Credit where Credit Due

What I don't get is why they specifically tax alcohol and tobacco at a high rate to discourage use, but tax income. Wouldn't they want to encourage people to use more "income"? Unless that's the point, which I'm starting to think. payday loans? subprime loans? I'm guessing poorer people use more credit? in my time, you couldn't get credit unless you didn't need it. strange days have found us.

quote of the day: (comment at Zero hedge)
"Can't wait to have my iPhone, iPad, Macbook air in my Apple backpack and the Apple watch on my wrist so i can check my Twitter and Facebook account, while riding my Segway."

to the Starbucks, to drink three dollar coffees. because free WiFi...

Fecal Cliff

Again, from the Latter-day Pamphlets;

  " For, in fine, the tragic experience is dimly but irrepressibly forcing itself on all the world, that our British Parliament does not shine as Sovereign Ruler of the British Nation; that it was excellent only as Advisor of the  Ruler; and has not, somehow or the other, the art of getting work done; but produces talk merely, not of the most instructive sort for most part, and in vortexes of talk is not unlike to submerge itself and the whole of us, if help come not!"

  "The beginning of all business everywhere, as all practical persons testify, is decidedly this, That every man shut his mouth, and do not open it again till his thinking and contriving faculty have elaborated something worth articulating, Which rule will much abridge the flow of speech in such assemblies! ... and this, alas, is precisely the rule which cannot be attended to in constitutional Parliaments."

Whither Hence, "American Conservative"?

Has anyone found any alien pods under the desks of the new "crop" of bloggers at the American Conservative? Is Ron Utz devoting too much of his attention to his vanity projects? Is there an editor in the house? This is just unreal. According to Scott Galupo, Republicans are going to resist letting the Bush tax cuts expire and instead are okay with eliminating all deductions and loopholes, because that won't be "raising taxes". Sounds weird, right? How about some quotes? My brackets...

     "The House GOP has signaled it’s not ready to budge on those rates. So we’re left with that big pot of tax expenditures, which, via the Romney-Ryan campaign, Republicans have tacitly committed to tackling." [If that's true, we're extra-lucky Romney lost!]

    "So here’s what I’m thinking could be the outline of a fiscal cliff-averting deal. Call it the Romney-Ryan plan without the rate cuts. It would give Obama the revenue he wants, [Oy!] and Republicans could at least claim not to have raised tax rates." [Sounds very Clintonian to me.]

     "Perhaps I’m overly optimistic, but I think it’s a deal that both sides could live with. Even more important, I think it would be good for the economy." [No, you're not - both sides could live very well with it,  its not important what you think, let alone more important, (editor!), and it would kill whatever is left of the economy. Quadruple Oy!]

     "Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner are the two most important people in America right now. My prediction: they will do the right thing, and we will get a deal." [Billy the Kid made a deal with Bill and Ted, too, "Whatever I win, I keep. Whatever you win, I keep." "Sounds good, Mr. the Kid!" said Bill and Ted and Scott Galupo.

Let's see if I can recreate my comment from memory, since they didn't run it for some reason;

"Wrong! Sorry liberal "conservatives" - although, you didn't mention what the taxpayers would get out of the deal (or the Republicans, for that matter), every penny would be spent, and trillions more would be borrowed, monkey business as usual would continue until the wheels fall off the wagon, and then they'll send the goon squad around like the Sheriff of Nottingham, looking for hoarders and tax-evaders. Respectfully [hah!], you're seriously deluded."

Here's a representative quote that they did publish;

Scott Galupo says;
Deduction limits can be structured in such a way that the wealthy [fucking bastards and crooks] take the biggest hit —> http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/10/18/study-deduction-cap-would-raise-1-3-trillion
And honest liberals [Hahaha] concede that middle-class taxes will probably need to go up at least somewhat.

Church of the Latter-day Pamplets

Thomas Carlyle, Latter-day Pamphlets, "Stump-Orator" - 1850 (fer chrissakes!)

"Probably there is not in Nature a more distracted phantasm than your commonplace eloquent speaker, as he is found on platforms, in parliaments, on Kentucky stumps, at tavern-dinners, in windy, empty, insincere times like ours. ... Alas, he is in general merely the windiest mortal of them all; and is admired for being so, into the bargain. ... Not empty these musical wind-utterances of his; they are big with prophecy; they announce, too audibly to me, that the end of many things is drawing nigh!"

"While the many listen to him, the few are used to pass rapidly, with some gust of scornful laughter, some growl of impatient malediction; but he deserves from this latter class a much more serious attention."

"If speech is the banknote for an inward capital of culture, of insight and noble human worth, then speech is precious, and the art of speech shall be honoured. But if there is no inward capital; if speech represent no real culture of the mind, but an imaginary culture; no bullion, but the fatal and now almost hopeless deficit of such? Alas, alas, said banknote is then a forged one; passing freely current in the market; but bringing damages to the receiver, to the payer, and to all the world, which are in sad truth infallible, and of amount incalculable."

Cicero (106-43 B.C.) is quoted as saying, 'Ut imago est animi voltus sic indices oculi' (The face is a picture of the mind as the eyes are its interpreter). Nailed It!

Counterpunch - Ron Paul: More Progressive Than Obama?

Charles Davis on Counterpunch

Wow!  My eyes are still bugging out a bit after reading that on Counterpunch, which I generally read for its excellent Power Elite analysis (and disregard for it's naive "progressivism").

Paul has stated repeatedly that his campaigns are primarily educational and, with a lot of help from the continuing economic disaster, has been wildly successful in taking his ideas to the general public. His greatest impact (so far) has been to expose the Elite's own contradictions and incoherence against itself, as in his performance in the last Republican primary and especially the debates. He exposed the other candidates as the lying hypocrites and moral midgets they are, and is perfectly poised to do it again.

I can't see the PTB letting him anywhere near the Presidency, so the left should really hold off on the hysterical screaming about racism, Ayn Rand, etc. at least until he's through spanking the people's true enemies - neocons, "Christian" warmongers, banksters, jailers and fascists. Personally, because I detest Republicans, I want to see him run third party. I'm very dubious, but Paul thinks the system can be reformed, or restored. People of good will should get behind him.

I've never been exposed to Davis before, my knee-jerk reaction to "progressivism" has created a huge blind spot on that side of my thinking, I admit. His blog "false dichotomy by charles davis" has been running since 2004, so I've got some catching up to do. Some libertarians have been hoping to make common cause with the non-totalitarian left for quite a while. Hope springs eternal...

Another Fine Mess You've Gotten Us Into, Oligarchs

Got a 401-k retirement account that's making little or even negative returns, and were burned once or twice when equities crashed, say in 2001 and 2006? The good news is you can cash out without the (I believe 10%) penalty if you are at least 59 1/2 years old. The bad news is they withhold about 1/3 up front, so if you think you have $45,000, you'll end up with about $30,000. You can probably do a little better in a IRA, but you still must pay when you cash out.


Those things were a sucker trap that paid off for the banks at least three times, and more if you got back into equities after the 2000 crash, and again in the coming one. The final desert will be "cramdown" to force all or part of private pensions into govt. bonds.


Paul Craig Roberts on Counterpunch

"The fallback target will be private pensions, assuming any survive plunder by the Wall Street investment banks. Pension funds could be required to invest in Treasury debt or they could face a levy. In the Clinton administration, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Alicia Munnell proposed confiscating 15 per cent of all pension assets on the grounds that they had accumulated tax free. Certainly Washington will steal Americans’ pensions, just as Washington has stolen Americans’ civil liberties, in order to continue the empire’s wars of hegemony."

four steps to getting blood from a stone -

1. lower interest rates to zero so savings pay less than inflation, creating minor inflation, so that

2. everyone gets into equities again, then "take profits", so that

3. everyone has to keep working after retirement because their pensions are gone, and then "cramdown" remaining pensions to finance government debt until only the rich have any cash, then

4. buy up all assets for pennies on the dollar after deflationary crash.

See, you CAN cheat an honest man, but you need to have help from the government.

Are Municipal Bondholders Consulting Robert Vesco in the Netherworld?

Lila Rajiva deconstructs Ellen Brown's piece at the Huffington Post which exposes vast amounts of money squirreled  away by State and Municipal governments as "rainy day" or emergency funds. The same governments that have to cut non-essential services (read - services that actually provide value to citizens but are high profile enough to show that the government is serious about cuts but without actually inconveniencing any public employees, at least any highly-paid ones). The same governments that are borrowing billions at X% while keeping the slush funds in essentially checking accounts earning .01X%. My county, Fairfax, VA, has had a strong stench of corruption for years as one of the richest, if not the richest in the country, yet has to borrow and roll over  a mountain of debt continuously while voters approve every bond issue put before them. None of this has ever made sense to me

Another big piece of the puzzle falls into place. Thanks to Lila for reading, so we don’t have to, the otherwise horrible HP for any crumbs of actual useful information that might flow from that sewer of PC babble.

I’ve been (halfassedly) researching State banks since I first heard about the Bank of ND and wondering why such banks might not be a weapon against the FED and why there doesn’t seem to be any discussion in Austrian fora. I’ve concluded that there must be some theoretical meta-objection along the lines that a State bank would still be a state bank, i.e. 50 mini-Feds, or that there would be too much opportunity for populist shenanigans. The possibility, as Occam’s razor would suggest, that the monster banks would smother any such discussion in order to extend the lucrative status-quo is strongly implied.

Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall had introduced legislation that quickly went nowhere, to establish a Virginia state bank, and when I requested more information from his staff, not only received no answer, but was evidently dropped from his spam list as I went from 3-5 emails per week to none. I can only assume that he was well instructed to drop this line of reasoning and return to moaning about abortion and gun-control.

When it comes to the examination of state and local financing schemes there is a great bi-partisan well of don’t-go-there. I guess taxpayer ignorance really is bliss, but the bliss is that of the bond holders. Full disclosure: I’m long on torches and pitchforks.

Farewell to Alms

http://www.goldmansachs666.com/

I saw this site featured on two very different sites, (exiledonline and counterpunch,), and thought it might be of some interest. They are looking for volunteers and running a "webinar" (stupid, dorky term, imo) Wednesday - April 15th at 6PM Eastern. I'm going to check it out, although I'm more interested in bringing down the public-sector criminal enablers than the gang-bankers themselves, what with the revolving door, the distinction is not that clear.

Eliot Spitzer, please call your office. All is forgiven and revenge is best served cold, no?

[UPDATE - I went to Spitzer's wiki page just to get his photo, but noticed this. In a nutshell, why he had to go.]

"He most notably pursued cases against companies involved in computer chip price fixing, investment bank stock price inflation, predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders, fraud at American International Group, and the 2003 mutual fund scandal. He also sued Richard Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, claiming he had failed to fully inform the board of directors of his deferred compensation package, which exceeded $140 million."

Lucky thing for him they got him for boinking a prostitute; beats sleeping with the fishes! Also from the wiki;

"Later in the month, The Washington Post published a Spitzer opinion piece conveying his analysis of the financial crisis of 2008 and suggested remedies. Spitzer concluded the piece by saying that he hoped the Obama Administration would make the right policy choices, 'although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past.'"

Come back and fight, Eliot, nobody wants to live forever.

Better Days are Coming

I, Ectomorph is losing faith in Blogging, and he even has readers. Although he writes mostly about Canadian politics, which might not be as exciting as it seems.

To make the urgency of the situation clear: if the federal government isn't forthcoming with an industry-wide "new topics" blogospheric bailout pretty soon, I, Ectomorph may be just one in a catastrophic explosion of blog failures that will threaten the very existence of ill-informed half-witted punditry as we have known it.

Have a bit more patience. I've been reading a lot of comments by the Hopeful (mostly on the Huffpost video of various stars "pledging" to Obama [if you've missed it, check it out; jawdropping - literally defies Parody.]) It's like a Galactic cruiser full of thousands of naive My Little Ponies and Bratz dolls just starting to cross the event horizon of reality's black hole, holding hands and singing the theme song from Exodus with Pete Seeger on banjo. So much stupidity it would make Mencken have to call his doctor with an over-four-hour boner and give any half-witted blogger enough material to seem like the bastard son of Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf.

Do you like spanking, and who doesn't? It's going to be like the Superbowl and World Series combined of naked, gleaming Victoria's Secret-class dumbasses and that's just the Washington D.C. tent, not to mention Hollywood, Wall Street, London and Tel Aviv! Hang in for just a little longer. the world that Groucho told us about is coming into sight, right around the old sigmoid bend!

Will Obama Hit the Ice Running?

Yesterday I posted "Some Questions...", the second of which concerned Mike Whitney's contention that Obama needs to start writing large checks to stimulate the economy as soon as his hands warm up enough from the Inaugural ceremonies. Fortunately my research (that is casually reading my usual morning blogs) led me to a satisfactory answer without even using google, on LRC, Scott Rosen "Has a Stimulus Ever Been Necessary?". In a nutshell:

"Even this pseudo-recovery did not last for long as the economy fell back into a depression in 1937. New Deal advocates insist that this was the fault of reduced government spending. In part, they are correct because so much of the "expansion" was merely a reflection of government expenditures. The decline in government spending, however, did not retard private commercial growth which, had never really recovered in the first place. Even if this was a true recovery, Keynesian theory calls for budget reductions during a period of expansion. Moreover, if five years of government spending truly resulted in economic recovery (as the New Dealers claim), it seems far-fetched to believe that a slight retreat in the growth of the government would plunge the economy back into a severe depression."

[snip]

"The fallacy behind the call for economic stimulus is that declining aggregate demand is the mother and not the daughter of economic contraction. When left to its own devices, the market will return back to prosperity (consumer demand and all). Government intervention oftentimes has the effect of actually prolonging the crisis. The new administration would be wise to let the market adjust on its own and spare us the additional debt and debased currency that an active fiscal and monetary policy will yield."

I'm satisfied. (Except that I'd still like to know if Witney considers the massive Defense budget stimulus as effective as any other public works spending, or more generally, if some spending is more "effective" than others, questions of morality aside. For instance, a bridge or hospital may be used for many years while a cruise missile is only used once.)