The Babbling Brooks of the NYT Babbles about Things Timely and Such

Abstract: The conservative token David Brooks writes a piece that seems to criticize the structure and essence of the new phony bailout bill of mere 820 billion or so dollars. He reflects upon Larry Summer’s summer colloquy on this subject and notes that the bill does not match the Harvard Professor’s metrics and averts dire warnings from this august source.  The resultant criticism by Brooks  does not state the obvious: that this is EXACTLY what the liberals want in a bailout or any other bill.

As we read the NYT—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1][2]--a turn-of-the-crank Marxian siren,  we must always be prepared to suffer the harangues of exotic and persuasive grand visions about hope and some new progressive leftist government that will bring glory and peace in our time. Now the Chief Babbler David Brooks,[3] [4] an interesting conservative ‘token’ who pretends at objective journalism at the Old Gray Lady, instructs us in his criticism of Larry Summer’s version of the Bailout Fairy Tale:

“Throughout 2008, Larry Summers, the Harvard economist, built the case for a big but surgical stimulus package. Summers warned that a “poorly provided fiscal stimulus can have worse side effects than the disease that is to be cured.” So his proposal had three clear guidelines.”[5]-- Cleaner and Faster By David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist January 29, 2009 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.][All quotes are from this link in this essay today unless otherwise indicated.]

It is refreshing to read about anything surgical from Harvard. Here we will be entertained by the ‘clearness’ of the three clear guidelines” from the good professor.

“ [1] First, the stimulus should be timely.

 [2] “The money should go out “almost immediately.” Second, it should be targeted. It should help low- and middle-income people.”

 [3] Third, it should be temporary. Stimulus measures should not raise the deficits “beyond a short horizon of a year or at most two.”—[the brackets ([]) are mine and added for [Emphasis and clarity. ]

This is almost too humorous for an evocative debate. To think that some Harvard Prof and disgraced president of Harvard was proposing bold action--but his concept came with safeguards: focus on the task at hand, prevent the usual Washington splurge and limit long-term fiscal damage, at least in part, for asking professors to teach their classes instead of grad students or readers. No wonder he is a failure at Harvard and elsewhere. He cannot play the game.

We Babble On:

“Summers was proposing bold action, but his concept came with safeguards: focus on the task at hand, prevent the usual Washington splurge and limit long-term fiscal damage.”

And we got a trillion dollars worth of pork. No splurge here?

The commentary on this from Brooks:

“In a fateful decision, Democratic leaders merged the temporary stimulus measure with their permanent domestic agenda — including big increases for Pell Grants, alternative energy subsidies and health and entitlement spending. The resulting package is part temporary and part permanent, part timely and part untimely, part targeted and part untargeted.”

Sometimes, our Chief Babbler from the Times stumbles into some guarded reality zone and cannot seem to grope his way out. Some of his points are worth considering. This is one of those rare adventures where his job is, again, in jeopardy for daring to criticize Obama and his priesthood. What he fails to mention is that the Republicans vacated this outrage along with several conservative Democrats. This leaves the ‘blame issue’ to fall squarely upon the far left of the party, where it belongs.

 Babbling analysis:

“[1]  First, by trying to do everything all it once, the bill does nothing well.

 [2] Second, by pumping so much money through government programs, the bill unleashes a tidal wave on state governments. 

 [3] Third, the muddle assures ideological confrontation

 [4] Fourth, Summers’s warnings about deficits have been put aside.

[5]  Fifth, new government expenditures on complex matters are being designed on a hasty, reckless timetable. 

I find this process to be pure leftist legislative procedure. Tax and spend. Where is the novelty here and why would we expect tax maggots to seek sustenance elsewhere but from the tax payers? Where did Nancy Pelosi[6] and her Reptilian Allies go astray? Did they fail to tax and spend until the bank is busted? Isn’t this the new Californian Way?

“This recession is scary and complicated. It’s insane to try to tackle it and dozens of other complicated problems, all in one piece of legislation. Leadership involves prioritizing. Those who try to do everything at once will end up with a sprawling, lobbyist-driven mess that does nothing well.”

The rush is all about getting some money shoveled out to the low class before the Dems lose control of the Congress in 2010. That is the basis for the urgency. The voters will soon see that this plug of pork does nothing but feather the nests of special interests in the leftist camp and will only burden each observing  taxpayer who makes about $50,00 with a mere new $16,000 tax liability.[7] The comical political lesson on the silly nostrum that “leadership involves prioritizing” is amusing but so much toss-away fluff when printed in the Times.

The facts are that the Democrats want the system to crash so they can socialize industry, grab out remaining assets and structure an authoritarian government.   David Brooks would lose his phony job if he printed that factoid.

The liberals and their Marxian Masters will try more and more and more of this in the next two years until reasonable people regain the majority vote in Congress. Until then, be prepared for a lot of wealth and opportunity to be shoveled into the latrines. We could wind up looking like California if the liberals get their way. [8]

rycK

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

The White House Attack on Rush: Mere Frantic Groping for Support.

 The White House, now occupied by the far left, have a burning desire to get wide vote margins for their socialist legislation and must convince us that, again, they are offering bipartisanship for the ‘good of the country’  to the Republicans.  The economy is going down and they have a massive anti-American economic plan to make it worse. This is a farce, as is all leftist ideas and politics, so they need a ‘consensus’ to escape some of the quickly-approaching blame from the public. The unemployment rate may hit 12-15% by August 2009 and after that ‘promises’ will mean little to the voters and they will blame the current politicos for this mess. The phony stimulus will not work and the equally phony ‘infrastructure’ jobs are years in the future. You cannot erect a bridge or a light rail system in‘shovel ready’ hysteria.  Much of their legislation is driven by Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman[1] of California, a place that is beyond hope in terms of financial responsibility. [2]

 The voting public was offered two poor choices, actually three if we include Hillary Clinton and her philandering husband who soaks up millions in bribes from the Middle East, and they decided to choose the far left in pursuit of ‘change.’ Nobody knows what that means.  But, we will find out as in hurricane force, Obama sets up executive orders and signs legislation that will destroy our economy. The Obama Administration needs coconspirators in this effort and we must not oblige them. They need the Republicans to drool and stooge for them. Some Republicans are good at that.

 The left are ideologically set in narrow lockstep with the environmental loonies called EcoNazis by me and have decided to make this grand lie the centerpiece of their transformation of the energy system in the US. The EcoNazis[3] have created this monster freak show with phony lies and drooling politicians like the loathsome stooge Al Gore [our answer to the Russian clown Lysenko.[4]]and his crooked associates like the reptilian Nancy Pelosi.[5] They have decided that children are now a burden to the state[6], view in Nazi terms of the 30s or perhaps as ‘enemies of the state’ in Stalinist lingo and we must push ‘family planning’ and such. What comes next? Euthanasia for the useless old folks?

 The message: Rush is a roadblock. 

“He then told them to break free of the confrontational mindset epitomised by Mr Limbaugh, the highest paid talk show host in America. "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," Mr Obama said[7].-- Barack Obama picks a fight with Rush Limbaugh as bipartisan spirit crumbles . Telegraph London. 25 Jan 2009 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]This link references all quotes in this essay unless otherwise stated.

 Gutter politics from Chicago:

 This is Chicago south of South Street gutter personality politics, a standard radical vein of identity politics, as we expected to see from people like Obama. The Communist parasite Saul Alinsky [8] would be proud.  Many of us wondered how we could trust some bozo who sat, mesmerized for 20 years, in a ‘church’ run by Jeremiah Wright[9][10], not to mention his own self-anointed ‘mentor’ the dedicated Marxist Frank Marshall Davis.[11]

 Obama responds with a cliché:

 “When he finally did sign the order he issued a statement in a bid to placate abortion critics by promising to "reach out to those on all sides of this issue to achieve the goal of reducing unintended pregnancies." He added: "It is time that we end the politicization[sic] of this issue."

 One wonders how you console both sides of this issue. Perhaps there is a kindler and gentler way to perform late term abortions? From one of my previous blogs: “We may ‘elect’ a hateful and vengeful government in November.”[12] Here they are. Is everybody going to celebrate ‘change?’

 What we are hearing is the same kind of identity politics that made Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe dearly loved by those who managed to survive the holocausts in those so-called countries. Both Mugabe and Castro were celebrated for ‘land reform’ and ‘redistribution of the wealth.’ We are going to see some of that here if the Republicans kneel down and lick the sticky boots of the far left as many have done.

 The foreword-going scenario is very clear: Obama will destroy as much of free enterprise in the US as he starts with the auto industry and energy industry and move into government-controlled areas.

 The Republicans should just vote ‘present’ in all these votes and show the American people that they do not support this economy-destroying legislation.

 We should listen to Rush[13] and prevent bad things from being done.

 rycK

 Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

Krugman of the NYT Explains Voodoo and Doo Doo Economics: Government Nationalization and Printing Money!

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers [1] has an all-encompassing and circuitous track record of apologizing for any form of big government as long as it involves huge spending and high taxes. Today, the Times’ famous noneconomics economist Paul Krugman grinds on with his generic contempt for capitalism and explains how a ‘bad’ bank would not function well in our quest to identify and do something about the mountain of toxic debt that is crushing the world economies.  Obama plans to spend another trillion or two and we might wonder if this adds to the debt?

I[2] have included an executive abstract of this blog that condenses the facts and themes.

Abstract of this blog: Paul Krugman resorts to his monotonous and tautological socialist stance by suggesting that the government seize certain banks, temporarily, and then wants to ‘clean out the stockholders.’ This is some plan to deal with massive toxic debt, now in the trillions.  In a parallel manner the Europeans are struggling with similar ways to sequester bad debt and deal with it. The net effect of this essay by Krugman is to encourage the US government to nationalize our banks and seize our assets to repay the debt that the government caused in the first place with subprime loans to people who had no credit.

My view is that they can only print more money and ‘solve’ this problem with massive inflation. The nostrum that our government would ‘temporarily’ take over anything and relinquish control some time later is a sick joke.  Our world economy is crashing and this is an opportunity for the leftists to take control and seize our money. They cannot succeed on their own and cannot get anything special unless they steal it from others. If they cannot nationalize the banks they will attack bond holders. The bond market may bubble up and burst like the real estate markets did. This is a confiscation of wealth and favored by leftists. Watch out for your government—they are in a frantic quest for your money.

In its twice-weekly turn of the leftist canonical crank, their igNoble Leechette[3][4][5][6], blessed with insights and the esoteric ability to divine the specifics of Depression government policies, will now sing  for us  a newly written chorus song featuring the only words that matter to a leftist politician: Tax and Spend.

Krugman begins with:

“Old-fashioned voodoo economics — the belief in tax-cut magic — has been banished from civilized discourse. The supply-side cult has shrunk to the point that it contains only cranks, charlatans, and Republicans.”[7]-- By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: January 18, 2009 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.][All quotes are from this link in this essay today unless otherwise indicated.]

The old theme above is popular with leftists who make pronouncements about capitalist economics while failing to explain eras like the Jimmy Carter Malaise.  This view frequently produces freak-show influenced written works like the Times article today that feature the criticism of ‘tax cut’ zombies,[8] and such, as odd capitalist caricatures. Much of our current financial problems derive, directly, from Jimmy the Peanut’s Community Reinvestment Act [CRA][9] and other follies.  The rest came mostly from excessive use of personal credit. The theme for the left is to tax and spend and to tax and spend and cutting taxes seems to perturb this fun process.  The demand for more real estate, world wide, caused a crash in wealth by forcing down home prices and wiping our equity. The government deficit spending also creates more massive debt, the kind that is trashing the world economies and is creating and worsening the impending depression. The world economies are crashing in a debt-deflation spiral and many think they can solve this with more debt. [10]What follows is a leftist propaganda piece[11] that shows us how to remedy the massive debt problem and winds up with the predictable socialist conclusions.

We now have to wander through an essay on ‘bad banks’ and where to put ‘toxic debt:’

“But recent news reports suggest that many influential people, including Federal Reserve officials, bank regulators, and, possibly, members of the incoming Obama administration, have become devotees of a new kind of voodoo: the belief that by performing elaborate financial rituals we can keep dead banks walking.”

Voodoo dead banks explained:

“On paper, Gotham has $2 trillion in assets and $1.9 trillion in liabilities, so that it has a net worth of $100 billion. But a substantial fraction of its assets — say, $400 billion worth — are mortgage-backed securities and other toxic waste. If the bank tried to sell these assets, it would get no more than $200 billion.

So Gotham is a zombie bank: it’s still operating, but the reality is that it has already gone bust. Its stock isn’t totally worthless — it still has a market capitalization of $20 billion — but that value is entirely based on the hope that shareholders will be rescued by a government bailout.”

[What Krugman is describing are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, creations of leftist governments to buy up bad debts from issuing mortgages to people who cannot handle credit. These quasi-government corporations were a latrine to dump bad mortgages. This is a typical mechanism of the left. It is a deferred tax and their constituents, largely, do not pay taxes so they can increase taxies to pay for this gift or, more accurately a bribe, to secure votes. ]

“Why would the government bail Gotham out? Because it plays a central role in the financial system”

Why did we bail our Fannie Mae? The stockholders took a massive hit and the stock fell to less than a dollar per share. Then they got rescue money from the Fed.  Somebody got cleaned out on that ruse.

Krugman’s Options:

[1] “Well, the government could simply give Gotham a couple of hundred billion dollars, enough to make it solvent again.”

[2] “A better approach would be to do what the government did with zombie savings and loans at the end of the 1980s: it seized the defunct banks, cleaning out the shareholders. Then it transferred their bad assets to a special institution, the Resolution Trust Corporation; paid off enough of the banks’ debts to make them solvent; and sold the fixed-up banks to new owners.”

Here, the socialist dreams of seizing a bank, wiping out stockholders equity [the bank is nearly bankrupt so the stock is worthless and they cannot allow the shares to remain active] , taking printed money or tax money to restructure the bank and then selling off the bank to new owners. Notice that this is a confiscation of shareholder’s equity [theft] and propping up the wreckage with tax money and then reaping a profit. Sound nice?

[3] “Instead, they’re reportedly gravitating toward a compromise approach: moving toxic waste from private banks’ balance sheets to a publicly owned “bad bank” or “aggregator bank” that would resemble the Resolution Trust Corporation, but without seizing the banks first.”

Krugman explains the fear of the non- Nationalization approach:

“What I suspect is that policy makers — possibly without realizing it — are gearing up to attempt a bait-and-switch: a policy that looks like the cleanup of the savings and loans, but in practice amounts to making huge gifts to bank shareholders at taxpayer expense, disguised as “fair value” purchases of toxic assets.”

“Why go through these contortions? The answer seems to be that Washington remains deathly afraid of the N-word — nationalization….

.. but nobody wants to recognize that fact and implement the obvious solution: an explicit, though temporary, government takeover …Unfortunately, the price of this retreat into superstition may be high. I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect that taxpayers are about to get another raw deal — and that we’re about to get another financial rescue plan that fails to do the job.”

The screed ends, abruptly, here without an alternative except for a temporary, government takeover. 

Here is proof that the government ‘leaders’ are in collusion with their counterparts in other countries as we read from the Brits:

“The Treasury's £200bn plan to soak up toxic debt will be followed within days by a US variant from the Obama team. Germany cannot be far behind.”[12]-- Biblical Debt Jubilee May Be the Only Answer Once again, Britain Leads The World In The Macabre Speciality [sic] of Saving Banks. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Last Updated: 6:08AM GMT 19 Jan 2009 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.][All quotes are from this link in this essay today unless otherwise indicated.]

Prichard Expounds on this theme:

“"It is easy to conclude that none of the Government's policies are working," said Professor Peter Spencer from York University. "We must not lose sight of the fact that they have prevented the collapse of the monetary system."-- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

“The $3 trillion (£2 trillion) fiscal blitz by the US, China, Japan and Europe plugs an emergency gap. With luck, it will keep the world economy on life-support just long enough to stop recession and banking crises from feeding on each other with lethal effect, as they did in 1931”

“The US version is a "bad bank" for mortgage debt. It is more or less the old "TARP" passed by Congress, before the funds were diverted into bank recapitalisations. This method worked after the Savings & Loan crisis in the 1980s. The market found a floor. The Treasury even made a profit.”

Here is the Evans-Pritchard clincher:

“There is no guarantee that the measures will succeed. The vast scale of government borrowing may exhaust the stock of global capital. Markets are already beginning to question the credit-worthiness of sovereign states. The Fed may find it harder than it thinks to disengage from colossal intervention in the bond markets.-- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

 In the end, the only way out of all this global debt may prove to be a Biblical debt Jubilee.[13]

 Creditors are not going to like that.”-- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Here we see a convergence between the leftists who favor nationalization and the Ambrose Evans-Pritchard analysis:

[1] There is NO solution to the massive debt, except inflation, in my view. Inflation can solve debt problems by wiping out the problem by simply printing money. If we have 12 trillion in debt we could, in theory, just print another 12 trillion and inflate the currency so that the debt is reduced 50%. What a neat idea! Thus the value of a bond or mortgage contract will plummet and become essentially worthless.  Gold and real estate prices will soar. There is no way the bond holder can struggle out of either type of financial instrument here as they cannot ‘call in ‘the debt.  Bondholders can only try to dump bonds on the bond market and that depresses the prices. We are printing money [a process called ‘quantitative easing’] along with the EU group, Japan and probably China. That will produce inflation and maybe hyperinflation.

[2] A Biblical debt Jubilee means that creditors must trade down their debt instruments for nothing but, perhaps, good will.  This suggests a wild and dangerous financial switch from being a creditor to becoming a debtor where your debt will be forgiven by the government. This is an investment opportunity that most will overlook, but could be a winner for mortgage buyers.  Hedge funds might be thinking about this investment jewel.

[3] In the absence of inflation, the confiscation of wealth to ‘spread it around’ is indicated by the Obama administration. He is a socialist and this makes sense in his mind.

What Krugman alludes to here is that the government needs to step in and nationalize the banks [temporary, government takeover]with the result that they can then tap or tax our accounts and swap some of that for debt. This is a process where the governments create debt and then seize the assets and capital of those who were successful participants in the economic game.  The Russians excelled in this respect except that they were a bit crude in the way they grabbed wealth. A few thousand firing squads satisfactorily solved the problem of complaint.

There is no such thing as a ‘temporary’ government takeover of anything. Once in power, the government wants more and more. The only prize left for the left is to seize the assets of those bank accounts as a first step toward socialism Of course; socialism has general records of failure on the globe as we must note that France, Germany, England and others who are in worse financial shape even though they have employed socialism for decades. Isn’t it strange that they didn’t avoid this mess, as in the case of China? It seems France had 51% of their GDP provided by the government, twice our level, and they are collapsing from the debt debacle as well.

The governments of the world have only two sources of money: taxes or the printing press.

All they have left now is your assets, bank accounts and 401(k) s. Next would appear a ‘wealth tax’ where they tax you according to your net worth [in addition to your income] that includes property. This favors the government also if they put in a confiscatory inheritance tax as the Communist Manifesto[14] recommends.

Are we really going to let this happen? Wake up people.

rycK

 Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

California Sinks into the Financial Abyss.

 The contemporary practice of politics, easily studied in this innovative age of instant and comprehensive communication, has shown us a wide range of measures that, some independently, can annihilate the financial health of any society. The number of ways to lose in this selected category is legion. One would conjecture that those who have practiced some form of financial control over groups of millions of citizens would have identified some reasonable form of management of taxes, jobs, benefits, and debt. But, no. After all, we have seen numerous strategies and experiments in dozens of countries fail resulting in revolution, war, starvation, depression, inflation and moral disintegration. Why cannot these elected ‘leaders’ manage to find a way to keep away from huge debts and inevitable bankruptcy? The answer is: because they don’t have to and don’t want to.

 The Golden State has now refused to pay state tax refunds[1] as they panic and watch their bank accounts vanish. They are conserving cash. All this was been predicted by this author. [2] [3] [4] Not alone in their slide into economic oblivion they are accompanied by other large states like New York, New Jersey and probably Massachusetts, where the situation is, of course, hopeless.[5]

 This hopelessness is based on the Snake Pit Theory[6] of politics wherein those politicians who are apt to lose anything, however slight,  will manage to make matters terminal by grappling so as to  lose everything as they dance around the snake pit jeering the opposition and daring them to jump across for bloody war. This is a form of group mental illness that can only be solved by massive loses at the ballot box in a future election. A good bankruptcy judge might have some good suggestions too.

 Some comments from reporters on this situation:

“Republicans, whose votes are needed to pass budgets, are resisting proposals for tax increases.”[7]-- California Delaying Tax Refunds Amid Cash Crisis Fri Jan 16, 2009 3:09pm EST

 “Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has backed some form of tax increase to raise revenues, angering Republican lawmakers, and is pressing Democrats to cut spending. [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

 And from a different source:

 “Still, even a governor and Legislature in perfect ideological harmony would struggle to close a deficit this big. Consider that $40 billion is the amount the state shells out of its general fund each year for the public school system. Payroll for California's roughly 230,000 civil servants tallies a mere $18 billion — not including legislative aides or people who work for the state's courts or university systems. (Those 149,000 additional folks aren't under the governor's control, but even if Schwarzenegger could fire them, their salaries wouldn't be enough to patch the $40 billion deficit.)”[8]--How big is California's budget hole? Try these numbers on for size By Mike Zapler

Mercury News Posted: 01/15/2009 07:20:07 PM PST

 Analysis:

 This averages about $78,000 per employee for the state. The school bill, meaning the state’s part averages $1300 for each of the state’s 30 million inhabitants not counting a few million illegal aliens here and there.  Add local school taxes to that.

 This is called spending and it is the root cause of the problems in a place that used to lead the world in class and innovation but is now a mere containment facility for losers, perverts and some others who wonder just what went wrong. Spending has caused this mess and the left refuse to truncate their spending.

 A solution would be to reach some kind of compromise including both some extra taxation and some strong cost-cutting, but that is not really a solution. Moreover, this frightful intermezzo will be relived in squalid agony as the next budget process approaches and will be compounded by the fact that people are losing their jobs, thus the current tax revenues are and will continue to  fall and the situation will become worse.

 Apparently, there is no sober education on debt and its effects on governments available to these political leaders. Maybe they live outside the box? Maybe they spend too much time in the sunshine and their brains are cooked. Perhaps the elected officials in California have never heard of the Great Depression or are aware that Europe is sinking into some economic morass.[9]  Maybe their reasoning powers are shadowed by clouds of marijuana fumes.

 The prediction here is that the antagonists in this gruesome war will not yield independently and California will go bankrupt and beg for alms in Washington. Raising taxes will only drive more taxpayers out of the state and further lower the tax revenues.  They MUST stop spending and make some serious cuts. This mere 40 billion dollar deficit will soar to maybe 50 or 70 billion next year and to 100 billion or more the year after.

 Not to put all the blame on California, New York State and New Jersey and Massachusetts are all in the same pit. Note, please, that they are all dominated by far-left, wild-spending liberal Democrats.

 Many will look to Barack Obama for ‘change’ and he is planning trillion dollar deficits, per annum, and what does that suggest. The salient difference between the states and the federal government is that the states, as yet, cannot print money. That would be the solution to the problem for the rest of us in the remaining 46 until Washington prints so much that our currency collapses. But there is a major opportunity here for the entire US financial system to collapse in chaos. I am not convinced that this is a bad option for the far left. They want to control everything and if money evaporates then controls will have to be placed on food distribution and such.

 They may wind up seizing our 401(k)s or giving us a wealth tax if we do not spend enough in income taxes. They need money desperately and our national personal wealth is still about 7 trillion dollars so they have a lot of loot to grab.  We have not seen the end of this. Failure is no excuse for higher taxation and taxation is all that the left has left.

 We could wind up looking like Zimbabwe.

 rycK

 Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

Herbert of the NYT Tells Us He Knows “Where the Money Is.” He Wants Some More Taxes.

We are always excited to be educated by political theorizing that is used at face value as ‘thinking’ at the New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers. [1] Bob Herbert[2][3], in today’s article in the soon-t0-be-bankrupt Times reshuffles his authorized stack of soiled clichés and ‘teaches’ us all about where the money is and  calls for new ways that  our money to be shoveled into sacred leftist causes. Whatever happens in the economy, the liberals always need to express their primeval urge to raise taxes and increase spending and the size of government. We already knew that, so here comes an0ther dose wrapped in sad stories, egalitarian logic and Marxian theory.

 The pitch for our loot:

 “…a trillion here, a trillion there ...President-elect Barack Obama is warning us to expect trillion-dollar budget deficits “for years to come.”[4]-- Where the Money Is By Bob Herbert Op-Ed Columnist Published: January 12, 2009 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.][All quotes are from this link in this essay today unless otherwise indicated.]

 That is one way to soak the taxpayers. The low class does not have to pay taxes as they are below the income median. The upper half pays 96% of the total federal tax load. Note, also, that the unfunded mandates of goodies like Social Security are a tax liability for the taxpayers too. Didn’t we hear the liberals moan about Bush deficits? Spending is sanctified now that liberals get the steer the loot into their stalls.  Do the liberals realize we have a 34 trillion dollar tax liability Social Security? Pelosi thought it was solvent until 2052.[5]

 Herbert proposes a tax on equity trading.

““It raises money in a way that comes primarily at the expense of speculation,” said Mr. Baker.[6] “The fees would be a considerable expense for someone who is buying futures, or a stock, or any asset at 2 o’clock and then selling it at 3. The more you trade, the more you pay.

“For the typical person holding stock, who is planning to hold it for a long period of time, paying the quarter of one percent on a trade is just not that big a deal.”

“Incredibly, President Bush and Congress cut taxes in wartime, which is insane.”

Incredibly, the small business owner’s benefit from such tax cuts and hiking taxes on them will result in lower employment. A stock transfer tax, again, would only affect those who provide investment capital to business and industry. We can expect that a liberal who services the 19^th nostrums about capitalism would lubricate this tax hike platitude with tautological tedium.

“If none of that is true, we should start looking now for some real money somewhere. A stock transfe