The Nine Percent Solution

A flat rate income tax, a national sales tax and a flat rate corporate income tax and all fixed at 9%. Is it the number of the Beast standing on its head?

Why not 8, why not 10? Is it because Nein, Nein, Nein sounds like standing up to something bad, or because it's easier to chant? Certainly there wasn't a lot of mathematics behind Herman Cain's arrival at this Goldilocks level and those who have done some arithmetic, like Melissa Labant, an accountant with the American Institute of CPAs, say that since Warren Buffet's income is mostly in capital gains, the billionaire investor would pay no taxes. The poor fellow trying to support a family on 25 to 30 thousand a year? That 9% means some painful choices have to be made particularly if he has to pay for medical care out of pockets with holes in them.
That national sales tax will certainly diminish already taxed disposable income and harm those of us who spend all of it just keeping the family fed and housed. Yes, this is a simple plan indeed -- simply disastrous unless you're rather well off, like Herman Cain. Sounds great on paper though, just like Communism and some other really disastrous isms.

Would there have to be exemptions for those for whom 9% of income and another 9% of necessary consumption would be ruin? Probably so, but then we're back where we started with loopholes, exemptions and deductions and with almost half the country paying nothing, a situation the simple minded tea bag wavers are making much of in a rather confused way -- as if it was a situation Barack Obama were responsible for. Still the plan offers hope to those for whom paying taxes is a serious burden even though it's false hope that promises to make us more of a country of many serfs and a few lords.

We love simple ideas because life is complex and scary and Herman Cain, although far from the first to propose such regressive tax structures is simply tapping into the power of simple mindedness; maintaining that he wouldn't, as President, sign a bill of more than three pages. It's a good thing that idea wasn't popular when the country was founded. It's hard to envision our already terse constitution being reduced to something acceptable to the minimalists and reductionists looking for a free ride and to people who think the complex global economy should be run more like Godfather's Pizza where you keep firing people and closing stores until it all looks good -- on paper.

A little good news

We got the news today from an Associated Press report that the Pentagon has decided not to keep troops in Iraq after a New Year's Eve deadline. All troops will be removed except for 160 soldiers left to guard the US embassy in Baghdad.

Now, there are some people who aren't going to trust this. "Obama promises a lot. We've heard this before."

Well, technically, what we heard before was a troop reduction, not a complete pullout. And Obama lived up to that.

But some people, ignoring the evidence, have always refused to believe that Obama is acting in good faith in Iraq, and I suspect that they will continue to ignore reality.

Well, I don't know if this will help, but here's a little reality for you.

When I was in Iraq (in the first relief group, replacing the actual invasion forces), the Army had taken over Al-Faw palace, one of the last of Saddam's overly ornate structures left standing.

The Army named it and the area around it Camp Victory. It became the HQ for the US Army, and was referred to by the Army as the Victory Base Complex, also encompassing Camp Liberty, Camp Striker, our Air Force unit in Camp Sather, and a number of other encampments from all branches of the military, and even forces from other countries - we had a British unit right next door, for example.

And how do you know that the military is actually going to pull out by January?



They have closed the main PX in Camp Victory.

You can trust in one thing over all others. You have a buttload of generals in one place, you're going to have someplace for them to stock up on clean underwear, chocolate and cigarettes. And the little black-market supply of Jack Daniels and porn coming in aboard the military aircraft isn't going to be able to expand enough to keep them supplied with all the amenities available. (There are other ways to keep supplied with contraband, but I bought mine straight from the aircrews, and I wasn't in charge of anything...)

They can't shop in Baghdad (OK, they could, but there's rules to keep the military out of town, because of those pesky bullets that keep flying toward them), and they don't want to go all the way to the Green Zone after a long day at the office.

An argument can be made about the lower-ranking troops needing some place to get razors and shampoo, but in the end, the needs of the brass override anything else.

_____

Update (10/17/2011): As was pointed out in the comments, I misidentified the Embassy as being in Tehran, rather than Baghdad. That has been corrected.

All the shallow things

"If this be treason, make the most of it."

What a different line that would be without "if." It would become an admission of the crowd's charge of treason rather than Patrick Henry's defiant stand for the law it was.

"Thou hast said it."

Is that an affirmation or a denial; or a refusal to answer the question?

"If I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness. . ."

How would that statement differ if the 'if' disappeared? That's a question being asked today about one of the inscriptions on the new Martin Luther King memorial being dedicated in Washington, where the 'if' does not appear as it did when it was spoken at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in 1968:

"Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all the other shallow things will not matter."

The 'if' matters. It matters a great deal because without it King is assuming a mantle and with it he is not; that it is not about him but about Justice, peace and righteousness. Is this a shallow thing or insignificant? I don't think so. I think it speaks of the way our heroes are elevated, to become, in death, a 30 foot tall man expressing stern, stony determination rather than just a man struggling with a mission, struggling with himself, struggling with a stupid, angry and vengeful world that will continue to be just that long after he is gone. The quote on the monument is not phrased as part of a question and that raises many questions.

Are we making him what he was not and apparently did not wish to be? If we make his life about him, then we can opposes him more readily than we can argue against justice and we can make the movement he participated in, a mere matter of quotes and formulae if we like him and personal failings if we do not. Perhaps some can ask his stone idol for guidance and support for their own objectives and pretend he is not gone and will magically return some day. As always happens when our heroes die, we are making his life something less than it was and something more about our lust for leaders, prophets and even gods and we do it to preachers and prophets; polemicists and presidents when we put our desires into their acts and words and thereby worship ourselves.

Victoria Falls

I think I'm starting to figure something out.

I’m coming to realize that Victoria Jackson is either a whip-smart satirist in the style of Steven Colbert, or she is so criminally, bone-chillingly vapid and clueless that it’s miraculous that she can navigate her way out of bed in the morning.

I never thought that she was even slightly humorous when she was on SNL: she was, in fact, one of the stupidest members of a particularly unfunny era for the Not Ready for Primetime Players (the only true bright spots being A. Whitney Brown and the early Dennis Miller – as opposed to the current, self-important, pandering Dennis Miller).

But now I think I understand. I suspect she’s actually a world-class performance artist, who’s been pulling off this ditzy blond act for almost thirty years now. Not because she is, herself, a vacuous, inane bundle of stupid wrapped in a little-girl voice, but as a potent weapon to skewer the ignorant and ego-driven. She has been making fun of various groups of unthinking zombies for decades, and has been doing it with such a straight face that nobody has caught on.

In her early career, I think she was concentrating on the female airhead: the woman willing to suppress her own personality and her own needs to fall in line with the 1950's cheerleader/Playboy image, where youth is prized and women have limited options. But she took that image to an extreme, and used as her archetype not the post-pubescent, sexually-charged girl, but the prepubescent, playful child: her original act consisted of reciting bad poetry while doing clumsy handstands and somersaults, while "accidentally" revealing her white cotton children's panties.

She stuck with that parody for most of her career, but now, perhaps noting that she's grown a little too old to pull off her infantile act any more, she's recast herself into a bad stereotype of a Teabagger. She mouths irrational philosophies, and tunes out any application of logic that might refute her poorly-conceived arguments.

That's the only explanation that I can come up with, to explain why Victoria Jackson proudly posted this video. She takes a cab into New York to meet up with members of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, and although she shows a couple of people just out to have a good time, and one extremist toward the end (essentially correct, but still an extremist), she spends most of the video talking to one man, who calmly and patiently destroys every argument she makes.

Her response? To repeat those same arguments, as if their bloodied shreds weren't piled around her feet. She completely ignores everything said by this quiet, good-tempered person, and goes back to her original, idiotic allegations, completely ignoring the past 15 minutes of her life.

And then she posts it on Youtube, as if it was a victory for her side of the debate. She even seems proud of it.

She can't possibly be that eyeball-meltingly ignorant. This has to be an act. A satirical persona that she uses to lampoon the Teabaggers. No person who can manage to navigate a fork into their mouth without impaling themselves in the forehead can be this galactically obtuse, can they?

Is the GOP Abel to raise Cain?

Herman Cain's attempt to position himself as an "outsider" is a key plank of his presidential campaign: unlike the rest of them, he wants you to know that he is not a professional polician, and that's part of why he should be elected.

Perhaps that's the entire problem. Maybe his inexperience is the reason for the abject stupidity of his ideas, and has nothing to do with him being a brainless twatwaffle.

On the other hand, maybe it's both.

One of Hermie's earliest ideas, that as president, he would never sign a bill longer than three pages, was widely derided by anyone who understood that there are, in fact, complex problems that might take a little longer merely to explain, much less fix.

Hermie's response? He explained that anybody who actually listened to him or took him at his word was stupid.

Some of these idiotic reporters thought I was serious. The joke’s on them. The message was short bills. Understandable bills. No it’s not literally going to be three pages. The executive summary will be three pages.

Of course, reporters aren't the only stupid people in Cain's tiny little world - basically anybody who questions him must automatically be stupid, right? In his latest book, This is Herman Cain, Hermie explained how Ron Paul's stupid followers were conducting a systematic conspiracy to make him look bad.

"I get the same stupid question at almost every one of these events," Cain writes. "I know it’s a deliberate strategy. How can a person randomly show up at a hundred events and ask the same stupid question to try to nail me on the Federal Reserve?"

(Apparently, Hermie isn't used to people with more than 5 followers.)

Actually, "stupid" is his favorite word. He loves to describe people that way: he gave a whole speech at CPAC around the theme that stupid people are ruining America. Which is odd. Because, despite having risen from a humble beginning to CEO of a crappy pizza chain, Herman Cain just doesn't come across as the brightest motherfucker on the planet.

Admittedly, his business model didn't take a genius to develop: pay people eight dollars an hour to deliver pizzas that cost less than a dollar to make, and charge twelve to eighteen dollars apiece for them. It's not like it's an original idea or anything. Hermie just put one interesting spin on the idea: if you use cheaper ingredients, they cost less. But then, instead of improving on the pizza, you give it an exciting, all-crime ad campaign. (As in, "I'm stealing from you by charging you money for this crappy pizza.")

Cain is more than willing to spew the most ignorant talking points with great authority, and totally without shame. It's not just that you're stupid if you disagree with him, you're lazy if you don't have a job. Oh, and by the way, this whole "Occupy Wall Street" movement? In Hermie's world, that's not just lazy people (OK, that's mostly what it is), that's lazy people being manipulated by the White House.

Because conspiracy theories go across real well with the modern Republican party.



Cain can't even get his birther talking points right:

"Barack Obama is more of an international," Cain said. "I think he’s out of the mainstream and always has been. Look, he was raised in Kenya..."

(Look, moron, Obama lived in Indonesia, and only for four years - ages six to ten. Were all your ideas set in stone when you were in second grade?)

He can't even spew the standard GOP rhetoric correctly. In the middle of accusing the left of being (once again) stupid, this time for not reading the Constitution, he tries to make his point by quoting... wait for it... the Declaration of Independence.

"...when you get to the part about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, don’t stop reading! Keep reading!"

Gonna be reading a long time there, big fella.



And his current big campaign promise is the 9-9-9 tax plan (9% income tax, 9% business tax, 9% sales tax). A plan which is basically hated by everybody, Democrat or Republican, except Herman Cain.

Bruce Bartlett, an adviser in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, says that 9-9-9 is unfair to working taxpayers. "It's the most upside-down tax plan that’s been put forward to tax the poor and the middle class," he says...

Daniel Shaviro, a New York University law professor who specializes in taxation, calls the plan "not viable." For rich people—defined as those who work for themselves and don’t have to take a salary—it essentially becomes an 18 percent total tax on all money. But for poor people collecting a paycheck, Shaviro says, it amounts to a 27 percent tax.

This plan was developed, not by an economist, but an investment banker with ties to the Koch brothers (unless it was stolen from SimCity). And basically, the rich get taxed less, the poor and middle class get taxed more, and the government gets less money.

This is the kind of "leadership" we can expect from Herman Cain? It doesn't take a lot of logic to rip his ideas to shreds.

If he does, by some miracle, win the primaries, Herman Cain may actually make history, though. He will be the first black man to get another black man reelected.

Occupational Hazard

I first heard of it a few days ago from a blogger noted for outrageous claims, but I have been late to pick up on the ploy, even though it has been used against liberals and liberal causes for some time. Similarly overbearing "conservative" commentators once assured me that of course Bill and Hillary Clinton were obvious anti-Semites and if you're old enough to read this you'll remember that Barack Obama was of the same racist, intolerant and bigoted stripe and perhaps even a Hitler Sympathizer and Muslim terrorist.

Of course there's always an anecdote, a selected collection of irrelevant or even fabricated 'facts' to prove the point -- and of course and strangely, those making the claim aren't often Jews. I've learned to discount these attacks, of course, you should pardon the metaphor, for many reasons including the observation that the accusations most often come from iron fisted defenders of a faith only they call Christian and who have only suddenly and temporarily stopped accusing Jews and other infidels of persecuting them. ( Sorry Muslims, you'll have to wait your turn for forgiveness.)

So for now, this week only and especially for you, I'm offering 99.99% off (what a deal) on the notion that the Occupy Wall Street people are really there to express their anti-Semitic notions about bankers and brokers and not their antiestablishmentarian anger at those who accepted massive and expensive rescue only to continue their shoddy practices to the detriment of the public and national survival.

That's a sentiment strangely similar to the Tea Party disdain for government bailouts, and the strange bed-fellowship implied here is difficult to sweep under the rug for those who need to look like the only ones discontent with the status quo on Wall Street. So how do you make the Tea Party look good and other people with the same idea look bad? You find something or someone atypical or irrelevant and promote it or him as the prototype.

The Jewish Journal today reminds us of the infamous "protocols of the Elders of Zion" that was used by Czarist supporters to identify the feared and hated Jews with socialism, a practice not unknown to this day and a book that was printed by "Christian" organizations around the world until recently -- if indeed they've stopped. I certainly remember the promotion of Abbie Hoffman to leadership of the many disparate and mostly respectable protesters in Grant Park during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. I was there and I'd never heard of him until I heard on the news that he was my leader, but of course it was enough to taint the many clergymen, Vietnam veterans and business leaders with the yellow star.

The fear of being labeled a racist of any stripe is, I think, being used quite deliberately to downplay the legitimacy of this protest. It isn't enough to play up the numbers of people who are making a mess of the city and its public and private facilities, particularly for a party trying to wear the mantle of some 18th century destructive, anti-Government protesters. It's hard to convince us that they're really secretly Mexican illegals or African Americans demonstrating their disdain for enterprise and civility, but anyone can be a Jew, or at least accused of it and so the sudden concern by the Religious right that their best friends are being offended on these holiest of holy days, by those unwashed, free loading, anti-Semitic hippies who seem to be gathering around the world calling for regulation.

And of course President Obama we already know to be a Jew hater and if he tries to impose regulations on the Jew-Dominated financial and banking interests, we have additional proof that regulation equals bigotry and not just Communism - just don't think about it too carefully and you won't notice the absurdity -- and if you do, the Tea Party will turn on you too, you bigot!

Bush v. Gore Redux (With 2 Updates)

In Election Year 2000, Al Gore won the national vote by a plurality of over 2 million votes cast. The Bush campaign won the not so great State of Flori-duh by a mere 531 votes - winning an Electoral College victory but making George Bush only the second president in history without a popular mandate. No other democracy in the free world counts votes quite like the United Reprobates of Amerika. Eleven years later, former Supreme Justice John Paul Stevens writes in his new memoir, Five Chiefs, that the Bush appeal to the United States Supreme Court was "frivolous" and should never have been granted (source):

He recalls bumping into Justice Stephen Breyer at a Christmas party and the two having a brief conversation about the Bush application to halt the recount by issuing a stay. "We agreed that the application was frivolous," he writes. "To secure a stay, a litigant must show that one is necessary to prevent a legally cognizable irreparable injury. Bush's attorneys had failed to make any such showing."

Imagine what the world would be like if the SCOTUS stayed away from politics … and let the election be decided in Flori-Duh after massive amounts of election rigging had come to light.**  If the vote count were reversed in the Florida Supreme Court, imagine a world with no George Bush! No Darth Cheney! No fungible Rumsfeld! No Bush tax cuts!  No decade of ruinous wars! And no economic meltdown!

**  Database Technologies (DBT) won a $4 million contract from the state of Florida to assist the Division of Elections in the removal of ineligible registrants from the voter file.  Ultimately 173,127 Floridians were identified as potentially ineligible to vote in the November 2000 election. Of those on the list, 57,746 were identified as convicted felons, which later proved to be false. The practice of felon disenfranchisement has resulted in the greater likelihood of minorities, especially African Americans – the ones most likely to vote Democrat - appearing erroneously on the Florida felon exclusion list.  For more commentary on election rigging, please read the comment thread below.

TUESDAY UPDATE:  If you believe Bush v. Gore was a freak historical anomaly, think again.  Republicans are determined to create a political monopoly and end democracy as we know it.  Slowly, methodically, bit by bit, they have been laying a foundation nationwide to disenfranchise voters, as this New York Times Editorial explains:

The Myth of Voter Fraud

It has been a record year for new legislation designed to make it harder for Democrats to vote — 19 laws and two executive actions in 14 states dominated by Republicans, according to a new study by the Brennan Center for Justice. As a result, more than five million eligible voters will have a harder time participating in the 2012 election.

Of course the Republicans passing these laws never acknowledge their real purpose, which is to turn away from the polls people who are more likely to vote Democratic, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities. They insist that laws requiring government identification cards to vote are only to protect the sanctity of the ballot from unscrupulous voters …

None of these explanations are true. There is almost no voting fraud in America. And none of the lawmakers who claim there is have ever been able to document any but the most isolated cases. The only reason Republicans are passing these laws is to give themselves a political edge by suppressing Democratic votes [my bold].

If you thought the stolen election of 2000 were bad enough – the one that gave us 8 disastrous years of Bush/Cheney – get ready for the Republican Reich.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE:  Is the hidden motive behind voter suppression driven solely by the ambitions of one party - to crush the opposition and dominate the national agenda? Or is there more? A political party is merely the public face of its backers in the pursuit of economic self-interest.  In this article, The Real Agenda Behind Voter Suppression, Donald Cohen offers this perspective:

In 1974 and 1975, the Conference Board, a mainstream business organization, held a set of strategic brainstorming meetings with groups of top business executives to understand these threats to free enterprise and begin to chart a course to fight back. They openly expressed their worries whether democracy, in the long run, was even compatible with capitalism. “One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since WWII. “ said one participant. Said another, “We need to question the system itself: one man, one vote” [my bold].

… which leads me to an academic question: If you can only have one, democracy or free enterprise but not both, which would you prefer? In my view, the Conference Board debate is a false dichotomy. Democracy and free enterprise are not mutually exclusive because eventually you will end up with neither. In a predatory world of business where the rules are written only by the most powerful, eventually the big fish will swallow the little fish, and all you will have left are lords and serfs.

Amerika Über Alles

Mitt Romney is hard to figure out, partly because his most salient feature is the love of ingratiating himself dishonestly with any group he thinks is worth ingratiating himself to. So I have to wonder if he really thinks the United States is the nation chosen of God to lead the world as he told cadets at the Citadel yesterday or whether he just assumes that people embarking upon a military career are dreaming of imperial glory. I have no way of knowing whether these cadets have Napoleonic dreams or are attracted to arms because of some sense of personal weakness and humiliation, but I'd hesitate to bet that many really think that US history isn't filled with mistakes at home and abroad or that we aren't a better, more moral nation than once we were. Of course I don't mean to say we shouldn't strive to be a good influence in the world, but being a good influence doesn't mean command, doesn't mean control, doesn't mean we're the infallible and mighty hand of some invented Lord as Romney would be implying if there were any implications beyond opportunism in anything he has ever said in public.

But as I say, you never know what Romney thinks, particularly if your assessment is derived from listening to the man. You certainly can know that he's willing to put some strange interpretations on events to bolster his imperial and messianic aspirations whether or not he believes them. President Obama's "apology tour" for instance; Mitt would like to make the psychorabble feel important and loved by associating honesty with apology and apology with weakness and weakness with Jonah-like abdication of a divine mission. Of course Obama never went on an apology tour, but what black man has ever not been in danger from Godly Americans when someone accuses him of winking at a white girl. Where there's smoke, there's fire, we say, forgetting that where there's smoke there may be a smokescreen and there may be arson.

That Obama portrayed American history in a poor light by admitting that we have sometimes been guilty of arrogance and have sometimes made mistakes is a big fish to swallow, to invert the metaphor and it clashes with Romney's carefully crafted humble demeanor. There's nothing humble about him and there's something disturbing about the belief in divinely ordained male control of family life his religion seems to demand, at least to an outsider like me.

"An eloquently justified surrender of world leadership is still surrender"

said the man who is more frightening for his benign smile. To me there is no one more dangerous than a man who can call upon a sufficiently established god to justify world domination and I don't think I need to offer examples. No one more dangerous unless, of course, we add the photogenic charm and the forked tongue. What Mitt really is saying is that America is chosen to be the priest and caretaker of the planet and what he is implying is that by being its ordained leader, he's God's agent on Earth. Where and when have we heard this before? Certainly not from the founders of our Republic who took up arms against God's own chosen King.

I've often been told that Obama "went over there and apologized to them" by Fox News victims totally ignorant of where there is or who said what. It's a lie of course and a big one but it isn't going away even if Romney never says another word about it or is magically transported to another world for him to rule, as apparently he thinks he will be. Lies, like cancer cells, are all but immortal. Truth and decency and the hope for a world not run by pompous and powerful thugs in expensive suits and plastic hair are as fragile as a dream.

Three idiots, balanced by a genius.

Mitt Romney is going to speak before the Values Voters Summit, which is another gathering of God-botherers that happens every year, this one put on by the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and other evangelical groups.

Now, Bryan Fischer (of the American Family Association) said just last month that the First Amendment doesn't apply to Mormons. So the New York Times asked the Romney's people to comment on that, but the campaign didn't reply.

Why is anyone surprised about that? It's Romney's people! How could they reply? They don't have the right!

Ought to be a short speech, though.

But this move of Romney's is only... interesting (you know - the polite way to say "pandering"). Other people are just outright stupid.

On ABC’s Top Line today, Rep. Paul Broun, a tea party Republican from Georgia, said the ("Occupy Wall Street") protests amount to an “attack upon freedom” — one that he said is now being hijacked by labor unions in attempt to reelect President Obama.

“They don’t know why they’re there. They’re just mad,” Broun told us. “This attack upon business, attack upon industry, attack upon freedom – and I think that’s what this is all about.”

“Attack upon freedom”? Exercising your right to peaceful assembly is now an “attack upon freedom”?

Congressman, please define what you consider “freedom.” And for that matter, define “attack.”

Especially ironic that, having gotten everything bass-ackwards like that, he went on to say that the president’s policies were “ignorant and incompetent”...

Meanwhile, Eric Cantor tried to whip up anger against those same protesters that broke Rep. Broun's brain.

"If you read the newspapers today, I for one am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country," he said.

And then, completely straight-faced, he found the perfect follow-up comment.

"Believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans."

You mean, like trying to pit Americans against working-class Americans who might be protesting economic injustice?

But, just because there are useless policians out there, that doesn't mean we have to pay attention to them all time, does it?

Instead, join me in wishing a happy birthday, on this late hour of October 7, to the brilliant Tim Minchin.

Steve Jobs and Fred Shuttlesworth - R.I.P