How Did You Grade the Lame Duck Session?

By Olivia LaRosa
December 22, 2010

Recently, I have been amusing myself by posting to the Wall Street Journal online community regarding select Questions of the Day. Today, the WSJ asked us how we graded the Lame Duck congressional session. I gave it a "D" for bad political theater. The only decent work of the session was passing the START treaty and repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." What an embarrassing policy!

In response to: He continues to lead the country from the far left and will push just as hard as he can in this direction as long as he is in office. The notion that President Obama is more centrist than Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid is ludicrous - though a useful fiction for him. They are all cut from the same socialist cloth.

I replied: I find myself boggled by people who still think that the lowest taxes support the best society. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization. (I gave the lame ducks a D.) The goods that you have, the education you received, the roadtrips you take, the fire department nearby, and so on, were at least partially subsidized by the taxes that your parents and grandparents paid. Furthermore, most of the stories told about how lowering taxes will help the US aren't quite what actually happens. Please take a look at this article for examples.
The 9 Biggest Conservative Lies About Taxes and Public Spending
http://www.alternet.org/story/149265/the_9_biggest_conservative_lies_about_taxes_and_public_spending

And in answer to the same man who asserted that Obama was a socialist, I talked about the TWO political axes: right-left, and authoritarian-libertarian. You can take the fun quiz too!

I am far left. I know so because I took a test at http://www.politicalcompass.org. I score at -10, -9.875. I am a libertarian socialist. People get confused about political orientation because we think that there are only two directions to go; left, or right. That constitutes one political axis. There is another, though. It is the authoritarian/libertarian axis. Obama is no more of a socialist than say, Evan Bayh or Bill Clinton. His political acts place him in within the right/authoritarian corner of the political compass. So, it makes no sense to call Obama a socialist or a Marxist when he clearly isn't either one. Here's another example: people can be left/authoritarian like Mao Ze Dong or Joseph Stalin. Or they can be right/authoritarian like Hitler, Mussolini, Hosni Mubarak, Benjamin Netanyahu, Hugo Chavez, etc. Ron Paul is the most prominent example of a right/libertarian. Take the fun quiz and see for yourself where you stand, alongside major historical figures.

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In response to this post:

One of the biggest conservative lies is that money simply grows on trees. Taxes can be lowered to zero and the economy will benefit. Borrow from the Chinese to pay for huge deficit spending and pay off the bonds by printing money (quantitative easing). The result will soon be hyperinflation.

Conservatives don't seem to care. But some people do, like many Tea Party activists, who seem to realize what a downward spiral our country's in.

I replied: The Tea Party knows that something's wrong, but they don't know what it is. They have been captured by bumper-sticker politics. If the answers are simple, then we are not talking about the problems of human beings. Sad to say, the Tea Party movement simply plays into the hands of the political agenda of transnational corporations. The political agenda of transnational corporations is to corrupt governments for the sake of profit, as their charters provide. I wish that the Tea Partiers would interrogate their basic assumptions. We need GOOD government, not what we have now. It's impossible to manage a nation of 300 million people without decent people managing the day-to-day business of keeping America together. You don't get that result by ranting about bureaucrats or term limits. You get that result by educating folks on what it really takes to run a pluralistic democracy.

The Three Coequal Branches of US Government

http://bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/government/branches.html

It's even got pictures for the trolls! Perfect.

The Corporate Welfare State: How the Government Subsidizes U.S. Corporations

by Deborah Lake

This analysis comes from the Cato Institute, a right-wing libertarian group that occasionally provides worthwhile articles that highlight the ills of the current political system. Corporate welfare costs Americans much more than individual welfare, just as corporate crime costs Americans much more than street crime.

I used to be a right wing libertarian. Now I am a left-wing libertarian, since I learned that the "ideal" of free market capitalism will never happen and at best mandates that there always be losers despite individual merit and hard work. If you don't know where you sit in that spectrum, there's a fun little quiz at www.politicalcompass.org you can take.

http://tinyurl.com/2s4qp7

The federal government spent $92 billion in direct and indirect subsidies to businesses and private- sector corporate entities — expenditures commonly referred to as "corporate welfare" — in fiscal year 2006. The definition of business subsidies used in this report is broader than that used by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis, which recently put the costs of direct business subsidies at $57 billion in 2005. For the purposes of this study, "corporate welfare" is defined as any federal spending program that provides payments or unique benefits and advantages to specific companies or industries.

Supporters of corporate welfare programs often justify them as remedying some sort of market failure. Often the market failures on which the programs are predicated are either overblown or don't exist. Yet the federal government continues to subsidize some of the biggest companies in America. Boeing, Xerox, IBM, Motorola, Dow Chemical, General Electric, and others have received millions in taxpayer-funded benefits through programs like the Advanced Technology Program and the Export-Import Bank. In addition, the federal crop subsidy programs continue to fund the wealthiest farmers.

Because the corporate welfare state transcends any specific agency — and therefore any specific congressional committee — one way to reform or terminate those programs would be through a corporate welfare reform commission (CWRC). That commission could function like the successful military base closure commission. The CWRC would compose a list of corporate welfare programs to eliminate and then present that list to Congress, which would be required to hold an up-or-down vote on the commission's proposal.

Go to the Original to get the full text of the policy analysis.

"Dumb" Conservatives v. "Smart" Conservatives

Dumb Conservatives v. Smart Conservatives

By Deborah Lake

The Bush administration is pushing like the devil to make the tax cuts for the top 1% permanent. They need to pay for that somehow, is the common view. Well, here's the plan to do it... raising taxes on most everyone else.

Reagan's tax "reforms" in the 1980's hurt middle class and working class taxpayers while helping those who didn't need it. Bush's program does even more harm than Reagan's. Homeowners will lose significant deductions, and those seeking the benefits of home ownership will be less likely to buy a home.

Sigh. If anyone still thinks that George Bush shares their values, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for you. Or maybe some nice swampland in Florida?

What perplexes the heck out of me, I must admit, is the terrible short-sightedness of a policy proposal like this. Even if they can get the legislature to support and vote for something like this, which they can, (see CAFTA vote armtwisting and bribery scam), it's terrible public policy for those who support capitalism.

See, support for US style capitalism is sustained by a solid, prosperous middle class willing to back the moves of the ultra rich. Why? The middle class sees itself as an auxiliary beneficiary. The Bush administration, although not the first to do so, has taken the structures that create a middle class for granted. Or it has actively worked to dismantle those structures, as it demonstrates by this latest proposal.

Like I keep saying, there are dumb conservatives and smart conservatives. FDR knew how to protect capitalism by giving it a smiley face. The Bushes, well, are just in the bush league here.

Someone said to me, "Do you know why George Soros is so pissed off at GWB? He has exposed the mechanisms at the heart of the system for everyone to see. The little man behind the curtain."