Blogito, Ergo Sum - 27 March 2008

I'm a little stunned by Robert D. Novak's column...can he really believe this?

Neither McCain nor his advisers seem to realize the value of the political prize that they can grasp. The regressive payroll tax oppresses most Americans, especially young men and women, and burdens small businesses that must match the tax that their employees pay. With dogma-bound Democrats unable to remedy this, the GOP has an opportunity to reach out beyond top-bracket taxpayers, big business and high finance.

About 41 percent of Americans have no income tax liability or do not file a return. But every wage-earner is hit by the payroll tax, amounting to more than they pay in income taxes for 86 percent of them. Young people are often stunned when they find out how much is withheld from their first paycheck under the FICA label.

Cutting the payroll tax, which funds Social Security, would not be easy but would offer a rich economic prize in this lean Republican year. ...

Politicians generally are ignorant about the payroll tax. ...

The perceived need to offset losses in payroll tax revenue stems from a belief that the Social Security trust fund must be replenished. The truth is that there is no such fund, and the heavy payroll tax revenue resulting from the Greenspan Commission's 1983 "reform" not only provides enough money for Social Security but funds other programs, as well.

The reason there are two kinds of taxes itemized on your pay stub is because they are supposed to be different kinds of taxes. One of them, the FICA tax, is not supposed to be spent this year. It is supposed to be your own money, to be set aside, invested, and held for your future retirement.

The second one, the income tax, is designed for the government to spend this year for its operation.

FICA is supposed to be like you telling your kid that you are taking $1 out of his $5 allowance every week and putting it into his piggy bank, since he doesn't have enough self-discipline to do that without your help. Later on, he can take his money out of his piggy bank to spend on something he wants but cannot afford out of his weekly allowance.

So all of these years, the government was supposed to be putting the money collected from earlier FICA payers into a trust fund (piggy bank). As workers aged and retired, their monthly social security payments were supposed to come from the funds they had put into the piggy bank.

Instead, much like some parents do in time of need, Congress raided the piggy bank and spent the money on current annual expenditures, leaving an IOU they intended to pay back later on. But they never did.

They could get away with this because pundits, not politicians, were ignorant. Since FICA has always collected more money to put into the piggy bank then it had to take out of the piggy bank each year, nobody noticed that nothing was really coming out of the piggy bank, at all. Instead, the government took the current FICA tax money and gave it to the retirees.

The surplus should still have gone into the piggy bank, of course, filling it at least a little bit, but no, they spent it on current annual expenditures, too.

Even so, spending both tax streams on current expenditures, they run a deficit.

Now if you stop collecting FICA taxes, two things are going to happen. One, you won't have the cash to pay the current retirees. Two, without the surplus to spend on current expenditures, the deficit will be even bigger.

And how can Novak not know that his "heavy payroll tax revenue" which currently provides a surplus is in short order NOT going to provide a surplus any longer? When FICA collections no longer cover annual social security checks, where will the difference come from? Out of the piggy bank? Well, no...that's already been raided. So the annual deficit will just grow larger to make up the difference, unless more income taxes are collected from somewhere else.

Now there isn't any reason at all for Novak not to know this as well as I do. It's not rocket science, although it is a Ponzi scheme which should land every member of Congress in federal prison, but won't.

Howard Kurtz, writing about why there are complaints that McCain is a media darling:

On Dec. 9, 1999, after riding the Straight Talk Express in New Hampshire, I wrote a Post piece headlined "Nothing Succeeds Like Access; Does John McCain Have the Media Eating Out of His Hand?" ...

Now that he's the Republican nominee, and doing well in head-to-head matchups with Obama and Hillary, some liberal critics are complaining that the press is prostrate when it comes to the 71-year-old Republican. Why aren't reporters tearing him down?

To start with the obvious, many journalists admire McCain's military service and his courage as a POW. They like his maverick approach to politics. They appreciate being able to spend hours each day questioning him, and are usually less likely to play "gotcha" because they understand the fuller context of his answers.

Howard then lists a bunch of places where the press has roughed up McCain, despite all of these things, but you can read those at the link, because here's the point I'm trying to make:

Despite his rough couple of weeks, does anyone want to argue that Obama hasn't been a bigger media darling this year than McCain?

No. And isn't it funny, considering the fact that Obama gives the press as little access as he can manage? If the reason why McCain is a media darling is because of his access, military service and courage, his maverick approach to politics, and the hours they get to spend questioning him, then what's the reason for Obama's good treatment?

Mac gave a big foreign policy speech yesterday:

"Sen. John McCain, carefully distancing himself from President Bush and seeking to sound a moderate tone, called Wednesday for stronger ties with allies and cautioned that American power 'does not mean that we can do whatever we want, whenever we want,' " the Chicago Tribune reports.

"His address Wednesday in Los Angeles instead tapped themes bound to appeal more strongly to moderates and Democratic crossover voters. He said the government should close its prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and 'work with our allies to forge a new international understanding' on how to treat detainees. He said Americans need to be 'good stewards of our planet' and urged steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions."

Conservatives will frown, no doubt, but it doesn't hurt to say those things. Clearly we cannot do whatever we want, whenever we want, nor have we. Despite distortions to the contrary, there was a rather long run-up to the war in Iraq, with plenty of opportunities for everyone who wanted to object to do so. And despite liberal lies, the invasion was not unilateral by a long shot. In fact, a majority of the coalition from the First Gulf War signed up again. "Consulting" your allies is not the same as requiring unanimous approval, after all; even the Supreme Court rarely gets unanimous approval, not even on landmark cases. So, sure...consult the allies.

Guantanamo is actually a pretty good deal for inmates, compared with the general population at Leavenworth. Send 'em there. Treat them just like any other high-security inmate incarcerated for murder, habeas corpus and everything. Put them out in the yard with the rest.

And, hell yes, make the rest of the world commit, in writing, to the rules for treating detainees. Put them on the record, rather then letting them complain while having no responsibility.

Does anyone--anyone--disagree with the "good stewards" part? Where we disagree is whether or not limiting greenhouses gas emissions is important, or worth it, and I think McCain is wrong, but it's an honest disagreement at the moment, at least. Let's put it this way: it is a dishonest argument presented by Algore, but the confused people who agree with him are at least as honest as the congressmen bamboozled by Bush into agreement.

I'm seeing more and more pieces like this one in the Boston Globe:

"Some Democratic Party leaders are growing more concerned that the protracted, caustic fight for the presidential nomination will cripple the eventual nominee, and there are new signs they have reason to worry . . .

"While the Democrats have been arguing almost daily the past two weeks about each other's electability and integrity, McCain has visited Iraq and other countries in the Middle East and Europe, received the blessing Tuesday of Nancy Reagan, and yesterday delivered a sweeping address on foreign policy."

The latest worry: a Gallup poll showing that 28 percent of Hillary backers would vote for McCain over Obama, and 19 percent of Obama supporters would defect to McCain.

Delicious, isn't it? I caught a snippet of McCain's speech on CNN last night, just a clip, and while maybe he isn't an Obama-class orator, he still gives a very good speech. Unlike Obama, his includes actual content.

Richard W. Rahn, writing on another subject, touches on the rationale behind the Bush tax cuts:

Another form of tax tyranny exists when governments impose tax rates above the revenue maximizing rate. It has been known for centuries that every tax has a rate above which it will be bring in no further revenue because people will cease engaging in the taxed activity, whether it is work, saving, investment or consumption of the taxed goods and services. Such high tax rates encourage development of underground or "black" markets, and/or the exodus of the particular activity.

It may have been known for centuries, but I know some people who still haven't figured it out. They think that you invariably increase revenue when you increase tax rates, and vice versa.

I don't know why, because there is a simple semi-mathematical proof which you can investigate merely by looking at the limits. If you tax something at a zero tax rate then you get zero income, obviously. As you start increasing the tax rate you get more revenue, but if you look at a 100% tax rate it's pretty easy to see that you are unlikely to find anyone willing to work for nothing. Even working on a chain-gang requires coercion. Clearly, then, there is an optimum number somewhere between zero and 100, so the trick is to find it.

I have really learned to like Ben Bernanke. He's the man. And his interest-rate cuts are vastly more effective than the so-called economic-stimulus rebate plan coming out of Congress and the White House.

Why do I say this? Simple. I just got my latest adjustable-rate mortgage statement from the bank. When I originally refinanced this loan, it was 5.75 percent. And last summer my ARM soared to 8.25 percent. But guess what? Through February, it has round-tripped all the way back to 6 percent.

So I'm now saving $2,000 a month, or $24,000 a year,

If a rate cut of 2.25% produces a $24,000 savings then he's financing a $1,067,000 loan, approximately. Questions:

(1) Why would an economic guru take out an adjustable-rate loan in the first place?

(2) Why would a man whose annual payment is currently about $2700 higher than it was when he started consider this a "savings"?

(3) How much did he lose compared with having gotten a fixed-rate loan in the first place?

On the other hand, what do you say about an economic guru who can afford to pay a $5300 monthly house payment, in the first place? And has somewhere he can invest a million bucks which will earn more than 8.25%.

As for the efficacy of the Bernanke plan as it applies to mortgages, though, how many people have adjustable-rate mortgages rather than fixed-rate? I've been out of the real estate business for 8 years now, so have they really taken over the housing market to that extent? If so, no wonder the housing market is in trouble.

Adjustable-rate mortgages are stupid, from the consumer's point of view. Why? Well, ask yourself: why would a lender offer them, if they are in the business of maximizing their interest earnings from borrowers?

(The IRS) sent me — and about 135 million other taxpaying households — a recent notice. As I thumb down this little letter, I learn painfully that taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $75,000, or more than $150,000 if married and filing jointly, will have their rebate payments reduced or phased-out completely. ...

Incidentally, those of us whose rebates will be reduced or phased-out completely comprise the top 5 percent of taxpayers and pay 60 percent of all personal income taxes. In total, three-fifths of hard-working Americans will get little or nothing from the famous rebate.

Give me the $24,000 you saved this year on your mortgage and you can have my rebate.

As Lorne Gunter reported Monday in Canada's National Post, the first of 3,000 new automated ocean buoys were deployed in 2003. They amounted to a significant improvement over earlier buoys that took their measurements mostly at the ocean's surface.

The new buoys, known as Argos, drift along the oceans at a depth of about 6,000 feet constantly monitoring the temperature, salinity and speed of ocean currents. Every 10 days or so a bladder inflates, bringing to the surface readings taken at various depths. Once on the surface, they transmit their readings to satellites that retransmit them to land-based computers.

The Argos buoys have disappointed the global warm-mongers in that they have failed to detect any signs of imminent climate change. As Dr. Josh Willis, who works for NASA in its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted in an interview with National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight cooling" over the buoys' five years of observation, but that drop was "not anything really significant." Certainly not enough to shut down the Gulf Stream.

Climate-change promoters also are perplexed by the observations of NASA's eight weather satellites. In contrast to some 7,000 land-based stations, they take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily over the surface of the Earth. In 30 years of operation, the satellites have recorded a warming trend of just 0.14C — well within the range of normal variations.

What's that? How about the various reports you hear about the Arctic ice melting and things like that? The media are playing their standard little joke on you, the same way they are in Iraq: bad news gets the emphasis, good news gets page D14. Thus you'll hear about the arctic melting in the summer, but not so much about it freezing again in the winter...haven't you almost gotten the impression that melting is all that it ever does?

Still, there's no doubt that the mile-thick ice sheets which once filled the Ohio Valley have melted and disappeared, and that's a lot of ice to melt, so it must have been getting warmer for a long time to do that.

Yes, it has, and that's the point. Man started contributing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in significant amounts only in the last hundred years or so. Melting began THOUSANDS of years ago and the Great Lakes were already full of water before the first white men arrived and put coal in his stove.

I have no idea why more scientists have not pointed out that by far and away the most important greenhouse gas is water vapor, producing a calculated 95% of earth's greenhouse effect.

Go to this site for a step-by-step evaluation of the greenhouse gases, including this:

To finish with the math, by calculating the product of the adjusted CO2 contribution to greenhouse gases (3.618%) and % of CO2 concentration from anthropogenic (man-made) sources (3.225%), we see that only (0.03618 X 0.03225) or 0.117% of the greenhouse effect is due to atmospheric CO2 from human activity.

And, in fact, the man-made greenhouse gases of methane, nitrous oxides, CFCs and other miscellaneous gases contribute 0.163%...yes, more than carbon dioxide does, but man's total contribution still calculates out at only 0.28%.

Algore is a gigantic fraudmeister who doesn't listen to the real scientists.

" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "

Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

He and his wife, Tipper, tell Stahl they not only matched the Nobel money with their own, but they are also donating to the organization the significant profits from his book and Oscar-winning documentary film about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." The funds will help The Alliance for Climate Protection execute a new $300 million ad campaign on global warming set to start next week.

Some of the ads will feature unlikely alliances to drive home the message that people of all stripes are concerned about global warming. These include the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Pat Robertson, Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks, and Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich.

I can't be sure which one of those names impressed me the most. Some powerful scientists there.

Last night, Greta van Susteren interviewed Hillary Clinton on Fox News. This was the most interesting exchange:

VAN SUSTEREN: And if he says, no, I won't do it, that leaves Michigan and Florida out. And does that leave you out?

CLINTON: No. Not at all, because we are going to make sure those votes get counted, one way or another.

VAN SUSTEREN: How?

CLINTON: Well, you know, you can always go to the convention. That is what credential fights are for. You know, let's have the Democratic Party go on record against seating the Michigan and Florida delegations three months before the general election? I don't think that will happen. I think they will be seated. So that is where we are headed if we don't get this worked out.

A credentials battle in Denver! Every Republican's dream! If Hillary is to be believed--always a big "if" where the Clintons are concerned--it may become a reality.