What Congress Didn’t Do

It is too late to stop the next crisis. It was probably too late even before the last crisis hit.
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Mark my words, the unavoidable excesses related to a college education are going to cause anemic economic performance indefinitely, until the situation is resolved, assuming it is possible to fix.
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Speculation may have exacerbated the market on home loans, but the loans for education have risen to the price of moderate homes. And this is before anyone even thinks about getting a home. And there is no way out of an education loan.
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The elderly have successful sold their children into slavery.

Joe,

Perhaps your next column should detail on what you see Congress will tackle over the next year. Also, what type of energy program do you think Obama can still work on?

It’s routine when arguing about the progressive taxation for people to refer to the wealthy as “the most productive members” of society. Like all conventional wisdom, it is almost exactly half true. there are indeed a large number of significanly productive ways to get rich and there are a similar number of parasitic ways. Unfortunately, it’s going take significantly more pain than what we are currently feeling before addressing the difference starts seeming like a good idea.

I thought the President got the best possible deal
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That’s funny. I thought the deal sucked. So did Stiglitz:
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“Congress has now passed a tax cut, much of the benefit of which will go to the richest Americans – including the bankers responsible for the crisis. They will receive quintuple benefits: lower payroll taxes, lower income tax rates, low taxes on capital gains, lower taxes on dividends and lower taxes on the money they pass on to their heirs. The national debt will be larger and the stimulus will be limited.
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There is hardly a worse way of squandering money, with a lower bang for the buck.” (from the link)
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And that it was no “deal” -both parties wanted an extension of Bush-cuts (for re-election purposes); Obama and the Dems got the legislation they wanted and blamed the Repubs for it. It was classic “Centrist” BS; serve the big money interests first, then give small benefits to the people.. just like HC.

Getting pretty tired of the press being all “the president should of done this and the president should of done that” and completely dissing the monumental achievements that have been done in TWO years. I rarely expect 20% of promises to be accomplished during an entire presidency. The press needs to stop *constantly* naysaying so they don’t look like they are catering (I’m assuming). Don’t cater, but at least report the circumstances as opposed to always speculating what should or shouldn’t have been done FIRST or MORE. Or at least wait until you can see it in perspective.

I’m a bit surprised that Stiglitz didn’t add another “evasion of responsibility”. My understanding is that the banking regulatory reform plan puts power in the hands of appointed regulators within the Federal Reserve- regulators that are not publicly accountable. The effect could be that current and future admins will appoint individuals with varying desires to regulate and hold the banks accountable. IOW, when “anti-regulation” candidates are elected, they will appoint regulators that are be less aggressive. This, to me, makes the whole plan an evasion of responsibility.

I’m not familiar with corporate income taxation, but I’m suspicious of any argument that it amounts to double taxation.
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Maybe someone could explain it to me.
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Finance reform is a major thing, and we don’t have a ghost of a chance of getting that through unless someone is willing to stare down the GOP. They are still in the “greed is good” mode that took us here in the first place.
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chupkar is right! It seems that regardless of pre-election GOP lust for a waterloo, he keeps coming up with things that are good for the country as a whole.
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I think that the reason that he is getting so much mileage out of this session is that the lame duck GOPers now realize that cooperating and meeting Obama halfway is not the worst thing in the world.
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The teabaggers are…

the monumental achievements that have been done in TWO years.
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I disagree, chupkar. While the admin has been successful in passing legislation, often on very difficult issues, has it achieved what the American people demanded of it?
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Obama and the Dems were elected mostly on the strength of a few promises: end the wars, reform healthcare by providing a public option, invest in green jobs programs to create jobs, enact robust banking industry regulations that will prevent future meltdowns. In my opinion, none of these were accomplished.

53–

Corporate profits are taxed once, via the corporate income tax, and then taxed again when they are distributed to stockholders–hence, double taxation.

I’d prefer a system where corporations are taxed according to the things they do wrong–speculation, in the case of Wall Street; pollution, in the case of manufacturing. Ideally, a tax on speculation (that is, the churning of derivatives) and a tax on externalities (that is, a corporation’s use of energy that causes pollution) would replace the tax on profits. Profits are good, if they’re clean.

@pinto,

You’re conflating “Democratic wish list” for “what the American people demanded of the administration”.

Approximately 45.7% of the American people saw what Obama offered and decided to pick McCain/Palin. Of the 52.9% that did vote Obama/Biden, a significant portion voted him in just because they wanted to punish the Republicans for eight years of incompetence, or because they couldn’t stand Palin, or numerous other reasons other than the ones you’ve stated (such as McCain flakiness on the economy).

The most -pressing-, and important, issue was reversing a failing economy. Whether or not this was actually do-able is certainly up for debate. But politically, all of the opposition that the Republicans have been able to muster arose because the US unemployment rate has hovered at 9-10%.

All of the other issues pale in comparison in terms of electorate demand.

Corporate profits are taxed once, via the corporate income tax, and then taxed again when they are distributed to stockholders–hence, double taxation
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Except, Joe, that you’ve been hit with a dose of R stupid. This is nothing but taxing money when it changes hands, a principle that shows up everywhere from the income tax to sales tax to estate tax.

The issue with taxing bad behavior as suggested by Joe is that once you’ve influenced the behavior, the revenue stream dries up. Taxes are ideally for the purpose of raising revenue. Trying to use them to influence behavior is precisely why our tax code is now such a pile of spaghetti.

Thanks so much for responding to commentary, Joe Klein, it is always greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the explanation Joe. I’m not sure it’s a clean case of double taxation, as only a portion of profits are distributed (I’m assuming here). Maybe don’t tax the distributed portion.
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I disagree though on not taxing profits, particularly if corporations are considered to be individuals.
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Corporate “sin taxes” are something I doubt would discourage dangerous practices to any extent. Corporate interests would just hatch new instruments, hypothetically, the economy would crash, and large amounts of money from such “taxes” would change hands, with the rest of us still left to pick up the pieces.
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I’m assuming that you do not favor regulation of the sins you wish to tax, otherwise, the taxable amount for any and all of these “sins” would be 0%.
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Other thoughts, but too long a response already…

Joe Klein:
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Whatever else you’ve said here today or at any other time, this

“ If we’re going to escape the toxic, speculation-fueled economy of the past 30 years, we need to…break up the big banks, while forbidding them from trafficking in gambling instruments like credit-default swaps.”

has to be one of the most pragmatic, useful prescriptions I’ve ever seen you write; a sober recognition that we cannot obtain a functional market economy while these pseudo-private bureaucracies make a holy mess of efficient financial capital allocation –and ordinary peoples’ lives.
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We have a de facto public banking and financial services system. It has a record of systemic, preventable failures, and continues to subject the real economy to unacceptable, catastrophic risk. Its influence constantly undermines mechanisms of publicly accountability for key institutions, both private and state.
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The financial services industry has not served the direct interests of the American people, either. As the details of the mortgage service industry’s widespread fraudulent and disorganized practices come into greater focus, we’re finding that very basic competencies that Americans have expected from financial institutions have been largely abandoned. What has increasingly come to light is that the banking sector, in all of its forms, has become expertly proficient at only one thing: creating messes from which the public may extract itself only at an exorbitant price.
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If we’re to have a first-world, productive, market-based economy, in other words, we cannot continue what Joseph Stiglitz called in March of 2009 “Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism”:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?pagewanted=2
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What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.

Thank you, Joe Klein, for highlighting Siglitz’s eminently reasonable prescriptions –prescriptions that, in a political environment capable of fulfilling its purpose, would have already been effected, banishing dishonest debates about their efficacy to the fringes of rightist economics quackery, where such ritual barking belongs.

BO may have made energy a priority but I don’t recall it. All the media attention (especially in ’09) was on HCR. If he uses energy as a conduit to talk JOB CREATION in ’11 it would be something to which the GOP would have to acquiesce (see, Joe, I know big words! )

I worked at a bottle depot back in High School. One of the guys there did additional work as a bottle picker. He was an immigrant, I wouldn’t place his IQ over 80, but he probably worked 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. He wasn’t ever going to be anything but poor. How many single mothers have we heard of working 2 or 3 jobs just to feed their family? We know these people aren’t rich. How can we claim that these millionaire and billionaire businessmen work harder and longer than them? Some people are poor because they were unlucky, some are poor because they aren’t intelligent and, yes, some are poor because they are lazy. The polar opposites are equally true and for anyone to presume it is about lazy vs hardworking has not spent nearly enough time trying to understand these people.

ericychan, very valid point you make that is repeatedly lost on elected politicians. Our country is about evenly divided 50/50 between the conservative/right wing and the centrist/liberal philosophies. Every election now comes down to very few points between winners and losers, leaving the very idea of “mandates” nebulous. I smile every time I hear a politician of whatever persuasion say that the electorate has spoken for such and such. With such an atmosphere, reasonable compromise might be the only, if not the best course.

“What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.
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Thank you, Joe Klein, for highlighting Siglitz’s eminently reasonable prescriptions –prescriptions that, in a political environment capable of fulfilling its purpose, would have already been effected, banishing dishonest debates about their efficacy to the fringes of rightist economics quackery, where such ritual barking belongs.”
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Seconded, all around.

Taxing a given cash stream is not the same as double taxation, which would refer to one component in the stream being taxed twice. Further, all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the tax bill seems to lump all of the components (business activity and individual income) together in a confusing hodgepodge. Individual income tax and business costs (tax, tax incentives, fees, etc.) are different animals. The Bush tax cuts are all about individual income tax and have little to do with business activity or economic recovery.

IF you wanted the Bush middle-class tax cuts passed but were opposed to upper-class tax cuts and IF you believed in the stimulus items you did get out of the deal, the deal was good insofar as you ended up getting more money spent on your own priorities than you otherwise would have. Let’s face it, Obama was not going to get the middle class tax cuts passed after the holidays without granting the upper class tax cuts for Republicans so either he made the deal or the cuts would’ve expired.

Sorry, that should read “Its influence constantly undermines mechanisms of public accountability for key institutions, both private and state.“

I have a dollar.
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I buy a candy bar with it from the store
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Who pays it to the employee.
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Who buys some supplies from a fabric shop
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Who pays it to their employee.
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Which is taxed by the government
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Which is paid to the school
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Which buys a book from a charity
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Which gives it to a homeless man
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Who buys his breakfast from a restaurant
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Which marks it as profit
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To give out to its shareholder
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Now answer me this: how many of those transactions should get taxed? How many of those transactions shouldn’t get taxed? How many of those transactions aren’t taxed? Why?
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And does anyone dispute my argument that this is a typical year for that dollar?

Eric, that’s what motivated me to leave my house and vote. I suspect many others feel this way.
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Yes, there are many that chose “not Bush” or “not McCain/Palin” the last election, and I’m sure that carried over somewhat to the Senate and House elections. But promises mean something. We have every right to demand they be fulfilled and/or hold our elected accountable for their failures.
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I care less that Obama has passed many bills. I care more that the top priority campaign issues I mentioned– end the wars, provide a public option, invest in jobs, regulate industry– promises written on his campaign web-site and spoken at debates, were not pursued with integrity and vigor. We got either nothing or hopelessly compromised and ineffective laws.
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Further, by simple track-record, I am coming to believe that none of these promises were intended to be kept.
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PS. it’s Pint Or Two

Sorry, I’ve got one other element to this: reapply the logic when considering the fact that the Supreme Court has consistently upheld the argument that a corporation is a person.

Profit for the sake of profit is bad. Especially if it is not routed back into the economy or if it goes only to the top of the food chain.
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If you can picture a vacuum cleaner and a dusty floor. The dust is the money and the vacuums are the corporations. In this world of dirt, if all the dirt is sucked up by the most powerful vacuums, and those vacuums never let it go, all of the other vacuums are considered useless and can be thrown away.
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(we’re the other vacuums)

Obama never had a shot at energy legislation any more than he did for Cap and Trade. Our energy sector works quite well despite the fact the American left are the only people who get pissed when America discovers Oil. The fact is Exxon and the other major players are exceptionally well run in all aspects of the business including technology. With major global discoveries as well as major domestic natural gas finds we will continue to rely on fossil fuels just as Ford relies on Trucks and SUVs. it’s been under-reported but 3 huge natural gas discoveries including the Baaken formation in North Dakota were old discoveries upgraded because technology made known supplies accessible and that’s only going to continue. The same thing is happening in Canada’s tar Sands where there’s more Oil than in Saudi Arabia. In less than a decade they’ve dropped the cost of production from near $26 to under $18 a barrel while increasing yields and reducing pollution. Canada had already dropped out of any new Kyoto agreement for this reason. They are our largest supplier by far and their production is going to increase another 10% based just on scheduled development.

Socialized green jobs will by definition fail. Spain and Germany have already taken huge losses on recent investments in solar and wind and the one good thing to change the last 5 years is the re-emergence of Solar. The market will eventually function properly and in 10 years we’ll have even less invested in solar and wind.

. The Bush tax cuts are all about individual income tax and have little to do with business activity or economic recovery.

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They have everything to do with business activity and economic recovery. The idea is to put more money in the hands of those who earned it so they spend and invest it. That’s called business activity. The 2nd idea there is to keep the stiffling role of govt to a minimum to let the markets function better. We just had a vote by the FCC in an attempt to regulate the internet. It has virtually no public support and Congress will over-rule. This is because people understand the gov can only restrain growth.

regarding the FCC look for it to be eliminated or at least severely constrained. The House will try to shut them down and failing there would cut the budget getting to the same result.

7.6

Taxing a given cash stream is not the same as double taxation, which would refer to one component in the stream being taxed twice.

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Joe is correct. This is absolutely double taxation and it is the same stream. Stockholders are the owners of that stream. It’s theirs. You are taxing them at corporate rates and then again when they take their supposedly after-tax profits.

And it’s the same for death taxes. I’ve already paid taxes on my earnings and now you want to tax me again when I give it to my kids or whoever. it’s nothing more than grave robbing.

One more year and again I am left out of the equation.
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The single income (low middle class?) citizen.

Forgottenlord, but this is it. We’re not getting another stimulus. Frankly, tax cuts for the middle class are not all that stimulating. Using the same money to hire workers to work on modernizing our national electrical grid (in all 50 states) is stimulating. Stim I + II were not only focused on the wrong things and ineffective, they are easily spin-able into memes intended to discredit progressivism and promote elite-centric rules.
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What we’re left with is a plan that Stiglitz, an undisputed exert, calls “squandering money”. In this case, doing nothing is preferable… but not as preferable as making a good stimulus plan.

“…the American left are the only people who get pissed when America discovers Oil. The fact is Exxon and the other major players are exceptionally well run in all aspects of the business…”
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I’ll be sure to drop a lump of coal in your Xmas stocking for that series of lies.

Damn, I didn’t think I could be more straight forward with clearly unambigious facts. The energy sector is incredibly successful and profitable. The technological advances over the last two decades have been stunning. That’s why the Tar Sands have been such a terrific investment and are STILL attracting billions. Shell just pickup up a lot more land in Alberta for development. That’s a fact. The US auto industry STILL relies on Trucks, Vans and SUVs. That’s a fact. Not only is production from the Tar Sands increasing at a still steady rate but Canada is just starting to develop their share of the Baakan formation. Two more facts. Here’s another one I didn’t mention. Brazil several years ago discovered massive oil fields off their coast that might put their reserves over 100B barrels. Unlike the American left they were jubilant.

Joe, couldn’t agree more on your thoughts to reduce the corporate income tax. In fact, let’s just get rid of it altogether. The cheapest and easiest way to create jobs in America today is to eliminate the corporate income tax.
The US Corporate Income Tax could not be hurting the average American worker anymore than it is doing right now. It decreases wages, sends new jobs overseas, raises the prices on all goods and services and is going to bust many of our nation’s largest defined benefit pension plans. If you want to help the working class find jobs, you need to tell your elected officials to Eliminate the US Corporate Income Tax today. http://www.eliminatecorporateincometax.com

I think that the reason that he is getting so much mileage out of this session is that the lame duck GOPers now realize that cooperating and meeting Obama halfway is not the worst thing in the world.

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You have that backwards. Obama is cooperating as he did on tax cuts. There will be much more of this as there was between Clinton and Newt. DADT was supported by 70% of the population and inevitable while Start is widely supported as long as we can continue to invest in missle defense. At the same time Dream never has a prayer. Next year the story is going to be spending and Obama will do as Clinton did and reduce the amount of growth in spending allowing revenues to catch up over time.

Yea right! And in the end we will make tin trinkets and send them to China.

The teabaggers are…

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Gods gift to the USA. They are perfectly placed to keep the pressure on the House to reduce spending. The rules are such Obama has to bargin with the House or they’ll just pass continuing resolutions which is in effect a spending freeze. Either way Boehner wins. The great news on the census is all things equal the GOP will gain 6 or more seats in 2012. All they have to do is listen to the Tea Party to keep their seats forever.

@pintortwo (thanks for the catch),

Sure, I understand the sentiment. My only point was to say that those campaign issues you brought up only resonate with a certain percentage of the American people, not -all- Americans.
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And there’s a big difference in meaning. It’s easy to get your way if you have the support of all of the American people…but if your support is rather more limited than that, perhaps not so easy.

Stockholders are the owners of that stream. It’s theirs

Oddly enough, the whole point of forming a Corporation in the first place is to separate out the ‘stream’ belonging to the business and the stream belonging to the shareholders. The very idea is to protect the indivuals from liabilities incurred by the corporation. Calling it double-taxation is trying to have your cake and eat it too……..

Warning – This comment section has been hijacked by Wingnut56.

I never said let’s not search for oil. But be realistic about it – new sources, even the Canadian oil sands, ain’t coming cheap or anytime soon. Sun and wind are already available and instead of pushing to better harness those resources we let China do it. Again.
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BTW is the cost of refining oil sands anywhere near drilling for oil yet? (I don’t know either so I’m asking.)

With all the talk of corporate taxes, it might be useful to look at some examples of what is really paid.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes.html

And more details in pictures.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes_slide.html

That wonderful energy conglomerate BP! Boy, it’s real consumer-friendly ain’t it!

A deal can suck and still be the best one available. Try flying somewhere, anywhere these days.

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And while Stiglitz is right about the inefficacy of tax cuts as a form of stimulus, there is no reason to believe that any advocacy from Obama was going to have an impact on Democrats, much less Republicans who are, let us not forget, dedicated to undermining the man just out of sheer cussedness. You’ll have a difficult time convincing me how he could have done much better.

“I’d prefer a system where corporations are taxed according to the things they do wrong–speculation, in the case of Wall Street; pollution, in the case of manufacturing.”
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JK once again gave the lefts’ universal answer for all problems TAX. Leaving aside you have the government essentially running businesses and having the ability to pick winners and losers. So the companies get taxed which is deductible so they get to shield more income. Or we can have another host of overbearing useless regualtion.

JK: Would you propose journalists get taxed when they something wrong or report incorrectly? Yeah I guess that would not work you and Chris Matthews among others would be in debt that would rival the federal deficit and the taxpayer would have to support your pathetic self.

. The fact is Exxon and the other major players are exceptionally well run in all aspects of the business including technology.

Yeah, if it weren’t for that subsidy that we pay to keep their unbridled access to raw material they’d be a model of private enterprise success. What? You didn’t see that line item. (It’s subsumed under defense / Iraq)

The business is distinct from the owners. The money made by the business can go into one of two places: back into the owner’s pockets, or be reinvested back into the business. Microsoft has $50 billion cash reserves – that’s not money it’s giving back to stock holders, that’s money it’s intentionally set aside to be reinvested into the business. Now answer me this: shouldn’t Microsoft be taxed on the income of that 50 billion before it is reinvested?

Addendum: I could see an argument for saying that corporate taxes are on income minus dividends, but I’m not convinced – see 7.7.

Yes, this wouldn’t even be quite true if corporations paid corporate taxes to begin with:

Corporate profits are taxed once, via the corporate income tax, and then taxed again when they are distributed to stockholders–hence, double taxation.

“a sober recognition that we cannot obtain a functional market economy while these pseudo-private bureaucracies make a holy mess of efficient financial capital allocation –and ordinary peoples’ lives.”
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SZ what you, JK and most others on the left ignore is that the banking and financial services industries are 2 of the most regulated industries we have. And the typical response is “its Bush’s fault” is just an ignoramus tag line without any grasp that the problems in the mortgage industry has been about 25 years in the making. Yes banks and mortgage companies did speculate but knowing full well that the bureaucracy of Fannie and Freddie would always be the backstop. The regulations that essentially mandated banks to make loans to borderline credit of certain groups led to the use of the swaps. The banks ( I contend) knew full well what the end result would be eventually and created and used a system to try and protect themselves. Much the result of excessive regulation that were essentially back paybacks to certain political allies.
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I have read several of Joe Stiglitz’s books and he does a comprehensive job of reviewing the global financial system but he also leans heavily that there should be a global centralized banking organization. We can argument the academic definitions of it but it is just socialism on a global scale. What he does ignore is that the a model where a central agency controls the money in a system with people asking for more and more is just another time bomb on a much grander scale.

One of the biggest risk in 2011 is that hte bank infrastructure of China will face essentially that problem. They have controlled capital allocation but demands of the people has created a loan and housing bubble that will deflate in the near term. It remains a fool’s game to believe that any one entity or government can control a financial system so that nothing “bad” ever happens. And we certainly do not live in a country where by people want the government controlling every aspect of their lives and that is essentially the end result of Stiglitz’s argument

…as the great Joseph Stiglitz points out today, there was one area where Congress punted this year: cracking down on the speculators who gave us the financial collapse of 2008 and the Great Recession.

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So, Dick Durbin told us why Congress “punted this year,” as well as why they’ve been giving Wall Street whatever it’s wanted at least since the Clinton era. Frankly, if the “bankers own the place,” what can we do about it?

You get to what the flat tax is all about. The benefits apply to corporations as well as individuals.

Wow, that was fast.
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/12/22/thanks-chuck/
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Go get ‘em, Joe. But while you’re watching – and hopefully shaming – the toadies for Wall Street, save a few pixels for Republicans. I know it will be hard to single out anyone from a whole political party that invented and perfected the game but…try.

“even the Canadian oil sands, ain’t coming cheap or anytime soon. Sun and wind are already available and instead of pushing to better harness those resources we let China do it. Again.”
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Check again. There are several oil companies here and in Canada that have been profiting quite nicely thnak you very much. With oil at over $80/bbl, oil sands is quite profitable. And of course the more roadblocks for drilling will slow any process. The battle cry of the left for 30 years has been “it will take 10 years” to get any production.
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Sun and wind are inefficient and intermittent compared to natural gas, oil or coal not to mention costly. You only get wind power in areas where wind blows which means large percentages of the country would have no access to wind power. And of course there is always the environmentally aware Kennedy family view -not in my ocean view.
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“Yeah, if it weren’t for that subsidy that we pay to keep their unbridled access to raw material they’d be a model of private enterprise success. What? You didn’t see that line item. (It’s subsumed under defense / Iraq)”
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Imagine oil companies drilling where the oil is. Pretty shrewd don’t you think. Since drilling in the US, offshore US and nearby areas has been taboo for the enviro-whacos the price everyone must pay is to have these companies protected as they deliver energy to run the globe largest economy since it won’t run on liberal hot-air.

You forbid drilling here then complain about having to pay for it to be drilled somewhere else. Seems you just want to complain.

Paul,

Go to the cash flow part of the quarterly reports. Their success is truly stunning. They are a total package. I think it’s for 23 years in a row they’ve increased their amount of reserves. No matter how much they pump they discover more and based on properties they own this will continue for many more years. The govt isn’t finding oil for them and they’re not even looking in the USA. The same is true for technological development at every phase of the process from finding it, deciding if it’s promising enough for a test well, to actually drilling, pumping and refining. Aside from Walmart they might be the best run company in history.

Ooooh those poor banks were just FORCED to sell ballon and interest only mortgages. Just forced to misrepresent their products to their customers AND the the resulting securities to their buyers. Not a speck of enthusiam or participation whatsoever – the poor things……

The Bakken Formation is a Cretaceous-era oil shale.
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Why is this important?
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Because even though there are huge reserves in oil shales and tar sands throughout the region covered by the Western Interior Seaway in it’s various incarnations, It is a high-sulfer, expensive resource to develop.

BTW is the cost of refining oil sands anywhere near drilling for oil yet

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The Sauds can essentially stick a straw in the sand and start pumping. Their cost might be $1 a barrel. Deep water drilling in the North Sea and the Gulf is obviously more expensive but still under $10. They’ve recently developed a process where one rig can support a much larger area using a new type of flexible tubing thus reducing the number of big rigs needed and thus capital investment. The Tar Sands is actually a towering engineering achievement an example of huge capital investment and almost continuous improvement reducing the cost of the capital needed and cost of production and maintenance. The result is they continue to attract major investment. At a B/E cost now below $18 a barrel the risk has all but been eliminated. Their biggest challenge now is less reducing cost but reducing the pollution they generate. Advances made here apply to the development of at least 5 huge natural gas fields in the USA. The Baaken field in ND was discovered decades ago but the cost of production and accessible reserves were too low to warrant investment. That all changed a decade ago. I think is was about 2002ish the US agency in charge of such things raised the potential reserves to near 4B barrels with a caveat that could be more than tripled at this pace of technological improvement.

Just one example of what is going on in the Gulf is Shell about 3 years ago did a test on one promising pool and found it had > 1B recoverable barrels. They might get to it by 2015. They’ll be able to pump 100,000 barrels a day for over 27 years. You can almost be certain by 2010 the technology will move that 1B to 2B. As profitable as this looks they have so many projects in front they won’t start on it for 5 years after confirming the discovery. They essentially have a license to print money.

And a sharp jab here in freeinpa’s side, too:
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One does not drill for oil shale!
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One mines it!

I’ll have to correct myself. Apparently I was wrong on the drilling…
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation

Sorry for flashing through all the comments before commenting again, but didn’t see much to grab my interest.
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The point I make is that there is a vast ignorance of what all of this talk of the economy is about. I’m no genius, but I can know common fallacies when I see them. Taxes are a necessity. Good government is not free. Those 2 points get lost at the pig trough. Don’t bother me with your selfish concerns.

It is a high-sulfer, expensive resource to develop.

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That might be but it is being developed and quite rapidly. Part of the green process not appreciated by liberals is big oil and big coal are actually spending serious bucks on removing sulfur and other pollutants during the refining and burning process. The beauty of capitalism is pricing signals and they know they need to reduce the cost of pollution to be competitive. Whatever target electric car geeks are using for what will define a competitive product there will be a higher target in 2020. fleet mileage will almost certainly be 10% to 20% higher. There will be compacts getting an authentic 60 MPG and a range of 600 miles. Electrics can’t get to a range of 100 miles yet. Compacts refill for $30 and take 3 minutes. Electrics recharge overnight

The fact is GW is dead and while pollution reduction will always be a popular thing the USA has rejected Europe and Kyoto. We are going to have some govt interference and market signals will rule. Many of the solar and wind companies are already out of business or soon will be as govt grands dry up. This GOP Congress is not going to subsidize solar.

the whole point of forming a Corporation in the first place is to separate out the ‘stream’ belonging to the business and the stream belonging to the shareholders.

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This doesn’t make any sense. If you own it it’s yours. The point isn’t just to limit liability although critical but to raise capital to expand the business. Bill Gates issued stock in Microsoft because he needed the money to expand and make tons more than he could otherwise.

“This GOP Congress is not going to subsidize solar.”
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No sh!t, Sherlock. Republicans since Reagan have already probably destroyed human civilization as we’ve known it, if not humanity itself, in service to their paymasters in big oil and big coal.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has projected that the United States will lead the world into catastrophic global warming over the next twenty five years…
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This pathway would almost certainly commit the world to catastrophic climate change, including rapid sea level rise, extreme famine, desertification, and ecological collapse on land and sea. Right now, the United States, with less than five percent of global population, produces 20 percent of global warming pollution. Center for American Progress senior fellow Joe Romm published in Nature in 2008 that humanity “must aim at achieving average annual carbon dioxide emissions of less than 5 GtC [5 billion metric tons of carbon, or 18 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide] this century or risk the catastrophe of reaching atmospheric concentrations of 1,000 parts per million.” To do so, he said, humanity needs to adopt a “national and global strategy to stop building new traditional coal-fired plants while starting to deploy existing and near-term low-carbon technologies as fast as is humanly possible.”

The fact is Exxon and the other major players are exceptionally well run in all aspects of the business including technology
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And the Gulf spill was a massive hallucination then??

Eric. per, certain percentage of the American people, the percent of eligible people it resonates with is well less than half, as far as we can tell. By eligible I mean potential voters. It’s odd that, what ever the number may be, it isn’t all that representative with so many staying home.. especially as young Americans toil overseas under difficult conditions.
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As is, we can’t know that percentage.
I’d guess that if we were somehow able to ask every American.. it resonates strongly.
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Among voters it appears to have been important
– these things were laid out for anyone interested, all you had to do was read it–
and voters is all you can go by.
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I don’t believe our vote hasn’t been well regarded.

Joe is correct. This is absolutely double taxation and it is the same stream. Stockholders are the owners of that stream. It’s theirs. You are taxing them at corporate rates and then again when they take their supposedly after-tax profits.

And it’s the same for death taxes. I’ve already paid taxes on my earnings and now you want to tax me again when I give it to my kids or whoever. it’s nothing more than grave robbing
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Yet another reality-free post. Corporations are separate, legal entities, apart from the stock-holders and workers. Trying to claim it’s double taxation is like trying to claim that, since your company already paid taxes on it, there should be no income taxes. Cause that’s double taxation too. It’s a wad of anti-tax baloney. Same with the “death tax”. You generally pay taxes of some sort on income when you receive it. It makes no difference who it’s from.

don’t believe our vote hasn’t been..
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Nice.
you know when you read something a couple of times and it looks right, then you look away and come back to read it again, and the stupid jumps right out at you..
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It should be
..don’t believe our vote has been..

And some of us are poor because we chose to go into “helping” careers. I’ll never make the big bucks working with the mentally ill, unless I were to write a blockbuster book about some the antics that go on around here.
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IMHO, teachers, social workers, police and fire fighters should make far more than the athletes, movie stars and other famous people with wealth. The last year of “Friends” the cast made $1 M an episode. At the same time, money for education-at every level-has decreased.

Man Shep, I hate all those liberals in Congress and the media that have been in power the last two years.. well, for the media, it’s been like.. forever.

It’s all in our imagination.
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Remember:
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Everything that ever happened, even if it didn’t actually happen that way, is our fault!

“Corporations are separate, legal entities, apart from the stock-holders and workers.”
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“Now answer me this: shouldn’t Microsoft be taxed on the income of that 50 billion before it is reinvested?”
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This is what is so disturbing about liberals. They lack the simple comprehension of a capitalist business and yet the only real thought is how to wring out more taxes. Care to guess why businesses go offshore?
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A corporation is owned by the shareholders. They are not separate legal entities (whatever that means). The owners of the corporation may be individuals, companies, trusts or other legal entity. The employees are just that employees, paid for labor performed.

A company earns revenue minus its expenses (labor included) and taxes equals to a net income. The net income can be paid out in dividends (taxing the money again) . The net income is accounted in shareholder’s equity on the balance sheet. If the money is not paid out, it is held as cash or investment. They have already paid taxes on this amount. If they earn investment income (interest) on this amount that flows through the income statement to be taxed as part of its income.

Microsoft is taxed on the income (if invested in taxable instruments) but not the $50 billion. That has always been part of the tax code

They are not separate legal entities (whatever that means)
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Sorry, freep. Yes they are.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatio
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http://public.getlegal.com/legal-info-center/corporation-law
But don’t let facts get in the way of your arguments. I’m sure they sound pretty.

“Ooooh those poor banks were just FORCED to sell ballon and interest only mortgages. Just forced to misrepresent their products to their customers AND the the resulting securities to their buyers. Not a speck of enthusiam or participation whatsoever – the poor things……”
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Forced no they were not forced. But given a set of regulations they found ways to make profits and grow their business (I know dirty words to liberals) and limiting their risk. Outside of bile spewed from the left there is little real evidence of extensive wrong doing (your say so really counts for nothing).
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Since you brought up forced activities. Were the homeowners forced to buy Balloon or interest only mortgages? So what you are saying is that we need to license people to obtain a mortgages because they are not smart enough. I would be willing to bet that most of the people who got these mortgages would have taken them even if the banks spent 5 hours explaining them with pictures on an etch-a-sketch.
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We had the same cry after the tech stock bubble. Arthur Levitt (SEC Head) insisted that research calls be open to all investors because they were smart enough to use the information to make a decision. Well these “smart” people were buying tech stocks with zero revenues no contracts and million dollar burn rates. Then wanted to sue everybody because well they well stupid.
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Liberals believe they can pass laws to stop anything bad from happening and protecting people from their own stupidity. What happens is the laws usually are at the source of the problem.

“I’ll have to correct myself. Apparently I was wrong on the drilling…”
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You under estimate yourself–you are wrong on more than just that. And before you start another victory lap, oil extraction costs in tar sands is about 38-40/bbI.

Iworked in synthetic fuels research for 10 years so there is little in your Funk & Wagnalls (encyclopedias for those born under a rock)that I won’t know or have seen.

The energy sector is incredibly successful and profitable.

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this does not necessarily mean it is a good thing. What many on the right are forgetting is that someday, maybe not in the next couple of decades, or even in the next 100 years, but some day there will be absolutely no oil. What then? Wind and solar are here. They will be here for as long is the earth exists. Why is there even an argument about developing wind and solar and geothermal energy? It isn’t as if it is oil or green (well I guess with some people it is). Shouldn’t it be about using everything we have available–in the long run it will conserve the oil we do have and thereby make it available for much longer period of time as well as bring down the price of all energy sources if people have a choice of several.

The best solution to this “double taxation” problem would be to eliminate all taxes except the corporate tax.

“But don’t let facts get in the way of your arguments. I’m sure they sound pretty.”
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Or let a snarky attitude get in the
way of you understanding anything but a cheap hit.
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In the legal technical sense they are separate for purposes of suits and ongoing structure. Since shareholders are the owners, by your wiki answer if they are truly separate in every sense, shareholders would;d be subject to taxes on retained earnings.

So before you start your victory lap, maybe pay attention to the larger point.
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But more interesting; “The law treats a corporation as a legal “person” ” I guess the Supreme Courts ruling on campaign finance was then correct. I assume you agree.

Same here. Seems as if you don’t have a family, and aren’t uber-wealthy, you don’t count in this country.
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ps. Greed is good.

A deal can suck and still be the best one available… (convince) me how he could have done much better.
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Just because you can make a deal doesn’t mean you should. The “inefficacy of tax cuts” is reason enough not to make this deal. Why commit heavy to an inefficient plan? We’re expecting the same thing to produce different results.
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You don’t think that Obama, after his heralded inauguration, could have said to us “we need to stimulate this economy by creating jobs. I’m releasing a plan to invest in an ambitious program of hiring Americans to modernize of our national electric grid. We believe that a one trillion dollar investment is appropriate”. And go from there.
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If it fails to pass, fine. At least we’ve got our elected on record with a clearly defined bill. Then you negotiate (offer 10% tax cuts, see what happens), and eventually, you may want to compromise.
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To me, readily committing to a Compromise Deal is their way to deny responsibility. IOW, if you vote for a compromise without debating the starting points, no one knows what side you’re really are on. Too much gray area, too much vagueness (spin loves a vacuum). The weasels will always blame the other guy for the inevitable bad product.

In the legal technical sense they are separate for purposes of suits and ongoing structure
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Hey, a troll finally admitted he was wrong. I suppose the reality check finally got cashed.
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And the key word here is “entity” not “person”. Corporations don’t have every right that a person has because -gasp-they aren’t people. Corporations have legal rights, but they are not people and should not be confused with people.

“With all the talk of corporate taxes, it might be useful to look at some examples of what is really paid.”
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It would even be more useful to understand why they pay at the level they do.

In you link, GE pays a low rate because of losses in the US. Why? high cost high regulatory costs and high overall labor costs.

Microsoft pays royalties to its overseas sub where it is taxed at lower rates (and where highly skilled people are paid at lower rates).

Much of the $1 trillion that sits on corporate balance sheets is overseas and will stay there because the economic cost of repatriation is high (US tax rate). So instead of lowering the corporate tax rate to allow the capital to be re0invested here, the left prefers to whine how little the corporations pay in taxes. How is that working out for you!
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Japan, until recently had the highest corporate tax rate in the world. It also had 20 years of economic stagnation. Thin there might be a correlation?

Now Shep, why did you go and post all those facts? You know wingnuts hate facks. Grass could grow in the antartic and the right will decry the truth of global warming if it snowed anywhere on the planet.

The regulations that essentially mandated banks to make loans to borderline credit of certain groups led to the use of the swaps.
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Regulations didn’t make the banks do anything. Money did. The regulations (or more accurately, the adjustments to those regulations) made it profitable for banks to loan big, to anyone, and securitize these dubious liabilities. Naturally, they did, voraciously- because no one said they couldn’t. And they made so much money.. just pumping air into that bubble.
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Of course, they found ways to make profits and grow their business (I know dirty words to liberals) and limiting their risk.. Yeah, as well they should. They are corporations. They don’t restrict themselves, they shouldn’t be expected to. They make money, or die trying.
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Obviously, we have passed a dangerous line and need to scale-back some of those restrictions that have been shown to work.

Forgot the source, via Digby:
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http://www.grist.org/article/2010-12-21-eia-projects-climate-catastrophe

ughh.
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“scale-back some of those restrictions”
should be “bring back…”

As rdw shills for the oil industry he forgets that this is not a renewable resource. In the long view, what will we do to power our economy, our homes, our transportation? I guess we can always go to Wal-Mart and buy Chinese energy products! Being left behind is a b!tch! Heaven forbid, that we should not start now, to think about the long term problems our country’s young people will face.

FTW, rwbbinla and shepherd. Too many of the oil and gas companies see themselves as only oil and gas companies. If they changed into energy companies they’d have better longterm views and develop renewable resources …ahead of those “left-leaning subsidy-grabbing” solar and wind companies. And don’t forget that BP’s oil diasaters aren’t the only ones out there. Envision the damage being done in Pennsylvania by gas companies fracking the rocks and poisoning water supplies.

First, building a national electric grid isn’t an immediate stimulus program. Something on that scale is probably looking at a multi-year investment phase. That was one of the biggest complaints about the original stimulus: that most of the projects would not actually get under way until 2010. Guess what, it happened exactly as believed and look at how badly it’s viewed now. Republicans can easily block it – and at a Trillion dollars, Republicans would be able to hold it up for years as a bad idea. Regardless of how good it actually is (though I honestly believe it is likely a very bad idea as a stimulus project)
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Second: Obama wanted the middle-class tax cuts. Republicans wanted the upper-class tax cuts. The reality is that Obama considered the middle-class tax cuts too important to fail to get them. Regardless of your opinion of whether he should or shouldn’t have gotten them, this is the reality: Obama, for better or for worse, had convinced himself and the media that the middle class tax cuts needed to be extended. He couldn’t not pass them – especially with both parties clearly in favor of it and likely enough moderate Democrats willing to cross the aisle to vote with Republicans. The only thing Obama would’ve been able to do would be to veto it – when does a President veto a middle-class tax cut?
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And don’t even pretend it wouldn’t be sold as such by Fox. Yes, the upper-class tax cuts would be the actual target of the veto, but that’s the reality Obama had to work with.
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So, Obama’s options were to deal with it now or deal with it in January. If you know you’re going to have to swallow or veto, which would you pick? Considering that, is this a good deal?
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Also, unemployment benefits alone, being extended for a full year from a Republican Congress that time and again has demonstrated it has no interest in unemployment insurance, is an important deal. If it were just those for the upper class tax cuts, I would’ve been hooting for joy, but a lot of other useful stimulus measures happened to come in play as well.

For all practical purposed Oil and Gas are renewable. We keep finding more and more all the time and finding ways of accessing more of known deposits. We’ve barely touched huge suppiles in Iraq and Brazil and the Sauds could easily double production if needed. We’re finding more all of the time almost everywhere we look from the North Sea to the Gulf to the coasts of Africa and South America. Exxon has increased their reserves 23 years in a row.

I am a fan of developing solar but at a measured pace using small grants to support basic research. Corzine using tax credits for solar in NJ was simply brain dead. NJ is not a sunny locale. It doesn’t work there nor is it close to working. Even Al Gore has finally admitted the Ethanol craze was stupid. Bush was supporting ethanol by trying to increase production 25% per year. A health number but not unreasonable given the unused farmland and ability to switch crops and increase productivity. Pelosi came in and tried to increase production more than 60% per year and corn prices more than tripled. Leaving aside the fact corn is a food staple for the worlds poor ethanol creates as much or more pollution as oil and can damage engines. She pissed away a lot of money making things worse.

>>the failure to break up the big six “too-big-to-fail”

The issue isn’t “too big to fail.” That is a red herring.

The issue is the repeal of Glass-Stegall and the “rescue” of the commercial banks of the 1990′s by allowing them to merge with investment banks.

In the 30s, we broke them up into 2 industries (1) low risk, low return commercial banks, to handle “the people’s money/savings” – money we need and can’t put at risk; and (2) high risk high reward investment firms to handle investment money – money folks and companies are willing to put at risk and can afford to loose.

Through the 1990s, the incursion of other, unregulated industries into the profitable lines of the commercial banks essentially made them unprofitable (ROI-wise.)

Traditionally, central banks (like the Federal Reserve) have promote commercial bank system efficiency and confidence by standing as the “lender of last resort.” Not “too big to fail” but “too important to fail.” (That role had never needed to be used through the 1980′s, but the possibility served to promote the commercial banking system.)

When commercial banks became relatively unprofitable in the 90′s, their “rescue” by allowing them to merge with high risk banks, while extending the role of “lender of last resort” to the investments banks was madly short-sighted.

Don’t be distracted by the idea of “too big to fail.”

Recognize that we need (1) profitable but safe commercial banks (which also provide the incredibly important global payments systems and import/export finacing) and (2) separate high risk high reward investment banks for those who have some money they can afford to put at risk.

Too many of the oil and gas companies see themselves as only oil and gas companies. If they changed into energy companies they’d have better longterm views and develop renewable resources …

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There’s an old saying in business that to be successful you must ‘stick to your knitting’. Meaning do what it is you do well and focus on that. Exxon and the giants have veered into some alternative energy businesses but it’s mainly for PR and in areas where there is some expertise, like chemicals. The entire green movement is based on politics not economics. Exxon and others will play the PR game as necessary but Oil makes things move. Liberals will fret every discovery but Exxon has the world as it’s playground. A few years ago Chavez threatened their business so they just transferred their rigs to Brazil. The Brazilians are not even remotely hesitant in developing their huge offshore fields. For Exxon it’s a simple profit/loss analysis. If the liberals want to raise the cost of doing business in the USA Exxon simply goes to Brazil. Hugo is so impossibly stupid he threatened Exxon as they were getting ready to tow a $1B rig to Venezuela to open new wells. The rig never made it to Venezuela. It’s in Brazil now. If Exxon can make more money pumping oil in Brazil than off of Texas they’ll drill in Brazil. Either way Exxon is going to drill and make a fortune. They can pay the taxes to Brazil or the USA. As a business matter, they’re indifferent. The green gods supported stupid decisions like corzine pushing for solar power in cloudy NJ. Pure political vanity and the reason we will NOT have energy policy controlled by politicians.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has projected that the United States will lead the world into catastrophic global warming over the next twenty five years..

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That’s not true as China passed the USA as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases two years ago and they are not slowing down. The Chinese never took Kyoto as anything other than an opportunity to get liberal saps to pay them so they can build more coal plants. The same is true of India, Brazil and the rest of the 3rd world. The USA is actually quite clean and getting cleaner all of the time. We have been investing large amounts of money in our air, our rivers and streams, our wetlands and millions of acres of parks. We are decades ahead of Europe where they depend on govt to do everything. Here much of the work is done via public/private partnerships or privately. PA and many states have very shrewd tax ploys whereby rich landowners can swap their development rights for tax credits to ensure their land remains family owned forever. IN some cases it’s an agreement not to develop and in some it’s an agreement to make some publically acccessable was horse or jogging trails. My township has $750K in a fund they expect to use as bait for matching state, federal and private funds to purchase more open space for parks. In an adjacent township they used a similar approach to remove a dam from the Brandywine creek in order to restore fishing. In the past fish traveled upstream to spawn. It’s now a small creek. The PA fish and game commission agreed to stock the creek 3 years ago, each year for 5 years. It takes 5 years for the fish to return as mature adults to spawn. The obvious theory is by the time the dam is removed the fish will start to return and reproduce on their own. Obviously this is a major gain up and down the food chain and for the environment.

About 5 years ago a very wealthy trader set up a trust for his estate to eventually add $750M designed to go for projects related to the great lakes region for habitat improvements, especially wetlands. He had already been active in buying land for various private conservatories providing the private matching funds to get local, state and federal grants to maximize his buying power. This is capitalism at it’s best. A professional investor using the system to maximize our investment in the environment. They don’t have this in Europe. That’s just one example. It’s happening all over.

some day there will be absolutely no oil. What then? Wind and solar are here. They will be here for as long is the earth exists. Why is there even an argument about developing wind and solar and geothermal energy

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The argument is quite obvious and straightforward. Capitalism is a competition. If the USA is to adapt to a solar based policy energy costs will increase dramatically and we’ll get out butts kicked economically. That’s one reason Granholm and Corzine were so stupid. Do you really want to start experimenting with solar in Michigan or New Jersey? How about the south where they get a lot more sun? We have plenty of Oil. Exxon has increased reserves 23 years in a row. It’s far cheaper than Solar and Wind and that doesn’t address reliability.

I am a big fan of investing seed money in R&D to keep the solar industry moving forward. We need continuous advances for an extended period before solar can become competitive. We might be at the point where solar is now a practical product in places without a grid. That is the industry can sell $10B or more in product without subsidy. There is some inflection point whereby the amount the industry reinvests in R&D guarrantees continued improvement. For now I support the Dept of energy awarding grants to research facilities such as MIT for promising lines of research.

Also note consumers of oil based products are not sitting still. They might be on a cusp of an upgrade in engine technology whereby they can drop another cylinder yet provide the same power an eliminate the need for a cooling system. If a 3 cylinder motor can replace a 4 cylinder and it’s cooling system that’s a major gain in MPH and a reduction in costs.

oil extraction costs in tar sands is about 38-40/bbI.

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No chance. They never would have made the huge upfront capital investment. The cost was never over $30.

And the Gulf spill was a massive hallucination then?

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The spill was real but a rare event caused by Shells subcontractors. As bad as that was the damage was contained and minimal. Many are predicting the shutdown of the fishing fleet is already driving a significant increase in fish stocks including shellfish.

I wish I had looked at this earlier. Good points forgottenlord, plenty to consider.
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Is it true that “a national electric grid isn’t an immediate stimulus program”? Once someone is hired, it becomes stimulative– wouldn’t you have to hire people to plan it? and more at each developmental stage?
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Anyway, whether or not “Republicans can easily block” Dem initiatives should not be the determining factor. Debate in public. Fight, push- maybe it’ll work. If not, at least we see who’s on what side.. something we can’t tell with these amorphous compromise deals.
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Besides, I don’t know if the Rs could have blocked modernization of the electric grid– it was popular (first and foremost), it is necessary at some point and it had gotten validation from practically all leading economists. Sure, they would have had to stuff the sausage in order to pass it.. but that’s the Hill.
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My point is this: we voted for candidates that promised certain things. Once elected, they made little effort to deliver- they gave up before the fight even began. Instead, we were told “it was too difficult to even try, just be happy with the little we were able to salvage.” BS. Aim high, fight and then compromise; instead we got compromise first, then excuses.
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Also:
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Obama, for better or for worse, had convinced himself and the media that the middle class tax cuts needed to be extended
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Not exactly.. it’s more accurate as:
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President Obama, for better or worse, had convinced himself and the media that middle class tax cuts needed to be extended, while candidate Obama (and candidate Dems) campaigned against Bush tax-cuts in full and clearly articulated that any middle class cuts had to be offset with increases for the highest earners.
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Bottom line: they blew it. Stim I could have been so much better; and now Stim II is almost all tax cuts. Opportunity wasted. Nothing changed except that the Rs’ hand was made stronger.

Yet another reality-free post. Corporations are separate, legal entities, apart from the stock-holders and workers.

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What’s your point? They are separate for liability purposes but still owned by the stockholders. You are taxing the profits and then taxing the distribution of those same profits again. That’s double taxation.

“If you’re a supporter of this President’s agenda, you have seen some setbacks and false starts, but Christmas has undoubtedly come early. While the President is being labeled the “comeback kid” and the glow of a convalescent figure follows him to vacation in Hawaii. Your gift was a country moving in the progressive direction you voted for in 2008. Change has indeed come to America, now it’s time to dig in and protect all that has been accomplished.”

My review of the 111th “Mighty-Duck” Congress:
http://j.mp/i7kUMZ

They should have shoved this down the Republicans’ throat right off the bat. Unfortunately,some Democrats are as corrupt as Republicans,only catering to their rich donors.

I don’t think it’s gum on shoe…it’s more like water on brain. If we were half as disciplined as the elderly from finances to respect,we wouldn’t have half the problems we have. A good percentage of the elderly live like paupers,barely make ends meet because of the greed and stupidity of us baby boomers. And yes I include myself in that accusation.

There will ALWAYS be something.

What Obama proved is that this country is not progressive as noted in that stunning rebuke on election day. With the largest house majorities in 70 years and a census that all but ensures extended dominance you are about to learn the GOP not only controls the house but conservatives control the GOP. 2011 will be about budgets, spending and funding and Obama will have to choose between continuing resolutions which freeze spending or make deals which ensure spending grows at a much slower than planned rate with the cuts coming from things like NPR, PBS, the NEH, the FCC, The UN, Green energy programs. etc. Further keep your eye on the constitutional debate over the rights of individuals versus the state to force people to buy healthcare coverage. It will get to the supreme court and this is not a progressive court.

This is a unique period in history whereby a powerful grassroots movement was able to form quickly thanks to the internet, able to fundraise prodigiously, thanks to the internet and thus for all practical purposed force the GOP into a far more conservative position on spending then they’d otherwise go. Each of the 63 new GOP members of the house was elected on a promise to cut spending and the size of govt. Each vote, no matter how minor, will be watched. One wrong vote on spending will generate large protests in their home districts and an immediate search for a successor including the start of fundraising. My congressman, Pat Meehan, knows with certainty, if he approves a increase in spending he will face a well funded opponent in the GOP primary and then again in the general. Without the support of the tea party it will be impossible for him to get a 2nd term. This is what he’ll have to mull over each and every time he votes on a spending package.

One other thing. We have 3 branches for a reason. We now have, after more than 200 years, an established right for the individual to bear arms. A huge and definitive conservative victory. Breyer’s comments in dissent last week were typically muddled and easily refuted. And he’s your only intellectual voice. Obama appointed two mediocraties who could only embarrass themselves debating Scalia or Roberts or Alito. Also under Obama they recently expanded free speech rights reversing the Orwellian Campaign Finance reform laws voted in by Obama. It will be a short matter of time before the FCCs decision to regulate the internet is rebuked however that’ll be by the house via the funding mechanism. The FCC is going to find itself with much smaller staffs and less able to regulate anything. As FDR found out the founders anticipated progressivism and defeated them nbefore they got started. We now have the most conservative court in 60 years.

Saw an interesting article a month back putting much of the recent legislation in context. It seems a truism that the more laws we pass the more regulated and less free we become. But that’s not necessarily true. The Supreme Court just rolled back laws banning guns in Washington and Chicago and laws restricting freedom of speech. Both were against Obama’s wishes but we became more free not less. If you go back into the 70′s Nixon instituted price controls which proved to be a disaster and much of the economy had already been over-regulated. All trucking / transportation avenues were effective monopolies with prices set by the govt as was almost all commnications and so many other aspects of economic life. Jimmy Carter wisely (I know, that’s an oxymoron) started the long process of deregulation of airlines, trucking, transportation, communications, etc. We now have a much freer economy than 35 years ago despite a gazillion more regulations.

The debate on forcing everyone to buy healthcare is going to rest on the limits of the commerce clause and the argument by Obama’s justice dept that it allows the govt to force anything they want will almost certainly be rejected by the Roberts court. This would be the 3rd decisive and authentically historical decision of the court and a 3rd significant rebuke of progressivism.

You will be getting it on two fronts, the courts and via the funding authority of the House. This tea party is far more dangerous than you know. We will be getting back to the spending levels of the Clinton administration, which in 2001 was 18.2% of GDP. How cool is it that Bill Clinton will become an icon for the Tea Party movement.

The World from Berlin
‘Barack Obama Was the Biggest Loser of 2010

SPIEGEL’s Washington correspondent Marc Hujer writes on SPIEGEL ONLINE:

“Barack Obama was the biggest loser of 2010. He allowed the angry Tea Party movement to grow powerful, he did not pass any decent laws despite his majority in Congress and he was aloof, elitist and indecisive. He had to accept a formidable, yet entirely understandable, defeat in the midterm elections as a result. No one expected much from Obama, at least not during the rest of this year.”

“Now, just days before Christmas, Congress has ratified the New START disarmament treaty with Russia. … Will Obama build on this victory? Is it Obama’s breakthrough as a president? Will it mark his comeback as a reformer? … Is a new era of cooperation beginning?”

“The opposite is much more probable, namely that the disarmament treaty will be Obama’s last significant achievement for a long time. In January, the new Congress will convene. The new representatives who won in the midterm elections will come to Washington, including those Tea Party activists who have little interest in making compromises with Obama. With them, Congress will move to the right …. Possibly the only reason why so many Republicans voted for Obama’s law was because they themselves fear the new era and see few chances of passing sensible, bipartisan laws in the new Congress.”

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The MSM is doing all it can to buff up Obama but the Start treaty is quite small potatoes. The Cold War ended two decades ago and the Russians are a 2nd rate power with a collapsing population. Touting this as disarmament when North Korea and Iran are selling missles and nuclear technology to all buyers is rather silly. Iran is going to get the bomb and then the arabs will follow. Venezuela has started an arms race and we will sell to the Colombians. We’ve also completed a number of agreements in Southeast Asia regarding defense with South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Cambodia, Australia and India that will significantly boost our defense industry.

I think he did a far better job on DADT in making sure it was a legislative effort rather than executive or judicial. As Krauthammer this is a generational issue that was always going to end this way and he handled it well. Clinton should have done this 15 years ago. Still small potatoes.

Envision the damage being done in Pennsylvania by gas companies fracking the rocks and poisoning water supplies.

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The dollars these companies are bringing into PA landowners are so advantageous even Ed Rendell realized he better not tax them to death and new governor Corbett ran on a pledge to keep taxes at the current level. The state is doing everything it can to take environmental protections while attracting the business as fast as possible. Drilling is proceeding on PA much faster than NY. It’s interesting that the advantages North Dakota has over PA in terms of fewer but much larger farms is a political disaster for the states liberals. For many farmers and landowners the leases are a windfall and there are so many benefitting they form a powerful political block. This being PA Corbett will almost certainly serve 8 years. Drilling activity will accelerate. I know of one landowner of 100 acres getting over $3,000 a month allowing them to drill. He’s almost doubled his monthly income. Philly liberals are outraged but sane people are thrilled.

What Obama proved is that this country is not progressive as noted in that stunning rebuke on election day.
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Come on RDW. Nothing Obama has done can be honestly portrayed as progressive: private insurance mandate, tax-cut stimulus, banking reform that puts power in the hands of admin-appointed (not publically accountable) regulators as opposed to clearly-defined guidelines, surge in Afghanistan, sanctions on Iran..
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Obama proved that liberalism (and conservatism- though the Rs are more responsible for that) is almost non-existent in today’s US politics.. not when corporations have such a profound impact of legislation and elections. And that mainstream media is powerful enough to convince many Americans that the failures of our corporatist policy of the past 3 decades are the fault of “liberal Obama”.

What corporate failure? On an individual basis corporations come and go and have ups and downs. Corporate profits are just fine. If you are talking about banking we’ve had these things every 10 or 20 years throughout our history. An example of his liberalism is nationalizing GM. The far smarter alternative would have been the bankruptcy process but that would have been painful for his chief source of funds, unions. He’s done a dozen other things that will lead to bigger government although I made the point in another post the trend will still be toward economic freedom. He failed progressives on taxes however it’s no more his failure than the MSM and yours for losing the long time argument. We are now in the age of Reagan where 70% tax rates are viewed by huge majorities as brain dead. Socialism isn’t just a dead religion but commonly viewed as a disease that’s killed more people and destroyed more lives and anything caused by viruses.

Obama was your only hope. He is authentically, deeply liberal. He is not a King. Politics is the art of the possible and with 40% of the people calling themselves conservative and only 20% liberal not much is possible in terms of moving left. Even Europe is reversing course. That 20% number is despite the efforts of the MSM which is left and in some cases, as with Joe Klein, pretty far left.

What corporate failure?
I didn’t use those words. I referred to corporate centric policies that have been detrimental, ie. eroding bank regulations (no Glass-Steagall, easing capital requirements, allowing AAA rated assets from risky loans..) caused the housing bubble, electronic commodity trading led to Enron fleecing CA, hedge fund schemes… I’d call healthcare reform one in that the tremendous power of lobbies, re-election contributions, commercials, etc. scuttled any chance of real debate and effective reform we might have had. Remember, roughly 75% of Americans and physicians polled in early ’09 wanted a public HC option and the person we elected President campaigned repeatedly on this. The fact that industry was able to sway our elected (and public opinion via the media) shows the power I refer to. Also, I think our military is often an extension of corporate policy and rarely reflective of actual threat.
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An example of his liberalism is nationalizing GM
Then you’d also have to say Bush’s loans to the banks and TARP is liberalism too. I agree that bankruptcy would have been preferable, however, as you said, “that would have been painful for his chief source of funds, unions.” Yes, this was an example of Dems catering to a traditional power-source (like Bush and the banks), not an example of “liberal”.
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“He failed progressives on taxes however it’s no more his failure than the MSM and yours for losing the long time argument.”
How can you say progressives lost an argument when Obama and the Dems failed to articulate the progressive response, let alone enact it? What rubbish. Voters elected a “liberal” and he failed us all by not acting as one. Per the media, you make my case here: “We are now in the age of Reagan where 70% tax rates are viewed by huge majorities as brain dead. Socialism isn’t just a dead religion but commonly viewed as a disease…” Trickle-down, “corporations will police themselves”, etc. are proven brain dead, yet they prevail. And leading economists trend liberal. So if we are in that age, you can’t say MSM argued for progressivism- you should conclude they argued against it. And who is talking about socialism? Only media types trying to sensationalize and scare.
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Anyway, I wish you all the best in the new year. Thanks for engaging.