This is what I don't get. They can do this and use this as a platform for 2012. "We are the party cutting spending and closing the deficit". "We are the ones that got things done". "Let us finish it off in 2012". You're getting a ton of concessions all the while the Democrats hold the Senate and Presidency. That's a remarkable accomplishment on its own.

Not sure why they'd destroy all that momentum over some stupid pact they made. I'd be using this as my campaign pitch for 2012. We are on track toward fixing the deficit problems but need more power in Congress and the Presidency to make it happen. Seems better than sending us into a recession and pointing a figure the other way and saying "He did it!".

The GOP House is full of radicals intent on destroying as much of the current government as possible. If that means destroying lives in the process, so be it. They have more in common with Leninists than Jefforsonians. It's time more people realize that.

Yeah, that's a valid point. I'm not really sure I have a grasp of it myself.

Maybe they actually are trying to blow up the economy.

Someone as smart as yourself usually doesn't wallow in the pits of hyperbole. But whatever works for you sitting in the safe haven of elite academia, I guess it's par for the course compared to everyone else, including me.

What do you call a group that will put the world's economy on the brink of disaster all because they can't get 100% of what they want? The Senate seems to have plenty of reasonable Republicans, but nobody in the House is willing to give a single inch.

Ooooooh....he dropped the "elite academia" on you. That's my fave.

lol

From Andrew Sullivan:

Only in America is telling someone they have a good education somehow an insult.

Seriously. What a :banghead: moment.

How else do you go from the lone behemoth bestriding the globe to teetering on the edge of Romanesque collapse in two decades?

I generally think Buc's a good guy, but for some reason he's gotten a bug up his ass regarding me. I figure every time he yells at me I'm at least saving a young child the ignominy of him hollering, "Get off my damn lawn!"

You mean "have too much sense than to throw it down the abundance of dry holes that are available". Good opportunities can find investments (as can plenty of bad ones for that matter), it's a shortage of good opportunities that keeps money in pockets.


On that we agree, the worthless bastards are willing to increase revenue when what the only justifiable move is to reduce spending.

That's capitulation to the enemy. Not one more f'n dime, not under any tax system that punishes success & rewards failure.

That leaves no increase in the debt ceiling.

On a side note though, isn't Obama being unwilling to agree to cuts-only irrelevant, as a willing Senate could override the veto. Right? (yes, I'm genuinely asking, is there something that mandates his cooperation that I'm overlooking?)

Without Obama on board it's inconceivable that both the House and Senate could get 2/3 to override a veto.

Clarifying: I wasn't talking about likelihood, I was simply inquiring about the procedural possibility (it's late, I'm feeling old & tired, wondered if maybe I was coming up brain blank on something that made this different procedurally than a regular old bill)

Except when it comes to banks, contractors, or any other large business that makes its money by lobbying for advantageous laws and contracts outside the scope of a capitalist system. Raising taxes on the rich is bad, but if their business fails, we all need to pitch it and help them out.

:lol: At least I pay attention to you, unlike DT. :)

Whatever.
:p

Neither you nor Jon are worth trying to have actual factual, policy-discussions with anyways.

Then by all means, don't try.

Count the number of posts where I mention your name vs the number where you mention mine. I'm not the one with the apparent compulsion, wtf did I have to do with your little feud with Bucc? In the last page I've engaged SA, jphillips, and sportsdino ... I've looked three pages back & don't see where I've even addressed any of the horseshit you post lately, most of it I haven't even bothered to bypass the ignore on (which I will do with anybody at times if the breaks are disrupting the flow of the thread too much or there's an incomplete quote in another post or whatever). So if you aren't interested in any discussions with me, wth even bring me up?

At this point in your Chavo,Jr FOFC career, you really aren't going to get much rub from trying to work an angle with a main eventer, just be happy that your limited talents have gotten you into the midcard & roll with it for crying out loud.

Bringing you up because I lump you into the same category as Bucc, that's all. Just didn't want him to feel singled out. I have no "feud" with him, nor do I have a compulsion with you. Notice how I've been letting all your BS go lately? Because I don't deign it worthy of responding for the most part, unless it's particularly egregious/bigoted/disgusting.

And at ~400 posts behind you in effectively 4 years less (I registered in 2002 but lurked until 2004) I'd hardly call my "FOFC career" a "Chavo Jr." career, so bite me. Wherever you are I'm right there in the same position on the card. Not that I think that's particularly relevant or anything.

Neither side is doing this imho - this is 'shock/scare' politics, its being played for big stakes in front of a very public stage.

Both sides ultimately know that the debt ceiling has to be raised - but both are also trying to ensure that the deal decided makes them look good ... simple as that.

They don't ultimately care particularly if the stock exchange plummets on monday, they know that so long as a deal is signed off before the sh*t hits the fan it'll recover quickly enough afterwards ....

This. You have learned the ways of American politics rather quickly, Marc.

One can always count on Jon to be deliberately ignorant of the question being asked if the answer he gives lets him masturbate politically.

Amazing how you just skipped completely past all that "wtf could they be holding out for, given these other realities?" because the idea of default made you splooge.


In a political vacuum, where you evidently live, yes, his willingness is irrelevant. In the real world, given that I already said that both Obama *and* Senate Democrats are not going to give in to your fairy-tale world of "cut $3 trillion in spending AND cut taxes", what it means is that if the President doesn't say "aw, fuck it, cuts-only," the Senate isn't going to follow his lead.

Do you remember what happened with the extension of the Bush tax cuts? Same principle - the Senate Democrats were not on board with extending the cuts for people making over $250k, and the President went to them and said "Look, this is the best deal I was able to negotiate."

So what happened? Said cuts were extended through 2012. Without the President's assent on the issue, there's no way the Senate falls in line. He's their political cover if people get pissed off, because one face will draw more ire than 50+.

A willing Senate could override him. Sure. So could a willing House. A willing Jennifer Love Hewitt could come play mattress for me. Why are we discussing any of that? It's about equally unlikely.

Oh please. It was a direct answer to what seemed like a pretty obvious question.


How about you, I dunno, read what I've said consistently throughout the thread instead of shooting from the lip & looking like a damned idiot? For what seems like weeks I've said I've got no problem with the debt ceiling being raised so long as there were no additional taxes in the process.
I've got no desire for a default, have never once said I was looking/hoping/wishing for one ... I simply prefer that option over a solution that includes new/higher/additional taxes and/or de facto versions of the same. You may not agree with that position, you certainly don't have to like it, but it certainly seems to be in line with a significant portion of the people who will actually be voting on it.


Again, how about either reading what I said or, failing that, just don't waste your time or mine by responding with your trademark pompous bullshit? I tried, twice in fact, to make it clear that I was asking about procedural stuff, NOT anything remotely to do with how likely it was. For crying out loud, I even left the door open for an easy joke about me having a brain blank on it. How the hell much clearer could I make it? Would pictograms help next time?

Reading is fundamental, you really ought to try it sometime.

I hope you're right, but there is a sizable group in the House that thinks default is a good option. Apparently close to 100 GOP House members have signed a letter that basically says Cut, Cap, Balance or default.

Which is sheer idiocy, given that they attached a constitutional amendment to it, and failed to even get 2/3 of the House to vote for it, making it a dead bill before it even left for the Senate.

With all these proposals being bandied around combining spending cuts and revenue increases, I kind of wish they would give an example of what the effective tax increases (including loophole closing and whatever else gets tossed into that category) would look like for say a small business pulling in 600k / year. Saying how much total revenue a deal would generate over ten years doesn't give me any feel for that. If I know it's an increase of say $800 / year, I can rightfully question someone calling this a job-killing bill. If it's $80,000 / year, I might not feel that way.

Either way, it seems like it would be to one side or the other's favor to do this, as well as people like me who just want a better idea of what we're talking about. Then again, I guess it's just as likely that no one really knows because there isn't time to crunch the numbers or study the details or they aren't well spelled out.

Yep...that's part of the problem I have as well JAG is that there really isn't enough transparency with these proposals & not enough time to digest such massive sums of money being discussed. I suspect the same would be true for a lot of the Senate & House who would be voting on this as well.

That's why I think we really need to move as much as practical to the state levels as they can be considered year to year and with greater transparency. Not perfect...but at least you'd know where you stand and could also consider what other states do (both well & not so well) as a comparison in the decision making process.

simple, cut spending, raise revenue, raise debt ceiling.

Right, if major tax hikes start closing up small businesses or seriously damaging their ability to hire employees, we're screwed. Somewhere, the Wal-mart corporation is smiling over all this.

Flasch...I'd be curious what you think of cutting the mortgage interest deduction since it would have bearing on your industry?

Personally, I think it probably should never have been there in the first place but with the housing market struggling to get its' footing, I don't know that it is the best time to do such a thing. Or maybe it doesn't matter at the end of the day since most people have likely refinanced at such low rates that the MI deduction may not be as big as it used to be?

I think there are plenty of opportunities to get things on the cheap and grab markets. The best timing would have been a year or two ago if you wanted to raid talent from companies forcing pay cuts on nearly everyone. The people who looked ahead and bought stocks or commodities when they were depressed by the mass hysteria are now looking at 100-200% returns within two years. The people who look ahead and invest in their business could be the ones leading the boom time and cashing out when it is high, instead of pouring money in when it is about to turn back towards bust.

For all the stupid people out there maybe there is a lack of good opportunities, but for anyone who knows 'buy low sell high' the logical leaps are not too hard to make.

Im fine with it. I think that they could cut it on homes assessed over a certain value at a certain rate and then stagger it downwards. Meaning a larger writeoff for someone who owns a home assessed at say, $100K while someone who has a mortgage on a $500K home gets less of a write off.

The no new taxes angle is irresponsible... unless you want to couple it with an across the board spending cut. That means cutting corporate welfare, cutting contracts to corporations, cutting military spending. Basically some of the things where you say "Hell no you can't cut that"... well they need to be cut.

That is how taxation works. You can try and claim your categories are special, but if the budget is 10 trillion, military spending is 6 trillion, and you are trying to cut 5 trillion from the budget... then military spending has to decrease by 1 trillion (or proportionately 3 trillion). That is how NUMBERS work, not just fancy pants politico budgeteering.

I don't agree that taxes need to be maintained at this level, the pain is clearly not distributed fairly (rich pay LESS as a percentage as the middle class) and there is a whole lot of economics out there showing that growth doesn't come from massive stationary piles of wealth horded in the top few percent of the population.

My position has always been to tax more and use that to push through cuts. Couple a high corporate tax and link it to corporate welfare, and successful firms will lobby and demand a massive reduction in useless corporate pork. Simplify the tax code down to a simple progressive bracket again and cut the invisible spending which is government subsidy through tax cuts.

If you want to take the efficient markets approach you need to get the government out of propping up so much of business and personal finances.

A tax hike is more than fair when you are adding 3 trillion dollars worth of pain that is going to hit a hell of a lot of people. Rich asses who got us into this mess need to shoulder a portion of the work as well.

I say this as a rich ass who did not cause the financial meltdown or massive malinvestment of the past few decades, because that tax hike isn't going to break me. I pay a little more on my winnings on the stock market casino, oh well, if I have losses they are deductible, and I am not going to stop playing the game just because I have another percentage point shaved off my spending money.

I think they should get rid of it altogether and give a tax cut on the lower brackets. Net effect is the same, but you stop encouraging mortgage debt. You have a mortgage why are you any better than a person who is taking their income and investing it, or paying down credit card debt?

Overall tax cuts with fewer loopholes is much better for everyone, and in the longrun reduces the number of idiotic bubbles the economy has to pop.

Same for college, I used to think it was something magical that had to be done, but really all it means is we have massive amounts of education debt and rapidly rising college prices all to put together a workforce that can't find a job even with a degree.

This has been my contention as well regarding education, housing, and many other things that are financed (or encouraged to be financed). It really just adds to the wealth disparity that exists & creates new debt-slaves. Many certainly benefit from higher education, and we should strive to have some percentage of the brightest continue with it, but I don't think everybody needs to pay $20-100k to do half of the jobs that need to be done in this country.

There's also this dynamic at play I think as well...instead of companies having a vested interest in training, educating, and cultivating talent...over time they have just deferred that to the employees. I'm not really saying these should be linked heavily, per say...but I do wonder what ever happened to OJT? And I mean...real OJT.

The trend that I have seen in my company and in the industry as a whole (IT) is far less emphasis on college coursework and degrees and more on training and targeted skills. I remember 10 years ago our annual budget would include enough for every staff (in my section) to take 3-4 college courses each year (we paid for tuition). Now such budget item is almost zero but our training/seminar/conference budgets have remained high. HR is slowly coming around, we are getting them not automatically reject those without much college coursework. It's more cost effective for young people not to ring up so much debt (from college or otherwise) and for companies to invest more into on-the-job training. It's a win/win, we wouldn't have to pay as much such a candidate and the candidate wouldn't have to play catch up so much.

There is one specific example I can give that happened earlier this year. There was a person in another department hired solely to run my mapping application for customers. He was not very bright but did his job effectively, albeit in somewhat of a disconnect kind of way. I asked about this relatively low-level position and he said he just needed something to help pay off $50,000 in student loans. I didn't push further but two thoughts ran through my head: 1) what on earth did that $50k accomplish?? and 2) why would you even consider taking on that much debt in the first place??. Due to an increasing level of incompetence and an indescretion (I don't know what), he was fired a couple of months ago. He was replaced with a bright, young lady with exceptional customer service skills (and was able to pick up my complicated application rather quickly). She has no student loan debts and we are allocating training funds for her to move up to the next levels.

Moral of story: If you feel the need to take on massive student loan debts, make sure you have clear plan on having the resources to pay them off as soon as possible. Same goes for public and private entities, and governments.

Good post, Buc.

I agree 100%. The emphasis on targeted skills is really the key for me.

Just want to point out that tax increases don't necessarily kill jobs like many pundits think. Taxes can close businesses down which can cause a loss of jobs, but a lot of people seem to think that raising taxes on a company will cause them to fire a person of that amount tomorrow.

I personally hate the interest deduction on mortgages. It artificially inflates an industry and gives an unfair advantage. I'd go farther and say the same for the automobile industry and the credits that are given. It's sort of underreported because people do benefit from them, but the biggest beneficiaries are the actual businesses involved.

There are times when credits/deductions make sense when it benefits the country as a whole.

I'd also throw in that while I don't like credits/deductions, I think it's counterproductive when they cap them. If the goal is to increase ownership in new homes because it may help other businesses, why would you not want rich people going out and buying big homes? Aren't those the people we should want spending their money?

Caps are merely to make it look like it is not a handout to people who don't need it. The point is that no one should need it. The tax rate should not be high to begin with and then through the magic of buying what other assholes tell you to buy you end up with a livable tax rate. Instead the tax rate should be low, people should buy reasonably sized homes, and others who want to put the money elsewhere can do so.

And I think Buccaneer's scenario should be encouraged, most skills are not taught in the schools anyway and you need to learn as you go. If you are going to be an engineer, fine go to school I don't want my bridge to collapse, but if you are going to be a damn flower shop clerk, coffee shop coffe-maker guy, or a secretary don't put yourself thousands of dollars in debt.

Besides you are slowly pulling down the statistics of college degrees earning more and I don't want to be associated with peasants. Shove off you scurvy dogs, no one is going to pay you more than 20K a year to mix expressos.

Economically, I blame the internet. It has really allowed globalization and we were not able to keep up, prevent the offshoring of jobs nor the growth of the other countries. I'm not saying the internet is bad, just stating the internet was the vehicle for the US not keeping its stranglehold.

Unlike the 80's, 90's when we offshored manufacturing and said that we have IT to fallback on, we have offshored IT and I don't see the next big thing ...

Societal, I blame ourselves. I've been to Asia and Europe the past 4 years. The difference in "sloth" is striking. Prior to reading your message, I've thought myself of the analogy of US=Roman Empire collapsing from within.

Obama is such a failure. Politics as usual in Washington.

There's also some measure of luck there. At the end of WW2, the US was the only functioning 1st world economy. That can't keep up forever but it does lead to a generation of tremendous prosperity. There was only one way to go: down. Combine that with the idea of American exceptionalism and the complete disregard of the previous first couple of sentences here ("Yeah, we're better not at all because of chance but because we're super awesome!") and it's any wonder why the fall is here.

So, on one hand- due to gravity, the fall was bound to happen. But, on the other hand, we aren't at all trying to prolong our own success, instead squabbling amongst ourselves and making it that much shorter.

SI

I'm not exactly going to debate the first sentence. But, as for the first, how is Obama responsible for all of the politics in Washington? What could he have done differently with regards to that aspect of politics?

SI

To me this all boils down to the 2012 election. McConnell stated that his sole purpose after 2008 was making sure Obama wasn't reelected. The Republicans have stood on this issue and made it the battle ground.

The way they see it, they can all point at Obama and yell that he didn't give them what they wanted and they did all that they could. If they force a last ditch deal, they win because they live to fight their battle another day. And if Obama still get's his deal they can say that they won, because they were solely responsible for the safe passage of the bill.

The whole thing is a spin war, where the best sound-byte wins and most ignorant voter loses.

Seems like community colleges would help fit the bill here.

It really says something about the sad state this country is in when those we entrust with keeping the nation strong have sold themselves to the highest bidders and only use their positions as footholds in a struggle for more power.

It says even more that people continue to elect these liars and thieves into office.

IMO: It doesn't matter if those elected are Republican, Democrat or any other party. Anyone who is given the power to make laws is damn near impossible to trust anymore, because corporations have the real power and manipulate them like puppets. We're a country of millions where only a few thousand really have the ability to influence anything. Its going to take something drastic to change that.