It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them,
and to deny them admittance
than to control them after they have been admitted.
Seneca
The Republicans Thinking of Paying Rope-a-Dope on
Class Warfare Tax Hikes? Thumbs UP!
The familiar reader of this blog probably remembers a story while I was serving on the MBA admissions committee during my 3 years at UWM. [For those readers unaware, professors are typically evaluated on teaching, research and service. Service includes a series of voluntary activities such as committee work to being academic jounal reviewers.] We deliberated over borderline student applications whom didn't meet automatic admissions criteria, typically upper-division GPA and GMAT cutoffs. We had some heuristic fallback criteria. Probably in most cases decisions were unanimous, but I recall being the sole dissenting vote on multiple occasions.
I had been asked to fill in when the senior female faculty member in my discipline declined to serve at the beginning of the academic year. At the last regular meeting of the academic year the 6 of us--the male committee chair (a Dean stooge), 2 junior female, and 3 other men (including myself) deliberated over a final group of candidates. One of them was a female minority candidate, whose relevant scores didn't come close to either fallback heuristic; we had routinely rejected candidates with smaller gaps. The chair pointed out that we had to vote her admitted because the Dean had already granted her financial aid and it would embarrass him for us to vote her down; the two hypocritical women on the committee didn't say a word, and the committee deadlocked 3-3. Finally, the chair appealed to my fellow dissenters resistance was futile because this would be my last committee meeting (there had been no discussion with the Dean's office about serving on the committee the next year) and the Dean would replace me with a crony--and the student would be approved next meeting.
When he said that, I immediately changed my vote to 'present'. Nobody was happy with me--my fellow dissidents for seemingly caving in, and the plurality wanted a majority vote. But it was my way of flagging the morally bankrupt process.
The Dems think they have the GOP boxed in. Apparently enough voters, including freeloaders, believe in asking only one group of people to sacrifice. This is little more than stealing and a de facto violation of the unalienable right of property.
The issue isn't whether or not upper-end earners (and I'm not one of them) should pay more but whether they are paying for things inside the scope of legitimate government, e.g., an enforced legal system, common defense, etc.--or other people's bills (entitlements) , whether other earners have skin in the game, and/or whether it's counterproductive. For example, well-to-do people can decide to wait on transactions involving capital gains, defer realization of income or shift wages to investments.
But the Dems think that the GOP will get the blame if the the middle tax cuts aren't renewed. They may be right about that: if the typical voter really understood economics they could never vote for a Democrat--this is no longer the party of Jefferson and Grover Cleveland.
I expect upper-income tax hikes will bite in economic growth: this has never been a case of class-based voting--because only a rounding error of the votes Romney got came from the infamous 1%. We realize raising taxes on job creators and investors is a double-edged sword.
Taking a dive by voting 'present' is better than being co-opted by Democrats to share the blame if and when Obamanomics fails again. Make it simple and demand more for a debt ceiling vote. I know the Dems want more but compromise cuts both ways; let's see them explain not voting for the tax cut renewal. We are less than 4 weeks away from the New Year.
Commenting on an Incompetent President's Rhetoric
Already cut $1T+ in gov spending last yr. Discretionary spending lowest as % of GDP since Ike," Obama answered. Then the president added: "Open to more smart cuts but not in areas like R&D, edu that help growth & jobs, or hurt vulnerable (eg disabled)." Don't look for the president to specify those "smart cuts" anytime soon.The facts of the matter are: money is fungible; Obama has done practically nothing to identify material cuts of any kind; R&D and education are immaterial from the perspective of a $3.7T budget; Obama has mostly discussed accounting gimmicks like reducing automatic budget increases, not even something obvious like an across-the-board cut, narrowing eligibility for government programs, or consolidating operations and reducing bureaucracy, And when Obama talks about cutting $1T, he's not talking about the annual $1T deficit but over a decade of maybe $40T in federal spending.
Same crappy shoddy analysis from an inferior intellect engaging in bait and switch tactics. If an economy is growing, a declining percentage doesn't mean lower spending, and it doesn't imply any relevant spending is effective or efficient. The fact is that this spendthrift guy hasn't done what families and state/local governments have to do: live within a a budget; he hasn't proposed any credible budget or short term cuts. During Obama's tenure the federal government is spending a record high percentage of GDP--mandatory spending, chiefly entitlements, is on an upswing with an aging population and the financially disastrous ObamaCare program--with no way of covering it (there aren't enough rich people to steal from), and Obama hasn't presented a respectable budget to date. Only feeble-minded people will accept Obama's disingenuous rhetoric/political spin at face value.
This kind of crap is what we can expect from him after 4 years on the job? Utterly pathetic.
Entertainment Potpourri
More Holiday Favorite Movies. (Link to network holiday movie schedule.)
- Finding John Christmas. This is one of a series of Christmas movies where Peter Falk played a Christmas angel (Max). The story involves a divorced single mom nurse administrator, her self-exiled heroic firefighter older brother, and the nurse's love interest, a news photographer, whom it turns out had been saved as a boy by the firefighter.
- Fallen Angel. The paths of a boy and an unrelated younger girl whose father abandons the family after a winter auto accident cross again after the now male lawyer comes back to settle his father's estate; the young woman is now the adoptive mother of a blind girl. The woman is unaware her father has continued to live low-key in the area, but the lawyer hires some local help and recognizes the woman's father; add a budding romance between the protagonists.
- The Road to Christmas. A fashion photographer runs into weather-related problems going to Colorado for Christmas nuptials with her Italian fiance and ends up hitching a ride with a widower and his young teenage daughter.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,"The Island of Misfit Toys"
