Surprisingly lost in the debate is any discussion of ‘why’ the California legislators are contemplating a tax that would most likely get thrown out in Federal court (per a decision in 1967 ruling that a catalog retailer needs a local presence in order to be subject to local sales tax) – Prop 13!  A state like Oregon doesn’t need a sales tax to pay for their services as local assessors aren’t hamstrung by ludicrous legislation effectively ‘fixing’ the value of a property to the time of original purchase.

Of course an Oregonian e-retailer gets the 8.5% ‘edge’ over a California retailer provided our tax rate stays so ridiculously high.  But toss out the crazy cap on property value assessment and Blam!, California could easily make up it’s budget shortfall, reduce the sales tax rate and still have money to spare.

Rather than discuss the elephant in the room, the California Left and Right shift into preposterous positions (fighting establish Federal Law or turning our freeways into private toll roads) in a self-parodying attempt to address our state’s chronic budget woes.

As I mentioned before, California politics represents a microcosm of our woes at the Federal level, as now evidenced in the absurd showdown over the debt ceiling.  In that discussion, the Left argues that huge deficits are a good thing during an economic downturn, and that the Feds need to make up in spending what the consumers are not.  The Right, who didn’t care about deficit spending when they controlled Congress, trots out the same old trickle-down prescription of keeping taxes low on the wealthy, increasing fee-bases services for the middle class and cutting or eliminating social programs for the old, the poor and the disabled.

Seriously, there are plenty of things that could be cut out of the Federal Budget, like cutting hundreds of billions of dollars out of the Defense for unneeded programs, winding out of Shrubya’s legacy wars.  And on the other side, why not have a conversation about eliminating the NEA?  Trimming back the Department of Education?  Folding the ATF into the FBI (and similarly reducing redundancies)?  Encouragingly, there was some talk, albeit muted, of eliminating loopholes in the tax code, but not-surprisingly that seems to have gotten dropped from the Boehner/Obama capitulation.  And never discussed were some basic measures such as getting private interests to pay commercial rates for use of Federal land (ranching, mineral extraction, etc).

The underlying issue, though, is that addressing the deficit isn’t sufficient.  All our Free Trade deals have proven extremely successful at outsourcing manufacturing and even back-office work to Asia, in a perverse vindication of ‘trickle-down’ economics, as rich corporations ‘trickle-out’ of the country.  If the trickle-out continues, and the tax base continues to shrink, how can the Fed possibly spend its way out of our economic malaise?

Bottom line is that we are in absurdistan precisely because the Congressionals can’t/won’t go against their corporate campaign funders, either in the form of eliminating some tax loophole, collecting ‘fair use’ royalties on Federal land, eliminating a defense program that benefits a local defense contractor, or getting corporations to pay taxes on their overseas payroll or unrepatriated profits.  The Dems and the Repugs put on a little show but go back to business as usual – with the other 99% of us continuing to fall behind the other 1%.

Yesterday, though, both Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias made the case that pursuing apparent austerity during an economic slump isn’t as insane as it seems — and, in fact, isn’t really pursing austerity in the short term, as Klein notes:

A big deficit deal could include mild stimulative measures such as unemployment insurance and an extension of the payroll tax cut. That’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. A small deficit deal, or no deficit deal, won’t include any extensions of stimulus.

… [Meanwhile, on spending cuts,] if you strike a deal that lasts 10 years, you can backload the savings to protect the recovery over the next three or four years.

The Prez himself alluded to this strategy during one of his 80 press conferences this week, when he explained that any tax increases he was seeking in the debt-ceiling talks wouldn’t take effect until 2013.

And I can see why he might have chosen this angle.  Of all the disappointments and botched opportunities that have marked Obama’s presidency to date, I will submit that there’s only one that truly damaged Barack O. politically: the stimulus package in early 2009 wasn’t nearly big enough to get the economy moving forward.

Yes, the failure to include a public option or other strong progressive elements in the health care bill is a strong runner-up.  If you ask me, though (and it’s my post, so I’m going to pretend you did), if unemployment had been a few percentage points lower, the Republican-esque health care legislation wouldn’t have kept Democrats from maintaining their majorities in Congress — and conversely, even a more populist health care bill wouldn’t have kept a GOP tide from swamping the Dems with the jobless rate as high as it was/is.

So, surveying the political landscape after the 2010 electoral fiasco, it shouldn’t be surprising if Obama came away with one simple conclusion: He needed to pass more economic stimulus, and he somehow needed to get it past a GOP-controlled House of Representatives.  Which, in effect, has meant wrapping it in spending cuts the same way you’d slip an unappetizing pill into your dog’s Alpo.

This is what Obama did in the budget talks to avoid a government shutdown a few months ago (including accepting the ineffective stimulus of the Bush tax cuts for the rich in order to keep better measures in the deal), and it would make some sense if that was what he’s trying to do now.

Sure, it would would be better if B.O. laid down a progressive gauntlet and challenged GOP budget priorities head on, daring them to oppose aggressive job-creating measures without any deficit-cutting camouflage.  But then, we all know that frontal assaults aren’t exactly Obama’s thing.

So instead we get the reluctant(?) endorsement of conservative budget frames, and a passive-aggressive approach to boosting the economy that might have been borrowed from a character in the old Popeye cartoons: “I’ll gladly pay you in budget cuts Tuesday for some stimulus today.”

Call it the Wimpy Deal.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

The historical significance of Prince Charles

Here is what they were dancing to:

The vote is, indeed, non-binding.

Plus,

“The vote, which was conducted with something less than a full caucus present, was as much a repudiation of the substance of the deal as the White House’s handling of it”

So the Dems go on record as bitching about the capitulation, and the ones who don’t want to go on record are conveniently out of the room.  Welcome to the next two years in the House.

*Update 12-11-10* Out comes the lard, spread on the slops to attract the pigs to the trough!  Nothing like pork-barrel politics and earmarks to bring the two parties together!  You still believe the Dems will actually stand up to Obama’s “Raw Deal”?

*Update 12-13-10* Okay this is freaky – the frickin’ Tea Baggers agree with me!

No I can't!

Remember all the comparisons to FDR and Kennedy after Obama got elected?  Up until now I’ve been thinking Clinton II, but my god, he can’t even have a show down with the minority Repugs over extending the unpopular tax cuts for the rich!  I’m with Howard Dean on this one.

*Update 12-8-10*  I caught President Chaimberlain’s little press conference, where he came running out waving his agreement to give the Repugs everything they wanted in exchange for a signed agreement stating they won’t ask for anything more.  Listen dude, I think we all know D.C. is all about compromise, but we expect something in return.  Maybe you should step down so we can see what Biden could do.

Well I’ve got a clunker from ’96.  Naturally I thought “I wanna get me some of that cash!”   No such luck.  In ’96 I bought the most fuel economical 4-door sedan I could get, a Mazda manual transmission that used to get me about 36 mpg (now maybe about 30).  I discovered there was a bottom threshold on the gas mileage and my car didn’t qualify.

So being a conscientious environmentalist, buying a fuel sensible vehicle really just makes me a cash-cow chump who must pay for my good behavior by paying for self-absorbed assholes who chose gas guzzlers back in the day.

Seriously, this really blows.

Forget giving cash to jackasses, fuck the carrot, what we need is the stick – let’s slam them with higher gasoline taxes – you’ll see clunker SUVs disappear off the roads far faster than this silly rebate program.  And if the government really wants to shower cash on us, just give us some god damned $5K gift certificates we can spend on whatever we want.  Or better, just cut my taxes by $5K, I promise I’ll spend it on something.

“The new analysis shows 869 species became extinct or extinct in the wild since the year 1500 while 290 more species are considered critically endangered and possibly extinct.

At least 16,928 species are threatened with extinction, including nearly one-third of amphibians, more than one in eight birds and nearly a quarter of mammals.”

I no longer support the search for extraterrestrial life – if we found any, we’d just have to go out there and kill it.

$70 billion       Repeal Corporate Farm WelfareFarm Security Act of 2001
$ 9.1 billion      Eliminate ineffective missile defense system

I’ll add more stuff later. Feel free to suggest your favorite pork for the block.

“The U.S. budget outlook continues to deteriorate,” wrote William C. Dudley, an economist at Goldman Sachs, after analyzing the government’s latest revenue data. “Our estimate of $300 billion for fiscal 2003 looks somewhat optimistic.”

If you were planning on receiving Social Security in about 20-25 years, I’m afraid it’s time to start making other plans. After an eight-year break, the Republican strategy to reduce your reliance on government programs (by systematically bankrupting the government) is back in effect.