Local politics is anti-Tea: States, cities raising taxes left and right

The AP was able to provide a snapshot of how voters in several states have been embracing tax increases at the local level. The analysis looked at 39 states, representing a cross-section of the country. The review found 2,387 revenue measures in 22 states where they appeared on local primary and special-election ballots this year. Voters in 19 states – or 86 percent of those holding such elections – passed 50 percent or more of the local tax initiatives that came before them.

Now, let's recall that about 1/3 of the $862 billion stimulus bill was for state aid and unemployment benefits. (Another 1/3 went to tax cuts, and the final 1/3 went to infrastructure, health care, and other projects -- money that has only been about 70 percent spent so far.) That is, the federal gov't has provided a HUGE bailout for state budgets; and states have had discretion over how those funds are spent and how quickly.

So, the same electorate that is allegedly mad as hell about high taxes and runaway spending is voting for more taxes so that their states can keep spending on the same things that the federal gov't gave them stimulus money to pay for.

Ergo, either Americans are hypocritical idiots, or the received "lamestream" media wisdom about what's driving this November's elections is wrong.

Despite Election Rhetoric, Many Cities Are Actually Raising Taxes

By Robin Hindery

October 29, 2010 | AP

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/29/despite-election-rhetoric_n_775829.html

Politico: Corporate profits rose faster under Obama than any Prez. since 1920s

"Profits have surged 62 percent from the start of 2009 to mid-2010, according to the Commerce Department. That is faster than any other year and a half in the Fabulous '50s, the Go-Go '60s or the booms under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton."

Just a coinkydink, I'm sure.

Corporate profits' big climb

By John Maggs

October 28, 2010 | Politico

URL: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44268.html

Jon Stewart's rally bad for America, liberal activism

Just in case some of you think I take my marching orders from Jon Stewart, here are two very strong criticisms of his silly Rally to Restore Sanity yesterday.

First, mean-spirited, angry liberal journalist Mark Ames, who attended the rally for a short while before he had to bail, argued that the rally is emblematic of his generation's prime directives to 1) never risk looking stupid, no matter what is at stake, and 2) always preserve one's ironic detachment from events, even from oneself. That kind of cool pose is great and everything at parties, but not when the general welfare of the nation is at stake. Concluded Ames:

You see, this is why so many cool Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers were so jazzed up about going to the Stewart rally – by definition, they were guaranteed not to look stupid by going to it, because it's not really a rally. They're not putting anything on the line. They're just going to chant the equivalent of that annoying Saturday Night Live Update skit 'Really?' No generation ever looked so cool so late in their lives as my generation. We did it! We achieved our dream! We don't look as stupid as the hippies did when they were in their 40s! Woo-hoo! We still mock ourselves and we're still self-aware, but best of all, we don't look stupid by devoting ourselves to ideas or movements that other people might one day laugh at. We won! We won the least-stupid-looking-generation competition! Let's gather together in an ironic, self-aware way, and celebrate how we're not really rallying or laying anything on the line–not even now, not even when the whole fucking country is collapsing. What's our prize, Don?
Meanwhile, behind Door Number 1, the country is in two losing wars and the worst economic crisis in 80 years, behind Door Number 2, over 40 million Americans are on fucking food stamps, behind Door Number 3, millions are being land-transfered out of their property like landless peasants in a banana republic–yeah, it's bad, whatever dude, it's always been bad, nothing ever changes much, don't have a cow, deal with it….

Second, founder of the anti-war group CODEPINK, Medea Benjamin, made a similar although more focused criticism prior to the event, saying Stewart's "slacktivism" celebrates those people who are too "sane" to rally against insane wars, Wall Street bailouts, and other unjust government policies. She also noted how Stewart's Daily Show spent two hours taping her, along with an anarchist and a teabagger, lumping them all together as protesting nutjobs. As if any loud and angry protest by definition is crazy. She concluded:

So let's celebrate the people who walk the talk. Slacktivism did not end slavery, activism did. Slacktivism did not get women our rights. Activism did. Slacktivism won't end war or global warming. But activism just might.

I've said it before: my generation's children and grandchildren are not going to be proud of us because we were so cool and avoided saying stupid things; they're going to blame us for sitting on the sidelines in ironical detachment while our country went to shit. If we don't stand up and stand for something -- and that something should be liberal-progressive ideals which have saved us in the past and can do so again -- then we are irrelevant.

That said, Jon Stewart is funny. That's his job. It's not his job to organize and lead us. We are not like those atomized zombies of the Right looking for a TV preacher like Glenn Beck to tell us where to gather and what to say and do.

2010 Corruption Perceptions Index

Transparency International released its 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index. Nearly three quarters of the 178 countries in the index score below five, on a scale from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt).

The USA is tied for 22nd place with Belgium.

That goody two-shoes to the north, Canada, ranks a squeaky clean 6th.

Ukraine is in a 9-way tie for 134th place with the likes of Togo, Bangladesh, and Zimbabwe.

Russia is in a 10-way tie for 154th place with the likes of Papua New Guniea, Tajikistan, and Congo-Brazzaville.

Georgia, which has made great efforts to fight corruption, is in 68th place, just behind Italy, but less corrupt than other EU countries like Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania.

URL: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results

Tea Party predictions from top political analyst

OK, no news article this time. This is 100% moi. I'm posting one for posterity this time, making predictions about that ragtag group of modern Know-Nothings known as the Tea Parties. Or teabaggers, in the vernacular.

In 2010, a few Tea Party-identified GOP candidates will win. Then they will go on to run a government gaffe marathon and slowly be brow-beaten into "lamestream" Republicanism.

By 2012, they will be something like MoveOn.org: just a way to organize and fire up Republicans.

If Palin doesn't win in 2012 (whether she loses the nomination to Romney or some radical like Mike Pence, or loses to Obama), then by 2014, they will not exist. Oh, they'll have some web sites and stuff, but they'll stop mattering. Even today, more people's cats have web sites than Tea Party groups do.

Why will the Tea Parties fade away? Because, first of all, Republicans like winners and hate losers. (This goes along with their whole Social Darwinism thing; but in a larger sense I mean this as a compliment: Democrats take perverse pride in losing "for all the right reasons," whereas Republicans never see a good reason for losing.) If the Tea Parties are seen as a liability to conservatives winning future elections, then teabaggers themselves will scuttle the "movement."

The other reason that the Tea Parties will die out is that Republicans who win Congress (yes, I'm predicting that will happen, too) will have to take principled Tea-Party stands on issues or else compromise with dastardly lib'ruls, Obama, and RINOs. If they stand on principle in the House, then they will be irrelevant because of their small numbers. If they compromise, then the movement will become disillusioned and abandon them, and/or the movement. Tea Party candidates will morph seamlessly into old fashioned Republicans.

Of course, all you teabaggers are welcome to prove me wrong, but American political history has never been kind to third parties. Also, most teabaggers are old white people, and everybody knows old people hate change. Conservative old people hate change most of all. Hence, old white people will slip comfortably back into that warm, old, familiar pair of socks known as the GOP. -- Especially if some principled Tea Party candidate has the gall to touch the 3rd Rail of American Politics: old, white, conservative people's Social Security or Medicare.

And if you answer, "The Tea Parties were never meant to be a real party; they were meant to purify the Republican party," then I ask you to tally after the 2010 November elections how many of the 91 Republicans in the House and 33 Republicans in the Senate who voted for TARP lost their seats or failed to win the GOP's nomination, i.e. "got purified" by the Tea Parties.

Finally, most of the new health care program benefits will have kicked in by 2014, and some of those apathetic young slackers who fund the teabaggers' Big Gubument benefits with their FICA contributions might then realize that they like their health care just as much as the "Greatest Generation" and Baby Boomers love their Medicare/Medicaid. Then they might make the Tea Parties irrelevant the old fashioned way -- at the ballot box.