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Friday, September 19, 2008

The Trillion Dollar Republican Tax Heist

[via Political Wire]
"Congressional leaders said after meeting Thursday evening with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that as much as $1 trillion could be needed to avoid an imminent meltdown of the U.S. financial system," according to Politico.

According to Sen. Christopher Dodd, lawmakers were told last night "that we're literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications, here at home and globally."

Of course, discussion of the need (or not) of the Bailouts -- just like discussion of the "success" (or not) of the Surge -- will function as a deranging do-over rendering it impossible for anybody who knows what they are talking about to talk sensibly about disastrous neoliberal ideology as such -- just as the latter rendered discussion of the disastrous illegal immoral war and occupation Iraq next to impossible as well. And to the cost of us all.

In a decade's time Republicans (and their allies among the worst Blue Dogs and DLC-types in the Democratic party) have demolished America's middle class, outsourced and downsized millions of jobs, lowered real salaries and living standards for everyday Americans, pumped up debts at every level of society, thrown mountains of money into the pursuit of illegal immoral wars of choice and conquest based on documented lies, all the while lowering taxes on the already rich and looting indispensable infrastructure and deregulating everything in sight with the predictable (and widely predicted but ignored) consequences of catastrophic debt, failure, corruption, fraud on an eye-popping unfathomable scale.

And now decent law-abiding average citizens who have suffered the loss of living standards, security, welfare, dignity and hope as a result of these policies are to be required to bail out the greedy short-sighted corrupt lying fools who made them suffer, bail them out in ways that ensure the wrongdoers keep their ill-gotten gains and are insulated from the consequences of their crimes and idiocies, and bail them out in ways that make the sufferers suffer endlessly more and endlessly longer.

Now all the free market cheerleaders and war-cheerleaders who caused all this completely predictable (and, again, widely predicted but ignored) devastation are exploiting long-despised New Deal era policies and programs twisted to add insult to injury, to socialize their losses as they have long socialized their risks and costs while hyper-privatizing their momentary gains, blaming everybody but themselves for the problems, incomparably exacerbating their corporate-militarist catastrophe or at least staving it off long enough to blame the next Administration.

Flabbergastingly enough, the right-wing nuttosphere is going apoplectic right about now about a manifestly true off-the-cuff remark by Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden to the effect that Americans who are making more than a quarter of a million dollars a year in these times should probably have the basic decency to accept gracefully a raise in their taxes as a straightforward matter of patriotism (it is also, by the way, a straightforward matter of survival).

But of course these dot-eyed Republican pigs at the trough don't want to pay for anything or accept responsibility for anything. They just want to lie about their role in this decade of unprecedented serial disasters, they want to lie about what they have done, what they are doing, and what they would go on to do if we let them get away with it.

So, they just lie and lie about Biden's comment. They elide the fact that he spoke of the patriotism of that vanishingly small coterie of Americans who have been epic beneficiaries of Bush disaster-capitalism properly having to pay their fair share in taxes to clean up their goddamn mess for them, and pretend that Biden simply made a blanket statement about the patriotism of raising taxes in general (which is just an idiotically Randroidal right wing caricature of the way everyday non-insane non-criminal people think about the very idea of good-government).

It beggars the imagination. Honestly. As always with Republicans we are eventually brought to the blank brute unholy moment of complete exasperation. Have you people really no shame? Have you no shame at all?

Republicans are booing and hissing and waving their white oven-mitt hands spastically around at the very idea of raising tax revenue from people who can afford it to deal with the problems they caused -- while at this very moment these people are imposing taxes on our future in the form of debt and looting "privatization" to bail out the wrongdoers themselves and in a way that does little if anything to address any of the underlying problems at hand.

It is true, there is little question that with Obama in the White House and Democrats in both Houses (too many of them too beholden to neoliberal moonshine themselves, notwithstanding) a more progressive and sensible tax system and regulatory regime will undoubtedly be implemented. It seems to me the current reckless bailouts by Republicans for misbehaving rich people represent a pre-emptive regressive tax of everyday Americans to overfill the bank accounts of the rich to compensate for the demands they are likely to face soon enough, or maybe just to give these awful criminals and self-important sociopaths as much money as they can possibly stuff in their accounts before skipping town to their domed cities in Dubai where they plan to live Vegas-style in crappy McMansions while warlordism and climate change give them a nice fireworks display they can watch on the teevee.

The thing that makes all this hopeless for anybody with a brain and any working sense of decency at all is that of course some kind of bailing out really does have to happen and some of that bailing out really will benefit people who don't deserve it, simply because otherwise millions of people will suffer even more who deserve their suffering even less.

But discussions of the bailout are maddening in the same way that discussions of the Surge are maddening to anybody with sense.

Yes, some kind of bailout is surely necessary, yes, conditions on the ground in Iraq marginally improved as expected when we threw more troops and resources there.

But will the bailout address any of the fundamentals that created the mess? Is a troop surge sustainable when the military is already strained beyond its limits?

Will we agree that Companies Too Big to Fail are by definition Companies Too Big to Exist? Will we admit that the underlying problem of an illegal immoral war of choice based on lies is more important than the success or failure of a strategic chapter called the Surge within the longer narrative of that catastrophic war?

Will we admit that the Market Fairy doesn't create spontaneous order and wealth out of nothing and that regulation is necessary and also progressive taxation to avoid wealth capture and concentration really are necessary for a decent functioning economy? Will we admit that this illegal immoral war of choice and the disastrous occupation without end that has followed it has succeeded in achieving not a single goal that has been offered up to justify it, squandering endless lives and treasure, destroying our credibility and standing in the world, such as it was, substituting militarist for democratic norms across our culture and institutions, and, mindbogglingly, making us all less safe in the process?

Will we end the insanity of the cult of the CEO and the politician as celebrities? Will we end the insanity of blood for oil when we all know by now that petrochemical society will end human civilization unless we transform our economy into a renewable one to the benefit of us all?

If not, the bailouts and the surges and all the other idiotic distractions and payoffs and thefts in plain sight of the corporate-militarists of (disproportionately) the Republican Party will cause more trouble than they're worth in every instance. And I'm sorry to say I'm betting on "not."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

And now decent law-abiding average citizens who have suffered the loss of living standards, security, welfare, dignity and hope as a result of these policies are to be required to bail out the greedy short-sighted corrupt lying fools who made them suffer, bail them out in ways that ensure the wrongdoers keep their ill-gotten gains and are insulated from the consequences of their crimes and idiocies, and bail them out in ways that make the sufferers suffer endlessly more and endlessly longer.

To be fair, we're not just bailing them out because we like them. We're saving our own asses, too. If the market collapses and trillions in capital are lost, that will mean lost savings and jobs for everyone.

Several hundred billion dollars in bail outs now could prevent trillions in losses later. Of course, as one analyst pointed out, $100 million in regulations and oversight could have prevented trillions in losses, too.

Anybody who gets laid off in the US is entitled to temporary unemployment compensation, but they have to pay into that system (same for Social Security). Why not require these mega-corporations, through a tax, to pay into a fund that would be used bail them out? No extra money would be allowed.

And where is this money coming from? We keep saying it's the "taxpayers' money." That's not really true. We're already in deficit spending. There's no more taxpayer money to hand out. The money is going to either be borrowed from foreign banks (the federal government still has surprsingly good credit among global lenders), or the treasury is simply going to print more money, which dilutes the value of the dollar. The lowest earners will feel that the most as the price of everything goes up.

Flabbergastingly enough, the right-wing nuttosphere is going apoplectic right about now about a manifestly true off-the-cuff remark by Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden to the effect that Americans who are making more than a quarter of a million dollars a year in these times should probably have the basic decency to accept gracefully a raise in their taxes as a straightforward matter of patriotism (it is also, by the way, a straightforward matter of survival).

This is what George Lakoff is talking about when he says we must frame the debate. Instead of a "tax burden," why not talk about "civic responsibility"? The people who make more than $250,000 per year are allowed to do so by a system of social democracy that produces personal safety, fiscal safety (which boosts investor confidence), advancements in science and technology (which improve productivity), and so on. Nobody creates wealth in a vacuum. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. And the least we could do is pay back into a system that creates that opportunity for us.

The thing that makes all this hopeless for anybody with a brain and any working sense of decency at all is that of course some kind of bailing out really does have to happen and some of that bailing out really will benefit people who don't deserve it, simply because otherwise millions of people will suffer even more who deserve their suffering even less.

Yep.

But will the bailout address any of the fundamentals that created the mess?

No, and even hardened free marketeers are against it. Cf. Ron Paul.

Will we agree that Companies Too Big to Fail are by definition Companies Too Big to Exist?

An interesting point. While they may be more efficient than smaller companies, we are seeing now, once again, that we shouldn't put all of our (nest) eggs in one basket.

Will we admit that the Market Fairy doesn't create spontaneous order and wealth out of nothing and that regulation is necessary and also progressive taxation to avoid wealth capture and concentration really are necessary for a decent functioning economy?

Regulations are necessary to smooth out and stabilize the otherwise wild and chaotic fluctuations of a Market Tazmanian Devil that has already empirically proven its capacity to destroy itself. The loss in efficiency that regulations create is more than made up for by the confidence of investors in a stable market.

Will we end the insanity of blood for oil when we all know by now that petrochemical society will end human civilization unless we transform our economy into a renewable one to the benefit of us all?

ET, environmental technology, is the next revolution, and it will dwarf IT in its capacity to produce wealth. But we need to challenge the entrenched interests of the fossil fuel industry.

Dale Carrico said...

To be fair, we're not just bailing them out because we like them.

I say as much later on in the post myself. But I do think that plenty of people championing bailing out the current crop of crooks and numbskulls are doing so at least in part because they do indeed "like them," that is to say, they identify with them as "our kind," "our sort," the "ones who matter," the "creative class," "the indispensable class," "the investor class" and so on. You know it's true as well as I do. Class warfare is real, it's happening, and it's not just a matter of vulnerable people pointing out how they're getting screwed, it's about privileged people doing the screwing and thinking it's cute.

We're saving our own asses, too. If the market collapses and trillions in capital are lost, that will mean lost savings and jobs for everyone.

Again, I say something like this latter in the post. But the problem that matters and maddens here is that this very way of putting the point seems to ensure we never redress the actual problem but endlessly clean up after what were perfectly preventable messes but which we are now told are too urgently messed up to worry about causes. Figuring out causes gets waved away as "blame gaming" or "politics of resentment" or "fiddling while Rome burns" or what have you and the wheel just goes round and round and round.

Dale Carrico said...

ET, environmental technology, is the next revolution, and it will dwarf IT in its capacity to produce wealth. But we need to challenge the entrenched interests of the fossil fuel industry.

I would include the nuclear advocacy and "clean coal" advocacy people too in that challenge to entrenched interests. Also, we need to be very wary about Big Industrial State handwaving in a geoengineering mode that will siphon off urgently needed dollars into porkbarrel crapola and elite-owned and managed gatekeeper gigantism in the nineteenth century mode when what are needed are resilient decentralized renewable peer-to-peer solutions in the twenty-first century mode.

Anonymous said...

But I do think that plenty of people championing bailing out the current crop of crooks and numbskulls are doing so at least in part because they do indeed "like them," that is to say, they identify with them as "our kind," "our sort," the "ones who matter," the "creative class," "the indispensable class," "the investor class" and so on. You know it's true as well as I do.

Yeah, especially now when most of the relevant agencies are populated by Bush/Republican get-the-government-out-of-the-way, let-the-market-police-itself, high-earners-are-superhuman types.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, especially now when most of the relevant agencies are populated by Bush/Republican get-the-government-out-of-the-way, let-the-market-police-itself, high-earners-are-superhuman types.

The Republicans haven't been very successful, then (there are still lobbyists, other employees, etc. who will stop them from doing the first two).

Dale Carrico said...

They have never intended to eliminate lobbyists or shrink government -- they have always wanted to direct government to do their bidding, control the majorities with which they dis-identify and which they mean to exploit, and to loot the achievements of collective civilization with impunity. It's just that they use a rhetoric of deregulation and liberty to achieve these ends.

Many of them are just cynical greedheads. Many of them are earnest purveyors of the "Noble Lie" in the service of their delusive faith that they constitute some kind of natural elite. Others are just stupid enough to believe that market outcomes, however duressed or misinformed, constitute "liberty" and that "deregulation" unleashes some kind of "spontaneous order" rather than the corruption and abuses that have always eventuated historically in the absence of sensible regulation and oversight of the regulators. So, bad people, dumb people, and wrong people.

But there are no ironies or surprises here. We should not pretend otherwise.