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February 05, 2009

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this nonsense could blowback on them rather quickly

won't.

the public doesn't think it's nonsense. they think it's all Wasteful Gubmit Spending! the media doesn't want to tell them otherwise, and the Dems refuse to take their message directly to the public.

GOP wins again.

Well, just from a strategy perspective – don’t make public statements like this:

Emanuel: Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before.

Pelosi: We won the election. We wrote the bill.

And then craft a bill that let’s Republicans say (with some justification) that the bill is “a wish list for the left wing of the Democratic Party”.

Even some Democrats are complaining about how the bill was put together and then crammed down their throats.

I’m not saying craft it to make Republicans happy… Spending vs. tax cuts is a legitimate argument. But it seems to me that over the last two decades or so Republicans are more effective when they are the opposition party. When they were in charge it became obvious even to their supporters that they could not lead worth a damn. But in terms of effectiveness they seem to be better at opposition. So don’t give them big juicy targets to oppose. Explaining to Joe public how contraception funding or $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts is going to help him get a job in the short term is a tough task. There are other appropriations bills where you can put that stuff. In a bill named “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” make them oppose something that Joe public can easily see might help him get a job.

And are they being effective?

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 37% favor the legislation, 43% are opposed, and 20% are not sure.

Two weeks ago, 45% supported the plan. Last week, 42% supported it.

Opposition has grown from 34% two weeks ago to 39% last week and 43% today.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of Democrats still support the plan. That figure is down from 74% a week ago. Just 13% of Republicans and 27% of those not affiliated with either major party agree.

Seventy-two percent (72%) of Republicans oppose the plan along with 50% of unaffiliated voters and 16% of Democrats.

16% of Democrats and 50% of unaffiliated voters is a heck of a lot of non-Republican opposition. You lost 10 points among Democrats in one week.

A stimulus plan that includes only tax cuts is now more popular than the economic recovery plan being considered in Congress. Forty-five percent (45%) favor a tax-cut only plan while 34% are opposed. Those figures reflect a modest increase in support over the past week.

So yeah – in opposition I’d say they are fairly effective…

The Dems refuse to take their message directly to the public, because the Dems think it's wasteful gubmit spending!, too. It's just their wasteful gubmit spending.

They don't defend it because that's a fool's game, defending it just brings more public attention on what exactly they're doing.

You can scream all you want about how the evil Republicans shouldn't hold up this emergency bill, but it's not as though the Democrats were treating it as an emergency. You don't produce bills that take a forklift to move around in emergencies, you do something simple, fast. You produce the Mother of All Bills when you want to bury things you wanted but can't defend in a bill you hope will pass before anybody can possibly find out what's in it.

I'll tell you how an NEA grant can stimulate the economy. Without that money, various dance, design, folk & traditional arts, literature, local arts agencies, media arts, museum, music, musical theater, opera, presenting theater and visual arts organizations (each has its own link from the link given) would either shut down completely or scale back. Anyone who knows anything about the arts is aware that arts are barely self-supporting. If we want arts in this country, they have to be supported.

In prosperous times, there may be an argument against government support for the arts (although I don't agree with it), but certainly in hard times, this support employs many people at the same time as supporting our culture.

As to honeybees, they are incredibly valuable to the economy, and they are diminishing in numbers. A random link.

Republicans are interested only in their own power and wealth. I don't see any evidence otherwise. I suggest that everyone who supports Obama's effort should call their senators and demand that this stimulus plan be passed. Even the better Congresspeople need to know that they have the support of their constituents.

If you want a big bill, it's going to have a lot of little parts. It's inevitable that some of these parts are going to be hard to defend in isolation. They're so small that there isn't a good answer to an argument that this program isn't going to do us much good. Well, no, it's not. If this small program were passed on its own, it would have almost no value stimulating the economy.

The stimulus bill is going to have to be made up of a whole lot of little programs, each of which, on its own, does little to solve the problem. Enough of them together, though, can help. Any package put together would be vulnerable to exactly this attack. There's no way to put together an $800 dollar package of nothing but big projects.

It's going to have these sorts of projects that can be demagogued individually. It's going to have a lot of them. The attack on the bill is, structuraly much simpler than the defense. So long as the Republicans can make the focus of the debate the individual programs, they're always going to come out ahead, because the bill can only be defended as a whole.

I have no idea how to change the frame of the debate. Getting in front of the cameras and fulminating about giving insurance to beekeepers is too easy. There's no way to fight it without trying to defend each individual program.

Brett is, as usual, wrong. Emergencies often do require an enormous bill. Complicated bills. Ones with lots of individual spending items. No one really wants to get out front and defend it, because the nature of the battlefield is tilted in favor of the enemy.

So long as Republicans are more interested in preventing anyone from governing responsibly, they'll have a rhetorical advantage over anyone who does want to govern. We all just need to recognize the contempt in which they hold us when they do this.

See, for example, the LA Times article on Mitch McConnell and David Vitter spewing venom about a program they both voted for, twice, last year.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-fi-hiltzik5-2009feb05,0,2141955.column?track=rss

Gosh it sure would be nice to see more congressional Democrats out in full force saying something other than "We won the election. The GOP wants to Destroy America". We know that. Move on, and tell us exactly what the honeybee protection does, how many jobs it will create and when, etc. And if they can't do that, then take the f*@#ing thing out of the bill.
It sure would be nice to see some leadership here.

As to honeybees, they are incredibly valuable to the economy, and they are diminishing in numbers.

You are correct, sir. If you like to eat fruit and vegetables, you should like honeybees. And yes, they are declining.

It's true that Republicans are more effective as the opposition. They don't believe in a constructive role for government in the economy or in social issues, so actually doing something constructive doesn't fit them well. They're at their best getting in the way of other people trying to do something useful.

I take the point of folks like Sebastian and others here who think that the focus should be on stimulus right now, rather than longer term infrastructure development. But "tax cuts now, tax cuts forever" is just freaking obtuse, boneheaded stupidity.

A tax cut doesn't do a damned thing for you if you have no job, no home, and no income.

Are there artists named "Joe" in this country?

Or is "Joe" reserved for bullet-headed fake plumbers?

It seems to me limiting executive pay to $500,000 is a massive tax cut for corporate executives.

You'd think that would stimulate and incentivize them to sort my garbage, if that's what I ask them to do.

Obama should announce at the National Prayer Breakfast this morning that he is withdrawing the entire stimulus package -- there will be no government stimulus --- and that banking executives should have their pay doubled and their taxes erased.

Remember, the NRA and the Republican Party armed the country.

I hate it when I eat a banking CEO and have to pick lead out of the meat.

OCSteve, you are correct that the Republican Party is more effective when they are in opposition. Actually, that has become their major role, to be in opposition, even when they were in control.

And they are effective, with the complicity of the media, in distorting, or even downright lying, to the general public about any plan that the Dems want to put into action.

They work from the premise that anything the Dems want to do is wrong for the country, even though just about everything positive in the country is due to Democratic policies. (A slight exaggeration, but only slight).

I read the list of expenditures they listed as frivolous, and could not find anything wrong with any of them, but that is the Republcian way. Fire a shotgun and try to have the Dems avoid every piece of buckshot.

Tax cuts, or rebates, are meaningless and would have zero to extremely limited benefit, as has been shown in the past. In fact, they would probably has less impact then they had last year when less then 30% of the rebates were actually put back into the economy.

And the statements by Emmanuel and Pelosi are really no different from anything the Republicans said publicly and privately for the last 8 years.

I didn't even have to scroll down to figure out that OCSteve's and Brett's comments were written by them.

But it seems to me that over the last two decades or so Republicans are more effective when they are the opposition party.

Gee, must be that liberal media again.

Gosh it sure would be nice to see more congressional Democrats out in full force saying something other than "We won the election. The GOP wants to Destroy America".

It would be nice, but since the congressional Democrats seem unable to get the message out, it's up to us. Just like it was up to us to mobilize people for the election. This is what Obama was talking about - it has to be us. We have to demand it.

Are there artists named "Joe" in this country?

http://www.dinosauria.com/gallery/joe/joe.htm

http://homepage.mac.com/joebergeron/

http://www.joechiodo.com/

You don't produce bills that take a forklift to move around in emergencies, you do something simple, fast.

Is Brett coming out for universal military conscription? Becasue I can't think, off hand, of another way to create several million jobs that qualifies as "simple" and "fast".

"...the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems..." Barack Obama, this week.

(I suppose some might want a link;WaPo won't open;Here is Mark Thoma)

The obvious implication of BO's statement above is that "tax cuts alone" could solve some or most of our problems. Sorry folks, we elected a Reaganite supply-sider, goo-goo liberal version. Obama believes in tax cuts.

The way to get spending stimulus after thirty years of Friedmanism was to come out of the inauguration with a large tax increase, just as FDR did. You needed to reverse the ideologies, dominate the framing and discourse with an actual change and stop the Republicans in their tracks.

And yes, the depression economics of tax increase, plus fiscal stimulus/deficit spending much larger than the tax increase, works like a charm in Fundamentalist Keynesian/Post Keynesian macroeconomic models. The downward redistribution is critical for increasing Effective Demand.

We have Ronald Reagan redux in a depression. We are so screwed.

For Sapient and Phil,

Why don't the Dems do a cram down and forget about it?

Move on, and tell us exactly what the honeybee protection does, how many jobs it will create and when, etc. And if they can't do that, then take the f*@#ing thing out of the bill.

I disagree that engaging in an endless nitpicking session over whatever people's jobs Republicans can make sound funny is a good idea.

"...the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems..." Barack Obama, this week.

'The idea that God alone controls our destiny is problematic' doesn't imply that I think God has anything to do with our destiny.

Also, note the sentence that immediately preceeds that statement

Now, in the past few days I’ve heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis – seems to be suggesting that tax cuts are problematic, not that they are any kind of help.

The obvious implication of BO's statement above is that "tax cuts alone" could solve some or most of our problems.

WTF??

KCinDC, agreed. A lot of this is like McCain complaining baout the small earmark for studying bear's DNA. Just flung out there, it can sound like a waste, but in reality it is something important and worthwhile.

The problem becomes one of trying to defend 100 worhwhile projects all at once. It is easy to attack that many at once, harder to defend. And the public only hears the attack, looks at the list and says, "What does that have to do with me." The Republicans are very good at making people aware only of what is most important in their own lives and disparaging things that imapct only a few people, while Dems are trying to figure out what is best for the country as a whole.

The government cannot take action that saves every small and insignificant (in terms of the larger economy) business situation in this downturn. That's the whole point of what is being used to keep a congressional consensus from being reached. They need to cut out all the pet projects (pork) they have been waiting to get in and focus on major projects that affect major parts of the nation.

You don't produce bills that take a forklift to move around in emergencies, you do something simple, fast.

OK. Let's have a one-paragraph bill that authorizes Obama to spend a trillion dollars any way he deems necessary to stimulate the economy. Simple enough?

GOB, the nation is made up of its parts. If any provision that benefits a particular area more than others is "pork", then the whole stimulus bill is pork, but that's as it should be. Unless, as rea suggests, you're coming out for universal conscription, so we can employ the whole country in one giant project (invading Canada, perhaps?).

Wow, I've been waiting a long time to hear one of you assert that the nation is made up of its parts. You almost had me convinced that it was homogeneous and all our governing needs could and should be met by Washington.

GOB, can you point to more than three (if that many) comments that would lead you to believe that?

Move on, and tell us exactly what the honeybee protection does

From the article Sapient linked to:

More than one-third of the diet of the average American is composed of foods pollinated by honey bees. A recent study by Cornell University determined the annual economic value of honey bee pollination to be $14.7 billion.

Yeah, 'save the bees' sounds silly, but if you're including anything in the way of support for agriculture in the form of livestock or crop insurance, 'save the bees' is actually a good thing to do.

If you don't want to include that, fine with me, I'm not a farmer. I do, however, like to eat.

I said one and I meant ONE. You folks are obsessed with numbers. How about some principles, for a change?

Like the principle of judging a group of people based on a one-off comment? You seem to have that one down well.

What's a one-off comment?

GOB, your "one" was in a different sentence. The sentence John Miller is reacting to seems to be referring to ObWi commenters in general: "You almost had me convinced that it was homogeneous and all our governing needs could and should be met by Washington." But maybe you can explain what other "you" you meant there.

I would rather John Miller do the research. I'll retract if he gives me three cases of support for governing with no Washington influence.

Who said anything about "governing with no Washington influence"? How quickly are these goalposts moving, anyway?

BTW, anyone on this thread who actually does support the notion that all but a handful of governing functions could and should be done at the state and/or local level can help out here.

The problem is that Republicans have simple talking points that they just pound over and over while Democrats always feel compelled (or pressured) to explain every little thing. When the Republicans were in charge they would go on about God Knows What (mostly terrorism) on every bill and saying it has to be passed, and then would slip in tons of things that were objectionable while the Democrats and media were talking about the big picture.

Now the Democrats are in charge and they think they can do a similar thing, but everyone is focused on the little details because Democrats aren't good at focusing on the big picture. Some of that is because they suck, and some of it is that their big picture arguments have been drilled into the populace as big and bad.

The Democrats need to just introduce bills that fit their style better. That means more of them and more targeted. The first bill should have been one that targeted unemployment benefits and state assistance...which every single economist and non-insane person supports. Of course this means the Republicans would oppose it and then you use it against them as a cudgel but hammering home over and over again that it is the best use of government money stimulus wise and you'd have to be sadistic to be against it.

Then just do the same thing about the other parts. Break them up into easily digestible and defensible pieces that have specific targets. Instead of trying to throw the livestock insurance in a "job creation" bill where it can be attacked, put it in a "food security" bill that aims to shore up our food supply and distribution systems. Put the arts and the resodding of the Capitol in "American Beautification Act." Etc. etc. Sure not every bill will pass and they'll have to cut out their stupid pet projects, but overall Democrats would be able to argue why each project is good on its own merit.

Frankly, much of it is "Wasteful Gubmit Spending!".

BTW, anyone on this thread who actually does support the notion that all but a handful of governing functions could and should be done at the state and/or local level can help out here.

even better: are there any elected Republicans in DC who believe this ?

otherwise, it seems silly to hold anyone here to a standard Republicans won't even hold their own representatives to.

Mikkel,

I think the Dems would do better with the approach you outlined. No one is going to argue successfully that things like foodstamps and unemployment benefits are not stimulative

Really, GOB? Apparently 36 out of the 41 Republicans in the Senate disagree.

I would rather John Miller do the research. I'll retract if he gives me three cases of support for governing with no Washington influence.

You are committing a category error here.

What you are demanding of John does not really belong on this blog. Most discussions on this blog center on issues of national scope (and thus are necessarily focused on federal policy) because this blog has an readership distributed all over both the nation and the world. State and local issues which are peculiar to a given locality are important to the people in that locality but (in all likelihood) of lesser interest to the rest of us at this specific political blog. If you go to a blog focused on regional politics, it will be the other way around.

The stimulus on the other hand is both national and local in character because the core idea justifying and structuring it is the notion that in a severe downturn in aggregate demand the govt. becomes the employer of last resort (not everyone agress on this, you are welcome to dissent). This is necessarily a federal issue because many state govt.s are required to maintain balanced budgets. They are constitutionally disqualified from the business of creating a Keynesian stimulus via deficit spending.

But to translate that abstract concept into actual jobs, it is necessary to find productive activities to employ people with, some of which will partake of regional characteristics if we wish to get good value for the money spent. For example, if we are going to create employment by paying people to maintain the streets, then during the wintertime in MN we are probably talking about snow removal, whereas folks in AZ will have other concerns which need to be addressed.

Thus the stimulus is a federal initiative (they have the money) in which local requirements come into play to make it work, by addressing particular rather than general public needs.

TLTABQ, Your analysis is correct. But his error goes even further. He has made an unsupportable claim and then says someone else has to do the research to support or knock down the claim.

But this is not uncommon from the new breed right. (My father was a Republican, but,at least when he and I would disagree, he actually presented something of substance to back up his arguments.)

The new breed right is also really good at avoiding any responsibility for jsutifying their point of view, as if making a claim is sufficient in and of itself.

During von's stimulus posts, he was asked several times how tax cuts, rebates, etc (not increased food stamps or extended unemployment benefits) would provide a "jolt" to the economy. He never answered those questions. I made the claim that less than a third of the rebates last year were put into the economy through spending, and when challenged on that, provided evidence to back up my argument.

GOB is just following in that tradition.

KCinDC, that is of course what they do. The Republican party is completely broken. The only good function they can serve is to flail about wildly and destroy some of the truly idiotic Democratic ideas. Of course they destroy more of the good than the bad in that aim, so it's a net negative.

But there is no way that they would be able to argue successfully that help to the lower income individuals isn't a dire need and public good. The public would be behind that 80-20 if there was a concerted push. And once the public sees how the party leaders are being obstructionist to be obstructionist, [at this point if we created cold fusion today and had the plans for a plant tomorrow and could build 100 of them in the next two years, the Republicans would still vote against it] then it creates an opening to go and do it again on this bee thing or long term infrastructure.

The Republicans as individuals aren't all crazy either, so a lot of them would break off and start being constructive because they would have nothing to hide behind. Then it'd be a net positive that they were in the process...because no one can pretend that a lot of the Democratic leadership isn't corrupt at all (or at least really stupid).

The first bill should have been one that targeted unemployment benefits and state assistance...which every single economist and non-insane person supports.

Seconded.

Frankly, much of it is "Wasteful Gubmit Spending!".

One man's ceiling is another man's floor.

the Dems refuse to take their message directly to the public.

thank you, Obama, for showing how it's done.

are you watching, other Dems ?

The Republicans as individuals aren't all crazy either

If we're talking about congressional Republicans, it's getting damn close. Ninety percent of them in the Senate voted for a "stimulus" bill that contained no spending at all (but permanently cut estate taxes, and income taxes for the ultrarich, like Wall Street bankers), and it's generally conceded that the ones in the House are crazier than those in the Senate.

KCinDC that's because the Republicans always vote in lock and file. Their apparatus is completely nuts that's true, but then they hammer in discipline and threaten and attack anyone that falls out of line. Who knows how many of them are just Spectering? My money is about 30-40%.

They can do that when things are 55-45 because the threat from within the party is greater than the threat outside it in most districts...but when you push that up to 70-30 or 80-20 then that's no longer the case and they'll break.

Er I guess rank and file is what they vote in. Hooray mixed euphemisms.

What's depressing is that the 30% that actually are more old school and pay attention to reality don't have more guts to vote against the party.

Well, KCinDC, here's part of what drives those republicans insane. In my own case, I started life before WWII with pretty much nothing except the privilege of being a citizen of this great country. Because this country operates in an economic system that allows it, I was able to obtain an education, work many decades and pay all my taxes (I think), raise and educate my children, accumulate some assets, and when I depart (if that is after 2011) I'll be taxed again for over half of my accumulated estate. Tell me why you think that should not make me crazy.

A lot of this is like McCain complaining baout the small earmark for studying bear's DNA.

Or, even worse, whining about the cost of an "overhead projector" at a planetarium. Every time he brought that one up, I wanted to slam his head into a wall.

GOB, I don't know how you have any idea how much estate tax you'll be subject to, since it's in such flux, but if it's going to be half you might just count yourself lucky that you managed to get into such a tiny slice of the wealthiest people in the country. Any accumulation of wealth doesn't come just from someone's personal virtues but from their society and a good deal of luck as well.

I don't believe that those who make their money from inheritance or capital gains should be taxed at lower rates (or in the Republicans' ideal world, not taxed at all) than those who actually work for their money. That doesn't seem like a particularly un-American position to me.

//BTW, anyone on this thread who actually does support the notion that all but a handful of governing functions could and should be done at the state and/or local level can help out here.//

I support that notion but I realize it's not going to happen so I keep it in my pocket.

Tell me why you think that should not make me crazy.

Do you think that what you have achieved is due purely to your own efforts?

Or do you think that, perhaps, the institutions, infrastructure, and other forms of support that were created with public money, both before and during your lifetime, contributed in some way to your success?

GOB and Dave, clearly the solution is for all the city and county councils to pass their own little stimulus packages, presumably funded by their own little reserve banks in their own little currencies.


Any accumulation of wealth doesn't come just from someone's personal virtues but from their society and a good deal of luck as well.

This is really the core of the disagreement between the right and the left on economic policy. You either agree with this idea or you don't. The rest is haggling over the details of how to address the truth or falsity of that idea.

Thanks, d'd'd'dave. You are correct as well as prudent. I think KCinDC just said that if we fail to preserve a society that allows personal success, then we might not get any.

GOB, since the society you grew up in had a substantial estate tax, as well as much larger marginal tax rates for the ultrarich than we have now, a society with such characteristics is one that allows personal success.

Because this country operates in an economic system that allows it, I was able to obtain an education, work many decades and pay all my taxes (I think), raise and educate my children, accumulate some assets,

We're not the only ones.

and when I depart (if that is after 2011) I'll be taxed again for over half of my accumulated estate. Tell me why you think that should not make me crazy.

Unless your assets are worth many, many millions, this statement is incorrect.

Which should be a big relief to you! Allow me to explain:

The estate tax only kicks in on estates worth over, roughly, $2 million.

Even then, the tax only applies to that portion that is over the $ 2 million threshold.

So if your estate is worth $3 million, your estate would pay estate tax on $1 million of the total assets - or roughly $500,000.

But $500,000 is not close to "over half of" $3 million.

If your estate is under $2 million, you won't pay any estate tax at all!

It's only when you start to amass assets well over $10 million that you begin to approach half or your assets being taxed. But not over half.

Further: You can set up trusts and/or give the assets away to your family while your still alive in order to avoid paying estate tax (tax free gifts! up to certain annual limits).

Warren Buffett agrees with me about inheritance:

I don't believe it's right for society. I also don't think it's a good thing for the kids. But that's a secondary thing. I mean, I've been ungodly blessed, you know, I just happened to be born at the right time in the right place. I tell people if I'd been born a few thousand years ago I would have been some animal's lunch, because I can't run very fast or jump very high. Or if I'd been born in Bangladesh or some place things would have been different for me. So what I've acquired has been, to an enormous degree, the product of a society that's a huge capitalist society, and I was born into it at the right time, and I get these disproportionate material rewards in respect to my contribution. There's all kinds of people who are just as good citizens as I am, they go over and serve in Iraq, they help in their communities, but I happen to be in something that just pays off like crazy and I get everything I want in life, and the idea that that money shouldn't go back to society but instead should go to a few people based on the fact that they came from the right womb strikes me as crazy. I mean, I do not believe in the divine right of the womb!

I'd like to see capital gains taxed at the same low rate as median income. If we are going to tax income at high marginal rates we can still allow entrepreneurial fortunes to be built via growth in the value of equity. I think that is a good idea. It is having custodial managers come in afterwards and continue to be compensated lavishly as if they had founded the enterprise which strikes me as dumb.

Not all CEOs are the same - some of them built something up from scratch, others were brought in to run something built by somebody else. There are different levels of public and private good involved in those two scenarios and they deserve different levels of compensation. If corporate compensation were really being managed for the benefit of the shareholders this would be the case, but it isn't. I think having a large gap between capital gains and top marginal rates on income is the next best thing.

Russell, see my post at 2:00 PM.

Eric, you're back on the number crunching again. At present, after 2011, the exclusion will be one million and the rate above that will be 55%. I won't have to be ultra rich before that gets to be more than half. And I didn't even mention the state share.

Also, Eric, I think the consensus is that the estate tax isn't going to go back to exactly where it was. It's likely the thresholds will be raised and the rates will be lowered (hopefully as part of a deal that gives us something progressive as well). It's just not going to be completely eliminated as the plutocrats hoped.

OT -

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75, had surgery on Thursday for pancreatic cancer, a court spokeswoman said.

GOB, see my comment at 2:06 PM.

Russell, see my post at 2:00 PM.

GOB, your point escapes me.

I get that a lot, the problem may well not be on your end. But if you wouldn't mind expanding it a bit, I'll appreciate it.

Eric, you're back on the number crunching again. At present, after 2011, the exclusion will be one million and the rate above that will be 55%. I won't have to be ultra rich before that gets to be more than half. And I didn't even mention the state share.

Number crunching? Just considering the federal share at 55% for anything over $1M, you'd have to have an estate worth $11M before you'd reach 50%. That's pretty rich AFAICT.

Eric, you're back on the number crunching again. At present, after 2011, the exclusion will be one million and the rate above that will be 55%. I won't have to be ultra rich before that gets to be more than half. And I didn't even mention the state share.

No, please see KCinDC. It will be adjusted via legislation. And even if not, $1 million ain't peanuts.

If you're worried about a particular state's laws...move.

Bottom line: under the current - and future estate tax regime - you'd have to be pretty fortunate for the estate tax to touch you.

And you would have had to have eschewed giving away tax free gifts and setting up tax free trusts.

At which point: cry me a river.

KCinDC,

I'm not really feeling the need to look back too much except to express the idea that I did succeed, so to speak, as a result of a society and an economic system that permitted that to happen. My interest now is in actions that will preserve that kind of opportunity for personal success into the future.

Most aspects of our society have seen enormous improvements over the course of my lifetime. Some have not, or even gotten worse. Personally, I am very disappointed at the greed and short term business prospective exhibited by Wall St, corporations, lenders, and most of those working in real estate who have led us into the situation requiring action now at the federal level. We were going to have a recession anyway, but these jerks have made it much more severe. And, as is clear with the Daschle debacle, the mentality of no rules and no integrity can spread rapidly.

One more time, I want to say that my general opposition to taxes comes primarily from my desire to limit the size and consequently the power of the federal government. I don't have the same reflexive opposition toward state and local tax initiatives, but in recent decades most governors and state legislators have been more than happy to avoid spending political capital to tax their constituents. Its much easier for them politically to get money from Washington and cave to whatever strings come with it. I just don't like that approach.

GOB, my confusion is that you're somehow tying your fear of destroying the opportunity-providing society you succeeded in with a vehement opposition to changes to the tax code that would make our present society more resemble the one in which you experienced that opportunity back in those halcyon days.

I think the "greed and short-term business perspective" you're concerned about has been fed by the changes to the tax code that have widened the gulf between ordinary working people and the tiny, tiny fraction of our society who live in extravagance that insulates them from anything resembling normal life and from the consequences of their decisions -- people who have far more power and influence than the rest of us.

Every time I think I've expressed why I hold the view I do, another post makes me come back again. Now I guess at an estate of 11 million I'll be ultra rich.

If the family wants to continue the business where these assets are tied up, where are they going to get the liquidity to pay half in estate taxes? Even if this were possible in normal or average economic times, in today's credit environment its much more difficult. Right now, they may not even be able to sell except at distressed prices, also just because of the liquidity and credit situation.

This is not a good situation for small business in this country. And this is where many jobs are created.

GOB: There are specific exemptions/deferrments for small busineses.

If you don't think $11 million is rich, maybe you need to do some more number crunching. But I'd certainly agree that people worth $11 million are in a completely different world from those worth a thousand times that, which is why I don't understand Republican determination to use the problems of one group to vastly reward the other.

If there are problems with the estate tax, then fix them. Don't eliminate it, necessitating a shift in the tax burden from Paris Hilton to garage mechanics. I'm confident that with the Republicans out of power the estate tax will be modified in a sane way rather than thrown out in favor of building a new American aristocracy as the Norquistas preferred.

mikkel: What's depressing is that the 30% that actually are more old school and pay attention to reality don't have more guts to vote against the party.

Not depressing. Damning.

Thirty-six out of the 41 were willing to cut all spending from the stimulus/recovery bill. Given the situation we're actually in, that's it. I'm not wasting one more minute reading flat-earth garbage from G.O.B. or d'd'd' or von or anyone else who wants to defend this pack of parasitic plutocrats.

Because this country operates in an economic system that allows it, I was able to obtain an education,

Which economic systems don't allow people to obtain an education? In fact, what do these two things even have to do with each other?

work many decades

Which economic systems don't allow people to work many decades?

and pay all my taxes (I think),

Which economic systems don't allow people to pay all their taxes?

when I depart (if that is after 2011) I'll be taxed again for over half of my accumulated estate. Tell me why you think that should not make me crazy.

Other have handily addressed why this is most likely untrue, but the reason it shouldn't make you crazy is because you'll be dead.

To go along with the Buffett quote, I offer this guy, the founder of the company I work for, who said in an interview not too long ago, "Of course I'm not leaving my money to my kids. They can make their own money."

I suppose if I had kids that were less responsible with a dollar than the government, I might consider willing my substantial estate to Uncle Sam.

As it is? I think if I had that kind of means, I'd leave the whole wad to a charity or three, after setting up a trust for my older kid, who may not be able to earn much of a living all by herself.

But I don't own a business, or plan on starting one.

John Cole:

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.

"...and when I depart (if that is after 2011) I'll be taxed again for over half of my accumulated estate."

Taxation...from beyond the grave!!!

Russell,

I was just agreeing with you that, yes, public infrastructure and institutions and other parts of society were important components for achieving personal economic success. We don't do it alone.


meanwhile back in the House, somebody needs to tell Rep. Pete Sessions that his Freudian slip is showing:

GOP Insurgency May Be Required

sort of like the Taliban (his comparison, not mine), only different.

Does this mean we can start picking off GOP congresspeople with predator drones?

And now one of the Republicans in the House says they should model themselves after the Taliban.

It would be easier to avoid duplication if Typepad hadn't instituted whatever new weird caching it's doing, where comments take a long time to show up (and sometimes show up only in the sidebar for several minutes).

We don't do it alone.

Thanks for spelling it out. My skull is thick, sometimes I need help. :)

I think insurgency is a mindset and an attitude that we're going to have to search for and find ways to get our message out and to be prepared to see things for what they are, rather than trying to do something about them

Also sprach Pete Sessions (R-TX), quoted in TLTIABQ's link.

If anyone can make sense out of that word salad, I'll buy them lunch.

Russell, Sessions was channeling Sarah Palin.

Yeah, KCinDC, the delay is a killer. How many times has somebody written, "where did my comment go" and have that show up after the comment they wrote.

The advantage in the new system is that I can post at work, which I couldn't before. The disadvantage is that replication of comments is running rampant.

I think insurgency is a mindset and an attitude that we're going to have to search for and find ways to get our message out and to be prepared to see things for what they are, rather than trying to do something about them

It makes more sense if you reshuffle these thoughts to put them into a more logical sequence:

be prepared to see things for what they are

translation:
Dems won the election. Deal with it. We need to adapt to act like an opposition party, not a governing party.

that we're going to have to search for and find ways to get our message out

translation:
Since we aren't the majority party anymore we can't dominate the media environment and set the agenda like we used to do circa 2002-2006.

I think insurgency is a mindset and an attitude

translation:
When you aren't in charge you can win from a position of weakness by disrupting what the governing party is doing. They are responsible for making things work, not you. If it all goes to perdition in a pushcart, that is their problem, not yours.

rather than trying to do something about them

translation:
We have to adapt and play the media game using the cards we have (see above), not the cards we wished we had. Trying to wind the clock backwards won't do any good.

-----------------------------

What this all adds up to is a recipe for the GOP to make a comeback via obstruction and disruption of the Dem agenda, adapted to the new political landscape. Not exactly bipartisanship, but then we knew that already.

Phil: I didn't even have to scroll down to figure out that OCSteve's and Brett's comments were written by them.

I recognize every front-pager or regular poster in the first 3 sentences? Do I win?

Phil – do you actually disagree with anything I said?

-Poking a stick in the eye of the opposition is kind of useless, and likely counterproductive.
-Republicans are more effective when they are the opposition party. They suck at leading the country. They are really good at opposing liberal/Democratic policies.
-Putting “shiny things” in a bill to give them something easy to oppose is kind of self defeating. Especially when they are beating you in the polls.

Right now, tonight, your party controls the WH and both branches of Congress. And a handful of loud Republicans are kicking your ass. They have put Obama off his stride. Some of his major plans have been shelved for now. Some of that is self-inflicted (Daschle), but again, don’t hand them shiny things to throw back at you.

How hard is this: Don’t put crap that Republicans can easily oppose to make you look like a fool in a bill named the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” and that the President says must be passed immediately or we are all going to die

They are going to oppose: make them oppose something such that you can explain to Joe Sixpack that they are wrong. Right now you can’t do that. Try it – give it a shot.

Actually, OCSteve, just about everything they are complaining about could be explained to Joe Sixpack so that Joe would be gung-ho for it. The problem is that it takes more than 30 seconds, and the media right now are only giving the Dems 15 seconds to explain it and the republicans 15 minutes to shout it down.

-Poking a stick in the eye of the opposition is kind of useless, and likely counterproductive.

Yeah, calling the Democrats traitors for seven years really hurt the Republicans, didn't it?

Right now, tonight, your party controls the WH and both branches of Congress.

I am not a member of any political party. In fact, this last election, for local and state offices, I voted for several Republicans.

How hard is this: Don’t put crap that Republicans can easily oppose to make you look like a fool in a bill named the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”

Republicans will oppose anything that is not tax cut.

OCSteve: Poking a stick in the eye of the opposition is kind of useless, and likely counterproductive.

And yet the Republicans have been doing it for more than 20 years and it seems to be doing well enough for them. Oh sure, they just lost a major election -- but they can still run the legislative agenda, and hence their eye-poking of Democrats, thanks to their hammerlock on the media.

Republicans are more effective when they are the opposition party. They suck at leading the country. They are really good at opposing liberal/Democratic policies.

They're really good at "opposing", period. They can obstruct the sh** out of anything. Except Palpatine-esque "Unlimited Power!" and other craven submissions to authorities even more depraved than they. IOW, it's not just that they're really good at opposing Democrats, it's all they can do. All.

I think -- and I mean this completely literally -- that the Congressional Republicans would rather the country were destroyed than a Democrat be praised... unless he or she were praised as a Republican. I get absolutely no sense from them that this is a real crisis; it's just the latest in a long line of issues that seemingly only exist to cudgel the Democrats. They've played the game so long, they've forgotten it's a game.

Putting “shiny things” in a bill to give them something easy to oppose is kind of self defeating. Especially when they are beating you in the polls.

You miss the point: it doesn't matter whether there are "shiny things" in a bill. As long as Republicans and Democrats have different priorities -- and they always will -- there will be things in the bill that the Republicans don't like, and that will be all the "shinyness" they need. They'll oppose it on principle, and frankly, even if they agreed with everything in it, they'd oppose it out of spite.

[Which isn't to say that the past few weeks have given me anything to love about the Democrats, mind.]

Putting “shiny things” in a bill to give them something easy to oppose is kind of self defeating.

That is the part I disagree with, OCSteve. You've made similar points before. The problem is that you're convinced that whatever the Republicans pick up on as something to criticize must actually have something wrong with it.

Regardless of what the Democrats put in the bill -- unless they limited themselves to things the Republicans suggested to them (and probably not even then) -- the Republicans would pick out plenty of items to attack as frivolous or pork or evil. Trying to behave well so that the bully doesn't beat you is not a winning strategy.

Putting “shiny things” in a bill to give them something easy to oppose is kind of self defeating.

There is nothing that Obama or the Congressional Democrats could put in the bill that the Congressional Republicans would not oppose. He could propose $100M a month for the RNC and they'd bitch about it.

Poking a stick in the eye of the opposition is kind of useless, and likely counterproductive.

There is nothing Obama or the Democrats in Congress can do that will make their relationship with the Republicans in Congress any more or less productive.

The political goal of the Republicans for the next four years will be to f*ck Obama up. Not address the economic crisis we face, not figure out how to deal with any of our foreign policy nightmares, not run the normal day-to-day operations of the nation in an effective way.

Their goal will be to f*ck up Barack Hussein Obama.

He's interested in transcending party politics, but he's wasting his good will on them. There is no productive relationship available there for him to have with them. It's like trying to have a productive relationship with deer fly.

Obama should neither deliberately poke them in the eye, or not poke them in the eye. He should proceed as if they do not exist.

the President says must be passed immediately or we are all going to die…

Actually, Obama has said the stimulus has to be passed or the economy will go south further and faster.

"Or we are all going to die" was the guy before Obama.

The political goal of the Republicans for the next four years will be to f*ck Obama up.

Same as it was with Clinton in 1992, actually, although the plan changed somewhat when they actually got power in 1994.

Obama should neither deliberately poke them in the eye, or not poke them in the eye. He should proceed as if they do not exist.

Word.

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