Read It And Weep

From a Q&A at ABC News:

Question: "Tax rebate. Sounds good on the surface but last time Bush and company gave us a rebate we had to deduct it as income on our taxes the following year. Smoke and mirrors people, smoke and mirrors. This is a temporary fix in an election year, nothing more. The only real fix is to dump the present tax system and make Washington stop spending like drunken sailors on leave. It's not their money, it's ours. I guess as long as we continue to re-elect the same losers we can expect more of the same."

Linda from Florida

McPherson [ABC News expert on the subject]: Linda, The tax rebate as proposed actually amounts to a tax cut on your 2008 income even though it is based on 2007 figures. The proposal calls for cutting the federal income tax rate on the first $6,000 in income for individuals and the first $12,000 for couples from the current 10-percent rate to zero percent.

The rebate proposal assumes you are having federal income taxes withheld from your paycheck now based on the current 10-percent rate. Think of the tax rebate actually as an advance on next year's tax refund.

All the details remain to be worked out, but I think it's safe to assume any tax rebates received this year will come into play when completing your 2008 return in early 2009.

Ain't no free lunch here folks.

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Wall Street Welfare

I mentioned the other day that I didn't want to hear any whinning about government handouts from rich conservatives given the plethora of government bailouts going on currently.

Here is a great article on just how some of this Wall Street welfare works. And guess who pays for it? Yep. Either through taxes or higher inflation, the crap rolls downhill.

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QOTD

Hiring Paul Wolfowitz to advise the State Department on arms control is like hiring Lindsay Lohan as a driving instructor.

H/T Juan Cole.

Smells like Republican welfare to me.

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Consumer Psychology

There's a whole bunch of back n' forth in the economic blog world about the governments stimulus package. Some of the debate revolves around who will spend the rebates and who won't. Another issue is the timing to sending the checks with the conventional wisdom being "the sooner the better".

For what it's worth, here's my take. When the checks actually go out, within reason, won't make much difference. Those who are likely to spend it (and that's most of us) will begin spending it now, long before we actually have the checks. That's what credit cards are for. In addition a whole lot of consumers, perhaps a majority, will spend the rebate amount a couple of times blithely rationalizing each purchase as covered by the rebate check. Government officials are well aware of this and counting on it to restimulate the economy well beyond the actual money spent. The only unfortunate part is that at the end of the day, many of these consumers will simply have more debt.

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Wondering?

I haven't been seen it yet and maybe one of you can tell me. Are the proposed "tax rebates" a gift or an advance on 2007 tax refunds (like in the previous "rebates").

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What We're In For

Here's just an opening salvo in what we're in for from Republican hacks if Hillary is the nominee:

Notorious Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone has launched a 527 political organization called Citizens United Not Timid (aka CUNT) to educate the public about "what Hillary Clinton really is." The organization's sole purpose? To sell $25 T-shirts emblazoned with the organization's charming name and its red, white and blue logo. The logo is supposed to evoke a woman's crotch, but it looks more like an elephant's anus (a perfect image for Stone's role in the Republican Party).

Class act eh?

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THE Database

Convinced we started an unjust war? Can't keep track of all the lies told to the American people? Wish you could access a database of them all?
The Center for Public Integrity has just what you need. You'll want to bookmark this.

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Candidate Guide

H/T Rising Hegemon:

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Telecoms, Round Two

Well, Chris Dodd still plans to filibuster the telecom get-out-of-jail free card. It's still a long shot, but Dodd will be fighting all of the establishment, both Republican and Democratic.

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935 And Counting

We know, we know.

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A Little Getaway

Geesh, I go away for a few days for a brief get-away and the stock market tanks, the Dems get into a brawl during the debates, and the conventional wisdom says that Guiliani is fading.

Frankly, I don't ever want to hear a single Republican/conservative type rail again socialism or government giveaways. The recent greed spike by the big money boys during the housing boom is now resulting in huge government bailouts to banks, mortgage companies, bond insurers and consumers. Some lesson on fiscal discipline, eh? But let some middle class person have an appendectomy (my son's cost $102,000.00!) and have to declare bankruptcy because of the burden and it's tough s@#t baby!

As far as the Dems, let them brawl. Let's get all the dirty we can out on the table. You know Republicans will be worse during the general plus make up some stuff that's a complete lie. Better toughen up now! And as far as Guiliani, hasta la vista baby. I don't like any of the Republicans, but he holds a special place in my heart as being oily.

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Today's Feel Good

Link to original with thanks to Immoral Minority

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Political News Shorthand

Here's a roundup of the latest political news:

1. McCain won in S. Carolina. It will likely be his last win as future primaries are less open. Republicans don't really like him all that much.

2. Mitt won big in Nevada, even if you discount the Mormon vote.

3. Clinton barely won Nevada.

4. Obama wants to change the narrative from victories to delegate counts because of his "win" in Nevada.

It'll all shake out Feb. 5th. I'd be hard pressed to predict the Dem winner, but I think Mitt is gonna be in.

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Blah blah blah .... blah blah blah

Feeling some heat Tweety?

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Quote of the Day

"I could promise you this. This president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example."

-- John Edwards, quoted by NBC News, responding to Sen. Barack Obama praise of Ronald Reagan in a recent interview.

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Pierced

Charlie Pierce summarizes my feelings about the Clinton's perfectly. Anyone notice that Bill seems to be losing it lately?

The Clintons appear to have forgotten that, when Bill got his ass impeached for being a priapic idiot, a lot of Democrats supported him because the alternative was utterly unthinkable. Now, it seems to be fast dawning upon them -- and particularly upon Clinton pere -- that there are a number of Democrats who either a) are too young to remember the golden era that was the 1990s, or b) are old enough to remember them all too well as the years of an overly punitive welfare-reform bill, the Defense Of Marriage Act, the several dozen new federal death penalty offenses, and those elements of the Patriot Act that had their birth during the Clinton administration, particularly in the 1996 Antiterrorism act. This seems to be causing the Clinton campaign no little consternation, since it can be assumed that Senator Clinton signed on to the Iraq war out of a similar level of political calculation. Unfortunately for him and her, we now have a Democratic primary electorate that sees such calculation as unseemly at one end and as cowardly at the other. The Clintons are unable at this point to triangulate the circle. Meanwhile, Bill's losing his sh*t to reporters and Hill's resorting to cheapjack electioneering that's getting laughed out of the federal courts. And, it should be noted, that the born-again non-triangulator who was Bill's vice president was right about the war, loudly and publicly, and he was ridiculed for it while Senator Clinton was still working with the protractor trying to fashion a position whereby she could argue that she wasn't really handing the armed forces over to the whims of feckless vandals. The day is past, I think.

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Rebates

I think the media is making a mistake. I know I know, that would be a shock now wouldn't it.

All the discussions about rebates to jump-start the economy have got reporters are mentioning the 2001 "rebates". If memory serves me correctly, in 2001 we all got checks from the government, but they weren't rebates. They were advances on our tax returns. In other words, the "rebates" was later deducted off our tax returns.

I haven't done the research to back up my memory, but then that makes me darned near a journalist now doesn't it!

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Reagan Mythology

Obama is starting to get to me.

It seems that now he's invoking St. Ronald:

"I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

To quote a favorite character from the movie "Fargo", "I think I'm gonna barf".

Digby puts into words the reasons for my retching:

But to long time liberals who lived through this period as an adult, it's like waving a red flag in our faces. Reagan ran explicitly against the left(and in the process normalized the kind of indecent talk that made Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter millionaires.) Because he won big in 1984, leaders in both parties accepted this omnipotent Reagan myth and have run against liberalism ever since --- and have ended up, through both commission and omission, advancing the destructive conservative policies that brought us to a place where we are debating things like torture. It would be helpful if ending the era of Democrats running against the liberal base could be part of this new progressive "trajectory."

As Digby earlier points out, Bill Clinton already tried catering to the DLC type boilerplate nonsense of Reaganesque bipartisanship and all it got him was an impeachment. Liberalism is not a dirty word, it's the fundamental ideal underlying out country ferchristsakes.

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Afpakistan Is A Mess

William Arkin:

The surge is about to hit Pakistan. The top U.S. commander for the Middle East says that the deteriorating situation in the country and the increased violence in the frontier area have prompted Islamabad to accept plans for U.S. forces in the country for the first time since early 2002. Meanwhile, a top counter-terrorism diplomat says the situation has become so dire, the United States cannot afford to wait.

Cummon Bill. Let's call it what it is. We're escalating the war in Pakistan which will play beautifully into the hands of the fundamentalists. Musharraf made a bunch of noise about not wanting American troops in Pakistan, but the bottom line is we're going in. The conventional wisdom is that we need to go in. I disagree.

Everywhere the U.S. goes the situation turns to crap. A limited number of insurgents/fundamentalists will suddenly become a movement with occupation by the U.S. military. Pakistan is fragile as it is, now we're going to put an American face on Musharraf's dependence at a time when the U.S. is hated throughout the region?

We're going to have to go back to square one in the "war on terrorism". Withdrawing American troops and working to support the average Arab citizen (perhaps not supporting suppressive, dictatorial governments?) is the answer, not more troops.

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Act for Net Neutrality

Comcast blocking of online content is the canary in the coal mine for corporate efforts to gate-keep the Internet. The FCC must send a stern message to stop other phone and cable companies that want to follow Comcast's lead and control our Internet experience.

Tell the FCC: Don't Let Comcast Off the Hook

Blocking our access to the Internet should never be tolerated. The longer the FCC waits to punish Comcast, the more companies will continue to invest in technologies to censor and manipulate what we can do online.

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