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Senators to lose sleep

Monday, July 16, 2007

Some time ago I suggested that the Democrats call the Republicans bluff and make them stand and deliver on their filibuster threats. It looks like Harry Reid has taken exactly that step.

Forcing his Republican colleagues to put up or shut up on the notion of an up-or-down vote, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) just moments ago announced that he will immediately file a cloture motion on the Reed-Levin troop redeployment bill and, if Republicans follow through with a filibuster, will place the Senate in a prolonged all-night session Tuesday to force a true continuation of debate.

This is a great first step. Just as important is that the Democrats speak with one voice on this issue.

Reid has chosen to draw the line on the Reid-Levin troop redeployment measure. Personally, I think Reid should have made them filibuster the Webb amendment, which would have required mandatory troop down time of two years for every year in combat. It’s something that would have been easier to frame, and it’s something many of them would have felt it necessary to vote for if they were forced to vote.

No matter. It’s good that the Democrats are trying to break the cycle whereby filibusters have been effective tools for the Republicans, who have used them without consequence, while the Democrats have retreated at the first mention of “obstructionism” or the argument that something “deserves an up or down vote”. The Democrats have failed to play tit for tat and have paid for it.

Now, they have to stick to this and make the Republicans talk for as long as it takes to get them to back down. If this is merely a symbolic gesture, it will only encourage further misbehavior.

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Getting to No

Monday, July 16, 2007

There are times when one wonders why we have come to the point where we are sometimes unable to just say no.

Here in Groton a developer has been building yet another tacky looking hotel, scheduled for completion in 2008. Halfway through construction he asks the town for a tax break.

Kiran Parekh, managing partner of Groton Hospitality, who also owns the Hampton Inn on Long Hill Road, said in a letter to the town that the company needs time to “ramp up and stabilize” the hotel operation, as meetings and conferences are planned in advance.

It’s patently clear that Mr. Parekh found out too late that the Town handed out a tax break to the Marriot as an incentive to get it to do what it was going to do anyway, so he figured it was worth asking that he be given an incentive to do what he’d already done.

I assume that ultimately the answer will be “no”, but should there be any doubt? Parenthetically, as the article points out, a similar need to “ramp up” justification was made in support of the Marriot project, which made the “argument that it takes time to build up business for a full-blown conference facility”. Has anyone ever seen the numbers to verify that the claim was true? And isn’t the problem far worse for a non mega-corporation entepeneur, e.g., the long a-building nursery on Flanders Road that is struggling through its initial years without, I’m sure, any tax break at all. Only the bigger pigs can make their way to the trough.

Double parenthetically, if we’re going to give tax breaks, why give them to people in the business of creating low pay dead end jobs? Have we no Wal-Marts?

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Newport Kite Festival

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Yesterday, (July 14th) my wife, sister and I headed to Newport for a mini-family reunion at Brenton Point State Park.

As it happens, the same winds that make Narragansett Bay an ideal yachting destination also make it an ideal destination for the humbler pastime of kiting, and, by a happy coincidence, our family picnic coincided with the 2007 Newport Kite Festival. We picnicked in the midst of the festival. The downside was that all the good (shady) locations were taken, the upside was that we got to see all manner of kites.

I know nothing of the finer points. I gather from some things said on the PA system that for reasons unclear box kites are out of fashion at the moment. I am not really quite sure how some of these contraptions, which often look like balloons, qualify as kites, but no matter, they lent an air of color and magic to the scene, which really enhanced our pleasure.

I’ve posted a few pictures, that you can view by clicking here or at the link at the upper left hand corner of the home page. Here’s one I especially liked, a kite boat that looks quite dramatic against the sky.

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The Devil defers to a better man

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Seen on a bumper on our way to Newport yesterday:

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Friday night music

Friday, July 13, 2007

Neil Young makes a suggestion:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4kTnP5VJ1k[/youtube]

The video is more than a year old, so many of Bush’s impeachable offenses still lay before him.

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All we need is Common Sense

Friday, July 13, 2007

A few days I argued that the Democrats could appeal to the visceral emotions of voters, as Drew Westen advocates and still make reasoned arguments. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, for there’s nothing that says you can’t make an impassioned argument that is consistent with reason.

I’m listening to a biography of Tom Paine these days, and it came to mind that Paine is a perfect example of someone who was able to appeal to both reason and emotion. Common Sense was brilliantly argued, and part of its effectiveness lay in the difficulty Paine’s opponents had in answering his arguments. But the pamphlet was brilliantly effective for another reason: Paine spoke to the common man in his own language, giving voice to inchoate resentments that seethed below the surface but had not been articulated so effectively before. He said very little that was new, but he said it in a way that was the opposite of the dispassionate, convoluted mode in which his contemporaries had been taught to write and argue. Before his pamphlet came out, anyone advocating Independence was a wild eyed radical; within weeks of its publication Independence was an unstoppable idea. Like master politicians and manipulators today, Paine knew how to frame an issue, but he stayed faithful to reason and intellectual honesty.

Reading it now, in the age of content free sound bites, we might easily miss the appeal to emotion that is embedded in Paine’s prose. But his audience didn’t. Maybe Michael Moore is our Tom Paine (he does strike fear in the hearts of the Tories), but things are bad. These days, one Tom Paine is not enough.

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Outrage fatigue closing in on the tax front-what else is new

Friday, July 13, 2007

Life is tough for pundits like Paul Krugman. Yesterday’s outrage seems mild by comparison with today’s. If you write your column a day or two ahead of deadline you risk writing about yesterday’s scandal.

Case in point, today Krugman takes the Democrats to task for slowly walking away from mandating fair taxation of hedge fund managers. The hedge fund crowd has taken the position that their earned income is capital gains, and they have, so far, gotten away with it:

The effect of this redefinition is that income that should be considered by normal standards to be ordinary income taxed at a 35 percent rate is treated as capital gains, taxed at only 15 percent instead. So fund managers get to pay a low tax rate that is supposed to provide incentives to risk-taking investors, even though they aren’t investors and they aren’t taking risks.

For example, the typical hedge-fund manager has a 2-and-20 contract — that is, he gets a fee equal to 2 percent of the funds under management, plus 20 percent of whatever his fund earns. It’s not exactly straight salary, but none of this income comes from putting his own wealth at risk. Except for the fact that he might make a billion dollars a year, he resembles a waitress whose income depends on a mix of wages and tips, or a salesman who lives on a mix of salary and commissions, more than he resembles an entrepreneur who sinks his life savings into a new business.

Outrageous? Yes, but mild compared to this from the front page of the very paper in which Krugman’s column appeared:

The Blackstone Group, the big buyout firm, has devised a way for its partners to effectively avoid paying taxes on $3.7 billion, the bulk of what it raised last month from selling shares to the public.

Although they will initially pay $553 million in taxes, the partners will get that back, and about $200 million more, from the government over the long term.

That’s right. These hedge fund guys just can’t get motivated to pull down billions a year if they have to pay a whopping 15% in income tax. Without us yokels subsidizing them, they might not invest other people’s money at all, and then where would we be? As Abu Gonzalez might say, this new scam renders outrage at the capital gains dodge somewhat “quaint”.

ADDENDUM: There is some good news. No less a corporate coddler than Hillary Clinton has grabbed the hedge fund tax issue to burnish her credentials with us little people:

Senator Clinton, speaking at a rally in New Hampshire, called for ending a “glaring inequity” that allows investment managers in certain partnerships to take large amounts of their compensation in the form of performance fees or “carried interest,” which is taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rate rather than at income tax rates as high as 35 percent.

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Tea: the magic elixir

Thursday, July 12, 2007

A link from the Seminal directs us to this article at the BBC News, in which we find that tea is healthier than water. Those who know me know that I drink vast quantities of tea. (By the way, did you know that Connecticut has a large number of excellent sources of quality teas, including my favorite Special Teas, from out of Stratford). I was delighted to learn that my favorite vice is in fact good for me. According to Dr Carrie Ruxton of Kings College London, tea:

Does not dehydrate, as is commonly believed, but in fact replaces lost fluids.

Protects against heart disease and some cancers.

Contains polyphenol antioxidants that help prevent cell damage.

Contains antioxidants, which everyone knows are great things. Without them, we couldn’t feel good about eating chocolate and drinking wine.

Protects against tooth plaque and potentially tooth decay.

Strengthens bones.

Some might say this is all too good to be true. Alas, those cynics might be right:

The Tea Council provided funding for the work. Dr Ruxton stressed that the work was independent.

Ah well, I can believe what I want to believe.

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Joe Courtney on Iraq

Thursday, July 12, 2007

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfpUydBKqYg[/youtube]

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NY Firefighters take on Giuliani

Thursday, July 12, 2007

The New York Times published an article on the New York Firefighters video piece on Rudy Giuliani. Here’s the video itself. You wonder, sometimes, how people like Giuliani manage to sleep.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaCYEEO-58I[/youtube]

By the way, the Times, along with a number of other media outlets, somehow forgot to mention that “Richard Shierer, a former firefighter who was commissioner of the city’s Office of Emergency Management on Sept. 11”, who defended Giuliani, is “a senior vice president at Giuliani Partners LLC, a consulting firm established by Giuliani, who is still listed as the firm’s chairman and chief executive officer”. No use confusing us with the facts.

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