Florida debate redux

I've mostly confined my blogging to Stinque, but I thought I'd drop by and share some peronal observations about last night's Florida GOP presidential debate, mostly just to point out what I felt were the event's most risible moments. Haven't been able to find a transcript online yet, so I'll quote from memory.

Hands down, the biggest howler of the evening belongs to Newt Gingrich who, when pressed on his lobbying business with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac insisted that he had not been hired as a lobbyist, but rather as a "historian of Washington." I haven't heard such a hilarious euphemism since South Carolina governor Mark Sanford was said to be "hiking the Appalacchian Trail" when he was, in fact cavorting in Argentina with his mistress. Newt is amazing in his shamelessness and ability to argue that black is white and up is down.

An eye popping moment, for me, at least, came when Mitt Romney, attempting to fend off Newt Gingrich's criticism of the favorable tax treatment he receives under current law noted that under Gingrich's tax plan he, Mitt Romney, would have paid no taxes at all. Not a dime. It's obvious and shouldn't have shaken me, but for some reason it did. Really gets to the essense of just how unfair the tax proposals floated by the GOP really are.

I did enjoy the moment when Brian Williams asked Mitt Romney to predict what people would be talking about "tomorrow" when his tax records were released. Among the things Romney said people would be talking about is just how "complicated" the tax code can be. I suspect that was Romney's way of saying that people will be surprised at the lengths to which his accountants have gone to game the tax code and shelter as much of his wealth from taxation as possible.

Ron Paul's insistence that Iran's threat to block the Straits of Hormuz is merely as response to a previous U.S. act of war (the blockade) shows just how outside the mainstream of the Republican party that guy really is. It's mind blowing to see stuff like that said on the GOP stage. These arguments will be missed when Paul is no longer able to run his Quixotic presidential campaigns (guy's age is starting to show).

Meanwhile, Ron Paul's ludicrous claim that the Community Reinvestment Act caused the 2008 financial meltdown shows just how childish his economic views can be. The CRA as root cause of the crash simply fails the laugh test on every conceivable level. But for a free market absolutist like Paul, everything bad that happens in the economy must be the fault of some "market distorting" government policy somewhere.

OK, that's it for now. I've got much more that could be said, but have run out of time.

My Activities of Late

Though I have written very little here over the pasy few weeks, I continue to blog for Stinque. To that end, I'd like to direct anyone who might drop by to two of my most recent pieces: here and here.

Just Give Up Already...

We're to the point where it's just sad, really. Hard to believe that a couple of months ago this guy was a frontrunner for the GOP nomination based solely on speculation that he'd announce.

Dumbest thing I've read in a long time

Ross Douthat's column in the New York Times today has got to be one of the dumbest editorials I've read in quite some time. Douthat correctly identifies a hyper educated, very sophisticated and highly intelligent Wall Street elite as the source of many of out nation's current ills. But in suggesting that the Republican electorate is in search of a more "down-to-earth" candidate to serve as a counterweight to these people he ignores two very important realities: (1) from 2000 to 2008 this nation was governed by a dim-witted Texan whose educational acheivements were "brought to you by the letter 'C'" and who had difficulty so much as putting together an entire sentence without committing a grammatical atrocity. It was a government headed by this sort of "down to earth" politician that witnessed and enabled Wall Street's recklessness. (2) Anyone who has paid even a moment's attention to the cries of the Tea Party and the blathering of the current crop of GOP presidential hopefuls realizes that these people don't blame the Wall Street elite or the banks for our current economic state. It is an article of faith among theabaggers that Washington regulations were to blame for the crisis, and the solution to our ills is to give evenmore freedom and leeway to the Wall Street wiz kids that Douthat lambastes.

As best I can tell, Douthat's column is simply an attempt to make sense of the shallow vulgarity of the GOP's current anti-intellectual tendencies without acknowledging the simple fact that the GOP electorate demonstrates these inclinations because they are fostered by a conservative elite that sees anti-intellectualism as a bullwark against the emergence of economic class consciousness. The GOP faithful don't despise the intellectual elite because they believe them to have brought about the 2008 financial crisis. They despise them because the massive and well funded conservative propaganda machine sees it in its interests to decry supposed "class warfare" while fostering resentment of the nation's intelligentsia.

Dropping all pretense

Last week, in an attempt to reclaim some newspaper headlines, Rick Perry finally presented the coutry with an economic plan, the centerpiece of which is a 20% flat tax proposal. This isn't that unusual for a Republican candidate, one will recall that it was also the centerpiece of Steve Forbes economic proposals when he ran for president. What's different about Perry's proposal, however, is a curious twist he's added. In an apparent attempt to assuage fears that a flat tax would constitute a tax increase on poorer Americans, Perry has decided that his flax tax should be optional. If you like it, you pay 20% of your income to the Federal Government and you're done (well... except for your state taxes), but if you remain unconvinced, you can stick with the current system.

This little twist apears to have received little scrutiny among the commentariat. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Perry has largely faded from the scene, his numbers dropping precipitously after a series of dissappointing debate performances. Perhaps it is because it apears too gimmicky to merit serous consideration. Still it is suprising how little attention has been paid to the "optionality" feature, because it implies a significant departure from the standard arguments that have, till now, been employed to promote the flat tax. Students of the various and sundry GOP tax proposals that have been floated over the last few decades are no doubt aware that one of the justifications that Republicans frequently provide for their flat tax proposals is the claim that under current law, the super rich are able to exploit loopholes allowing them to shelter much of their income from taxation. The flat tax, proponets have often argued, would actually increase taxes on those wealthy Americans who rely on an army of tax lawyers to help them escape taxation.

And then here comes Rick Perry with another flat tax proposal, however, unlike previous proposals, wealthy individuals are under no obligation to pay a flat 20% of their income to Uncle Sam. They can continue to employ their army of accountants to pay little or nothing. In the end, Perry's proposal represents a tax increase only on those who don't want to go through the hassle of calculating exemptions and looking up tax tables. One wonders what the point is.

Of course, in the end, skeptics are more than justified distrusting Republican candidates' justifications and projections of the effects of their flat tax proposals. If tax loophole allow the super rich to escape taxation, why not simply close those loopholes? And given that most flat tax proposals tend to exempt capital gains from taxation altogether, the idea that these tax plans would repesent an actual tax increase on wealthy Americans is as fanciful a tale as stories about the lost continent of Atlantis.

What we have in Perry's plan, then is just the latest example of GOP policies that are completely divorced from arithemetic and empricial reality. Currently, the U.S. borrows some 40 cents of every dollar it spends. The idea that you can institute a tax plan that is guaranteed to decerase government revenues and still balance the Federal budget in six years... well that's akin to caliming, not merely that you've discovered the lost continent of Atlantis, but that it was inhabitted by Faeries and unicorns.

Puzzling Cain

I've got to say that I'm somewhat puzzled by Herman Cain. I mean, I can understand how a guy who's shown no interest in foreign policy could fumble a question about the Palestinian "right of return." But for a candidate running as a Republican to not realize that expressing an effectively pro-choice position on abortion is a deal breaker with GOP primary voters... that shows a remarcable lack of insight into the U.S. political process.

In any case, it will be interesting to judge the fallout from Cain's statements, especially in places like South Carolina where he's become an unlikely and unexpected frontrunner.

Occupy Orman

Paul Krugman points his readers to this column by Suze Orman, in which the personal finance guru endorses the Occupy Wall Street protesters, and rails against the unfairness of the events that have transpired over the past few years, with major banks and other financial institutions seeing massive bailouts while ordinary homeowners, their mortgages under-water, have been left out to dry.

One point Orman makes is to note the unfairness of a system in which our youth are graduating from college loaded up with student loan debt, and few if any job prospects to help them repay it. Furthermore, recent legislation makes this debt nearly impossible to discharge in bankruptcy court. It's no wonder the kids have taken to the streets.

By manner of comment, I would like to repeat something I have said in other venues: when future historians look back at the wreckage that is becoming of the American economy, they will note with sadness our skewed priorities. And they will wonder how it is we ever got to a point where a propective homeowner considerng the purchase of his next MacMansion can rest secure in the knowledge that should things go wrong, he can simply turn his key in and walk away from the mortgage suffering no legal ramifications. Whereas, by contrast, a young person looking over a stack of college prospectuses and trying to decide where she wants to pursue her higer eductaion faces the very real risk that the massive loans she takes out to pay for her education will haunt her for the rest of her life.