Election 2012: TARP Republican or TARP Democrat? Some Choice! Same as 2008!

They are the TARP men! Goo Goo G'Joob.

Liberals Hate Middle Class: Bruce Bartlett Attacks The Mortgage Interest Deduction

Eliminating the mortgage interest deduction has become something of a fetish for liberals and libertarians in America. The enthusiasm for eliminating the deduction suggests a hatred for bourgeois values.

Liberals use it like a shield to obscure the hidden privileges they enjoy under the tax code, privileges which the vast lumpen proletariat is too dumb to understand. Extracting more revenue from their lessers so that they have more money to play with is the goal of liberals, whose constant refrain is "the money is in the middle." Actually, the money escaping taxation in America is at the top, where nearly $2 trillion of net compensation escapes Social Security taxation, amounting to a tax loss to the feds of about $300 billion annually.

Libertarians use elimination of the mortgage interest deduction more actively. To them it is like a club which they can use as a weapon to drive people from their homes in their effort to turn workers into interchangeable parts, which they can then move around wherever they need them and thus drive down the cost of their labor. If you are unemployed for a very long time because you won't move from your home, to a libertarian like a John Tamny or a Megan McArdle at The Atlantic, you are nothing but a depreciating asset, as she has put it.

Just look how Bruce Bartlett attacks the mortgage interest deduction here, misrepresenting its place not simply by singling it out but also by failing to place it within the spectrum of tax loss expenditures generally:

"The problem, insofar as tax reform is concerned, is that the mortgage interest deduction and that for property taxes reduce federal revenues by $100 billion per year."

If only that were an impressive number compared to the usual categories of tax loss expenditures.

The Joint Committee on Taxation, for example, puts the combined tax loss from deductions for health-related and cafeteria plans at $140 billion.

Tax loss from exclusion of retirement-related benefits comes to $160 billion when you include Social Security and Railroad retirement benefits, capital gains excluded at death, and pension and 401k plan contributions.

The last two together alone come to $91 billion.

Coincidently, reduced rates of tax on capital gains and dividends as a category by itself means a tax loss of nearly $91 billion, more than the mortgage interest deduction at $78 billion. 

The rich may benefit a lot from the tax perspective from the mortgage interest deduction, but they benefit more than anyone from reduced rates of tax on capital gains, and Bruce Bartlett knows it:

For most people, income is simple: it means wages or perhaps a pension or Social Security benefits. Income from capital – dividends, interest, rent and capital gains – seldom enters into the calculation. The vast bulk of such income is earned by the ultrawealthy, like Mr. Romney.

Bruce Bartlett has made it a regular habit to sniff at the proposals of Republicans, who recently restored the mortgage interest deduction plank in their platform, the real inspiration for his screed.

In this he reminds me of no one so much as Katie Couric when she went nosing around the "unwashed middle" before her ilk got hosed off in the November 2010 elections. But liberals still have a certain air about them.

I think they need another bath.

Mish Complains About "Useless" College Degrees, And Lousy Google Translate

"You're umbday in any language"

In ye good olde days, a college degree came with a foreign language requirement in addition to demonstrated facility with the finer points of English.

Holders of college degrees could reliably be counted on to read something in Italian, German or French and put it in a presentable form in their own language. In addition to knowing how to type, the skill supplements the work, say, of a financial blogger, unless your name is Mish, who has a degree in civil engineering.

On August 21 he's trying to plumb the depths of stories about the European Central Bank, noting here:

Every day I get links from Spain, Italy, Germany, and Australia. The first three frequently cause problems. Translation from German is particularly difficult.

For example, a Google-translated headline on Welt Online reads ECB chief demonstrates German banker. ...

With the help of Bran from Spain, Andrea from Italy, and "EM" from Germany I can frequently provide much better translations of foreign articles than I could otherwise.

Then three days later he complains here in a lengthy diatribe that colleges today turn out too many useless degrees:

Yet colleges churn out thousands of graduates, year after year, with perfectly useless degrees.

Clearly his own degree has failed him, not in the least because, even after all that, he still doesn't recognize it.

Education And Health: Inflation Is Highest Where Government Interferes The Most

Mish has the chart and discussion here.

Rasmussen Polling Also Shows Florida As A Must-Win For Romney

Based on Rasmussen's electoral college map tonight, Gov. Mitt Romney must win Florida to prevail against Obama.

Rasmussen shows Obama presently with 247 and Romney with 206 electoral college votes, and just six states in toss-up status (unlike RCP's ten in toss-up status): Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Wisconsin (10), Ohio (18), Virginia (13) and Florida (29).

My hunch is Obama figures Iowa is key to himself because he's counting on heavily union-dominated Ohio going his way, but Obama is so far making an effort not to telegraph this fact. Together those two toss-ups put him at 271, just enough to win. That's why he's spending so much time in Iowa after the pick of the 42 year old Rep. Paul Ryan by Romney, and why Byron York is fixated on Iowa in a recent column, but for the wrong reason. Iowa is more winnable for Obama than it is for Romney. In other words, Obama is theoretically right now conceding in a worst case scenario Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado to Romney, which together give Romney only 267, not enough to win, because he believes he can win in Iowa and Ohio.

A Romney loss in Florida and an unlikely sweep of all the rest of these Rasmussen toss-ups means Romney still loses with 262.

Romney must prevail in Florida to win, if Rasmussen's map is correct. That's why Romney has focused on Florida right out of the box in sending Rep. Paul Ryan to Florida to appear there with his mother, reassuring the seniors on Medicare.

This election is going to be about the economy in general, but spending for Medicare is the tip of the Republican spear, while the president parries with appeals to the youth vote, which in Iowa turns out second only to Minnesota. For a state Romney at one time early decided not to contest in the primaries, Sen. Rick Santorum's narrow victory there identified Iowa to Obama as a state vulnerable for a candidate Romney.

The Des Moines Register reports here on five visits to Iowa by Obama in recent days:

The sitting president of the United States is coming back to Iowa next week to do some more campaigning, on the heels of a super-sized three-day visit to the state last week.

Obama is spending so much time in such an insignificant place because of the electoral math somewhere else, combined with the probability of winning Iowa's youth vote.

Female Domestic Violence Lawyer Used "Legitimate Rape" Phrase In '09 Newsday Article

But when Rep. Todd Akin uses it it's wrong?

Well obviously! He's a man, a Protestant, and holds an MDiv degree from a theologically conservative seminary, making him once, twice, three times a . . . baddy.

Here:

Lois Schwaeber, director of legal services for the Nassau County Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said cases where people make false reports of rape hurt all legitimate rape victims seeking justice. But she said prosecuting someone who has made a false report will discourage real rape victims from coming forward as well.

10tv In Ohio Uses "Legitimate Rape" In April 2012 Headline

But in August 2012 Rep. Todd Akin can't use the phrase "legitimate rape" and remain the Republican nominee for the US Senate from Missouri?

The story is here.

Here is the screenshot:

Female Reporter Speaks Of "Legitimate Rape" For Long Island Newsday In 2009

But for some reason Rep. Akin made a mistake using the words "legitimate" and "rape" together.

The story is here by Ann Givens:

On the one hand, they will want to discourage people from lying to law enforcement, and show that there will be consequences for doing so, experts said. On the other, they don't want to discourage legitimate rape victims from coming forward, or discourage people who lied at first from telling the truth later on, experts said.

Here's the screenshot:

Orlando Sentinel Quotes Orange County Official Saying "Legitimate Rape" In 2010

Rep. Todd Akin can't use the words together, but she can?

The story is here:

"There is potential that the recent cases involving false allegations of sexual violence will negatively influence legitimate rape victims from coming forward to receive recovery services, report the crime to law enforcement and ultimately hold their offenders accountable," she says.

Here's the screenshot:

George Neumayr: Romney And His Republicans Are Not Authentic Conservatives

So says George Neumayr for The American Spectator, here, and so do I:

An authentically conservative party would find Romney's unprincipled position far more chilling than Akin's gaffe. If unborn children gain or lose their right to life depending upon the circumstances of their conception, then the party has already conceded that that right doesn't exist. Ronald Reagan understood the implications of that concession and never wavered in his defense of the right to life of all unborn children, not just some of them. ... For all the talk about "pragmatism" and "diplomacy" this week from country club Republicans, they didn't display any towards a candidate who won a primary fair and square.

How One Conservative Voted Against Materialism And The Imperial Presidency In 1976

From Bill Kauffman, here:

[T]he Port Huron Statement, and SDS, emphasized the core principle of decentralization, of breaking overly large institutions and even cities down to a more human scale, “based on the vision of man as master of his machines and his society.”

“We oppose the depersonalization that reduces human beings to the status of things,” declared the authors. The line might have been written by another Michigan lad, Russell Kirk of Mecosta. Kirk was no New Leftist, though he did later befriend—and in 1976 voted for—Eugene McCarthy, the peace candidate of the 1968 Democratic primaries, the distributist-inclined Catholic intellectual who befuddled his conventional liberal supporters with talk of a salutary “depersonalizing” of the presidency, of reducing that office to its constitutional dimensions, shorn of the accreted cult of personality.

Mitt Romney: Today's Symbol Of The Fatal Impoverishment Of Conservatism

"[T]he conservative movement is enfeebled, intellectually and in backing, at the very hour of its popular ascendancy. (By the way, America’s bigger men of business, with very few exceptions, never have been of any help to really conservative causes; if they think of politics at all, it is much as they think of professional sports teams: 'Winning is the name of the game.') This may become a fatal impoverishment. ... 

I am not implying that conservative folk should set to forming a conservative ideology; for conservatism is the negation of ideology. The conservative public man turns to constitution, custom, convention, ancient consensus, prescription, precedent, as guides—not to the narrow and fanatical abstractions of ideology. I am saying, rather, that unless we show the rising generation what deserves to be conserved, and how to go about the work of preservation with intelligence and imagination—why, the present wave of conservative opinion will cast us on a stern and rockbound coast, perhaps with a savage behind every tree. Conservative leaders ought to declare, with Demosthenes, 'Citizens, I beg of you to think!' ...

So it is that thinking folk of conservative views ought to reject the embraces of the following categories of political zealots:

Those who urge us to sell the National Parks to private developers.

Those who believe that by starving South Africans we can dish Jesse Jackson and win over the black vote en masse.

Those who would woo the declining feminists by abolishing academic freedom through a new piece of 'Civil Rights' legislation.

Those who instruct us that 'the test of the market' is the whole of political economy and of morals.

Those who fancy that foreign policy can be conducted with religious zeal, on a basis of absolute right and absolute wrong.

Those who, imagining that all mistakes and malicious acts are the work of a malign or deluded 'elite,' cry with Carl Sandburg, 'The people, yes!'

Those who assure us that great corporations can do no wrong.

Those who discourse mainly of the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderburgers, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

And various other gentry who abjure liberalism but are capable of conserving nothing worth keeping."

-- Russell Kirk, 1986 (here)

Catholic Republicans Gang Up On Protestant Todd Akin

Laura Ingraham calls him a liar, Sean Hannity gives a prominent forum to Ann Coulter, who likens Akin to Eliot Spitzer and elsewhere calls him a swine, and Hugh Hewitt encourages him to drop out. Oh yeah, and throw in the VP nominee, well after the deadline.

Old Republican Fools For Romney

 

 

 

 

The hoary fool, who many days

Has struggled with continued sorrow,

Renews his hope, and blindly lays

The desp'rate bet upon tomorrow.

-- Matthew Prior

Ann Coulter Champions Exception For Abortion In Cases Of Rape On Hannity

Why is it we hear the loudest shrieks for mortal sin from the mouths of Republican Roman Catholics?

The Voting-Third-Party Line of the Day from Forbes.com

“ Always vote for a principle, though you vote alone, and you may cherish the sweet reflection that your vote is never lost. ”

-- John Quincy Adams

What Do Arguments For TARP And Arguments For Romney Have In Common?

Fear.

The Growth In Income Inequality Wasn't A Bug, It Was A Feature Invented By Liberalism

If you generally tax some income at one rate and other income at a lower one, what do you think would happen over a long period of time?

Obviously you would see income shift to the category taxed at the lower rate, to the extent that this is possible for those earning it.

This is what has happened with income from capital gains, the tax rate on which has been much lower by law than the tax rates paid on ordinary income.

That's the long-term lesson from the data, the salience of which seems to elude Bruce Bartlett writing for The New York Times:

For most people, income is simple: it means wages or perhaps a pension or Social Security benefits. Income from capital – dividends, interest, rent and capital gains – seldom enters into the calculation. The vast bulk of such income is earned by the ultrawealthy, like Mr. Romney.

According to the Tax Policy Center, in 2011 those in the middle of income distribution got about 70 percent of their income from labor and only about 3 percent from capital. By contrast, those in the top 1 percent of income distribution got 30 percent of their income from labor and 35 percent from capital.

The disparity is even more pronounced when one looks at the distribution of aggregate capital income. The total came to $1.1 trillion last year. Of this, 86 percent was earned by those in the top 20 percent of households, ranked by income. But this figure is misleading, because within the top quintile, the vast bulk of capital income went only to those at the very top. ...

[T]he tax code makes a sharp distinction between income from labor and income from capital. Wages are fully taxed at rates as high as 35 percent by the income tax, plus taxes for Social Security and Medicare. In contrast, realized capital gains and dividends on corporate stock are taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent and do not bear any taxes for Social Security or Medicare.

Income inequality in America has grown precisely for this reason, and it is an artifact of progressivism, and of liberalism generally.

The contemporary distinction between capital gains and ordinary gains got much of its impetus under FDR, when the modern tax code differentiated for the first time between capital gains held for 1, 2, 5 and 10 years, exempting from taxation 20 percent of gains, 40 percent, 60 percent and 70 percent, for the respective holding periods. Considering how steep and confiscatory marginal tax rates became after 1916, the provisions under FDR look like a bone thrown to the rich. What these reforms did, however, was cement the trend toward tax avoidance for the rich which had been introduced earlier.

Originally capital gains had been taxed as ordinary income up to a rate of 7 percent, which was the top marginal income tax rate for the first three years of the modern income tax. But as marginal tax rates on ordinary income skyrocketed after 1916, the low 7 percent capital gains rate continued to apply until 1921, after which the rate was 12.5 percent, regardless of holding period and despite the fact that marginal income tax rates soared to 63 percent and higher as the years marched on.

So from the very beginning the rich were given their privileges in tax avoidance by making distinctions between income while the broad mass of the people got soaked with income taxes on their ordinary income. The steeply progressive rates made it appear that the rich were paying their fair share when in effect they had recourse to a back door to ameliorate their condition through the capital gains code provisions. Liberalism was nothing if not hypocritical. 

If our tax policy goal today is to reduce income inequality, as seems to be the prevailing notion among liberal and liberal-leaning commentators, we ought to reconsider that history and appreciate better how tax policy is often just pushing on a string. To a conservative what leaps to mind is making taxes on ordinary income look more like taxes on capital gains income by flattening rates, not the other way around, raising capital gains rates to look more like progressive income tax rates, and broadening the base up the scale by capturing all income of all kinds for Social Security and Medicare before considering broadening the base down the scale by abolishing tax loss expenditures like the mortgage interest deduction. 

Income inequality begins with treating some forms of income differently than others for tax purposes. There may be important social and economic reasons for doing so, such as promoting family formation or capital investment, but it should never be forgotten that you will immediately be introducing inequality into the equation when you do. How you compensate for that is what matters in approximating a just society. 

Paladins of Economics Eschew the Mob and Excuse the Fed

So says Brian Domitrovic for Forbes, who thinks the Fed's bad habits are congenital.

Domitrovic calls attention to the glaring omission of monetary reform in Mitt Romney's economic proposals, about which his hundreds of recent endorsers from the economics profession have likewise said not a word:

This is a worrisome tendency in economics, on two counts. The first is that the vox populi is probably onto something. Why should the profession risk being wrong on such an important issue?

There is perhaps no institution in our government that has been so cornered by economists as the Fed. The Fed is the place most dominated by the credentialed Ph.D.’s of the profession. It would rankle economists to concede that despite this capture of the Fed by their ranks, the Fed was at fault for causing the worst economic crisis in eons. It would implicate the profession in the whole mess.

Gee, just maybe it's because the capture has gone precisely in the other direction: economics professionals profit from the status quo which puts them in the center of the system which puts them and their friends first in line for the funny money. Why do you think people so desperately worship the presidency in this society, and so desperately want to possess it?

Read the whole thing here.

Byron York Doesn't Get It: EVERY Toss Up State Matters If Romney Loses Florida

Mitt Romney can take a loss in a New Hampshire or an Iowa, give or take, but if he loses in Florida he cannot. Romney absolutely must win in every single other toss up state if he loses Florida, from Iowa to New Hampshire to Nevada to Ohio to Wisconsin to Virginia to Colorado to North Carolina, in order to win.

Iowa doesn't have a special meaning, especially now if it's really true that Michigan moves into the toss-up column as Real Clear Politics says today. Rick Santorum did especially well here in Michigan with pro-life Democrats, who also helped pick Todd Akin in Missouri, and Romney's throat cut to Todd Akin today isn't going to play well with Santorum's supporters, an incident which post-dates the poll taking Michigan out of the leaning-Obama category. The broader point is that 56 percent of Republican primary voters in Michigan picked someone other than Romney: either Santorum, Gingrich or Ron Paul. Romney might have capitalized on the new poll had he not flubbed on Todd Akin. It just shows Romney is still not a skilled politician.

Mitt Romney has emphasized protecting Medicare in Florida as a matter of first importance because he knows Florida is the key to his victory in November. If he can convince seniors there, he can convince them anywhere. Florida makes it easier to win in this bad environment, but without it, it's going to be very much more difficult.

Misguided story here.