Politics, Government & Public Policy: November 2012 Archives
Barack Obama wants us to return to Clinton-era tax rates, so how about Clinton-era spending rates as well? And we don't have to use absolute-dollar values... let's go back to Clinton-era spending as a proportion of GDP.
In arguing for a return to Clinton-era tax rates for wealthy households, with a top marginal rate of 39.6 percent rather than the Bush-era 35 percent, President Obama suggests that Slick Willy cooked up precisely the right recipe for growth and prosperity. The boom times and economic dynamism that characterized the last five years of Bill Clinton's presidency strongly support that contention. But by addressing only the taxing part of the equation and not the spending levels, Democrats leave out the most important element in the winning formula.Indeed, even if we went back to the good old days of Clinton taxation levels but maintained our current rates of spending, we'd suffer from devastating deficits of close to $1 trillion each year.
According to official government figures, the feds collected revenues totaling 20.6 percent of the gross domestic product in 2000, the final full year of Clinton's term. Under Obama in 2012, however, Washington spent money at a near-record rate of 24.3 percent of the GDP. Even with all of Clinton's tax revenues, that still would have left a deficit of 3.7 percent of GDP, significantly higher even than the worst full year of the much-reviled George W. Bush.
However, what effect would such cuts have on national defense? Clinton cut defense spending to the bone, and it's not clear we should return to pre-9/11 levels there. So maybe 20.6% of GDP isn't quite right, but 24.3% is certainly too high.
Missourians re-elected Democrat Jay Nixon as governor by a decent majority, but we also just gave Republicans in the state legislature veto-proof supermajorities in both houses. Nixon has vowed to continue opposing a right-to-work law for Missouri, but with a supermajority in the legislature Republicans can enact right-to-work without the governor's consent. Will they?
I'm sure the unions will howl if right-to-work gets enacted in Missouri, but they shouldn't fret: Democrats now have supermajorities in the California legislature.
In the public interest all negotiations between the President, the Senate, and the House to resolve the fiscal cliff should be public and televised on C-SPAN. All sides should be forced to make their priorities and positions known to the public. No more closed-door negotiations about the fate of our democracy.
Few things are more characteristic of business as usual in Washington, D.C., than closed doors. Nothing will do more to end business as usual than opening them to C-SPAN cameras.With the "fiscal cliff" of sequestration approaching, now is the perfect time to establish a precedent: The bigger the deal, the more important it is that negotiations be done in public.
It took about 12 seconds after the 2012 campaign winners were declared for the maneuvering toward a "grand bargain" to begin among President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner.
Everybody professes to favor compromise, but without open negotiations there is no way to know who actually offers concrete compromises and who merely talks about them.
The only people who benefit from closed-door negotiations are the negotiators, not the public. Open the doors!
If the Republicans can't win Presidential or Senate elections against such a damaged incumbent then it's time for some soul-searching. The Republican brand is trashed. There's enough inertia to carry the organization forward, but it needs to be significantly transformed.
Obama: What can I say? I don't think you're a very good president. I don't like your policies. I think you're weakening and endangering America. I think you're sapping our strength, innovation and spirit. You probably wouldn't think much of me either. Now I'm stuck with you, and you probably couldn't care less about me.
Romney: You had plenty of money and plenty of enthusiasm. You couldn't close the deal. Maybe you should have hammered Libya harder? Built a better ground game? Who knows. Northeasterners don't fare well on the national stage. I think you were the best of the bunch that Republicans put forward, and you did a reasonable job.
Virginia, Ohio and Florida: Seriously? Sigh.
House Republicans: You're less popular than just about anyone else in the country, but at least you can win elections. Please teach this trick to the rest of the conservatives. Do what you can to mitigate the bleeding over the next few years.
Tea Party: Despite it's enthusiasm, despite the fact that a strong majority of Americans believes that the government is too large, expensive and intrusive... the Tea Party has been a net loser for conservatism. Republicans would probably control the Senate right now if not for the Tea Party. Tea Partiers will argue that RINOs are no better than Democrats, but the next four years might change their minds.
Nate Silver and the pollsters: Good work. You should be proud. I always knew your methodology was sound, but I doubted that your input data (state polls) was accurate. It was.
Political pundits: Ugh. I couldn't even find time to read all the "Romney landslide" predictions over the past week. Are you people daft? Pundit malpractice.
The Economy: You're almost certainly going to improve over the next few years, and Obama will take credit.
Artificial intelligence: I guess we're going to need more socialism as artificial intelligence progressively displaces human workers.
Superstorm Sandy: Good job stealing news cycles and giving Obama the opportunity to look "presidential".
Terrorists: Guantanamo Bay prison is still open, and we've got plenty of Hellfires. Please don't stand too close to innocent civilians.
Rest of the world: Yeah, you love Obama. Let's see how that works out.
Betsy Newmark notes that if Romney wins and the Democrats retain control of the Senate that there will be zero Protestants at the top levels of our government.
Given that Guy Fawkes was part of a Catholic conspiracy against Protestants, here is an interesting observation that occurred to me if Romney should win and the Democrats maintain control of the Senate: in that scenario, there would be no Protestants at the top levels of any of our three branches of government. Romney and Reid are Mormons; Ryan, Boehner, and Durbin (Majority Whip) are Catholics, and Eric Cantor, the Majority Leader of the House is Jewish. And the Supreme Court has three Jews and six Catholics. Think about that in the context of the history of prejudice against Catholics, Mormons, and Jews in our nation's history. Having just talked about nativism in 19th century U.S. history, I find this factoid simply amazing - in some ways, just as eye-opening as the first African-American president.
As a protestant I don't feel threatened by this prospect in the least. I probably wouldn't have noticed if it weren't pointed out.
I just voted in suburban St. Charles, M (definitely a Republican stronghold). The line was longish, but I spent more time checking and re-checking my ballot than waiting. Someone needs to re-allocate the "line up by first letter of your last name" system... of the three lines, "P-Z" contained about 80% of the voters.
The Democrats who ranted against the Electoral College in 2000 may come to be thankful for it this year. The presidential race looks close, but there's a very real chance that Romney may win the "popular vote" while losing the Electoral College. Frankenstorm Sandy may depress turnout in the generally leftist North East but most of those states will still go for Obama and they get the same number of electoral votes no matter how many people show up to cast ballots.
Imagine if Obama's 2009 stimulus had been spent burying every electric pole on the Eastern Seaboard. Instead, just that one Obama bill spent a little shy of a trillion dollars, and no one can point to a single thing it built.
I bet we could have buried every power line in the United States for $1 trillion.
