Do the rich and powerful "own" both parties?

[Torie]

Jay Cost thinks so. What do you think?  By the way, he missed the pension plan scandal (probably the biggest tax loophole out there for high income earners), contributions of appreciated art to charity (you get the deduction on the appreciation, but don't have to pay the capital gains tax),  life insurance and single premium deferred annuities (which have tax deferral and tax forgiveness aspects on the income earned on the cash surrender value, plus an estate tax dodge to boot), and that is before we get to all the subsidies you are now paying me to be an absentee landlord farmer now - all administered by a phalanx of bureaucrats. And I am just getting started. Cheers.

[Torie]

Also it's amusing how Cost equates urban machines with being for the 'rich and powerful' when in fact the machines, corrupt as they were, existed to allow those who would otherwise be shut out of the system a foot into the system. Someone once pointed out that just because the US doesn't have rampant bribery of low level bureaucrats like police officers and customs officials, it doesn't mean the US isn't corrupt. It only means that the rich exclusively benefit from corruption. Low-level corruption at least allows the poor to benefit from corruption as well.

Ah, equal opportunity corruption. I hadn't thought of that one before. 

[Torie]

It's mildly amusing how Cost article topics alternate between the Democrats having lost support of the voters for being too liberal and the Dems having lost support for being too in thrall of corporate America. I'm not sure what his prescription for the party's ailment is.

He also makes a major error in assuming that progressives are perfectly ok with the Dems being corporate shills.

Everybody somewhat informed no matter what their ideology should be unhappy with their parties, be it Pub or Dem. Ideology in fact all too often gets in the way of clear pragmatic thinking.  Sometimes the left has the "right" solution, and sometimes the "right," is closer to the mark, and sometimes they are both wrong.  JMO.

[Torie]

It's mildly amusing how Cost article topics alternate between the Democrats having lost support of the voters for being too liberal and the Dems having lost support for being too in thrall of corporate America. I'm not sure what his prescription for the party's ailment is.

He also makes a major error in assuming that progressives are perfectly ok with the Dems being corporate shills.

first Nym90 non-administrative post in years?

Nah, I have induced Nym to respond "non-administratively" to my little rants 3 or 4 times in the past two or three months. God, I'm good.

[Torie]

Tell me: How many Republicans want to cut the biggest budget killer, the military? Lower taxes and more bombs, that's a great way to balance the budget.

A considerable number, but not by as much as the current default law requires. Btw, medical subsidies is the biggest budget killer going away, as presumably everyone agrees, no? Another thing ballooning the deficit is our sluggish economy, cutting revenues and upping transfer payments obviously. And we have a problem there. Without a creditable way out of the box deficit wise, if the economy improves a bit with banks starting to lend more, that will increase the money supply (fractionalized banking), and all those Treasuries the government bought to replace the money supply removed when the banks stopped lending much, will need to be resold, and guess what?  That is going to push up interest rates as the Treasury bond supply balloons, and quality concerns haunt these government debt instruments, which in turn will wound or kill  the recovery in its crib (and itself push up the deficit even more as the cost of debt carry ratchets up).

We're trapped guys without a clear plan to clean up the fiscal books. This is not an ideological exercise, but rather a mathematical one. There is no escape.

[Torie]

Back to Franzl's point, don't you think $2 billion a week (the amount we're roughly spending in Afghanistand and Iraq) extra in the coffers would help stop the bleeding?

Sure (assuming that is the number), but it is not going to go down to zero, so it will be less than 100 billion a year (not all that much really), and that savings has already been "spent" as it were anyway (incorporated into the "budget" which still is a fail).

[Torie]

Slower growth is one cost of high debt carry, but in the case of the US, draining out the currency the US issued is destined to increase real interest rates as too many T Bills/Bonds chase too few buyers and/or there is a perception of greater default and/or currency depreciation risk which will exacerbate the cost of the debt carry, further truncating growth or leading to another economic dip.  So I guess what I am saying is that the cost to economic growth of failing to install confidence in US budgetary policies going forward will probably be higher than what would normally be the case for a given level of debt, and with a somewhat higher risk of a potential sharp currency collapse risk ala Greece, rather than just prolonged stagnation.