Saalon Muyo

People are wondering if Sarah Palin was knocking places like California and Massachusetts as being anti-American when she said this:

Palin also made a point of mentioning that she loved to visit the “pro-America” areas of the country, of which North Carolina is one.

She wasn’t. She was obviously talking about how nice it was being away from her anti-American home state of Alaska, where her friends in the Alaskan Independence Party feel a hatred of our government so hot that the fires of hell are glaciers in comparison.

So chill out, everyone.

Want to keep your candidate of choice in the game?  Polls are hard to game from the outside, but by God, I bet you could bamboozle Intrade!

An internal investigation by the popular online market Intrade has revealed that an investor has been attempting to artificially boost the prediction that Sen. John McCain will become president.

Over the past several weeks, the investor has pushed hundreds of thousands of dollars into one of Intrade’s predictive markets for the presidential election, the company said, resulting in great financial losses through a strategy that belies any financial motive.

Was the perceived benefit that Intrade granted the McCain campaign (which couldn’t have been large, as Ben Smith at politico notes) worth the money this cost?  You probably could have bought the number of votes this would have swung McCains way at a better rate than you got on Intrade.

Really, really weird.

A lucid point about the Joe the Plumber taxation thing is made by John Seery at HuffPo:

Joe versus Sam. You could line up economists spouting elegant theories for each side, but the basic arguments can probably be reduced to Joe’s and Sam’s respective positions on very gut levels. Joe’s never made $250,000, but he feels that if he ever reaches that threshold, he shouldn’t be “penalized” for his success. He seems to believe that cutting taxes for wealthy individuals somehow serves his current financial interests and his aspirations for the future. Sam’s already lived those trickle-down and dream-up Republican talking points but now rejects them with hard-won conviction.

I’m not going to say there aren’t business owners over the $250k range that wouldn’t disagree with this, but I think it’s anecdotal evidence of what I talked about yesterday.  The real recipients of the high-income taxation message are middle class voters who are encouraged to project their fantasies of wealth into Obama’s tax plan. It simplifies a complicated issue of the effects of taxation into meaninglessness.

There are cases where appropriate spending of fair taxation helps everyone, just as there are cases where inappropriately high taxation can hurt an economy, just as there are cases where an imbalance in tax proportions unfairly benefits a minority of Americans.

Sam’s point stands, though.  If your consumers can’t afford to buy from you, a difference in 4% taxation isn’t what’s going to cause you to lay off workers.  We could cut your taxes to nothing and you’d still go out of business.

The greatest trick the conservative movement ever pulled was convincing the population of America they were all the on the verge of massive wealth.  All of them.  This has been the thrust of every supply-side economic movement we’ve been forced to endure, and is at the core of modern conservative policy.

Sure, they say a lot of other things about why cutting taxes on the wealthy will be good for us.  It promotes job growth because “small businesses” have more to spend.  People who have lots of money who end up with even more money will spend or invest it in such a way that it will work its way down to the poor folk.  Taxes are an evil dreamed up by the Liberal anti-God at the dawn of time to combat balanced fiscal policy and punish the successful.

That’s not why people get on board.  You can tell, because people who are voting Republican have a tendency to say things like “They’re going to raise my taxes!”  My taxes.  Not, “They’re going to raise the taxes of my employer, kicking off a chain reaction that will result in my firing.”  No.  The taxes are going up on you.

How could this be?  Look at the current election, where Senator Obama says “Only people making over $250,000 a year will see an increase.”  That’s pretty clear language, and still I see people who aren’t even making $100k claiming that Obama will raise their taxes.  In fact, Senator McCain is saying that as well.  He’s not talking to the 5% of the population Senator Obama is proposing raising that taxes of; he’s saying your taxes.

So what gives?  How does this message manage to stick every time it comes up?

I think it’s pretty simple.  All of America is convinced they’re on the verge of making tons of money.  Just around the corner is that great investment or big job.  That $250,000 is about five times the median family income in the U.S. is irrelevant.  We’re all about to make 500% more, and as soon as that happens, Democrats want to punish you! The idea of you in the future with $250k+ becomes you now and you vote as if that’s the case, even if the only reason you had the shot at that money were the fruits of the taxes you pay, like your public education.  It’s absurd, but it works.  And now, finally, the Republican party has found their economic mascot.

Joe the Plumber.

Here’s the back story.  Joe Wurzelbacher showed up at an Obama rally in Ohio and said, basically, “I’d like to buy the plumbing business I work for, and then I might make more than $250,000, and I don’t understand why you want to tax me extra for that.”  Obama suggested it would be better for everyone, including him, if they “spread the wealth around” a bit.  Of course, the McCain campaign jumped all over that insinuation of class warfare and proceeded to bring it up in the debate last night some 20 times.

Now, keep in mind that Joe doesn’t make anywhere near $250k right now.  He’s talking about the theory of him making this money in the future, and how in theory this would be unfair to him.

Wurzelbacher this morning told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer that he was talking about, in Diane’s words, the prospect, the hope that someday he would make $250,000.

“Well, exactly,” he said. “Exactly. I mean not that I don’t want to be taxed. You have to be taxed. But to — just because you work a little harder to have a little bit more money taken from you, I mean, that’s scary. You know as opposed to other people. I worked hard for it. Why should I be taxed more than other people?”

Sorry to break it to you,  but you’re not likely to make $250k any time soon.  Chances are, you won’t ever make that much money, unless inflation changes what that number means.  You haven’t worked hard for it, yet, and even if you get that amount of money there’s no guarantee you’ll have worked harder than other people for it.  I make almost twice what one of my friends makes and I assure you he works way, way harder than I do.  He carries cabinets.  I type on a computer.  He wins.

Let’s put aside the fact that Joe is registered Republican who voted in the primary, so this whole insinuation of him being some independent voice for the blue collar crowd everywhere is bull.  Let’s also ignore that he’s not even licensed as a plumber, so calling him Joe the Plumber is especially moronic.  And, while we’re at it, we’ll try not to read too far into the fact that he hasn’t been paying his existing taxes.  Not that this isn’t all important to deflating the idiot-bubble the McCain campaign is trying to inflate for themselves out of this situation, it’s just not relevant for what I’m saying.

Joe the Plumber is the conservative myth made flesh.  “Don’t raise any taxes, ever, even on a tiny percentage of the population who can afford higher taxes because the day may come when I’m rich too and I won’t like it much!”  That’s how it goes, and that’s who Joe represents.  The person who votes against their own self interest because their greed is so ingrained in them that they can’t tolerate the idea of being less rich than they could be.  In all probability, they will never smell that tax bracket, yet their argument against it existing is that…well, maybe, someday, right?

In any case, the argument is fallacious.  Our tax code as it’s existed for some time is progressive, meaning that the more you make, the higher percentage of taxes you pay.  This is done for a simple reason: people who make less can part with a lower percentage of their income safely.  The more you make, though, the greater amount of your money is going into luxuries, and thus you can afford to lose some for the greater good.  If your reaction to this is “Socialism!!!!” maybe you should listen to everyone’s favorite capitalist, Adam Smith:

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

Get that?  Progressive taxation ain’t so bad.  And that’s why we do it.  Unless you make no money, someone who is making less than you is getting charged a smaller tax percentage.  Every raise you get endangers you, for you are bound to be punished by our socialist tax system.  What Senator Obama is proposing is restoring the percentage at the top of the tax bracket to where it was before Bush’s first term tax cuts, which will be expiring in 2011 anyway.  People making $250,000 are already paying a slightly higher percentage of tax.  The framework is in place.  Obama is suggesting adjusting the proportional differences, not creating them.

Joe the Plumber represents one of the sickest parts of the American dream.  The idea that if you achieve that dream it’s solely because of the superiority of your work ethic and intellect, and any progressive taxation is simply punishment for your success.  When arguing this, though, we forget that without publicly funded schools, police departments, road crews, transit systems and unemployment benefits, the likelihood of your success was far lower.  People like me and Joe the Plumber have a shot at success because the taxes we pay fund the programs that prepared us.  Paying higher taxes at a higher income isn’t punishment, it’s paying the system that got you there back.

Most people at the bottom of the tax bracket work way harder than those at the top.  You talk to a mother who can’t afford day care and works two jobs if she thinks my success in sitting at a desk typing was a result of me being a harder worker than her.  You live with the stress of wondering if you can feed your child and get it needed medical care without crushing your already strained budget then tell me how much you’re being punished by losing an extra 4% of your $250k income.

Say it ain’t so, Joe!

It goes like this, I think:

It’s one thing to bail out Wall Street.  But who’s going to bail out you?

Denny’s!

Followed by shots of breakfast.

Dunno what to say about that one, folks.

If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the stock market bounce around like a yo-yo for the past couple of weeks and hoping it gives you some kind of indicator as to how the financial crisis is shaping up.  And, if you’re like me, you’ve been unable to glean even a tiny bit of information from its gyrations.  As I learned today, the stock market is the wrong thing to watch.  It’s just reacting to something else: the frozen credit markets.

So how do we watch those?  Well, the wonderfully informative people at NPR’s Planet Money podcast point us to the right place.  The core of the crisis is that people don’t want to lend to each other.  This is the same thing that happened prior to the Great Depression, and our lack of response to that credit freeze may be what turned a financial downturn into a global depression.  When the solvency of institutions that are supposed to be stable, like banks, comes into question it makes people timid with their investments.  In fact, it even makes banks afraid to lend to each other, and that’s when things get really ugly.

So there are two things to watch.

The first is the rate on 3 Month Treasury Bonds.  These are considered very safe investments, so when people panic, the put their money here.  And the more money the put into them, the less of a return they pay.  What does that mean?

As the market panics, the 3 Month Treasury rate goes down.  As it calms, it goes back up.  Right now the rate is .11%  Last month it was at 1.58%. Not so good.

The second thing to look at is something called the TED Spread.  The TED Spread is basically the difference between the rate on one of those 3 Month Treasury Bonds and the rate banks are actually charging each other to borrow money.  The lower the TED Spread, the more confident banks are in each other. Why?  Because if you think someone is safe, you’ll charge them close to the same interest you’re getting out of the really safe government treasury bonds.  If not, you’ll charge them a lot more, because those T-Bills are way less of a risk.  A good explanation of this can be found here.

So historically the TED Spread has been at around .5%.  It went up to 1% for most of this year, which you can see on the chart at Bloomberg.com which I linked to above.  Then things got bad.  Now the TED is hovering around 4.5%, and is not yet going down. That means that even though we’ve dumped some money at the problem, banks still see each other as risky investments and are reluctant to give them money.

As the stock market flies all over the place, keep your eyes on Treasury bonds and on the TED Spread to see if the real cause of this crisis - frozen credit - is getting better.

So far it isn’t.

I’m refusing to make predictions on this election.  Part of that is superstition.  I believe very strongly that an Obama presidency is the best chance for this country to save itself from its current crisis, and I’m afraid of jinxing that win with presumptuous declarations of victories.  The other part is that I know how wildly elections can swing.  Up today can become down tomorrow with the right sequence of events.

I will say this, though: Senator John McCain’s campaign looks very, very confused right now.  It’s never a good sign when a campaign changes messages regularly, especially in the modern media environment.  It takes some power behind a signal to cut through the noise, and it often requires repetition.  Saying something once might - might - gain you a five minute spot on a new outlet, but you’ll be washed away by the next celebrity drug addiction.  It’s important to come up with a strong campaign narrative and carry it all the way home.  Adjustments will be required, but massive shifts can hurt you.

Look at the events of this last weekend.  It started with the rumbling of a new economic plan in the works that would help solve the credit crisis.

On Sunday, hours before attending a big strategy meeting at McCain campaign headquarters, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Bob Schieffer on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that McCain was planning “a very comprehensive approach to jump-start the economy, by allowing capital to be formed easier in America by lowering taxes.”

There were even a few details leaked, such as a tax reduction on capital gains and dividends.  Putting aside the fact that giving a tax reduction on capital no one is gaining right now sounds fairly pointless, the intent of this release was the prime the public for a new phase of Senator McCain’s campaign.  This would replace the phase where we were expected to look away from the plunging Dow to stare at the name “Bill Ayers” and the one before that where Senator McCain was proposing we purchase mortages at inflated prices using tax dollars in an effort to stabilize home prices which are currently wildly overvalued.

Oh and before that was the bailout Senator McCain first helped negotiate, then didn’t help pass when it failed and then claimed to have “blew up” to keep it from passing, even though the day it was supposed to pass he was taking credit for it.  If that sentence makes your head spin, imagine how well it must be playing as a campaign narrative.

Yet, before it was even released, the new plan was off the table.

But when the meeting ended, so did plans for a new economy push. The campaign now says no new policy announcements are planned. Participants in the meeting refused to say what happened.

So, just on the crisis alone we’ve seen a suspended campaign to negotiate the bailout, credit taken for a bailout plan that got voted down hours later, insinuations that the Senator himself killed the plan he was taking credit for, a plan to buy up mortgages and renegotiate them and an econommic policy that no one could agree on that included tax cuts for income no one is currently receiving with the crashing stock market.

So what’s next?  Perhaps recasting yourself as “a scrappy fighter on the comeback trail against an opponent who’s already ‘measuring the drapes’ in the Oval Office.”

Allies are calling this “hitting the ‘reset’ button” on the campaign, with McCain reemerging after a long Sunday strategy session with a feisty tack that uses candor and humor, at a time when his rallies have become known for raucous rage and clumsy attacks.

So now, after all of that, we’re just going to pull a Star Trek and reset button our way out of the past three months of campaigning?  If so, for the Senator’s sake this had best be the last sudden shift in messages that he tries.  Like I said, I refuse to make predictions, so I won’t go on record as saying this will not work.  But if it doesn’t - and I think there’s at least a good possibility that it won’t - he may be out of options.

I guess we’ll get our first real taste of this at the third debate on Wednesday.

I have been so disheartened by how much this election has divided us as a nation. Posts like this one make me sad (although I have nothing against the author, who was very brave to share her point of view), because it really grieves me that people are basing their opinion of a person on the candidate he or she supports- or in my case, is even thinking about supporting.

- Lindsay Ferrier, “The Lesser of Two Evils”

When people say that you shouldn’t talk about politics or religion in public, it’s all I can do not to pick the kind of fight people are trying to avoid with their advice.  Do we really believe that it’s better to be quietly ignorant of two huge, important things that certainly will affect our lives than to risk someone being a jerk to us?  Do we honestly think that our views of the nature of the universe are unimportant enough to allow them to be challenged?  Are we comfortable handing over power to a government we then won’t discuss in the company of others?

Here’s the thing.  We don’t like being disagreed with, and we like even less when a disagreement causes others to turn against us.  This is why people avoid discussions of inflammatory topics.  Losing a friend over a political or religious affiliation seems too high a price to pay for opening one’s mouth.  I’m sympathetic to their concerns, because if you’ve argued yourself into hating a once good friend you have likely done something wrong.  Civility in debate is something you gain with experience, though, and having a violent reaction to disagreement is more likely when you avoid them at all costs.

Lindsay Farrier, who writes the blog Suburban Turmoil, recently wrote about her reaction to the second presidential debate, which she attended as a member of the press.  In it, she stated how the debate changed her feelings on the election and on which candidate she’d be supporting.  Unsurprisingly, her post drew quite a reaction from her readers, some less civil than others.

Strike that.  Ferrier later wrote, “a surprising number of comments were downright hostile,” so perhaps I’m just used to the kind of reaction a statement of any preference of any kind made on the Internet will elicit. After saying something on reddit, if I don’t get accused of an ad hominem attack or compared to Hitler, I consider it a mild day in the tubes.

That said, I think Ferrier’s post does get to the core of why people are so cautious about bringing up politics or religion in public.  I quoted the line above, but I want to repeat it.  It’s important.  Ferrier says that it “really grieves me that people are basing their opinion of a person on the candidate he or she supports- or in my case, is even thinking about supporting.”  Though I commend her for her own openness to discussion on this topic, I think the reason we avoid bringing up politics or religion in public can be found in that statement.  We don’t want people to look at us differently over something we’ve decided is not a core part of who we are.

But it is.

It does all of us a disservice to suggest that who gets our vote or what deity does or does not get our allegiance says nothing important about our values and priorities.  Voting isn’t - or at least, it shouldn’t be - the equivalent of whether you prefer Coke or Pepsi.  How you think your tax dollars should be spent, who you think we should be at war with (if anyone), where the responsibility for our sick belongs, whether people should be incarcerated for consuming psychoactive substances; these should never be boiled down to some simple matter of opinion.  These are important issues, and your opinion on them says a lot about who you are as a person.

If you are a devout Christian, and you say that you believe literally in the words of the Bible, does that mean you also believe homosexuals should be stoned?  If so, is it really unfair for me to think less of you as a person for believing that?

If you support a candidate based on the recriminalization of abortion, but believe in the continuation of the death penalty, am I expected to ignore the blatant contradiction in an effort to agree to disagree?  If you supported the end of both, perhaps, but if my problem is that you hold two contradictory values that are largely punitive to the underprivileged, how does that not affect my view of what your moral priorities are?

I think the difference is in how important you feel your vote is.  If you believe that politics is as important to your life as a reality show, that the ambiguity of the choice between candidates - none of whom represent pure evil or undiluted good - makes the decision pointless, or that the concept of democracy is worthy without the passionate exercise of it, then I suppose the tying of political choice to a person’s quality of character seems silly to you.

If you’re like me, and you believe that the choice you’ve been given in this nation is the chance - however small - to see the things in which you believe acted out across the nation, it’s impossible not to connect your choice of candidate to your character.  I’m not suggesting that supporting a candidate I consider toxic makes you a terrible person.  I’m merely saying that if democracy means anything at all, then your vote should be representative of your own moral and ethical beliefs, and I should be able to make a character judgment based on it.

Let me put it another way.

Do I believe that someone who attends a church I take issue with is evil? Absolutely not.

Do I lose all respect for someone for disagreeing with me politically?  Of course not.

Would I seek to end a friendship simply over a political or religious difference?  Not a chance.

Do someone’s political views and priorities, as evidenced by their choice of candidate, affect my opinion of someone?  Yes.  They absolutely do.

I expect that my friends do this to me as well, and I’m fine with that.  There’s a reason I talk openly about politics and religion on this blog.  I believe my opinions and views on these subjects are reflective of who I am and what I stand for.  I’m comfortable with someone making a character judgment based on my political affiliations, and I open to being challenged or even judged based on them.  If someone wants to think less of me because they honestly feel my vote represents a flaw in my character, I can accept that.

It helps if you’re prepared to back it up.  Then we can talk about it, and we might even find we have common ground we didn’t expect.  We might discover that we’re disappointed in someone in one way, but respect them in another.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  I can be disappointed that your economic beliefs are hostile to the poor while respecting your advocacy to improve the lives of disabled children.  I can be appalled at your church’s intolerance of homosexuals while being pleased that its youth group gives kids a place to be safe once a week. Life is like that.  We’re all lesser evils when you get right down to it.

Or we could agree to disagree, which is what got us here in the first place.  We could pretend our differences in beliefs should not be discussed, should be held back and privately protected.  Or worse, revealed without discussion and then wheeled back into the garage after taking them for a spin around the block.

What do you think it says about our political and religious views when you think we shouldn’t talk about them?  That we’re different, right?  That we are so different that my views and your view can only clash without purpose should they be released into the same room.  Perhaps, even, that I’m inherently better than you and that the actual discussion of our ideas is a waste of time.

I’ve had enough of agreeing to disagree.  I think it’s time to learn to just disagree.  We can do it without violence and without rage if we spend some time learning how.

I’d rather you think less of me than not have heard from me at all.

This American Life rocks.  By now, you’ve realized that, right?  You haven’t?

Well.

How about this: Do you think you know why the mortgage crisis happened?  Have you listened to the This American Life story about it?  No?

Well.

The Giant Pool of Money might be the best episode of This American Life ever.  It’s the most lucid, fascinating and informative story about the mortage crisis you’re likely to find.  It should win a Pulitzer, or a Peabody, or whatever they give audio news programs.  It’s that good.

Check it out.  Please.

As the Dow continues to scare the living crap out of you, take a moment to laugh at Betty White saying “crazy bitch.”