Talk Elections

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/07/31/gop_lawmaker_says_his_party_is_too_extreme.html (http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/07/31/gop_lawmaker_says_his_party_is_too_extreme.html)

Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) blasted the Republican Party in an interview with the Syracuse Post-Standard, saying his party is "too willing to accommodate its most extreme members."

Said Hanna: "I have to say that I'm frustrated by how much we -- I mean the Republican Party -- are willing to give deferential treatment to our extremes in this moment in history."

He added: "We render ourselves incapable of governing when all we do is take severe sides... If all people do is go down there and join a team, and the team is invested in winning and you have something that looks very similar to the shirts and the skins, there's not a lot of value there."

Right......Dems don't operate that way!  ::)

Well, obviously not, Grumps - they pretty much operate the opposite way: the moderates in the party are catered to and the extremists (what few there are) are almost completely ignored.

Pity that Mr. Hanna did not condescend to give us any specifics of his alleged ineffectual extremism of the Pubs.

How about the no taxes pledge?

Or the War on Women.

Or the continued denial of man-made climate change.

Oh, I am sure that you could come up with some examples sbane. I was just wondering what Hanna considered "extreme."  Anyway, the tax thing is all mixed up and conflated between revenues, rates, dynamic versus static scoring, and on and on. A majority of Pubs in the compromise deal would sign off on more revenues vis a vis slashing deductions as opposed to rate hikes. It is kind of easy to yammer about "starving the beast" until you lock yourself in a dark room, and read polls that a majority of Pubs don't want any Medicare cuts, or SS cuts, or much of anything else that might inconvenience them. So the slaying of the beast chat is just for rhetorical purposes, as opposed to a serious policy stand. They are not any better at math than the Dems.

The other prong, where the Pubs are far more sound than the Dems, is the means testing of entitlements, which the Dems shy away from for reasons I will address in due course in a little essay that I plan to write, and bury somewhere around here.

The guy who mentioned climate change should have a chat with snowguy. The "war on women" sling is a Dem sound byte. It came about because of this notion that contraceptive care should have no co-pay unlike most other forms of care, coming out of the mouth of a law student who will soon be making 150K per year. It was just bizarre.

I'm glad to hear this, Torie.  But, try as I might, I can't find anything about the slashing deductions part in Mitt's policy agenda.  He gives me the impression that he wants to lower marginal rates to somewhere around where effective rates are now and then let everybody keep the bonanza of deductions too.  Those Pubs willing to sign off on trading rate cuts for deductions should have a chat with him!

http://www.mittromney.com/issues/tax

lulz @ "the war on _____" 

I have heard Romney say he does not want to cut government revenues, and hopes to increase them with a more robust economy. No, he has not said he wants to increase revenues net with static scoring. I don't expect him to during the campaign. Unpleasant painful little truths are not spoken about much in campaigns, because politicians tend to have a courage and candor gap. But that is what will happen. It has to absent a consensus on slashing entitlements more severely, which just isn't there - not even, as I noted, among Pubs.

On average, Democrats have more moderate and actually tried to work with Republicans when they controlled the House. The same cannot be said for Republicans currently. You can't explain away everything by bringing up Democrats.

As if Booker and others who deviate an inch aren't whipped into shape by Emmanuel or Axelrod... it is the same in both parties!

I hate the pubs maybe more than the Dems, Dr.....but both suck and operate in similar fashion in my view.

Snowguy is incredibly smart, and he could probably out-debate me, but he is an outlier. The vast majority of published studies and experts in the field accept that the earth is indeed warming and that it is primarily driven by humans.

Regarding the relative extremism of the two parties in Congress:

Note that the Democratic Caucus's majority on the Senate Committee on Energy and National Resources is entirely at the whim of Joe Manchin, who disagrees with Democratic energy policy to such an extent that he literally shot a copy of the Cap and Trade Bill with a rifle for a campaign commercial. I honestly doubt that Congressional Republican would ever allow a member of their caucus to so overtly and publicly distance themselves from the party in such a manner, let alone hand that member the implicit authority to effectively veto any laws being considered on the topic he disagrees most with the party line.

Splendid, but here is the rub. We don't know for sure if humans are doing the warming, we don't know if they are, how much they are doing, we don't know if the warming will be good or bad economically that the humans do, if they do any, and we don't know the cost of changing course, and whether it is even possible to change course. Beyond that, it seems silly for the US and Europe to go on this green crusade, while China and India massively expand their own carbon footprint, swamping and then some whatever marginal changes in fossil fuel consumption occur in Europe and the US. In short, we know so little (with cooked data and expanding heat islands and so forth causing us to know even less than we thought we knew), that throwing trillions upon trillions at it, often achieving nothing or next to nothing, other than enriching the politically connected,  seems quite nutter to me. As a lagniappe, I recall snowguy mentioning that some hole or other lacunae in the atmosphere or something, is inconsistent with the global warmists little models as to how CO2 is supposed to fry us up.

I am very proud not to be a greenie. :)

We will see. Of course there is no way to fiscal solvency without tax hikes and some entitlements/military cuts. Even cutting all deductions isn't some panacea since it could negatively impact the economy with a prominent example being the housing market.

Remember when the Koch Brothers and bunch of other climate skeptics funded the only credible source of denial (Richard Mueller) who then proceeded to confirm the worst fears of climatologists with the caveat that his findings predicted worse results than their climate models? The consensus is unanimous: anthropogenic global warming is real and is already creating severe problems. On top of the huge droughts that have been afflicting us over the past few years, southern Russia has consistently had precipitation problems and India is facing problems with their monsoon (as predicted).

You can try to wiggle your way out of this issue all you want because the results seem far-fetched and damaging to your ideology but the verdict is in: global warming isn't going away. If we put this issue off for another decade, the damage will be done and the positive feedback loop will run away from us. Minute amounts of methane trapped in the permafrost of the arctic circle are already beginning to be released, over ten years ahead of schedule.

Torie is ignoring the models and the findings:
()

Considering that we are in an el nino phase currently, it shouldn't be surprising if the monsoon isn't doing so well over India. Or let's take the drying of the western United States which will occur over the next decade or two. People will of course blame global warming while the PDO goes negative.

Climate change is an empirical issue, not an ideological one. Aside from his little "ideological" dig, TheDeadFlagBlues made his points well, but ignored the issue of the rapidly increasing Indian and Chinese carbon footprint that will continue. So the experiment we are undergoing will continue, and with more CO2 in the mix, not less. There is no escape from that. The case involving public policy regarding the issue of climate change, needs to revolve around the marginal utility of throwing trillions and trillions at the issue. In the end, what change can be expected that makes that "investment" worth it? 

[insert relevant P. J. O'Rourke quote here]

This is why climate change is the most difficult public policy issue that has ever confronted the post-war consensus: it requires global cooperation at a nearly impossible level (the tragedy of the commons will sink all of us in the end), progresses at a snail's pace as far as the public is concerned so it will be a secondary issue until it's too late and it's tailor-made to exacerbate class conflict when discussed in the public sphere (reductions in carbon output hit the working class hard in their pocket book while they're also the most likely to be skeptical of the existence of global warming). I think we're doomed no matter what actions we strive to take.

At the same time, I'm disturbed by crass lies uttered by countless Republican politicians that claim that global warming doesn't exist. It's the most shocking example of the GOP's existence as a band of uneducated zealots who are unfit to govern. No mature conservative party acts in this manner.

The problem of getting the developing economies to get on board is one reason why I favor using a carbon tax instead of cap and trade as part of any approach to global warming.

First off, it minimizes the overall economic impact, provided carbon taxes are used to replace other existing taxes.  Secondly, it provides additional economic impetus to the development of low-carbon technologies that could be adopted directly by developing countries, thereby mitigating their carbon spikes.

What Hanna says became true for both parties, but especially - Republicans. As of late it seems to me that they could change their name to something like Constitution party without changing a bit in program and candidates. In some cases (especially - in the South) their candidates are even to the right of "constitutionalists"

Is this thread about extremists or the environment?

He is probably burnishing his credentials as a mavericky, pragmatist for the general election now that the primary is over.

Of course, Richard Hanna endorsed Jon Huntsman.

Define "Republican Party".  I think the GOP leadership is trying to limit the far right candidates, but in states where the Tea Party is strong, they really don't have any say.  It's not like the party is accomodating them, rather they're being forced in by extremely dedicated people who are willing to give their all.

Only a hardcore denier would reject the Richard Muller study.

It's not an untrue statement, to say the least - parties of damn-near-theocratic True Scotsman moral guardians don't tend to have the best governance record. I'm glad at least someone on the right of the House has the balls to admit it, although polarization is hardly limited to one side of the field.


P.S. I find the amusing part of this to be that Hanna is, strictly speaking, more conservative than most of the Reps we have loitering about the House, what with his opposition to the PATRIOT Act and his disinclination toward letting the federal government expand into uteri.

A statement that is about 1/4 right. The world has been warming for centuries. That warming is likely due to increases in CO2 concentration. The primary culprit is the percession of the earth. Periodically, the tilt of the earth brings rains to Northern Africa. The resultant grasslands hold large amounts of carbon in both the soil, and in the plants themselves. The current tilt of the earth has brought drought to Northern Africa. This has released all the carbon in the plants and blowing soil. This natural variation in atmospheric CO2 is well documented.

Sure, people are doing to the Amazon basin by choice what nature is doing the Northern Africa. So, man has played some role. That is the entirety of the "consensus" about "anthropomorphic global warming." The actual claims made by the proponents of "global warming" go well beyond that "consensus." For instance, their models about expected temperature and sea levels are breaking down.

Nor, can I let pass without comment your the claims about "severe" effects of "global warming." The earth has been in a cooling trend for a million years. It survived quite nicely for millions of years before the recent cooling trend. Industrialization occured during a particularly good stretch of weather. That probably wasn't an accident. That was probably a necessary condition for that industrialization.  If the weather worsens it is because good weather doesn't last forever.

"End of world" hysteria isn't confined to fundamentalist Christian pastors with radio programs. 2012 theorists are pedaling the same bunk. So are global warming proponents.

Since it fails to address what is happening in the Amazon basin, it is doomed to failure.

The current national debt is over 15 trillion, with unfunded liabilities even larger. The "extremists" are the folks whom believe that we can make the current projectory work if we only raise taxes and add another government program here and there.

The extremists are the ones who thing we can solve that problem solely with increasing revenue or decreasing spending. And the super extremists are the ones who refuse any compromise and take a my way or the highway approach.

There has been an upward bias in the size of government, and taxes. That trend cannot go on forever. Eventually, it ends in one of two ways: the people can't pay any more taxes, or the people won't pay any more taxes. The "extremists" are the folks whom prefer following the path to former. The sensible position is the latter. Since the government is going to have to accept that there is a limit to revenue, it might as well be today's level of revenue.

Why?

Always amazing to see people engaging with BS Bob. This is the man who believes that there is, indeed, a War On Christmas and that it is also a Jewish Conspiracy. That's all.

You are the one posting "conspiracy theories." While, depending on what you mean by the words "War on Christmas," there is a concerted attack on the public recognition of the Christmas holiday, it is figment of your, perhaps, paranoid imagination that I believe in a "Jewish Conspiracy," whatever that means.

I don't even know what you mean by "Jewish Conspiracy." For instance, when Jonathan Pollard accepted cash from the Israeli government to turn over highly classified information that was "a conspiracy among some Jews to commit treason." It wasn't a "Jewish Conspiracy." Ethnic groups can't enter into conspiracies, only people.

Why not?

The basic choice is between biting the bullet and doing it now, and, putting it off to a latter date.

Sure, it is theoretically possible to either raise, or cut taxes, from their current level and freeze them forever at that level, but, that's not how humans operate. In practise, the decision to raise taxes will only result in a debate later in which the tax-raisers will claim the underlying facts are the same as they were in 2012.

I really don't think the argument will use 2012 as its touchstone.

The fact that you think taxes can or should be frozen forever at any given level says an awful lot about you, Bob.

I'm not responding to Bob per se but I've noticed that all climate change deniers say that the main contributor behind increase carbon emissions are natural factors. No serious climatologists has agreed with this assertion: it's 100% clear that humans are responsible for the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's so obvious that you don't even need to look at the data to understand imo (although by all means, you should). Get real.

Pretty much. Only someone purposefully naive wouldn't believe in climate change after Muller's study.

While there are always stragglers, climate change denial has evolved and I think will soon move to a new level. First they denied it was happening, then they agreed it was happening but said humans didn't cause it. The next step is to accept that humans are causing it but say it will cost too much to do anything about it and trying to change things will just destroy the world economy so just accept it and move on.

True, the arguments against doing something about climate change are kind of inconsistent.

1. What climate change?
2. OK, there's climate change, but it's natural causes
3. OK, humans caused climate change but it's too expensive to do anything about.

For some reason, the people in these categories don't argue with each other, but only with people who say that we should do something about climate change.

The fact that you are incredulous about the notion of the electorate saying, "Enough, we are choosing not to pay higher taxes!," just means you are one of the people whom has to be politically defeated, else taxes will rise to the point that people can't pay them any more.

One of those two limits is going to be reached. It might as well be the electorate choosing not to pay higher taxes.

Hanna is definitely no Jacob Javitts, but I could see him getting primaried because he didn't drink enough kool-aide.

Well, the taxes aren't raised right now, as much than I know.

A couple of points about the graph above. First, the temperatures before 1850 are wild-ass guesses, and the black line is merely kinda the center of a series of wild-ass guesses. The next fifty years aren't particularly well documented either. Only the twentieth century is well documented. Since the temperature trend of the twentieth century is pretty uniform, it is fairly easy to "model." That doesn't prove the validity of the model since the model is based on past data points. The validity of the model is tested by its predictive value going forward. The reality is that in the last few years the model has broken down. Temperature increases predicted by the model simply have not occurred.

With respect, I don't think you understand which part of your argument it is that I'm incredulous about.

Again, my point seems to have completely eluded you. I'm fairly confident that if the electorate took the decision to prefer choosing not to pay any higher taxes rather than waiting until they are unable to pay any higher taxes many in the political class would take the attitude that this is just a phase that the electorate is going through and that they need merely wait them out before raising taxes yet again. The electorate has to take this into account.

Either taxes really reach a political limit, or it is subject to renegotiation.  If the electorate continues to renegotiate with the political class, taxes will inevitably rise to the point that the citizenry simply cannot pay more. Again, I am arguing that the electorate choosing a limit for the political class is the rational political choice. If the electorate doesn't stick that political limit then it simply isn't a limit.

Uh, no they are not "wild-ass" guesses. There is a very secure methodology that is based around a variety of factors: tree rings, ice cores, glacial areas etc. You don't know what you're talking about.

Well, it's the Boob we are talking about.

Oh, I see what's going on here. You're positing a form of class struggle ('electorate' vs. 'political class' over taxes, which the former always wants as low[/flat?] as possible and the latter always wants as high[/progressive?] as possible) which doesn't actually bear much resemblance to reality at all, although to be absolutely fair it's somewhat more sensible than some other dialectics I've seen people come up with. You don't appear to view the dynamic as one in which taxes are raised and lowered according to real or perceived macroeconomic utility and such policies are argued to the public based upon either their merits or common rhetoric (you likewise don't seem to view taxation as a macroeconomic policy choice of any kind so much as some complicated form of embezzlement, which may explain your apparent inability to understand the import of the fact that income tax rates have been relatively low for several decades now).

Okay, I got your point and understand exactly what was so baffling to me about it. Thank you.

Apparently, you can't even read your own graph. The graph clearly shows the 95% confidence level for the early years varying from 7.5 C to 9.5C. What science has to say about average global temperatures during that time frame is, "We are 95% certain that it was between 7.5-9.5C." That is to say they don't really know for sure.

What you are claiming is akin to taking a scientific political poll of fifty voters and representing it as an accurate reflection of the electorate, never mind the poll comes with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 15%.

Sorry, you simply didn't get it. The size of government at all levels has grown consistently over the last century precisely because government has internal biases towards growth. The natural progression of such a system is for taxes to rise until the electorate is no longer capable of paying more taxes. The best way to change that bias is not from within the system. The best way to change that bias is for the electorate to place a limit to that growth, and stick to that limit. I reject just about every buzzword you have assigned to me as examples of your fundamental inability to put aside your ideological blinders to  observe the objective world as it actually exists.

As to your claim as to taxes being "relatively low for several decades" I would merely refer you to the "tax freedom day" which is calculated by comparing total income against total taxes at every level of government. It simply hasn't shown the trend you have claimed.

Okay, so you see taxation as some sort of tumorous growth, not some sort of embezzlement. Too bad the rest of what you're saying has no basis in reality because 'size of government' isn't a particularly meaningful measure except in the context of the nonexistent class struggle that you keep talking about.

I'm aware of Tax Freedom Day. The averages that it comes out with are consistently misinterpreted for use as talking points and it doesn't do what you claim it does because it measures capital gains tax but not capital gains. It also hasn't moved outside of a relatively narrow belt since the 1960s, which kind of puts the lie to your quixotic notion of the tax burden inexorably spreading like mesothelioma or the apostolic succession, doesn't it?

I have been referring, of course, to the tax burden on any given actual flesh-and-blood American, not the undifferentiated Frankfurt School-esque masses that seem to interest you more.

Yes, I think someone may have had some polling done and realised that he wasn't doing so well with moderates/independents, or some such.

Hanna's said stuff like this before, though.

I think Hanna is a genuine moderate.

Of course the GOP is too extreme/incapable of governing.

That's what happens when an ideology that is cynically hostile to public service takes over a major political party.

http://www.examiner.com/article/gop-congressmen-criticize-their-party-s-failure-to-compromise

We can assign blame to both parties if we want, and it's definitely true there is blame to go around, but Republicans collectively suck more. At least moderate Democrats aren't purged out of the party, even if the majority of the party isn't interested in entitlement reform.

Well, since Ronald Reagan the average American has been brought into this neoliberal nationalist folklore and of of course the Republicans are seeing how far they can run with it. Barack Obama has been very peculiar about getting a lot done in this environment but not changing it. I suppose, in a way, he is like Nixon 2.0 and in a way this is a lot like the early 70s where one party is going off the deep end and the other is just begining to get its act together...or it could be like WWI where the out party simply got lucky because of some crises in leadership and that when things start to get better, the establishment will be roaring back with such a vengance that its excesses will cause a problem that is so pervasive that the other party will become more than just a protest vote or a short term solution.

I'm guessing it will be 1) rederegulating the Healthcare System and causing another deregulation bubble, 2) the final collapse of the student loan bubble as more 20somethings still cant find work after having to retrain after their first dog didn't hunt (the first two are basically the 20s), 3) a neoconservative or nationalist  administration gets us into a war that escalates or at least can't easily be won or 4) there is a period of miscalculated forced cultural engineering . (the latter are basically the 60s...but 4 could just as easily apply to the 20s)

First of all, may I suggest that you cease trying to characterize my position since you have shown a fundamental inability to read correctly what I have written. I have repeated noted that government has an internal bias towards growth, and that end point of that growth is either taxes rising to the point people won't pay any more or can't pay any more. And, I have consistently noted that that one of biases towards government growth is corruption: marginal increases in spending creates opportunities for the political class to take graft in the forms of campaign contributions, future consideration such as lobbying jobs, and, in the case of Duke Cunningham, outright theft. So, I have characterized government as both as a tumor and, as you put it, a mechanism for "embezzlement."

I am stunning at the level of denial in your claim, "'...size of government' isn't a particularly meaningful measure..." because we were referring to total governmental spending. The total number of dollars spent by government at all levels isn't just a "meaningful measure" of government spending, it is the best metric.

As to Tax Freedom Day, whether, or not, it has been "misrepresented," in some circumstances, I will simply note that it measures totals taxes paid versus total income derived. In response to the claim that, "taxes have been relatively low for several decades," it is an entirely accurate "representation" of taxes, unless, of course, you wish to suggest radical changes in income have distorted the ratio.

Your formulation "it measures capital gains tax but not capital gains" is simply wrong. The correct formulation is "it measures capital gains and capital gains tax, but not deferred capital gains and deferred capital gains tax." So what? Are you claiming deferred capital gains/taxes have radically changed over the past several decades?

The graphs you can find http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/charts.html show that total government spending has doubled in less than fifteen years. No matter how mocking your tone, government seems to be growing at a geometrical rate. What we know for sure is that your claim "taxes have been relatively low for several decades" is plain wrong.

Since you claim to reject macro analysis in favor of  analyzing "flesh-and-blood" people, would you care to elaborate exactly what your claim is about the tax rate of "flesh-and-blood" people, and why you believe that their taxes "have been relatively low for several decades?"

Well, at equal tax rates, the government revenues and spending should both increase, given the inflation. The wages are also increasing.

They certainly aren't "wild-ass guesses," but on the other hand, I wouldn't call the methodology of forming climatological records based on historical biological/chemical data to be "secure".  There's a lot of assumption that goes into those methods, and factors other than temperature can affect whatever it is that we're basing temperature off of as well.

Bob, the problem isn't necessarily that your numbers are wrong on their own terms. The problem is that you're missing the point because you don't seem to be able to distinguish between different social classes, except when they're social classes that you made up, or between different systems of government, or between different types of spending, except when they're differences that Grover Norquist made up. The way to shift the burden on people of flesh and blood is to shift the burden, not to ruthlessly slash services.