Monday, March 28, 2011

Is Birtherism Rooted in Racism

My take is that birtherism is indeed rooted in racism. Did anyone demand to see George Bush's birth certificate or Bill Clinton's or HW Bush's or Reagan's? No. It was never an issue until we had someone with dark skin running for president. Then crowds of older white people started claiming that he is not one of them and questioning his legitimacy. It is clearly because he is of African descent; clearly racism.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

You Want to Balance the Budget; It's Really Not Too Hard

Hey Republican Tea Party, so you want to balance the budget? Are you serious or just using your new found disdain for deficits as an excuse to cut tiny and budgetarily insignificant programs with which you have a partisan disagreement like Pell Grants, Planned Parenthood or school lunches. If you are serious about balancing the budget, you are going to have to make HUGE changes to expenditures and revenue. That means raising taxes AND cutting discretionary spending.

Here are some ideas that would actually make a difference:
  1. When you or I go to a Las Vegas casino and place a bet, a portion of our bet goes toward taxes. When a giant hedge fund or bank goes to the Wall Street casino and places multi-billion dollar bets, the bets are tax free. Here's an idea; place a tiny one tenth of one percent tax on the 500 trillion dollar Wall Street casino handle. The result would bring in $500 billion to the treasury and put us on a trajectory to a balanced budget within the decade.
  1. Most workers and tax payers pay 12.4% for Social Security taxes yet Bill Gates and other extreme high earners only pay a tiny fraction of one percent. So here is a dose of common sense: Have everyone, rich and poor alike, pay the same 12.4% tax. This would make Social Security solvent into the far future so it would be there for all our kids.
  1. The lion's share of discretionary spending is found in our military budget. Do we really need a gigantic world girdling military? Do we need 1000 plus military bases stationed all over the world? Are the vast Canadian hordes poised to sweep down on us the minute we let our guard down? Over the course of the decade we can phase out about 90% of our foreign military bases which will still leave us with about 100 military bases outside our country. For comparison, do you know how many military bases China has outside its country? Zero.
  1. Raise taxes on income over $500,000 to levels comparable to what we had in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. After World War 2, we had a bigger debt than we have now as a percent of the economy and we didn't go broke. We raised taxes on the wealthy to over 90% and guess what? The rich prospered along with the middle class. As it turns out the rich heavily invested in business creation in order to avoid the high taxes, and in the process created millions of new jobs resulting in increased tax revenue. A win-win-win scenario that resulted in decades of robust growth and low deficits.

Our current fiscal problems are solvable. We just have to overcome 30 years of Republican propaganda that has convinced most Americans, liberal and conservative alike, that low taxes on the wealthy creates jobs. It does not; it is just the opposite. Our country has been in similar circumstances before; the playbook has been written and it has worked before. All we have to do is open our eyes and see the obvious truth that taxes must be in line with our spending.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Thirty Years of “Starve the Beast” has Crippled America

The Republican “Starve the Beast” strategy of cutting taxes depends on the mistaken idea that government spending will somehow magically follow tax revenues down. Thirty years of this magical thinking as regards tax policy has crippled America and left us with massive deficits.

Instead of proposing politically unpopular spending cuts, Republicans in the 1970s developed a strategy called “Starve the Beast” by which they would promote massive tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the deficit. With the high deficits, spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity to deal with the budget short falls; a sort of fiscal bait-and-switch. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative who worked in the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations, provides an insightful history of Starve the Beast.

If you raise taxes to pay for government programs, you’re essentially making government programs more expensive. Conversely, if you cut taxes, you’re making government programs cheaper. Econ 101 tell us that when you reduce the price of something the demand for it goes up. Therefore, tax cuts make government programs cheaper thereby increasing demand for said government programs; the exact opposite of the theoretical intended effect of the Starve the Beast strategy.

The simple and obvious solution to 30 years of Starve the Beast idiocy is to raise taxes back to the pre-STB levels of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Sanity Break

Human Beings are just animals. But they are THE BEST animals, because they invented cake. 

Friday, March 18, 2011

Republican Tea Party; Are You Serious About Reducing the Deficit

The current Republican Tea Party obsession with cutting programs like Pell Grants, Planned Parenthood and school lunches is really just a way to sneak in a stealth tax increase on the middle class and poorer segments of our country. Every dollar cut out of these programs has to be made up by increasing fees on average Americans. All these cuts taken together are a tiny fraction of one percent of our budget and are insignificant if you are actually trying to reduce the deficit. These cuts are nothing more than a phoney attempt to use the large deficit as an excuse to cut programs the Republican Tea partiers are against for partisan political reasons.

Hey Republican Tea party, if you are serious about reducing the deficit, here is an idea:
Do away with the proliferation of phoney tax shelters and raise taxes on income over $500,000 to 70%. After World War 2, we had a bigger debt than we have now as a percent of the economy and the world didn't end. We raised taxes on the wealthy to over 90% and guess what? The rich prospered along with the middle class. As it turns out the rich heavily invested in business creation in order to avoid the high taxes, and in the process created millions of new jobs resulting in increased tax revenue. A win-win-win scenario that resulted in decades of robust growth, high employment and low deficits.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

We All, Quite Literally, Start Off as Ass Holes

All chordates (animals with spinal cords) are dueterostomes.
The defining characteristic of all dueterostomes is the fact that the hollow ball of cells called a blastopore develops a dent that turns into the anus as the first stage of differentiation. So, in other words, the first thing that happens in our early embryonic development is that we turn into little ass holes.

Ironically, our whole existence consists of growing and evolving beyond that auspicious start; both literally and metaphorically.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

There is No Tea Party; They are Tea Bag Republicans

What is the best and most fair term to describe these Tea Bag Republicans. The term “Tea Party” is dishonest. There is no Tea Party; when they run for office they all have “Republican” after their names. These supposed Tea Partiers are almost all Republicans that are ashamed of the mess that Bush left and don't want to own it so they claim to be something other than Republican; yet these Tea Partiers want to double down with a more extreme version of the same Republican policies that have nearly destroyed our economy. I think "Republican" has to be included in their description because that is what they are; they are just trying to hide from being called Republican.
I am open to using a term that doesn't have negative connotations such as Tea Bag Republican which is a fairly accurate term but it is a mouthful. Folks have used the term “Tea Bagger” because Tea Bagger is the term they first used for themselves and many think it accurately depicts what they want to do to this country, but the term "Tea Bagger" has a decidedly negative connotation and prejudices the conversation.
When they appear on the ballot with Tea Party after their name alongside Republican and Democratic candidates, then it will be fair to call them Tea Partiers, until then, they should be called something that doesn't let them run from their Republican affiliation such as Tea Bag Republicans, Tea Party Republicans or just Republican Tea Partiers.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Is Morality Absolute or Relative

Almost everyone alive today knows that slavery is wrong. Two hundred years ago most people thought slavery was acceptable and two thousand years ago everyone thought slavery was the natural order and perfectly justified. Even Jesus never spoke out against slavery and the Bible is fine with slavery; instructing on how to treat your slaves. Obviously our view of the morality of slavery has changed over time, proving that, as for as slavery, morality is not absolute. Continue for a deeper and more detailed examination of relative and absolute morality.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Is America's Future Coming to an End

Sometimes it feels like America's future is coming to an end but I think it is important to keep things in perspective.

Over the last 500 years, humanity has gotten more and more democratic, more and more free, more and more capable of determining its own direction. The internet is revolutionizing the availability of information. There are problems, yes, but there are solutions. Every problem we face today is solvable.

At the moment, 90% of the country's wealth is owned or controlled by 10% of the population. Does this 10% also contribute 90% to the maintenance and improvement of society? No, not even close. The wealthy in this country are not pulling their weight.

After World War II, when we had to pay back an even bigger debt than we have now, we taxed the rich at 90% of their income. Yes, 90%. Oddly enough, that left them still rich.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Self Deception: I Believe it, Therefore it Must be True

People make decisions based on emotion, and then come up with “rational” reasons for that decision. It's not that just other people lie to themselves, it's that "we all" by our human nature lie to ourselves. We can get better at not deceiving ourselves by means of introspection and constantly challenging our own assumptions. The more points of view you expose yourself to, the more probable it is that you will catch your faulty thinking.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A Clue About Beliefs

If your beliefs result in you feeling hateful toward other humans, maybe that should be taken as a clue that something is wrong. 

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Does Abortion Allow a Woman to Avoid the Consequences of Sin

I remember back in the late sixties listening to a preacher get worked up over abortion. He was a young guy; probably mid-twenties clearly without much life experience with short-medium length hair slicked back, horn rimed glasses and that typical young Republican clean shaven look. The guy worked himself into a vein bulging rage over the idea that a woman could sin and then get pregnant and then avoid the consequences of that sin by getting an abortion; kind of like she was cheating God.
In the intervening decades I have watched as the anti-abortion movement has evolved away from “the woman is avoiding the consequences of her sin” to “compassion for the life of the unborn”. This argument has brought new adherents into the anti-abortion movement because, let's face it, it has some justification. It's perfectly reasonable that we should care about the unborn; just as we should care about the born, the sick or the disadvantaged. When I see it displayed so ardently though, I wonder if the intense compassion for the life of the unborn is real or is just a cover for “the woman is avoiding the consequences of her sin” rage.
A clue as to the true motivation of the anti-choicers can be found in their attitude toward others in need of compassion. The telling point for me is the simple fact that in most cases that I have witnessed the “compassion for the life of the unborn” disappears once the kid is born. I can't help but suspect that in many cases the outward show of compassion is largely fake and what lurks behind it is that hate-filled preacher from the sixties.