Rush Limbaugh Adopts The Class Warfare Of Obama/The Wall Street Journal

Today, here:

The middle class still is, in an aggregate sense, where all the money in the country is. That's where all the money is in the economy. The rich do not hold all the money.

This is the voice of a very rich man who is under attack by a leftist president and a leftist consensus which says that the rich do not pay their fair share, the voice of a man who is not reasoning as a conservative but emoting as a rich man. If he reasoned as a conservative, if The Wall Street Journal reasoned as conservatives, we would be seeing something other than the suggestion that the leftists go victimize the middle class. Like the bank robber, this thinking, if it can be called thinking at all, maintains that you should tax the middle class because that's where the money is.

As such what Rush says is not conservative, but purely reactionary in the worst sense of the term: it responds to an historical development in which it finds itself the victim and seeks escape instead of statesmanship. This is what you get from a Rush Limbaugh, who abhors learning. You wouldn't get that from a William F. Buckley, Jr.

It goes without saying that it is absurd to suggest that all the money is in the middle, but apparently we must insist that it is not so.

The middle quintile of households made a median income of almost $50,000 in 2011. Generously speaking, this approximates to every single income in the country in 2011 making between $35,000 and $65,000 annually, 35 million workers, accounting for $1.7 trillion out of $6.2 trillion in net compensation, just 27% of the total pie. The bottom end of the richest quintile, on the other hand, begins somewhere just north of $100,000 annually, 10 million workers, accounting for $2.1 trillion out of $6.2 trillion in net compensation in 2011, significantly more at almost 34% of the total pie.

But this is no way for a conservative to look at it.

The founders of the country envisioned equality of contribution from taxation, which the original constitution required to be direct, apportioned according to population. This is why taxation was always very low, because the poor could not afford it. This is also why we have a census in the constitution, not so that we may learn how many Americans are of Italian descent, but simply how many there are, for tax purposes. If it is pleaded that the constitution has been changed to permit indirect taxation, it is still more originally American to insist on equality of treatment under the tax code. The real problem with America is that originalist principles were thrown under the bus in the early 20th century by progressives like Teddy Roosevelt, and enshrined in constitutional amendments under people like Woodrow Wilson.

Equality of treatment under the law is the principle conservatives should be trumpeting. But you will listen for that in vain from Rush Limbaugh.

The progressives like Wilson, a Presbyterian whose grandiose ideas bordered on the fanatical and are reminiscent of no one so much as George W. Bush, misused Christianity by insisting that "to whom much is given, much is required" in arguing for progressive taxation, and forgot that "no one can be my disciple who does not say goodbye to everything that he has". The actual price of Christian discipleship was everything you had, whether you were rich or poor. But in the secularized, immanentized bastard version of this under progressivism, the price became distorted so that the richer you were the more you owed, the poorer the less. It is little wonder that for that the rich demanded more, and eventually got it, in special rules in the tax code designed especially for them, which since that time have evolved into the elaborate distortions and complexities of the tax code we face with trepidation and consternation today.

In a very real sense when it comes to the tax code, The American Century has been the most un-American one of all, and the crying need of the time is to reverse it and refound the country anew on the original American principle of equality of treatment.

Rush Limbaugh: Turd In The Conservative Punchbowl

On Rush Limbaugh's role in the decline of American conservatism, as recounted by Andrew Ferguson for The Weekly Standard, here:

The idea that conservatives should have a special interest in high culture​—​the best that has been thought and said, sung and played, carved and drawn​—​has been selectively applied. In speeches and in the [Mars Hill Audio] Journal [Ken] Myers has often raised the question of why political conservatives, who defended the literary canon, the Great Books, with such energy in the eighties and nineties, went limp when it came to defending other traditional forms of cultural expression.

A watershed may have been reached when Rush Limbaugh, who would replace William Buckley as conservatism’s chief publicist in the early ’90s, chose as his show’s theme music a Top 40 track by the Pretenders​—​a self-conscious contrast, Limbaugh has said, to the baroque trumpet concerto that opened Buckley’s TV show Firing Line. Buckley’s fanfare had signaled that he aspired to something lively but elevated, slightly at an angle to the surrounding popular culture. The Pretenders’ guitar riff was meant to signal that Limbaugh’s conservatism would have none of that stuffy stuff: He was fully at home with what had become of American culture and wasn’t terribly curious about what had come before.

Which is why Rush Limbaugh isn't much interested, either, for example, in the original principle of direct taxation in the constitution. American history doesn't exist for Rush before 1913, which is why Donald Trump, who believes in tariffs on China, doesn't qualify as a conservative. Rush only learned the bad stuff from Buckley . . . like how to excommunicate people from the movement. "Stripped-down" isn't just for punkers.

Is FINRA Bent On Driving Out The Little Broker?

Inquiring minds will wonder, after reading this:

Since 2007, there are 12.5 percent fewer brokerage firms, 5 percent fewer branch offices and 6 percent fewer registered representatives in the financial services industry.

According to Treece’s data, there has been a 26 percent increase in the number of disciplinary actions taken against member firms, a 31 percent increase in the number of firms expelled from the industry and a 65 percent increase in the number of individuals expelled. After three hours, the Finra brass apologized to Treece.

China Commits $350 Million To Develop Thorium Power

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has the story here, and tells you better than I can why you should care. What's old may become new again.

Global Warming To Blame For Hurricane Sandy, Now Record Low Temps In China

Amazing, but true. Coastal waters freeze, trapping ships!

Story here.

Obama Finally Cracks The 51% Barrier

It only took two months of diligent counting, but Obama has finally garnered 51.03% of the popular vote in Election 2012, entitling him to a tax increase on the 0.31% of Americans at the top of the income ladder, or so he says.

Mitt Romney got 47%, but not the now proverbial 47%, who are about to find out that tax increases on the rich amounting to $60 billion a year divided by 148 million Americans comes to a handout of just 405 bucks each. Don't spend it all in one place.

And the libertarians, fittingly, got the 0.99%, the actual support of Occupy Wall Street which, like all crackpots, claimed to represent nearly everybody in the 99% while crapping on your front stoop, which free expression libertarians are all for.

Data here.

The Most Important Thing You Need To Know About The Middle Class

Rich people need it for cover.

Here We Go Again: The Wall Street Journal's Lies About The Middle Class

No matter how much and how long they repeat it, it still isn't true: $250K isn't "upper middle class".

Like their opponents on the left, maybe because as libertarians they are genetically related to the left, The Wall Street Journal likes to assert false premises buried in subordinate clauses of paragraphs addressing a different topic, hoping to gain your assent through rhetorical slight of hand. It's an effective technique used by leftists everywhere to ideologize people, which is to create beliefs which are not supported by facts.

Here they are this morning, squealing like all the other rich libertarian pigs at RealClearMarkets about the raw deal they just got in the fiscal cliff compromise:

"Under the new law, some of the steepest tax increases may fall on upper-middle class earners with incomes just above $250,000."

As much as I get tired of challenging this assumption, the stupendous lie that it is awakens in me just enough disgust to get the old corpuscles going in the morning.

If you make $250,000/year, you are in the top 0.67742% of wage earners in this country, ok? You wouldn't know middle class if it hit you in the ass with a sack of potatoes. You can complain all you want about how hard it is to live in New York City on that income, but it still doesn't make you middle class. I'm not sure what it makes you, but out of 314 million Americans, there are only 1.025 million like you at the top of the income ladder. Like in the dictionary, you can look it up.

I'm not surprised to read lies in The Wall Street Journal. They actually advocate lying, here, or excuse it with the is is ought argument, here. In 2012 lying seemed to be a peculiar fascination of the editors.

That's the difference between the old America and the new one. The old America still believes lying is wrong, whether to ourselves or to others. The new one wants to be free to lie. In fact, it believes that unless you are free to lie you aren't free.

To hell with that.

"PMS Is The Major Cause Of Water Retention In Women"

So says How Stuff Works, here, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, here:

"Chris Christie does not have a weight problem. He has a water retention problem.”

Does anyone know if the Weeper of the House included funds for that in the Hurricane Sandy relief bill?

GDP Under Bush Was More Than Twice As Good As It Is Under Obama

Americans Have Been Hoarding Spending Money Since October 27th, 2008

That's the last time M1 was at the $1.4 trillion level.

Americans haven't looked back since.

Since that date in 2008, hoarding of spending money has increased at a rate north of 66% overall. Compare that to the previous four year period from October 2004 to October 2008 when money in consumers' spending accounts increased only 8.4%.

Theoretically, in excess of $1 trillion has been removed from consumer spending over the four year period since 2008, but it has been kept in such a way that it is ready to spend, suggesting Americans have been waiting to spend the money, preparing to spend the money, or just plain saving the money in the only accounts they own where they can keep it.

I'll go with the latter.

This is an enormous sum when compared with the actual dollar increase in GDP for the three years from 2009 through Q3 2012 annualized, which is a measly $1.84 trillion. Assuming non-crisis conditions, however, these monies might have been spent instead of saved and GDP would have increased to at least $2.84 trillion instead of $1.84 trillion, or as much as 35% higher than the reality.

Parenthetically, notice the fear represented by the near verticality of allocation to this category during the debt ceiling crisis of Summer 2011, and then the resumption of the trend upward.

Another such episode will be upon us shortly.

Bush Tax Cuts Made Permanent, Obama Tax Cuts Expire, Payroll Tax Rockets 33%

And Rush Limbaugh says Obama won a "massive victory"?

It depends on your point of view, doesn't it? If you have a Republican bias, you think George Bush won, which he obviously did. The permanent adoption of Bush's tax cuts by the opposition is a vindication, which Rush somehow can't bring himself to crow about, let alone even acknowledge. If you have a Democratic bias, you think Obama won.

No wonder a caller just phoned in to tell Rush to stop campaigning for the Democrats. She rightly perceives Rush to be making a political mistake, to which Rush responds he's been the best campaigner against the Democrats for 25 years, but to no avail, by his own admission.

Has Rush Limbaugh been good for America? His own answer is No!

Maybe it's time for Rush to quit! 

Rich Radio Talkers To Make Bazillions Off AMT Fix And Don't Know It!

The New York Times reported the cost to the federal government of the permanent AMT fix over the next decade at $1.8 trillion, here, based on the findings of the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Do you know what that means?

If something costs the federal government something, it means it saves someone something, namely, the (mostly) rich taxpayers who pay the damn thing, who now get to bear the blame in the liberal media for increasing the deficit over the next decade because of it. That's a good thing to a conservative, last time I checked (keeping the money, not getting the blame), unless you are a conservative radio talk show host whose stupidity is exceeded only by the size of his paycheck. (Sean Hannity is so stupid he's actually criticizing the fiscal cliff deal because it does just that, increase the deficit. Someone should tell him he's just adopted the liberal argument that tax cuts increase the deficit, not that it would do any good). Teams Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham and Beck really ought to call their CPAs before they continue shooting their mouths off about what a massive victory Obama just achieved on the backs of the rich. The irony here is that while Obama thinks he just won a free Cadillac, it turned out to be a Pontiac from Rent-A-Heap, delivered by Rush, Sean and Glenn. They made Laura drive.

When are you stupid people out there in radio land going to get it? Like this guy does:

"The AMT fix, like the Medicare 'doc fix' was an end of year ritual that couldn’t be resolved permanently.  Why you may ask?  Because any permanent fix would reflect in the CBO’s deficit and debt estimates for the years going forward.  Fixing the AMT for any one year was considered a cost for that particular year, but the CBO would base their estimates by current law, which would have the AMT not being fixed for the next year and every year afterwards.  Fixing the AMT for one year is a cost of 92 billion dollars.  A permanent fix it for the next ten years costs almost a trillion dollars.  From a purely crass, political position, having the costs of a permanent fix to the AMT and Bush income tax cuts accrued under the Obama administration ( two items that Republicans wanted to do but could never find the money for):

Priceless.

However all is not well in conservative talk radio land.  I made it a point to listen to what I think was a fair cross section of conservative radio for their take on all things fiscal cliffdom, and I must say, it was a muddled mess of incoherence."

Nov. Unemployment Revised UP To 7.8%, Dec. At 7.8%

One revision to reported unemployment for 2012 went down, from 8.3% to 8.2% (July), and one went up, from 7.7% to 7.8% (November), a wash.

December unemployment comes in at 7.8%.

Read the pdf from the BLS for yourself, here.

The number of people whose primary and secondary jobs are both part-time jobs has increased in the last year, December on December, by 6.4%, from 1.99 million to 2.118 million (Table A-16).

The total not in the labor force has increased 2.56% in the last year, adding 2.233 million for a total of 89.445 million Americans not in the labor force.

Why Isn't There A Single Conservative Radio Talker Happy About The Fiscal Deal?

Why isn't there a single conservative radio talker happy about the fiscal deal? Not a one is glad that Bush's lower tax rates have been made permanent for the vast majority of the American people.  I thought the Bush tax rates were every Republican's sine qua non, since at least 2003.

I see that the reported salary of Glenn Beck is $20 million/year. Sean Hannity reportedly makes north of $10 million/year on television at Fox, and $20 million/year on the radio. Rush Limbaugh makes way north of $38 million/year if you add in his signing bonus. And Laura Ingraham? Not very credible sources say she makes $15 million/year, but that was before the very recent relaunch of her radio show in 2013 under new, and presumably more attractive financial, circumstances. HuffPo here thinks her TV contract with Fox, filling-in for O'Reilly, is in the neighborhood of $1 million annually.

These four people dominate the talk radio airwaves from 9AM-6PM everyday, and they're all severely critical of the fiscal cliff deal. But there hasn't been a single word of gratitude to today's Republicans for getting the Bush tax rates made permanent for 99.7% of the American people.

The reason, of course, is that the radio talkers haven't the slightest feeling for the American people, the slightest understanding of their day to day experience, having left them long ago for the airy regions of the richest Americans in the top 0.3% income club where they now reside, the lowly victims of a paltry 13% tax increase agreed to by Obama and the Republicans, and they are livid.

Ungrateful wretches.

Chief Takeaway From The Fiscal Cliff Deal

The chief takeaway from the fiscal cliff deal is that, despite his many shortcomings, especially as a communicator, Vice President Joe Biden, who brokered the deal through Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, would actually make a much better president than his boss, Barack Obama.

I think I've been wrong about old Joe . . .

Rush Limbaugh Is Back And He's As Big An Idiot As Ever

Rush Limbaugh is back and he's still a big fat idiot.

He actually says Obama won a "massive victory" in the fiscal cliff deal, for raising taxes on the top 0.3%. You know, on people just like Rush. Rush's salary? $38 million/year.

If ever anyone needed any proof that Rush couldn't care less about the principled nature of the lower Bush tax rates for all Americans, this is it, because those rates just became permanent for everyone, except for Rush and about 600,000 other rich Americans who make $400,000 a year or more. Their taxes go up about 13%, but only on paper. You would think a so-called conservative would at least acknowledge that victory and give George Bush some credit, but no, not even after a caller reminds him about that at the end of the first hour. The entire opening monologue was completely self-referential, and suggests that Rush is talking his book here. He doesn't even understand the math in the deal, which now lets the income rich keep $1.8 trillion over ten years from the permanent AMT fix. Their cost under the deal? $600 billion over ten years, as I said, on paper. Even the income rich can still shift income out of the "ordinary" category to the now 33% higher, but still low dividend and capital gains rate category to escape the 39.6% top income tax rate. They will, and the somewhat rosier federal revenue scenario used to sell this deal won't even materialize. The rich will stay that way. They will not pay much more. And the Democrats will be stuck with another failed scheme.

Obama didn't win a victory here, the American people and George Bush did, and I still haven't heard a single so-called conservative radio talker even acknowledge it, let alone be grateful for it. That doesn't buy ears. Only what bleeds does, or what might bleed, which is why all Rush can talk about is some hypothetical threat in the future, when an actual threat, increased tax rates on everyone, has been completely neutralized in the present by good Republican leadership.

I say, "thank you". All Rush can say? "@#$% you".

NYT: Fiscal Cliff Deal Gave Obama Only "Small Victories"

The New York Times, here at CNBC.com, admits it: Obama's victories in the fiscal cliff deal were small.

"For President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress, the fiscal deal reached this week is full of small victories that further their largest policy aims. ... White House officials took the path they did because they feared that a hardened stance on the debt ceiling would result in no deal at all: taxes would have risen on nearly everyone; automatic spending cuts would have begun; jobless benefits would have ended for many; and markets may have reacted badly.

"In the chaos that could have followed, the officials believed, a grand bargain would have been unlikely. If anything, Democrats -- worried they would be blamed for the economy's troubles, as the party holding the White House -- might have struggled to get a deal as good as this week's. Having won this round, Democrats still have compromises to offer Republicans in the next one, like changes to Social Security."

In other words, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts was a gun pointed at Obama's already terrible economy. There was no way the Democrats were going to let that gun go off and ruin the second term of the most overrated president in history. The stock markets knew it for months, which is why they never tanked even as the expiration date passed.

Here's a newsflash for the readers of the NYT: this deal is as good as it's going to get, and Democrats lost big even on the tax hike on the rich because, despite raising taxes on estates and on high incomes, dividends and capital gains, the AMT fix is going to cost the Feds (read: offset the taxes paid by the rich) $1.8 trillion over ten years. The price of that to the rich was barely $600 billion over ten years for those other things, about which so-called conservatives doth protest too much. The rich aren't going to be getting any less rich at all.

And the Times boasts that the deal reduces economic inequality. In their dreams. What a joke.

If Democrats won anything, it's that the economy isn't going to tank immediately under their mismanagement, and that they have more time to take the credit for the successes the Republicans achieve.

CNBC: "The Bush-Era tax cuts will be extended for 98% of Americans"

Actually it's 99.7%, but hey, who's counting.

Here.

Heh. Heh. Gloat. Gloat.

Liberal Henry Blodget Agrees: Pres. Bush/Republicans Won Battle Of Fiscal Cliff

Liberal Henry Blodget of BusinessInsider fame writes for YahooFinance, reproduced here:

"Ever since the Bush Tax Cuts were first enacted in 2001, one goal of the Republican party has been to 'make the Bush Tax Cuts permanent.' ...

"The Republicans may not have gotten everything they wanted out of the Fiscal Cliff deal, but they got almost everything.

"And when it comes to the broader fiscal battle, the Republicans are winning: The federal government's tax revenues are at the lowest level as a percent of GDP in the past several decades.

"The Republicans, in other words, are well on their way to starving the beast."

Moody's Warns Lack Of Deficit Reduction Could Affect AAA Rating Negatively

As reported by Reuters, here:

"On the other hand, lack of further deficit reduction measures could affect the rating negatively," Moody's said.

Moody's placed the U.S. credit rating on a negative outlook August 3, 2011 when the Congress and the White House wrestled over a relatively routine measure of raising the debt ceiling to the point where the United States was on the brink of default before hammering out a deal.

That political impasse and near financial calamity prompted rival rating agency Standard & Poor's to take the unprecedented move of cutting the U.S. credit rating to AA-plus from AAA.

George Will Gives But One Cheer For George W. Bush, Fiscal Cliff Winner

Here:

"Third, one December winner was George W. Bush because a large majority of Democrats favored making permanent a large majority of his tax cuts. December’s rancor disguised bipartisan agreement: Both parties flinch from cliff-related tax increases and spending decreases. But neither the increases nor decreases would have tamed the current $1 trillion-plus budget deficit nor made a discernible dent in the 87-times-larger unfunded liabilities of the entitlement state."

The Youth Vote: Suckers Overpaying For HealthCare

So says Mish, here:

The fact of the matter is youth overpay for health-care as the benefits primarily go to the elderly. Obama needed a pool of fresh suckers to overpay for health-care costs to keep the system solvent for a bit longer.

George Bush Vindicated: Dems Make His Tax Rates Permanent

"I won? That doesn't make any sense."

Stock Markets Love Tax Certainty, Why Not Republicans?

Bloomberg Headline Is Complete BS: Conflates Payroll Tax Cut With Income Tax Deal

The headline at Bloomberg here is total bullshit: "Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households".

The end of Obama's temporary payroll tax cut, the cause of almost everyone's tax increase, has nothing to do with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, but that doesn't stop Bloomberg from lying about it, with a little help from the so-called non-partisan Tax Policy Center:

The budget deal passed by the U.S. Senate today would raise taxes on 77.1 percent of U.S. households, mostly because of the expiration of a payroll tax cut, according to preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.

More than 80 percent of households with incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 would pay higher taxes. Among the households facing higher taxes, the average increase would be $1,635, the policy center said. A 2 percent payroll tax cut, enacted during the economic slowdown, is being allowed to expire as of yesterday.

The Senate deal does nothing to raise taxes on anybody except the very rich. The absence of a provision extending Obama's temporary payroll tax cut for another year does. The latter had nothing to do with the expiring Bush tax provisions, which Democrats just overwhelmingly voted to make permanent.

There's only one way to save the failing Obama: George W. Bush's tax rates.

Speaker Boehner Wins One For The Sipper

The 112th Congress just made the evil Bush tax cuts permament, and conservatives think they've lost?

People who think such things are not terribly intelligent.

Really rich people lost a little (a 13% tax increase on the backs of the top 0.3% of wage earners, who will promptly elect not to take income in the form of wages). Meanwhile the Bush tax rates are set in stone indefinitely for the remaining 99.7% of us. I say let's drink to the 2013 13% tax increase. It'll never hurt them much anyway.

Liberals voted for this. Do you understand what that means? While certain Republicans are whining loudly today that they just overturned a decades long stand against increasing tax rates and suddenly became hypocrites who can't live with themselves any longer for doing so, liberals had to cry uncle and vote in massive numbers for George Bush's tax cuts to save Obama's sorry ass. Who's the hypocrite, huh?!

The 112th Congress voted 346-175 to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, nearly 2-1, and WE LOST?! The only thing Republicans lost was their strategy of trying to link spending cuts to a tax agreement, which was not very wise. So it didn't work. Big deal. Quit whining. Declare victory. Move on. Republicans continue to hold the purse strings. So tighten them. The sequester is an opportunity. The debt ceiling is an opportunity.

I'd say it was liberals and Democrats who lost, and lost big.

Bar owner John Boehner just won one for the sipper, with a lot of help from Ol' Kentucky.

Pour me another.

Republicans Are So Stupid They Don't Even Know They Won

The Republican tax regime of George W. Bush, vilified by Democrats as the source of everything wrong with the country since 2007 when Nancy Pelosi took over as Speaker of House, was made permanent last night, mostly by Democrats and liberal Republicans, and there's narry a voice on the right crowing about the victory. Instead they're all eating crow, and in public, complaining about how they couldn't support tax increases on the rich or about the lack of spending cuts.

To the first point, they don't call Republicans the party of the rich for nothing. They have opened their mouths wide today and removed all doubt. And when it comes to the spending side, Republicans' mistake all along has been to link spending decisions to a tax package. Without a fixed lodestar of revenue, debates about spending have no point of reference. But now, happily, they do, no thanks to them. It is sad that what finally gave permanence to the Bush tax rates was Democrat fear of booking another recession by sucking money out of people's wallets which normally would get spent, crashing GDP. Saving Obama's reputation and his second term demanded it, who now thinks he just won the Cadillac when all it is is a Pontiac. There's plenty of incompetence to go around.

The Washington Post here has the vote breakdown:

The House voted 257 to 167 to send the measure to Obama for his signature; the vote came less than 24 hours after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the legislation. ...

The bill drew 85 votes from Republicans and 172 from Democrats, meaning well more than half of its support came from the Democratic minority.

With 151 Republicans voting “no,” the GOP tally fell far short of a majority of the GOP caucus. That broke a long-standing preference by Boehner to advance only bills that could draw the support of a majority of his Republican members.

Senator DeMented Jim Bailed On Fiscal Cliff Compromise Vote

Senator Jim DeMint bailed on the fiscal cliff compromise vote.

People wonder why.

Answer: it's called going Galt.

Reminder: Elected Democrats in Wisconsin did the same thing by fleeing the state to try to prevent a quorum. Not that that was the situation here. But nevertheless . . .

Really bad form, there, Jimmy boy.

Have fun wrecking the Heritage Foundation, if it were possible to wreck it even more than it already is.

OK, How Long Before The Ratings Agencies Downgrade Us Again?

I'd take bets, but that's illegal, so I'll just wager a hearty pat on the back that the next debt downgrade takes three months, tops.

Futures Soar On Fiscal Cliff Compromise

George Bush Beats Obama: NYT Says Republican Fantasies Fulfilled By Democrats

I won? Hey, that doesn't make any sense.

For once The New York Times gets it right, here, emphases added:

Just a few years ago, the tax deal pushed through the Senate in the early hours on Tuesday would have been a Republican fiscal fantasy, a sweeping bill that locks in virtually all of the Bush-era tax cuts, exempts almost all estates from taxation, and enshrines the former president's credo that dividends and capital gains should be taxed gently. ...

... a hard-fought compromise that [Republicans] could have easily framed as a victory. ...

The bill would do much more than head off the automatic tax increases and spending cuts. It would fix in place a tax code that for more than a decade has caused struggles over regular sunset provisions, temporary solutions and fleeting incentives. The bill would finally make permanent five of the six income tax rates created in 2001 by the first Bush tax cut. It would codify Mr. Bush's successful push, in 2003, to make tax rates on dividends and capital gains equal so that one form of investment income is not favored over the other. ...

The 10-year price includes $762 billion to lock in the Bush tax rates of 10 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent and 33 percent, along with some of the Bush-era 35 percent bracket; $354 billion to continue Mr. Bush's expanded child credit; and $339 billion to secure Mr. Bush's 15 percent capital gains and dividend rates for families earning less than $450,000. The alternative minimum tax fix would cost the Treasury $1.8 trillion, according to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

Democrats say they had little choice. The Bush White House and Republican Congresses structured the tax cuts so that letting them expire would be politically difficult. Add the threat of across-the-board spending cuts if Congress does nothing, and President Obama felt he had no choice but to extend most of the tax cuts or watch the economy sink back into recession.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

House Votes For Fiscal Compromise

As reported here at 11:11 PM tonight:

By a vote of 257 to 167, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a bill that fulfills President Barack Obama's re-election promise to raise taxes on top earners.

Businessman Senator Ron Johnson, R-WI, Votes For Fiscal Compromise

The Washington Post reports here:

Five Senate Republicans also rejected the measure, including tea party favorites Rand Paul (Ky.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), a potential contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. But 40 others voted for it, including such GOP leaders on tax-and-spending policy as Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.) and Ronald H. Johnson (Wis.), a tea party star who frequently consults with conservatives in the House.

Key features of the legislation are attractive to conservatives, as noted in the story:

• The payroll tax cut expires, a recklessly irresponsible diminution of Social Security to welfare.
• Obama's pay raise for federal workers is eliminated.
• Estate tax exemption limits remain as they were and get indexed to inflation.
• The Bush tax rates, except for the top 0.3%, are made permanent for everyone.
• It's a Pyrrhic victory for Obama because instead of $4.5 trillion in new revenue, he gets $0.6 trillion.

Senate Passes Fiscal Compromise At 2 AM, 89-8

So reports CNBC and Reuters, here, noting that taxes go up only on the wealthy and that the sequester agreement cutting spending is post-poned for two months. I'm sure Standard and Poors is not amused.

Without agreement on spending cuts the US risks more downgrades of its debt rating, yet Democrats in particular seem not to care about that.

Separate reports indicated that taxes revert to the old Clinton era rates under the measure for individuals making $400,000 a year or more, which in 2011 included barely 0.3% of wage earners, or 586,000 people, and that new revenue expectations from the agreement amount to a laughable $60 billion per year. Expect this group to take even less ordinary income in the future, which came to barely $500 billion last year.

The expiration of the Bush tax cuts, combined with the sequestration cuts, was supposed to translate into ten times that new revenue per year, or $600 billion, a Pyrrhic victory for the president who was already gloating yesterday at an event clearly staged in advance for the purpose that he got Republicans to flip-flop on raising taxes.

If the House doesn't pass the bill today or tomorrow, that will complicate things, says the story:

"A new, informal deadline for Congress to legislate is now Wednesday when the current body expires and it is replaced by a new Congress chosen at last November's election."

If there is any virtue to the bill, it is that it makes a number of tax rates permanent, and permanently fixes the Alternative Minimum Tax.

The House would do well to take the deal, and press the spending cuts issue separately in two months on the sequestration, and again when the debt ceiling must be raised, but the extension of unemployment benefits yet again for another whole year could be a problem.

Like making the real thing, government sausage isn't pretty.

Progressive Lefties At TNR Recognize Senate Deal Is "Crappy" For Them

So says Tim Noah, here:

"Nevertheless, this is still a crappy deal, and Democrats should still reject it--or be quietly pleased if House Republicans reject it (as they're threatening to do)."

I agree that the deal is crappy for Democrats, really crappy, but the objective of Obama is only political. What's good for the country is meaningless. He's counting on the right in the House to reject the deal, doing for Obama what he cannot do by himself. It is the extremists of both the left and the right which cannot see how Obama is playing them. If the House had any brains they'd take the tax deal, but I don't think they will, unlike how under Pelosi the House progressives swallowed hard and took the Senate healthcare plan instead of opposing it. Better than anyone they know that ObamaCare is not the end game, but the next step to the single payer idea for which they originally stood.

Politically Obama needed to look like a compromiser, and appear reasonable and "balanced", to match his rhetoric played out over a long period, which is now very familiar to everyone. Later he can use the political capital gained thereby to appear like a genuine savior when he swoops in to offer a tax cut to the poor to relieve these unfortunate souls victimized by Republican "intransigence" over spending cuts. Obama has been telegraphing this for what seems like forever. This lousy deal for Democrats gives all the appearance of compromise, but it is intended rather to go to the heart of the split between the more conservative House Republican caucus and the more liberal Senate Republican caucus.

Once those two groups are split publically over a vote on a bill which will wreck the lives of millions, Obama is in the strongest position ever to appear the benefactor of "the middle class", the group he most wants out of his way in his attempt to level American society. In order to really screw them, he's got to get their complete confidence first. To do so he'll throw them a tax cut bone, which the doofusses will be very thankful for and will repay their master for with grateful support when he goes after their real enemy, the rich. You know, the Romneys and Buffetts of the world who look like the guys who fire them from their jobs.

The problem with true believers is that they are true. It blinds them to the way power shifts, which is why they never succeed.

Or Maybe Terrifying Blackouts Mean Hillary Clinton Is Just A Drunk?

Senate Cliff Deal Settles For TEN TIMES LESS Revenue Than Cliff-Diving

As reported here:

"Before [Obama] spoke, details of the emerging deal emerged. It would raise $600 billion in revenue over the next 10 years [emphasis added] by increasing tax rates for individuals making more than $400,000 and households making above $450,000 annually, officials familiar with the talks said.  ... The Biden-McConnell negotiations appeared to offer the last hope for avoiding the fiscal cliff of $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that economists fear could throw the country back into recession."

$600 billion over ten years?

Notice how CNBC leaves out "per year" after "$600 billion" in that second part of the snip after the elipsis. A $600 billion annual hit to the economy would be bad indeed, but only because it would post as a bookkeeping negative. Government spending counts as GDP, and removing $600 billion annually from the pool of funds normally tallied under GDP would "book" a recession before we even got there.

Look, by letting the Bush tax rates expire we were supposed to face a tax increase generating revenues of $500 billion PER YEAR or so, plus $100 billion per year from separately agreed to sequestration cuts to defense and social spending from August 2011's debt-ceiling imbroglio. That's why this fiscal cliff was such a big deal. We were talking $600 billion per year in the case of the Bush tax cuts expiring, not $60 billion per year as the Senate has now agreed. Tax increases on the first $9,000 of income ALONE would have generated $65 billion per year by letting the Bush tax cuts expire on the lowest wage earners for the simple reason that that tax increase affects EVERYONE'S first $9,000 of income. That's how progressive taxation works. Keep going on up the income ladder with all those expiring Bush tax rates reverting to the higher Clinton rates and soon you are talking about $500-$600 billion PER YEAR in revenues. What do you think Obama and Dirty Harry Reid have been greedily eyeing after all? That they are caving to this "deal" just shows how really weak is their position, and how much power the House has in fact, if only they understood it.

Unless of course it is all an elaborate ruse, a trap for the House, which just might be conservative enough to reject the deal for its surrealism at a time when the political consensus in favor of "balance" is rearing its ugly head. In which case the political position of the conservative House will be marginalized more or less indefinitely, and the political power of the Senate enhanced.

The US Senate is clearly the most despicable institution in the federal system, if that were possible, for obscuring all this from the American people, for the way bipartisanship means liberals get to remain liberal while Republicans have to check their conservatism with the coat girl, for continuing to spend through borrowing, and especially for acting as a Super House in doing all this, trying to shove this crap down our throats just as it has already shoved the ObamaCare crap down our throats. Bills are supposed to originate in the House after all, but those which do are routinely ignored by the Senate, which thinks itself superior and possessed of a priority it does not have.

The problem clearly is the US Senate and the way it is elected, how long it serves, and the way it acts. If ever it were time to repeal the 17th Amendment, this is it.

Now Hear This! Obama Finally Gets 51% Of The Popular Vote!

Gee, it only took almost two months, but finally they found a way. Obama now has acheived a clear mandate to do WHATEVER HE WANTS! He's finally got 51.03% of the popular vote, for crying out loud.

Bow down and worship, America! The 47% of you (!) who didn't vote for Obama DON'T COUNT!

The Real Difference Between Sen. McCain and Pres. Obama

This one just screwed the pooch.

This one actually ate it.

Wealthy Ivy League Occupy Wall Street Extremists Captured With Explosives

Now, what would they need explosives for, hm?

Story here:

A detective discovered a plastic container with seven grams of a white chemical powder called HMTD, which is so powerful, cops evacuated several nearby buildings.

Police also found a flare launcher, which is a commercial replica of a grenade launcher; a modified 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun; ammo; and nine high-capacity rifle magazines, the sources said.

Gee, remind you of anyone? You know, Obama's friends?

Democrats Are Coming For Our Arms, As The King Did In 1774

"Early in the morning of September 1, a force of roughly 260 British regulars from the 4th Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Maddison, were rowed in secrecy up the Mystic River from Boston to a landing point near Winter Hill in modern-day Somerville. From there they marched about a mile to the Powder House, a gunpowder magazine that held the largest supply of gunpowder in Massachusetts. Phips gave the King's Troops the keys to the building, and after sunrise they removed all of the gunpowder. Most of the regulars then returned to Boston the way they had come, but a small contingent marched to Cambridge, removed two field pieces, and took them to Boston by foot over the Great Bridge and up Boston Neck. The field pieces and powder were then taken from Boston to the British stronghold on Castle Island, then known as Castle William (renamed Fort Independence in 1779)."

Peter Morici: Obama Threatens To Shakedown Everybody If The Rich Don't Cough It Up

Once again, Peter Morici of the University of Maryland gets it exactly right, here:

"The president, by being so persistent that it's my way or the highway, no spending cuts, taxes on folks over $250,000 or nothing, has basically put a pistol to the head of the middle class. It's threatened them with financial extortion if he doesn't get his way to satisfy the populist wing of the Democratic Party."

Translation: Obama is a gangster who threatens to take everyone's money if we don't give him rich people's money.

Somebody should call the cops.

Democrats Want To Kick The Sequestration Can To 2015

So reports Business Insider here:

On the spending side, the Democrats' offer would delay the "sequester" (automatic spending cuts) until 2015. This would cost an estimated $200 billion. But it would avoid the cuts to the military budget that the Republicans are so desperate to avoid.

If I were in charge of the ratings agencies if that passes, I would answer it with a swift rebuke and lower the credit rating again.

Secretary of State Hillary "The Dog Ate My Homework" Clinton Now Has Bloodclot

Miss deceive, delay, dissemble and deny finally goes to the hospital.

Left: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raises her glass for a toast during a State Dinner in honor of China’s President Hu Jintao at the White House in Washington, January 19, 2011. REUTERS/Jim Young

Equality Of Taxation Would Completely Wipe Out The First 41 Million Wage Earners

If we had anything like equality of taxation in this country, it would completely wipe out roughly the first 41 million of 151 million total wage earners. That's how bad federal spending has become.

In 2011 the first 37.4 million individual wage earners had net compensation of up to $10,000. Add in those making up to $15,000 and you get up to 49.6 million wage earners. So the 41 million mark is reached roughly somewhere between the $11,000 and $12,000 per year level of earnings.

For fiscal 2011, federal spending came to $3.6 trillion, and US population came to 313.85 million people.

If we taxed everyone equally as the US Constitution called for originally (you know, "direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers", which is one reason why we must have a census every ten years to begin with), all that federal spending in 2011 divided by all those millions of population comes to . . . wait for it . . . $11,480 per person.

So federal spending in this country is so bad that we'd have to reduce the lowest paid 41 million Americans to what amounts to slavery, to be fair, because they'd owe everything they make to the government. Everything.

"How much government is spending is the true tax", Milton Friedman once said (quoted here). And also the true tyranny.

Compared To Cash Or Stocks, Bonds Were Best In Last 5 Years

Not adjusted for inflation, the average annual return of the S&P500 Index has been about 0.84% over the last five years, October on October, dividends fully reinvested, but you didn't get much sleep.

The average annual return of the Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund has been about 0.76%, November on November, and you slept like a baby.

Stocks vs. cash has been nearly a wash, but the average annual return of the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index has been 5.88%, November on November. The big gains began in earnest late in 2008.

Perhaps The Most Important Argument Against Consumption Taxes

Perhaps the most important argument against consumption taxes is Murray Rothbard's critique of them here, noting their time-preference prejudice:

"The major argument for replacing an income by a consumption tax is that savings would no longer be taxed. A consumption tax, its advocates assert, would tax consumption and not savings. The fact that this argument is generally advanced by free-market economists, in our day mainly by the supply-siders, strikes one immediately as rather peculiar. For individuals on the free market, after all, each decide their own allocation of income to consumption or to savings. This proportion of consumption to savings, as Austrian economics teaches us, is determined by each individual's rate of time preference, the degree by which he prefers present to future goods. For each person is continually allocating his income between consumption now, as against saving to invest in goods that will bring an income in the future. And each person decides the allocation on the basis of his time preference. To say, therefore, that only consumption should be taxed and not savings is to challenge the voluntary preferences and choices of individuals on the free market, and to say that they are saving far too little and consuming too much, and therefore that taxes on savings should be removed and all the burdens placed on present as compared to future consumption. But to do that is to challenge free-market expressions of time preference, and to advocate government coercion to forcibly alter the expression of those preferences, so as to coerce a higher saving-to-consumption ratio than desired by free individuals."

Rothbard goes on to ascribe this prejudice to "Calvinism", which may be entertaining to the libertarian who is interested in wine, women and song now and has a devil may care attitude about present frugality as a defense against want later. But this assumes there is no moral difference between savings and consumption, which there certainly is when the penniless old man turns up on your doorstep, hat in hand. The libertarian has his own time preference prejudice, were he to admit it, which life teaches us has serious consequences, more often than not.

Be that as it may, it is important to recognize that standard measurements of economic activity in the United States have for some time shown, in something like the following formulation, that "70% of GDP consists in consumer spending", and were it not for schemes like Social Security and Medicare there would be far more ringing of the bell going on at the front. This is quite a remarkable fact in a supposedly Calvinist civilization, a fact which argues for the moral superiority of savings over consumption because despite our better natures we in reality live otherwise. This suggests that we still ought to do everything we can to encourage the former and punish the latter, for the simple reason which the observation of human nature teaches. We are mixtures of good and evil, but unfortunately too often it turns out to be a bad mixture.

The ancient Greeks, among other things, notably taught us "nothing too much", by which we may infer that the preponderance of present spendthrifts demonstrates individual and social excess which ought to be remedied by tax policy encouraging the increase of savers. To right the ship would mean achieving a better balance between the two, and to Rothbard's main point, which is that under a consumption tax savings would inevitably be taxed in the long run anyway just as consumption is in the present because that is what savings becomes, we therefore ought to have no compunction about taxing savings in the end. That is what the death tax accomplishes, the final message to an excess of savings.

In the present context this recommends taxation of consumption in some form to encourage marginally less of it, better mechanisms of rewarding savings of which we have too little, and a death tax which approximates the same level as a consumption tax would operate at. This means that draconian schemes of estate confiscation by the government at death are in principle unjust because as consumption taxes we would never think of imposing similar levies on the living.

Unless, of course, we subscribe to The New Republic.

The Middle Third Of Net Compensation In 2011

The middle third of net compensation in 2011 went to 28 million earners who represent just 19% of all earners. They made $1.95 trillion of the $6.24 trillion of total net compensation in 2011.

In this group earning the middle tranche of all compensation you make between $50,000 and $100,000 a year as an individual.

The Bottom Third Of Net Compensation In 2011

The bottom third of net compensation in 2011 went to 112 million earners who comprise the first 74% of all earners. Altogether they earned $2.2 trillion of the $6.24 trillion of total net compensation for the year.

You remain in this group until you earn somewhere between $45,000 and $50,000 a year, after which you may be said to join those earning the middle third of net compensation.

The Top Third Of Net Compensation In 2011 Went To 10.7 Million Earners, The Top 7%, Making $100,000/yr Or More

As shown here.

The top 7% of earners, 10.7 million workers, made $2.07 trillion of the $6.24 trillion total of net 2011 compensation.

You entered this group once you made $100,000/yr.

5 Years of the S&P500: Down Just Over 5% Nominal

Real Incomes Have Been Essentially Flat For 6 Years

Obama Raises Federal Pay $11 Billion Over 10 Years On Eve Of Fiscal Cliff

Now you know why Obama cut his vacation short . . . to raise spending! And rub our noses in it!

This guy is the biggest jerk ever to sit in the Oval Office, maybe excepting Lyndon Baines Johnson who reportedly pissed on the shoes of a soldier who dutifully stood at attention.

If ever anyone needed evidence that El Presidente couldn't care less about the consequences of federal spending for the fiscal situation, this is it. He's "in your face" about it, on the very eve of the biggest tax increase on the American people in living memory, and Republicans still take this guy seriously.

As reported here:

CBO [The Congressional Budget Office] says the (discretionary) cost of the .5% pay-hike the President is calling for in the Exec Order – relative to a freeze – is about $500m in FY 2013 and $11 billion over the ten years from FY 13 - FY 22.  The reason why the FY ’13 savings is only $500 million is because the pay hike as proposed by the President’s Exec Order would not go into effect until April 1st, 2013 - when the current CR [Continuing Resolution] expires. So it only covers half the fiscal year. The annualized cost of the pay hike is about $1 billion/year."

If Republicans had any imagination, they'd shut the damn government down . . . for the next two years, and teach Obama what it's like to run something. Teh.

That would save about $2 trillion of the taxpayers' money as government makes do with current revenues. The sound of the squealing pigs would be worth it.

At 2% Inflation/Year, It Takes Just 35 Years To Devalue The Dollar 50%

The rule of 72.