29 Days & Counting

I'm glad it's Monday because I had a trifecta of disappointment last week. First, there was Monday night where Tony Romo and the Cowboys stunk up the place. Then, there was the debate where President Obama didn't show up and then Saturday night, my Longhorns failed to make an open field tackle when they needed to. It's a brand new beautiful day. The temperature is 54° so it's time to turn those three pages and prepare for the next 29 days.

Before I move on, I want to give my take on Daniel Ellis's letter to the editor last week. It was a rare Obama complementary letter which I knew, would be attacked. I can't get angry because the letter got contradictory remarks because that would be hypocritical, so I'll try, to sum up, the points used by his detractors.

In Mr. Ellison's three short paragraphs, the  letter writer stated that he liked President Obama’s Christian like approach in handling problems, his humble beginnings contrary to Mitt Romney's and a plea for patience to complete the job.

I believe Mr. Romney, and President Obama are both God- fearing men but that's not for me to say because I can't see into their hearts, and neither can anyone else. Some will continue to use a single DVD that was shown on a continuous loop on Fox, to judge Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his parishioners as radical racists, and they will associate the president with them. That issue was settled in 2008, and 69 million people chose Barack Obama to be the 44th president of the United States. It would take a vivid imagination and a consumption of loads of propaganda to convince  even the  most guidable people that the president and Michelle didn't come from humble beginnings.

I agree with Mr. Ellis final assessment . Consumer confidence is up, and people are aware that we have a long way to go, so it's no time to start all over.

I started my weekly watching of the Sunday talk shows with a very spirited debate moderated by George Stephanopoulos on ABC Sunday. Peggy Noonan can write an excellent speech and a decent column, but she's no match for Paul Krugman when it comes to economics’, and it showed. Mary Matalin is also great using scripted talking points, but she was stunned when a panelist said that consumer confidence was up. Mary Matalin had to resort to rolling her eyes in obvious disgust. She even stooped to name calling, telling Paul Krugman " "You're hardly credible on calling somebody else a liar" when he said that Mitt Romney's incredible performance was theatrical and based on lies.

I noticed a pattern that's been used by Republicans. Mitt Romney cited the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) as his source for saying that we would lose 700,000 jobs by taxing the wealthy. First of all, NFIB, is an ultra- conservative think- tank that’s to the right of the United States Chamber of Commerce, so the fact that they are independent businesses is laughable. Every Republican surrogate will try to use the NFIB numbers and dismiss the Tax Policy Center as a left wing source, when the Obama team says that Mitt Romney has a $5 trillion dollar tax plan that's geared to the wealthy. Mitt Romney will often cite six supporting economists who agree that he can give a 20% tax cut across the board without raising the deficit. The economists he cited, like the American people and President Obama's team, have not been told the deductions that Romney will cut, to remain revenue neutral.

I think the onus is on the Romney team to repeat a stellar performance Thursday night and the rest of the debates. I also think that Joe Biden will get the ball rolling Thursday night, and it's going to be interesting to see if Paul Ryan does a complete 180°on his views because he has actually put out two budgets that failed to pass the senate. Is Paul Ryan going to say, that his ideological views were wrong, and they are now going with a more moderate point of view? Mitt Romney has effectively killed the Ryan budget because Mitt Romney said he would restore the $716 billion Ryan used in his budget proposal. Romney has also said that he will not increase the budget with tax cuts, so what happens to the Bush tax cuts and defense spending Ryan wants? It is surprising to see those who were criticizing Romney not being fazed with his moderate stances he is now taking.

I don't know if facts matter anymore because the waters have been muddied so much that people think that the Dept. of Labor and Bureau Statistics, and the Federal Reserve can be manipulated by the White House. Liberals don't have any confidence in the Supreme Court, and we all seem to be playing a zero-sum game. It's been that way for while; did anyone believe the color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale? Many thought it automatically went up to orange when President Bush approval numbers started dropping.

I still believe that this election will be about the role of government. I heard a good line, this weekend that went something like this “we the people made this government and we the people can fix what's wrong." That statement was supported with a good example of how a small  private startup company came together and built an app that helped the city of Philadelphia with their bureaucracy. It seems that Philadelphia was trying to get input from its citizens who use their children's park to see what they could do to make it better. Typically, they had a city council meeting were 150 people showed up on a weekday night. They would get about 10 ideas and then they would go through the bureaucracy of setting up committees for approval. By using a text-messaging system, the start-up received over 750 responses with new ideas that didn't require a weekly meeting. To make a long story, short, the app saves the city two million dollars and was implemented in two days. After that success, the start-up company received many more requests from cities across the nation. It goes to show that people want effective government.

I hope this election is not about sound bites, quotes taken out of context, 30 second ads or anything but well informed opinions. I hope we don't allow ourselves to think that the 3/10 of 1% job numbers drop are rigged for election purposes. We shouldn't let the politics of Big Bird confuse or influence us; that program costs $450 million or as I like to say, 6 hours of Pentagon spending. Mitt Romney did a wonderful job of mudding the waters on green jobs. That $90 billion for green jobs was just a proposal figure that never materialized.  Not even half of that has been spent because Congress only allocated $34 billion of it.  Mitt Romney said half of the green companies went bankrupt but that is not true.  Only three of the companies went bankrupt.  Check out the facts because if a candidate will lie about something that can be Goggled in 5 minutes; what else could he be lying about?

Let the 47% eat cake

This is the first of more to come

There has been a lot of “first time I've ever heard of that" in this presidential campaign, but I've never seen a campaign self- destruct in a period of two weeks. I can't imagine how Mitt Romney would have reacted to the 2008 financial crisis or a terrorist attack. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because he implemented Romneycare but in the clip I posted, he seemed at ease telling the fat cats that he wasn't gonna worry about those people. He made similar remarks after the NAACP convention saying, “I’m not going to give them free stuff." Mitt Romney said those words were off the cuff but I'm not buying it. 

Mitt is hitting on a popular Republican theme for not raising taxes on the 1%. The Republican argument is that 47% of taxpayers don't pay income tax is running thin. Most people understand that because of unforeseen circumstances, many taxpayers were laid off, and they now fall into a bracket where their deductions, credits, and adjustments allow them to receive back more than they paid in. Older people living on their pension and Social Security checks are in that 47%. Students entering the job market for the first time might be in that 47% and so the point being; not everyone who ended up not paying income tax last year is a deadbeat Obama voter. Talk about class warfare.

Mitt Romney is not one to preach about government handouts because he only pays 13% to 17% income tax on his earnings while the rest of us pay more than that. We don't have tax shelters in the Cayman Islands. His tax plan calls for 20% cut across the board, but it still gives him a very healthy tax cut. The wealthy will get their tax cut by eliminating some middle class deductions and credits; however, it has not been announced.

I don't know why the conservative pundits are angry at Mitt Romney. It's the same message they've been preaching. I think that they want him to say the words that will win him the presidency and then enact the Ryan budget which will be devastating for those who are already struggling.

The Romney apologists will now reset their aim on the indigent, making them the scapegoats for all our ills. The same ol' made-up stories of poor people loading their grocery baskets with prime ribs and other expensive food, paying with the Lone Star card and driving off in a brand-new Lexus. These stories are as close as the storytellers will get to understanding economics'. If you ask them for the percentage of GDP, Welfare, the SNAP program and Medicaid represent; they will say it doesn't matter because they don't know. 

I still believe that Mitt Romney is an intelligent businessman, but now I think he's a con artist because he must know that Wal-Mart (one of his top donors) will not let him go after China for its currency manipulation. It's that currency manipulation that allows Wal-Mart to buy cheap Chinese products and sell them to us at a good profit.

Mitt Romney has been trying to please the base, but they can see right through him because, as they say, “a leopard doesn't change its stripes." Mitt Romney should have run as a moderate Republican because that's what he is. He's a Rockefeller, country club Republican, and it's easy to see that in his economic plan and tax policies

Tax,Penalty,Fee or who Cares?

It shouldn't surprise anyone that we're constantly engaging in the war of semantics, instead of rolling up our sleeves to fix the problems that are keeping us in this rut. The latest battle is finding the proper word to use to describe the Affordable Health Care Act. Is it a tax, penalty, or fee? I'll dwell more into that later, but if my insurance premiums rise, it will be an increase in expenses for my household budget. It could just be that my old company decided to pay a lesser portion, my insurance company decided to raise their premiums for unknown reasons, or perhaps it was part of a fee but I am not one of those who will receive a tax or penalty for not purchasing health care. I am not one of those approximately 4 million folks ,who will decide that just don’t want to buy health insurance.

It's funny how both presidential candidates insist that health care law is a penalty and not a tax for obvious reasons. I tend to go along with their reasoning because, if, in fact, we are using the Internal Revenue for a reference, then the Internal Revenue Service is authorized to assess penalties for various tax violations and deciding to opt out of health insurance(free rider) would fit nicely in the code. For example, if you decide to withdraw from a deferred compensation plan, that taxable portion of that withdrawal would be taxed at ordinary income rates, but you would be assessed a 10% percent penalty if you were not 59 1/2 years old at the time of withdrawal.

I understand why Republicans want to call it a tax; it's in their DNA. They do have a problem because their nominee for president is calling the Act a penalty because, if it's called a tax, the Democrats would say that he raised taxes in Massachusetts; something that Mitt Romney adamantly denies. The Republicans go on and say that it's the largest tax increase in history, but  that talking point draws four Pinocchio's from the Washington Post's fact checking site, Politifact. Mitt Romney does admit that he raised user fees but he is one of those Republicans, who doesn't think a fee is a tax. I remember telling my conservative friends at work that the only difference between parties is how they raise revenue. Back in the day when we used to have democratic governors in Texas; I would say, yes your Republican governor cut property taxes but  he raised fees to pay for them. The democratic governor had to come and raise taxes to repair the neglected infrastructure. Democrats cannot erase that “tax and spend “depiction but my party didn't put in enough effort in tying the label “borrow and spend" Republicans around their neck. Republicans slipped out of that noose because they convinced their constituents that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. I've always said that Republicans are great campaigners, but they can't govern.

The conservatives are still angry at Justice Roberts, but they're saying that he called the whole Affordable Health Care Act a tax. No, he's specifically said that the Act is not constitutional under the commerce clause, but it could fit in the taxing powers of Congress. The first time that Justice Roberts has ever sided with the more liberal side of the court caused a political firestorm of conspiracies. The liberals are cautioning their side to remember how Justice Roberts has voted in the past and how he would likely rule in upcoming and cases such as: affirmative action, voter rights, and DOMA. I can't believe how Republicans overlooked the fact that Roberts made it extremely difficult for future legislation to be included in the commerce clause. He also made it possible for Republicans to gin up their base to get the numbers; they need to repeal the whole Affordable Health Care Act. The court by a 7-2 margin voted against the Federal government mandating the extension of Medicaid. That was huge, because, if the red states opt out, it will mean that 6.2 million people will not be injured. that’s nearly half of those eligible. It's funny how the conservative states that want to opt out for political reasons have the most uninsured people and would be benefited more or as Howard Dean called it “Intellectual Malpractice."

 

Meanwhile, the Affordable Health Care Act will be used by the populace as a dumping ground for their complaints; a lot of them will automatically blame their premium increase on the law, allowing the health insurance companies to scathe free.

Irony or hypocrisy?" According to an analysis by The Huffington Post, dozens of Republicans who want to repeal Obamacare have adult children who are allowed to stay on their parents' health plans thanks to the law, which extended this benefit nationwide. Many of the lawmakers' children are employed and on their own health care plans, but others continue to take advantage of their parents' coverage."

Making the case for fair taxation

.

Not class war fare

Honestly,the Democrats can never convince a country that is struggling from a stagnant economy; that their policies have worked. The policies were working until April, when the Greece economy hit rock bottom, and the tsunami-hit Japan but Americans don't want excuses and who can blame them.The country does not want nuance ;they want jobs and improvement. The only alternative is to make their side, the lesser of two evils, metaphorically speaking.

The liberals are ecstatic because President Obama is starting to show the same passion that he used in the 2008 campaign election.It may be too little too late, but he is calling out republicans by name and is no longer trying to extend the olive branch, which has been knocked out of his hands every time he has tried it. The president is showing up in Republican districts and giving his audience their representative's phone number, so they can call to have their bridge repaired. Since that is a ground level approach, it normally would take a little time to show results but not this time, voters in Seattle, Chicago, and elsewhere have been hanging large banners reading “Fix this bridge."The president has until the end of the year to make his case because next year the attention will turn to the alternative.

That next step is to take back the message that the Republicans have controlled for centuries. The democrats must explain that the budget will not be balanced if we only increase taxes on the rich, but they should be raised and asked to to pay a little more, rather than put the whole burden on the overextended middle class. The Republicans will fight back saying that taxing the achievers (job creators) would be counterproductive ,because it would cause them to recoil and quit hiring the unemployed. If you listen to people like Mark Cuban, Warren Buffett and the CEO of GE Jeffery Immelt, nothing could be farther from the truth. Ideally, they want more certainty from Washington on regulation and taxation, so they can adjust over the years. I'm reading Ron Suskind's new book called “Confidence Men" where he asked a CEO from Wall Street why he thought President Obama was bad and indifferent towards them. The CEO said that they sensed a weakness in the administration, because every time Wall Street cried foul, the administration would pull back and give them more goodies. The CEO said that they would continue doing this because it's working.

Democrats must learn that we cannot get the whole enchilada at one time, perhaps they should just settle for getting hedge fund managers to pay tax on their income at ordinary rates rather than the 15% for capital gains rate. The Democrats should be for tax reform but must continue to be against the flat tax, fair tax, or a consumption tax that will favor the wealthy and hurt the poor, in this period of inequality. When the lines between the wealthy, the middle-class come closer together, then it would be an appropriate time to devise some sort of a flatter tax that's simple and fair. To do that in this economy, will only benefit the rich. Remember, the wealthy can benefit in a bad economy because they're the ones that are buying up the hotels, residential homes, businesses, and other assets to sell when the economy improves.