TPMCafe

There's that funny smell wafting outta Wall Street again...


Take a gander here,
then mosey on over here...

and let your imagination go wild!
Seriously. Some guy is accused of lifting proprietary software which permits a monolithic investment company to act in a manner which at minimum, calls into question the legality of their services. Then the NYSE files a claim with the S.E.C  to decommission its Daily Program Trading Report ("DPTR") by July 10th, effectively disabling any transparency obligations that said investment firm and the organization responsible for its oversight might be required to provide.

I mean seriously, come on!
If I said Goldman Sachs performs abortions while smoking crack and praying to Allah - would that FINALLY get you off your asses?

WAKE UP!

Pudd'nhead Palin Sez "I Quit"


pudd'nhead palin


Contrary to what Pudd'nhead says, "countless" others have not resigned and her definition of "honor" seems to be atypical and nonstandard:

"And though it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make."

In the last 50 years only 33 governors have resigned:
  • 15 resigned in order to accept a presidential appointment
  • 11 resigned because they were elected or appointed to Congress or VP
  • 3 resigned due to scandal
  • 2 resigned after being tried and convicted of felonies
  • 1 due to illness
  • 1 resigned in order to prepare his fourth run at the presidency
In the last 50 years, no sitting governor resigned because of too many ethics complaints, or because "life is too short", or to avoid being a "dead fish", or to help someone else's election campaign, or because they're a "lame duck", or even to "advance in a different direction".

Governors who resigned 1959-2009

NameStatePartyTerm ResignedReason
Raul H CastroAZD2Presidential Appointment - Ambassador to Argentina
Patrick Joseph LuceyWID/I2Presidential Appointment - Ambassador to Mexico
Richard Francis KneipSDD2Presidential Appointment - Ambassador to Singapore
Christine Todd WhitmanNJR2Presidential Appointment - EPA Administrator
Michael Okerlund LeavittUTR3Presidential Appointment - EPA Administrator
Otto KernerILD2Presidential Appointment - Federal Judge
Mike JohannsNER2Presidential Appointment - Secretary of Agriculture
Abraham Alexander RibicoffCTD2Presidential Appointment - Secretary of HEW
Kathleen SebeliusKSD2Presidential Appointment - Secretary of HHS
Janet NapolitanoAZD2Presidential Appointment - Secretary of Homeland Security
Tom RidgePAR2Presidential Appointment - Secretary of Homeland Security
George Wilcken RomneyMIR3Presidential Appointment - Secretary of HUD
Dirk KempthorneIDR2Presidential Appointment - Secretary of Interior
Cecil Dale AndrusIDD1Presidential Appointment - Secretary of Interior
John Arthur LoveCOR3Presidential Appointment - Director of the Office of Energy Policy
Michael Newbold CastleDER2Elected US Congress - House
James Caleb BoggsDER2Elected US Congress - Senate
Harold Everett HughesIAD3Elected US Congress - Senate
Edmund Sixtus MuskieMED2Elected US Congress - Senate
George V VoinovichOHR2Elected US Congress - Senate
Spiro Theodore AgnewMDR1Elected US Vice-President
Albert Benjamin ChandlerKYD1Appointed to US Senate
Wendell Richard AndersonMND2Appointed to US Senate
Edwin Leard MechemNMR4Appointed to US Senate
Donald Stuart RussellSCD1Appointed to US Senate
John Joseph HickeyWYD1Appointed to US Senate
John G RowlandCTR3Scandal (ethics)
James E McGreeveyNJD1Scandal (sex)
Eliot SpitzerNYD1Scandal (sex)
Harold Guy HuntALR2Resigned after felony conviction
J Fife Symington IIIAZR2Resigned after felony conviction
Nelson Aldrich RockefellerNYR4To prepare for 1976 presidential bid
Ella T GrassoCTD2Illness
Pudd'nhead PalinAKR1Bad Hair Day


'New media' Politico looks bit hypocritical like old media on access


So, Mike Allen from the Politico decided to join all the "old media" types from the White House press corps and eat free Obama-cue on the Fourth of July. And, go along with the old media hands from the press corps and not tell anybody.

Guess Politico staff can't break old WaPost habits of selling access. And, folks, it's not just the business side, it's the editorial side that sells access, too. Just in different ways.

Sarah Palin quits the Presidency she expects to win in 2012


WASILLA - Outgoing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has dropped another bombshell that will likely again shake her supporters to the core. Palin announced today that she is resigning the Presidency of the United States as of Jan. 24, 2012. Palin said the bad press she will likely receive has made it impossible for her to fulfill the job she expects to win.

"This is not politics as usual," said a smirking Palin. "I know there are plenty of real Americans out there who will help me win the 2012 Presidential election. And while I'm proud to serve, I'm afraid the negative press and potty-mouthed attacks from bloggers will force me to resign, effective shortly after I expect to win, roughly 45 months from now."

While most political pundits have questioned whether Palin is making the right decision in abandoning the White House nearly four years before she anticipates being elected President, The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol called the move "Pure genius by an amazing super maverick."

"I'll tell you what, once again, we see that Sarah Palin knows what America is all about," said Kristol. "Her pre-quitting of the Presidency will long be look forward to as a brilliant time in American history."

For her part, Palin said that she would look into other ways to serve the American public, such as serving as the center square on a revamped production of the game show "Hollywood Squares." Palin is also expected to begin hawking flakes of her skin on QVC later this month.

"I belong to America, you betcha," said Palin. "And for just three easy payments of $19.99, real Americans can own a part of me."

Palin is also expected to publish her first book later this month, as well. The book, tentatively titled "Sarah's Book of Baby Names" will include such Palin-esque names as Thump, Splat, Flap, Monkeybars, Norbert, Plug and Schwing!

Palin added that she wanted to thank those that will be campaigning for her in the future.

"For those of you that will be working hard to help me become President so that I can quit, well God Bless ya," said Palin. "Your hard work is vital and appreciated. I couldn't pre-quit the presidency if it weren't for all the hard work that you'll all eventually be doing."

In the end, Palin made it crystal clear why she was willing to give up the nation's biggest office before she actually won it.

"It's pretty insane - my staff and I spend most of our day dealing with this instead of progressing our state now. I know I promised no more "politics as usual," but this isn't what anyone had in mind for me," said Palin. "If I have learned one thing: Life is about choices!"

-WKW

Breaking** Possible Assassination Squad Ran by Cheney**


We may be about to see the lid blow off of another  Dick Cheney black operation from his star chamber. Back in March ,New York Times  Seymour Hersh  stated that Dick Cheney may have set up and orchestrated an "Executive Assassination Ring" . Here is part of that  statement

Hersh:  "Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it's called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.
Complete statement and audio here Great Conversation Event (University of Minnesota)

Today Sam Stein over at Huffington Post reported some further developments
The revelation from seven Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee that they were misled about a critical CIA program has sparked a debate that touches on the most sensitive areas of national security policy. What program, exactly, was being kept secret?
                                   ***

And in a conversation with the Huffington Post, Rep. Anna Eshoo,(D-Calif.), one of the letter's signatories, said that Panetta "stopped the program the day after he was informed." Waterboarding was ended as a practice during the Bush years

She is indicating that waterboarding had been stopped back during the Bush administration and that whatever this program was, it was stopped recently , after Panetta became CIA director and found out about it.He stopped it the next day , or in effect immediately after the shock wore off.

So what are the "significant actions" that these seven lawmakers insist were kept from Congress? Another theory being bandied about concerns an "executive assassination ring" that was allegedly set up and answered to former Vice President Dick Cheney      Huffpo Sam Stein
 
Whatever Panetta told them about stunned them.Shocking to even these lawmakers who have seen and heard just about everything, that indicates something extraordinary

Eshoo said she could not discuss what was a "highly classified . program." She did, however, note that when Panetta told House Intelligence Committee members what it was that had been kept secret, "the whole committee was stunned, even Republicans." A Republican committee member told Who Runs Gov's Greg Sargent it was something they hadn't heard before.


This is something they had not heard before, so this also indicates it was something other than Water boarding  and torture. If we take what Seymour Hearst has stated  ,who has always been reliable investigative reporter, and the statements that Stein has reported it looks like Cheney may have actually had a hit squad and used it .

EBB



EBB



When is one sure that retreat is the best option?     Could it be the sun and moon have aligned to pull me away from resolution.    I feel that to go offshore now would actually end up leaving me high and dry.    I could wait for the full moon and walk back up the beach.  I could just lie there in the tall rye grass above the storm bank with the other flotsam.   I could try and hide, dwindle away like the sand during a wind storm; nothing left but a pedestal under my feet.    I subside within; I founder.    I am lost.   I have no answer.   My little tide book tells me when to rise and when to wane, but what of those other orbits, how do they influence the rising and falling of our little seas?   Will your tears raise the flood and then swamp each into the ocean as all recede into its retreat.    I might just try and tide myself over in this little dinghy of mine.  Now all I really need is an anchor and its long chain to keep from being swept far out to sea; withdrawing off the edge of your world.


I am not sure what it is I love about the sea.    Not the rocking ground swelling waves, they make me sick with their slowly rolling my ship from side to side.   The salt?  That must be it, the salt.   We all must have a little sodium to keep our tears flowing.    The sand?  The waves on the beach rock the sand back and forth grinding into uniform grains; soft under bare summer feet; warm between our toes. 

  

I pull back, retire, give way, give ground, can you not see I have lost foresight in my hasty defeat?    I watch and wait.   You have asked me to examine this shell for some creature .   I am soon to become the crab like hermit. See here my brittle claws.   I hardly need to feel your flesh.   I will simply withdraw, the tide has left me apon this narrow stretch of what was once the love of my life.   Nigh untouchable, wrapped in seaweed; no more a face; darkness. Oceanas, please roll and pitch me to sleep. Rock me back and forth in this shallow pool. The stars both above and below tell me, be still and becalmed; the storm is yet to rage.


Storm, oh my storm! Button down; batten down; the waves began to roar along the shoal; the crushing crash of the hull; all hands abandon ship. Now my beach is strewn with tangled rigging, split spars, and sail torn. Which has failed? What is that naked form all white and puffy floating face down, sliding up, then down, with each wave. I reach down, roll it over, only to see that gulls have already had the soft tasty eyes. Oh please! Give me back my eyes.


Land ho!   


How is it I have again and again sailed too close to those shoals? With full sail I dared each gale.  To weather, round the point, almost without fail. I have foundered, sunk both captain and crew. Wrecked again and again, but why? Why have I continued to sail these desperate waters; never wide enough and never deep enough to navigate safely. Where is my harbor? Again and again I put to sea without you. I sit below in my cabin rocking, up and down, each ground swell making me more sick.   


Wherefore my first mate?  


Mutiny? 

  

Hanging there among the gallows. Who swings there? A long tailed jeager perches on its left shoulder, its beak tugging the swollen black tongue, the body pitches with the ship, swings into view, only then do I behold. I see now.  It was I !


No tongue, eyes gone, what other organ might I spare?    These hands that write and plot, what should I do without them?   Would I spare you all my suffering?   l know not why but I must share.   It is an unwritten rule!   I can no more put down this pen then ask the wind to stop it's howl or to beg the sun stay an extra hour past night fall. I am sure, I am not sure. What I search for is a pilot to guide me out of this precarious port. I have eyes still but I am blind, and my tongue too; I have her still, but being tied up has been forced to utter only base commands and orders course.   Feeling from this pen marked paper only.   

 

Does it appear I again and again grope for the receding?   Even though listing I am on a long reach for refuge. Would you lie here with me?   Could it be you are my sanctuary? I am not looking for another solitude. Share? What a strange word. I need an explanation. Life offers first its cradle then its end only; the in-between are ours to make as we dare.  I dare you!  

  

Another page.  Another search into my retreating soul. Each time I get lost in the pain of my past but closer and closer does my orbit align with truth. Should I continue to share? What is the point you ask and what joy could there be in bringing you the reader to tear? If I touch you where you dared not touch yourself, you tell me if there is, in the end, any difference. Yes, you tell me. 

 

I still reach and reach for reason regardless of the day or night.   I can not let these impressions be. I am both the father and mother of these memories. I am both brother and sister fighting  forever over recollections.   While it appears I give myself nothing but bothersome isolation; I give you freely: page after page of options.  

 

I give to you safe harbor while I ebb and ebb.


Census nominee to receive vote early next week


I spent parts of the last two weeks researching the census and the political battles surrounding it as the 2010 count approaches. I focused on the biggest and most recent controversy: the anonymous hold on Robert Groves, President Obama's nominee to lead the Census Bureau, preparing to write a post on the reason for the hold. But earlier today Roll Call revealed the senators who had placed holds on the nomination and reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would like to bring Groves up for a vote as early as this week.

The story changed instantly, but I went after the new story. This evening Reid's office confirmed to me that the senator will file for cloture, bringing Groves to a vote as early as Monday evening, and I broke the news here.

Healthcare Reform Would Be A Done Deal If We Stick To The Facts


If false and misleading ads from the private for profit health insurance companies and their cohorts were debated objectively by responsible journalists, the healthcare reform debate would be over. If Congress follows the will of the people and the facts that are readily available on the internet from reputable objective organizations, the healthcare debate would be over.

Follow my healthcare tweets at http://twitter.com/EgbertoWillies

Video

Fact:
It is mathematically impossible for a for profit private insurer to be less expensive than a public not for profit insurance giving the same benefits. It is for this reason why insurers are fighting the public option. They must convince you that basic arithmetic does not apply here. Of course it does.

Fact:
Medicare's administrative cost is between a low of 2 percent and a high of 6 percent. Private for profit insurance ranges from 16 percent to over 30% in administrative costs. In other words for every thousand dollars you pay in premiums 300 of those dollars go into the pockets of shareholders, overpaid executives, advertising and other costs. Those are dollars that could have been used to lower healthcare costs.

Fact:
US Healthcare as % of GDP: 15.3%
Canada Healthcare as % of GDP: 10%

Fact:
US Per Capita Cost of Healthcare: $6714.00
Canada Per Capita Cost of Healthcare: $3,678.00

Fact:
Government Spending on Healthcare Per Capita is 23% higher in the US than Canada.

Fact:
Canadian health outcomes are better than ours.

Basic Statistics U.S. Canada
Life Expectancy (Male)74.8    77.4
Life Expectancy (Female)           80.1    82.4
Infant Mortality/1000 live births   6.8     5.3
Obesity Rate (Male)                31.1    17.0
Obesity Rate (Female)              32.2    19.0
HC spending as % of GDP (2005)     16.0%   10.4%

Fact:
Accusations by for profit health insurers and their cohorts stating that government will take over healthcare delivery are false. It is a fact that for profit insurance today tells you which doctor you can see. It is a fact that for profit insurance tells you what medical procedure you can have. It is a fact that for profit insurance tells you which hospital you can use. It is a fact that for profit insurance tells your doctor which drugs you may be prescribed. It is a fact that for profit insurance selectively rescind your coverage if they can find away to qualify your medical condition as pre-existing. It is a fact that for profit insurance will not insure those with pre-existing conditions.

If we stick to the facts healthcare reform will be realized

Links:
Most People Support Public Option
CBS/New York Times Poll
Quinnipiac Poll

Cost of Administering Healthcare in US Versus Canada Versus All Countries
The New England Journal Of Medicine
OECD Health Data 2009
World Health Organization Core Health Indicators

Get Some Better Zingers Specter


Arlen Specter's latest attack on Joe Sestak is pretty lame. Specter is calling Sestak a hypocrite for first saying that Specter is an opportunistic politician when he didn't declare his political affiliatiation until he left the Navy. More recently, Sestak responded:

"Like Colin Powell (who was also registered as an Independent while he served), I believe that military officers should be nonpartisan," Sestak said. "I'm proud that I was an Independent during my 35 years in the Navy, and I was proud to register as a Democrat as soon as I retired from active duty."

Sestak is right here. It's not unusual for soldiers to stay as far away from politics as they can while they are in the service. Former four-star General Richard Meyers is a good example. Journalists can be this way too. Former Washington Post editor Len Downie has stated that he didn't vote because he's an objective journalist. I don't want to get into the objectivity discussion here. The point is that professionals who have to deal with politicians feel they can do their job better by not officially declaring sides. Makes sense.

public option and Organizing for America correction


Several posters (thanks Greg Greene) have pointed out that OFA's website now does permit one to express support for a public option.  This is a new option--my post was based on my experience with OFA last week.  So, I retract the post, but not the point that we have to be on our toes about expressing our support for public option, a point that Synchronicity makes very well in the comment to my original post.

Can Doctors fire their patients?


According to Doc Gurley, an Internist, doctors may opt to quit some of their patients under a pay-for-performance scheme. This happen to me for reasons other than not doing what my doctor told me I needed to do to keep myself healthy. My doctor fired me as a patient because he said he was returning to do research at UCSF Medical school.  When he told me the this I was depressed. I felt like I had developed and was developing a good patient-doctor relationship with him. I had to start all over with another primary care physician. Having a primary care physician  is a very big deal to me because I think I have a slight case of iatrophobia.

Today I have a primary care physician and I would hate to think he could fire me under this scheme.

The World Ocean and World Peace


      Most of the human race lives in misery. We are told--it may or may not be true--that the resources of the land will be insufficient to correct this, even if inequity of distribution should be radically reduced or disappear. But most of the earth--the World-Ocean--is unknown, its resources virtually untapped. The development of the oceans may well be the most urgent of all material needs; but the ocean cannot be civilized without world peace. Until the land is civilized, the sea will remain as it is.

      On the sea we travel as on deserts, wishing only to cross to the destination. On the sea we fish and fight battles. On the sea, then, we are hunters and gatherers, sometimes warriors: the most primitive stage of social evolution. We carry our industrial-age artifacts there to do our stone-age work, tools too advanced for such primitive enterprise. Our fishing fleets take fish that are too small with nets that are too fine, for mature fish have become scarce. Much-hunted whales are endangered. Life forms are disappearing. The seas are ever more polluted with our leavings.

      In a few places near the shore we farm kelp, farm shellfish, raise fish. In a few places we drill for oil and collect manganese nodules. Scientists have unraveled mysteries of the seabed and comprehend something of ocean layers, currents and ecologies. And politicians and entrepreneurs have begun to think of potential riches.

      The World-Ocean covers seventy-one percent of the earth's surface; but ocean is not only surface; it is volume, layer upon layer. All this tremendous three-dimensional space awaits mankind's civilizing hand. What wonders, what agriculture, husbandry, minerals, sources of power, will be found or created there? In this frontier things yet undreamed of will be done. Whales, dolphins and myriad other creatures await domestication. We will discover or create food plants. Imagine a field, ready for harvest, whose volume is one thousand or ten thousand or one hundred thousand cubic kilometers. We will come to understand and use the minerals of the depths. Great volumes will be set aside as nature reserves. No doubt some people will make the sea their home.

      At present, these vast areas and enormous volumes remain effectively outside our world. International law has it that, beyond territorial limits ("the Area" in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), the seas are the common heritage of all mankind; but mankind is hard put to it to claim such a heritage, for no sovereign body yet speaks for mankind with an authoritative voice. The International Seabed Authority, struggling to establish a practical jurisdiction, must seek the acquiescence of powerful states for the regulations it is able to promulgate. The U.N.'s sovereignty over the sea is weak, indeed does not exist, for the U.N. is not a government. Civilization has not come to the World-Ocean because the nations cannot agree on the way it is to arrive there. In these days, the sea is not developed, but despoiled. There is so far no coherent plan to make it an integral part of our world, no plan to civilize it. For that matter, so far as most of the world can see, there appears to be no plan to finish civilizing the land. There exists a hope or a wish, while the rulers use the marvels of science for the most evil and barbarous of practices.

      The problem of the undeveloped World-Ocean is one with the problem of the land. The world is the world.

      We need coherent world order. Mankind is trapped in a shifting, warring anarchy of independent states. There is one mankind; but this oneness has not yet crystallized in a sovereign institution that can effectively unite and govern mankind's diverse elements. That is why the oceans, and the land too, remain uncivilized. Without such sovereignty, "the common heritage of all mankind" is only a string of words, and the potential of the World-Ocean remains unknown and unrealizable. Without a peaceful, integrated world our race, on land and sea, will surely continue its present decline, its murderous wars.

      Every war is fratricidal!

      The existence of independent sovereign units gives rise to conflict. Several thousand years of tragic experience has proved that a single nation or group of nations cannot impose lasting peace, much less peace with justice; nor can persuasion, exhortation, or the simple need for it cause it to appear.

      Nothing can occur unless the conditions for its occurrence exist. A pot of water will not boil without heat, however long one waits. A pile of bricks will not become a house without a builder and a plan. And a house built on sand will not withstand the storm, whatever the real estate agent may claim. The world will have peace only when the conditions for peace are established.

      The minimum condition for world peace is this: that all the nations unite in ceding key elements of their sovereignty to a central sovereign Institution. This is what the most powerful nations have thus far refused to do, what the founding members of the United Nations Organization rejected. Peace has not come, not because the human race is incapable of it, but because the leaders of the nations have been unwilling to do what is required for it to exist.

      There have been two relatively serious moves toward peace, each after a ruinous war. The League of Nations would probably have failed even without the fatal decision of the United States, whose legislature rejected what its President had promoted and in large measure created. The United Nations Organization, with all its imperfections, has sometimes prevailed; has created numerous functioning world institutions and ameliorated or solved a number of vexing problems. Much greater than the League, it is admirable as a move toward what is needed; but the U.N. is doomed to failure in its present form, a central institution without sovereignty. It has not established world peace because it cannot.

      The United Nations Organization is like a one-armed pianist. It may perform brilliantly, but its repertoire is very limited.

      The sense that the world is one, that all mankind is a single, complex, diverse and beautiful thing, has grown ever more prominent. Protests against "globalization" arise, not out of a rejection of the fundamental oneness of the human race, but rather out of a terrible disappointment, on realizing that the people who arrogate to themselves the control of the world belong to the same bands that made fortunes on the slave trade and stole whole countries and their resources, not caring about the injustice and the misery their actions created. The protests turn out to be protests against the violation of the oneness of mankind, against the ongoing attempts to divide mankind into ruling and subject nations, races, and classes, against the contemptuous and murderous arrogance of those who claim the right to rule.

      If the horrors and disasters of two World Wars have brought us only to this place, we cannot realistically expect the world's present leaders to create the conditions for peace, although it is within their power to do it. It appears that more suffering is required.

      Events will finally force the nations to accomplish it. Some at least of the people who are alive today--or if not they, then their children or grandchildren--will see the beginning of the longed-for universal peace, the inevitable next step in human evolution. When it comes, the resources and wealth of the earth will no longer be sucked up for war and the satisfaction of greed at the expense of most of humanity. When it comes, the undiscovered material and spiritual resources of the earth will gradually reveal themselves. The whole planet will be our home.  The civilizing of the World-Ocean will take place.

      It is a terrible pity that we do not have this already and that suffering will, for now, only increase.

Burris Out In 2010


Well thank god. Roland Burris isn't going to run for reelection. It's not such big news since his polling indicated he had a steep climb to retain the senate seat. That leaves Mark Kirk as the probably Republican contender and who knows for the Democrats. Maybe Chris Kennedy? We'll see.

I actually had a crazy thought today: What about Illinois Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart? You may recall Dart as that Sheriff from around Chicago who got fed up with evicting people from their houses. Yup, that's the guy I'm talking about. In the process he also stood up to banks who had been critical of him for not enforcing the law. In short, Dart disagreed.

So basically, this sheriff stands up to banks, he's a Democrat, he's popular, and he's a law abiding citizen. That's a pretty rare combination in Chicago and Illinois and a pretty appealing resume these days.

Woman Jumps From State Office Building In Juneau


Woman Jumps from State Office Building in Juneau

This was just tweeted from the Juneau Empire.

Not to make light, but it is extremely strange to have people suicid-ing in the middle of summer in Alaska.

Local tax policy


I hope to start a discussion about tax policy on the local level--county and city/town/village. My first few posts concerned this topic, and I think it should get more play. After all, "all politics is local [attributed Thomas O'Neill, Sr., Tip O'Neill's father]."

I have been teaching a course on tax ethics (no giggling, please), to graduate students for a few years now. One unit deals with how a professional's public expounding of any particular tax policy impacts his or her ethical requirements to the client. While thinking about this topic, I distilled tax policy to this formula--not particularly insightful, but nevertheless ignored by many politicians:

Public Expenditures = revenue + deficit.

I review some elementary algebra, to the effect that one equation with three variables has an infinite number of solutions. Then I break down the variables as follows:

  • The deficit equals the amount politically expedient at the time. For state and local situations, the deficit is set by law to equal zero.
  • Revenue equals the sum of tax revenue plus fees (and federal or state aid).

I break down tax revenue in terms of public policy regarding the allocation of the tax burden over society.

  • Finally, public expenditures are a matter of political compromise and expediency.

Applying these rules, local expenditures must equal local revenues. That's so simple that it seems like a waste of time to type it all out, but it's ignored by politician after politician. I will resume from this point in the next day or so.

--Dean L. Surkin
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