Obama Planning Crafty Copycat Gambit?

From Taxes: What people forget about Reagan

Two bills passed in 1982 and 1984 together "constituted the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime," Thorndike said.

The bills didn't raise more revenue by hiking individual income tax rates though. Instead they did it largely through making it tougher to evade taxes, and through "base broadening" -- that is, reducing various federal tax breaks and closing tax loopholes.

"What people forget about Ronald Reagan was that he very much converted to base broadening as a means of reducing deficits and as a means of tax reform," said Eugene Steuerle, an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute who had helped lay the groundwork for tax reform in 1986 and served as a deputy assistant Treasury secretary during Reagan's second term.

Got it? Reagan decreased tax rates, and then he dealt with revenue shortfalls with tweaks that weren't tax hikes per se, but led to more tax dollars being collected. Here's Obama in his SOTU:

Over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change.

So tonight, I’m asking Democrats and Republicans to simplify the system. Get rid of the loopholes. Level the playing field. And use the savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years – without adding to our deficit.

Someone has been looking over the Gipper's  playbooks, I'm good wit' it.

Growth the Magic Dragon

I was quite taken by the apparently guileless conclusion to a recent pro-growth editorial by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser in the Boston Globe.

So when you wonder why more people aren’t moving to Massachusetts, don’t blame the weather. That explanation lets us off the hook too easily. Instead, think about how difficult it would be to add a couple hundred homes in your town and recognize that the Bay State stagnates by design. While our anti-change rules may keep our communities looking the way we like them, they also mean that we do a worse job of providing affordable housing than deep red states, such as Texas. This country is being shaped by local land-use rules, and around here, those regulations have now resulted in Massachusetts losing a seat in the House of Representatives.

Is this really how we want to live?

Glaeser is in favor of substantially reducing regulations so that Massachusetts can add a lot more housing and new residents. Heh. I don't recall any of my fellow Massholes wondering why more people weren't moving to Massachusetts. Or pining for them. Should we really be troubled that Texas does a better job with "affordable" housing when Texas's population density is a full order of magnitude lower? Massachusetts has a population density of 810 people per square mile. Texas? 80.

 Ought we really to suppose that Texas would be just as delighted by growth if its population were 10 times as great? I doubt it.

Predictably, a Harvard economist thinks that growth is the magic dragon. The tail that should wag the dog. Well, none of us regular folks needs to be anti-growth to worry a bit about our quality of life here in the overcrowded northeast corridor. Maybe Glaeser can walk to work, or telecommute. Maybe he doesn't have to drive on the expressway or catch a rush hour subway car.

 Massachusetts has one big city, Boston. And we're piled up ass to elbow anywhere within an hour's drive of it. So, is this really how we want to live? I'm not sure. But do we want lots more folks living here? No. Not really. To quote Jack Nicholson, "don't come selling crazy round here. We're all full up."

Acknowledging Muslim Intolerance

Cathy Young, cogent and reasonable yet again. This time on the subject of  islamic intolerance.

While the attempted murder of an American Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, has prompted an outpouring of grief and soul-searching, the fatal shooting of a prominent elected official in another country around the same time has provoked a very different reaction. After Salman Taseer, governor of the Pakistani province of Punjab, was murdered by his own bodyguard, there was a wave of support for the murderer -- from religious figures and ordinary citizens, from several political parties, and even from a group of lawyers. The reason? Taseer had spoken out against Pakistan's blasphemy laws and in support of Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Such harrowing stories cannot be ignored in the discussion of Islam and religious tolerance. Last year, the controversy over Cordoba House, the planned Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero, turned into a debate about Islam and "Islamophobia." There is no question that some of the rhetoric in that debate crossed the line into anti-Muslim bigotry -- the portrayal of all or most Muslims as "the enemy" -- and that the self-proclaimed "anti-jihadists" who spearheaded anti-mosque campaign, such as bloggers Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs and Robert Spencer of JihadWatch, routinely traffic in gross caricatures of Islam as inherently and uniquely evil, oppressive, and violent. But all too many in the pro-mosque camp argued as if violent extremism in Islam today was as much of a fringe phenomenon as in Christianity or Judaism. This month's events in Pakistan remind us that is simply not the case.

There is not a single majority Christian nation today that executes or imprisons people for blasphemy or apostasy. Several leading majority-Muslim countries punish these offenses with death, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. The Aasia Bibi case is a frightening example of the precarious position of religious minorities under these laws. Bibi, a rural laborer, was asked to bring water to a group of other women with whom she was working in the fields. Some of the women refused to drink the water after it had been touched by an "unclean" Christian. Bibi got into an argument with them and defended her faith -- and was reported for blaspheming against Mohammed. The mother of five was sentenced to death after a trial during which she apparently had no access to a lawyer. Leading Pakistani clerics have urged President Zardari to reject her clemency petition.

Don't neglect to  read the whole thing. Only by reading it all do you get to her final takeaway, which is that opposing bigotry against muslims here will be a fruitless task until Islam faces its own intolerance.

Who Is the Correct Not Obama?

As the 2012 field of GOP prez nominees begins emerging, there is still plenty of reason to think that  any such nominee stands a great chance of winning simply by virtue of being the Not Obama. But obviously, that could change with a better economy and 2 years worth of Obama playing the pragmatist against cranky ideologues.

 The greater the number of potential nominees at the Iowa starting gate, the more it makes sense to consider the "game theory" dimensions of the primary process as it intersects with media coverage and financing. Unless any given candidate can develop truly long-term staying power (translation: a giant pile of dough or a steadily flowing money hose), that candidate is at the mercy of appearing viable as one of the top 3 within the first, what, 5 or 6 primaries.That can be sensitively dependent upon the number of other candidates who hold similar positions.

For example, if socons split between 2 or 3 socon darlings, then someone else from a different GOP faction with less internal competition can emerge. In 2008,  McCain, seemed to emerge because his support was broader than anyone else even though it wasn't especially broad.  Just as a big a problem was that it lacked any real depth of passion.

Ultimately, whoever becomes the nominee really stands a great chance of winning by being the Not Obama. But being the Not Obama means different things for socons and for independents. And being the Socon Not Obama means risking alienation of independents. Is that risk bigger than the risk that the Independent Not Obama alienates socons? I would guess yes, but then I'm an independent. Who really knows?

One thing to look out for is candidates who will try to thread the needle by using different customized speeches for different audiences. Though many politicians seem to persist in this approach, the advent of various social media suggests it's problematic. In 2012, can a reasonable-appearing candidate successfully obscure substantial socially conservative views simply by endlessly chanting "jobs, jobs, jobs?" Sooner or later, you're expected to speak at Bob Jones U. They want their pound of red meat, everyone's watching.

Healthcare Reform: The Beta

I visited an old publishing buddy the other day, and he related a story about how a boss had said "You DO NOT want to miss the dates on this project. We can find places to hide low quality." I immediately remarked that publishing seemed to be getting further down the road towards the software industry production model. You rush a buggy product to market to be first to meet a need, and you let customers find and maybe even fix the bugs. You can release patches or a beta version later. Customers? They're used to it, especially if they are early adopters.

When it comes to healthcare reform, I think the software production model is a useful analogue. A buggy product was rushed to market within a short time frame. Perhaps for defensible reasons and perhaps not. Doesn't matter.

What we now have is something that meets some needs, solves some problems. Like access. And does nothing about others. Especially cost. Because our politics is characterized by the bipolarism of the Democrats and Republicans, the debate is being framed in terms of whether or not to reject it as is.

I don't ultimately care which we do, only that we find ways to manage access and cost. In other words, as long as the next result is better for regular folks. But we all know that any "from scratch" effort

• Will face all the same problems the last one did, and 

• can't begin in earnest until the current reform is repealed, which cannot happen until 2013 at the earliest

So, if congress really wants to work now on making our healthcare system better, what they should really do is work on an Obamacare Beta that finds patches to the bugs found by customers and accountants and so on. If Republicans were willing to fake this tack, they should ask in return that Democrats concede that existing law does nothing substantive to control costs.

Krugman: Long Live the Fray

Paul Krugman thinks there's the way one side sees it, and the way the other side sees it. And that's it:

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

There’s no middle ground between these views.

Paul Krugman, polarizer in chief. Is it really that hard to find a middle ground between "the poor deserve the rich's money" and "taxation is theft?" No, it's not. The more this goes on, the greater the chances that 2012 finds voters looking long and hard for opportunities to reject BOTH parties. Even if it means voting for ex-party-members who are just as likely to be opportunists as committed independents. Give me a candidate I can vote for to represent "neither," and I'll vote for him. Time to send the message both parties need to hear.

In Case You Were Warming to 1st Amendment Exceptions

First the santized huckleberry. Now this. Does the world feel better. safer, and more tolerant yet?

Well there goes another new year's resolution. I had pledged to go a whole year without making fun of Canadian "rock." But now that it's official that no good canadian would have the balls to sing this:

That little faggot with the earring and the make-up? Yeah buddy, that's his own hair. That little faggot's got his own jet air plane. That little faggot is a millionaire.

Dire Straits, a band banned:

The Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" was ruled by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to be "extremely offensive" and thus inappropriate for airing on radio or television because it uses an anti-gay slur.

The decision against St. John's radio station CHOZ-FM in Newfoundland was released Wednesday. In it, the panel ruled that the word "faggot" "contravened the Human Rights Clauses" and its ethics code and is "no longer" permitted "even if entirely or marginally acceptable in earlier days."

Ron Cohen, the CBSC's national chairman, told The Washington Times on Thursday that the decision effectively sets a "nationwide" precedent binding on all private license holders for TV, cable-TV and radio broadcasting. It does not cover the state-run Canadian Broadcasting Corp. or "community and university" stations.

People get paid money to do this stuff. To protect the rest of the people. But can they protect us from Rush? Or Bryan Adams? Or April Wine? Oh, no.

The worst part of all is that no weight was given to the iussue of banning possibly the best riff ever. Thus destining Canadians to remain forever locked in their status as "rock-challenged." They've been overtaken by Eastern Europeans who dress like pansies, emulate Poison,  and play flying V's. Seriously. Flying V's.