2010 In Reverie

I seem to be reading a lot of people, both personal friends and online, bidding a not so fond good riddance to 2010. I can't say that I can really complain much about it. Nationally and politically, it was definitely a rough year. The economic conditions are still shit, and I have little optimism that the 112th Congress will do much about it (unless you count cutting taxes and going after social security. You know, deficit reduction stuff). But personally, I can't really complain. I have a lot to be grateful for. 2010 wasn't anything spectacular, but it wasn't bad either. I guess 2011 can only go up from here. I guess I'm not just feeling very reflective.

So yeah, fuck it - time to have several drinks and then stumble around Tempe listening to Jimmy Eat World. There are worse things I could be doing.

Holiday Gaming

I haven't had much time for blogging lately, what with all my spare time being consumed by the Christmas break and video games. It's a pretty rough gig. I got Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for Christmas, and then picked up The Force Unleashed 2, Bayonetta, and Splinter Cell: Conviction (the later of the two for only $29 total).

I haven't gotten into Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood much yet, because I assume it will be awesome and I have just been working my way through some of the others. TFU2 was a horrible, horrible, waste of goddamned money disappointment. I don't even know how Lucasarts could put out such dreck in good conscience, but then again, there's probably not a lot of that left at that company at this point. George Lucas is pretty much a money whore. See Zero Punctuation's review for a completely accurate depiction of the game. This guy makes his living off of being overly negative in his write-ups, but every negative about the game that he highlights is merited. It's an enjoyable game for the 3-4 hours that you get to play it, but I mean what the fuck? Like ZP says, I have played DLC for other games that was about that long, and I only paid $4.99 for the privilege of doing so.

Have not tried Bayonetta yet, although I hear it's supposed to be pretty entertaining. Splinter Cell: Conviction has been very enjoyable so far (hard not to be considering I only paid $9 for it). It feels a bit like watching an episode of "24" at times: disgruntled, grizzled, ex-federal agent whose demeanor and appearance scream "Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in," a government conspiracy at the highest echelons of power, torture/interrogation fetishes, and of course, guards that don't shut the fuck up. But it's a lot of fun. The mark/execute combat system is pretty entertaining, although it starts to feel repetitive and overpowered after a while. But I mean...$9? Am I right?

Internet Monies

It's probably about time that everyone comes to the realization that when a Republican speaks in apocalyptic, hyperbolic admonitions about the ramifications of a given public policy, we should rush to do the complete opposite:

McConnell (R-Ky.) also signaled the GOP will attempt to block such rules in the next Congress. "Today, the Obama administration, which has already nationalized health care, the auto industry, insurance companies, banks and student loans, will move forward with what could be the first step in controlling how Americans use the Internet by establishing federal regulations on its use," said McConnell.

While arguing against net neutrality, McConnell relied on the very same rhetoric about a free and open Internet that is used to bolster it, exploiting the confusion that surrounds the issue.

[...]

McConnell warned that regulating the Internet could reduce investment. "This would harm investment, stifle innovation and lead to job losses. That's why I, along with several of my colleagues, have urged the FCC chairman to abandon this flawed approach. The Internet is an invaluable resource and should be left alone," he said. "Many Americans will wonder as many already do if this is a Trojan horse for further meddling by the government. Fortunately, we'll have an opportunity in the new Congress to push back against new rules and regulations."

McConnell's statement is so full of fail that it's hard to know where to begin. Outright, repeatedly and objectively debunked lies notwithstanding, McConnell has now added government regulation of the internet (net neutrality) to his list of evil librul boogeymen that are going to single-handedly savage our economy and push unemployment up to 20%. Specifically, McConnell claims that any sort of FCC regulation on the internet would stifle innovation, kill jobs, and discourage investment, and that the internet ought to be left alone. I think we all know how well things work when private industry is left to its own devices or laughably, to 'self-regulate' (see financial crisis/Wall Street, Massey Energy, British Petroleum). It doesn't fucking work. It never has, and it never will. But aside from that, what about the standard Republican claim that any government regulation will lead to job/investment/innovation killing?

Japan has surged ahead of the United States on the wings of better wire and more aggressive government regulation, industry analysts say.

[...]

In 2000, the Japanese government seized its advantage in wire. In sharp contrast to the Bush administration over the same time period, regulators here compelled big phone companies to open up wires to upstart Internet providers.

In short order, broadband exploded. At first, it used the same DSL technology that exists in the United States. But because of the better, shorter wire in Japan, DSL service here is much faster. Ten to 20 times as fast, according to Pepper, one of the world's leading experts on broadband infrastructure.

Indeed, DSL in Japan is often five to 10 times as fast as what is widely offered by U.S. cable providers, generally viewed as the fastest American carriers. (Cable has not been much of a player in Japan.)

[...]

Perhaps more important, competition in Japan gave a kick in the pants to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), once a government-controlled enterprise and still Japan's largest phone company. With the help of government subsidies and tax breaks, NTT launched a nationwide build-out of fiber-optic lines to homes, making the lower-capacity copper wires obsolete.

"Obviously, without the competition, we would not have done all this at this pace," said Hideki Ohmichi, NTT's senior manager for public relations.

His company now offers speeds on fiber of up to 100 megabits per second -- 17 times as fast as the top speed generally available from U.S. cable. About 8.8 million Japanese homes have fiber lines -- roughly nine times the number in the United States.

[...]

The opening of Japan's copper phone lines to DSL competition launched a "virtuous cycle" of ever-increasing speed, said Cisco's Pepper. The cycle began shortly after Japanese politicians -- fretting about an Internet system that in 2000 was slower and more expensive than what existed in the United States -- decided to "unbundle" copper lines.

For just $2 a month, upstart broadband companies were allowed to rent bandwidth on an NTT copper wire connected to a Japanese home. Low rent allowed them to charge low prices to consumers -- as little as $22 a month for a DSL connection faster than almost all U.S. broadband services.

[...]

As the United States drifted, a prominent venture capitalist in Japan pounced on his government's decision to open up the country's copper wire.

Masayoshi Son, head of a company called Softbank, offered broadband that was much cheaper and more than six times as fast as NTT's. He added marketing razzmatazz to the mix, dispatching young people to street corners to give away modems that would connect users to a service called Yahoo BB. (The U.S.-based Yahoo owns about a third of it.) The company's share of DSL business in Japan has exploded in the past five years, from zero to 37 percent. As competition grew, the monthly cost of broadband across Japan fell by about half, as broadband speed jumped 33-fold, according to a recent study.

QED, and that article is even three years old. Here you have a prime example in Japan, under similar circumstances to the US (albeit a decade ago, sadly), effectively using government regulation to revolutionize an industry and transform it into a global leader. The end result was faster speeds, lower prices, better technology, superior innovation, and yes - more jobs. The unbundling of Japan's broadband infrastructure and low rents made it possible for the supposed Republican free market Jesus, small businesses, to enter the industry. All of this was forced by regulation, and it created a better outcome for everyone.

But McConnell and his caucus are not interested in these outcomes. They want the status quo - for telecom giants like AT&T & Comcast to have a virtual monopoly and to be free to continue to gouge its customers at the highest possible prices that the market will bear. For all their love and worship of the free market, their actions declare the exact opposite: they don't want competition, lower prices, better access, or more choices for consumers, because Republicans don't promote capitalism, but plutocracy in its purest form. And they continue to promote this perverse agenda through their fear mongering language and warnings of government takeovers that a good 40-50% of the Fox News loving populace actually believes.

I know that facts, data, and empirical evidence have a librul bias but I'll conclude with the following graphs from OECD. The first shows the average monthly price per Mbit/s by country, in US Dollars at purchasing price parity (PPP). The second shows the fastest broadband speeds by country (also in Mbit/s), as reported by the incumbent telecommunications operators.

Yes, you read that correctly: we pay on average approximately four times more than Japan, for speeds up to 400% slower. I guess this means all of fears have come true: the OECD has become part of the evil, librul Amurika hating agenda.

GWOT: Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

Via the New York Times, we learn that Endless War is about to expand to a new front:

WASHINGTON — Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan's tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan’s efforts to root out militants there.

The proposal, described by American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash.

Almost a decade later and we are still following the Bush mantra of go anywhere/fight anywhere so we don't have to fight them here. And we do mean anywhere - we are in Yemen too. And as Wikileaks has revealed, the Yemeni government has been claiming responsibility for US attacks in order to mask our role there:

President Obama has approved providing U.S. intelligence in support of ROYG [Republic of Yemen government] ground operations against AQAP targets, General Petraeus informed Saleh. Saleh reacted coolly, however, to the General's proposal to place USG [U.S. government] personnel inside the area of operations armed with real-time, direct feed intelligence from U.S. ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] platforms overhead. "You cannot enter the operations area and you must stay in the joint operations center," Saleh responded. Any U.S. casualties in strikes against AQAP would harm future efforts, Saleh asserted. Saleh did not have any objection, however, to General Petraeus' proposal to move away from the use of cruise missiles and instead have U.S. fixed-wing bombers circle outside Yemeni territory, "out of sight," and engage AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] targets when actionable intelligence became available. Saleh lamented the use of cruise missiles that are "not very accurate" and welcomed the use of aircraft-deployed precision-guided bombs instead. "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Saleh said, prompting Deputy Prime Minister Alimi to joke that he had just "lied" by telling Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the ROYG.

Meanwhile, back in the US, our infrastructure is crumbling and sorely lagging the rest of the developed world, unemployment remains perilously close to 10%, and Congress quibbles over any sort of domestic or social relief program that would add event a red cent to the deficit while we spend trillions trotting the globe in search of Scary, Evil Terrorists. But hey - at least we are Safe. Who can put a price on that?

Is This Good For The Company?

The US Chamber of Commerce is still a collective of profit-worshipping assholes:

Over the weekend, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) tried to revive the bill by changing the way the compensation fund would be paid for. Instead of ending the foreign corporate tax loophole, Gillibrand proposed a new funding mechanism, including a 2 percent excise fee on certain foreign companies that receive U.S. government contracts. However, the Chamber still believes the bill’s offsets are unacceptable.

Asked for comment by ThinkProgress, Chamber spokesperson Tita Freeman told us that the Chamber takes no position on compensating 9/11 first responders, but absolutely opposes Gillibrand’s new funding mechanism because the Chamber believes it to be “harmful to the business community and the economy.”

Well isn't that predictable? More ad hominem. They completely support the bill, but the way it's paid for would upset the gods of business and the economy! And that's scary! The truth is that they don't give a shit, because if they did, they would support this humane and necessary legislation. They just care far more for their profits than they do the suffering of 9/11 workers. As I indicated in my earlier post, this isn't exactly a bad year for business. They could afford to give a helping hand.

What the hell ever happened to being a good, decent corporate citizen? They are a dying breed.

Steal from the Poor, Give to the Rich

Recent headlines this week bring us yet another indication of how fucked up and broken our political and governmental system has become.

The James Zadroga 9/11 Health & Compensation Act of 2010 has been an ongoing legislative action since last year, despite the currency of its title from the latest revisions. The bill seeks to provide compensation to first responders at Ground Zero who have been afflicted with debilitating diseases, mostly respiratory in nature, as a result of their service at the WTC in the wake of 9/11. It would seem that it would be a purely moral, just, and obvious choice to provide proper compensation and access to healthcare for those among us that sacrificed their well-being (and in some cases, their lives) in our nation's hour of need. However, that very notion belies the fact that this is America - a nation where nothing purely moral and just happens automatically, and where perverse moneyed interests and their legislative stool pigeons fight viciously to protect the plutocracy at any cost.

This insistence upon the welfare of the few at the expense of the many manifested itself most recently when Senate Republicans issued their intent to block any and all legislation until the Bush tax cuts were extended in their entirety. The oddly termed Obama-McConnell tax cut/unemployment benefits package ultimately flew through both houses of Congress, because Republicans never met a tax cut that they didn't want to take home to their mother. The total package is estimated to cost about $858 billion, with $125 billion of that cost coming from tax cuts for those with incomes over $250,000, and the newly gutted estate tax. All of this, of course, goes straight to the deficit and is not paid for by any means, but as our Republican establishment always tells us, tax cuts pay for themselves by way of magic unicorn dust and their overt fiscal detriment is a figment of our collective imagination.

Our very own Senator Kyl leads the asshole brigade, levying typical Republican whine charges of process, that the bill was rushed, that amendments weren't allowed, and of course - cost:

KYL: This has been a moving target since day one. … This is something that they came up with to just put directly on the floor of the Senate, without any hearings, without any opportunities to figure out what it should be like. [...]

I have no idea how this thing would work. So they reduced it from $7 billion to $6 billion — I have no idea whether $6 billion is a reasonable figure. … But the question is who’s responsible? Who’s at fault? Do they have the money? Is the insurance adequate to cover it? Wasn’t the previous settlement adequate? Why would they need $6 billion?

KYL: First of all, they should have peace of mind when it comes to health care. The question is what and how? And when you try do it, as you said in your introduction, in a hurry, in a lame duck session, without a hearing, without understanding what the ramifications are and whether we can amend the bill, you’re doing it in the worst way. For example, there has already been a settlement for a lot of these people, a fund that’s been set up for them to receive funding. Will the people who are supporting this legislation be able to participate in that fund? Nobody has been able to say. Why $7 billion? What will the requirements for qualification be for the money?

Nobody wants to deny care to people who, and by the way these are primarily people who helped to clean up the site in the aftermath of 9/11 and there weren’t enough adequate precautions taken in some cases to deal with potential health issues and to the extent that they’ve become ill they do need to be taken care of. It’s one thing to make an emotional appeal to say we need to care for someone who did something good. It’s another to do it in a sensible way. And that’s all we’re asking for. You bring it up in the lame duck session with no opportunity to amend it and you’re probably going to make bad legislation. All this could have been done earlier I might add.

To summarize the Republican position, $125 billion in tax cuts for people who genuinely don't need the money is worth holding the lame duck session hostage to secure its passage. But a mere $6 billion to provide solvency to emergency workers that risked their lives in the wake of an attack on American soil is something that must be done Correctly, Properly, and Deliberately. Of course they need health care! No one denies that, but it must be done the Right Way, even though none of these bullshit rules or provisos applied when we were busy fellating the rich with tax cuts. As Jon Stewart astutely notes, this posturing is ironic coming from a party that made 9/11 their pet catch phrase during the Bush years.

But the Republican bile does not end there. Since Republicans have spent the last two years vehemently insisting upon pay-as-you-go (or paygo) rules for any legislation (except tax cuts, of course), Democratic sponsors of the bill ensured that it was fully funded and deficit neutral. This was accomplished by ending a corporate tax loophole. Enter the US Chamber of Commerce, which in my opinion, is rapidly giving Goldman Sachs a run for its money for the dubious honor of the great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity. The Chamber lobbied against the bill, spewing ad hominem and red herrings in an attempt to scare lawmakers into doing the bidding of their corporate masters. And much like the income tax cuts for the wealthy, corporations don't need them either:

Investors around the world say President Barack Obama is bad for the bottom line, even though U.S. corporations are on track for the biggest earnings growth in 22 years and the stock market is headed for its best back-to- back annual gains since 2004.

It remains to be seen what will happen to the first responder bill, but with the Senate tied up with passing START and possibly DREAM during the lame duck session, it's unlikely that it will come up for a vote, let alone break cloture. And the Republican-controlled House next year and slimmer Democratic margins in the Senate only further compound the bill's path to passage. But that's okay - I'm sure all those tax cuts will trickle down to the 9/11 workers and the free market Jebus and invisible hand will cure them of all that ails them. Or something.

Move Along

Nothing to see here:

In an internal memo, released to the media Monday, the director said that sharing information “cannot extend beyond the limits set by law and the ‘need to know’ principle. The media, the public, even former colleagues, are not entitled to details of our work.”

Panetta added that the leaks had potentially done “incredible damage to our nation’s security and our ability to do our job of protecting the nation. More importantly, it could jeopardize lives. For this reason, such leaks cannot be tolerated.”

Shorter CIA: The act of revealing our atrocities is a greater evil than the atrocities themselves.

I just can't begin imagine why Muslims continue in their steadfast hatred for us.

Can We Call It What It Is Now?

It's funny, sad really, because I have been meaning to write about the Park51 nontroversy for a while now. It's been all over the news and blogs, but with our painstakingly short national attention span, I figured the issue would have fizzled out by the time that I got around to forming a post. Clearly I underestimated the utter stupidity and ignorance of the masses.

Glenn Greenwald has a very thorough (and now, prescient) piece about the debate over the Park51 Islamic community center. Read the whole thing. I don't agree with Greenwald entirely; I do think that the issue is a bit of a distraction and a wedge issue created to bring out the mouth-breathers and generally keep any discussion off of the economy. Let's face it - the midterms will primarily be in large part about economic matters. And Democrats - if they haven't already - will begin hammering away at the Bush/Republican economic legacy day and night in key races. So while the Park51 mosque shouldn't be dismissed as a distraction in its entirety, the label is not without its merits.

The reality is the core of the issue is exactly what Greenwald posits: it's all about good ol' fashioned American racism and xenophobia. Would we be having this debate if the construction in question were a synagogue, a Christian megachurch, or a Catholic church? The fact that the proposed site is near Ground Zero is immaterial, but rather a convenient way to conflate the debate and ignite anti-Muslim sentiment. Don't believe me? Check the links in Greenwald's piece; mosques are now running into anti-Muslim resistance across the nation.

But aside from that, let's let the actions of the bigots speak for themselves: today a NYC cab driver was slashed and stabbed after answering affirmatively to a question of his Muslim faith. Now a mosque in California has been vandalized with a sign decrying the worship of 'the god of terrorism' near Ground Zero. And I am sure these will not be isolated incidents.

I am confident that the Park51 center will go forward as planned, and admirably, a large contingent of families of 9/11 victims have come out in support of its construction. But the path will needlessly ugly.

Dysfunctional And Corrupt Is An Understatement

Paul Krugman hits the salient points of the pathetic 'debate' over the fate of the Bush tax cuts in his column this week:

What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. For the sake of comparison, it took months of hard negotiations to get Congressional approval for a mere $26 billion in desperately needed aid to state and local governments.

How can this kind of giveaway be justified at a time when politicians claim to care about budget deficits? [...] No, this has nothing to do with sound economic policy. Instead, as I said, it’s about a dysfunctional and corrupt political culture, in which Congress won’t take action to revive the economy, pleads poverty when it comes to protecting the jobs of schoolteachers and firefighters, but declares cost no object when it comes to sparing the already wealthy even the slightest financial inconvenience. So far, the Obama administration is standing firm against this outrage. Let’s hope that it prevails in its fight. Otherwise, it will be hard not to lose all faith in America’s future.

I'm not going to try to add anything to that, because I have already done so previously. It's not about economics, or the wisdom of Nobel laureates - it's about a broken and corrupt political system where ideology prevails over reality, where the media treats both positions equally when one is absolutely full of shit, and where the liars have no incentive to stop lying. A culture where a dime of government spending must be debated for weeks and filibustered for months, but slashing revenues is always a great idea, always the right idea, and always the panacea regardless of the symptom.

Serenity Now

All of my recent entries have sounded super angry lately, so here is a picture of Mia to counterbalance that. I know I need to make a conscious effort to blog about something other than stuff that pisses me off, so consider this the first (occasional) step in that direction.

Enjoy.

The New Normal

Paul Krugman's latest column dishes up the depressing:

What lies down this path? Here’s what I consider all too likely: Two years from now unemployment will still be extremely high, quite possibly higher than it is now. But instead of taking responsibility for fixing the situation, politicians and Fed officials alike will declare that high unemployment is structural, beyond their control. And as I said, over time these excuses may turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the long-term unemployed lose their skills and their connections with the work force, and become unemployable.

I’d like to imagine that public outrage will prevent this outcome. But while Americans are indeed angry, their anger is unfocused. And so I worry that our governing elite, which just isn’t all that into the unemployed, will allow the jobs slump to go on and on and on.

But why are we facing such a grim future?

But the fearmongers are unmoved: fighting deficits, they insist, must take priority over everything else — everything else, that is, except tax cuts for the rich, which must be extended, no matter how much red ink they create.

The point is that a large part of Congress — large enough to block any action on jobs — cares a lot about taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, but very little about the plight of Americans who can’t find work.

That's right - because Congress is effectively waging class warfare against the electorate at this point. Extend the tax cuts for the rich because you wouldn't want to raise taxes in a down economy would you? They might have to settle for a smaller yacht or skimp on that next Rolex. And you unemployed jerks are just lazy. Maybe if you got off your ass once in a while, you could find the bootstraps you need to pull yourself up.

It will probably take mass riots and street violence before anyone on Capitol Hill gets a clue about the gravity of the average American's economic dilemma. And as Krugman says, that won't be happening anytime soon. We are simply too complacent and have probably the highest tolerance for being shit upon in the developed world. It's almost as if we've become accustomed to it.

On A Related Note

What do you suppose the odds are of this bill hopelessly failing?

The Senate will hold a key vote Monday afternoon on a bill to provide $26 billion in Medicaid and education money to states.

Previous domestic aid bills have gone down in flames because Republicans and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson have insisted that the cost of helping the poor, old, and jobless not be added to the deficit. This bill is fully offset with spending cuts and tax increases on U.S.-based multinational corporations, but Republicans have not signaled whether they will support it.

Can't add to the deficit to help the poor or jobless, but let's make damn sure we keep our checkbook perpetually open for two failed wars. You've also got to love that the preening Republicans have had their concerns met (the bill is deficit neutral), but they still can't commit to supporting it. Because they don't want the Democrats to succeed on anything, ever, even at the expense of holding our ailing country hostage.

Priorities Revisited

We can't get a single fucking legislative act through Congress without getting the vapors about how it will be paid for, but endless war funding never faces the same scrutiny or debate:

Washington (CNN) -- The House of Representatives on Tuesday gave final approval to a nearly $59 billion emergency spending bill, the bulk of which would go toward the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan.

Specifically, the bill includes almost $33 billion for Afghanistan, along with over $5 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, almost $3 billion for Haiti relief programs and $68 million for the oil disaster response in the Gulf of Mexico.

It now goes to the president for his signature.

This comes as July marks the highest number of casualties on record, and thousands of leaked documents show what a hopeless waste the war has become. Not only do we continue to piss away billions in a nearly decade old, ever deteriorating conflict, but pedantic things like funds to prevent teacher layoffs were viewed as wasteful spending:

Top Democrats struggled to maintain support for the bill among more liberal House members, who have increasingly turned against the Afghan war effort and are upset about the loss of funding for programs designed to prevent teacher layoffs, among other things.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wisconsin, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, slammed the Senate for stripping domestic funding from the bill, including funding for teachers and other forms of education funding.

So apparently the moral of the story is that we have to invade our own country and go to war with ourselves before it becomes politically palatable to spend money on any domestic priorities. Perhaps if keeping our country from slipping into the third-world was considered a priority of national security, we could justify taking care of our own needs.

But since that won't be happening anytime soon, there's always this:

So, asked for an exit strategy, the administration instead offered up guidelines for an endless occupation.

And then last week, in a nearly unnoticed development at an international conference in Kabul, world leaders including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed their "support for the President of Afghanistan's objective that the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) should lead and conduct military operations in all provinces by the end of 2014."

That's right: The end of 2014.

"I was kind of struck that the 2014 didn't get more critical attention than it did," said Paul R. Pillar, formerly the CIA's top Middle East analysis and now a Georgetown University professor. "The war will have gone on 13 years at that point."

I'm sure a 13-year old war will go over real well with the public in the 2016 elections, but then again, we are too goddamned stupid and complacent to do anything (or elect anyone) that will take a position to the contrary.

So Much Stupid

The last month has been a little crazy, and I really haven't felt like writing at all. The urge is slowly coming back, aided in part by the fact that some truly stupid shit has been said over the past three or four weeks.

Tax policy has been in the news lately, given the impending expiration of the Bush tax cuts and our pathetic fiscal state. Expiration, assuming our stalwart, fiscally responsible Congress doesn't outdo themselves and extend them beyond the termination date.

It starts with the usual suspects: deficit peacocks in the Republican party who have suddenly become acquainted with the size of the deficit now that they're in the minority and have to act like they didn't just spend the last eight years bombing brown people and giving money away to rich people because government surpluses are evil things that cause bad things like social spending or preparedness for economic downturns. The primary difference this time is that now they showing their true colors: openly admitting that they do not believe that tax cuts should ever have to be paid for or that they have any adverse impact on the budget.

Here's Sen. Tom Coburn:

Continuing the [Bush] tax cuts isn’t a cost, if you added new taxes, new tax cuts, I would agree that’s a cost. It’s not a cost. That’s where we are today. That’s the baseline. It doesn’t score anything to continue them. It costs money if we increase, which I would be willing to do. I think we ought to cut corporate taxes.

And Sen. John "Unemployed People Are Lazy" Kyl:

You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely congress has the authority and it would be right, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.

And Rep. Michele Bachmann:

"I think we need to be paying for all the spending that’s going on," [...] "But when people can keep more of their own money that shouldn’t be considered a cost."

And their own minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell:

"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue," he told Brian Beutler of TPMDC. "They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."

And I am sure there are more, but those are just the quotes that I flagged during my weeks off. The fact that errant bullshit like this is allowed to go completely unchallenged in the news media is an entirely different issue. For now, let's just look at the facts for those of us that actually exist in a reality-based world. The following figure is from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan organization:

Even the Congressional Budget Office draws similar conclusions, as Ezra Klein notes here:

But how about the Congressional Budget Office's estimations? "The new CBO data show that changes in law enacted since January 2001 increased the deficit by $539 billion in 2005. In the absence of such legislation, the nation would have a surplus this year. Tax cuts account for almost half — 48 percent — of this $539 billion in increased costs." How about the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget? Their budget calculator shows that the tax cuts will cost $3.28 trillion between 2011 and 2018.

All empirical evidence notwithstanding, the crux of the mandatory Republican fetish with tax cuts is that by lowering taxes, you widen the base of people paying taxes, as if doing so makes taxes a bargain buy or a sale item at Walmart. This makes sense, to a very limited extent, in a private sector application with goods and services (a major difference being that paying taxes is compulsory, whereas consumers may pick and choose what goods they wish to purchase).

When businesses lower their prices, a higher number of consumers are generally more inclined to purchase their goods. It's basic supply and demand. The primary difference between the public and private sector, however, is that you generally don't have a bunch of demagoguing idiots running private sector companies that enact markedly stupid policies out of a mindless, irrational, and patently false conviction. The private sector is concerned with profit, success, and the continuity of their business. When they lower prices on their goods, they do so in a targeted manner to drive up sales, attract new customers, or punish their competitors. They do not do so reflexively regardless of any market or economic setting or as their sole idea for running their operations. If a corporation were to perpetually lower prices, as the Republicans wish to do with taxes, many of them would go out of business. Why? Because at some point, their costs would exceed their revenue, and they wouldn't remain solvent.

Somehow that logic escapes Republicans, or they simply refuse to acknowledge what is a very obvious and time-tested principle. A principle that is the foundation of our economy and our private sector. A principle that is not backed by ideology, but fact and hard data. Data that is self-evident in our prolonged budget crisis, whereby their pet tax cuts have failed miserably as costs/spending increased while revenues fell.

So we're left with a nation in which almost half of our elected officials believe in a false, irresponsible, and dangerous fiscal policy and where they are never challenged on the fallacies of their policies by those in a position to do so. Basically, people believe this bullshit because it gets spread widely and uncritically as truth, or even a position with a modicum of validity that should be considered despite the enormity of the evidence to the contrary. Bill Maher sums this up best in an episode of Real Time before the summer break:

That's the problem with our obsession with always seeing two sides of every issue equally -- especially when one side has a lot of money. It means we have to pretend there are always two truths, and the side that doesn't know anything has something to say. [...]

We shouldn't decide everything by polling the masses. Just because most people believe something doesn't make it true. This is the fallacy called argumentum ad numeram: the idea that something is true because great numbers believe it. As in: Eat shit, 20 trillion flies can't be wrong.

Indeed.