Monday after the long weekend

The Senate actually begins debate on the healthcare bill, after debating about whether to begin debate on the bill. Gotta love that one. Obama is going to announce on Tuesday at Westpoint troop increases to Afghanistan while explaining that this is how to leave the country. Merry Christmas!

As an aside, why do Project Managers and Resource managers at my office assume that December is a full month for planning and delivering projects? Hello? Everyone is gone, or key people will be out at some point during the last 2 weeks of December and 1st week of January. This always happens, yet it's planned that people will be available and working. Come on! If getting this work done was so vital to year end goals, it should have been done in September and August and October, not November and December. New Rule: When planning, December is only 2 weeks long. Anyways...

Paul Krugman is pounding on the jobs creation platform. He's completely correct. This is yet another indictment of so-called 'trickle-down theory'. Look, we've given the banks BILLIONS of dollars in free money, and yet where's the money going? To the top! David Frum says that the Bush tax cuts should be extended by 5 years and not expire next year, because taxes are bad bad bad. His last point argues for more TARP, because the banks kept all the initial TARP money for themselves. And so more TARP does...what, exactly? Mr. Frum has really started to go oddly backwards in his ideology in the last couple of posts. Trickle-down theory is DEAD, Mr. Frum. It doesn't work. Why is it that when rich people screw up, the demand a do-over? When other people mess up, too bad! Welcome to capitalism. David Brooks admits he is a die-hard Bruce Springsteen fan. Great. Now how can he be a fan and Republican? Does he just ignore the lyrics? Does he just pretend that Springsteen is liberal? I'm confused. Wait, I just realized how: I like Mr. Brooks, but like all Republicans, he can hold conflicting ideologies in his head with no problems whatsoever. Wait, that holds true for Democrats, too. So is being a pundit just his day job, then? Augh!

Finally, the CBO is saying that Health Care Reform would lower costs! How about that?

Daniel Mitchell over at the right-wing think tank the Cato Institute is defending Obama and blaming Bush for the colossal deficit we find ourselves in. He then goes on to say that Obama will probably be worse than Bush in the long run. We'll see.

Tuesday links

So I've got a new fire in my soul for posting. After a few weeks of not much, I feel compelled to share lots and lots. Maybe because it's the holidays!?!?

David Frum panders to his wealthy readers (very disappointing).

Barry Ritholtz shares a drawing that he used during his recent visit to Europe and got a lot of laughs. The image is below:
Nearly 1 in 4 home owners are underwater. That's sobbering.

David Brooks looks at the healthcare bill Plinko'ing its way through the Senate. It's about the values, dummy.

NPR looks at the healthcare bill, too. It's about affordability, dummy.

I already know that my generation is getting screwed, but this is surprising.

Andrew Sullivan analyzes the GOP's new 10 commandments. Good stuff.

Monday Links

Thomas Friedman is jumping on the higher taxes bandwagon.

Barry Ritholtz returns from Europe, where they think we are weird but still follow us anyways.

Ezra Klein has a wildly interesting thought on Joe Lieberman's nonsensical positions.

And finally, Planet Money has a great idea for taxing the rich. Rich people have gotten us into a lot of messes, so it's ok with me if they actually have to (gasp!) pay for it.

The notion that lower-income people make up the majority of our armed forces has led to sayings like "rich man's war, poor man's fight."

Now, Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has an unsual idea to equalize the cost of war: a war tax on the rich.

An "additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000" a year, could fund more troops, Levin proposed in an interview for Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital With Al Hunt," this weekend.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has estimated that each additional soldier in Afghanistan could cost $1 million, for a total that could reach $40 billion if 40,000 more troops are approved.

The tab, Levin said, should be paid by wealthier taxpayers. "They have done incredibly well, and I think that it's important that we pay for it if we possibly can," the senator said.

They don't get it

Lots of people wonder why the younger generation (under 30) are so cynical and anti-establishment. Let me help them reach some understanding on this.

The current ruling generation (baby boomers) has the appearance of wanting its cake and eating it too. We (the Gen Y) were brought up by these folks being told that anything is possible if you work hard and be honest. We were taught that if we could dream it, we could do it. We were taught that morals were important, and that not having morals was evil and those who chose that path would not succeed. Now that my generation is coming of age, we are realizing that that was just a bunch of smoke and mirrors created not for our benefit, but for our parents' benefit. Maybe this is just our coming-of-age moment, this realization that our parents' generation is so terribly off base and self-centered.

Health care is paid for, but Republicans don't like it. Even the Republicans that voted for the deficit-funded Medicare Part D benefit are fighting against the current Health Care reform. Bruce Bartlett even takes Republicans to task over the health care debate. Hypocrisy at the highest levels of government. Isn't this what Jesus taught us was bad? The current Right-wing "moral high ground" pundits talk, the more I associate their justifications with an 'eye for an eye' Old Testament basis, not a New Testament 'turn the other cheek' basis that I was taught growing up. We have hard-core Farm Belt Republicans railing against big government, yet they happily lobby Washington for increases in the Farm Bill. Raising taxes is the the devil's work, yet we continue to spend ungodly amounts on the defense budget and two wars. Our economy is tanking, while the rich get more and more. The rank and file middle class wages are kept in check with 'pay for performance' while upper class wages skyrocket based on abysmal performance. Our Congress is broken, with our out-of-touch rich folk Congress wringing their hands over whether or not the government should be funding abortion, meanwhile unemployment has risen to 10.2%. This doesn't seem to matter much, because Wall St. is pretty happy with how things have gone, and what is good for Wall St. is good for Main St, right? Obama talked about change, but its become more and more of the same.

The worst part is, which health care prolonging people's life spans, the baby boomer generation will stay in power for a longer period than any previous generation. This means that me and my son will be paying the price for this incompetence for decades. Is it any wonder why Gen Y'rs run and hide in Facebook and MySpace? That is the only solace we have left. The more you look at how we got to this point in our American history, the more sad and angry one becomes. I hope that the crisis of 2008-2009 moves us in a different direction, but as we move into 2010, things aren't looking that way.

Monday reading

Today in the NY Times, drug makers are raising the prices of brand name drugs by 9%. This equates to about $10 billion dollars in rising costs, effectively eliminating first year savings that the companies promised to provide in striking a deal with Obama to be left out of health care reform. Isn't America great?

Bruce Bartlett is still advocating the VAT.

Ezra Klein rants on Senators who voted for the debt-funded Medicare Part D and are now railing against Health Care reform. Hard to argue with him.

Robert Reich has an open letter to Harry Ried on Health Care.

In Dilbert I Trust

Scott Adams is scary good.

Paul Krugman agrees

Paul Krugman takes it to his critics that claim that his assertion that growth was better before 1980 is a lie. Um, no. This is something that I have also come to agree with. America did better with higher tax rates and lots of regulation.

The GOP has a health care refrom plan

So the GOP bill does less that the Democrats bill. Not a good move. Now they go from the party of no ideas to the party of bad ideas. David Frum explains how Republicans have fallen from their perch, and what they can do to change (become Moderates) I don't think this will happen until the leadership changes. It's going to happen the same way that same-sex marriage or legalized pot is going to slowly become accepted and normal. People resist change and resist change, even if the change is good. Then after the change is made and people get used to it and experience how it is better, then it becomes accepted and the new norm.

Oh, and it is in vogue now to pretend that the postwar era (1946 - 1970) didn't happen if you are a Republican arguing economic policy.

Planet Money gives a history of how our Doctors get paid, starting in 1968 when Medicare began. It is one of their best podcasts.

Special Interest groups SUCK. They are worse than lawyers.

The Keyboard Commandos question Obama's resolve with Afghanistan.

See? See!?!?

I told you this would happen.

Lessons forgotten

Here is a slide deck on the 10 lessons already forgotten from the financial crisis, meltdown, fiasco, I don't know what to call it.

Monday links

Why Keep Geitner? - Why is Tim Geitner still the Treasury Secretary?

Get American to work - Robert Reich argues that getting Americans back to work is more important that getting good health care reform passed.

If Best Buy sold healthcare - Ezra Klein does a fascinating look at healthcare from a retail standpoint.

Friday's Bill Moyer's Journal looked at the economic recovery so far in 2009.

I've been trying to figure out what happened in the 1970's that caused wages to stay flat while productivity increased. This page argues that high tax rates = high economic growth. David Rothkopf also argues that the high taxes during the period from 1946-1973 really helped America become strong during this Q&A back in March of 2009:

Q: I think one reason for our lack of leadership is the possibility of immense reward, i.e. greed. We need much higher marginal tax rates so executives do not have the ability to accumulate wealth that would embarrass an Oriental potentate. They make short term decisions that are bad for the US, the world and even their own institutions, but are good for their own balance sheet.

During the period 1946 - 1973 taxes were much higher. Marginal rates averaged 70%; they were 93% under Eisenhower. The economy was better than what we now have. For example, median wages went up 3 times as fast as since 1973. Also I recently saw a graph of the national debt as a percentage of the GDP from 1946 to the present. It started high, went straight down until 1973, and then flatten out and in 1980 made a sharp turn and went straight up except for a wiggle during the Clinton administration. CEOs earned 50 times what their workers earned; it is 500 times today. Staring in 1973, the percent of wealth and income taken by the richest 10%, 1%, and 0.1% has gone up at an ever increasing rate. This is a recipe for disaster.

David Rothkopf: I agree. In fact, much of my most recent book, Superclass, is devoted to this issue of growing inequality in the U.S. and internationally and the risks it poses. I'm not sure we need to consider 70 or 93 percent tax rates...and our economy is at a fundamental level much more dynamic and strong than it was in the 50s...but we do need to rethink senior executive compensation, what we let our pension funds pay hedge fund managers, and also what obstacles need to be removed to close the gap for those on the bottom.

And now, David Horsey of the Seattle PI: