The tax farce

"Rule of all without rule of oneself would prove to be as deceptive and disappointing as a painted toy-mango, charming to look at outwardly but hollow and empty within." Conquest of Self - M.K. Gandhi

President Obama’s choice for the position of chief White House performance officer has withdrawn from consideration for the post, an administration official said Tuesday, after coming forward with concerns about her tax returns. New York Times

Thomas A. Daschle, President Obama's choice to be secretary of Health and Human Services, has withdrawn his nomination, White House officials announced shortly after noon. Daschle cited the distractions that followed his failure to pay all of his taxes in recent years. Washington Post

Obama is off to a very shaky start. The belief that he is ready to push for a fundamental remaking of America has weak evidence in its favor, despite his intelligence and his intellectual openness. The United States is getting good grammar. It needs bold remaking. Immanuel Wallerstein

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Gee, that didn't last long did it?

As skeptical as I have often been about Obama, I admit that the last place I ever expected him to trip up was on something sleazy like this.

The word was that everyone being considered for even minor positions in the Obama administration was being exhaustively vetted, gone over with a fine tooth comb, held up to the light like a dangling chad...

It has been my experience that one of the first things that those doing vetting normally want to look at are people's tax returns. Official financial records are usually the easy part, looking under rocks for the nasty stuff comes much later. So, I think that it would be fair to say that failure to check simple information concerning important, cabinet level, nominations is indicative of extremely poor staff work, wouldn't it?

I've been away so long, somebody tell me: are America's tax laws now like those curious old laws against sodomy and miscegenation that used to be on the books in the south? If this is so, then what is all the fuss about? I'm sure that Obama could nominate someone who was openly gay to a cabinet position without it being a problem. Why not a tax evader?

Of course the comparison is absurd: obviously public officials are supposed to obey the laws that they pass and are sworn to enforce. The state lives from the taxes it collects, so paying taxes is fundamentally important for anyone who aspires to public life and not just a question of personal taste like an individual's sexual orientation.

I always expected Obama to come up hard against reality in places like the Middle East, Afghanistan and, of course, on the economy, but not on something as idiotic as this.

The staff work has been so lousy on this that I fear we are only looking at the tip of an Iceberg here.

I wonder what the Obamese equivalent of "heckuva job Brownie" will turn out to be? DS

Back to class war

The worst is yet to come for the U.S. housing market.(...) The national median home price is poised for its first annual decline since the Great Depression(...) ``It's a blood bath,'' said Mark Kiesel, executive vice president of Pacific Investment Management Co. ``We're talking about a two- to three-year downturn that will take a whole host of characters with it, from job creation to consumer confidence. Eventually it will take the stock market and corporate profit.''(...) ``It's not just a housing recession anymore, it looks more and more like an economic recession,'' said Nouriel Roubini(...) ``When all these people see their mortgage payment and it's up 40 or 50 percent, they're going to say, `We can't stay in this house,''' Pimco's Kiesel said. ``And there are millions of people in this situation.'' Bloomberg

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I can think of no more wrenching yet predictable political trend on the horizon than a general souring on the super rich. There is nothing especially new about it, quite the contrary, but like all the other "end of history" myths, the supposed end of "class struggle" is also about to hit the fan and after a long absence, the tensions that brought the social-democracy movement on stage in the first place, are eagerly waiting in the wings.

As interest rates rise and lending restrictions are put into place, millions of middle-middle class people who have been living in a dream world, thinking that were somehow part of the same universe as Bill Gates, are going to have to make drastic decisions about allocating their resources if they are not to lose their homes. They are going to re-discover why there was ever a universal demand for good, free public schools and universities or (in the countries lucky enough to have gotten that far) first class, free public health care in the first place. They will rediscover the nearness of the abyss of destitution and humiliation that terrified their parents and grandparents who lived through the Great Depression.

As much as an economic and political readjustment, it will be a cultural change, for never before in history have so many "normal" people identified with the wealthy and considered them harmless or even benevolent. DS

The rich must be penalised - Guardian
Abstract: (...) Equality is not a penalty-free condition. It increases rather than reduces the sum of freedom - giving millions more men and women the ability and the right to exercise the choices of a free society. But it reduces the purchasing power of the top earners, whose taxes are increased to pay for the improved pensions and health care. Every great leap forward towards redistribution has been accompanied by a frank acceptance of the price that the wealthy must pay, usually accompanied by an attack on their reluctance to meet the bill.

A hundred years ago, David Lloyd George - fearful that the House of Lords would reject his budget because of the introduction of a land tax to finance "provision for the aged and deserving poor" - mounted an attack on landlords in general and landowning dukes in particular. He told of a visit to a Welsh coalmine - "three-quarters of a mile of rock and shale above us" - to illustrate the infamy of the coal-owning classes.

"The prime minister and I knock on the doors of these great landlords and say to them, 'You know these poor fellows ... Some of them are old, they have survived the perils of the trade, they are broken and they can earn no more. Won't you give something towards keeping them out of the workhouse ...?' They retort, 'You thieves ...!' If this is the view taken by these great landlords of their responsibilities to the people who, at risk of life, create their wealth, the day of reckoning is at hand."

The rhetoric is as old-fashioned as the overt class antagonism, but the essential point remains. Lloyd George was not advising the coal owners to subscribe towards the cost of a pension in order to improve productivity. He was saying to the world that security in old age is a moral necessity and has to be financed by the wealthy. Politicians who run away from the underlying principle that greater economic equality penalises the rich will never have the nerve necessary to bring about economic equality. READ IT ALL