Thanksgiving's Coming - So, Impeach Obama, Right?

The traditional recipe: Stewed FOX [image source]

Summer's Almost Gone

Get ready for the family...

[Jim Morrison's version]

Of course, there is the natural aura of dreadful anticipation surrounding the inevitable spat which will suddenly lurching itself onto the Thanksgiving table. Weird Uncle Billy, still recovering from the night before at the American Legion beer hall, will inevitably latch onto some otherwise innocent, casual remark from someone at the table, interpreting it as a open opportunity to begin another repetition one of his already road weary FOX "news" lectures on the outrage and danger of Obama Care, the IRS or Benghazi.

Relax.

Although Uncle Billy, all juiced up with what he heard on his car radio during the trip to Thanksgiving dinner, has been convinced that his opinions ["everybody knows..."] are either "those of a clear majority" or some sort of evidence of his "long suffering patriotism," he is actually nothing more than a loud mouthed outlier. He's been fed hourly doses of twisted facts for years, and -- sometime around 1994 -- he quietly began believing them.

Well, turn that frown upside down! You are not alone! Here's a little audio comedy which will help lift your spirits. Listening to this will strengthen your resolve to make another try at the suggestion which follows in this post, that is, caringly ushering Uncle Billy back to reality.

Rocky Mountain Mike - Con Star [soundcloud]

The Uncle Bill story may seem like fantasy to some of us, but to others, it represents an relentlessly unpleasant and frustrating recurring nightmare. Further, "Uncle Bill" might be an actual uncle, but his equivalent could also manifest as all sorts of other people we encounter in our daily lives -- someone at the office, a blow hard neighbor or someone in a check out line. MeanMesa, wearing an old Obama-Biden tee shirt from the 2008 election campaign, was accosted by a butcher at the neighborhood farmer's market grocery.

If you're not intimidated by these over zealous mouth breathers, you'll need to get ready for those unavoidable moments when they decide to tell you "how it is." This post will set you up with what you'll need.

Beefing Up Reality's Voice

Let's make the reactionaries defend their talking points

When we face facts, as opposed to stumbling around mindlessly inebriated by "non-news" television, we must acknowledge that perhaps as many as 30 % of US voters continue to consider the right wing's artificial think tank media stream more or less credible. The oligarchs' plan unquestionably incorporated this aspect of "non-symmetric" propaganda promotion in their larger scheme to permanently divide the country's electorate.

One of the most common forms of these irritating attacks may not even focus on any particular topic, but rather be blindly driven by what is called "Obama-phobia." In these cases there is little likelihood that the conversation will get far beyond raw right wing racism with a few of the "easier to recall" wing nut talking points interposed here and there. These, generally, have some tenuous, talking point connection to three areas of government policy.

1. The Federal Deficit

2. Federal Spending and Stimulus

3. Unemployment and Job Creation

These seem to be the primary subjects which the right wingers have heard the most frequently repeated complaints about from their media outlets. The frenetic Benghazi, IRS and Obama Care scandals ignominiously "died on the vine" public opinion-wise before garnering any political traction -- primarily because they were each too complicated for the GOP's educationally challenged base to handle in one of their abnormal, breathless "spontaneous conversations."

What's the point?

Because these deceptive "media lines" have been roaming around our country's "free press" -- unhampered by any contradictory, factual reality -- long enough to foment this current synthetic political meme, MeanMesa is anxious to do what's possible to equip visitors with information they need to set things straight. So, let's get to work.

A Few Convenient "FOX Fact Un-Twisters"

Excerpt Courtesy of Daily KOS

[Read the entire article here.]

MeanMesa ran across the Daily KOS article with these great graphic charts which happen to directly address the three areas of right wing propaganda mentioned above. To start, we need to take a close look at the data they present. This article is excerpted here, but the original is worth reading. Enjoy. [All links from the original article remain enabled.]

Three Charts 

to Email to Your Right-Wing Brother-In-Law -- Update

Friday, August 8, 2014

Dave Johnson

Dave is a Fellow at Campaign for America's Future and a Senior Fellow at Renew California

Problem: Your right-wing brother-in-law is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh lie machine, and keeps sending you emails about "Obama spending" and "Obama deficits" and how the "stimulus" just made things worse.

Solution: Here are three "reality-based" charts to send to him. These charts show what actually happened.

Spending

Government spending increased dramatically under President Bush. It has not increased much under President Obama. This is just a fact.

Deficits

Note that this chart starts with Clinton's last budget year for comparison.

The numbers in these two charts come from Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2015. They are just the amounts that the government spent and borrowed, period, Anyone can go look them up. People who claim that Obama "tripled the deficit" or increased it or anything of the sort are either misled or are trying to mislead. President Obama inherited a budget deficit of $1.4 trillion from President Bush's last budget year and annual budget deficits have gone down dramatically since.

The Stimulus and Jobs

In this chart, the RED lines on the left side – the ones that keep doing DOWN – show what happened to jobs under the policies of Bush and the Republicans. We were losing lots and lots of jobs every month, and it was getting worse and worse. The BLUE lines – the ones that just go UP – show what happened to jobs when the stimulus was in effect. We stopped losing jobs and started gaining jobs, and it was getting better and better.

The leveling off on the right side of the chart shows what happened as the stimulus started to wind down: job creation leveled off at too low a level.

It looks a lot like the stimulus reversed what was going on before the stimulus. We have gone from losing around 850,000 jobs a month to gaining over 200,000 jobs a month.

Conclusion: THE STIMULUS WORKED BUT WAS NOT ENOUGH!

More False Things

These are just three of the false things that everyone "knows" because places like Fox News repeat them over and over and over. Some others are (click through): Obama bailed out the banks, businesses will hire if they get tax cuts, health care reform cost $1 trillion, Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme or is "going broke", tax cuts grow the economy, government spending "takes money out of the economy."

Actually This Reduced Spending And Lower Deficit Have Hurt The Economy

Government spending is literally, by definition, the things that government does to make our lives better. People have been tricked into thinking that government spending is somehow bad. The billionaires and giant corporations spread this nonsense around because they are greedy and just want their taxes lower. The top income tax rate used to be more than 90 percent and the top corporate tax rate used to be more than 50 percent. That was back when we built this country's great infrastructure, had good schools and defended the world against the Soviet Union. We also had higher economic growth and a growing middle class.

Government spending does not "take money out of the economy." In fact it puts money into the economy, creates jobs and lays the foundation for future prosperity. The decline in government spending shown in the charts above is the reason that the economy remains sluggish and jobs are still hard to get. Just look at that chart showing what the stimulus spending did for the job situation. But since the stimulus ended, Republicans have obstructed every effort to continue to use our government to help our economy.

Putting the Plan Into Action

Uncle Billy don' kere whut yew lyin' libruls is sayin'

Now, clearly, rattling off volumes of figures to one of these already gravely confused "propaganda victims" will probably not be all that effective. After all, they are accustomed to "absorbing" think tank talking points which have been "pre-digested" into such a state as to be pablum an infant could swallow without choking. Still, somewhere down in that mindless, hate filled "fellow citizen" there remains a potentially functional human.

This suggests that if we could just hand him something tangible that he might take home to "look at later," there is the possibility that he might consider some of the facts. Try to think of it as leaving an AA pamphlet on the coffee table of a still drunk alcoholic.

Some years ago MeanMesa prepared this "business card sized" graphic concerning the increases to the national debt occurring under various Presidents. It was handy because it could be reproduced on a computer printer, cut up with scissors and handed to these mouthy throwbacks.

At the time it directly contradicted reactionary "fact twisted" accounts of how bad Bill Clinton had been as President.

At first these were prepared individually, but after the idea caught on a little, all sorts of folks wanted a few that they, too, could hand out to argumentative Republicans. To provide these, the individual card image was "ganged" into an 8 1/2" by 11" format for "mass" printing.

Cutting these sheets into individual "business cards" took a few minutes, but the results were fantastic!

To get started you'll need to purchase a ream of card stock. This contains 500 sheets of printer compatible card stock, so you'll have plenty to make a few cards containing all sorts of different "messages." The card stock here at Galactic HeadQuarters is 110 pound, and cost around $8. The 500 sheet ream has lasted for years -- through a couple of Presidential elections and a few other things.

MeanMesa has ganged the charts from Daily KOS in the same manner, converted them into blogger friendly ".jpegs," and posted them here on the blog for your convenience.

You can copy them as you read this post, paste them onto your "drawing" part of your office program and print away. You may need to adjust the size to make sure it is going to print a nice spread on a full sheet of card stock.

So, get out your scissors, stay inside the lines and get to it!

Raising Taxes: Stop Paying CEO Bonuses from the General Fund

Deficit Stop Loss: $1 Bn Annually

Mechanism: Ending Tax Payer CEO Pay

2012 Federal Deficit: $1.1 Tn 

[$1,100 Bn]

Ryan-Murray Deal Deficit Reduction

 $21 Bn

 The Federal Deficit: CEOs' Invisible Drain

Nestled in safely beneath zombies and the Congress, American CEO's enjoy a position somewhere around third place with respect to public disdain.   A common "water cooler" discussion about the "burning question of the day" will almost inevitably lead to the open castigation of this 10% class of the rich and powerful.

Among our fellow travelers in the lower castes, one encounters an understandable sort of grumbling, stoic, envious class petulance, but, setting aside the pitchforks and torches for the moment, these parasitic economic creatures are also officially "fair game" for MeanMesa because they are literally sucking billions of dollars out of the stumbling US economy every year -- and, thanks to the tax code, doing it legally. 

In this series of posts addressing the prospect of  "Raising Taxes" we are looking carefully at some of the "topsy turvy" fiscal anachronisms currently in place -- legislative tax code peccadilloes which should have expired quite ignominiously during the FDR administration.  If we intend to complain about these things -- and we should -- we need to be armed with specifics.

We might find it easy enough to simply burp, belch and scratch while taking "pot shots" at these "free enterprise" interlopers, but be advised, they bite back. We find what amounts to an encyclopedic compendium of faux ideological "narcotic and soothing" misdirection, misrepresentation and out right lies like a storm cloud obscuring the insults being inflicted by this bunch.

Corporate "Protective Talking Points"

In fact, in the context of discussing economic rebuilding, the carefully constructed, almost sacred legitimacy of this same group is energetically protected by relentlessly repeated, perpetually specious "talking points."

After all, they also own the media.

To put it another way, this bunch owns the portfolios which contain the stock shares of the holding companies which own the media.  They also tend to be comfortably seated by almost inter-generational, monastic "divine right" on the boards of directors of all those ethereal, vampire-like, corporate structures.  All this nonsense includes a direct line to the network "mouth junk" experts we listen to while we watch the corporate media "news" each evening.

We're not talking exclusively about FOX and News Corp here, either.  The "alphabet networks" are in almost identical cess pools as the bone pit where we find Murdoch's grotesquely over grown hate factory.

For this post we will take a hard look at this abnormal class, their ambitions, the mechanisms of their extractive schemes, their destructive impact on the economy in large and possible solutions to their continuing, suffocating economic death grip. We must focus on money flowing from the federal general fund to this particular class of oligarchs.  This is precisely the data we need if we are interested in limiting their impact on our federal deficit.

 Stemming the Tide

At this point, MeanMesa will very confidently turn this post over to two fascinating articles from the Institute for Policy Studies and the Huffington Post.

To start, let's have a look at this YouTube video [2:19 minutes].

IPS:Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out, Booted, and Busted

Excerpts from the Huffington Post article spells out the extraction mechanism pretty clearly. [Read the entire Huffington Post article here.]

 Huffington Post

Taxpayer Dollars Paid A Third Of Richest Corporate CEOs: Report

WASHINGTON -- More than one-third of the nation's highest-paid CEOs from the past two decades led companies that were subsidized by American taxpayers, according to a report released Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank.

"Financial bailouts offer just one example of how a significant number of America's CEO pay leaders owe much of their good fortune to America's taxpayers," reads the report. "Government contracts offer another."

IPS has been publishing annual reports on executive compensation since 1993, tracking the 25 highest-paid CEOs each year and analyzing trends in payouts. Of the 500 total company listings, 103 were banks that received government bailouts under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, while another 62 were among the nation's most prolific government contractors. 

Many of the companies appeared multiple times on the annual top 25 list, with Bank of America appearing 18 times, Citigroup appearing 15 times, while Morgan Stanley and American Express each secured 12 slots. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has landed on the list twice since the bank received $10 billion under TARP, and American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault has appeared three times since his company accepted $3.4 billion in bailout money. Goldman Sachs received $10 billion under TARP, and made the list seven times in the past two decades, once after receiving its bailout. Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers, both of which failed in 2008, also appeared on the list, with Leman making eight appearances before filing for bankruptcy.

Banks piled on financial risk in the years leading up to the banking crash, fueling record profits from their investments. Those high profits translated into strong "performance-based" bonuses and stock compensation. But when the risk backfired in 2008, companies either collapsed or were rescued by taxpayers.

Citigroup, Goldman, American Express and JPMorgan declined to comment for this article. Morgan Stanley emphasized that the company has not appeared on the list of the 25 highest-paid CEOs since receiving TARP money. Wells Fargo told HuffPost that its CEO pay packages were necessary to retain top talent; the bank received $25 billion from TARP.

The "protective talking points" mentioned above become clear when we examine the corporate justification of these atmospheric CEO compensations in the light of the failure of the corporations they were managing and the amount of tax money these businesses were consuming.

"We take a disciplined approach for determining compensation based on four principles: pay for performance, promote a culture of risk management that avoids unnecessary or excessive risk taking, attract and retain highly qualified executives with competitive pay, and align executives' interests with those of stockholders," Wells Fargo spokesman Michael McCoy said. 

"Sky-high CEO pay purportedly reflects the superior value that elite chief executives add to their enterprises and the broader U.S. economy," IPS wrote. "But our analysis reveals widespread poor performance within America's elite CEO circles. Chief executives performing poorly -- and blatantly so -- have consistently populated the ranks of our nation's top-paid CEOs over the last two decades."

  Institute for Policy Studies

Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out, Booted, and Busted

By Sarah Anderson, Scott Klinger, Sam Pizzigati

Nearly 40 percent of the CEOs on the highest-paid lists from the past 20 years were eventually "bailed out, booted, or busted."

This 20^th anniversary Executive Excess report examines the "performance" of the 241 corporate chief executives who have ranked among America’s 25 highest-paid CEOs in one or more of the past 20 years.

The lavishly compensated CEOs we spotlight here should be exemplars of value-added performance. After all, sky-high CEO pay purportedly reflects the superior value that elite chief executives add to their enterprises and the broader U.S. economy.

But our analysis reveals widespread poor performance within America’s elite CEO circles. Chief executives performing poorly — and blatantly so — have consistently populated the ranks of our nation’s top-paid CEOs over the last two decades.

The report’s key finding: nearly 40 percent of the CEOs on these highest-paid lists were eventually "bailed out, booted, or busted."

• The Bailed Out: CEOs whose firms either ceased to exist or received taxpayer bailouts after the 2008 financial crash held 22 percent of the slots in our sample. Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers enjoyed one of Corporate America’s largest 25 paychecks for eight consecutive years — until his firm went belly up in 2008.

• The Booted: Not counting those on the bailed out list, another 8 percent of our sample was made up of CEOs who wound up losing their jobs involuntarily. Despite their poor performance, the “booted” CEOs jumped out the escape hatch with golden parachutes valued at $48 million on average.  

•  The Busted: CEOs who led corporations that ended up paying significant fraud-related fines or settlements comprised an additional 8 percent of the sample. One CEO had to pay a penalty out of his own pocket for stock option back-dating. The other companies shelled out payments that totaled over $100 million per firm.

Over the past 20 years, we have seen no shortage of creative and practical proposals for reining in excessive executive compensation. Three pending reforms strike us as particularly urgent:  

1. CEO-worker pay ratio disclosure: Three years after President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank legislation, the SEC has still not implemented this commonsense transparency measure. The reform would discourage both large pay disparities that can harm employee morale and productivity and excessive executive pay levels that can encourage excessively risky behavior.
2. Pay restrictions on executives of large financial institutions: Within nine months of the enactment of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, regulators were supposed to have issued guidelines that prohibit large financial institutions from granting incentive-based compensation that “encourages inappropriate risks.” Regulators are still dragging their feet on this modest reform.
3. Limiting the deductibility of executive compensation: At a time when Congress is debating sharp cuts to essential public services, corporations are able to avoid paying their fair share of taxes by deducting unlimited amounts from their IRS bill for the cost of executive compensation. Two bills, the Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act (S.1746) and the Income Equity Act (H.R. 199) would fix this outrageous loophole and significantly reduce taxpayer subsidies for excessive CEO pay.

 

From IPS Report: Executive Excess 2013

 [You can download the "pdf" and read the entire IPS Report here.]

Calculating the Deficit Reduction

Returning to the Institute of Policy Studies, we can add a little to the Senate bill, S. 1746, which would put a cap on the amount of CEO pay considered "deductible" on corporate tax returns.  Take a look at the following excerpt. [Read the entire article here.]

Institute of Policy Studies

Senate Bill Would Reduce Taxpayer Subsidies for CEO Pay

August 2, 2013

 

A bill introduced late yesterday by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) would close a loophole that currently serves as a taxpayer subsidy for excessive CEO pay. The Institute for Policy Studies has been calling for a fix to this outrageous glitch in the tax code for two decades.

Under current rules, corporations can deduct unlimited amounts off their income taxes for the expense of executive stock options and other so-called “performance-based” pay.

“The more corporations pay their CEOs, the less they pay in taxes,” notes Sarah Anderson, a co-author of 19 annual IPS executive compensation reports. “This loophole creates a perverse incentive to pay executives excessive amounts, while ordinary taxpayers wind up paying the bill.”

The just-introduced bill, the “Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act (S.1746),” would cap the tax deductibility of executive pay at $1 million, with no exceptions for “performance-based” or commission-based pay. The cap would extend to all employees of all companies that are required to file periodic reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In May 2013, IPS published a report that was the first to put a price tag on the tax breaks specific corporations have enjoyed from this loophole. The report found that the 90 publicly held corporate members of the ‘Fix the Debt’ lobby group raked in at least $953 million — and as much as $1.6 billion — from the “performance pay” loophole between 2009-2011.

UnitedHealth Group enjoyed the biggest taxpayer subsidy for its CEO pay largesse during this period. The nation’s largest HMO paid CEO Stephen Hemsley $199 million in total compensation, of which at least $194 million was fully deductible “performance pay.” That works out to a $68 million taxpayer subsidy – just for one individual CEO’s pay. In 2012, Hemsley pocketed another $28 million in “performance pay,” which computes into a tax break for UnitedHealth of nearly $10 million.

“At a time when Congress is considering major cuts to basic services for ordinary people, it’s unacceptable to continue to allow highly paid CEOs to benefit from this loophole,” says IPS Associate Fellow Scott Klinger.

FORTHCOMING CEO PAY REPORT: On August 28, IPS will release the 20th anniversary edition of “Executive Excess.”The report looks at the top 25 highest-paid CEOs for each of the past 20 years. It calculates how many of these “successful” top executives wound up getting fired, led firms that received financial bailouts, or had to pay massive fines or settlements for fraud.

Consequently, MeanMesa arrives at the roughly $1 Bn annual savings -- money which is currently flowing out of the federal budget as deficit into the pockets of these "ultra valuable" corporate CEOs.

One might consider a sum of no more than $1 Bn to be of little help in reducing the annual deficit, but this particular $1 Bn is fueling a respectable part of the corporate incentive toward the massive bribery and corruption of the Congress.  While the precise amount may be small, the mischief caused by its constant temptation leads to the very legislation which serves the oligarchs so well.

While looting a country, efficiency is immediately replaced by lethal, pragmatic impulse.  It doesn't really matter much if a scheme will cost the country or the government $100's of Bn if it allows you to pocket just $1 Bn completely your own from the damages.

MeanMesa Cuts the Budget

If one could imagine a group of risk averse, codependent doctors circling mindlessly around a dying patient who needed surgery, the picture might begin to resemble the "budget slashing" charade unfolding in Washington.

"I don't want to use up our favorite bandages!"

"I think it's disgusting when all that blood comes out!"

"We shouldn't start until there's someone here to blame if we screw up!"

"We could just give him a haircut.  His insurance will still pay when he dies."

You get the idea.  There are so-o-o many "sacred cows" grazing in the Congress.  Worse, the cow path through the vale where "sacred cows" become "oxen gored," hasn't seen a bovine traveler for years.  The supply side clan continues to rage forward in some kind of hypnotic spell, transfixed with the idea that the whole problem is simply not further lubricating the production of goods which no one has the money to buy.

The handiest of all "talking points" predictably include the phrase "costing jobs."  The least handy of all talking points meticulously avoid the phrase of "increasing consumer incomes."  The worst nightmare of the hypnotists is something which might drift into the question: "After we spent all this money, why is our country still falling apart?"

(image source)

 A "dark humor" cartoon from Think Progress

Well, although the patriots in the House have bravely set their targets on the poor, the sick and the elderly, MeanMesa thinks there actually are  both some political plans and some budget cuts which might make sense.  Let's take a look -- by the numbers -- at a few possibilities.  Many of these ideas have been posted before on this blog.

1.  Social Security

Although Social Security is entirely self-financed and does not manifest itself as an element of the deficit (unless you are a "fact free," wing nut pundit on the radio...), projections of future shortfalls are always added in hopes of further aggravating the deficit's fear factor.  The ultimate aim, of course, is to hand the Social Security Trust Fund over to Wall Street.

Solution:  Raise the cap on Social Security deductions to a level high enough to handle the load.  Social Security Administrators have already -- long ago -- doubled the contribution rates to accommodate the Baby Boomer influx of old people.

2. Medicare

Medicare is a huge problem, but not an unsolvable one.  As an unfunded Republican designed program, what we see before us is little more than an unwanted child.  Even though we see successful health care systems all around us, the wing nuts have invested heavily (for example, $1,250,000 per week since the health care "debate" began two years ago...) to guarantee that absolutely no one can figure out how to do this.

Solution:  Develop a credible revenue source, then design a program which can actually be paid for with the money available.  Naturally, everyone will hate the "final solution," but, at that point, it will at last become a political matter instead of simply a "feeding plan" for insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers.  Further, draw a limit on the medical procedures which will be funded which is consistent with the amount of money we have chosen to spend.

After a few starving old people are seen dying on the side walks, Americans may find the inner strength to demand that we can, finally, buy what we want.

3. Foreclosures, Exemptions and Mortgage Loan Guarantees

There is probably no future in trying to pump money into failed mortgages.  Over priced houses purchased by unqualified buyers producing bogus security mortgage packages sold to under informed investors is a scenario which enters the realm of the "grateful dead."  Both the Americans and the investors need to finally realize that these were bad investments, and that this process was going to cost lots as the full reality of the mess "comes home to roost," even if "home" is Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, however, a new law which requires the holder of any property's mortgage to pay the corresponding property taxes would both decelerate the  ravaging appetite to foreclose everything while limiting the damage to the communities where the malfeasance occurred.  The law?  Simple.  If you hold any portion of a mortgage, you pay the property tax for that part of the property.

Solution:  The Federal Government gets completely out of the mortgage encouragement business.  The tax exemptions on mortgage interest payments ceases.  Fannie and Freddie are privatized for a future existence without loan guarantees financed by tax money.

America is already moving solidly toward becoming  an "apartment dwelling" society.  So be it.

4. Wall Street Speculation and High Speed Trading

Unregulated stock, bond and commodity trading has shown how lethal the practice can be in the last decade.  Still worshipping at the altar of "market self-correction," the U.S. economy has become frighteningly similar to an uncontrollably accelerating Toyota.  Even though the most savage, avarice soaked "capitalists" in the system will scream bloody murder at any effort to rein in the unavoidable damage they are causing, clamping down in this chaos will, in the end, move very positively to sustain the value of the dollars they are extracting in their frenzy.

Solution: Institute a sweeping structure of temporary windfall profits taxes.  Start small, then increase the take annually up to a predetermined level, then begin to gradually sunset them, all based on market and revenue levels, not corrupt politics.  Just like the Peoples Republic, an imposed economic plan.  Corporate oligarchs not wishing to pay the windfall profits taxes will have to reinvest in their companies.  If the idea can survive the Congressional "pirate clan," the re-investment side can be, domestically, heavily protectionist or even tariff driven.

As to Wall Street, a per unit issue stock trading tax can be imposed.  Every stock or bond sold and bought will pay the general fund tax base a fixed percentage of its price.  The rate can start low, incrementing upward annually along a pre-determined schedule.  This will incentivize investment for growth rather than for speculation.

5. Agricultural Subsidies

The existing "patchwork" structure contains almost no plan whatsoever for the support of comprehensive agricultural goals for the good of the country.  If one were to analyze what's currently in place, the conclusion would be that it has been designed to blindly funnel tax money to the "owners" of the lobbyists who promoted each little piece of it.  This is huge federal tax money, and the return on the investment has been a decades long chaotic feeding frenzy.

Solution:  Dump the entirety of existing legislation and start over with a rational, national goal as a guide.  MeanMesa would like to see the annual $250,000 subsidy check to Michelle Bauchman's "farming family" go away on the first day of the debates.  The corporate benefactors of agricultural subsidies have justified their good fortune as a necessary component to manipulating the food market.

This solution continues in the next item.

6.  National Health Food Policy and Tax

The current strategy is that bad food -- sodas, fast food burgers, corn syrup, etc. -- should be subsidized so long as the respective markets for the products are strong and their lobbyists are well paid.  This crazy policy dives directly into the incredibly expensive national obesity, cancer and diabetes problems, much of which are paid for by federal tax dollars.

Solution:  Neither farming, manufacturing, marketing or other support subsidies for any of these products should come from tax dollars.  How can we tell which ones are on the list?  Any food product which costs health care dollars qualifies.

The Military Budget

For this group of budget items, we'll just go directly to solutions.  MeanMesa visitors are already quite familiar with the problems.

7.  Limiting Costly Military Adventures

Institute a new policy of only "declared war."  The country will start saving right away if the decision to spend "war making" money has to face the political liability of requiring a "Declaration of War" before it can begin.  Of the $14 Tn national debt, roughly $4 Tn has been spent in Afghanistan and Iraq.

8.  Eliminating Military Contractors

Although these contractors might possibly make sense with respect to cost effectiveness in combat theaters, the inherent weakness deriving from their manipulation of Congress and the DoD totally outweighs their possible advantages.

9.  Eliminating Useless Weapons Systems

The U.S. military is already a gigantic junk pile full of Cold War systems.  Our latest "adversaries" figured this out quite quickly, designing a military response which could credibly bankrupt our country while costing very little.  We are not talking "a few little tweeks" here.  

The current defense budget is around half a trillion dollars per year.  It needs to be at least a third less than that.  The Pentagon procurement practices, along with the greedy Senators with bomb factories in their states, need to be crushed, exposed, disassembled and totally reorganized.  This is not only a budget issue, we are rapidly arriving at a point where our fundamental military profile is so cost ineffective that we couldn't fight a legitimate war if we had to.

Politics

Two political investments can lower the budget deficit by tremendous amounts.

10.  An Open Review of All Tax Subsidies

Dozens of American corporations are wallowing in massive tax subsidies.  These are not subsidies which take the form of actual checks from the government, but rather tax subsidies which eliminate federal revenue by providing exemptions for all sorts of corporate costs which would, otherwise, be taxable.  For example, the poor starving Exxon/Mobile Corporation receives an average of $16 Bn per year to help make ends meet.

This is a gigantic pile of tax money being redistributed from tax payers to stock holders.

Solution:  Even before we begin salivating over tax reform, start a House Committee which will review every tax subsidy on the books.  Further, the conclusions must be public.  Very public.  A rather long list can be prepared of all the revenues the government is failing to collect, and each case will either make sense to tax payers or not.  MeanMesa thinks this would be a great job for the House Republicans if they can find time in between passing bills against Sharia Law in Oklahoma, etc.

11.  Merchandise the Budget

Much of the corruption and other mischief which habitually drives our national budget into the mud survives simply because the American public has been carefully convinced that understanding the thing is beyond our human capacities.  MeanMesa finds this laughable.

Solution: It is high time for the U.S. budget to be honestly condensed, edited and packaged into a form which can sit on the kitchen table of every American family interested in knowing where the money is going.  When House spending comes up, we should all have a chance to understand what is being done.  The Federal version of the budget is eight thousand pages long, and not by innocent oversight, either.  The wing nut version is five sentences of incendiary half-truth, and not by innocent oversight, either.

American citizens and tax payers are supposed to make sense out of this mess so they will be an "informed electorate" when voting time comes around.  Right.  As citizens and tax payers, we are fully justified in demanding significantly better performance.  MeanMesa thinks this would also be a good job for the "deficit hawks" in the House.

As we go to work on our national debt, both progress and failures must be  made very public.  Why would anyone think that we should simply "fly blind" into a multi-trillion dollar project without demanding some very serious, very comprehensible  "progress reporting?" At least enough "progress reporting" to vote a little better -- a lot better -- than we have been doing lately.

For visitors who have threaded through this lumbering post, please accept MeanMesa's gratitude.  If any of these ideas have resonated as solid common sense, add a few more of your own!  Then what?  

Make a clever sign communicating your plan and walk down Central a couple of afternoons when the weather is nice!  Start a blog and show horn your friends into reading it!   Talk to your neighbors about these things!  Read a high school civics textbook!

Most important, start pumping this stuff into your Congressman's office!  Add a few troubling little innuendos about how you plan to vote in the next election!

Enough said.

Part 1: Why Bingaman (D-NM) Votes "No"

News From Washington to New Mexico

The following email  was sent to MeanMesa's Galactic Headquarters from New Mexico Senator, Jeff Bingaman.  It is presented here in its entirety for MeanMesa visitors who may not be on the Senator's mailing list.  On this tax issue, MeanMesa lands -- somewhat precariously -- on the side so eloquently explained by one of our favorite radio friends, Randi Rhodes (The Randi Rhodes Show, AM1350 KABQ, Albuquerque, 1-4 PM weekdays).

Take a few minutes to read what the Senator thinks and the decision he has made.

Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) (image source)

 Newsletter Update from U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman - December 15, 2010

Today, I voted against an $857 billion tax package that I believe will unnecessarily add to our nation’s growing deficit. It does so by extending deep tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

My preference is to extend tax cuts to all Americans on the first $200,000 of income earned by a single wage earner, and $250,000 per couple. But in the spirit of compromise, I voted for a proposal that would have extended tax cuts on the first $1 million. I was disappointed when those proposals failed when they were put to a vote earlier this month.

In my view, borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars and adding to an already out of control deficit in order to pay for tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans is both unaffordable and irresponsible.

Below is a speech I delivered to the Senate outlining my concerns with this tax cut plan. If you prefer, you can watch the speech on my YouTube page.

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"Yesterday the Senate voted on proceeding to an $857 billion package that would: extend all personal income tax rates for two years; substantially reduce the estate tax; and establish or extend a host of tax incentives for American families and businesses. This package should be evaluated on how it deals with our two biggest economic problems: strengthening recovery from the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and setting us on a long-term course to achieve fiscal stability.

On the first issue, economic recovery, there is much in this package that I strongly support. We should protect 98% of American households from any tax increase. We should extend benefits to our fellow Americans unable to find jobs in this period of stubbornly high unemployment. And we should continue key business incentives like the Section 1603 program, which has provided a critical lifeline to our renewable energy industries. If the only economic imperative were recovery from the downturn, I would have voted for this package.

But as I said at the outset, this is not our only economic imperative. Our dire fiscal condition requires us to adopt a strategy that will dramatically reduce deficits in the coming years. And frankly, I'm disappointed by the plan's shortsightedness on this dimension. And therefore, I opposed the cloture motion.

If we are serious about addressing the deficit, we must admit that we cannot afford this package.

In 2001, I came to the floor to explain my opposition to enacting the so-called "Bush tax cuts." At the time, CBO was actually projecting budget surpluses. But as I explained then, I viewed the 2001 tax cuts as carrying a higher price tag than we could afford. The 2001 cuts, which were accelerated in 2003, reduced the stream of revenue to the federal government by an amount that virtually guaranteed the elimination of our anticipated budget surplus, and ensured that substantial deficits would once again become the norm in our federal budget.

The results – a federal debt that today nears $14 trillion – could have been avoided under the Bush tax structure only if there had been major cuts in spending at the same time. But as we all know, no such cuts in spending were proposed by the President or adopted by the Congress. In fact, in the years following the Bush tax cuts, spending increased greatly. The Bush tax cuts were larger than we could afford when they were adopted. Including interest costs, those tax cuts account for nearly 55% of the deficit projected for the end of the next decade. And once again, we cannot afford to extend them.

The nation's debt now stands at 62% of GDP. CBO says that if we continue on our current course, the debt will reach 90% by 2020, and 185% of GDP by 2035. This concern is not merely academic. Our growing deficit has stark consequences for our government's ability to meet essential priorities. At current levels, government revenue in 2025 will be enough only to cover interest on debt, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And the threat to American prosperity is severe: By 2035, rising debt could reduce per-capita GDP by as much as 15%.

In recent weeks, we've had several expert commissions tell us that we need to get the debt under control – and they have offered thoughtful, practical proposals to do so. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform released a six-part plan that would achieve nearly $4 trillion in deficit reductions through 2020. Five of the six Senators on that Commission supported the plan. Two weeks earlier, a bipartisan commission headed by former CBO Director Alice Rivlin and my former colleague Pete Domenici issued their own report. Both bipartisan groups concluded that to be credible, any deficit reduction plan must impose limits on spending and increase revenue. For much of this Congress, the excuse for deferring serious action on deficits and debt has been "Let's wait and see what these commissions decide." Well, now these commissions have finished their tasks of issuing proposals. This bill is our first chance to begin considering their recommendations, and I see no evidence that we have done so.

I understand that we cannot tackle both tasks – stimulating the economy and reducing the deficit – with equal force at the same time. The decision, which I have supported, has been to focus first on stimulating the economy. But that focus does not excuse us from also taking the relatively easy first steps to reduce future deficits. I agree with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, whose leaders argue that "the critical objective is to pair any stimulus for the short-term with a credible plan to reduce the debt in the medium- and long-term. We should be talking about what triggers to attach, how to pay for this new package over the decade, and what spending cuts and tax reforms to make." It is unfortunate that no such conversation has taken place.

And because the cost of this package is not offset, it has been larded up with wasteful provisions that will do little for the economy. Most problematic is the $129 billion this package would spend to extend tax cuts that benefit only the very highest-income American households and reduce the estate tax below 2009 rates. Proponents of this bill say because the economy is weak, now is not the time to allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest households to expire. But a CBO report issued earlier this year tears down this argument. Examining 11 options to stimulate growth and job creation, CBO ranked extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts dead last. CBO further found that extending the tax cuts for high-income households in particular would rate lower in effectiveness than extending all of the tax cuts because, and I quote, "higher-income households … would probably save a larger fraction of their increase in after-tax income." We know that a recovering economy needs more spending. If government spending is to facilitate the transition to recovery, then we should put money into hands of those who will spend it. But the wealthiest among us are likely to save most of any additional income they receive. This is not effective stimulus.

There is one comparison that puts this sharply into perspective. Last month, the President announced that because of concerns about the deficit he will freeze all civilian federal salaries, at a savings of about $2.5 billion per year. I stated at the time that I supported his decisions. But we erase those savings nearly three times over with this package's reduction in the estate tax from the 2009 parameters. Is it not enough to reinstate the 2009 parameters, which exempt $7 million in assets per couple and tax amounts above that at 45%? Under this package, the exemption is dialed up to $10 million per couple and the rate reduced to 35%. So instead of reaching only 1 out of 400 Americans, this plan will subject only 1 out of 1000 estates to any tax whatsoever. So while a GS3 clerk at a USDA office in Albuquerque will have her salary frozen in the name of fiscal responsibility, the heirs of a $50 million estate save $5.35 million. This unwarranted generosity costs our Treasury an added $7 billion a year. Americans are right to question how we can possibly be serious about reducing the deficit when we are ready to give wealthy heirs a windfall, with no benefit whatsoever to the economic recovery. Do we really believe the question of "What's another $7 billion" is merely a rhetorical one?

Those who rate our debt do not view this rhetorically. In fact, after yesterday's vote, Moody's announced that the plan before us could endanger our vaunted Triple-A credit rating.

I am also troubled that this package makes the tax code permanently temporary – and falsely assumes that we will be able to achieve a different outcome in two years' time.

The cover of today's (12/14/2010) Wall Street Journal points this out, in a story "'Temporary' Tax Code Puts Nation in a Lasting Bind." The piece opens: "Welcome to the world of the temporary tax code."

A main argument being used in support of this temporary extension is that it is the only proposal we can get the Republicans to agree to. But I am concerned that this framework will make it more difficult to muster the political courage to reduce the deficit when these tax provisions again expire in two years.

The reason? Democrats are trying to ensure that all but the wealthiest 2% of taxpayers do not see their taxes go up on January 1. But we are told that Republicans are willing to accept tax increases on middle class Americans in order to protect the very highest income Americans. And so, the logic goes, while we don't agree with Republican demands, their willingness to punish 98% of Americans to get their way gives us no choice but to accept this quote "deal."

Frankly, that argument assumes a less generous view of our Republican colleagues than I am willing to embrace. I agree with President Obama that neither Democrats nor Republicans want to see taxes increase on January 1 on the overwhelming majority of Americans. To avoid that result, I believe Republicans would be willing to support a more responsible tax proposal along the lines of the tax proposals put forward by Senators Baucus and Schumer that I voted for last week. Those proposals would have shielded all families from any tax increase on their first $250,000 or $1 million in income. The fact that not a single Republican supported either proposal results from their expectation – apparently accurate – that if they remained intransigent, Democrats would give in to their demands. But those demands, reflected in the bill now before us, do not acknowledge the serious problem of the deficits. Retaining Bush tax rates on income over $1 million, reducing the estate tax to the level it was in 1931, and continuing the full ethanol subsidy of 45 cents per gallon are examples of provisions that do little to stimulate the economy but abdicate our responsibility to address our dangerous deficit. Some say that in two years, when the economy has recovered, we will be able to stop another extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest income Americans. I question the wisdom in that argument. Having achieved all of these wishes now will only embolden the Republican minority to adopt a similar hard line stand on extending the Bush tax cuts when the issue arises again in two years.

Failing to extend provisions with proven effectiveness merely because they were originated with the Recovery Act is terribly misguided.

Finally, I wish to note my deep disappointment with political posturing that has led to the cancellation of nearly every innovation under the Recovery Act. Even though it is the largest revenue measure to be considered in the 110th Congress, this package was negotiated behind closed doors. And I am informed that the Republican leaders demanded that no provision enacted under the Recovery Act be extended. Now I can understand that certain Recovery Act provisions might not warrant extension. But this opposition is purely political, driven by a desire to deny merit to the Recovery Act, which added 2.7% to third-quarter GDP growth and raised employment by 2.7 million to 3.7 million jobs. And so the package chokes off the Build America Bonds program, which has provided crucial support for municipal governments during a period of sustained challenges in raising funds to meet infrastructure needs. The package also ends a provision that Senators Crapo, Grassley, and I fought to include in ARRA, which raises the bank qualified limit, last adjusted in 1986, for small municipalities that sell debt to community banks – and which has significantly reduced rural governments' borrowing costs while creating jobs and needed infrastructure improvements for thousands of communities.

And because of the other side's reflexive anti-Recovery Act position, this bill relies intentionally upon outmoded, ineffective incentives for clean energy deployment. We fail to extend the advanced energy project or 48C credit, which allows qualifying companies to claim a credit for 30% of the cost of creating, expanding, or re-equipping facilities to manufacture clean energy technologies. The credit's vast oversubscription is a powerful demonstration of the potential for clean energy manufacturing in our country. But it, too, is allowed to die – which is all the more appalling given that the ethanol blenders' credit is extended again at 45 cents, even though the House negotiators and industry reached a consensus on reducing the credit by 20%. Had we done the same, we could have used the savings to implement a suite of energy incentives that would dramatically improve energy efficiency, reduce emissions, and enhance domestic manufacturing competitiveness. And I have filed an amendment with Senator Snowe to do just that. Unfortunately, this bill is closed to amendments.

In spite of its positive provisions to strengthen the economic recovery, the bill moves us in the wrong direction with regard to our other major problem of budget deficits. On that issue, it will start the 112th Congress off on the wrong track. For those reasons, I oppose going forward with this bill."