Repubs Freak Out Over Obama Fiscal Cliff Proposal

I was watching Morning Joe this morning, and I must say it was amusing watching those guys freak out over the proposal Geithner presented to Boehner yesterday.  Apparently, they think that President Obama should make an opening offer in the negotiations that differs substantially from what he was proposing during the election campaign.  Are they serious?

I can tell you for myself - and from what I've been reading on the blogs - Dems are delighted.  For the entire first term the President was entirely solicitous of the Repubs, and they consistently spit on him.
Even when he did things they say they favor, they totally opposed him, and even worse, ran against him for supporting Republican proposals.  I mean, Repubs have been talking about reforming Medicare for years, and the ACA goes a long way towards that.  Then they run against him claiming that he's gutting Medicare!

The mendacity of these people is amazing. 

Look, the Republicans are on the wrong side on the two big issues they are upset about.  They want to preserve the tax cuts for the rich.  Large majorities of the public say no.  The want to cut entitlements.  Large majorities of the public say no.  If they want to do these things, they better get specific on how they want to do it.  There's no reason for Obama to negotiate with himself on these two main points.

My feeling is that Obama should hold firm and force the Repubs make a counter offer.  And it should be a specific one.  No three page powerpoint presentations.  No unspecified spending cuts and unspecified tax loopholes to close.  Specific proposals fully scored.  Enough of this negotiating with himself BS.

Obama should also make clear to Boehner that whatever deal is ultimately reached, he better bring his caucus along.  Democrats can't be left in a position where the they are the only ones voting for policies the public doesn't want.  Both sides have to own the compromise. 

If there's no majority of the majority in the House voting in favor of the deal, there's no deal. 

The Social Security Payroll "Tax"

In a roundabout way I came across a couple of items today that revived some ideas I've had rolling around in my mind for a very long time (since the 80s in fact).  One item in particular is this item from Ross Douthat.

Now to start off, I have always been fundamentally opposed to payroll taxes.  I've never viewed it as "retirement contributions" (social security) or medical insurance premiums (medicare).  They are taxes, used to fund government operations, two of which are the payment of social security and medicare benefits. 

Why do I think that?  Because there really is no obligation on the part of the government to pay social security benefits or medicare benefits.  I mean think about it.  These are government programs enacted by statute.  A bare majority in Congress and a supportive President could decide tomorrow to repeal these programs, and that's it.  Done.  There's no obligation, if they do so, to "refund" the "contributions" or "premiums" people have paid.  There is no obligation really, to do anything should they decide to repeal these programs. 

The reasons these programs continue to exist are (i) a feeling that there is a moral obligation to do so, and (ii) the fact that it would be political suicide if our politicians decided to repeal the programs.  But a legal obligation?  You know, in the same way that a corporation has a contractual obligation to fund pension and health care benefits for its employees?  No such obligation exists.  These programs could be repealed tomorrow, and nobody would have any legal recourse.  Period.

You want further proof that these really are taxes?  For years the government collected much more in social security and medicare taxes than was paid out in benefits.  And what happened to those excess revenues?  The government "borrowed" them - the surplus funds are "invested" in treasury obligations - and used them to fund other government operations.  Have you ever "borrowed" from yourself?  Of course, in reality there is no such thing.  What do you think would happen to the "trust fund" if Congress decided to repeal the program?  The treasury bills would just disappear.  The government would just rip up the IOUs it has given to itself.  This is all just internal accounting - paper transactions - smoke and mirrors, designed to make people think that there really is an obligation there when in fact there isn't.

Actually, a huge chunk of the excess revenues were used to offset the dramatic reduction in income tax rates that have taken place over the last 30 years.  I have pointed out as often as I can over the last month or so how in the 1980s Congress "fixed" the horror of future social security and medicare "shortfalls" by increasing the payroll tax by 33%, only to turn around a couple of years later and reduce the top marginal income tax rate by 44% (from 50% to 28%).  I cannot think of any other instance in our history when such a huge shift in the tax burden from the upper class to the working class has taken place.  But they got away with it because it was disguised as a "fix" to a future "actuarial problem."  What a horrible sham inflicted on the American people....
Now that same fiction continues to transfix people.  The same "actuarial problem" looms and we hear that it's got to be fixed again - this time by cutting benefits.  That's not really what the problem is of course.  The problem is - if you actually believe in the smoke and mirrors - that those "borrowings" now have to be "repaid."  We are soon getting to the point (with the payroll tax cut we may have gotten there already) where payroll taxes are no longer high enough to fund benefit payments, so the government will have to start "repaying" those "borrowings" to fund the benefits.  In other words, income tax revenues will now have to be tapped to pay social security and medicare benefits.  Heaven forbid....
I actually think that's what's really going on here.  The only reason social security and medicare were palatable to our rich elites was that they really didn't cost them anything.  The costs of the programs were more than offset by payroll tax revenues which for the most part the elites didn't bear (or at the very least, which they got back in benefits like everyone else).  Now, heaven forbid, they might have to bear some of those costs, and it's driving them nuts.

I honestly never understood why the two sides of these programs were linked.  On one side is the tax revenues - in this case a payroll tax.  On the other side is the benefit expenditures.  Congress can stop one side or the other any time it wants to, and nobody will have any recourse.  It's pay as you go, plain and simple. 

So in my mind there was never any reason to have a separate payroll tax - something I object to because of the inherently regressive nature of the tax.  The same fundamental fairness that, to me, underlies the principle of the progressive income tax applies here as well.

Which gets me to Douthat's post.  There he talks about, well, if we got rid of the payroll tax what would we replace it with? 

[T]o completely replace the Social Security portion of the payroll tax (which was the focus of my op-ed), you would need just south of a trillion dollars in revenue every year for the next decade. To get that from the tax system as it currently exists, you’d need to let the Bush tax cuts expire and purge the tax code of nearly every credit and deduction. Alternatively, if you were willing to think more outside the existing policy box, you could institute a Value-Added Tax, perhaps paired with a carbon tax — but the VAT rate would have to be as high as 10-12 percent.

Note the paradigm here.  As laudible as his goal is of getting rid of the payroll tax, he just can't seem to accept the notion that tax rates may have to go up - perhaps, even, to the rate that was in place for the first six years of the Reagan presidency - you know, 50%.  Why is 35% magical or 39.6% (which would be the rate if we return to the Clinton era rates)? 

Douthat's goal seems to be to replace the payroll tax with something equally as regressive.  If you're going to do that, why bother?

Cox Joins Fox

Just what we need.

Why Hostess Went Under

Great summary of the real cause of Hostess's failure, by Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times.

The shorter version, as Atrios said, Hostess got Bained.

Really, how can anyone think that a company that goes into bankruptcy with $575 million of debt, and comes out of bankruptcy with $774 million of debt, is actually going to succeed? 

What kind of stupid judge approved this reorganization plan?

The Education of Bruce Bartlett

Via Paul Krugman comes this essay by Bruce Bartlett in the American Conservative about his long slow ostracization from the Republican Party because he dared to make his judgments based on facts rather than epistimology.  Krugman calls it moving and I must say I agree.

I'll have more to say about this later today.  But in the meantime, as they say, read the whole thing.

Forty-Seven

For my Pomona College friends and fellow alumni:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dear Red States

I saw this today in the comment section of Charlie Pierce's blog.  Apparently, it's an update of an earlier version that was circulating back during the Bush Administration.  As near as I can tell, no one has claimed authorship.  But it does seem appropriate in light of all the secession talk that's been going around lately.

Dear Red States:


We're ticked off at your Neanderthal attitudes and politics and we've decided we're leaving.

We in New York intend to form our own country and we're taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the rest of the Northeast.

We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation and especially to the people of the new country of The Enlightened States of America (E.S.A).

To sum up briefly:

You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.

We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get Andrew Cuomo and Elizabeth Warren. You get Bobby Jindal and Todd Akin.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

We get Harvard. You get Ol' Miss.

We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs.

You get Alabama.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

With the Blue States in hand we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90% of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the US low sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans and their projected health care costs, 92% of all US mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

We're taking the good weed too. You can have that crap they grow in Mexico.

Sincerely,

Citizen of the Enlightened States of America

National Health Insurance Risk Pools.

Karoli:

GOP Governors Unwittingly Move U.S. Towards Single-Payer Health Care.

It is kind of ironic that the reason that Obamacare provides for state-level risk pools (which states can opt out of) instead of a national risk pool was because of Republican concerns about states rights. Now the only states electing not to establish state level risk pools are those governed by Republicans....

Now if we could only get other states to do the same thing....

Now We're Talking

Timmy comes up with a great idea:

Treasury Secretary Calls For Abolishing The Debt Ceiling

We have this huge budget negotiating process that where Congress agrees on tax and spending numbers.  Everyone knows what affect the outcome of these negotiations will have on the budget.  And it gives people the opportunity to be two-faced.  Vote yes on the budget so you can show everyone how you are working hard to maintain the programs they support, then become a deficity scold when what you support increases the debt.

There is no need to have a separate vote on this.  It's part of the budget process.

How Low Interest Rates Make the Future Look Scary

One of the things that people just aren't talking about in the whole fiscal cliff/tax reform/entitlement reform is how our view of the future is being skewed by the historically low interest rates we are experiencing right now.

I was reminded of this when a friend of mine posted a link to this on Facebook this morning.

How do interest rates affect this?  Well, the amount of money you have to invest in order to fund future pensions differs depending on how much you expect to earn on that investment.  For example, let's say you were looking to put money aside today to pay a pension obligation to an individual that begins ten years from now, and that obligation is $3,000 per month for the rest of that person's life (and using life expectancy tables let's say that lifetime is expected to be 15 years).  The following table shows how much you would have to put aside, based upon your assumptions as to what future interest rates will be:

Interest Rate                      Amount Required

     1%                                      $453,890
     2%                                      $381,751
     3%                                      $321,944
     4%                                      $272,046
     5%                                      $230,336
     6%                                      $195,400

I ran headlong into this when the financial crisis hit and I was sitting on my local school board trying to figure out what this all meant for our budget.  In New York State, public employees and teachers have pension plans that are maintained by the state.  Each year the state figures out actuarially what is needed in the fund in order to pay future pensions, taking into account expected future performance of its investments.  Based on that, it bills the local government units that employs the personnel their shares of the amount necessary to get to the right balance in the fund.  When the crash hit, the bills from the state skyrocketed.  Most of this was due to losses incurred in their investments.  But the required contributions really have not dropped all that much since then, and that is because the expected future earnings in the fund is smaller now than it used to be.

Of course, the reason for the record low interest rates is our weak economy.  Fix that, and a lot of these problems look a lot less scary.

Labor and the Markets

I've commented on this before, but sitting here watching Chris Hayes talking about the Wal-Mart labor situation, I feel I have to say this again.

I have always been amazed at the short sightedness of our markets.  For years you see companies announcing cuts in personnel and the market responding by lifting their stocks.  But in the long run, if you cut the resources of workers, you cut the resources of your customers.

This is one of the basic disconnects between the stock market and the economy.  These actions may be good for business, but what is good for business is not necessarily good for the economy.

Going Over the Fiscal Cliff

Paul Krugman has a series of charts up on his blog that need to be seen and understood by everyone involved in the fiscal cliff negotiations.  These two he posted on Friday are very instructive:

This chart shows changes in gross domestic product since the financial crisis began in 2007.  As you can see, the US economy has now resumed growth and is now beyond where it was at the peak before the crisis.  On the other hand, the other countries shown, still have not fully recovered, and progress made prior in the first year or so after the bottom was hit has stalled and even reversed.

The second chart is this one, which he posted yesterday:

This shows that our unemployment picture is significantly better than what is happening in the Euro Area.  This should not be surprising based on the first chart, which shows that our economy has begun to expand again while their economies have ceased to expand and, to some extent are beginning to contract again.

The third chart is this one:

What this chart shows is that the EU and the UK have worked very hard - and apparently succeeded - to get their budget balances back to where they were prior to the crisis.  The US has not - our budget balance continues to be in a greater deficit position than these other areas.

Are these factors related - economic growth, unemployment and budget deficit levels?  Of course they are.  Traditional economic theory, at least since the days of Keynes, holds if the government tries to deleverage - reduce it's debt (or at least avoid incurring more debt) - at the same time the private economy is doing so, it holds back expansion of the economy. This was one of the major things I learned when I took my introductory economics class in college.  So this is precisely what one would expect from the different policies being followed in Europe and the United States.

So what happens if we go over the fiscal cliff?  Basically, going over the fiscal cliff means that we will be adopting the policies that governments in Europe have followed - closing our deficit at the same time we are trying to recover from the financial crisis.  And this will stall the recovery, and quite likely push us back into recession.

Everybody knows this - that's why everyone is working so hard to avoid it.

Ironically, one of the things that has allowed us to perform better than Europe is the political gridlock surrounding the budget and taxes.  The result of that has been to keep the status quo in place, so that we continue to have more expansionary policies.  There is talk of putting off the decision once again, rather than reaching a Grand Bargain before the end of the year.  Depending on what the terms of the Grand Bargain are, that would not necessarily be a bad thing.

When Do Kids Become Self-Reliant?

Recently when I was helping my mother with packing up for a move, we got to reminiscing (as one is wont to do when you are packing up someone's life).  And we talked about how, when I was a kid, she used to send me to the market with a list and some money.  It was a small local market where we knew the owner and all the personnel.  When I got there I would hand them the list and the money, and one of the workers would gather together the items on the list and put them in a bag, together with the change, for me to take home.  The distance was about a half-mile each way through a mostly lower-middle class residential neighborhood - think Levittown - and I walked both ways.

I was 7 years old.

So when I see something like this, all I can do is shake my head:

A Principal Calls CPS After Mom Lets Daughter, 10, Ride City Bus to School

CPS = Child Protective Services

Has our society really grown so dangerous that letting a 10 year old ride a bus is considered child endangerment?

No.  The only thing that has grown since I was a kid is our fear.

h/t Atrios

The Press and Patraeus

David Simon has a great column up at Salon on the Patraeus affair:

It would be one thing if this were a scandal that could have compromised the CIA or American intelligence, if this were some honey trap set by foreign entities. When politically connected columnist Joe Alsop was famously lured into a homosexual liaison by Russian intelligence, which then attempted to turn Alsop, he rightly marched into the CIA headquarters and revealed the ploy, rendering it moot. And if there were indications that Petraeus was vulnerable to being so blackmailed, this mess might have actual import. But no, upon being confronted with his paramour’s indiscreet emails, he confessed all, resigned, and returned to private life to attempt, no doubt, to salvage his marriage or at least deal with the personal implications of it all.

More incredibly, Mr. Simon argues the general’s stupidity in not lying to federal investigators. He is, at that moment, not merely callow and sneering, as much of the press is apt to be in such a circumstance, he is, himself, grandly idiotic. The penalties for lying to an FBI agent are profound. Just ask Henry Cisneros. Or Martha Stewart, for that matter. Or Bill Clinton. No doubt if the general did lie and was later charged with a false statement, or worse, lying to a grand jury, Mr. Simon and his like would rush to declare that it wasn’t the marital infidelity that we care about, but the perjury and dishonesty. As if it isn’t entirely rational for any human being — caught and shamed for thinking with their genitals as ordinary mortals are often apt to do — to lie and avoid not only the public shaming, but the private harm to other loved ones inherent in that public disgrace. Nice for the press to have it both ways: Shame them when they tell the truth about their private indiscretions, or stand self-righteously and defend the public trust if they don’t. Christ. It’s enough to make even a half-honest man vomit.

I’m neither an admirer nor detractor of Gen. Petraeus. But I am most definitely a detractor of what journalism has become in this country, of what passes for the qualitative analysis of our society and its problems. And I’ve paid enough attention to the human condition to no longer take seriously the notion that anyone who lets penis or vagina rub against the wrong person, who is indiscreet in doing so, and who then tells the truth about it when confronted by an FBI agent is unfit for either citizenship or public service. I certainly know enough about the human condition to know that all kinds of people — smart and dumb, powerful and powerless — are capable of finding themselves in such a circumstance and shaking their heads at just how far they strayed, at just how indiscreet they were in their very ordinary, human hunger, and how they have hurt those closest to them. Sex, done right, is some powerful shit. And when Americans begin to accept the human condition for what it is rather than an opportunity to jeer at the other fellow for getting caught, then we will be, if nothing else, a little bit more grown up. I remember when Francois Mitterrand’s wife and mistress walked beside each other in the French premier’s funeral procession and few in that country thought it remarkable. The French have got their problems, but in some respects, they make our country, our political commentary, seem as mature and insightful as a 14-year-old unsticking the pages of his dad’s just-discovered skin mags. It’s a peculiar American hypocrisy that only the worst kind of  journalistic hack would readily and willingly embrace as a meaningful metric.

We’ve caught some of the smartest and most committed public men and women with their pants at their ankles. Time and again, we’ve had our fun. We’ve roundly mocked them for the very weaknesses that are so utterly our own. Reporters who have at points in their lives fucked themselves silly in hotel rooms across this great land of ours while pursuing the infidelities of more public men with righteous glee — these are not men and women who are much inclined to any real moment of self-reflection, but then who among us really is? This kind of hypocrisy requires a complicit silence and a ritual wiping of the memory before every byline. Well, I’m 52 years old and I will admit that I have not lived this long without occasionally misplacing my penis. For shame, yeah. And so, being fully complicit in the human comedy, the last thing I’m going to mock is the mistakes that others make in the rush to bed, or why they do so.

But for those who love throwing stones, is it too much to ask that their aim be true? That they limit the target to Darwinian compulsion, to ordinary, and yes, at times, unthinking human desire. That they not equip themselves to judge the totality of a public servant’s entire career and works solely with the details of whatever sexual misadventure we happen to discover. Roosevelt was a smart guy. So was Eisenhower. Clinton might be the smartest president of my generation. And David Petraeus saw and spoke to the folly of Iraq before the rest of America was cheering the fall of Saddam’s statue. And he stayed long after that folly was evident to work at a remedy for and an extrication from that tragic intervention.

If we can judge stupidity by solitary lapses, then Roger Simon, by dint of this recent column could rightly be judged a moron. And if we’re going to free-associate stupidity with the public discovery of sexual misadventure, such vacuous shit as Mr. Simon just offered up virtually requires him to be caught unawares in a Nuevo Laredo whorehouse with a fistful of 50s.

What I just wrote is unfair of course. I’m sure Mr. Simon has had better and meaningful moments commenting on our body politic, just as the general has had other, more meaningful moments as a public servant. But given that Petraeus himself doesn’t seem to have done anything criminal, or failed in his public performance, one can surmise that his decision to depart as CIA director is predicated on what he will now endure from our stunted media culture.

I can't help but think that the mindset that Simon describes here is the same one that tolerates the derision of women who stand up for their rights to use contraception.  And the press is a key, continuing to press these memes without realizing the role they play in reinforcing them.  

Our society's attitudes towards sex are, forgive the pun, royally screwed up.

The Makers Shirk Their Responsibilities

Something that has occurred to me as I was writing this is the degree to which the "social contract" has been unilaterally modified over the last, say 30 years, in a way that benefits his employer.

There are a number of ways that this has happened.  This post discusses how today's norm is that employers expect employees to be able to step into the job on day one, without the need to expend any time or funds to train them.  This is a new development.  Since the time of apprentices in the Middle Ages, the responsibility for training the people who work for you has been the employers.  Certainly, when I was a junior lawyer, there was not an expectation that I would immediately be able to step up and draft a 200 page merger agreement.  And the result of this development is that the government is now stepping in to pay the costs of training workers.

Another example of this is what has been happening with benefits that employers have traditionally provided to their employees.  40 years ago, virtually all retirement plans were defined benefit plans - the plan would pay a fixed amount of income to the employee when they retired based on a formula.  Many companies also paid retiree health benefits (which, since the 1960s, meant picking up the portion of health care costs that Medicare did not cover).  Now, in the private sector, these have all but disappeared except for the most highly compensated employees.  There are now defined contribution plans - such as 401(k) plans and IRAs.  These plans are characterized by the cost of the plan being shifted to the employee (the plan is funded by elective contributions by the employee), and the risk of whether the plan will have enough funding being shifted to the employee as well.

As a result, the need to maintain government programs that help retirees is that much greater.  This, too, represents a great shift of responsibility from the private sector to the public sector.

Indeed, one could look at wages themselves and see a shift taking place.  The "working poor" is a growing phenomenon.  More of the participants in the food stamp program and the medicaid program are people who work.  They need these programs because their employers do not pay them enough to be able to pay all of the costs of living.  This, too, represents a shift - by depressing wages, the government is now having to step in to support these workers with food stamps, medicaid, housing assistance and similar programs.

When I saw the 60 Minutes episode discussed in this post, not only was the government paying to train these workers, but the workers were happily accepting the jobs even though they paid $12 an hour.  That's $24,000 per year.  How can we really justify paying a fairly high skilled worker such low wages?  I would have loved someone to actually ask the questions :  what are the executives of this company earning? - how profitable is this company?  - how much would it have hurt the bottom line if the company had actually paid the $6,000 cost of training the two employees that went through the government training program?  One of the things that bothers me so much is that business' pleas that they can't bear this costs are just accepted as a given.  There is no need for them to actually demonstrate that this is the case.  This is why I say that this shift - this change in the social contract - has been unilateral.

So over the course of the last several decades we have seen a massive effort to shift costs from corporate income statements to employees and, indirectly, to the government.  It is no surprise, then, that we see that corporate profitability has risen more than twice as fast as the growth in the economy as a whole.  Nor is it a surprise that income inequality has grown to levels not seen since the 1920s.  This is being accomplished by shift costs that these companies have traditionally borne to others.

And maybe something like this is inevitable.  From my point of view, I have always recognized that corporations exist for only one purpose - to make money.  They are not altruistic entities.  Their purpose is to generate the greatest amount of revenues at the least cost, period.  If you understand anything about the law of corporations, you know that that is their reason for being.  Even if you see them doing things like sponsoring charitable activities, the motive for doing so is a pecuniary one.  Trust me, if they did not have studies and information demonstrating that the public relations value of engaging in these activities was outweighed by the costs, they would not be doing it.  They are doing it because it enhances the bottom line.

One of the barriers that previously existed to prevent this from occurring was the labor movement.  It is no surprise that the ability of the private sector to shift costs away from them has occurred as the labor movement has become increasingly neutered.  This unilateral shift derived from the economic strength of the corporations.  There was no pushback against it, as there would have been if the unions had been stronger than they were.  The failure of the federal government to adequate enforce the National Labor Relations Act has been a major factor in employers' ability to shift costs away from themselves.

Another major factor has been the incredible failure of the government to enforce anti-compentition laws, in particular the anti-trust laws.  I can't remember the last time I saw a headline saying that a proposed merger or acquisition has been blocked because it failed to get antitrust clearance.  I can't remember the last time the government brought an anti-trust case against any corporation.  As too big to fail becomes more and more prominent (you can argue, as I certainly would, that the bail-out of the auto industry was in large part necessary because the companies are too big to fail), the ability of these companies to shift costs away from themselves will continue to grow as well.

But the most insidious part about this shift is that while these shifts have take place, and more and more costs have been shift away from the private sector to individuals and the government, they have insisted that government not have the funding to do anything about it.

I don't have a problem necessarily with corporate America re-negotiating the social contract.  But there has to be a quid pro quo.  This has to be a fair negotiation, and the only party capable of sitting on the other side of the bargaining table in our system is the Federal government.  And the bottom line from the other side of the table has to be that if you're not willing to do these things any more directly, and the very least you have to pick up your fair share of the costs the system has to bear to do it for you.

And that, to me, is what the discussion on increasing tax revenues is really all about.

Charitable Deductions

This morning I was reading a blurb on one of the tax wires regarding one of the proposals that is currently kicking around.  Believe it or not, because of their incessant willingness to "keep all options on the table," serious consideration is being given to the idea of a cap on itemized deductions.  But, of course, charitable deductions would be exempt from the cap.

Let me start off by saying that I hate the concept of "tax-exempt organizations."  On this point, I am a total egalitarian.  If an organization undertakes an activity and it makes a profit at it, it should pay a tax.  No profit-making activity should be exempt. So yes, if the Catholic Church operates a hospital and makes a profit, tax should be paid.  There is no reason why secular institutions should have to compete with an organization that has a built-in advantage.  If the Church doesn't want to pay tax, then don't make a profit.  After all, the whole point of the exemption is that these are not-for-profit entities, right?

Ok, I understand that's just a rant. But just once I'd like to see a "tax reform" proposal that takes a serious look at abuses of the charitable exemption and charitable deductions.  I understand that there are a lot of good charities out there doing very fine work and not abusing their privileges.  But there are a lot of abuses as well.

One more point: nobody can doubt that the charitable deduction is something that greatly benefits upper-income taxpayers.  Certainly, for taxpayers below the tax threshhold - the infamous 47% - a charitable deduction has no benefit whatsoever.  You have to be fairly well-to-do in order to be able to afford to make substantial charitable deductions.  But even more than that, many of these people take large deductions for contributionis to charities that they control.  An excellent example of this is the Gates Foundation, but rest assured there are literally thousands of private foundations around there which are funded by people that control them, and who are able to take deductions for money that, in reality, does not leave their hands.

With this in mind, I would be willing to accept an unlimited charitable deduction, but would say that "contributions" to the following kinds of entities would not be exempt from the cap:

1. Any entity that, on its annual report filed with the IRS, shows net administrative costs exceeding 25% of the total contributions received during the taxable year.  By "net adminstrative costs" I mean the costs of running the organization, minus the income of the organization from sources other than contributions.  In my mind, this is a huge issue.  Contributions should not be used to pay for maintaining the operations of the organization.  They should be used to fulfill the charitable mission of the organization.  The 25% threshhold is, in my mind, negotiable, but the general concept is not.  There are too many people making loads of money working for these organizations.


2. Any entity who has an officer or employee who receives compensation in excess of a threshhold.  In my mind, the threshhold should be equal to the social security cap on wages. Further, I would reduce the threshold if the person receiving the compensation has outside sources of income that exceed a certain amount, say, $1 million. If a person has enough income from other sources, that person should not expect to be paid for his or her charitable activities, period. Remember, these are entities that are supposed to be fulfilling a chartiable mission. They should not be cash cows for the people that work for them.


3. Any entity that has an officer, director, or highly compensated employee that is related to the donor.  I would extend this to include employees of persons (including companies) that are related to the donor.  Section 267 of the Internal Revenue Code would be a good starting point in defining what "related" means.  The concept behind this is simple:  If you are going to get a charitable deduction, then you have to relinquish control over the money you are contributing. 


4. Finally, no deduction should be allowed if a quid pro quo of the contribution is that a building, facility, program or activity of the charity is to be named after any person who has not been dead for more than 50 years.  No more vanity contributions.  Frankly, I think this should be a general rule of thumb in naming any kind of public facility as well. 

Romney on Student Loans

To Mitt Romney and his fellows in the rentier class, changing the law to prevent lenders from charging usurious rates of interest on student loans equals "forgiveness."

Oh , and lets not forget that the reason state usury laws don't apply to banks is because they have convinced their servants in the federal government that federal law should pre-empt state law on this issue. States Rights!

If these guys actually have a principle that they believe in other that "whatever enriches me is good," I have yet to discern it...

I Want to Hear More About This....

The new Senator from North Dakota is a tax lawyer, and she sees the real problem with out tax code:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

About the most pernicious, unfair aspects of our tax law:

You know, we've bee talking a lot, and you know me, I've spent a fair amount of my political life and my publice life working in the tax area.  MY big concern is the difference between earned and unearned income.  And I say this every time, I say that the bobcat worker in North Dakota pays a higher tax rate than Paris Hilton, becase she doesn't earn her income.  She just lets her money make her money.  And we need a way to figure out a way to equalize those rates.

I said it earlier, I want to hear more, much more, about this....

Makers and Takers

It is kind of ironic that the states that are the takers are those that voted for Mitt Romney.

Or perhaps it isn't.  One of most obvious characteristics of these tea party conservatives is projection.

Now, we're talking!

Just came across my Bloomberg Tax Wire:

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told BNA that either a cap or a maximum dollar amount represents an improvement over the current tax system, but that a reasonable dollar amount as the cap is “probably superior,” because it is a more progressive method.

However, he cautioned that all options need to be examined as part of a bigger package that includes higher tax rates. “You can't make the numbers work without higher rates, especially on capital gains and dividends,” he said.

It was troubling to me that dealing the special treatment of capital gains and dividends has been totally omitted in discussions about "broadening the base."  The discussion of "loopholes" has centered around the mortgage interest and charitable deductions.  The low rates of tax on capital gains and dividends are totally unjustified as a matter of policy, and a super giveaway to the rich.  They are the primary reasons why people like Mitt Romney pay effective tax rates of 14%. 

Nice to see someone actually mention this as an important source of revenue.

Make-up

From the Wall Street Journal yesterday, a college Republican on what the GOP's problem is:

The GOP is like a supermodel who has been doing photo shoots under fluorescent bulbs without any makeup. But fix the lighting, dab on some foundation and highlight her good side, and she can take the most attractive picture.

I don't know about you, but I've always thought a woman's looks should be judged sans make-up.  That's when you see what she really look like....

Yeah, I'm sure this will work...

Election Post-Mortems

Lots has been written since the election about the Romney campaign and the Republicans in generally - how could they get it so wrong?  And I do believe that they live in an alternative media universe that they have created for themselves.

But I guess the important aspect of it - and of the election - is that it just seems to me that fewer and fewer people are buying the alternative reality.  And perhaps even more important, the mainstream media seems to be noticing.  Yes, that is really important.  Because if the media now starts actually presenting the facts instead of he-said she-said, maybe more citizens will be able to make rational decisions.  And more politicians as well!

Let's hope we are getting back to negotiating policy based on reality.

More on Training - Doctors and Others

Well I guess I was wrong about this.

Kevin Drum points to a piece on 60 Minutes last night.  The piece was about the so-called "skills gap," how companies are saying the can't find qualified workers to fill their jobs.  The show describes a training program at a community college in Nevada to provide unemployed people skills to take on high tech manufacturing jobs.  They supposedly provide "a year's worth of training in 16 weeks," at a cost of $3,000 per trainee, paid for by the taxpayers.  The two trainees followed by the program were hired by a company that uses high-tech machines to manufacture parts for planes.  The starting wage, $12 per hour, plus benefits.

Near the end of the piece the head of the company was asked how long it would of taken to train these people on the job.  He replied a year to two years.

What?  None of this makes sense to me.  It takes the government 16 weeks but it takes you over a year?

The real kicker in this was the following exchange involving the CEO of Alcoa and Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the Wharton school:

Byron Pitts: Do you think if manufacturing paid more, could that be part of the issue? Part of the equation?

Klaus Kleinfeld [CEO of Alcoa]: I don't think that manufacturing is not paying well. In fact, I think manufacturing is paying very, very well.

Peter Cappelli disagrees.

Peter Cappelli: This is a market. And so, you know, if you're not willing to pay more, don't expect to get better quality people....One of the things we know now is wages are not going up. In fact, they've been stagnant and some cases even declining over time. So where is the shortage?

Byron Pitts: What's changed in the way that American companies hire workers compared to a few decades ago?

Peter Cappelli: I think there are big changes. And I think this is the heart of what is new. What's new now is that employers are not expecting to hire and train people....Companies are now saying, for all kinds of reasons, "We're not going to do it anymore." And maybe they're right, they can't do it. But what they probably can't do is say, "We're not going to do it, and it's your problem. It's your problem to provide us with what we need, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. You need to pay for this for us."

This is, of course, precisely what is happening in America.  More and more companies are sloughing off to the government a key task that they previously had performed themselves - training their workers.  I would have really liked it if Mr. Pitts had asked the head of the Nevada company whether his parents trained their newly-hired workers when they ran the company.  And if the answer is yes, they did, then the next question would have been what's changed.

I know what the answer would have been - they can't pay these costs themselves if they are to remain competitive.

I just wonder what it is the heads of these companies mean by being "competitive."  If they picked up these costs what would that entail - higher prices for their goods, so that they couldn't compete with other companies that charged lower prices?  Or is the real problem what it does to the bottom line?  They have to keep their profits up or, heaven forbid, their income might go down, or they might have disgruntled stockholders selling their stocks?  Take a look at the charts in this article and see how the tide has turned.  In 2010, corporate profits as a percentage of the economy reached an all-time high, while wages as a percentage of the economy reached an all time low.  This is what they mean by being "competitive."

And is there any question why so much pressure is being placed on our education system?  Companies now expect - expect - the government to do their training for them.

What really galls me about this is that while their expectations of what the government should do for them have risen, their willingness to pay taxes - the costs of the government of doing these things - continues to decline.

So I apologies to my friends in the health care community - you are not alone.

But doesn't this thing just put the lie to the whole "you didn't build that" meme?  Can we finally put that to rest, please?!

Media Going Nuts - UPDATED

One item of personal fallout for me since from the election is that, the last few weeks before election day, I got back into the habit of watching the news on TV.  And I have continued to do that since the election was over.  Big mistake, but I wonder how long it will be before I can wean myself off of it.

This morning I was watching Morning Joe and just marvelling at how the people there were freaking out about the Patraeus  affair.  It just seems to me that there is this huge "How could this happen?" quality to it.  And my bottom line in all this is what's the point?  The only point I can see in harping on all of this stuff is that they are upset that he resigned, and (though nobody has said so) that the President accepted his resignation.  And the big question is why?

As near as I can tell, the news about his affair was about to come to light, and he decided on his own that this meant he had to go.  There could be any number of motivations behind this, and I think it's foolish to even speculate on them.

I seriously doubt that he was forced out against his will, although it is a possibility.  But even if he was so what?  There is little doubt that a person involved in a sensitive intelligence position like his should not have gotten himself into that position.  There is little doubt that, if a junior field officer had done the same thing his career would have been over.  So why all the sturm and drang?

The only thing I can figure is that, well, it's Patraeus.  The guy has attained almost mythic status over the last ten years.  He is a hero, especially to our elite media (who he has been expert at cultivating for a number of years).  Already there is handwringing about how this will harm our security.

That's just BS.  There is no one so valuable that they cannot be replaced.

There is a real danger to anyone attaining that kind of status in a society like ours.  These are people.  They make mistakes, and they should be held accountable for them.  Indeed, if there's one thing I admire about Patraeus after all this has come out, is that he did the right thing - self-imposed accountability.  Would that most of our elites follow his example.

UPDATE:  News reports are now stating that the Director of National Intelligence, who was informed of the situation on Election Day, told Patraeus that he should submit his resignation to the President.

Secession Petition

A friend of mine on facebook linked the the following petition on the White House website:

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:

Peacefully grant the State of Louisiana to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

As the founding fathers of the United States of America made clear in the Declaration of Independence in 1776:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

"...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government..."

I just have a few snarky comments about this.

First, I would oppose this petition, primarily because Louisiana is at the mouth of the Mississippi, which is of course of major economic and strategic importance to the United States.  However, I would be happy to have the US government provide grants to people who live there to move to Alabama, and allow Alabama to withdraw from the Union if it so desired.

Second, I do find it amusing that the majority of the signatories on this petition thus far live outside of Louisiana.  Is this because these people would like to see Louisiana go?

Seriously, though,why do these people hate America?

Senator Elizabeth Warren

...as described by Charlie Pierce:

To me, the most revelatory moment came in the last of their debates, when Warren, asked about the war in Afghanistan, said simply,"It's time to get out now." No qualifications. No relying on the generals. No crawfishing. Out. Now. A few weeks later, I was riding around with her and I told her that, as far as I knew, she was the only Democratic candidate in a contested race who has said that simple thing as plainly as she did. She popped her eyes at me in the way that she does.

"There was no other answer," she said, as though being asked to explain why she had come to start breathing that morning. Oh, dear Jesus, she's going to cause so many people so much trouble down there.

And I for one am REALLY looking forward to it....

I take this as a good sign for 2016

Erick Erickson over at Red State, claiming that it wasn't the right's policies towards women that cost the Republicans the election:

Blame social conservatives if you must, but (A) you are lying to yourself and (B) if this is a fight you want to have, I’m happy to see you in the primaries in 2014. I like my chances.

Yeah, Erick, and you probably will win that fight.  The problem is, you'll get your ass handed to you in the general election like you did this past Tuesday.  Of course, that's your problem not mine....

ht Thers

The Worst Person int he World

Casey Mulligan is out of his mind:

In my new book, I explain how, in the matter of a few quarters of 2008 and 2009, new federal and state laws greatly enhanced the help given to the poor and unemployed — from expansion of food-stamp eligibility to enlargement of food-stamp benefits to payment of unemployment bonuses — sharply eroding (and, in some cases, fully eliminating) the incentives for workers to seek and retain jobs, and for employers to create jobs or avoid layoffs.

Anyone who claims that unemployment benefits and food stamps are a disincentive to work should be forced to live on them for three months. They let’s see how incentivized they are to get back to work again….


ht Crooked Timber

More on Climate Change

Following up on this post from last week comes, via Think Progress, a new report on climate change which presents a very scary picture:

The annual PwC Low Carbon Economy Index centres on one core statistic: the rate of change of global carbon intensity. This year we estimated that the required improvement in global carbon intensity to meet a 2ºC warming target has risen to 5.1% a year, from now to 2050.

We have passed a critical threshold – not once since 1950 has the world achieved that rate of decarbonisation in a single year, but the task now confronting us is to achieve it for 39 consecutive years.

The 2011 rate of improvement in carbon intensity was 0.8%. Even doubling our rate of decarbonisation, would still lead to emissions consistent with six degrees of warming. To give ourselves a more than 50% chance of avoiding two degrees will require a six-fold improvement in our rate of decarbonisation.

In the Emerging Markets, where the E7 now emit more than the G7, improvements in carbon intensity have largely stalled, with strong GDP growth closely coupled with rapid emissions growth.

Meanwhile the policy context for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and nuclear, critical technologies for low carbon energy generation, remains uncertain.

As negotiators convene every year to attempt to agree a global deal, carbon emissions continue to rise in most parts of the world. The urgency for a global binding and meaningful policy commitments has reached a tipping point.

Business leaders have been asking for clarity in political ambition on climate change. Now one thing is clear: businesses, governments and communities across the world need to plan for a warming world – not just 2ºC, but 4ºC and, at our current rates, 6ºC.

This is no radical environmental group presenting this apocalyptic vision.  This is PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the largest auditing/accounting firm in the world, the firm that has the greatest number of large multinational corporations as clients than any other in the world.  The business community is telling itself that the future is grim.  Maybe the rest of the country should listen....

Post-election

OK, I will admit, I spent way too much debating with my friends on facebook and not nearly enough time posting to this blog. Time to change that...

My reaction to the election results in one word:  relief!

FEMA Workers

This story about the situation of FEMA workers really resonated with me.  A year ago a freak early blizzard struck the northeast, in particular Connecticut, almost a year to the day as Sandy this year.  At the time, I was between jobs, and a call went out for people to work as temporary workers helping with the clean-up after the storm, a call that I answered.  For six weeks, I worked 7 days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day.  The pay was $12 per hour, time-and-a-half if you worked more than 40 hours in a week.  I didn't work directly for FEMA - I worked for a disaster relief company under contract with FEMA.  They did offer health coverage, but the employee share of the cost was so great that it would have taken half of my paycheck.

The article doesn't say what the government is paying its own temporary workers.  I would hope that it is more than what they paid me.

I will say this - many of the workers on that job - particularly those that were involved in cutting and removing downed trees and such - were independent contractors, who were contracted for by a corporation, which in turn was a subcontractor of another corporation, which had the contract to do the work.  If you ask me, these layers of corporate bureaucracy were merely waste - I have no idea why the  independent contractors weren't hired directly.  God knows how much was paid actually got into the hands of the people who actually did the work.

Manhattan at Night.

This is an incredibly dramatic photo to me:

You can see the Freedom Tower - the large lit-up building in the midst of the darkness.  My office is right across Church Street from the WTC construction site, and from what I have heard it still will not be open tomorrow.

But I was moved to tears when I saw this.  I've never seen Manhattan look like this, and it just demonstrates the extent of the destruction wrought by this awful storm....

What is happening to our independent agencies

When this happens....Congress bashing the agencies that exist to provide them with information based on research and facts,

You get this....agencies that provide them with bad information.

Funny how only Republicans keep doing this.  Colbert was right - reality has a well-known liberal bias....

Chips

Via Kevin Drum, a tale of computer chips:

I just looked up "obama care chip in arm" and found a 5-minute YouTube clip narrated by a professed Ron Paul acolyte: Obamacare Mandates RFID Chips to be Implanted in All Americans by March 23, 2013? It begins with a mock commercial in which vaguely zombie-ish dupes speak enthusiastically of having their medical conditions effectively monitored by the wonderful device. Then comes an earnest, wonkish sounding young man with the inside story: the ACA mandates that an RFID chip be implanted in each of us. Your bank account will be linked to it; it will have a GPS, so the government knows where you are all the time, as well as your whole medical history. It will enable the government to track all of us illegally; there will be no 4th amendment any more, etc etc. And the ACA mandates that all American citizens have this chip implanted by March 23, 2013. He then reads off ominous-sounding language, allegedly from the ACA pp 1000-1008 (who reads a 2000-page bill, he asks near the end) establishing a medical device registry.

Even on the face of it, the quoted language sounds like exactly what it is: a registry of existing medical devices for the purpose of tracking effectiveness. In any case, the registry is not in the ACA; it was included in a version of the bill that did not pass. Snopes.com has a complete debunk. And as a quick Google search demonstrates, this fever dream is connected with End of Days fantasies; the chip is the mark of the beast.

Scary that people actually believe this bunk....

A Facebook Conversation

A Republican friend of mine posted this on his Facebook page:

My comment on this was as follows:

No it can't happen here. Anyone who thinks there's a realistic possibility that it can is delusional....

My friend responded, "Go ahead and make your argument.  Tell us why it cannot happen."  To which I said:

Come on, the vast majority of Americans are Christians of various denominations, and a good many others are atheist or agnostic. Really, do you have so little faith in the strength of your own faith that you think muslims will be able to proselytize you into changing it to Islam? Do you doubt the faith of your fellow Americans? Or do you really think that a small minority of muslim extremists will be able to force their religion on us by force of arms? This in a country where really we have not had a tradition of any government being able to enforce religious doctrine on the population - at least, not since early colonial days? I think that the possibility that a muslim congregation might decide among themselves to live according to Sharia law is quite feasible, but that is no different to me than any other religion deciding for themselves what doctrines to live by, and they would never be in a position to enforce their doctrines other than by excluding those who violate them from their particular religious congregation - the same way any other religion in America operates. The idea that non-muslims have anything to fear from muslims here in the United States is the height of paranoia. But ultimately, it betrays a lack of faith - a lack of faith in the religion the person professes to hold, and a lack of faith in the strength of American traditions and institutions.

This is not to say that terrorism is not a real threat, including terrorism from people that live in muslim counties in the Middle East. But you know my views on that. We have had our military on their lands and our ships in their seas for decades. And we have attacked and decimated their countries, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions of people. And we were doing that before 9-11. We have no idea what it is like to live under those kinds of threats, and it is perfectly understandable to me why they would want to retaliate. But this is not a religious reason - defending their religion is a motivator to action, but the real motivation for terrorist acts in the US is that they just want us to leave them the hell alone, which we can't seem to get through out thick heads.

But I honestly don't think they want to convert us. That stopped in about the 8th or 9th century. And even if they wanted to do that, the possibility that they can actually succeed is to me beyond infintesimal.....

Then one of my friend's other friends (someone I do not know) replied to me as follows:

Sorry - but the innocents of Nazi Germany never thought it could happen to them either. All it takes is one bad, vicious, incompetent leader bent on destroying a country and it's people, surrounding himself with like-minded individuals, and it WILL happen. Look around you and see how Muslims have infiltrated every walk of American life already. Do you really think they are our friends if they honor the Koran but live in OUR country? Do you really think they are our friends if they uphold everything this destructive president has done and want's to do? Are you willing to give up your guns yet? Because that's the next step in obama's agenda! Are you willing to take that chance and pay the consequense if you're wrong? Does the name "Hitler" ring a bell????

To which I replied:

Nazi Germany is a horrible example. Hitler was a conservative German Christian Nationalist leading a country of almost entirely German Christians. There was no "secret infiltration" involved there! Naziism at its heart was a tyranny of the majority against small minorities of easy targets. .

Muslims have "infiltrated" America? No more so than Hindus or Shintos or Buddhists or any number of other religions of the world as people from the countries where these religions have been practiced have migrated here. It's not so long ago that this same kind of paranoid fear was expressed of Roman Catholics. And how is the fact that they honor the Koran any different than Christians honoring the Bible? Neither book does or should form the basis of the laws of our country. Only the Constitution does that. .

And what do you mean by "OUR" country? Who do you define as what people are "we" and what people are not "we"? As far as I'm concerned, "we" means every American citizen, regardless of their religion or ethnicity (or any other of the myriad classifications that some people use to try to artificially divide us). .

By the way, I dont't have any guns. Never held a gun in my hand in my life, and never been in a situation where I wished I had one. Funny thing is, I grew up in a military family and come from a long line of military men. Never have I felt so afraid of my fellow Americans that I thought I needed a gun, and never have I feared some invasion of foreigners such that I need to arm myself. I mean how realistic is that? We have more military might than the rest of the world combined! Who would be crazy enough to try to invade us?

Frankly, I'm much more concerned that the followers of a conservative American Christian charismatic leader a la Hitler will turn their guns on their fellow Americans than a small minority of Muslims will somehow undermine American institutions. To me, the view that some foreign religion will succeed in secretly undermining America betrays an extreme form of projection. The same people who fear this are the ones who insist that their fellow citizens ought to conform to THEIR religious doctrines, and therefore assume that followers of other religions want the same thing. And people who think this way are a much bigger threat to their fellow Americans than any religious minority will ever be.

But the fact is that most Americans don't want any religion - Christianity, Islam, or any other - to dictate what should be legal or illegal in this country, while at the same time they want the freedom to exercise their religious beliefs however they deem fit. This is one of the fundamental principles of our system, and I am certain that most Americans, including most Muslim Americans, firmly believe in it.

That last was 12 hours ago.  I haven't had a reply since then....

Note that these are direct quotes except that the names of the participants have been deleted....

Cuomo's Climate Change Statement

Tuesday I was driving upstate to check on my sons after Sandy.  I happened to be listening to the following news briefing by Governor Cuomo.  The key portion of the statement begins at about 9:40.
 

When I heard this I literally pounded the steering wheel saying "yes!"  It's about time that someone, somewhere, at some level of our government said what everyone is thinking - these extreme weather events are the "new normal."

But then my next feeling, very soon thereafter, was anger, just tremendous anger.  I mean, it's not as if we didn't know that this was happening.  And it's not as if scientists haven't been warning us about it for decades, and urging policies to try and prevent it, or at least mitigate it.  But nothing happened.  Whether it was something that could have been stopped with better policies - well, who knows? The fact is we never even tried...

Right now I'm just tremendously sad and angry at how our political system, not just domestically but globally, has failed to come to grips with this issue.

And it is our children and grandchildren who will pay the price. Lets hope they deal with this with the wisdom and compassion that my generation and this before it have so sorely lacked...

The Aftermath of the Storm

Hurricane Sandy knocked me an a lot of others offline for several days.  I only had power restored to me late yesterday evening, and my cable and internet service was restored this afternoon.  That is the worst that I have suffered - many others have suffered much, much worse as we all know...

I consider myself lucky just to have power and an internet connection - many here in New Rochelle are a lot less lucky.  I heard today that most of the Con Ed crews are down in Manhattan, which is understandable given the state of the city right now, particularly below 34th Street, which I here is a real disaster (haven't seen the news yet - I'll get my first look in a little while I guess).  Rumor has it that the Con Ed crews that remain in Westchester have been focusing their attention on getting power restored to hospitals, schools and (believe it or not) polling places for next Tuesday's election.  Luckily, I live right across the street for a school which doubles as a polling place, which I guess explains why my building has been restored while those one or two blocks from me remain dark.  An island of light in a sea of darkness....

Tuesday I went upstate to check on the conditions at the house my ex-wife and sons live in.  Luckily, the damage was minor, one tree came down in the yard but nobody was endangered by it, and while there is some cleaning up of branches and the like to do, they came away relatively unscathed.  The same can't be said for two boys, ages 11 and 13, who died when a tree came down on the house they were in about a mile away from the house.  What a horror for those parents....

One of the things I neglected to do while I was upstate was to fill my car with gas.  My car is near empty and there is little gas to be found in the area - the stations that are open have lines hundreds of cars long.  Frankly, I'm afraid I'll run out of gas before I get to the pump if I stand in a line like that, so I'm carless for now.

My office is in downtown Manhattan and we are cautiously hopeful of being able to return to work on Monday.  Now that I have internet service, though, there's no excuse for not getting work done.   So for the most part, it's back to normal beginning tomorrow.

As I say, I am one of the lucky ones.