I have been listening to all the furor over the compromise tax proposal reached by the President and the Republican leadership, and I think a lot of people are misinformed.
What did the Republicans want? They wanted to extend all the Bush tax cuts and make them permanent. They wanted to let all the Obama tax cuts lapse. They wanted to repeal the estate tax permanently, and they were reluctant to extend unemployment benefits beyond a few months and without finding spending cuts specifically intended to pay for them.
What did the Democrats want? They wanted to extend only the tax cuts for the middle class and only until the economy has recovered enough that a tax increase would put it into a tailspin. They wanted to continue the Obama tax cuts for at least another year in hopes the economy will recover enough that letting them lapse wouldn't send it into a tailspin. They wanted to extend unemployment benefits, including creating a "tier" to help the "99-ers" who have been unemployed for so long.
What did each side get?
Both sides got the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the bottom 98% of the populace.
The Republicans got the extension of the tax cuts for the top 2% of the populace. They got the lapse of the "Pay to Work" bonus for low-income people who have jobs. They got a reduction in the estate tax from 55% to 35% and an increase in the exemption to $5 million.
The Democrats got the extension of all the Obama tax cuts except "Pay to Work." They got the 2% reduction in the FICA deduction from people's paychecks, which will only partially make up for the loss of the "Pay to Work" tax credit for folks making under $20,000. They got the extension of the unemployment benefits for 13 months, so we don't have to fight over that for at least a year.
Frankly, that looks like a pretty good tradeoff to me. The Republicans got a $130 billion benefit for the super wealthy, while the Democrats got $770 million for the middle class and unemployed -- and part of that will be paide for by the extra revenue that will be coming in from the estate tax.
The only major drawback I see is that all this is going to be deficit spending. Part of me cringes at that thought. Part of me says, so what? The tax breaks for the middle class will keep this recovery chugging along, and the extra 2% in everyone's paycheck will stimulate the economy, as will the unemployment benefits. Getting the economy back on a steady footing is more important than worrying about the debt we're running up.
The people who scream loudest about the deficit and the debt are always talking about the percentage of GDP it represents. They think it would be terrible for the debt to be greater than our GDP, but my family has more debt than our household's income. What is im portant is that we're spending that extra debt on something that benefits us in the short term as well as the long term. Most of it, in other words, is the mortgage on our house.
I look at it this way. The government has income, in the form of taxes and fees it collects. What is happening right now, is that we've had some crises that have forced us to borrow more than we'd like. (We've also been living beyond our means in other ways, too. for the past decade.) Like a family that has faced a major illness or the loss of a home to fire, we can come back from that crisis once it's over. But it's not over yet.
The federal government doesn't have a "house" to mortgage, but it does have resources that could be sold to pay off the debt. While I don't want to see Yellowstone or the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve on the block, I feel confident that their value and the value of other land the federal government owns would cover what we owe. More important, I believe that in the long run the government will be able to pay down the debt we're running up.
But I don't believe that now is the time to tighten our belts. I hope the furious legislators will improve the deal rather than reject it entirely. We need the stimulus it represents.
And I think President Obama deserves some credit for getting the Republicans to bend as far as they did.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Fighting Viruses
.
I received an e-mail today from a political friend asking for help in answering a viral e-mail she had received. It was all about health care, and it started out so ridiculously that I have to pass it on.
It seems the writer believes that Natasha Richardson died because she was not med-evaced out of the ski area where she received the head injury that killed her. In actuality, Ms. Richardson was taken to a clinic immediately after the injury and refused to be taken to a nearby hospital for further tests to make sure her injury was not life-threatening.
When further symptoms made it clear that she should have taken the doctors’ advice, an ambulance was called, and the emergency medical technicians worked on her while she was driven to the hospital, a trip that took less than 15 minutes. Unfortunately, the swelling of her brain had caused damage that was irreversible.
Now, the e-mailer was using this tragedy as a jumping-off point to rail against health care reform, specifically Obama’s health care reform. If Ms. Richardson had been injured in America, the writer opines, she would still be alive because the U.S. has a superior health care system – including med-evac helicopters. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Later, the writer says that Obama wants to change the American health care system to be just like Canada’s and England’s. Unfortunately, she seems unaware that Canada and England have very different health care systems. Canada’s is a single-payer system, where providers are private but apply to the government for payment of fees for services. England’s is a national health system where doctors are employees of the government.
As I describe the e-mail, you may think that it requires no response, because it is so weak. Unfortunately, that is not true. These viral e-mails circulate back and forth across the Internet, sometimes morphing into truly hateful messages that accuse Democrats of total irresponsibility, if not corruption.
It takes time to write a response – or even to find the one you wrote before and modify it to fit the version of the e-mail you’re receiving this time, but it is very important that all Democrats learn the truth and “fight such bad speech with good speech.” If we remain silent, the people who receive these e-mails assumes they are true.
The e-mails are generally written by cutting and pasting from rightwing bloggers and websites, often mixing apples and oranges. Of course, no sources are provided for the assertions. You have to do the research yourself to find out where the stories come from so that you can fashion a rejoinder. But sometimes you’ll receive one that is so cleverly put together, mixing half-truths with whole lies to twist the mind of the reader, that it probably was not written by a private individual. Those are the ones that are truly viral.
Someone once said that you could have your own interpretation of the facts, but you couldn’t have your own facts. That is no longer the case. The extremes on each side not only pick and choose what information they will trumpet, but they make up information, if it fits their purposes, regardless of the truth.
What does it say about our society that there are people out there who willfully refuse to accept the truth of a situation? And what more does it say about us that there are people who make a living – often a very good living – misleading others in this way?
Nothing good.
.
I received an e-mail today from a political friend asking for help in answering a viral e-mail she had received. It was all about health care, and it started out so ridiculously that I have to pass it on.
It seems the writer believes that Natasha Richardson died because she was not med-evaced out of the ski area where she received the head injury that killed her. In actuality, Ms. Richardson was taken to a clinic immediately after the injury and refused to be taken to a nearby hospital for further tests to make sure her injury was not life-threatening.
When further symptoms made it clear that she should have taken the doctors’ advice, an ambulance was called, and the emergency medical technicians worked on her while she was driven to the hospital, a trip that took less than 15 minutes. Unfortunately, the swelling of her brain had caused damage that was irreversible.
Now, the e-mailer was using this tragedy as a jumping-off point to rail against health care reform, specifically Obama’s health care reform. If Ms. Richardson had been injured in America, the writer opines, she would still be alive because the U.S. has a superior health care system – including med-evac helicopters. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Later, the writer says that Obama wants to change the American health care system to be just like Canada’s and England’s. Unfortunately, she seems unaware that Canada and England have very different health care systems. Canada’s is a single-payer system, where providers are private but apply to the government for payment of fees for services. England’s is a national health system where doctors are employees of the government.
As I describe the e-mail, you may think that it requires no response, because it is so weak. Unfortunately, that is not true. These viral e-mails circulate back and forth across the Internet, sometimes morphing into truly hateful messages that accuse Democrats of total irresponsibility, if not corruption.
It takes time to write a response – or even to find the one you wrote before and modify it to fit the version of the e-mail you’re receiving this time, but it is very important that all Democrats learn the truth and “fight such bad speech with good speech.” If we remain silent, the people who receive these e-mails assumes they are true.
The e-mails are generally written by cutting and pasting from rightwing bloggers and websites, often mixing apples and oranges. Of course, no sources are provided for the assertions. You have to do the research yourself to find out where the stories come from so that you can fashion a rejoinder. But sometimes you’ll receive one that is so cleverly put together, mixing half-truths with whole lies to twist the mind of the reader, that it probably was not written by a private individual. Those are the ones that are truly viral.
Someone once said that you could have your own interpretation of the facts, but you couldn’t have your own facts. That is no longer the case. The extremes on each side not only pick and choose what information they will trumpet, but they make up information, if it fits their purposes, regardless of the truth.
What does it say about our society that there are people out there who willfully refuse to accept the truth of a situation? And what more does it say about us that there are people who make a living – often a very good living – misleading others in this way?
Nothing good.
.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Going Home
.
They say you can’t go home again, but I’m about to prove them wrong for the umpteenth time: I’m heading for Nevada, Missouri, to visit my mother for a few days.
I do this about a dozen times a year now. Mother is eighty, and I worry about her. Not as much as I used to, however, because she now has a boyfriend, Bill, who takes her out to lunch every day and helps her run the few errands that occupy her time. And my brother lives with her. Even though he works long hours, I know that if anything were to happen, he would be there, eventually.
So, I really go back because I enjoy her company and because the visits are so pleasant. I don’t have to feel responsible for anything while I’m there, although I try to do the dishes a few times and help her some with the notebooks she is assembling about the lives of my father and the two brothers who never had families to collect their mementoes.
But I don’t go back to visit my hometown. I have almost no interest in Nevada. I didn’t have much when I lived there. I was always intent on getting old enough so that I could go to college and get out of there. That’s such a common thread running through so many teenagers’ lives.
Now I wish I had been less dismissive of the community activities that mark the passage of the years in a town like Nevada. I never participated in the Little Miss Bushwhacker Days contest; I never entered anything into the County Fair contests; I never even read the newspaper.
Part of that was because I had so few friends to draw me into such activities. I was always the odd duck, the girl everyone thought was stuck-up, when I was really only a peculiar sort of shy. As one of five children, I didn’t miss having friends much and so I never learned how to make them. I had my brothers and sisters to pal around with – at least until my older brother and sister went off to college. Then I was left with two brothers years behind me, who didn’t really want to have much to do with a sister.
So I have no friends there to catch up with. The most I do is ride around the square and try to remember which stores have closed and opened since the last time I was there. My husband actually does a better job of that. He is more observant than I am, and he remembers what he notices. So he tells me what has changed, and I say, “Really?” and nod like I’m interested.
But I do notice what has changed in Mother’s world, and I am interested in her news, even though so many of our conversations repeat themselves. How my sister, Sharon, doesn’t listen to her and acts like she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. How Sharon’s sons are struggling with their finances and what Mother has done to help them out. What funny things the great-nieces and great-nephews have said recently and how they are doing in school or pre-school.
It’s comforting to know that some things never change, that home is still home and will be until Mother’s gone. At which point I won’t be able to go there any more.
-------------
While I'm in Nevada, I won't have access to e-mail, so no blog from me until Saturday.
.
They say you can’t go home again, but I’m about to prove them wrong for the umpteenth time: I’m heading for Nevada, Missouri, to visit my mother for a few days.
I do this about a dozen times a year now. Mother is eighty, and I worry about her. Not as much as I used to, however, because she now has a boyfriend, Bill, who takes her out to lunch every day and helps her run the few errands that occupy her time. And my brother lives with her. Even though he works long hours, I know that if anything were to happen, he would be there, eventually.
So, I really go back because I enjoy her company and because the visits are so pleasant. I don’t have to feel responsible for anything while I’m there, although I try to do the dishes a few times and help her some with the notebooks she is assembling about the lives of my father and the two brothers who never had families to collect their mementoes.
But I don’t go back to visit my hometown. I have almost no interest in Nevada. I didn’t have much when I lived there. I was always intent on getting old enough so that I could go to college and get out of there. That’s such a common thread running through so many teenagers’ lives.
Now I wish I had been less dismissive of the community activities that mark the passage of the years in a town like Nevada. I never participated in the Little Miss Bushwhacker Days contest; I never entered anything into the County Fair contests; I never even read the newspaper.
Part of that was because I had so few friends to draw me into such activities. I was always the odd duck, the girl everyone thought was stuck-up, when I was really only a peculiar sort of shy. As one of five children, I didn’t miss having friends much and so I never learned how to make them. I had my brothers and sisters to pal around with – at least until my older brother and sister went off to college. Then I was left with two brothers years behind me, who didn’t really want to have much to do with a sister.
So I have no friends there to catch up with. The most I do is ride around the square and try to remember which stores have closed and opened since the last time I was there. My husband actually does a better job of that. He is more observant than I am, and he remembers what he notices. So he tells me what has changed, and I say, “Really?” and nod like I’m interested.
But I do notice what has changed in Mother’s world, and I am interested in her news, even though so many of our conversations repeat themselves. How my sister, Sharon, doesn’t listen to her and acts like she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. How Sharon’s sons are struggling with their finances and what Mother has done to help them out. What funny things the great-nieces and great-nephews have said recently and how they are doing in school or pre-school.
It’s comforting to know that some things never change, that home is still home and will be until Mother’s gone. At which point I won’t be able to go there any more.
-------------
While I'm in Nevada, I won't have access to e-mail, so no blog from me until Saturday.
.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Real Health Care Reform
.
We’ve heard a great deal lately about health care reform, but that isn’t what they’re really talking about. They’re talking about health care insurance reform. In other words, how do we get everyone covered by some form of health insurance so that they will have access to the health care system we already have?
Well, I’m not particularly in favor of that. I’d rather see us reform the health care system so that we can afford to give proper health care to everyone for far less money. Whether the health care insurance industry is involved, indeed, whether it even survives that reform, I don’t care. I want a system where a sick child can be taken to see a health care professional to make sure that the cold the child is suffering from isn’t pneumonia and doesn’t turn into pneumonia. And the same for the adult with bronchitis.
Lowering the cost of health insurance won’t get us to that point, because all health insurance involves co-pays and deductibles, which very poor people can’t afford. It does us no good to limit individual payments for a doctor’s visit to $25 each if the sick person can’t even afford a co-pay of $5.
Personally, I think the only reasonable route is to institute a system of free health clinics, run not by doctors but by nurse practitioners, in neighborhoods that need service, and supported directly by tax dollars. This is the backbone of the system in England, and it works pretty well for them.
The clinics act as a triage filter, treating the sniffles, even setting broken bones, but sending the pneumonias to a “real” doctor and the shattered ulnas to the emergency rooms. That frees the doctors from being overwhelmed by patients whom they don’t need to see and allows local hospitals to maintain emergency rooms for the good of people who face real medical emergencies.
I’ve grossly oversimplified this, of course, and I know that this basic idea would be far more difficult to implement than just renting storefronts and hiring nurse-practitioners, but I can’t think of any other system that really reforms the medical system we have today, which rations care to those who can afford to pay for it while encouraging doctors to prescribe unnecessary laboratory tests and computer imagings because the doctor gets a kickback – or even owns the lab or the machinery outright.
But the people in Washington are not talking about any such reform to the medical system. They’re just talking about reforming the way we pay for a system that is broken. In my opinion, that will be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
.
We’ve heard a great deal lately about health care reform, but that isn’t what they’re really talking about. They’re talking about health care insurance reform. In other words, how do we get everyone covered by some form of health insurance so that they will have access to the health care system we already have?
Well, I’m not particularly in favor of that. I’d rather see us reform the health care system so that we can afford to give proper health care to everyone for far less money. Whether the health care insurance industry is involved, indeed, whether it even survives that reform, I don’t care. I want a system where a sick child can be taken to see a health care professional to make sure that the cold the child is suffering from isn’t pneumonia and doesn’t turn into pneumonia. And the same for the adult with bronchitis.
Lowering the cost of health insurance won’t get us to that point, because all health insurance involves co-pays and deductibles, which very poor people can’t afford. It does us no good to limit individual payments for a doctor’s visit to $25 each if the sick person can’t even afford a co-pay of $5.
Personally, I think the only reasonable route is to institute a system of free health clinics, run not by doctors but by nurse practitioners, in neighborhoods that need service, and supported directly by tax dollars. This is the backbone of the system in England, and it works pretty well for them.
The clinics act as a triage filter, treating the sniffles, even setting broken bones, but sending the pneumonias to a “real” doctor and the shattered ulnas to the emergency rooms. That frees the doctors from being overwhelmed by patients whom they don’t need to see and allows local hospitals to maintain emergency rooms for the good of people who face real medical emergencies.
I’ve grossly oversimplified this, of course, and I know that this basic idea would be far more difficult to implement than just renting storefronts and hiring nurse-practitioners, but I can’t think of any other system that really reforms the medical system we have today, which rations care to those who can afford to pay for it while encouraging doctors to prescribe unnecessary laboratory tests and computer imagings because the doctor gets a kickback – or even owns the lab or the machinery outright.
But the people in Washington are not talking about any such reform to the medical system. They’re just talking about reforming the way we pay for a system that is broken. In my opinion, that will be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Transfer of Power
.
Watch what happens in Iran over the course of the next few days – and compare it to what happened in Florida in November and December 2000.
In the United States, a disputed election meant lawsuits and people poring over ballots with other people leaning over their shoulders. In Iran, a disputed election has alredy meant clashes between young people and the police. Here, we called about 30 people in a corridor a “riot.” There, the police have raised translucent shields and are chasing looters up and down the streets.
The peaceful transfer of power from one leader to another is one of the primary hallmarks of civilization. The methods developed in Britain and the United States have been copied all over the world. Britain arrived at its method after centuries of uprisings any time a ruler died or aroused the ire of the populace. We arrived at our method after only eight years of the failed Articles of Confederation and less than twenty years of the Continental Congress.
Only once did the election of a President cause armed conflict (and that might have been avoided had the South not forced the issue). This is a blessing we take for granted.
One half of this country will continue to believe that Albert Gore was cheated in 2000; the other half will continue to believe that election fraud was narrowly averted. In the next few days, we will see what Florida could have been if either half had adhered less to the rule of law and surrendered more to the passions of the moment.
.
Watch what happens in Iran over the course of the next few days – and compare it to what happened in Florida in November and December 2000.
In the United States, a disputed election meant lawsuits and people poring over ballots with other people leaning over their shoulders. In Iran, a disputed election has alredy meant clashes between young people and the police. Here, we called about 30 people in a corridor a “riot.” There, the police have raised translucent shields and are chasing looters up and down the streets.
The peaceful transfer of power from one leader to another is one of the primary hallmarks of civilization. The methods developed in Britain and the United States have been copied all over the world. Britain arrived at its method after centuries of uprisings any time a ruler died or aroused the ire of the populace. We arrived at our method after only eight years of the failed Articles of Confederation and less than twenty years of the Continental Congress.
Only once did the election of a President cause armed conflict (and that might have been avoided had the South not forced the issue). This is a blessing we take for granted.
One half of this country will continue to believe that Albert Gore was cheated in 2000; the other half will continue to believe that election fraud was narrowly averted. In the next few days, we will see what Florida could have been if either half had adhered less to the rule of law and surrendered more to the passions of the moment.
.
Friday, June 12, 2009
A New Couch?
.
We need a new couch.
We've needed a new couch for a long time. Years, even. In the past, we never had the money when we had the time to look, and vice versa. Now we have the money and we could easily find the time, but . . .
My husband works for a company that sells services to newspapers. The newspaper industry is dying. None of his company's customers appears to be in danger, but . . .
So we're holding off on buying that couch or making any other major investment until such time as the dust settles and we know where we are and what we'll need, to keep us where we want to be.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are doing what we're doing, and it isn't doing the economy any good.
That is the biggest irony of our economic situation: to get the economy out of its rut, we need to consume; to get our personal finances under control, we need to save.
Our household has decided to follow Isaac Newton's advice: moderation in all things.
We're going out to eat less, not making unnecessary trips in the car, using our ceiling fans more and leaving the thermostat at its energy-efficient, computer-controlled level more often. But at the same time, we're not switching to the store brand on items where brand means something to us, not haunting the thrift stores looking for bargains, not walking to the grocery store that is less that five blocks away (but on the other side of Tyler Road).
Whenever I have to make a financial decision, no matter how small, I find myself thinking of this balancing act. Should I save a few pennies or should I help the economy? It's kind of corny, but I believe, no, I know that the future of the country rests on all those little, everyday choices.
So what do you think? Should we buy that couch, after all?
.
We need a new couch.
We've needed a new couch for a long time. Years, even. In the past, we never had the money when we had the time to look, and vice versa. Now we have the money and we could easily find the time, but . . .
My husband works for a company that sells services to newspapers. The newspaper industry is dying. None of his company's customers appears to be in danger, but . . .
So we're holding off on buying that couch or making any other major investment until such time as the dust settles and we know where we are and what we'll need, to keep us where we want to be.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are doing what we're doing, and it isn't doing the economy any good.
That is the biggest irony of our economic situation: to get the economy out of its rut, we need to consume; to get our personal finances under control, we need to save.
Our household has decided to follow Isaac Newton's advice: moderation in all things.
We're going out to eat less, not making unnecessary trips in the car, using our ceiling fans more and leaving the thermostat at its energy-efficient, computer-controlled level more often. But at the same time, we're not switching to the store brand on items where brand means something to us, not haunting the thrift stores looking for bargains, not walking to the grocery store that is less that five blocks away (but on the other side of Tyler Road).
Whenever I have to make a financial decision, no matter how small, I find myself thinking of this balancing act. Should I save a few pennies or should I help the economy? It's kind of corny, but I believe, no, I know that the future of the country rests on all those little, everyday choices.
So what do you think? Should we buy that couch, after all?
.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Confronting the Hate
.
I have a nephew who was a Holocaust denier. May still be.
My sister's boy Eric was indoctrinated in that hatefulness by one of his high school teachers. My father tried to counteract it by taking him out to hear the stories of a friend who helped liberate one of the death camps. I don't think Eric was convinced. If he had been, I don't think my father would have told me the story.
I've never asked Eric about it. If he still holds those opinions, I don't want to know. I don't know him well, and I'm not sure I like him. But he's family, and I really don't want to have any reason to like him less. Besides, there's no point in being confrontational with someone I see at most twice a year -- is there?
My ambivalence probably mirrors the reaction of most of us to racial hatred. We don't want to know that our neighbor, our co-worker, our friend is a racist. So we shy away from discussing the issue until the other person has given us some sign of where they stand. Then we either relax or tighten up completely, depending. The result is that the quiet haters, the ones who give aid and comfort to the violent ones, are rarely confronted with the truth.
James von Brunn is one of the violent ones. He appears to be an equal-opportunity hater -- against Jews, Catholics, blacks, Hispanics, and government employees. He isn't happy with the world as it is, and he is willing to take matters into his own hands to change it, no matter the cost -- to him or to others.
Haven't we seen enough of that lately? I wonder if he realizes that he is a comrade-in-arms of the suicide bombers who kill our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But fanatics rarely have true self-awareness.
Maybe I'll bring that up at Thanksgiving dinner this year.
.
I have a nephew who was a Holocaust denier. May still be.
My sister's boy Eric was indoctrinated in that hatefulness by one of his high school teachers. My father tried to counteract it by taking him out to hear the stories of a friend who helped liberate one of the death camps. I don't think Eric was convinced. If he had been, I don't think my father would have told me the story.
I've never asked Eric about it. If he still holds those opinions, I don't want to know. I don't know him well, and I'm not sure I like him. But he's family, and I really don't want to have any reason to like him less. Besides, there's no point in being confrontational with someone I see at most twice a year -- is there?
My ambivalence probably mirrors the reaction of most of us to racial hatred. We don't want to know that our neighbor, our co-worker, our friend is a racist. So we shy away from discussing the issue until the other person has given us some sign of where they stand. Then we either relax or tighten up completely, depending. The result is that the quiet haters, the ones who give aid and comfort to the violent ones, are rarely confronted with the truth.
James von Brunn is one of the violent ones. He appears to be an equal-opportunity hater -- against Jews, Catholics, blacks, Hispanics, and government employees. He isn't happy with the world as it is, and he is willing to take matters into his own hands to change it, no matter the cost -- to him or to others.
Haven't we seen enough of that lately? I wonder if he realizes that he is a comrade-in-arms of the suicide bombers who kill our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But fanatics rarely have true self-awareness.
Maybe I'll bring that up at Thanksgiving dinner this year.
.
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