Paul Ryan's Cynical "Baseline" Push

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Thursday August 04, 2011 · 9:39 AM PDT

2011/08/04 · 09:39

So the next round in the deficit battle relates the congressional supercommittee, which is assigned finding about $2 trillion in additional cuts by the end of the year. And right off the bat, we see a dispute over which baseline the CBO should use in assessing the effect of any proposals.

Paul Ryan's cynical jockeying on the matter is almost laughable. As I understand it, he says the CBO should use current law as the baseline, which means we should assume all the Bush tax cuts will expire. In that context, any Dem effort to extend the cuts for the middle class would drive up the deficit (because it shrinks revenues).

But how insane is that? If baselines are supposed to be the best estimate of how the real world will look, the corollary would be that Republicans actually believe all the cuts will expire. [If that were the case, the actual deficit would come down 40%, given the central role the Bush tax cuts have played in creating shortfalls.]

Hkingsley

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Tuesday August 02, 2011 · 9:52 AM PDT

2011/08/02 · 09:52

Throughout history, our legislative process has basically worked. The parties have typically acted in good faith for the benefit of the country, notwithstanding differences in opinion.

So normally, I’d simply say that the debt deal is phase 1 of a longer approach. It’s not as bad as it might appear for our side – defense spending is on the chopping block, and a good part of the safety net is protected from the Nov 2011 triggers.

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How do you deal with a hostage taker?

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How do you deal with a hostage taker?

Stare him down and call his bluff

3 votes

Cut your losses to protect the hostage

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there's no good answer

2 votes

The SCOTUS Video Game Ruling and Obscenity

Hkingsley

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Tuesday June 28, 2011 · 6:56 AM PDT

2011/06/28 · 06:56

Yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down a California law that bans the sale of violent video games to children. It was an atypical majority alignment, with a lot of First Amendment muscle.

The core of the decision is that video games are a form of protected speech (vs. behavior), and California's law therefore had to survive strict scrutiny in order to be upheld; under the Court's assessment, it failed that test. I support the Court's reluctance to create new classes of unprotected speech, but in my view we should go a step further and ask some basic questions about "obscenity", which is afforded no First Amendment protection at all.

Hkingsley

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Monday May 02, 2011 · 10:13 AM PDT

2011/05/02 · 10:13

Already, some conservatives are attempting to diminish the president’s role in sending Navy Seals across the border into Pakistan. One co-worker of mine said something like, “it was all laid out for him – Daffy Duck could have made the decision…”

That of course is ridiculous on its face; deciding to embark on an operation into third-party foreign soil is among the stickiest decisions a president can face.

Hkingsley

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Sunday May 01, 2011 · 11:01 AM PDT

2011/05/01 · 11:01

Marco Rubio was simply awful this morning on Meet the Press. His contradictions and factual distortions are just another indication that Republicans are only serious about ideology, not actual solutions.

Hkingsley

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Wednesday March 23, 2011 · 9:51 AM PDT

2011/03/23 · 09:51

There is new evidence that Obama-bashing is really a limited foray.

According to a new CBS poll, Americans aren’t blaming him for the state of the economy, and they oppose Republican austerity efforts.

Hkingsley

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Thursday February 24, 2011 · 9:43 AM PST

2011/02/24 · 09:43

Yesterday, the Justice Department decided that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, so it won't defend the law in court (although it invited Congress to do so). Somewhat remarkably, the attorney general wrote that orientation should trigger heightened scrutiny when laws make distinctions between gay and straight Americans.

If adopted by the courts, this would put orientation in the quasi-suspect class, along with gender and age. That means laws based on orientation would be presumptively unconstitutional; the state would carry the burden of proving some sort of significant need to keep them in place. [Race is considered fully suspect, so racial classifications trigger strict scrutiny, the most difficult test for the government to pass.]

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"Framing" the Commerce and Taxation Clauses

Hkingsley

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Saturday January 22, 2011 · 2:27 PM PST

2011/01/22 · 14:27

It’s a core question that divides the American right and left: what kind of federal authority is granted by the commerce and taxation (general welfare) clauses under the constitution? And how should the Supreme Court assess it?

Of course, that debate has raged on since ratification, but I’m intrigued about how a 1798 law making the blogosphere rounds might tilt the discussion. At issue is a statute called "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen," which levied a tax on seamen who worked on merchant ships, creating a government-run healthcare system to treat all the physical illness contracted by workers traveling the world’s ports. The thrust of the blog discussion has been the law’s apparent mandate provision and its possible similarity to the new healthcare law passed last year. Leaving the narrower mandate question aside, the existence of this law seems to blow holes through the strategy of hiding behind "the framers" whenever one opposes the scope of modern-day spending and regulation.

Hkingsley

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Wednesday January 05, 2011 · 10:02 AM PST

2011/01/05 · 10:02

So I’m driving home yesterday, and stumble across Hannity on the way to sports talk. He has some caller on crying about how Obama is destroying small business. As I always do, I then go through the mental exercise of disputing his bullshit point by point – in this case, summarizing the list of all the small business assistance Obama has signed into law.

Well, I wonder what that propaganda head has to say about this?

Hkingsley

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Tuesday November 16, 2010 · 8:09 AM PST

2010/11/16 · 08:09

As we keep battling over the revenue side of the deficit problem, why isn't a tax on high-frequency market transactions part of the discussion?

Briefly, from the Businessweek piece:

One proposed solution gathering support is a transactions tax—possibly just a few cents per $100—that would throw sand into the gears of high-frequency trading. The European Parliament came out in favor of the concept earlier this year. Britain already has a half-percent "stamp duty" on stock sales that traces its origins to 1694; it hasn't kept London from being one of the world's chief financial centers.

Hkingsley

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Thursday November 04, 2010 · 8:17 AM PDT

2010/11/04 · 08:17

I think people have missed something amid all the talk about the rising power of the Tea Party: the harsh social backwardness embedded in the movement's DNA.

Let me start with Col senate candidate Ken Buck, who said this on Meet the Press a few weeks ago:

MR. GREGORY: The issue of gays in our country, in a debate last month you expressed your support for "don't ask, don't tell," which we talked about with Mr. Gibbs, and you alluded to lifestyle choices. Do you believe that being gay is a choice?
MR. BUCK: I do.
MR. GREGORY: Based on what?
MR. BUCK: Based on what?
MR. GREGORY: Yeah.
MR. BUCK: Well...
MR. GREGORY: Why do you believe that?
MR. BUCK: Well, I guess you can, you can choose who your partner is.
MR. GREGORY: You don't think it's something that's determined at birth?
MR. BUCK: I, I, I think that birth has an influence over like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically you, you have a choice

Hkingsley

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Wednesday November 03, 2010 · 11:59 AM PDT

2010/11/03 · 11:59

I posted this on FB today, as a message to my conservative buddies who think Obama is dead in the water.

Begin:

So what happened last night? And where do we go from here?

A few observations:

I'm most curious about the tea-party invasion on the Right. On the one hand, tea-party inspired candidates made huge gains in the House; however, they fell short in big Senate races that should have been taken in the wave. That tells me tea-partiers are strongest in gerrymandered / localized House districts, but still don't carry enough appeal to win consistently in statewide races (Senate contests are statewide). In Delaware, Colorado (apparently), and Nevada, tea-party candidates fell short, when all of those seats were ripe for the taking.

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Paul Ryan's Cynical "Baseline" Push

Debt Deal: What’s the Way Out on Revenues?

The SCOTUS Video Game Ruling and Obscenity

Under President McCain, Bin Laden Would Probably Still Be Alive

Marco Rubio: Factually Challenged and a Walking Contradiction

Americans Don’t Blame Obama for the Economy

Moving Past the Defense of Marriage Act

"Framing" the Commerce and Taxation Clauses

Hannity Cries about Small Business While Hiring Surges

Why Isn’t Anybody Talking About This Tax???

My Tea Party Co-Workers: Send the Gays to Sweden

To All My Salivating Republican Friends...