Bill O’Reilly
tonight highlighted findings that liberals on the internet tend to be
less tolerant of opposing views than conservatives. Democrat Kirsten Powers
agreed with this sentiment, relaying from her own personal experiences
engaging with liberals and conservatives, surmising that the former tend
to be less tolerant because they are used to controlling the media. Powers has worked for the New York State Democratic Committee, was the press secretary for Andrew Cuomo for Governor and Communications Director on the mayoral campaign of C. Virginia Fields.
O’Reilly said the study finds liberals are far more sensitive about
criticism, and a significant percentage of them have ended online
relationships due to political differences. Powers explained that after
getting out of her own “Democratic bubble,” she noticed that
conservatives tend to be more open to hearing opposing viewpoints than
liberals.
“Liberals, because they are used to controlling all the media, pretty
much, academia, that for them, when they hear things that don’t jibe
with what they want to hear, it’s very disconcerting and unsettling to
them.” Powers added that most of these liberals are generally shocked about
dissenting views because they just assume everyone believes their
beliefs are just common sense.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
The on-going myth that never dies
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote a scathing editorial on Obama (shocking, I know). But couldn’t help herself with this line:
“But the cost of W.’s misbegotten wars and his mishandling of the economy overwhelmed Obama’s first term.”
Are you kidding me? Do we have to live with this PR bs for the rest of our lives?
A. Afganistan is now a misbegotten war? What happened to Afganistan is a legitimate war and Iraq, the war that got virtually unanimous approval, is illegitimate?
B. The actual cost of Afganistan, Iraq and "Pakistan" (whatever that includes) was $757 billlion over 7 years (2003-2010). Only 75% of Obama's PROPOSED deficit going forward for one year.
C. The media and think tanks have rolled out a $3bn proposed estimate for the cost of all the wars.
1. That figured includes "interest." Even if all the $750 billion were borrowed on day one, the aggregate cost to now is $225 billion at most, and $22bn going forward (less than Sandy pork).
2. It also includes $1 trillion of FUTURE healthcare costs for veterans for the next 50 YEARS. Again, per year, less than Sandy pork.
3. The next $1 trillion estimate must be rounding because I can't find support for that - unless it is 30 years worth of the above mentioned interest pulled forward.
D. Now in retrospect, what exactly was the mishandling of the economy that GWB is responsible for?
1. The tax cut? Can't be. Obama just campaigned across these great lands that restoring the Bush-tax cuts were ESSENTIAL to maintaining our economy.
2. The Federal involvement in the housing crisis? Yes, he can be criticized for pushing the "home-owner" society like many others at the time, but when he proposed curtailing the expansion of Fannie and Freddie (the lead players in the creation of the housing crisis) as early as 2005, he was shouted down by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd for being anti-middle class.
3. The banking crisis? Albeit dangerously, the banks were operating all legally and under the supervision of the non-political Federal Reserve limits and regulations.
4. The bailout through TARP? - The bailout of the nations' banks was the efforts of Bush's Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulsen, but in conjunction with soon-to-be Treasury Sectretary Tim Geitner. Therefore it must have been a bi-partisian approach. Plus, TARP has been repaid and actually MADE the government money!
So someone please explain how Bush's activities have gotten us into this "mess" that is no one's fault but his?
I re-read an article written in 2003 by a self-proclaimed "moderate independent" that discussed whether or not GWB was reponsible for the recession of 2001-2002. The conclusion was that he WAS responsible - not for any of his fiscal actions or tax cuts - but rather that for the months leading up to his election and the six months that followed his inauguration, he talked down the economy by saying it was "bad" or "weak." Clinton, OBL nor anyone else was to blame for the malaise, but rather harsh words scared everybody. That blogger no longer writes, I would love to hear what he has to say now.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Who's Not Fair?
Estimated Effective Federal Tax Rates for 2013:
Bottom fifth: 1.9%
Second fifth: 9.5%
Middle fifth: 15.6%
Fourth fifth: 19.0%
Top fifth: 28.1%
80-90 percentile: 21.5%
90-95 percentile: 23.4%
95-99 percentile: 26.3%
Top 1 percent: 36.9%
Top 0.1 percent: 39.6%
And this isn't fair share, why? The middle class - which by definition would be the middle fifth - pay 15.6% of income to the federal government. The top fifth pays almost double. The top 1% pays almost 2.5x.
If you make $92k a year or better, you are in the top fifth. To make the top 1%, you would need to make $350,000 or more. Therefore, if you make $100k, your additional federal tax over the middle fifth is $6,000 per year. And that is not considering any impact of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) which limits deductions and creates a minimum tax rate, and was originally created in 1969 in an Congressional attempt to nab a handful of millionaires (155 people) that "weren't paying their share," because they were not paying any income tax at all. Sound familiar?? For years since then, Congress has passed one-year "patches" aimed at minimizing the impact of the tax. Nevertheless, despite its attempt to be a "millionaire tax" on just 155 people, the tax has creeped to nabbing 3.9 million people in 2008 (and going higher), and hits some with incomes as low as $75,000 per year.
#LawofUnintendedConsequences
Bottom fifth: 1.9%
Second fifth: 9.5%
Middle fifth: 15.6%
Fourth fifth: 19.0%
Top fifth: 28.1%
80-90 percentile: 21.5%
90-95 percentile: 23.4%
95-99 percentile: 26.3%
Top 1 percent: 36.9%
Top 0.1 percent: 39.6%
And this isn't fair share, why? The middle class - which by definition would be the middle fifth - pay 15.6% of income to the federal government. The top fifth pays almost double. The top 1% pays almost 2.5x.
If you make $92k a year or better, you are in the top fifth. To make the top 1%, you would need to make $350,000 or more. Therefore, if you make $100k, your additional federal tax over the middle fifth is $6,000 per year. And that is not considering any impact of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) which limits deductions and creates a minimum tax rate, and was originally created in 1969 in an Congressional attempt to nab a handful of millionaires (155 people) that "weren't paying their share," because they were not paying any income tax at all. Sound familiar?? For years since then, Congress has passed one-year "patches" aimed at minimizing the impact of the tax. Nevertheless, despite its attempt to be a "millionaire tax" on just 155 people, the tax has creeped to nabbing 3.9 million people in 2008 (and going higher), and hits some with incomes as low as $75,000 per year.
#LawofUnintendedConsequences
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
The Negotiator - not
Obama says we DON'T have a spending problem. He is soooo wrong, but the reality is he doesn't care. His potential legacy is winning things that change the country. If he focuses on the spending problem, he won't be able to do his legacy things.
Therefore compromise isn't an option. My way or the highway.
The Fiscal Cliff deal was tragic. Not because it raised taxes on those making greater than $400k per year (although that affects about 750,000 small businesses), but rather because it does nothing to fix the deficit. In fact, with some new spending snuck in, it actually ADDS to the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years according to the non-partisan CBO. $4 trillion! great. Nice job everyone.
But in the end, Obama only wanted to raise taxes, and knew that if we went off the cliff, the general population would blame the Republicans. The Dems and their media lapdogs have done enough PR to make that so. Instead Obama gets to put out press releases touting that now we have the "most progressive tax code in decades." I don't recall that being the Fiscal Cliff objective.
Peggy Noonan of the WSJ writes this good article regarding Obama, the negotiator:
We're all talking about Republicans on the Hill and their manifold failures. So here are some things President Obama didn't do during the fiscal cliff impasse and some conjecture as to why.
He won but he did not triumph. His victory didn't resolve or ease anything and heralds nothing but more congressional war to come.
He did not unveil, argue for or put on the table the outlines of a grand bargain. That is, he put no force behind solutions to the actual crisis facing our country, which is the hemorrhagic spending that threatens our future. Progress there—even just a little—would have heartened almost everyone. The president won on tax hikes, but that was an emotional, symbolic and ideological victory, not a substantive one. The higher rates will do almost nothing to ease the debt or deficits.
He didn't try to exercise dominance over his party. This is a largely forgotten part of past presidential negotiations: You not only have to bring in the idiots on the other side, you have to corral and control your own idiots.
He didn't deepen any relationships or begin any potential alliances with Republicans, who still, actually, hold the House. The old animosity was aggravated. Some Republicans were mildly hopeful a second term might moderate those presidential attitudes that didn't quite work the first time, such as holding himself aloof from the position and predicaments of those who oppose him, while betraying an air of disdain for their arguments. He is not quick to assume good faith. Some thought his election victory might liberate him, make his approach more expansive. That didn't happen.
The president didn't allow his victory to go unsullied. Right up to the end he taunted the Republicans in Congress: They have a problem saying yes to him, normal folks try to sit down and work it out, not everyone gets everything they want. But he got what he wanted, as surely he knew he would, and Republicans got almost nothing they wanted, which was also in the cards. At Mr. Obama's campfire, he gets to sing "Kumbaya" solo while others nod to the beat.
Serious men don't taunt. And they don't farm the job of negotiating out to the vice president because no one can get anything done with the president. Some Republican said, "He couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag." But—isn't this clear by now?—not negotiating is his way of negotiating. And it kind of worked. So expect more.
Mr. Obama's supporters always give him an out by saying, "But the president can't work with them, they made it clear from the beginning their agenda was to do him in." That's true enough. But it's true with every American president now—the other side is always trying to do him in, or at least the other side's big mouths are always braying they'll take him down. They tried to capsize Bill Clinton, they tried to do in Reagan, they called him an amiable dunce and vowed to defeat his wicked ideology.
We live in a polarized age. We have for a while. One of the odd things about the Obama White House is that they are traumatized by the normal.
A lot of the president's staffers were new to national politics when they came in, and they seem to have concluded that the partisan bitterness they faced was unique to him, and uniquely sinister. It's just politics, or the ugly way we do politics now.
After the past week it seems clear Mr Obama doesn't really want to work well with the other side. He doesn't want big bipartisan victories that let everyone crow a little and move forward and make progress. He wants his opponents in disarray, fighting without and within. He wants them incapable. He wants them confused.
I worried the other day that amid all the rancor the president would poison his future relations with Congress, which in turn would poison the chances of progress in, say, immigration reform. But I doubt now he has any intention of working with them on big reforms, of battling out a compromise at a conference table, of having long walks and long talks and making offers that are serious, that won't be changed overnight to something else. The president intends to consistently beat his opponents and leave them looking bad, or, failing that, to lose to them sometimes and then make them look bad. That's how he does politics.
Why?
Here's my conjecture: In part it's because he seems to like the tension. He likes cliffs, which is why it's always a cliff with him and never a deal. He likes the high-stakes, tottering air of crisis. Maybe it makes him feel his mastery and reminds him how cool he is, unrattled while he rattles others. He can take it. Can they?
He is a uniquely polarizing figure. A moderate U.S. senator said the other day: "One thing not said enough is he is the most divisive president in modern history. He doesn't just divide the Congress, he divides the country." The senator thinks Mr. Obama has "two whisperers in his head." "The political whisperer says 'Don't compromise a bit, make Republicans look weak and bad.' Another whisperer is not political, it's, 'Let's do the right thing, work together and begin to right the ship.'" The president doesn't listen much to the second whisperer.
Maybe he thinks bipartisan progress raises the Republicans almost to his level, and he doesn't want to do that. They're partisan hacks, they're not big like him. Let them flail.
This, however, is true: The great presidents are always in the end uniters, not dividers. They keep it together and keep it going. And people remember them fondly for that.
In the short term, Mr. Obama has won. The Republicans look bad. John Boehner looks bad, though to many in Washington he's a sympathetic figure because they know how much he wanted a historic agreement on the great issue of his time. Some say he would have been happy to crown his career with it, and if that meant losing a job, well, a short-term loss is worth a long-term crown. Mr. Obama couldn't even make a deal with a man like that, even when it would have made the president look good.
Therefore compromise isn't an option. My way or the highway.
The Fiscal Cliff deal was tragic. Not because it raised taxes on those making greater than $400k per year (although that affects about 750,000 small businesses), but rather because it does nothing to fix the deficit. In fact, with some new spending snuck in, it actually ADDS to the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years according to the non-partisan CBO. $4 trillion! great. Nice job everyone.
But in the end, Obama only wanted to raise taxes, and knew that if we went off the cliff, the general population would blame the Republicans. The Dems and their media lapdogs have done enough PR to make that so. Instead Obama gets to put out press releases touting that now we have the "most progressive tax code in decades." I don't recall that being the Fiscal Cliff objective.
Peggy Noonan of the WSJ writes this good article regarding Obama, the negotiator:
We're all talking about Republicans on the Hill and their manifold failures. So here are some things President Obama didn't do during the fiscal cliff impasse and some conjecture as to why.
He won but he did not triumph. His victory didn't resolve or ease anything and heralds nothing but more congressional war to come.
He did not unveil, argue for or put on the table the outlines of a grand bargain. That is, he put no force behind solutions to the actual crisis facing our country, which is the hemorrhagic spending that threatens our future. Progress there—even just a little—would have heartened almost everyone. The president won on tax hikes, but that was an emotional, symbolic and ideological victory, not a substantive one. The higher rates will do almost nothing to ease the debt or deficits.
He didn't try to exercise dominance over his party. This is a largely forgotten part of past presidential negotiations: You not only have to bring in the idiots on the other side, you have to corral and control your own idiots.
He didn't deepen any relationships or begin any potential alliances with Republicans, who still, actually, hold the House. The old animosity was aggravated. Some Republicans were mildly hopeful a second term might moderate those presidential attitudes that didn't quite work the first time, such as holding himself aloof from the position and predicaments of those who oppose him, while betraying an air of disdain for their arguments. He is not quick to assume good faith. Some thought his election victory might liberate him, make his approach more expansive. That didn't happen.
The president didn't allow his victory to go unsullied. Right up to the end he taunted the Republicans in Congress: They have a problem saying yes to him, normal folks try to sit down and work it out, not everyone gets everything they want. But he got what he wanted, as surely he knew he would, and Republicans got almost nothing they wanted, which was also in the cards. At Mr. Obama's campfire, he gets to sing "Kumbaya" solo while others nod to the beat.
Serious men don't taunt. And they don't farm the job of negotiating out to the vice president because no one can get anything done with the president. Some Republican said, "He couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag." But—isn't this clear by now?—not negotiating is his way of negotiating. And it kind of worked. So expect more.
Mr. Obama's supporters always give him an out by saying, "But the president can't work with them, they made it clear from the beginning their agenda was to do him in." That's true enough. But it's true with every American president now—the other side is always trying to do him in, or at least the other side's big mouths are always braying they'll take him down. They tried to capsize Bill Clinton, they tried to do in Reagan, they called him an amiable dunce and vowed to defeat his wicked ideology.
We live in a polarized age. We have for a while. One of the odd things about the Obama White House is that they are traumatized by the normal.
A lot of the president's staffers were new to national politics when they came in, and they seem to have concluded that the partisan bitterness they faced was unique to him, and uniquely sinister. It's just politics, or the ugly way we do politics now.
After the past week it seems clear Mr Obama doesn't really want to work well with the other side. He doesn't want big bipartisan victories that let everyone crow a little and move forward and make progress. He wants his opponents in disarray, fighting without and within. He wants them incapable. He wants them confused.
I worried the other day that amid all the rancor the president would poison his future relations with Congress, which in turn would poison the chances of progress in, say, immigration reform. But I doubt now he has any intention of working with them on big reforms, of battling out a compromise at a conference table, of having long walks and long talks and making offers that are serious, that won't be changed overnight to something else. The president intends to consistently beat his opponents and leave them looking bad, or, failing that, to lose to them sometimes and then make them look bad. That's how he does politics.
Why?
Here's my conjecture: In part it's because he seems to like the tension. He likes cliffs, which is why it's always a cliff with him and never a deal. He likes the high-stakes, tottering air of crisis. Maybe it makes him feel his mastery and reminds him how cool he is, unrattled while he rattles others. He can take it. Can they?
He is a uniquely polarizing figure. A moderate U.S. senator said the other day: "One thing not said enough is he is the most divisive president in modern history. He doesn't just divide the Congress, he divides the country." The senator thinks Mr. Obama has "two whisperers in his head." "The political whisperer says 'Don't compromise a bit, make Republicans look weak and bad.' Another whisperer is not political, it's, 'Let's do the right thing, work together and begin to right the ship.'" The president doesn't listen much to the second whisperer.
Maybe he thinks bipartisan progress raises the Republicans almost to his level, and he doesn't want to do that. They're partisan hacks, they're not big like him. Let them flail.
This, however, is true: The great presidents are always in the end uniters, not dividers. They keep it together and keep it going. And people remember them fondly for that.
In the short term, Mr. Obama has won. The Republicans look bad. John Boehner looks bad, though to many in Washington he's a sympathetic figure because they know how much he wanted a historic agreement on the great issue of his time. Some say he would have been happy to crown his career with it, and if that meant losing a job, well, a short-term loss is worth a long-term crown. Mr. Obama couldn't even make a deal with a man like that, even when it would have made the president look good.
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