Our life is frittered away by details...Simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
Andrew Napolitano/Freedom Watch, "The Case For Austerity":
Thumbs UP!
A few readers (who seem unhappy with me the last couple of days--my pageviews have gone down, when I expected my readers would be curious whom I listed as the worst Democrat of 2011) must feel I am being a "RINO" by implicitly calling the House Republicans to go ahead and do the two-month extension for the payroll tax holiday. No. Sometimes in chess you sacrifice a pawn to take a bigger piece on the board.
I've been very consistent on the point that payroll tax cuts, without serious concessions on transfer payments for seniors (the length of payments, the adjustment of increases, and the amounts), are unsustainable; in fact, we need to reform the system even if there are no further cuts. I have repeatedly pointed out in this blog that temporary tax cuts make for lousy economic policy. Money is fungible--even if we find a way of cutting spending to replace the lost payroll contributions propping up transfer payments to today's social security beneficiaries, it's merely tossing a few bags of sand against a surging river of ongoing trillion dollar deficits. Who do our fellow Americans think they are fooling, with the Congress and President playing accounting tricks to justify a 2-point tax cut that undermines the future benefits owed to the same workers? Sooner or later, they'll have no choice BUT austerity; as Judge Napolitano points out (because of the compounding effects), austerity is better done earlier than later.
So why would I "sell out" and tell the House Republicans to accept the two-month extension, something Senate Majority Leader Reid is refusing to negotiate and Obama is publicly pressuring Boehner to accept? Well, to be honest, Obama is getting political payback for the Senate GOP last December refusing to budge on a class warfare tax hike: he couldn't politically afford to lose continuing the middle-class Bush tax cut. And when Boehner couldn't even win a year-over-year budget cut, I could sense something like this was all but inevitable. I don't blame Speaker Boehner: the Dems control the Senate and the White House, and all Obama needs is to threaten a veto and the Senate Dems have more than enough voting strength to sustain it.
The problem is that the GOP has found itself boxed in by 30 years of predictable tax cut rhetoric, and they have let the Dems spin an expiring tax cut as a middle class tax hike. There is a reason the Dems agreed to a payroll tax cut: they have long believed the tax is regressive in nature, and I have also commented I see it as the "Lay's Potato Chip" tax cut: if and when the Republicans agreed to this, they had to know there was going to be opposition to restore that revenue. I personally believe that the Dems are consciously trying to convert social security into a Medicare style business model, including general revenues, a significant percentage underwritten by higher income people. We fiscal conservatives know this is not sustainable; we already have one of the most progressive tax systems in the world.
I'm saying Boehner and the House GOP should not take a heavy political hit over $20-30B in spending in the context of a $3.5T budget, especially since they already agreed to extending the payroll tax holiday in the first place, just in a different context of how to pay for it. Furthermore, the 2-month extension got Senate bipartisan support. There is no way the House GOP looks good to moderates and independents by rejecting a bipartisan plan. Recall Nancy Pelosi and most House Dems hated the weaker version of ObamaCare coming out of the Senate: they wanted a public option; Pelosi also hated giving up the class warfare tax hike. Boehner at this point needs to sacrifice a pawn.
Does that mean I have backed off my political perspective or principles? No. But this is not a battle over principle: this is about power politics, and sometimes you have to sacrifice a pawn.
I want to make one point in particular in terms of the judge's initial remarks which I take exception to: he's arguing both Gingrich and Romney are moderates, unwilling to wield an ax to chop away at a bloated budget. I strongly disagree with this assessment of Romney: Romney has had to deal with bankruptcies in his venture capitalist role at Bain Capital. The idea he doesn't know how to chop away at expenses in government the same way he did chop away at expenses in the private sector is simply unreasonable on its face. I submit if anyone is capable of rebuilding government, it's Mitt Romney.
Big Nanny Knows No Bounds...
There are two topics that have surfaced lately: a proposed national ban of texting and other uses of cellphones by drivers nationwide; and a tenth-amendment issue on online betting. First of all, I don't believe that drivers should be distracted by cellphones while driving (and I don't do it myself), and I certainly understand (not by personal experience but the experience of others) the addictive nature of gambling. But it's almost impossible to "ban" a much larger class of related issues. Look, we will never be able to regulate all aspects of people's lives and dictate their choices, short of a grossly inefficient police state: where do we draw the line?
Let me give some examples from personal experience: I have had two motorists rear-end me at red traffic lights on two occasions: the first was a mother with a small baby in the passenger seat I have no doubt she was distracted by her baby and didn't see me at a dead stop in front of her--and I'm not talking about the light just turning red--I must have been at a stop for 30 seconds before impact. How many times have I seen married couples screaming at each other, with one of them driving? Distractions happen and are almost impossible to regulate out of existence. What's a police officer going to do? Ticket a lady because she looks as though she's about to give her husband a piece of her mind? The second was a couple of blocks away from my Santa Clara apartment when I lived in California; it was nighttime, and this Asian guy (who couldn't speak English) slammed into me. Again, I had been at the stop light for the better part of a minute.
I"m not saying that there shouldn't be traffic laws--but pay attention to dangerous driving, not on the potentially bad driving practices. As for betting, are we next going after workers betting in football pools, participating jointly in the lottery, or guessing Jane's delivery date? Isn't it time we have law enforcement focus on things besides victimless crimes?
Political Humor
"A survey released today found that men spend twice as much on their mistresses for Christmas as they do on their wives. On the other hand, men spend half their income on the wives when the wife finds out about the mistress. So it all balances out." - Jay Leno
[Newt Gingrich has been screwed ever since his current mistress found out about wife Callista's shopping binge at Tiffany's...]
An original:
- California is considering implementing online gambling, since Congress outlawed relevant poker back in 2006. Of course, we knew that from last fall when California voters pulled the lever and came up with three terms of Governor Jerry Brown....
Classic Christmas Cartoons/Children's Songs.
Billy May featuring Alvin Stoller, "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Mambo"
Alvin & the Chipmunks, "Christmas Don't Be Late"
"Snoopy vs. The Red Baron (Snoopy's Christmas)"
"Frosty the Snowman"
"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". For Billy May's mambo version and related video clip, click here.
"The Grinch Song".
