Monday, November 21, 2011
As this is being written, members of the US Congress have, once again, proven that they are totally clueless. It seems that they can't agree on any long-term method for reducing the budget deficit of the US Treasury. As is the case with all treasuries, managers balance their ability to raise cash with their need to fund liabilities. For corporations, that means, that revenue, e.g., sales, must be of a sufficient amount to meet payroll and other expenses. If sales revenue falls short, the company can borrow money to meet its obligations. If borrowing still falls short or if the company can not borrow, it can file for bankruptcy and stay in business or close its doors and walk away from its obligations.
The US Treasury however, can't have a Columbus Day Sale or use another way of selling goods and services to raise cash. It relies on tax revenue and some fees for income. When, in times of lower tax collection - recessions - the treasury either borrows greater amounts of money, or the congress raises taxes. As we all know, republican members of congress have insisted that raising taxes is out of the question. This misinformed position is based upon the the fact that they have signed a pledge not to raise taxes under any circumstances.
Now, since the onset of WW II, which really pulled the US economy out of the depression, the US has, pretty much, conducted a monetarist economist policy. There have been times when an administration has tried other methods but actual fiscal policy has been most effective when it relied on the basic tenets of Keynesianism. The rationale for so doing, friends and neighbors, is pretty simple - it works - especially here in the good ole US of A.
Before we get too far, the text of the House of Representatives pledge follows:
United States House of Representatives candidates Taxpayer Protection Pledge
I, _______________, pledge to the taxpayers of the _____ district of the state of__________, and to the American people that I will:
ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and
TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.
_________________________________________ Signature
_________________________________________ Date
_________________________________________ Witness
_________________________________________ Witness
Pledges must be signed, dated, witnessed and returned to:
AMERICANS FOR TAX REFORM 722 12th Street, WASHINGTON, DC 20005
PHONE (202) 785-0266 FAX (202) 330-5224
Now, I'm not an expert on the US Constitution. But simple logic tells me, that if one is bound by a sacred oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, then, one is precluded from PLEDGING loyalty to some other institution. This is a PLEDGE! The "to the taxpayers" bit provides cover, but congress people have pledged their loyalty to a third party. We all know, that as soon as one of them tries to act rationally and agrees to eliminate some of the tax shelters or to actually increase tax rates on high earners, Americans For Tax Reform will be all over them screaming that they are un-American!
The US can not conduct sound fiscal policy with one hand tied behind its back. It MUST have the ability to raise taxes during difficult economic times.
Regardless of how we got into this mess - and a great deal of that has to do with lax congressional oversight - the only way out is to reform the tax code so that the banks and the hedge funds and GE and the other corporations pay their fair share. These people have become extremely wealthy because of the opportunity that has been given them here in the US. It's not fair for them now, to try and hog it all.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Leadership, or the Lack Thereof
If a reader were to go back and read he pages of this blog, he or she would discover that, as it relates to the present state of economic affairs, a lack of responsible leadership is the principal reason why we find ourselves mired in this mess. That is, if the heads of the various participating perpetrators paid attention to the direction of the market in single-family real estate, the problem could have been averted. This is a gross simplification and one that assumes that the heads of the various entities - from the originating mortgage companies to the providers of the credit needed to finance the whole thing - actually possessed the intelligence to understand that no market goes up in perpetuity.
As providing a rationale, I also talk about the duplicity of the Bush administration - mushroom clouds, WMD and the rest - as the foundation of starting unnecessary and grossly expensive wars as well as the ONLY focus of our congressional leaders on raising money as opposed to actually doing their jobs. In addition, we the people, took our eye of the ball and submerged ourselves under a mountain of debt. This, naturally, changed our focus, increased our stress level and, ultimately opened the door to an unregulated Wall Street and an unresponsive government.
Now, in the sense that they generally outline a specific problem as opposed to offering solutions, I don't usually reference journalists. However, Thomas Friedman has written an op-ed piece for today's Times that is worth reading. As usual, anything that I scribble here is far more clear in the old noggin than on the page, but read on and THINK!
Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
THE melancholy over Steve Jobs’s passing is not just about the loss of the inventor of so many products we enjoy. It is also about the loss of someone who personified so many of the leadership traits we know are missing from our national politics. Those traits jump out of every Jobs obituary: He was someone who did not read the polls but changed the polls by giving people what he was certain they wanted and needed before they knew it; he was someone who was ready to pursue his vision in the face of long odds over multiple years; and, most of all, he was someone who earned the respect of his colleagues, not by going easy on them but by constantly pushing them out of their comfort zones and, in the process, inspiring ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
There isn’t a single national politician today whom you would describe by those attributes, which is why the fake Jobs obituary published in The Onion, the satirical newspaper, struck such a nerve. It began by saying: “Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple Computers” — and the only American in the country who had any clue what he was doing — “died Wednesday at the age of 56.” It went on to quote President Obama as saying that Jobs “will be remembered both for the life-changing products he created and for the fact that he was able to sit down, think clearly, and execute his ideas — attributes he shared with no other U.S. citizen. ‘This is a dark time for our country, because the reality is none of the 300 million or so Americans who remain can actually get anything done or make things happen.’ ”
Ouch! Fortunately, the last part is not true. There are still thousands of U.S. innovators who embody Steve Jobs’s most important attribute: They didn’t get the word. They didn’t get the word that we’re down and out. They didn’t get the word that we’re in a recession. They didn’t get the word that Germany is going to eat our breakfast and that China is going to eat our lunch, so they just go out and invent stuff and make stuff and export stuff. Like Jobs, they just didn’t get the word — and thank God.
But we’re not doing them justice because our political system is not providing these entrepreneurs what they need to thrive in the 21st century. Think of how cramped and uninspiring our national debate has become. It is all about cutting, filibustering, vetoing and blaming — or solving our problems by either untaxing or taxing millionaires alone.
Neither party is saying: Here is the world we are living in; here are the big trends; here is our long-term plan for rolling up our sleeves to ensure that America thrives in this world because it is not going to come easy; nothing important ever does.
What is John Boehner’s vision? I laugh just thinking about the question. What is President Obama’s vision? I cry just thinking about the question. The Republican Party has been taken over by an antitax cult, and Obama just seems lost. Obama supporters complain that the G.O.P. has tried to block him at every turn. That is true. But why have they gotten away with it? It’s because Obama never persuaded people that he had a Grand Bargain tied to a vision worth fighting for.
We cannot bail or tax-cut our way to prosperity. We can only, as Jobs understood, invent our way there. That is why America needs to be for the world in the 21st century what Cape Canaveral was to America in the 1960s: the place where everyone everywhere should want to come to start up and make something — something that makes people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, entertained, educated or secure.
To do that, we need to reinvigorate our traditional formula for success — quality education and infrastructure, open immigration, the right rules to incentivize risk-taking and government-financed scientific research. But to do all that in a recession means we have to cut spending, raise tax revenues and invest in this formula. And to do that, we need a Grand Bargain that involves upfront spending plus credible, long-term fiscal reform that is at the true scale of our debt problem. Obama has given the spending plan, but he has not produced a credible, this-really-hurts fiscal plan — and many Americans know it. The paucity of Obama’s audacity is striking.
Sometimes the news is in the noise, like the Wall Street protests or the Tea Party. But sometimes the news is also in the silence. To me, the biggest protest in the country today is that when the Tea Party insanely blocked any G.O.P. participation in a Grand Bargain that involved taxes, most Americans were silent. Why? Because they didn’t think Obama was offering a big plan from his side, either — one that rose to the true scale of our problems and aspirations, one that would push us out of our comfort zone and make us great.
“The country has been way ahead of the politicians,” argues Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. “They are impatient with the small and the short term. Voters totally understand the scale of the problem facing the country, and they are looking for leaders who are ready to step up and offer a big vision — and don’t try to fool them with things that don’t address the long-term challenges.”
As providing a rationale, I also talk about the duplicity of the Bush administration - mushroom clouds, WMD and the rest - as the foundation of starting unnecessary and grossly expensive wars as well as the ONLY focus of our congressional leaders on raising money as opposed to actually doing their jobs. In addition, we the people, took our eye of the ball and submerged ourselves under a mountain of debt. This, naturally, changed our focus, increased our stress level and, ultimately opened the door to an unregulated Wall Street and an unresponsive government.
Now, in the sense that they generally outline a specific problem as opposed to offering solutions, I don't usually reference journalists. However, Thomas Friedman has written an op-ed piece for today's Times that is worth reading. As usual, anything that I scribble here is far more clear in the old noggin than on the page, but read on and THINK!
Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
THE melancholy over Steve Jobs’s passing is not just about the loss of the inventor of so many products we enjoy. It is also about the loss of someone who personified so many of the leadership traits we know are missing from our national politics. Those traits jump out of every Jobs obituary: He was someone who did not read the polls but changed the polls by giving people what he was certain they wanted and needed before they knew it; he was someone who was ready to pursue his vision in the face of long odds over multiple years; and, most of all, he was someone who earned the respect of his colleagues, not by going easy on them but by constantly pushing them out of their comfort zones and, in the process, inspiring ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
There isn’t a single national politician today whom you would describe by those attributes, which is why the fake Jobs obituary published in The Onion, the satirical newspaper, struck such a nerve. It began by saying: “Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple Computers” — and the only American in the country who had any clue what he was doing — “died Wednesday at the age of 56.” It went on to quote President Obama as saying that Jobs “will be remembered both for the life-changing products he created and for the fact that he was able to sit down, think clearly, and execute his ideas — attributes he shared with no other U.S. citizen. ‘This is a dark time for our country, because the reality is none of the 300 million or so Americans who remain can actually get anything done or make things happen.’ ”
Ouch! Fortunately, the last part is not true. There are still thousands of U.S. innovators who embody Steve Jobs’s most important attribute: They didn’t get the word. They didn’t get the word that we’re down and out. They didn’t get the word that we’re in a recession. They didn’t get the word that Germany is going to eat our breakfast and that China is going to eat our lunch, so they just go out and invent stuff and make stuff and export stuff. Like Jobs, they just didn’t get the word — and thank God.
But we’re not doing them justice because our political system is not providing these entrepreneurs what they need to thrive in the 21st century. Think of how cramped and uninspiring our national debate has become. It is all about cutting, filibustering, vetoing and blaming — or solving our problems by either untaxing or taxing millionaires alone.
Neither party is saying: Here is the world we are living in; here are the big trends; here is our long-term plan for rolling up our sleeves to ensure that America thrives in this world because it is not going to come easy; nothing important ever does.
What is John Boehner’s vision? I laugh just thinking about the question. What is President Obama’s vision? I cry just thinking about the question. The Republican Party has been taken over by an antitax cult, and Obama just seems lost. Obama supporters complain that the G.O.P. has tried to block him at every turn. That is true. But why have they gotten away with it? It’s because Obama never persuaded people that he had a Grand Bargain tied to a vision worth fighting for.
We cannot bail or tax-cut our way to prosperity. We can only, as Jobs understood, invent our way there. That is why America needs to be for the world in the 21st century what Cape Canaveral was to America in the 1960s: the place where everyone everywhere should want to come to start up and make something — something that makes people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, entertained, educated or secure.
To do that, we need to reinvigorate our traditional formula for success — quality education and infrastructure, open immigration, the right rules to incentivize risk-taking and government-financed scientific research. But to do all that in a recession means we have to cut spending, raise tax revenues and invest in this formula. And to do that, we need a Grand Bargain that involves upfront spending plus credible, long-term fiscal reform that is at the true scale of our debt problem. Obama has given the spending plan, but he has not produced a credible, this-really-hurts fiscal plan — and many Americans know it. The paucity of Obama’s audacity is striking.
Sometimes the news is in the noise, like the Wall Street protests or the Tea Party. But sometimes the news is also in the silence. To me, the biggest protest in the country today is that when the Tea Party insanely blocked any G.O.P. participation in a Grand Bargain that involved taxes, most Americans were silent. Why? Because they didn’t think Obama was offering a big plan from his side, either — one that rose to the true scale of our problems and aspirations, one that would push us out of our comfort zone and make us great.
“The country has been way ahead of the politicians,” argues Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. “They are impatient with the small and the short term. Voters totally understand the scale of the problem facing the country, and they are looking for leaders who are ready to step up and offer a big vision — and don’t try to fool them with things that don’t address the long-term challenges.”
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Spurious Argument, or Ignorant Rambling?
The following is a John Boehner quote:
"the only way we're going to get our economy going again and solve our budget problems is to get the economy moving."
You decide.
"the only way we're going to get our economy going again and solve our budget problems is to get the economy moving."
You decide.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Reality or Revenge?
S&P shows Congress who really can't do their jobs correctlyI Take that!
You dare drag us in front of your committee and make us feel small? Well, we'll show you!
Fuck You MBA's, accountants rule!
Can anybody, besides Bill Gross - who, pretty much, sets levels in the US - really assess the implication of this move. At least they had the intelligence to do it on a Friday night.
I guess we'll have to wait to see what China is going to do with their holdings of US debt. Should they decide to sell a few hundred billion, I suppose that rates will go higher.
So, ask yourself this, do you want these stalwarts of sound economic thinking setting YOUR fiscal policy?
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Lake Wobegon Trail Extension
Thanks to the non-stop efforts of Chuck and Pete from Stearns County Parks, it looks like the Wobegon Trail is finally on the agenda and will get completed soon. Not sure how soon, but soon. Here is an excerpt from the SC Times:
Stearns County could join national trails trend with a proposed extension
By Kirsti Marohn • kmarohn@stcloudtimes.com• February 4, 2011
The Lake Wobegon Regional Trail already covers 62 miles of Stearns County, giving bicyclists, walkers
and snowmobilers a traffic-free route from Osakis to St. Joseph.
But there’s a critical missing piece, a 7-mile stretch from St. Joseph to the St. Cloud metro area, that
many — including Stearns County parks director Chuck Wocken — would love to see completed.
Wocken is hoping to jump-start efforts to finish those last seven miles, nicknamed the “Saintly
Seven.” He hopes to take advantage of a transportation corridor that already links the two
cities: an active railroad line.
“Rails with trails” projects — where a recreational trail runs adjacent to a railroad — are becoming
increasingly popular across the United States. Although they sometimes raise questions of safety,
advocates say there is no evidence of an increase in accidents or trespassing along such trails.
Extending the Lake Wobegon Trail into St. Cloud would provide 135 miles of continuous separated
blacktop trail, the longest in Minnesota and possibly in the nation, Wocken said. It also would
give urban St. Cloud residents a connection to the outdoors, he said.
The project has the support of the St. Cloud Area Planning Organization’s bike/pedestrian advisory
committee.
“It incorporates so many cities together and it just would benefit everyone economically,” said Michelle
Musser, a planner with the APO. “What I hear most is that’s the biggest project that people want in the
area.”
Stearns County could join national trails trend with a proposed extension
By Kirsti Marohn • kmarohn@stcloudtimes.com• February 4, 2011
The Lake Wobegon Regional Trail already covers 62 miles of Stearns County, giving bicyclists, walkers
and snowmobilers a traffic-free route from Osakis to St. Joseph.
But there’s a critical missing piece, a 7-mile stretch from St. Joseph to the St. Cloud metro area, that
many — including Stearns County parks director Chuck Wocken — would love to see completed.
Wocken is hoping to jump-start efforts to finish those last seven miles, nicknamed the “Saintly
Seven.” He hopes to take advantage of a transportation corridor that already links the two
cities: an active railroad line.
“Rails with trails” projects — where a recreational trail runs adjacent to a railroad — are becoming
increasingly popular across the United States. Although they sometimes raise questions of safety,
advocates say there is no evidence of an increase in accidents or trespassing along such trails.
Extending the Lake Wobegon Trail into St. Cloud would provide 135 miles of continuous separated
blacktop trail, the longest in Minnesota and possibly in the nation, Wocken said. It also would
give urban St. Cloud residents a connection to the outdoors, he said.
The project has the support of the St. Cloud Area Planning Organization’s bike/pedestrian advisory
committee.
“It incorporates so many cities together and it just would benefit everyone economically,” said Michelle
Musser, a planner with the APO. “What I hear most is that’s the biggest project that people want in the
area.”
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