Tax Debate: the difference between being an asshole and a major asshole

While doing the usual rounds of daily news reading (mostly British - reading American news websites just depresses/angers me) I cam across this op-ed: "Obama's Bush Tax Cut Proposal Hits Republican Roadblock" which made me laugh. It is an example of much ado about not much at all. Don't get me wrong - I am entirely in favor of 'rolling back' the Bush blanket tax cuts and for a more progressive tax structure (I think it is important not only in regards to fiscal policy but for the "soul," stability and civic cohesion of the nation)but this op-ed was an excellent example of how sometimes there is not all that great a difference between the apples and oranges. For example: Economists who take the reducing-income-inequality part of taxation policy seriously see the debate over whether we should have Bush-era or Clinton-era tax as arguing the difference over a 10% versus 5% tip: just the gap between being an asshole and major asshole. They say that for a meaningful shift in income distribution – right now, the US has an income inequality index that's about the same as Rwanda's – debate should be framed as a choice between the tax rates for the wealthy during Reagan (50%) versus Nixon (70% – the goddamn hippie!). Ah! That put my sanctimonious self back in line!

An Intellectual Coup: Washington Post OpEd on Supreme Court Hearings on the Health Reform Act

Last week's marathon hearings at the Supreme Court in re: the Health Reform Act hurt my head (from slamming it against driving wheel while at stoplights)...and heart.
There's a lot to be said on this topic - just a few points:

(1) While I respect the importance of settling this matter (and thus the undesirability of leaving it floating around until 2014) I don't understand why the government didn't frame the penalty fee for failing to purchase insurance as a tax. Given the supposed concern that this 'novel' approach "fundamentally changes the relationship between the individual and the state" [six, Justice A. Kennedy] it would seem to be a more prudent approach to align it with an accepted exercise of power. I'm sure there is an excellent (and probably very simple) reason for this - I just don't know it. If you have any insights, please share!


(2) Yes, Justice Scalia, I do expect you to read all 2,700 pages of the act. It's your job.

(3) To return to Justice Kennedy's concern about how this positive obligation (requiring a specific action instead of mere prohibition) "fundamentally changes the relationship between the individual and the State" (can you tell that I am a little hung up on this assertion?) - I really don't think that is accurate. The State - or other historic governing authorities - is rooted in 'positive' (again not a judgment call but a classification!) coercion. Villiens were required to submit a certain number of days labor to their lords, vassals to provide military service. Etc. Etc. The objective for all of this being communal security. Sacking and pillaging by men in longboats or neighboring war-lords is (fortunately) no longer a foremost concern in our society. But that doesn't mean that the State cannot mobilize to address what are the security concerns of its citizens. And today those shared concerns include the assured access to quality health care.

So, it seems disingenous to me for certain Justices to take issue with the means employed - when their real beef surely must be with the stated (proper) legislative objective. And that is troubling, at least to me, because it seems to be a usurpation of Congress's legislative powers and a subversion of governing judicial precedent.

I've rambled on - but this post was really only intended to share a link to an interesting Washington Post Op-Ed piece by E.J.Dionne, Jr., examining the pervasive and subtle influence of radical tea-party dogma into the conservative intellectual dialogue.

Oy. It's pretty bad when the Washington Post Op-Ed section calls Shenanigans...



"The success or failure of any government in the final analysis must be measured by the well-being of its citizens. Nothing can be more important to a state than its public health; the state’s paramount concerns should be the health of its people." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address to the New York State Legislature

Desperately seeking.....something

Serenity
These days I find myself (in addition to the usual mantra of "just get to the weekend") repeating the "Serenity Prayer" in my daily life, asking for the ability to accept the things I can't change, the gumption to change the things I can and the wisdom....something something.

There seems to be an awful lot these days that falls in the first category: things I cannot change. Working in the public sector offers many examples...

But perhaps I am too quick accept such things as immutable, immovable. Surely, I am too young to be wise; this is my time for tilting at windmills.

So, no more serenity and the security of supposing oneself wiser - I need change.

Thoughts on Threshing and Sowing

For the past several years there has been a point of contention (and, I will admit, on my part some deliberate prodding/provoking) between my mother and me: Catholicism. I expect that now it can no longer be a point of disagreement and debate but rather a painful line of division.

Salinger once wrote "Catholics are always trying to find out if you are Catholic." I have to give him props for that observation. To be Catholic is, as my father explained, like being Jewish: It is not a question of practicing but of cultural definition. We are Catholic because we have been called so - excluded and oppressed since "The Flight of the Earls," through the Troubles - (and key to the success of Tammany Hall). To abandon that identity - a sacrliege, not because of any question of Transubstantiation v. Consubstantiation, election or good works, but because it is a denial of self-history: what went before you, what made you. Understood thus it is an act of self-mutilation.

But there are times you have to pass the scalpel.

Now, if I was a Protestant (and thus better versed in Scripture over Saints) I would quote something about Threshing and Sowing or plucking out thy left eye if it offend thee.

Well, I am offended. And the Church's defensive and aggressive response to its malfeasance concerning the abuse of its most vulnerable members is the last straw. Last week a letter from then Cardinal Ratzinger resisting the explusion of a priest repeatedly accused of molesting children in his charge surfaced. In this letter the Cardinal, in elegant Latin while acknowledging the "grave significance" of the charges filed, asserts that it is "necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that [such action]...can provoke." He closes his letter referencing once again "the common good" which must always be in mind.

This is where his future Holiness was wrong: it is not a question of cost or benefit analysis. Christianity is not a formula, or, despite Jesus's ability to make a little bit go a long way, a multiplying of loaves and fishes - the greatest good for the greatest number. Christianity is a practice of faith. Faith that what we do matters - that there is a right and a wrong - and that we always have a decision between the two.

The Church's focus on caution in confronting controversy and the pre-emminence of the preservation of the "common good" over the protection of the least of that common's members may be many things: reasoned, calculated, cautious, but I cannot think it Christian.

Sanity Check

For the most part I'm really enjoying grown-up lawyerly employment. This week I had my first hearing (I think it went well. The clerk gave me a thumbs up at its close). Thanks to NPR the commute isn't too bad. And there's that warm fuzzy feeling that the security of state employment gives you.

So, yes, I like the daily grind. I feel justified in gulping down the espresso in the morning (equal parts coffee to sugar)and I rather like the power suits and skirts.

Aside from the power suits and heels though, part of being an adult is accepting responsibility for one's actions. I want to take the opportunity to do that here...
I am a celebrity gossip addict.
I'll give you a moment to digest that.
Having joined the world of cubicles and accordian case folders I have slowly but surely gotten addicted to more than caffeine (see above esspresso recipe). My morning in the office starts with a read through of the various gossip blogs (The Hollywood Gossip, E! online, TMZ...)Aside from the tic of just having to check to see the lated I have also noticed that it has started to affect me. Namely, I have started to really feel depressed about the state of the world and the average sanity quotient/stability of its inhabitents.

So now I spend my day reviewing (primarily) cases concerning the provision of mental health services for Medicaid recipients in Our Great State - interupted with the odd break to catch up on the latest news on Tila Tequila's tweets, Tiger Woods rehabilitation (and expectations of recidivism), and recent leaks of racy photos of various Bachelor contestants. At the end of the day (or perhaps more accurate estimation would be 11:00 am?) I have serious reservations re: the contination of the human race and reason.

I need help.

There, first step, recognizing that I have a problem and seeking assistance in its redress.

Step two: having faith that the world isn't as f*#king crazy as reported, latest in.

America, Inc. (or, Money Talks)

NPR featured an extraordinary investigative report this evening that I had to share with you: "Bail Burden Keeps U.S. Jails Stuffed with Inmates." - an example of public policy where no one wins other than the private bail bondsmen market and the public officials recieving their financial and political support...

Another winner today: corporate America. In 5-4 decision the Supreme Court overturned existing limitations on corporate spending during elections: an example of the legal fiction of a corporation as a "person" gone too far.

Lessons I'm taking from today? I'll refer back to the old masters: Sunlight is the best disenfectant and, obscenity (whether it is public corruption or pornography) - you know it when you see it.

"Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." - Justice L. Brandeis, Other People's Money, 1933


Let's shine a bit more light - from our prisons to our power players.

In further news on Resolutions...

I am mentally filing my gym membership fees as charitable donations to my local YMCA. It has been a long time since I have been on the eliptical.