Tax deal: lousy but not as bad as it could have been
Grafic by Dan
Guest Post
Note from Dan: The following was forwarded to me Tuesday by Joe Campbell of Glenvar, who received it from a dear pal in California named Larry. I haven’t asked Larry’s permission to republish it so I’m not going to use his last name unless I hear he wishes me to.
By California Larry
The deal that Obama/Biden struck was lousy but not as bad as it could have been. As usual, the stumbling block to progress was the odious Republican contingent from the agrarian south and midwest. But lest you think this is a recent turn of events, a little history review might prove useful.
Remember the three-fifths rule? This was the mechanism in the founding documents which counted slaves as three-fifths of a human being for purposes of determining states’ representation in the House. But those same southern states roundly rejected the concept of a three-fifths rule for determining states’ contributions to the federal treasury.
The South is still doing exactly the same thing today, never paying its freight, its cornpone pols inveighing against the evil government while the Southern states are collectively the most dependent on Washington largesse of all states and regions. The hypocrisy has a long pedigree.
In 1850, the only way California was admitted to the Union as a free state was if the Northern states accepted a strengthened Fugitive Slave Act plus the hated federal government had to assume the crushing debt of “The Republic of Texas.”
Through reelecting the same agrarian-reactionary House and Senate members for decades, the Southern states worked their way up the seniority system ladder into the chairmanship of many of the legislative committees, thus bottling up progressive legislation for most of the 20th century.
The two major pieces of progressive legislation of the 20th century, Social Security and Medicare, passed under liberal Democratic presidents who rammed them through Congress by dint of their forceful personalities and over the screams of mossback southerners.
In the last part of the 20th century, they have been joined by Mountain and Southwestern voices of repression and “stand-pat-ism.” Those of us of a certain age can remember a “B” rate movie actor who took a very anti stand on Medicare. See
What unites all these movements are pretty much the same motives that drive today’s right wing: hatred of government and taxation, constant (and almost always baseless) fear that a central authority is going to rob their liberty, and so on. They are bound together also by a kind of psychology and mindset, a conviction that they represent the good simple folk while their opponents speak for the shifty and the shiftless.
So I’ll hold my nose and accept the Obama/Biden compromise because I see that, in a historical context, it could have been much much worse.
January 2, 2013 - 6:00 AM
Ah! Nothing like the sage advice from a resident of the most financially and mroally bankrup State in the Union.
Many of us are holding our noses, and our wallets, as we try to ride out the next 4 years of national socialism.
The bill passed the House because they had no choice. They were up the proverbial creek with no paddles in sight.
The right loves government spending as much as the left. They just want to spend on different things. How else can a deal that, according to the CBO, has $41 of tax increases for every $1 of spending cuts be made with anti-tax right wing support?
As for the condescending crap about the south-how’s that progressive stuff working out for you Californians on a state level Larry? Almost bankrupt I hear.
Boehner could have had better deal last summer, last month or two weeks ago.
I have been waiting on Boehner to crack. Bless his heart, he’s getting mashed between the Dems and the Republican hard right.
Boehner To Reid: Go F**k Yourself
I believe this writing style is what we called in the English Department “random drunken gibberish”. He somehow tied Slavery to the bipartisan tax deal that the (black) President will sign. What?
Oddly, pay checks will be smaller for most Americans because of the rise in the Social Security tax.
This story makes very little sense. Bold statements with little factual data.
sheesh. what a lib-piece of b.s.! as if the repubs stood against civil rights. ahh, that would have been algore’s daddy and sheets byrd, both dems last time i checked. seems to me that what unites the lib-movement are copious amounts of prunes and ex-lax.
Any diatribe of the deal that doesn’t blast it for not addressing the problem–runaway spending–is moronic.
This is so obvious to everyone. Yet the CPUSA/MSM will pretend it’s the Tea Party’s fault.
Frank,
It was CONSERVATIVES who:
1. Stood against ending slavery
2. Fought civil rights
3. Tried to prevent women’s voting rights
4. Voted against child labor laws
5. Tried to stop the 40-hour work week
6. Campaigned against Social Security
7. Tried to keep us out of World War II
8. Destroyed lives in an anti-freedom pogrom against so-called “communists” in government and Hollywood.
9. Wanted to maintain segregated lunch counters
10. Desperately tried to preserve segregated schools
The fact is, for many years those CONSERVATIVES were Democrats. But now they call themselves Republicans.
CONSERVATIVES have been against nearly every important reform ever adopted in the history. And you stand with’em, Frank.
I honestly hope you’ll reflect on the list above and realize how wrongheaded were those things CONSERVATIVES fought against over generations. But I doubt you’ll get the message. You believe you know better, just like they claimed they did, on all those issues. That’s sad.
You should be ashamed of yourself!
“Yet the CPUSA/MSM will pretend it’s the Tea Party’s fault.”
suzie serving up alphabet soup for lunch.
yep, just as i thought. when the chips are down, ol’ dan just changes the names. ol’ cauliflower larry never once mentioned conservatives. he did mention republicans.
oh, and what about barack’s aca, and of course, gun control?
HEY, Frank, you should read more carefully.
“oh, and what about barack’s aca, and of course, gun control?”
What about them.
As stimulating as it is talking to brick walls, this remains such a repetitive and useless discussion. Kenneth, they do not have the frequency and are not likely to ever gain it!
I just love it when people who do not understand the history of American political parties continue to argue that Dems have always been Liberal and the GOP has always been conservative.
I thought California Larry had some interesting observations, reasonably accurate from my view. I do modestly disagree with his central point – that this deal was lousy. It most certainly could have been worse, but I think President Obama and Vice President Biden exceded expectations in two ways. First, they were able to reach a compromise of some value with the most intractable group of Republicans perhaps in the history of our country. This is no small feat, and hopefully, sets a tone of cooperation for the daunting fiscal negotiations to come. Second, they delivered a sliver of hope to citizens disturbed by the wealth imbalance in our current economy. I do not begrudge anyone the opportunity to become wealthy, but the greed demonstrated by some individuals and corporations is, frankly, contrary to my view of the American Dream. The tax increase on the top 2% is largely symbolic, but it is a ray of hope.
Well said Jason Perdue!! I agree.
I have to admit that I’m heartened that nobody has been able to rebut my 10 commandments of conservatism:
1. Favor slavery
2. Block civil rights
3. Keep schools segregated
4. Keep lunch counters segregated
5. Abolish the 40-hour work week
6. Make children work for slave wages
7. Prevent women from voting
8. Nix Social Security
9. Stop the country from entering WWII
10. Ruin so-called “communists” lives, bar them from employment.
But I’m not surprised. The conservatives know this is true. They believe this stuff.
It’s unAmerican.
Not counting the fifty or so teaparty chuckleheads, Cantor managed to garner another one hundred defectors from the SS Boehner. Orange Julius is toast. “It could have been worse” has become the norm for this administration. The prez just gave away his most potent weapon, and there are more cliffs to come.
Liberals have brought us
1): 50 million aborted babies since 1973 and that just in America.
2) Generational dependency, thanks to 80 years of welfare programs.
3) The disintegration of the American family, thanks to sexual permissiveness and easy divorce.
4) Loss of religious freedom.
5) General loss of liberites through senseless regulation
6) Permanently high unemployment
7) Pervasive taxes
8 . A far more dangerous world, through a PC support of dictators.
9) 100 million murders in the 20th century by socialist regimes.
That’s the leftwing legacy. They have simply turned their backs on God. The result has been nothing but misery.
#21 Pretending to do 400s at the track again, suzie?
Wow, it’s a good thing no conservatives have aborted any babies, taken any sort of welfare, been sexually permissive and/or gotten divorced, or passed regulations like the Patriot Act that take away “liberites”!
I have to admit that I’m heartened that nobody has been able to rebut my 10 commandments of conservatism
1. Conservatives have always opposed slavery. The Catholic Church openly came out against it.
2. Civil Rights – Again, neither a conservative nor liberal issue. Unless Al Gore, Sr. was a conservative
3. Segregated schools – Sorry, blacks continue to segregate themselves. That’s why Roanoke no longer has forced busing; the blacks don’t want it. It was a(nother) liberal idea that failed.
4. Lunch counters separated. Neither liberal nor conservative,
5. Abolish 40 hour work week – More liberal meddling. If worker and employee agree on the hours, what business is it of anyone else how much people work?
6. Nobody made children work for slave wages. Children could have always quit.
7. Prevent women from voting- Bipartisan. Recall the temperance organizations were the leading advocates of suffrage. Were the anti-booze folks liberals? I don’t think so. The fact that most women vote stupidly is another issue.
8. Social security. Abused, robbed, a drain on the system. Let people decide for themselves. ANOTHER bad leftwing idea.
9. So conservatives were peacenikes, huh? This is a revisionist theory I hadn’t heard.
10. A few more communists should have their careers ruined today. Starting with the media.
LOL. I sense Dan wishes he had not pushed for a response on his nonsense.
Yeah, the Catholic Bishops and nuns are against slavery all right. Those are the folks you have repeatedly trashed on this blog. But conservative southern (protestant) preachers gave sermons back in the 1800s that slavery was supported by the Bible. Slap your head now.
Sorry Suzie, but your 10 points are a sad, feeble and failed attempt at rebuttal.
Yeah, the Catholic Bishops and nuns are against slavery all right. Those are the folks you have repeatedly trashed on this blog.
Not exactly the same folks. 150 years removed, genius.
Suzie’s “rebuttal” at 1:54 p.m. on 1/3/2013. Sad, truly very sad.
I have to admit that I’m heartened that nobody has bothered to reply to suzie’s 10 commandments of idiocy and trollism.
There, fixed it for ya.
(the Catholic Bishops and nuns are against slavery)
“Not exactly the same folks. 150 years removed, genius.”
So says one of the posters who insist that Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond represented a party unchanged since Lincoln.