Far East Cynic

“It is the spending, stupid”-beat them over the head with this chart.

Most of the GOP and most of Phib’s commenting class, want to ignore this fundamental truth:

The very large, but permanent and worsening, budgetary impact of the “Bush tax cuts” — which when first proposed back in the pre-9/11 era, were supposed to end in 2010 and were in response to what back then seemed to be the “problem” of a burgeoning surplus in federal accounts! Since “extending” those cuts just sounds like business as usual, I think it is hard for most people to envision the profound and growing effect they have. The chart above helps toward that end — and doesn’t even go into how heavily those cuts are skewed to the “haves” of society.

And, as a bonus half-point, the chart clarifies that budget problems would be on the path to self-correction, if the Bush cuts had lapsed as originally planned.

 

 

 

Look carefully too at the net impact of the wars on the deficit. What the chart doesn’t tell you though is the ancillary costs of the wars-in increased energy prices, transportation costs, unecessary expenditures for current operations ( that prevent force modernization) and most importantly the attendant loss of tax revenue associated with those added costs. This burden is being primarily borne by the middle class and not by assholes like Paul Ryan and others who want to sacrifice real people on the altar of supply side Jesus. Combined together, foolish tax cuts with a state of permanent war are doing more to destroy American competitiveness than any other cause. Your friendly neighborhood tea bagger is either too stupid to recognize this, or simply is too selfish to care. ( “I’ll take option two, there, Alex”).

“But the debt is robbing our children!”

Oh really? Then how do you explain the fact that without doing anything except letting the Bush tax cuts expire-the debt stabilizes? Thus allowing-if you reform the tax code and make some vertical spending cuts ( including Defense)  the debt to go down. Without sacrificing Medicare or Social Security.

Sorry URR-this what you and the rest simply don’t get. It is not, “that the government is taking your hard earned money”-it is that it is misdirecting the money from the programs that make the most impact on the most Americans and using it to enhance the earning prospects of the top 1%. And all the whining about “small business” ignores the fact all companies, large and small are not being held to a standard of contributing to the social welfare of the nation. Like it or not-if you want to “control spending” someone has to address the growing income inequality.  If for no other reason than the fact that in the long term-it restricts growth a heck of a lot more than any one particular government policy or regulation.  In fact-it was the lack of regulation that created the need for TARP and the recession in the first place.

Any who talks about “sacrifice” and “cutting spending” without including tax reform-like John Boehner does-is telling you a lie. We can fix the financial mess we are in-without forgoing the investments that make America a better and different nation, but it requires and honest conversation about what is and is not “shared sacrifice” Boehner in his effort to suck up to the Tea Party is not doing that.

John Boehner’s new line on the deficit negotiations is that raising taxes — by which he appears to also mean closing tax expenditures — “is off the table. But everything else is on the table.” This is a bit like telling your doctor, who’s worried that you’ve gained weight and are out-of-shape, that exercise is off the table, but everything else is on the table. Well, it’s nice that you’re prepared to diet, but you need to exercise, too. Otherwise, you’re not going to get where you need to go.

And without revenue, we’re not going to get where we need to go — at least if you think where we need to go is towards a balanced budget. Over the past 10 years, the Bush tax cuts have increased the deficit by about $1.3 trillion. They’re the single largest policy contributor to our recent deficits. Due to the growth of the economy and the creep of the alternative minimum tax, they’ll cost the Treasury closer to $4 trillion over the next 10 years. They’re the single largest policy contributor to our projected deficits.

 

There is a way out of the wilderness though-and no one’s tax rates have to go up. The amount of taxes paid will though.

So here is a way to curb this loss of revenue without eliminating any individual deduction: limit the total tax saving for any individual to a maximum percentage of his total income. Daniel Feenberg of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Maya MacGuineas of the New America Foundation and I have been studying a reform that would cap the tax reduction that each taxpayer could get from tax expenditures to 2 percent of his adjusted gross income.
What’s the result? Taxpayers with incomes of $25,000 to $50,000 would pay about $1,000 more in taxes; those with incomes of more than $500,000 might pay $40,000 more.
The cap would affect more than 80 percent of taxpayers. Although they would continue to benefit from the mortgage deduction, the health insurance exclusion and other tax expenditures, their tax savings would not increase if they took out a larger mortgage or a more expensive insurance policy. Similarly, they would not be penalized and get a lesser tax benefit if they scaled back their mortgage or their health insurance premium by moderate amounts.
[...]
We found that a 2 percent cap on tax expenditures in 2011 would raise tax revenue by $278 billion—nearly 30 percent of total projected income tax revenue for this year. The extra revenue would increase over time, reaching nearly half of the projected future fiscal deficits.

We are going to have to do it sooner or later-might as well get on with it now. That’s less “socialist” than the current system of corporate welfare.

Phib-that’s what your readers would be better off understanding. Sadly, thanks to the noise machine of the right, it would appear fewer and fewer of them are able to.

The Dark Lord has an important announcement in the ongoing Global War on Terror Galactic effort to rid the galaxy of rebel scum.

CORUSCANT — Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on the Galactic Empire and the most hunted man in the galaxy, was killed in a firefight with Imperial forces near Alderaan, Darth Vader announced on Sunday.

In a late-night appearance in the East Room of the Imperial Palace, Lord Vader declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that agents of the Imperial Army and stormtroopers of the 501st Legion had finally cornered Kenobi, one of the leaders of the Jedi rebellion, who had eluded the Empire for nearly two decades. Imperial officials said Kenobi resisted and was cut down by Lord Vader’s own lightsaber. He was later dumped out of an airlock.

Obi-Wan Kenobi ’s demise is a defining moment in the stormtrooper-led fight against terrorism, a symbolic stroke affirming the relentlessness of the pursuit of those who turned against the Empire at the end of the Clone Wars. What remains to be seen, however, is whether it galvanizes Kenobi’s followers by turning him into a martyr or serves as a turning of the page in the war against the Rebel Alliance and gives further impetus to Emperor Palpatine to step up Stormtrooper recruitment.

In an earlier statement issued to the press, Kenobi boasted that striking him down could make him “more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

How much his death will affect the rebel alliance itself remains unclear. For years, as they failed to find him, Imperial leaders have said that he was more symbolically important than operationally significant because he was on the run and hindered in any meaningful leadership role. Yet he remained the most potent face of terrorism in the Empire, and some of those who played down his role in recent years nonetheless celebrated his death.

Given Kenobi’s status among radicals, the Imperial Galactic government braced for possible retaliation. A Grand Moff of the Imperial Starfleet said late Sunday that military bases in the core worlds and around the galaxy were ordered to a higher state of readiness. The Imperial Security Bureau issued a galactic travel warning, urging citizens in volatile areas “to limit their travel outside of their local star systems and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations.”

I’m afraid the death star will be fully operational when your friends arrive…………

Yes-I am. More tomorrow, I hope.

My Canadian Counterpart makes a lot more sense about Pakistan and Afghanistan than our beloved King David[Petreaus] does. He’s got two posts up that should be mandatory reading for any one of the current crop of idiots in Congress. And should be read twice to learning impaired assholes like Allen West-and most of Lex’s fan’s too.

First, he points out, that having allowed the abominations that are India and Pakistan to come into existence-we are woefully misinformed about what is important to them:

With very few exceptions, American foreign policy over the last six decades been conducted on the mistaken premise that everyone shares the same interests with the United States. That’s definitely not true in Pakistan and never was. Americans were concerned first about Soviet expansionism, then global terrorism. Pakistan’s first, last and only concern is India.

And they aren’t wrong, necessarily. Imagine if the Soviet Union was ten times as powerful as the U.S, but was situated where Mexico is and had cut America in half as recently as forty years ago. Do you think that Washington wouldn’t be every bit as paranoid as Islamabad is? Now imagine that America’s closest and most powerful ally had deepened relations with Moscow and made the unprecedented move of exempting it from the nuclear non-proliferation rules that bind everyone else. Looked at that way, Pakistan’s conduct makes infinite sense.

 

 

More importantly-he points out what the boneheads at Fox News and Powerline have yet to recognize-that the war on terrorism, is a huge tactical mistake by the United States. Whole hordes of people are still whining about how George W. Bush should be getting “credit”.

Credit for what? For involving the United States in a war that is laying the seeds of its own economic and political destruction? Sure-good job asshole! You should have gotten him five year before to get “credit”. You snoozed, got fixated on another worthless country-you lose.

The jihadis are pissed at American foreign policy. Period. But if a president actually had the balls to go on TV and say that, most Americans – who are genuinely peace-loving to point of having an almost  studied ignorance of the rest of the world – would say “Well, why don’t we change our foreign policy?” And that can be problematic for a people who like buying their oil at fifty cents a barrel.

If the Bush administration knew anything, they knew that anything worth doing was worth overdoing. Even after 9/11, they never relented in telling us that we were making war to ensure that girls were going to school eight times zones away, which had never before happened in all of human history. The inhuman incineration of nearly 3,000 innocents in New York City was just no longer enough. The war in Afghanistan wasn’t long about retribution. It became, by the military’ s own branding, a “just crusade.”

The historical problem with a crusade is that they tend not to go well unless they’re won quickly. If they aren’t, they tend to become problematic. Assuming that you’re going to forcibly change anyone’s religious virtues is about as silly as thinking that they’ll change yours.

And that’s really what the “War on Terror” comes down to. “Terror”, in and of itself, isn’t an enemy. It’s a tactic. The United States didn’t win the War of Independence by fighting against outflanking maneuvers any more than they’ll win a War in Terror. If you think about it really hard, you might just understand that you’re an idiot for even having thought very hard about it in the first fucking place.

Al Qaeda is the enemy today, every bit as much as the Nazis were in World War Two. Well, when you kill bin Laden, you defeat the enemy. Unless you don’t. Then you’re fucked, just as you would be if you thought that killing Boy George would have prevented the 1980s.Then you’re you’re in a position where you think that you’re a hero, until Kajagoogoo rises in to destroy us all and there’s no one to defend us because you’re off collecting your trophy.

Yeah, we got bin Laden. But when you really think about it, that’s like thinking that murdering Donald Trump is going to cancel The Apprentice. No one ever counts on NBC’s bringing Warren Buffett out of the darkness, do they?

Doing a Fredo on Osama is important, have no doubt about it. But in the grand scheme of things, he’s only Fredo. It doesn’t matter how many times that you dump him off of the rowboat if his ideas survive. 

 

 

But hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good pro-war narrative? The simple truth is that the United States can no longer afford these protracted crusades-even if they were in our best interests. ( Which they are not). This is especially true, given the fact that Pakistan’s enemy ( who in my perfect world would still be subjects of the British Empire)-are sitting on the sidelines making obscene profits at our expense. And India’s enemy is doing even better. And they never had to send one chugokujin to fight anywhere. Remember that the next time you shop at Wal-Mart.

The powers that be in my company have decided that since we did not win the last bid I cobbled together-that I should have to try again. (Even though we had the low bid and it was technically excellent-I’m still trying to figure out how it works that they give it to the other company with the highest bid). Somehow, this strikes me as betting on a 60-1 shot in the derby today.

Nonetheless-it just made the “suckiness” factor of this upcoming week go up by 200%.

I think I will just take Dilbert’s approach this time:

The S.O. had her knee “scoped” today. So I am sitting at home trying to keep her from getting up off the couch.

And drinking Margaritas. She can’t drink them-I need to:

But doing it …..safely!

“Victory only has meaning in its effect on the events of the future”-Herman Wouk

Remember this phrase as we discuss the events of Sunday Night.

As we were laying in bed-the sun having gone down long before, and the only light in the room being that of the solar walk lamp(s)-my cell phone wrang? “What’s going on? Why is the President coming on TV?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about-all I know is I paid 500 bucks for a generator and I am not happy about it.”  After reminding him that here in Shopping Mall we had no power to view a TV-he explained what was happening. And he called me back after the President’s speech to confirm it. I thanked him-turned the battery powered radio on-listened for a while and went to sleep.  Well that’s one thing done, but too bad it doesn’t solve the rest of my problems. ( Or the nations.).

The celebrations afterwards may have made everyone feel good (even me-Osama deserved to be killed and I am glad no one thought they should capture him and bring him home to some sort of a trial, it would have been a nightmare. Just look at what happened with the guy they are going to try). However the kind of wild eyed enthusiasm we saw may have been a great thing in 2002, culimating a successful invasion of Afghanistan-the fact that it occurs in 2011 makes all the difference. People want to forget that the intervening eight years happened,  but they did. And Osama dead or alive-we still have to live with those results.

So seeing Osama gunned down in 2011, simply leads to a sigh of relief. ” Thank God that’s over with.”

Now what?

A good question!

This is not the same as saying that the US and Europe can now stop worrying about terrorism. The west will need a serious counter-terrorism policy for many years to come. But the Bush-inspired drive to make terrorism the centrepiece of US foreign policy was a mistake. The declaration of a “Global War on Terror” distorted American foreign policy and led directly to two wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war on terror has guzzled billions of dollars in wasteful spending and spawned a huge and secretive bureaucracy in Washington. The death of bin Laden gives President Barack Obama the cover he needs to start quietly unwinding some of these mistakes.

I happen to agree with that sentiment. I also will not go down the rathole of thinking, ” Oh great-the fact that we got Bin Laden somehow makes all the bad things that are at odds with our national ethos,  somehow OK now.” Because they don’t answer one or more underlying questions:

“If they [torture] worked so great, why did it take so long?”

The problem with arguments about how well torture “worked” is that they invariably justify future acts of torture,  as well as past ones. The Obama administration appears never to have fully understood this, decrying Bush-era excesses while continuing to deploy them.  Sunday marks our best opportunity not only to turn the page but also to close the book on claims that our legal regime was inadequate to address terrorism. It is clear Bush never understood it-and that was one of the many reasons he deserved, and still deserves,  a healthy dose of national scorn.

Furthermore, no one is answering the really really important question-namely, now that Bin Laden is dead, how will this expedite the removal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan? The answer is it won’t-nor will it put a cork in the mouths of those who advocate for permanent war. If Bin Laden’s killing was about creating a turning point so we could leave both of those conflicts behind, pull out our troops,  and begin the necessary adjustments to our overseas presence to successfully compete in the multi-polar world, then that would be something really worth celebrating. Unfortunately, Americans seemed to have learned remarkably little from their pain and disappointment in both countries.  And regrettfully, we have too many in our leadership who have a vested interest in keeping the conflicts going. ( Cue “God Save the King”-for David Petreaus). And as long as the conflicts go on, they drain our national treasure, kill and maim the elite of our youth-and on the whole diminish our ability to stand up and compete with those forces that are the real enemy to American life and prosperity. And those enemies are not located anywhere in Afghanistan, Iraq, or for that matter much else of the Middle East. Many of them trade on Wall Street and the Hang Seng.

Andrew Baecevich is right:

As long as the American way of life – American freedom itself in however warped a form – depends on access to large quantities of foreign oil, US exertions to determine the fate of the Greater Middle East will continue. So, too, will efforts by violent Islamic radicals intent on thwarting the West’s vision of a New Middle East serving the West’s purposes. Bin Laden’s passing – like his entire vile career – will have decided nothing.

The opportunity cost of the mistakes made getting to the villa in Pakistan are huge. And if the United States does not seize the opportunity to reverse those mistakes, turn the corner and get out of the hell holes we find ourselves in, then we will continue on a road of economic and influence decline. If we use the opportunity to turn the page of history-that will be the best gift the SEALS could have given us.

That’s what Lex continues to fail to understand. Not just him, but too many others who influence others with bad ideas.

When we finally put the wars behind us and leave Iraq and Afghanistan-then I will break out the champagne. Till then, its just a really positive development in war that has gone on way too long already.

But I’m glad Osama is dead.

The lights are back on at Chez Skippy-but not on elsewhere in the greater Metropolis of Shopping Mall. Thank goodness!

For us it was kind of a blessing-we were given an excuse to clean out the refrigerator-but it also made me the proud new owner of a generator I was not planning on buying. I am looking on it as an “investment”.

But on the plus side-I have not had to work in two days.

So, in theory-with the operative word being theory-the S.O. and I should have had a great time what with going to bed when the sun went down. However since she has knee surgery coming up-and her idea of  “roughing it” is a four star hotel, I am now in great need of a trip to : (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Angeles City-you choose).

Due to the lights being out-and my cell phone being almost depleted, I had no idea what my son was calling about when he texted me “OMG! They got the fucker!”. ( More on that later).

But I did discover, that having Solar Lights is a great thing. Bring em in the house when the sun goes down and you can see to get from room to room.

Tell me again-why I don’t like living in Shopping Mall…………