The eyes of Texas

It's no secret that Florida's economy is hurting more than that of many other states, but I'm sure it would be much worse if our sales tax cap on yachts costing more than a quarter million weren't in place. Of course mine didn't cost quite enough for me to benefit significantly, but it's gratifying that some of my friends saved enough to pay for a few thousand gallons of fuel. I'm sure it puts a smile on the faces of the many who have to choose between lunch money for the kids and driving to work. I'm sure that the several of my neighbors in foreclosure are altruistic enough to be glad those with that level of disposable income might use the savings on that Taiwan built vessel for an extra trip to the Abacos this summer.

Texas, which has a share of the yacht trade, is jealous, which is an extraordinary thing to say of our second biggest state with its continental sized self esteem. A Republican sponsored bill to cap the sales tax on yachts is now out of committee and will be considered by the Texas House along with deep cuts to education, nursing homes and other things that benefit only the surplus population.

The eyes of Texas are on taxes and the rest of us are watching.

Banzai patriotism

By Capt. Fogg

There are all kinds of patriotism, some real, some pretended. With some countries it's mostly about supporting wars. It's been that way in most of my lifetime, with a few exceptions. With some people it's all about flags and pins and ceremonies. I'm straining to think of a time when it was seen as a reason to support a government you didn't vote for and I have to look back over 65 years ago to find a time when patriotism extended to making economic sacrifices in times of crisis, for the good of the country; for the good of the people. To me, Patriotism may once have meant something more than overgrown and somewhat pugnacious pride and militaristic ritual and it may once not have smelled so much of covert self-interest, but there are outside examples.

If it had been an American nuclear power plant destroyed by a natural event or anything of that magnitude, like a war, or flood or ecological disaster for example, I'd not expect to hear the party of big business or the mega-corporations that pay virtually no taxes anyway offer to suspend another round of corporate tax cuts. Yet that's what seems to be happening in Japan. The Japan Business Federation is a powerful corporate lobby -- sort of like the GOP. Its chairman, Hiromasa Yonekura says he will not stand in the government's way if it backs away from a proposed corporate tax cut.

"I don't mind if the government skips cutting the corporate tax rate," said Yonekura, who is also chairman of Sumitomo Chemical . "Instead I want the government to move swiftly in its recovery efforts."

I don't think I have to waste much space comparing Japan to the country that stood behind tax cuts and against paying off the enormous costs of war by taxing those who made the most money from it -- and challenged the patriotism of anyone who suggested it wasn't a good idea because tax cuts never have and never will pay for themselves -- so I won't.

Kill the cuts

There seems to be a difference between the ultra right as represented by Ayn Rand disciple and 'free markets cure all ills' cult leader Alan Greenspan, and the ultra right as personified by the rabble rousing opportunists who feed the vernacular conservatives of America. Dilatory though he may be in admitting that free markets are no more free or self steering than a car without a driver, he's none the less not as retarded as people who claim to see Russia over the horizon, staple tea bags to their hats and shriek about tax increases they didn't get. He does, albeit slowly, question the ad hoc axioms upon which he bases his theories and thus, through doubt, he thinks, he learns, he changes.

Amidst the tumult of irate e-mails calling President Obama a liar for personally having raised the cigarette tax ( a tax is a tax, after all ) and a communist for unleashing THE BIGGEST TAX INCREASE OF ALL TIME, which actually is nothing of the sort, it's refreshing to hear Greenspan utter:

"I am very much in favor of tax cuts but not with borrowed money."

What he's dismissing is the lifeblood of Republican economic policy and has been at least since the Reagan administration: tax cuts pay for themselves. It's policy that along with a huge increase in government agencies, military spending and a war now having cost more that World War 2 was supposed to be paid for by tax cuts, but failed. It was paid for by borrowing from foreign sources with our independence as collateral. A rational person must have noticed by now that it doesn't work and never has worked and virtually always precipitates a recession. An irrational man, a Fox man, a Conservative man, even a Libertarian man, chants liberaliberaliberal, constructs straw stuffed scapegoats and tries to distract us with fairy tales about the President's religion and parentage.

"The problem that we've gotten into in recent years is that spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous."

said the Former Federal Reserve Chairman on NBC yesterday. It's axiomatic in our new propaganda soaked world that fixing a problem is far less effective and more expensive than hiding it under foamy lipped hysteria, and so the tax cuts that were designed to expire this year by the Republicans who wrote them into law, become a surprise betrayal by Obama. Those liberals are betraying us by following the law we wrote!

The tax cuts, that if renewed will cost us $2.2 trillion to $3.8 trillion over the next decade and put us that much further in debt, since no, they will not pay for themselves as has been demonstrated but will further impoverish the nation but to the benefit of a handful of people and corporations. But that debt must be thought of differently than any debt incurred in extending unemployment benefits and the glaring hypocrisy must never be acknowledged. For are we not conservative?

"You don't agree with Republican leaders who say tax cuts pay for themselves?"

asked David Gregory on Meet the Press.

"They do not."

was the emphatic reply.

The French confection

Bob Greene made me laugh this morning, writing about the magazine ad for a Hermès suitcase priced at $27,100. He thought at first it was a joke until the Hermès store in Naples Florida told him that it wasn't even their most expensive bag, which of course is diamond encrusted. This one isn't. It's trimmed in "Evercalf" leather which I suspect to be much like the "rich Corinthian" leather of Chrysler Cordoba fame, which means most of the cost -- at least $27,000 of it -- is in the trademarked name for a perfectly ordinary material. Otherwise it's just a canvas bag, or "officer canvas" as they call it, which means you may have to salute it if you're wearing a Hermès hat.

Why? Greene keeps asking, although I know and you know exactly why anyone would actually buy one at a time when more Americans are cramming their things into shopping carts and Hefty bags and wandering the streets. It's precisely because it cost $27,100 and you can't afford to toss that kind of money away on nonsense, hand stitched or not.

It's not the sort of bag most people would really notice, except that it doesn't have the silly handle and wheels that make our airports seem like farmyards full of goat carts, but then it's designed for another purpose, it's designed both to remind you and to help you forget that there are people -- millions of people trying to support families on one Hermès suitcase a year.

Hey, don't get angry. It's your money and you're taxed enough already. Under Reagan's tax structure you'd have had to make do with Louis Vuitton or, perish the thought, Hartmann, so the country owes it to you and you needed to buy it now, before that Marxist in the White House restores the tax rates of that prince of Capitalism -- right?

Hot Florida nights, men in tights

Yes, despite the rain which delayed the fireworks, it was a great 4th of July in beautiful Stuart Florida. We watched the spectacle, sponsored by a local car dealer famous for bilking the elderly, aboard a friend's Hattaras and trying, as usual, to avoid talking about politics. As crazy as it was a year ago, it's crazier now that the last few decades of Republican policy and economic theory have been wilfully forgotten and new memories forged about the way we were.

In nearby West Palm Beach, not far from the homes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, politicians and propagandists were out working the crowds of tea flavoured idiots, some dressed in items of late 18th century attire.

"Yes, we do need change, you can start by giving me my money back!"

yelled Joyce Kaufman, of AM station 850-WFTL.

"I don't care which side of the aisle you're on, if you're taking money away from my children, you've got to go"

said GOP Congressional candidate Edward Lynch who lost the 2008 race to a Democrat. Of course he cares about little else, but who knows whether he really believes our current predicament derives from the expensive attempts of the current administration to keep our economy alive long enough to recover and not from the decades of "debt doesn't matter' and "upper bracket tax cuts boost the economy" and "freedom isn't free?"

"yes, I had doubts about George Bush, but this guy. . ." was a common theme, as though any of the people clinging to it actually did anything to question the years of borrowing, revenue cutting, removal of oversight, deregulation, expense bloating and war mongering, the newly legalized scams and frauds and schemes and practices that have characterized those on that "side of the aisle." In fact most of these people would have deported you, if they could have, simply for questioning the Right Wing Religion.

To me, it's like yelling about dental bills when you haven't brushed your teeth or seen a dentist for 20 years. It's like complaining about how the repair bills are putting you into debt when you let the Sex Pistols crash at your house for years and left your checkbook and credit cards and key to the liquor cabinet on the kitchen table. It's your own damn fault and many of us predicted this collapse years ago to a chorus of your jeers and accusations.

Sure the dentist may be too expensive or the contractor may not be the best, but when you let it all go to hell, when you wouldn't listen to any advice, it's your fault and wearing three-cornered hats, knee length pants and tights in the 90 degree heat isn't going to get "your" money back after you spent it on a useless war that cost nearly as much as WW II and on gifts to the richest men and corporations in the world.

The tyranny of personal responsibility

I guess that in a time when the definition of a word must be determined by it's most ignorant and mendacious use we will have to accept that "tyranny" now means any change to the tax structure that does not immediately benefit the wealthiest 1%. That is of course the preferred word to describe president Obama's desire to allow W's gift to the wealthy to expire on schedule. My mind boggles when contemplating the many years of 80 - 90% top brackets. What words could we use to describe Eisenhower? Indeed does boggle even cover the dire linguistic lack?

But of course we need "tea parties" so that the Fox puppets can express their concern about the effects of lowering taxes for most people while restoring the top bracket to less than half of what it was back in what they usually otherwise describe as a golden age. Of course the destruction of tea in Boston harbor wasn't about giving the very, very rich a couple of percent more of the burden of fixing the mess the Bush gravy train left on the carpet, it was about being ruled subject to a king by divine right, amongst which was the ability to tax us, control who we could buy from and sell to and make us subject to the domination of a private corporation without having to grant us any representation. It seems that it's impossible for Republicans to understand that "taxation without representation is tyranny" does not in any way mean that taxation is tyranny. We have representation, but the people did not choose the Republican way and so the simpletons seethe and festoon themselves with tea bags from China in defiance of representative democracy while the Republican Fox smiles and licks its lips.

More astonishing than astonishment itself is the editorial in my local Sunday paper piously insisting that beyond the tyranny of taxing the rich more heavily than the poor, our true mistake is in forsaking biblical rules, amongst which is the Genesis requirement to tithe. We should do nothing about the crisis, other than give money to his church, forget the law and turn to God.

No, there is simply no word available for this kind of effrontery and perhaps we're so far into the realm of public insanity, fostered by private greed, that no thing, no words can help us.

Down the drain

Maybe we shouldn't have been wasting our time last night, listening to McCain and Obama accusing each other of being big spenders when we should have gone straight to the one expert who seems to agree with John's tax proposal. I don't mean some PhD economist or tax law expert or even a CPA; I'm talking of course, about Joe the Plumber, the fellow whose concerns about Obama's tax proposal has made him one of the most well known men -- and certainly the best known plumber on the planet at the moment. If that notoriety alone doesn't translate into financial success for Joe, it will be only because he'd rather not be in a higher tax bracket.

According to Joe Wurtzelberger, a progressive tax structure is Robin Hood socialism and John McCain seems to agree. I particularly liked his oily sneer when he repeated his "spread the wealth around" formula, but I wonder how that meshes with the spreading around of wealth inherent in supply side economics. It's only the direction of the trickle that differs after all, not the redistribution.

Of course Joe seems to have misunderstand what the differences are, and who can blame him? Like all of us he's been bombarded with ugly stereotypes of tax and spend liberals all his life and to be fair, it's complicated, but Joe is wrong. If he buys a business that grosses more than $250,000, he will not be propelled into a higher tax bracket by that fact alone. Surely Joe understands the difference between gross and net and knows about all the expenses and other deductions available. It's very unlikely that the business would net that much and therefore be subject to a tax increase of any kind. It's not very nice of his "Buddy" John not to have explained that to his "best buddy."

For one thing Obama's plan offers additional benefits like a tax credit for new employees and the elimination of Capital Gains for small businesses. Even if the business is wildly successful, and with all this notoriety, it may well be, the increase would be 3%. He would be better off in Obama's America than he would have been in Ronald Reagan's or John McCain's.

Very much to Mr. Wurtzelbacher's credit, he's not endorsing anyone yet. After all, his future and my future depend on a lot more than a 3% potential tax hike that's very unlikely to affect him. A new and deep recession may make it all moot if McCain's leadership is not much better than George Bush's.

All in all, the scenario is not what Joe fears it would be, it is not what John McCain misrepresents it to be and it's very very far from anything one could honestly describe as "spreading the wealth around" even if it's said without the squint and sneer and rubbing of hands. But then we're talking about John McCain's claims about his tax policy and not about honesty, and to quote another plumber and funny guy I used to know - that shit don't flush.

Shell game

Hillary Clinton and John McCain agree, at least to the extent that they support a gasoline tax holiday this Summer. John is pandering to families with children, saying this will help them buy school supplies. Hillary is pandering to anti-corporate sentiments by saying this will take money from the deep pockets of the Oil oligarchy. Both seem to be pandering to the " not thinking too clearly."

Alison Fitzgerald at Bloomberg.com says that economists in general aren't buying it. A projected savings of $35, spread over the tax holiday isn't going to be very useful, and particularly when acquired a buck or two at a time. The retailers aren't likely to reduce prices very much and the overall ten billion dollar tax revenue will be directed back to the refiners and must of course, reduce the general revenue; a loss that will have to be made up elsewhere. All in all, it looks like a shell game to me and an Exxon Mobil game and a BP game and even a Citgo game.

Clinton is pushing the estimate of a $70 savings to consumers, but Ethan Harris, chief U.S. economist at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., said families would save only about $18 a month. Burman estimated the total savings from Memorial Day to Labor Day at $28. Even if the savings actually materialized "it would be chump change," he said. An extra beer here and there, a couple of packs of cigarettes and there won't be much left for Johnies new backpack.

But to a nation of chumps, conditioned to slobber like Pavlov's dogs at the phrase "tax cut," it may seem like a good deal. We usually do sit up and beg when a candidate offers to put a dollar in our pocket while sending us a bill for five bucks plus interest and fees. We'll take the nickels and dimes while the roads and bridges continue to crumble and our transportation system, already about the worst in the first world, gets worse and the war grinds on and on.

Tax day

It's that time of year again, and unless you're one of the very different, very rich, your thoughts may run to the great disparity in income between our fellow Americans. It's no secret that a Guy like John Paulsen, the Hedge Fund manager will make three and a half billion, or that he has a whole world of tax breaks and loopholes that you don't. That would pay about a hundred thousand High School teachers or perhaps 50,000 Associate Professors. That would pay for a thousand supermodels like Gisele Bündchen.

It's no secret that entertainers like 50 Cent make over 30 million or that Oprah earns something like a quarter billion in a year or that the incomes of the upper, upper crust have been expanding significantly of late -- but it's not that I begrudge any of them who make all that money honestly. The root of my unease and for most of us, is that the earned incomes of the vast majority of Americans has been stagnating for at least a decade when inflation is factored in. My discontent has a bit to do with the fact that because of various loopholes, US corporations are subject to nearly the lowest tax burden of any nation; 61% payed no taxes at all at a time when corporate earnings have been trending up and up. That includes 39% of large corporations and that includes defense contractors like KBR who benefit hugely from no-bid Iraq War contracts and make use of Cayman Island shell corporations to avoid US taxes.

With personal bankruptcy and foreclosures multiplying like bacteria in a rotting apple, the news that the tax burden on individuals is climbing while the burden on corporations is declining is making many Americans reach for the bottle of Tums as they struggle to get those forms into the mail by tomorrow.

Perhaps instead of analyzing every word of Clinton and Obama: spending days and nights fantasizing who is the better bowler or about what he meant by this or she meant by that, we should remember what their opponent and his party means when we're signing that check.