Mr. 0%

Is it possible that for ten of the past twelve years, Willard Mitt Romney paid no federal income tax at all?

According to an unnamed source known to both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and CNN's Dana Bash, that's the case. And Reid is not backing down when Romney tells Hannity that he oughtta "put up or shut up," he's doubling down:

“It’s clear Romney is hiding something, and the American people deserve to know what it is. Whatever Romney’s hiding probably speaks volumes about how he would approach issues that directly impact middle-class families, like tax reform and the economy. When you are running for president, you should be an open book.

The Dems are forcing Romney into a corner of his own making. Mitt keeps having to defend, primarily because whatever is in those taxes is obviously damaging to him, or else he'd release them. Since the wealthy live by different rules and have all the tax lawyers and tax accountants in the world to help them "preserve capital" it is not hard to imagine Mitt having skirted his civic duty, even if foolish for someone with designs on the White House.

This whole narrative has made it impossible for Mitt to carefully choreograph his introduction to the electorate - Obama For America has already introduced him to us all as Mr. Bain, destroyer of American businesses. Best of all for Barack, it plays right into Romney's policy choices, as demonstrated by this new, hard-hitting ad:



My only fear is that Romney is so weakened by the time the GOP Convention rolls around, they replace him with somebody who might actually win.

Upside Down

Wow, what a difference 1/8 of a primary makes. And that's a rough estimate. Here's the crazy news that has completely flipped whatever conventional wisdom existed three months ago:

• President Obama now leads all GOP challengers in national polling. And his approval rating is now official "above water" -- higher approval than disapproval percentages.
• The GOP Congress just folded without a fight on the Payroll Tax Cut Extension, and isn't even trying to balance it - going for more deficit rather than raising taxes on their precious rich.
• Mitt Romney can no longer claim electability as his Primary advantage -- Independents have gone upside-down and no longer favor him over President Obama.
• Rick Santorum now leads Romney nationally in GOP Presidential Primary polling and, even worse for Mitt, his firewall state of Michigan is now firmly for Santorum.
• Mitt can only win, it seems, by buying or stealing, and in Maine his win may be a loss to Ron Paul.
• Just as a Google search for "Santorum" yields and embarrassing definition, a search for "Romney" now means "to defecate in terror." Sounds about right.

With the contraception issue turning into a GOP albatross and Obama's new budget (unlikely to pass the GOP Congress) setting the populist tone for the campaign...my only fear is that the best finisher in national politics today may be peaking just a little early!

GOP Disarray

The payroll tax holiday debacle in the House of Representatives is tearing the GOP apart and smashing to pieces their "anti-tax" brand. The meme is becoming clear: the Republican Party is only interested in political wins and protecting the wealthy.

Here's how they looked today on the House floor when Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) tries to bring up a vote on the Senate compromise bill passed by nearly 90% of the Senate:

Embarrassing optics for the House leadership, where Speaker Boehner kowtows to the Teapublicans to try and keep his job. Per Dana Milbank, the GOP is now in damage control mode. And supposed "leader" of the GOP Presidential pack, Willard Mitt Romney, is too chicken to take a position on the payroll tax holiday at all. Nice leadership skills, Willard.

It's not just this issue -- the GOP are in trouble everywhere with their Teapublicans, like the Major of Troy, Michigan:

Janice Daniels, led a coalition of like-minded tea partiers to kill off a transit center project that was a decade in the making, kissing off $8.4 million in federal investment funds to help make the project happen.

Well, Troy is now going to pay the price for this type of mindless ideological dogma: investors are being advised to look elsewhere rather than Troy, Michigan.

As for the idea of taxing millionaires, an anathema to the GOP:

Six in ten Americans believe Congress should raise taxes on Americans earning more than $1 million per year, according to a new CBS News poll, while only 35 percent oppose such an increase.

A narrow majority of Republican primary voters say those making more than $1 million per year should not see an increase -- but they are nearly split on the question. Forty-three percent want to see taxes on millionaires increased, and 51 percent do not.

Most GOP primary voters - 55 percent - don't think such a tax increase would have a negative impact on job creation. Twenty-nine percent say such a tax hike would hurt job creation.

Yep, as The Wall Street Journal said today:

After a year of the tea party House, Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats have had to make no major policy concessions beyond extending the Bush tax rates for two years. Mr. Obama is in a stronger re-election position today than he was a year ago, and the chances of Mr. McConnell becoming Majority Leader in 2013 are declining.

Once again: Gobama.

Rockin' Barack vs. the Philistines

In Osawatomie, Kansas, today, his mother's home state and where Teddy Roosevelt called for "a square deal, President Barack Obama lay down the argument for now through the next election. Some meat:

But this isn’t just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.

Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.

Well, I’m here to say they are wrong. I’m here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren’t Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They’re American values, and we have to reclaim them.

Meanwhile, the GOP continues to openly take their orders from unelected tax-pledge king, Grover Norquist while a desperate Texas mom who's been denied food stamps for months shot herself and her children.

Choose your America, America.

OWS Changes the Conversation

The payroll tax cut used to be a Republican idea, but now that President Obama is for it, they're against extending it. That is, until Occupy Wall Street made clear the division between the 1% and the 99%:

If Republicans block the measure, as expected, Democrats would paint them as the party of the rich.

Trying to get ahead of the game, McConnell proclaimed Republican support for the payroll tax cut extension and told reporters his party would soon propose its own ideas for covering the cost of the tax cut.

"The Democrats put them in a box," said Andrew Taylor, a North Carolina State University political science professor. "I think many Republicans realized this is a bad side of the argument to be on."

Thanks to the protesters, there's media buzz highlighting the GOP's behavior and allegiances. It's common knowledge now, nothing anyone can obfuscate with rhetoric. And you know #OWS matters when the new GOP frontrunner, Newt Gingrich, calls on President Obama to repudiate the movement and its message of wealth inequality.

As Robert Reich tells us, the Basic Bargain holding our society together and creating growth in the 20th Century has been torn apart by greed and must be restored:

For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling.

That basic bargain created a virtuous cycle of higher living standards, more jobs, and better wages.

...

The latest data on corporate profits and wages show we haven't learned the essential lesson of the two big economic crashes of the last 75 years: When the economy becomes too lopsided -- disproportionately benefiting corporate owners and top executives rather than average workers -- it tips over.

In other words, we're in trouble because the basic bargain has been broken.

...

Corporations don't need more money. They have so much money right now they don't even know what to do with all of it. They're even buying back their own shares of stock. This is a bonanza for CEOs whose pay is tied to stock prices and it increases the wealth of other shareholders. But it doesn't create a single new job and it doesn't raise the wages of a single employee.

Nor do the wealthiest Americans need more money. The top 1 percent is already taking in more than 20 percent of total income -- the highest since the 1920s.

American businesses, including small-business owners, have no incentive to create new jobs because consumers (whose spending accounts for about 70 percent of the American economy) aren't spending enough. Consumers' after-tax incomes dropped in the second and third quarters of the year, the first back-to-back drops since 2009.

The Dems are proposing to pay for the payroll tax cut with a surtax on millionaires -- affecting 0.2% of the U.S. population.

I hesitate to ask what 1%-favoring counterproposal GOP will come up with themselves.

Real Patriot vs. No Leadership

Gotta love this enlightened Silicon Valley millionaire:

Doing Obama's job for him.

Meanwhile, the DNC releases the greatest hits of the recent GOP debates. I'm not very happy about the ominous music -- it's out of a Rick Perry ad -- but the three points ring true:

Evidently the President was particularly pissed about the booing of an American soldier, as well he should be. The core issue: Leadership. Not one of those Republican candidates dares to stand up to their rabble.

Here's to hoping Obama keeps his tough tone going throughout the election. In the old days it was called "staunch."

Keep it up and see what happens next November.

Poster Boy

Meet Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), who can't live on $600k/yr and who's shown up right on time for his Party's math lesson.

Class Warfare

The Republicans have declared class warfare by violating historical norms for taxation of the wealthy and the raising of taxes during U.S. wartime. With the Crash of 2008, the abject failure of the Bush tax cuts in any philosophical or economic sense, the laughable lie that calls the wealthiest Americans, the ones who have benefitted most from automation displacing those pesky workers and replacing Americans with foreign workers, "job creators."

Even Rep. Dan Lundgren (R-CA) doesn't have the energy of believability in his tired repetition recitation, his "I'll take my ball and go home" hostage move when confronted:

No one seriously believes this crap anymore and it's the antidote to the fallacies and identity politics of the teabaggers. And I don't care to call them "Tea Partiers" since I doubt Sam Adams would have approved of the majority of them. It's an economic theology that somehow denies progressive taxation in the name of liberty.

Like the robber barons who ruled America with a violent fist at the turn of the previous century.

Presenting The Tea-cession

Here's the actual passage from the S&P downgrade announcement:

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said it best himself today:

"I believe this is without question the Tea Party downgrade," he said. "This is the Tea Party downgrade because a minority of people in the House of Representatives countered the will of even many of Republicans in the United States Senate who were prepared to do a bigger deal."

Kerry intimated that the "grand bargain" that President Obama initially negotiated with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), a package of larger spending cuts and revenue increases, was scuttled by a smaller group of Republicans who were unwilling to negotiate at any cost.

"There were some people in the Republican party - and Mitch McConnell even admitted this - who wanted to default," Kerry said. "He said there were people in his party who were willing to shoot the hostage. In the end they found that the hostage was worth ransoming."

The meme is spreading: It's The Tea Party Downgrade. Next comes the Tea Party Recession, hopefully not Tea Party Depression.

Thank you, Tea Party. For revealing that you're willing to send America back into a deeper recession that will likely take longer to get out of -- watch those interest rates this week -- all because of your inflexible anti-taxation ideology.

Let's see how much support they have after the pension funds get hit.

Still the Winner

According to the new NY Times/CBS News poll, the whole debt ceiling crisis, where for the first time a political party (starts with "R") used the full faith and credit of the United States of America as a bargaining chip, that same party is the l-o-s-e-r in public opinion:

More than four out of five people surveyed said that the recent debt-ceiling debate was more about gaining political advantage than about doing what is best for the country. Nearly three-quarters said that the debate had harmed the image of the United States in the world.

Republicans in Congress shoulder more of the blame for the difficulties in reaching a debt-ceiling agreement than President Obama and the Democrats, the poll found.

The Republicans compromised too little, a majority of those polled said. All told, 72 percent disapproved of the way Republicans in Congress handled the negotiations, while 66 percent disapproved of the way Democrats in Congress handled negotiations.

The public was more evenly divided about how Mr. Obama handled the debt ceiling negotiations: 47 percent disapproved and 46 percent approved.

The public’s opinion of the Tea Party movement has soured in the wake of the debt-ceiling debate. The Tea Party is now viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of the public and favorably by just 20 percent, according to the poll. In mid-April 29 percent of those polled viewed the movement unfavorably, while 26 percent viewed it favorably. And 43 percent of Americans now think the Tea Party has too much influence on the Republican Party, up from 27 percent in mid-April.

And the public is smart enough to know that jobs, not deficits, are the problem to be solved:

But with the nation’s unemployment rate at a stubborn 9.2 percent, 62 percent of those polled said that creating jobs should be the priority.

“Cutting spending is important, but getting people back to work is more important,” said Diane Sherrell, 56, a Republican from Erwin, N.C. “If people are working, they are more productive. There is less crime, there is less depression, there is less divorce. There are less hospital and medical bills. If you put people back to work, you are cutting spending.”

Stanley Oland, 62, a Republican from Kalispell, Mont., said that the government needed new jobs to generate the economic activity and the revenue it requires.

“That revenue supports the basic foundation for the economy, creates more jobs and stimulates the economy,” he said. “Unless you have working people you don’t have revenue from taxes. If you cut spending, jobs will be eliminated and you won’t get any revenue. Every dollar spent creates jobs.”

Yep, they know that Obama's still digging out of the guano pile created by President Cheney/Bush's tax cuts, unfunded wars and mandates. There's one message that, I contend, can resonate today over all others:

Tax. The. Rich.

Really?

President Obama is doing a Tina Fey/Seth Meyer routine on the GOP, as is the majority sane side of the country, those for whom nation is more important than party. Damned if Obama didn't put more on the table than any reasonable man should have had to, and the prissy Republicans turned down what they and their Teafaction had always said they wanted -- to cut the deficit. Only they refuse to return to the Clinton Prosperity levels of income taxation because it mean more of it would come from the rich. As if that's a bad thing.

The wealthy sometimes create jobs. Sometimes here, sometimes overseas, sometimes they just buy more T-bills, which the GOP is holding hostage to default on. Default on money already spent. By them 2000-2008 and the lower revenue levels through 2012.

The twin lies of their economic narrative fall flat now that our nation's President has publicly admitted that the compromise he seeks, the Grand Bargain to cut $4 trillion over the next whatever years, will cause trouble for him with members of his own party. But he's willing to take the heat -- as long as the other side takes theirs go.

"I will not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension. That is just not an acceptable approach. And if we think it's hard now, imagine how these guys are going to be thinking six months from now in the middle of election season when they are all up. It's not going to get easier, it's going to get harder. So, we might as well do it now. Pull off the band-aid. Eat our peas. Now is the time to do it. If not now, when? We keep on talking about this stuff, and we have these high-minded pronouncements about how we've got to get control of the deficit, how we owe it to our children and our grandchildren. Well, let's step up. Let's do it."

The GOP aren't negotiating. It's beyond hostage-taking. It's their own Dr. Strangelove Doomsday Machine, their impossible logic of having drawn in the most extreme rightwing elements of political America in order to win elections, only to end up fearing for their primaries.

The question is whether they have a jujitsu move to somehow make a deal while screwing the other 80% of America who say Tax the Rich, or at least eliminate their private aircraft deduction. But if they don't, per Jonathan Rauch (subbing for Andrew Sullivan), this is Obama's moment and the Democrats to come:

I'll always remember the moment in 1995 when I realized that Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolutionaries had gone too far. As you recall, they, like the current bunch, were freshly elected hotheads who thought they had a mandate to get tough with Big Government and believed they could hammer a weak Democratic president into submission. One day my father, a conservative independent who until then had shown little sympathy for Bill Clinton, looked up from his paper, having just read about House Republicans' musing that they might default on the national debt if Clinton didn't knuckle under. "These people," he said, "are dangerous."

Republicans ought to remember that nothing would whisk them back to long-term minority status faster than being perceived by the broad middle as unfit to govern. Obama clearly understands as much and is doing everything in his power to broadcast tough reasonableness. He's setting the Republicans up for another Hurricane Katrina moment—but one of their own making.

I think when all the state layoffs hit, particularly in the new GOP governorships, there will be hell to pay. Layoffs is layoffs, and they did it so fast, they'll still be in office for two or four years while the state is hurting.

Somebody game this out for me -- if the GOP don't raise the debt and the economy tanks, maybe the world economy collapses, what could possibly be their strategy for winning in 2012: Obama didn't assent to our demands, so we shot the hostage?

Really?

The Broken Clock

is correct twice a day. Or so I heard before digital.

With that in mind and the vision of a shared America on Independence Day, the most holy day of the American year for all the right reasons, the anniversary of a document, not a battle, not a war, although it sparked one. An anniversary of a ideal that used to be the common knowledge of most folks, not a referendum on a divided country, as it feels in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Florida, and the House of Representatives.

I get David Brooks and why he makes sense as the conservative columnist at The New York Times, but what I've liked since 2008 is that he gets Obama, who has met with him and discussed ideas. But I can't say I've ever agreed so fully with one of his columns as today's on the unholy intransigence of the 2012 Republican Party:

If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases.

A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.

The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.

This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.

But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor.

The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name. Economists have identified many factors that contribute to economic growth, ranging from the productivity of the work force to the share of private savings that is available for private investment. Tax levels matter, but they are far from the only or even the most important factor.

But to members of this movement, tax levels are everything. Members of this tendency have taken a small piece of economic policy and turned it into a sacred fixation. They are willing to cut education and research to preserve tax expenditures. Manufacturing employment is cratering even as output rises, but members of this movement somehow believe such problems can be addressed so long as they continue to worship their idol.

Praise the Lord and pay the insurance.

The President hasn't been so healthy on the Fox Twitter handle. Is this a warning sign to anybody besides me?

I spent Independence Day on the beach at at a Dodgers game (they lost to the Mets, so I had mixed emotions) with fireworks at the end. The last song was Ray Charles' "America, the Beautiful" in the bluesy genius he discovered in it. I'm a patriot and I teach my children to be patriots as well. I don't think it should be owned by some political party just because it says lower taxes = true patriotism. That's a lie.

We all want clean water and air, we all want meaningful work and the chance to build a life for ourselves and our descendants. We want our nation protected adequately. We want the state to preserve the peace, while providing opportunities. And no matter how you prioritize all that, some taxes must be paid if the people want them. Because government, when not corrupted by it, is the last check on complete corporate feudalism.

Like when the markets fail.

Go, Russ, Go

Former Senator Russ Feingold (R-WI) may have lost his re-election bid last year, but he'd win next year, and he was fired up today at "Walkerville," the poverty encampment set up by the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison to protest Republican Gov. Scott Walker's draconian cuts, public union disenfranchisement and privatization legislation:



Meanwhile, the GOP Presidential contenders hold their second debate -- the first one attended by frontrunner Mitt Romney -- in New Hampshire tonight. Sure to be filled with more of what Feingold rails against -- the removal of protections for Middle and Working Class Americans to better serve their corporate feudal overlords.

Like I've said before, I'll take a second look at any Republican candidate who wakes up and says we should return top end tax rates to where they were under Clinton.

If you agree that the rich should pay their fair share again, click here.

Tax the Rich Pt III

Okay, this will do -- take this passage, from the President's speech today:

"Of course, there will be those who disagree with my approach. Some will argue we shouldn't even consider raising taxes, even if only on the wealthiest Americans. It's just an article of faith for them. I say that at a time when the tax burden on the wealthy is at its lowest level in half a century, the most fortunate among us can afford to pay a little more. I don't need another tax cut. Warren Buffett doesn't need another tax cut. Not if we have to pay for it by making seniors pay more for Medicare. Or by cutting kids from Head Start. Or by taking away college scholarships that I wouldn't be here without. That some of you wouldn't be here without. And I believe that most wealthy Americans would agree with me. They want to give back to the country that's done so much for them. Washington just hasn't asked them to."

The speech is not his most eloquent, just super smart and super refreshing:



Poor Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is fighting to get the most attention and be the brightest John Galt in the room after releasing his feudalistic budget last week:

Reacting to Obama’s Wednesday speech on deficit reduction, Ryan said that he was first “excited,” then “naively optimistic,” then “disappointed,” then “sad” and finally, in the end, “sincerely disappointed.”

“I was excited when we got invited to attend his speech today,” Ryan, who authored the Republican budget proposal unveiled last week, said just hours after returning from George Washington University where he was given a front row seat for Obama’s address. “I thought the president’s invitation…was an olive branch. Instead, what we got was a speech that was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our countries fiscal challenges.”

As if Ryan's feed the rich/starve the rest of us budget wasn't hyperpartisan? With this speech, Obama has lashed the GOP to the budget of their own making, and the U.S. public is against whatever Ryan and his fellow Republicans think they are selling. Per this week's USA Today survey:

• Are split over whether there should be significant additional cuts in domestic spending: 47% say no, 45% yes. On this issue, there is a yawning divide between the parties. Democrats by 2-to-1 oppose more cuts; Republicans by 2-to-1 support them.

• Overwhelmingly oppose making major changes to Medicare. By 2-to-1, they support minor changes or none at all to control costs, rather than major changes or a complete overhaul. Even a third of Republicans say the government should not try to control the costs of Medicare.

• Favor imposing higher taxes on families with household incomes of $250,000 and above, as Obama has endorsed: 59% support the idea, 37% oppose it.

Welcome to the 2012 General Election.

Tax the Rich Pt II

So with President Obama set to speak about the deficit on Wednesday night and recommending rescinding the ruinous Bush tax cuts -- the very cuts that got us deeper into debt doing nothing to stop the Bush economy from cratering, the very cuts that seems to have rescinded the Clinton Era prosperity -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has, predictably, called this return to sensible taxation of income above $250k/year "unacceptable and a non-starter."

I find that particularly amusing in light of the difficulty he appears to be having getting his Party in Congress to go along with the budget deal made this past Friday between Boehner, Harry Reid and the President:

While only 28 Republicans voted against the bridge plan to keep the money flowing until Thursday’s vote, it is highly likely that some of the Republicans who supported that measure were looking to avoid a government shutdown and will vote nay on the bill to finance the government through the rest of the fiscal year.

In a meeting with reporters, the House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, while saying it was his understanding that the bill had “strong Republican support,” conceded Tuesday that he was not certain the bill would pass without support from Democrats. “Certainly we’ll always ask for them,” he said about Democrats.

Ha, weaklings, needing Dem support. I almost hope it fails -- then the nation sees today's GOP for what they are, psycho extremists or hostage to the same. Now Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) is saying the GOP will let the U.S. debt limit hit the ceiling and risk catastrophic default:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) suggested Tuesday that Congress will allow the country to hit its debt ceiling, and continue to hold out for dramatic spending cuts while the nation approaches a genuine default.

"I think Treasury has, if I'm not mistaken, has put ... out a notice that there is a window within which we have to act in order to avoid the eventual default of this country on its debt," Cantor told reporters at his weekly Capitol briefing. "And I believe that that outside deadline is early July."

I'm guessing this is just bullshit brinksmanship for the benefit of teabagger votes, but you never know how a game of chicken will resolve itself. Unpleasant surprises have been known to happen once such a game is on. Per Dem strategist John Podesta, the GOP are playing with the type of fire with which they can scorch themselves:

"That that's like playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun. I think that gun's actually pointed at the Republican leadership's head, not so much at the White House," John Podesta told me after a presentation at his think tank, the Center for American Progress. "I think they will find soon enough that if they try the same tactics they used in the 2011 [spending] battle with respect to the debt limit, you're going to see markets react to that in a very, very negative way and there's going to be a lot of pressure on them to get realistic, and at least with respect to the debt limit, to move forward in a more cooperative way."

Bang bang.

Tax the Rich

I will vote for any politician in 2012 who promises to do just that. And by rich, I mean any politician who specifically goes after multimillionaires. Anyone making over $1MM/annum after deductions should pay a higher marginal tax rate than just about everyone I know. Anyone over $10MM should, by law, give more of it back to our citizens through our elected government than anybody else, for the privilege of living in a country where they can have the most taxes taken away of anybody with the least diminution of lifestyle. As in none.

The superstar on arrival House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) 10-year budget that arrived with fanfare today kills Medicare for good in return for a paltry voucher system offloading, once again from Republicans, more risk onto individuals. Than any other industrialized nation. It is based on fantasy 4% unemployment projections and ultimate increases the deficit without reducing medical costs -- dumping it all back in the private sector for more gouging and C-level salary packages. Per the White House:

The White House rejected Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) "Path to Prosperity" budget blueprint for fiscal 2012 Tuesday, arguing that it unfairly guarantees the prosperity of wealthy millionaires while overburdening seniors and the poor.

While President Obama is committed to dramatically reducing the country's long-term deficit, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, Ryan's plan is exactly the wrong approach.

"The President believes that dramatically reducing America's long-term deficit is essential to growing our economy and winning the future," Carney said in a statement. "Any plan to reduce our deficit must reflect the American values of fairness and shared sacrifice. Congressman Ryan's plan fails this test."

The Republican slogan, "Path to Prosperity." Through a return to Robber Baron era Social Darwinism. As the NY Times asks, "Prosperity for who?"

We don't have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem, and we need to return to the still historically mild tax levels of the successful Clinton Presidency, rather than the disastrous Bush Presidency. Return those revenues, make America healthy again.

Read my lips:

Tax. The. Rich.

And win my vote.

A Win is a WIn

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So maybe we took some hits on the rich getting richer (again), a Republican concept. I'm glad it's chalked up as a bipartisan victory for our guy.

New narrative for the silly MSM.

Easy for You

It's easy to say that President Obama folded if you have a job, as he did it to continue unemployment benefits for another year, benefits that were due to expire at the end of this one.

That said, it sure would feel better if he stood on principle and fought, instead of giving the GOP another victory.

Yep, he may have consigned himself today as a one-term President. Or he may have a Democratic revolt that kills his compromise. There's few who stand on principle like one (outgoing) Republican Senator, however, George Voinovich of Ohio.

One thing I will say is that I do not believe that Hillary Clinton would have somehow had the more perfect Presidency. She folded on the Iraq War vote and ran a chaotic, hubristic and wastefully spending campaign.

But we just want our champion to fight and maybe, just maybe, she'd be fighting harder.

Probably Right

But wouldn't it be nice if, for once these days, the Dems proved Mitch McConnell wrong?

Brinksmanship, Please

I sense this decoupling of the tax cut for everyone from the tax cut just for the rich (they get their first $250k/year exempted with the general cut just like everybody else) is a threshold issue for core Dems, or should I say the kind of old loyal and new potentially loyal Democrats that Obama and Kaine forgot to market to this past election.

Here's what America's Republican Party leadership is planning:

The Republicans' top tax guy in the House threatened in the clearest possible terms today that he and the rest of the GOP would vote to block any tax cut for the middle class during the lame duck session unless tax cuts for the wealthy are extended for the same period of time.

In a policy speech at the business-friendly Tax Council today, incoming Ways and Means Committee chairman David Camp called the Democratic plan for tax cuts -- a permanent tax cut extension for all income up to $200,000, and a temporary extension for income above that level -- "a terrible idea and a total nonstarter."

"We would be foolish to fall for it," Camp said.

Of course not -- don't fall for helping all Americans when you can disproportionately help those billionaire Lords who fund your think tanks and your campaigns, your millionaire Dukes and your close-call wannabees. You know, the Top 2%. Instead of everyone.

They're even scared of meeting en masse with President Obama again, getting more time for preparation lest they endure another Baltimore:

The roots of the partisan standoff that led to the postponement of the bipartisan White House summit scheduled for Thursday date back to January, when President Barack Obama crashed a GOP meeting in Baltimore to deliver a humiliating rebuke of House Republicans.

Obama’s last-minute decision to address the House GOP retreat – and the one-sided televised presidential lecture many Republicans decried as a political ambush – has left a lingering distrust of Obama invitations and a wariness about accommodating every scheduling request emanating from the West Wing, aides tell POLITICO.

....

Stung by the Baltimore fiasco, Republican leaders carefully stage-managed a televised health care summit at Blair House in February, helping to choreograph every conceivable detail, from the order of speakers to the precise configuration of the horseshoe table occupied by Obama and Congressional leaders. Wary of what they perceive to be potential traps when it comes to appearing with Obama, that kind of precautionary behavior is likely to continue.

Which he kicked their asses in anyway. I say let them prepare, but more such meetings, please.

The GOP sense fold. Please don't reward them with it, Obama and even you most Blue Dog Dems. Not when you have a chance to win the Lame Duck session and slightly redeem yourselves.

Show me something.