Make. It. Stop.

Oh. My. God.  Did you read the news?  The Congressional “Super Committee” failed.  I cannot speak for you, but I was shocked that anyone — including the expert media — believed anything would be accomplished here.  Especially after the House took up and passed such groundbreaking legislation as the determination that pizza is a vegetable.  How can you expect anyone to work after that?  I mean, they’re only human.

Normally, blaming the media feels like a cop-out.  We love to hate the news media when they use their ink and air time covering the Karashians or Snooki and conveniently forget their story selections are based on what we buy.  Don’t care who Brad Pitt is screwing?  Don’t read the tabloids.  In this instance, however they seem to be more than mere spectators.  Andrea Mitchell didn’t see this coming?  If I saw this coming, she should have.  And thus the political media, who build up these paper tigers, feel more complicit.  The coverage of this debacle — as was the deficit ceiling fiasco before it — borders on media malpractice.  Real conversations about serious problems become showdowns at the OK corral, great for ratings but not so much for anything else.

But blaming the media remains a cop-out.  As does blaming the Tea Party.  The Tea Party didn’t cause this problem, they may not be helping but we aren’t here because of them.  Remember they only came on the scene a few years ago.  Even Grover Norquist didn’t cause this.

So, if we cannot blame the media and we cannot blame the right wing (or the left wing) — who caused this?   We did.

President Obama got into trouble when a clip of him calling Americans lazy (ironic given how many GOP presidential candidates have called #OWS protesters lazy and dirty).  I don’t think we are lazy but we are whiny.  We want everything without paying for anything.  Most of us agree that we need a good military, decent education and a host of other programs but we don’t want to pay for them.  The disparity of what we want and what we want to pay for extends beyond taxes and spending: We tell ourselves — and the world — that the US represents the pinacle of exceptionalism and socioeconomic fluidity but we trail most of our peer countries.  Think taxes destroy freedom and rob citizens of happiness?  Don’t tell that to Norway.  Taxes are much higher there — especially when the Value Added Tax (VAT) is included — yet they have the highest standard of living on the planet.

Back to our Congressional conundrum.  We have the Congress we settled for.  Each member is elected to represent their district, their part of the country, their special interests.  By special interests, I do not mean lobbyists but constituents.  Through gerrymandering, a word I learned in junior high school social studies but never thought about until moving to Washington, Congressional districts have been distilled to the point where extreme views are common place.  Our Congresspeople don’t compromise because we don’t want them to.

The Congressional “super committee” was never supposed to succeed; it was set up to do exactly what it did — give the impression of action while doing nothing to accomplish anything.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

Kind of ironic book title, huh?

Herman Cain, aka the pizza magnate and current flavor of the month in the GOP POTUS candidate, has made some interesting choices and statements. He seems to think running for president and selling books are not mutually exclusive activities.

To give him his due, the Cain campaign has bought a lot of his books so he is definitely selling a ton while running for president. And Governor Sarah Palin would tell you her VP run and the speculation about her possible 2012 run did not hurt her book sales but just because you can do something, does not mean you should.

This is not an anti-capitalist view I am trying to promote. Sell as many books as want but it seems a little unseemly to use a presidential run to do it. Any presidential campaign is really a multi-month (or year) job interview for the most (or one of) important jobs in the country. Nothing a candidate does will really prepare anyone to be president (and it’s not supposed to, you should be qualified to run before you make that decision) but it does give the nation a chance to get to know the would be candidates. This is not a time to bring anything but your A game. When you think about that, is this really the time to split your energy between running and doing anything else?

Running for president is hard. Not has hard as being the leader of the free world but it is hard. That’s why I criticized Cenk Uygar when he said that Mike Huckabee was “too fat and happy” to run. I have a lot of respect for people who admit that it takes a lot of time and energy to run and there are no guarantees. Good for you, Governor.

Governor Rick Perry has learned how much harder it is to run for national office (I believe he thought that his track record in Texas would prepare him better for the presidential race) than any state-wide. That’s one of the reasons he has said he may not take part in upcoming debates (not that his underwhelming performances have had any role, seriously, if you cannot stay awake past 8:00 pm, how can you be president?).

Congresswomen Michele Bachmann has learned this, too. Maybe that’s why her New Hampshire staff all quit in a huff. Maybe she thought she could make up facts as she goes along in this campaign the way she does every other time she opens her mouth but it doesn’t seem to be working as well as she thought.

So we come back to the current front-runner (in national polls, though, not the state polls, where it matters more), Herman Cain. It is worth noting that the title of this post could also refer to Godfather’s pizza. With all due respect to Chicago deep dish pizza lovers, you can theoretically make pizza outside of New York, but why would you?

Full disclosure, which is pretty obvious to anyone who has met me or read what I write, I am a liberal Democrat and have every intention of voting for President Obama. Having said that, I think having two robust parties and a vigorous discussion about where we want the country to go, is in everyone’s best interest. I was really impressed when Governor Chris Christie said that he believes in “small government, lower taxes and less regulation,” not because I agree with ANY of that, in fact I do NOT, but that’s where our conversation should be.

Herman Cain is not advancing our political discourse at all. His economic plan (the “9/9/9” or “9/0/9”) would be disastrous. His ignorance of foreign policy is scary. It is his lack of interest in running for office, while he runs, that bothers me the most. With little or no campaign infrastructure, few details on his policy proposals and a general laissez-faire attitude towards the process, I am left with the thought that if he doesn’t care about his campaign, why should anyone?

Death and Taxes

"Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Supreme Court Justice who was nominated by Theodore Roosevelt and served frojm 1902-32.  This quote is on the IRS building in Washington, DC.  Yesterday was April 15th, normally tax day but it was Sunday so most of America has until the 17th — apparently the storm this weekend was so severe that many people will have until April 19th.  They said on the news that the IRS is considering giving people a few extra days to get the tax forms in — if you were impacted by the storm, keep an eye out for news on this.

We've all heard the quote, "Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes," attributed to Benjamin Franklin, which was news to me.

Where do our taxes go?  There are a number of places you can go to see how your federal taxes are spent. I found this site, "Death and taxes: a visual guide to your federal taxes."   From the site:

“Death and Taxes” is a representational poster of the federal discretionary budget; the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes. The data is from the President's budget request for 2008. It will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress by October 1st to begin the fiscal year.  The poster provide a uniquely revelaing look at our national priorities, that fluctuate yearly, according to the wishes of the President, the power of Congres, and the will of the people. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster.

The author wrote this about himself:

"Jess Bachman, that’s me. I am a resident of Burlington, Vermont and freelance graphic designer. In addition to combing through federal budget documents I can be found DJing, drinking tea, making concert posters, blogging, and dressing like Robert Redford from Three Days of the Condor. I am 26 years old."

I do not know anything about this person but thought it was an interesting site and idea but I don't know what his ideology is or what his background or party affiliation, or even how accurate this.  As someone interested in politics, the budget itself bores me to tears so I appreciate anyone who can wade through it and come up with something so interesting.

You can see the actual budget in several places:

1. The White House version can be found at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) site.
2. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has a version.
3. And Wikipedia has an entry.

 

As a godless, tax-loving liberal, I know we need them to keep our society the way we like it.  They make sure we have military, roads, a good education system and the list goes on.  It is easy to forget how important our infrastructure is because when it is doing its job well, it is invisible. The best way I have found to describe it as being similar to a fish tank or well maintained eco-system, it provides everything needed to keep everything in there alive and healthy.  We have a stable government, except for the last six years where my cat could have done a better job and my cat thinks rocks are food, that allows us to have a stable economy and the rest.

One of my favorite people once told me that he votes for Republicans because he wants to pay fewer taxes.  The irony of that statement, which seems to have been lost on him unless that was just his dry humor and I do not know him enough to tell the difference but given his tax bracket, he benefits far more from the taxes he pays than many.  If anarchy broke out tomorrow, my house is not going to be looted.  Again, my cat is one my most valuable possessions and he was born in an alley and still thinks rocks are food.  He is not alone in this view.  Taxes and tax day are things people dread.  A Congressperson told the New Yorker sometime during the administration that President Clinton had “ruined democracy because he showed people that they can get something in return for their taxes.”

While democracy remains intact, well aside from the Bush v. Gore debacle but that’s for another post, there is evidence that many people around the world pay much higher taxed and don’t mind.  This is because they get things like health care.  The countries with the highest standard of living tend to be in Scandinavia.  They also pay the highest taxes in the world but they receive great services for them.  My roommate in (spent my senior year in ) was from .  She had no concept of charitable organizations and did not understand why we need them, why the richest country on the planet could not provide basic services to its people.  In , she told me, the government takes care of such things.  We could learn a lot from her.

So when you send off your returns, whether you will get a check or send one in, remember that you pay less taxes than the rest of the civilized world but that you get far fewer services.  Having said that, the next time you call 911 (ok, that’s a local tax), drive on an interstate highway, go to a public park or do some mundane thing like work in a safe place, drink decent water (exception: Washington, DC – full of lead) and send your child off to school rather than some horrific job remember your taxes make all that possible.

Oh, and if you voted for Dubya (and other GOP candidates), you get the added bonus of knowing you have turned governing into campaigning by politicizing what were supposed to be neutral jobs, started an illegal war (really wish that ‘you broke it, you bought it’ rule applied ONLY to the people to actually broke Iraq and wanted us in there), dang, there are just too many bad things your decision has caused us to do.  We are hated by most of the planet.  All the White House scandals hurt politicians of all stripes – does anyone believe Karl Rove lost email or that Dick Cheney didn’t know what he was doing when he told Scooter Libby to out a covert CIA agent?   Most of you have some money so I know you are not stupid, did you really think Saddam Hussein planned 9/11?  Your tax dollars and vote did all of that.

Sorry I went off the deep end a little.  I do that a lot. 

 

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