good thing. However, Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo had a great post yesterday about remaining questions regarding Alpha and promises that may have been made to retain key Massey personnel, including those connected to the management of the Upper Big Branch and Aracoma mines.

I can't help but think Alpha would have to get up pretty early in the morning to be worse than Massey in the Bad Old Days. We'll see.

Ward, who for my money is America's best coal reporter, posted this quote from Delaware Judge Leo Strine Jr. about Massey:

Convinced that it knew better than the public authorities charged with enforcing laws designed to make mining a safer and cleaner business, Massey management, with board knowledge, fostered an adversarial relationship with the company’s regulators and accepted as ordinary the idea that the company would regularly be accused of violating important safety regulations.

Of course, when a company has strong opinions about knowing better than the regulators, it is optimal to match that with a record of worker safety and environmental protection that is substantively spotless. But in the case of Massey, no such match existed, at least insofar as one credits actual judgments and other regulation-related losses suffered by the company under Blankenship’s tenure as CEO.

HOW WE GOT IN THIS MESS. Here's a brief from the Economic Policy Institute on the 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cuts.

THIS DIDN'T HELP EITHER. Here's a look at major companies that made big bucks but managed to have a negative tax rate.

SPEAKING OF MESSES, here's Robert Reich on the state of the US economy.

ALL THIS FROM TEETH? Scientists have found clues about the social structure of human ancestors from studying their teeth.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Hey, it's worked before

Apparently the board of directors of Massey Energy came up with a time tested way of shifting public attention away from their less than stellar safety record: blame the black guy. According to Bloomberg,

Massey Energy Co. (MEE)’s management believed government officials, including President Barack Obama, conspired to destroy the coal producer, according to unsealed court records in a case related to a fatal mine accident.

Those wily Kenyans...

SO MANY BAD IDEAS, SO LITTLE TIME. Here's something on the latest bad budget idea to get consideration in the Senate.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. The Ryan plan to gut Medicare and Medicaid was voted down in the Senate yesterday. The Ryan plan was a factor earlier this week in the victory of a Democrat in a heavily Republican district in New York.

ALLIGATOR LOVE. The males "sing" when they want female companionship, making some weird noise with their backs that is too low to be heard. Don't try this at home.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED