Red vs. blue: selections from the blogosphere
Further reading on red-blue tax-spend divides (see prior post) and what's next:

• Red State Tax Reform, Mark Schmitt
  Schmitt concedes a red-blue tax war might be a goal, but concludes ending the state/local tax deductions is a bluff: no one's burning the midnight oil at the Treasury Department to work out the details, and too many red state senators would peel away against the measure. (Counterargument: no one at the White House may care whether there are details to work out.)
• Tax as a Weapon, Redux, Paperwight's Fair Shot:
  A political roadmap for the next two years: Bush appoints commission to study reform proposals, Bush and DeLay beat Dems over the head with "tax fairness" come 2006. Will Dems be ready? Mr. Paperwight sounds skeptical.
• Should Blue America Give Red America The Finger?, Creature of the Shade
  Answer: no. Jarrett's point is mainly about the "red" center of gravity: the far suburbs and exurbs, not rural areas.
• Left-Wing Federalism: An Infantile Disorder, Max Sawicky
  Sawicky considers the data for federal taxation vs expenditures by state (see map below) questionable, but more importantly asserts that little of the regional imbalance could or should be offset by state tax code revisions: too little of that imbalance is due to domestic discretionary spending, too much is unavoidably shared (interest, defense), or unacceptable to devolve (entitlements).
• Retro vs. Metro, John Sperling
  Not the blogosphere; Sperling, who got rich building the online University of Phoenix, has a correspondingly slick and sometimes fairly interesting web site reframing the red-blue divide.

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UPDATE, 11/26: Finally, common ground: Daniel Radosh
Red and blue agree on how kids shouldn't dress. Worth it just for the photo.
UPDATE, 11/29: "Should Blue America..." link fixed. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:04:00 PM -- |    

 
Red vs. blue, here we come
Max Sawicky commented last week:

You might think it incredible for the Administration to inaugurate a special tax on residents of New York, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and other states whose electoral votes went to John Kerry, but that's what is in the works.
(via The Washington Monthly)

He's referring to a Washington Post report suggesting that Bush will keep his tax breaks for investors revenue-neutral in part by eliminating the federal income tax deduction for state and local taxes. (I noticed this just after the election.) Sawicky's point is that state and local taxes are generally higher in the urban and coastal states -- Texas and Florida, for example, have no state income tax at all. It's still in the trial balloon stage, but that's how the crazy stuff always starts.

I'll admit that as a in Montgomery County, Maryland homeowner, Bush's "tax code simplification" could wind up being a substantial hit for yours truly. (And that's before even thinking about the health insurance tax increase that's the other part of the "how we'll they'll pay for it" half of the proposals the GOP are floating.) It'll be interesting to see how my esteemed governor, Bob Ehrlich (R), will react -- probably by saying "now it's really important we get those slot machines!" Democrats had better fight this tooth and nail -- their one remaining tooth and nail, to be sure.

The Post article reports there is supposedly a worthy principle underlying the so-called "reforms":

Pamela F. Olson, a former Bush Treasury official in close contact with administration tax planners, said the president will pursue a tax system where all income -- whether from wages, dividends, capital gains or interest -- is taxed only once.

I guess I don't understand how eliminating state and local tax deductions would square with that: it gives the federal government a separate whack at the same dollar of income someone just spent on state or local taxes. Makes sense if you're running in the red as much as these guys are, of course.

There's an item bouncing around the blogosphere -- "The Urban Archipelago" -- saying essentially, "We're everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the s**tholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We'll take Manhattan."* (Actually, it doesn't essentially say that, it literally says that.) Despite what that map I drew below may have implied to one reader or another, and despite admittedly laughing at the author's urban snarkery every other paragraph or so, it's not my way. I'd much prefer to build political coalitions and urban areas to benefit everyone, I'd much prefer to bridge the urban-rural and blue-red divides in this country.

But I also don't think most East or West Coast city dwellers -- whether Democrats, Republicans or independents -- are going to gladly accept being even more parasitized by Oklahoma or Alabama when it's for the sake of cutting taxes on Dick Cheney's or James Dobson's investment income. You all want that and "revenue-neutrality" so bad, get the money you need somewhere else: pass a tax on faith healers or strip clubs or something.

Trial balloons like this one might mean it's already too late for "thinking purple" -- the worthy paradigm Aziz Poonawalla is trying to promote at Dean Nation.** Heck, even Republicans from blue states are getting pushed around. Josh Marshall notes that 21 GOP lawmakers had their 'projects' deleted by Congressman Ernest Istook (R-OK-5) from the recent omnibus spending bill because they had the temerity to make a case for... Amtrak funding.*** According to the Hartford Courant, the axed projects for one Congressman, Robert Simmons (R-CT-2), even included $1.5 million for the Cerebral Palsy Sports and Recreation Association World Championships.

Now as Marshall concedes in a second post, there's no constitutional right to "pork." And I'll concede the congressmen -- like everyone else in Congress -- were trying to jump aboard the dysfunctional omnibus spending bill process to benefit their districts.

But Istook's action was a noticeably anti-urban and anti-Blue state one, both in its hostility to Amtrak and therefore in the general geographic distribution of Istook's victims. It was also an explicit directive to make Amtrak just another goodie to beg for in the broken appropriations process, instead of a legitimate transportation issue in its own right. Just the fact that someone from Oklahoma is in charge of quashing Amtrak support like this speaks volumes.

The upshot: that map I drew below -- the ratio of federal spending to taxes paid? By and large, blue is going to get bluer, and red is going to get redder. It's crazy, it's mean-spirited, it's divisive -- why, it's today's Republican Party. All aboard!


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* Via the all-seeing, all-knowing Iris. She must be, like, a librarian or something.
** This is absolutely not a dig at the "Dean for DNC" campaign Aziz also supports. Dean as DNC chair would be fine with me. He's a fighter, we need that, and he did his share supporting Kerry and the Democrats in the election.
*** Istook is the same congressman who was involved (somehow) in the scam to let House committee chairs review individual tax returns. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:20:00 PM -- |    

 
I'm thankful
...that I don't need to see this on a daily basis: Mysterious ‘George W. Bush: Our leader’ Clear Channel political public service billboard graces Orlando freeway.

Hmm. Sparta 286-Athens 254 indeed. Kind of appropriate this kind of "Dear leader" cult stuff would appear along a freeway, to sift out that author's (Stirling Newberry's) interesting assertion, which he distills in a followup comment:

The gas burning economy is unstable because gas is in shorter and shorter supply. But, not everyone can collapse into the cities (the blue economy). The fight is how to create enough outward pressure (economically) so that the engine of the cities can support a greater spread of population.

The right wing answer is a protection racket. The left didn't have an answer.

The Newberry item has too much jargon, and maybe tries to spin too much gold out of too little straw. But if David Brooks can do it, why not Mr. Newberry? Have a look. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:10:00 PM -- |    

 
Happy Thanksgiving!
At home for this holiday, hope you are too. Not all of us can be; spare a moment to help US troops phone home, via Operation Uplink. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:42:00 AM -- |    

 
Congressman Mickey Finn
Discussing the (IsitOrIsntIt)Istook Amendment I noted a couple of days ago, the Washington Post buried this little item:

Also included in the final bill was a major provision barring states from enforcing laws that require health care providers, hospitals, HMOs or insurers to pay for, provide or give referrals for abortion.(via Josh Marshall)

What's going on? A Planned Parenthood press release explains:

The legislation, originally proposed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and passed today as an amendment to the final version of the omnibus appropriations bill, would allow health care organizations to refuse to comply with existing federal, state or local laws pertaining to abortion. [...]

The bill provides a sweeping exemption from existing laws relating to safe and legal abortion services. Health care entities, as defined by the law, include hospitals, provider-sponsored organizations, health maintenance organizations, health insurance plans or any other kind of health care facilities, organizations or plans.

As Josh Marshall observed, "So much for states-rights and federalism." (It would be interesting to get Supreme Court justice nominee opinions on this -- who's your daddy, federalists or pro-lifers? Assuming they can be bothered to answer instead of taking the "nominee's fifth.") At any rate, I've joined Planned Parenthood's protest against this bill on the merits, and hope you'll consider doing so as well.

But even if you're pro-life, or Republican, you ought to be concerned about the way your will is being done these days in Congress. Both this item and that motherless child, the possibly-Istook Amendment, were introduced into a major piece of legislation without hearings and nearly without review. Ms. Magazine's Feminist Wire reports:

On Friday, nine female Senators, including Olympia Snowe (R-ME), sent a letter to chair of the Appropriations Committee Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), requesting that the language of the clause be changed and protesting the fact that the Federal Refusal Clause had not been discussed in committee, nor had it been put to a vote on the Senate floor.(also via Marshall)

While the Istook item giving certain House members sweeping powers to review tax returns proved too embarrassing to allow to proceed, this one wasn't -- although at least opponents were able to force a separate vote on the issue next year:

After threats by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), one of the signatories to the letter, to use procedural motions to delay the vote on the bill, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) guaranteed that he would hold a separate vote on the provision in the Senate next spring.

Senator John McCain has rightly pointed to the Istook episode as evidence that the system is "broken." I'd go farther than that and call it a fundamentally fraudulent approach to legislation -- similar in execution and outcome to slipping the old "Mickey Finn" in a victim's drink.

This isn't the only example by a long shot. Brett Marston points to a similar story with student loans -- a Bush/House joint venture that Senator John Corzine calls a "backdoor attempt to cut funding from the Pell grant program" by allowing the Education Department to change eligibility rules for these student loans without further Congressional input. Presto -- $300 million less for student loans, affecting around 90,000 students. No one likes to vote for that, and this way, no one needs to.

I have no idea how common these kinds of dodges used to be in Democratic Congresses, but I want it to stop regardless. Bills should be considered, debated, and passed in the clear light of day -- not smuggled past the rest of Congress, the press, and the citizens of this country like contraband. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:13:00 PM -- |    

 



One of the "Brand Democrat" series by Oliver Willis. Plenty more good ones there, have a look; Willis says t-shirt profits ($1 per shirt) will go to 'building the brand' or the Democratic Party. posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:30:00 PM -- |    

 
WMD Urban Modeling Engineer
Might as well make a career path out of it:

Job Description

Provide technical leadership and innovative problem solving skills using modeling and simulation solutions for mitigating effects from WMD. Use a systems engineering approach to conducting analyses and advising government customer on S&T investment, model/tools development and integration, and ensure quality of tools for decision support information in support of hazard prediction and protection strategies from release of CBRN materials in urban environments. Assist Defense Threat Reduction Agency in managing technology development and maintain liaison with consequence assessment tool users to operational users.

Job Qualifications

Degree in engineering, physical sciences or other technical field. BS required, MS preferred. 10+ years of experience in DoD environment required. Prefer a DoD environment background with a demonstrated ability to provide objective evaluation, recommend courses of action and champion improved technology development. Topics of interest include environmental or atmospheric transport sciences and modeling, statistical analysis, GIS, programming and data manipulation. A plus is experience in programs associated with weapons-of-mass destruction, applied R&D, M&S, T&E, V&V, and integrating multidisciplinary technologies. Excellent communication skills for interface with customers and ability to use Microsoft Office Products.

Microsoft Office should help a lot with those communication skills for interfacing with customers -- the "Run for your lives!" Powerpoint presentation, the "Just how **ed are we?" Excel spreadsheet.

"Prefer a DoD environment background with a demonstrated ability to provide objective evaluation..." Wouldn't we all.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:30:00 AM -- |    

 
Where the buck stops
Near the end of Timothy Burke's review of reactions to his earlier polemic -- "The Road To Victory" -- he writes some very true words:

Bush voters, the buck stops at your desk. You’re in charge, collectively, and your representative is in charge of the reins of government. You can bitch and moan all you like, sometimes justifiably, about the sins of the other side, about Michael Moore and bad liberal blogs and so on. The fact is that in some crucial sense, none of that matters now. I charged you collectively with responsibility for what happens next, good or bad, because you are responsible. I blamed you, harshly, and I’m sorry if that offends you. Make it a positive charge rather than a negative accusation. You are responsible, and so you must be better than your perception of those you oppose. If you want to live up to the decision you have made, then you have to respect evidence more than they, you have to be bound by facts more than they, you have to be more gracious and tolerant than they, you have to reach out more than they, you have to concede more than they. Don't come whining that little Jonny hit you first: you just became the grown-up in the room, so act like it. You have the power now: you cannot hide behind a cloak of marginality, you cannot complain about liberal media and liberal Hollywood and liberal professors. Nothing is keeping you down. You are the Man now, no longer an underdog in any sense. If you do not hate and you do not preach divisiveness and you have the interests of all at heart, if you do not aspire to dominate your fellow countrymen and if you pursue a particular foreign policy in the tempered, justifiable, rational belief that it will produce better results, now is when you must prove it.

The ongoing "beleaguered right" theme really is a little ridiculous and whiney at this point. Mark Schmitt points out one example, a friend whose blog sports pointers to "TGWW" stickers -- a "thank God Dubya Won" secret handshake for your blue-state Bush voting brethren -- and whose blurb promises "vital information about Euro-snobbery." I'm also reminded of Glenn Reynolds' post before the election, recommending a Bush vote if only to stick it to the French and Germans (if I recall correctly).

Unless something drastic happens to the European subcontinent -- and academia and "activist" judges and Hollywood, etcetera -- such folk may have a nice, permanent grievance to nurse into their old age, quite independent of Bush's actual, you know, performance over the past and next four years. It would be nice if they'd try governing instead of bemoaning their opponents' characters, or setting aside their remaining ethical scruples. But I won't hold my breath waiting for it.

Burke on the election
Timothy Burke has been writing some very good reactions to and analyses of the 2004 election; see also "Six Degrees of Condescension," and "And another thing." That's not to say I agree with him 100%, although I gave his arguments far too short shrift in a "buck up" kind of post of my own. I have to rely on Burke's account of the book, but I suppose I'm more in the Thomas Franks (author of "What's the matter with Kansas?") school of "give 'em something to vote for you for" red-state/county outreach. That is, I don't agree with Burke that

...The red-staters are the people who have stayed behind while everyone else has left because they do not want to or cannot live the blue-state way, because they have an idea of moral economy that scorns getting ahead, rejects meritocratic values.

...and that therefore they are immune to outreach along the lines of my "Wal-Mart" notion (however unpromising that particular notion might turn out to be). These people, Burke seems to say, are made of sterner, uncompromising stuff -- mere economic blandishments will be met with rejection and scorn.

And well they might be, if there's simply an implied quid pro quo "deal" for votes. But if it's a matter of solidarity within those communities, the story might turn out differently. People have often supposed westerners, mountaineers, or farmers aren't capable of progressive politics, and they keep forgetting how and why they've often been wrong.

Some of the bitterest sustained union fights in American history happened in the West (Cripple Creek, Ludlow) and the Appalachians (Matewan, Blair Mountain) -- peopled "though" they were with often deeply religious, generally highly independent, decidedly non-urban folk. Some of the most progressive impulses in American history came from or found strongholds in the farming heartland -- abolitionism, the Chautauqua movement, the Progressive Party itself. I'm a poor enough student of this kind of American history that I can't better support these contentions. But I'm a good enough one to suspect Burke hasn't quite got his "red-staters" right -- if history is still a guide. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:10:00 AM -- |    

 
Making new rules is fun! Unless you get caught
Then and only then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will get all stern and say, "I have no earthly idea how it got in there. Nobody is going to defend this." (Via Josh Marshall)

Well, presumably Representative Ernest Istook might. For those just tuning in, what's going on is that Istook (R-OK) tried to add a provision to an omnibus spending bill giving certain House committee chairs and "agents designated by such Chairman" the power to review IRS returns at will, and do what they wished with their findings. See Josh Marshall for all the latest; here's where he broke the story. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Here's hoping
Fairly encouraging stories from the vicinity of Najaf, recounted by American soldier and "View from A Broad" blogger 'ginmar' in "What You Read":

Gradually, something else dawned on me, too. We were being waved at. I'm a waving fool. Hey, every little gesture. The kids always wave. But as we got further and further south, it was adults who lifted their hands first, and smiled. And what smiles! They smiled as if they were fond of us, as if we were old friends. Men, women, all the kids---it was like we were neighbors back from a visit that had kept us away too long. Young men, old men, women in full abbayas, women in chic outfits and without veils----they all waved and smiled at us. When we smiled and waved back, it felt a little bit like euphoria.

If this were from anyone else, I'd think "baloney," but not with her.* The skeptic in me suggests maybe ginmar herself somehow brings out the friendship in passersby; the optimist points out I wouldn't have even bet on that.

At any rate, what Jim Henley says: ginmar's post deserves to be read just as an example of good writing -- she works outward from reflections on her father to the people she sees from her Humvee, and their effect on her. Henley lifts one particularly nice bit; I liked this vignette as well, about an imam's reaction to ginmar and her unit:

The vehicle had to slow down to take the curve and negotiate the traffic, so I got a good long look at him. He and I looked at each other, and then his eyes warmed like there was a candle wick behind them, slowly gathering strength. The smile reached his lips, and he raised his hand and gave me a dignified acknowledgement, not quite a wave, but a salute of sorts. He had the lines around his eyes that signify a man who smiles cautiously and gravely, not because he has no humor but because he contemplates the consequences of everything, and must be an example. He had my father's eyes. The crowd of young men around him shared a similar mien and I wondered if they were his pupils or his children----or grandchildren. They, too, smiled gravely, and each lifted a hand as we passed. It was almost like a benediction.

For expert analysis of the big picture in Iraq, see Juan Cole, not me. There is probably always a silent majority for just finally getting some peace and quiet, and maybe that's all there is behind the smiles and waves for ginmar on this particular convoy run. But this account actually sounded a little better than that.

Any success in Iraq will be the wholly owned property of the soldiers on the ground there. May ginmar return safe and sound to tell us all about it.


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* I first came across her writing by reading her "Alamo" post during the March/April Mahdi Army uprisings; unfortunately, she later needed to make that post unavailable. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:10:00 PM -- |