Tax Day

This year was much less painful than last year. I used a different computer program, and it worked like a charm, without any of the idiocies that I ran into last year. Well, it did take a bit of effort to get around the "interview". But not too much. Suffice it to say, I plan on using it next year.

Nobody likes taxes. However, the vast majority of folks don't mind paying "their fair share". The majority of complaints are simple grousing; not at all the symptoms of an incipient rebellion. People also like to feel they're getting something for their money; European countries have sky-high tax rates, but the citizens feel that they're getting their money's worth.

So what's with the Bush administration's tax cuts? $350 billion last time I looked; the Republicans think they should be at least twice as much. Targeted at the rich to super-rich; most of the money will go to people making more than $300,000 per year. How much of your tax bill was due to taxes on dividends? The White House says that the tax cuts are to "increase productivity". This is the "supply side argument". To see what this means, we need to look at the economics of recession.

A Descent into Economics

The "classical" recession is now called a "demand-side" recession. Basically, people don't have enough money. Stuff piles up unsold, prices go down, suppliers go out of business because nobody is buying stuff. Cure is to pump money into the consumer economy. People use the money to buy stuff, business recovers, and Bob's your uncle.

The "supply-side" recession, popularized by the Reagan administration, is caused by the opposite problem. People have money, but businesses aren't making enough stuff. Prices go up and the economy stagnates. Cure is to pump money into business; they use it to increase production, people buy the new stuff, and, again, we be cool.

If you remember the supply-and-demand curves from Econ 102, a "demand stimulus" moves the demand curve to the right, while a "supply stimulus" moves the supply curve to the right.

So What's Going On Now?

The official Republican position is that the current, uh, slowdown, is a "supply-side recession", to be fixed by giving money to businesses, as represented by rich people. Idea is that, if you give money to poor people, they spend it, thus stimulating demand. If you give money to rich people, they invest it, thus stimulating supply. Unfortunately, this simply doesn't wash. Problems:

• The Fed is practically giving away money. If they try to lower the discount any further, the Federal Reserve will have to start giving away toasters.
• Assume that the rich folks "invest" their tax savings. How does that help productivity? Remember the Internet bubble? How does investing in a company that promises the computer equivalent of perpetual motion help anybody except con artists?
• A current economic fad among the rich and the corporate world is "offshore tax shelters". If Joe Rich Guy moves his wad to the Cayman Islands, how does that help anybody?
• Remember how this tax cut business got started? We had a budget surplus. The tax cuts were to "give back the surplus". Then the economy went into the toilet and suddenly we need the very same tax cuts to "stimulate the economy". Hmm.

What's really going on is a "crisis of confidence". After the bursting of the Internet bubble, we got hit with, in close succession, the Global Crossing, Enron, and WorldCom bankruptcies. All had engaged in practices that were at the very least unethical and very possibly illegal. All had boosted stock prices by "creative" accounting and growth estimates that are now seen to have been wildly optimistic. Aided and abetted at all points by greedy investors, of course. Don't expect them to admit any responsibility.

This sort of thing is simply not supposed to happen. The stockholders and the Board of Directors keep the CEO on the straight and narrow track of profits, the accountants make sure that Management has an accurate picture of the company finances, the auditors keep things honest, and the SEC steps in if anybody gets seriously out of line. However, here, every point has been compromised.

• The concept of "profitability" seems to be obsolete. The focus is on the stock price, at the expense of everything else. More and more, "profit" is simply the part of your cash flow that you have to pay taxes on.
• The accountants helped Management to build up the rosiest picture possible. Lotsa "paper money"; no "grocery money".
• The auditors were the same as the accountants. Essentially, they were auditing themselves. Arthur Anderson went out of business because of this. Good riddance.
• The SEC is drastically underfunded and staffed by refugees from the companies that they're regulating. Mainly, they seem to spend their time coming up with mindbogglingly complex regulations for things like "insider trading". Explain to me again what Martha Stewart did wrong. Her broker told her to sell. She sold. She's in trouble. Hunh??
• Doesn't help one little bit that one of the most influential people in the early Bush administration (especially before Bush took office) was Ken Lay, the "mastermind" of Enron. "Common wisdom" for the reason VP Cheney doesn’t want to release the notes on the development of the Administration's energy policy is that it was actually written by Ken Lay. Why isn't Lay in jail?

Basically, people are scared. Before we see any movement in the economy, we have to convince the people with the money that the things that they're investing in are not con games. Even more difficult, we have to convince them that things are going to be stable for long enough for them to make a reasonable return on their investments.

And right now, that is precisely what we are not getting. The SEC is even more toothless. Arthur Anderson is gone, but there is no assurance that other accounting firms aren't doing the same thing. CEOs and directors are still getting mindboggling salaries and bonuses. Explain to me why the CEO or the directors of a company that isn't making money, or that is actually shrinking, should get any bonus at all. And, of course, there's the "elephant in the living room", that causes a great deal of trouble but that no one will talk about: the war. We are sinking a serious hunk of cash in the Iraqi desert. It's gotta come from somewhere. And check out how much of it is going to Halliburton or its subsidiaries.

So Who Benefits from the Cuts?

I normally try to hedge my statements. There's very little absolute in this world. Remember up at the start, I said that "the vast majority of folks don't mind paying 'their fair share'"? Well, turns out that the people who don't want to pay their fair share are the ones getting the cuts. Of course, there's always room for debate on what "fair share" means. Practically everybody thinks that a graduated income tax is about as fair as you can get. Just about everybody has to pay something, but those who have more money pay more. We can argue about details essentially forever, but almost everybody agrees on the basic point. Those who disagree tend to be members of fringe groups, or rich. The fringe groups write blogs, the rich give big contributions to political groups. Guess who gets listened to?

The old fashioned term for the Bush tax cuts is "looting the treasury".

He Shoulda Said ...

I caught an interview with Gen. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Fox "News" yesterday. The Fox talking head (far as I'm concerned, they're almost all identical) asked a question to the effect of "Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who wants to be President, for cry'n out loud, said that we need 'regime change at home'. Should this kind of irresponsible statement be allowed In Time Of War? Isn't this irresponsible when Our Troops Are At Risk?"

Myers responded with about three minutes of Beltway doubletalk that translated as "    ".

Unfortunately, the tendency toward public doubletalk is ingrained in the folks at the policy level. Basically, you know that anything you say will be used against you later, so you say as little as humanly possible, while making it as difficult as possible for the questioner to break in with a question, like "Hunh??"

What he should have said:

So you're saying we should cancel the 2004 Presidential election? Or that Democrats shouldn't be allowed to campaign? What he said was, essentially, that a Democrat should win the 2004 election. Do you really expect a Democrat to say anything else? Politics in the US is conducted at a high volume; get used to it.

Remember, we're fighting for freedom of speech and free elections. There's no reason to give up our most fundamental feedoms because we're actively fighting for them for the Iraqi people.

Also, I find your implication that our fighting men and women would allow their performance to be affected by legitimate, peaceful protests to be the single most disrespectful statement I've heard in a long time. Saying that our troops will not perform at their peak levels because of a few protests impugns their character, intelligence, and professionalism. It's worse than the people who scream "baby killer!" at our troops. That's just an insult, and says more about their own anger and ignorance than anything else.

Too much to hope, I guess.

War Sites

I've added an extra link block over on the right for useful war sites. Problem is, there are a bazillion sites talking about the war (including this one!), and it's hard to figure out where to look for information. The sites here, I think, are a good starting place. Most of the usefiul stuff, of course, is in the links. The information comes from "conventional" media sites, but those sites are so poorly organized that it's almost impossible to figure out what is going on without spending a huge amount of time digging.

• Sean Paul Kelly (The Agonist) -- Grand Central Station. News as it happens, at least as long as Sean can stay awake. He makes a real effort to simply digest and report, without slant. IMHO, he does a darn sight better job than the conventional media. (Note -- this site is extremely popular. This link points to one of the mirror sites.)
• Kos -- Thoughtful, in depth analysis and discussion of various points, especially logistics. Center/left politics.
• Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing -- A military point of view. Again, people who know what they're talking about, without too much political baggage. Politics, what there is, is middle-of-the-road military.

These sites have comment sections that are very much worth the effort to check out. All have a policy of throwing out dribbling loons of all political stripes; sadly necessary.

Enough with the Omens, Already!

Okay. We've had the biggest snowstorm in many years. Iraq had its biggest sandstorm ever. We have a brand-new plague. Chicago got hit by a meteorite. And to top it all off, today the temperature in the Washington,DC area was in the mid 60s, with snow flurries.

Awright, already! Enough with the omens! We get the idea -- we know this war is a bad idea. Now how about some hints about what to do about it?

What to look for? Bird carrying a snake? Plague of frogs? Rooster crowing at midnight?

How about a burning bush ... ?

Iraqi Affairs

The big question in Iraq is "what will happen after we win"? The talk of "democratization" is simply silly; we don't have the resources, will power, or national attention span. Most probable, of course, is that we'll just install a toady at the top and leave, keeping the Ba'athist power structure. Iraq will then promptly collapse into chaos and the Islamists will take over. Nobody in the US will care, as long as the oil keeps flowing.

But what if we did stay around? What if, as some have claimed, Iraq is going to become the "51^st state?". Well, we have a couple hundred years of experience dealing with "indigeneous peoples"; we'd probably do the same with the Iraqis.

Here, then, is the proposal for the Bureau of Iraqi Affairs (BIA) , patterned on the other BIA.

The War, So Far

If you want to know what's going on as it happens, The Agonist is the place to be. The error rate is higher than you get from the more mainline sources, but that's the price you pay for being up-to-the-minute. For as long as Sean-Paul holds out. How does he do it?. For more in-depth analysis, Kos is hard to beat. Try Venik's Aviation for a different point of view, including purported translations of GRU briefings..

TV coverage is absolutely godawful. Reminds me of nothing so much as a bunch of college wargamers discussing what Eisenhower did wrong at Normandy. Loud, arrogant, ignorant bluster and pictures with no context. Fox, as expected, is especially bad. They've completely dropped any pretense of doing "journalism" as opposed to "propaganda".

Al Jazeera finally has an English-language site. Too bad it's marked "Temporary". The site design is horrible (Microsoft only), but it's still interesting. Hopefully, they'll make it permanent and fix the design. I've also heard that they've been the victim of a denial-of-service attack; it'd be interesting to see just who's doing it. The talking heads are appalled that we didn't make Iraqi IV a priority.

Our military is following the obvious plan -- capture the oilfields, airlift troops to the north to start a front there, capture airbases in Iraq's western desert, and move the main attack force as quickly as possible to the outskirts of Baghdad. We're doing a lot of bombing, but nowhere near as much as the original (leaked?) "Shock and Awe" plan called for.

Unfortunately, a couple of things have gone very badly wrong:

• Against all expectations, the Iraqis are fighting. This is seriously Not Good; longer this war goes on, the worse trouble we'll be in.
• We're not being welcomed as liberators. Perhaps the Iraqis remember what happened when they answered our call to revolt in 1991?
• When this is over, I expect the Second Amendment types to have a field day. The Iraqi populous seems to be rather heavily armed. Not encouraging for the occupation.

Some things we expected:

• A few oil wells have been set on fire. Messy, but not disastrous.
• Hit and run attacks on the supply lines. I'm surprised there haven't been more.
• Some Islamist types have poked their heads up, including at least one suicide bombing.

Rumsfeld & company soiled their trousers on the POW issue. It's OK for US TV news to show Iraqi POWs, but not for Iraqi TV news to show American POWs. Everybody outside the US and UK has called them on this.

No "Weapons of Mass Destruction", despite what Fox says. Their talking heads can't distinguish between a factory for making poison gas and poison gas. LATER --Turns out it was an ordinary chemical factory.

Lessons we've hopefully learned:

• Helicopters are vulnerable to heavy machine gun fire. (The Soviets learned that one in Afghanistan)
• Our transport and logistics requirements are, in a word, unacceptable. Our military was designed to sit in fixed positions in West Germany and get overrun by the Soviets. It takes us six months to get into position to do anythng; against real opposition, we'd get wiped out.
• Blowing up empty government buildings impresses nobody.
• Outclassed military units tend to fight dirty. Rumsfeld & company may expect Iraqi military units to line up to be slaughtered like good little movie extras; most people don't.
• House-to-house mopup operations are nasty and dangerous. Duh!
• We're already getting blamed for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq since Gulf War I. We're finding out why the sanctions were a really bad idea. Supposedly, we'd make the Iraqi people miserable enough to revolt against Saddam. "That trick never works, Bullwinkle!" "This time for sure!"

Well, we'll see. It's continuing.

The F Word, Again

David Neiwert of Orcinus has just put up a postscript to his series on Fascism and the American ultra-right wing, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism. If you haven't read it, arrange some time and do so. It's long and detailed and very, very, scary.

For reference, the parts of the series are:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9
• Part 10
• Part 11
• Part 12
• Postscript

A good primer on Fascism is Umberto Eco's Eternal Fascism. Note that Eco is Italian -- while he isn't old enough to remember the rise of Mussolini, his parents' generation certainly is. Eternal Fascism has the kind of immediacy that says "it can happen here because it did happen here".

This Makes 'Way Too Much Sense

I'm always suspicious of theories that try to explain too much. They're almost as bad as conspiracy theories. But sometimes, you get one that is so good, it just might be true.

In the past few years, Georgie Bush and the Republicans have enjoyed an unbroken run of success, despite an absolutely jaw-dropping level of ineptitude. Their priorities have been, quite nakedly, looting the treasury on the domestic side and settling old scores internationally. The press can't seem to ask a single tough question and the Democrats can't seem to tie their own shoes. What's going on here?

Finally, we have an answer. We're re-enacting the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Georgie Bush as Mayor Wilkins. 'Way too much sense.

Plan Ahead. Big problem in Season 4 was with high-tech top-secret military types ...

War Crime

Two Iraqis surrender to a British soldier in southern Iraq.

Just saw Defense Sec. Rumsfeld on the Tube commenting on the American prisoners that the Iraqis have taken. He was majorly upset that al Jazeera had shown them on TV. "War crime! Violation of the Geneva Convention!" So, by the same standard, the above picture represents a British "war crime". (Or maybe a CNN war crime?)

Did we sign this convention? There seem to be a lot of "Geneva conventions"; some we signed, some we didn't. I remember some kerfluffles during the Vietnam war relating to "illegal" weapons (shotguns, to be precise); excuse was "we didn't sign it, we're not bound by it."

In any case:

• As "war crimes" go, this one is pretty lightweight. A bunch less serious than, say, the way the Soviets and the Germans treated each other's POWs in WWII.
• Since when does this administration feel bound by international treaties, conventions, or anything else that might prove inconvenient?
• Any "war crimes" trials will be held by the US. We will decide what's a "war crime" and what isn't. Nuremberg showed that "war crimes" trials can create entirely new classes of crimes, applied ex post facto to the defeated.

Gives us license to kick around some more Iraqis after the war. Like we need it?

Signs of Civilization

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins, 1st Battalion, Royal Irish, 19 March, 2003, Fort Blair Mayne desert camp:

We go to liberate not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country

We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them.

...

Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there.

You will see things that no man could pay to see and you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis.

You will be embarrassed by their hospitality even though they have nothing.

Don't treat them as refugees for they are in their own country. Their children will be poor, in years to come they will know that the light of liberation in their lives was brought by you.

If there are casualties of war then remember that when they woke up and got dressed in the morning they did not plan to die this day.

Allow them dignity in death. Bury them properly and mark their graves.

...

I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts, I can assure you they live with the mark of Cain upon them.

...

As for ourselves, let's bring everyone home and leave Iraq a better place for us having been there. Our business now is north.

Compare this with the bloodthirsty gang of nincompoops at Fox or Dan Rather babbling like Howard Stern on a bad day.

(via Electrolite)