Time to be Sane Adults on Taxing and Spending

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a non-partisan organization that basically does audits and analyses for Congress, recently released a report that stated, in essence, that hard choices on taxing and spending need to be made sooner rather than later to prevent a contraction that could harm the very very very slowly rebounding economy. As reported by USA Today, at the end of this year the "Bush tax cuts" are set to expire after they were extended when the original sunset clause kicked in and $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, agreed to in last summer's debt ceiling negotiations, will be triggered. In our current economic climate, as seen in Europe, such austerity measures could have a significant impact on the country's precarious recovery. The CBO's prescription, which many economists (and this non-economist) agree with is:

Or, if policymakers wanted to minimize the short-run costs of narrowing the deficit very quickly while also minimizing the longer-run costs of allowing large deficits to persist, they could enact a combination of policies: changes in taxes and spending that would widen the deficit in 2013 relative to what would occur under current law but that would reduce deficits later in the decade relative to what would occur if current policies were extended for a prolonged period.

Hopefully our elected officials can act like adults long enough to make something happen for the good of the country. And, not to get too melodramatic, the world considering how interconnected the global economy now is. Let's just say, with this being an election year and all, I'm not exactly holding my breath.


Image: By Carolyn Kaster, AP by way of USA Today.

All Up On Pixar's Incorporated Nuts...

Time Magazine recently released it's Top 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium (Thus Far) and I casually went through the slide show with no problem until I got to numero uno (umm, mild spoiler alert if you truly want to be surprised by the slide show)...

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You good now? Cool. Ahem...

It was Wall*E. Bet that picture  above probably spoiled it already, huh? Alas.

I'm not one of those cinematic purists that have a fundamental problem with animated movies being lauded and winning awards. Pixar has been truly revolutionary and constantly puts out great pictures. It's borderline mystifying I sold my soul to the devil type shit. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't tear up one or five times while watching Up. I did not, however, care for Wall*E. It didn't help that the first time I watched it was after coming home from an event called "Hoboken St. Patties Day," held a week or two before actual St. Patrick's Day, that people of a certain, age, location and social proclivities are known to hang out at. When I got back that evening I had Wall*E waiting for me. At that point, I could not have been less equipped to watch that particular movie and found it unbelievably boring.

As people kept raving, however, I felt like I had no choice but to give it another, more clear minded, chance.  It went a bit better, but not THAT much better. I thought it was an interesting bit of social commentary on where our society is going, i.e., fat, stupid, and pollute-y, but, unlike others, I found the "emotional core" of the movie in the relation between Wall*E and EVE, unlike almost every relationship in Up, to be weird and creepy and discombobulating. I just really didn't get why this was supposed to be so sweet.

Anyway, I never got on board the Wall*E train and I find it insane that Time ranked it the #1 movie of the millennium thus far. But, then again, maybe I don't have a heart.


Image from: WALT DISNEY / EVERETT

StewBeef Lulz

Apparently, Fox News head honcho Roger Ailes intimated that Jon Stewart had "basically" admitted to being a socialist while speaking at Ohio University. In a bar. This is amazing. I would've paid very good money to be there as a witness for this alleged breaking of barley. I'm picturing a lumbering Roger Ailes, tipse on the blood of liberal children and fear-mongering, I dunno, gin sidling up to some Manhattan bar:

Roger Ailes: Heyyyy. Hey Stewart. STEWART... You're a goddamned communist aren't you? Or at least a socialist like President Hussein. Don't chu deny it.

Confused Jewish Professional That Vaguely Resembles Jon Stewart: Pardon em? Who is Stewart? What are you talking about.

RA: Don't DENNYY ITTT. R Murds told me is was legit.

CJPTVRJS: Umm, sure. I'm a socialist just like whoever the Hussein guy is.

RA: I KNEW IT! R MURDS IS ALWAYS RIGHT. Must be that tappin' intel.

Fin.

Clearly not my best old drunk white guy impersonating work, but you get the idea. I cannot wait to see what the Daily Show does with this info. Jon Stewart, though a socialist, is a lot funnier than I.

Image: An awesome, super jowly, Ailes from DangerousMinds.net

The Hysterical Hysteria of Catholic Bishops

Archbishop Timothy Dolan popped off again about the incredible dangers (please read italics as supreme sarcasm) of the requirement that organizations related to the Catholic Church having to pay for birth control and how it is "strangling" the Church. Quoth Archbishop Timmy:

Dolan also criticized Georgetown University's decision to invited Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak to graduates of its school of public policy last week because of her role in formulating the policy.

"Well, I do think that's a problem. Georgetown is the oldest Catholic university in the country. Part of Catholic identity is to be in union with the bishops," Dolan said.

"When they would invite someone that is so dramatically at odds with one of the central tenets of the faith, that does bother us," Dolan said. (Emphasis added).

Seriously? Central tenets of the Catholic faith? That is REALLY what we are going with here? I was once a dutiful Catholic back in the day. I played CYO basketball, which my dad headed up for our church (starting PG for the 18-0 champs, but I digress... and also it's not like it was AAU), I was an thankfully untouched alter boy, and I went to Catholic HS, which probably definitely started my path as a fallen Catholic. My Catholic street cred is legit and I'd like to think I know a thing or two about the religion yet I do not remember the religion class where avoiding any association birth control was a central tenet of the faith. I am sure that he means that all sex must be procreative to be given the ole papal a-okay, but that does not really strike me as a CENTRAL tenet either. What I do remember being the first and foremost tenet, or golden rule if you will, was to love others like you love yourself. What happened to that rule? Where is that Church? Are your current actions how you want to be treated by women, or by homosexuals, or by children who trusted in their priests? Though my HS hierarchy's refusal to adequately engage with an inquisitive student's questions rather than simply shouting FAITH, started me down the path, the despicable actions of the Church hierarchy the past decade or so after I graduated really solidified the position.

Hopefully one day this will change, but I definitely have no faith that it will.

Image by: Weasel Zippers (?ya, I have no idea what that is) via Google Images

UPDATE: As should be expected since a majority of Catholic women, 66.4% of all married Catholic women in 1973, do not follow the Church's ban on contraceptives, there is not actually a Catholic voting bloc. So the GOP might want to be careful catering to that non-existent bloc....

RIP Donna Summer

Really not much else to say.

What Have You Done With My Supreme Court?

The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin is, by leaps and bounds, one of the best chroniclers of the Supreme Court that we have or have had for awhile. His latest piece in the May 21, 2012 issue of the New Yorker is a fascinating recounting of the intrigues surrounding the precedent upending Citizens United ruling, which once again allowed unfettered corporate money to stream into elections. As Toobin mentions at the end of the piece, there is a direct line from Citizens United to the one billionaire backing one candidate (Adelson/Gingrich; Friess/Santorum) GOP primary we just witnessed.

I am planning two much longer posts on Citizens United, once I finish reading the decision (and you are welcome faithful readers... it's a doozy), and on how the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate decision should go IMHO, but suffice it to say that I agree with a lot of what Toobin states in the article. I know it's a long one but please do yourself a favor and read it. I try to stay up with the doings of the Supreme Court as much as possible but Mr. Toobin enlightened me. Be similarly enlightened. DO IT NOW. You woonnn'tttt.

Image: The New Yorker

Dimon's in the Rough

See what I did there in the title? With the mixed metaphors and play on words and such? SO clever. Anywwaaayyy, JP Morgan Chase, the formerly venerable white shoe investment banking institution, reported a $2 billion trading loss yesterday afternoon. Not so surprisingly, Jamie Dimon managed to continue to sound like a giant doucher while attempting to show some sort of facsimile of contrition. While admitting to immense risk management failures, he managed to contend that oversight of the banking industry was still a ridiculous idea. Here are two actual quotes (well a quote and a paraphrase) from the same call to analysts:

"There were many errors, sloppiness and bad judgment," Dimon said. "These were grievous mistakes, they were self-inflicted."

 followed by...

Dimon said yesterday that the timing of the trading blunders "plays right into the hands of a bunch of pundits out there" who want a strict proprietary trading ban, the Volker Rule, named for former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

I mean... wow. Only a wanna-be pugnacious solipsist like Jamie Dimon could somehow claim that his firm's catastrophic failure in self-oversight somehow indicates that the Volcker Rule is a bad idea. Listen, I'm no class warrior. While sympathetic to a couple of Occupy Wall Streets complaints (when they enumerated them), I'm not marching for the 99%. But people like Dimon and some of his cohorts need to get their shit together and realize that while such rules will definitely be bad for their bottom line, it'll probably be good for the health of the world economy as a whole. While this is really for another, longer, post I've been thinking about for awhile... many commentators seem reluctant to assert is that the Volcker Rule, formerly known as the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, worked pretty well for 6 decades. Enacted in the turmoil of the Great Depression, Glass-Steagall, among other things, separate commercial banking from investment banking. Lo and behold, there were no serious shocks to the banking system anywhere approaching the same scale of the Great Depression. Our current Great Recession then occurs after it was essentially repealed in 1999 (Good call Billy) and the Volcker Rule hopes to re-institute a weaker version. Now, clearly one cannot directly correlate the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Great Recession, but why not bring back a rule that worked so well for over half a century? I've not really heard any compelling reasons, that hold any water, from folks like JD... who's firm bears little resemblance to the old JP Morgan & Co. that once ruled Wall Street (read this fantastic book for more. Seriously, Ron Chernow is the MAN).

To make a long story not any longer than the above, I hope Jamie stops spewing BS until the time he can put forth a reasonable argument for why the provisions of the Dodd Frank Act, including the Volcker Rule, would be bad for anyone aside from him, his cohorts, and their respective bottom lines.