Republican tax overhaul would come at cost of hundreds of credits, deductions - The Washington Post

Republican tax overhaul would come at cost of hundreds of credits, deductions - The Washington Post

Gotta say it, I'm astonished. A Republican proposal that I can get behind.



There are things I'd change, but much or it seems to be a step in the right direction.

Tea Party is Folding on the Debt Limit | New Republic

Tea Party is Folding on the Debt Limit | New Republic

 Prior to the shutdown, it wasn’t clear whether Bachmann et al were irrational (that is, so zealously attached to their ideological goals that they ignored conventional political incentives, like widespread public disapproval), or delusional (meaning they were perfectly capable of responding to political incentives in theory; they just assumed the masses supported them).

IOW, Teapartiers are so embedded in their echo chamber that they truly believe most people think like they do.

But the lesson of the shutdown is that engagement and accommodation is worse than useless—it’s counterproductive. When you’re dealing with delusional people, any gesture in their direction will only be interpreted as confirmation that their delusions are true. When Obama agreed to pare tens of billions from his 2011 spending request shortly after the GOP won control of Congress, House Republicans didn’t see it as a sign of good faith, as the White House believed they would. (David Plouffe: “The trust was increased.”) They interpreted it as an admission by the president that the public supported their radical agenda. 

IOW, letting a delusional person have his way only encourages the delusion.

It’s only through confrontation—doing away with negotiations and inciting voters to communicate which side they support—that you have any chance of breaking through. Going forward, that means there’s no probably difference-splitting approach to, say, getting an immigration bill through the House. If you want immigration reform, let Republicans reject the reasonable-sounding bill that passed the Senate, then force them to pay a brutal price for their unpopular positionin 2016. 

IOW, force them to commit to crazier and crazier ideas  

If I thought Obama was that smart, I might have thought he was doing that. Unfortunately he has failed to grasp the fundamental truth of bipartisanship: When one side says 2+2=5 , and the other side says 2+2=7, compromise between those positions isn't much help. I really can't think of a bipartisan idea in the last century or so that was actually a good idea (WW II a possible exception).

"But they earned it." Oh really?

The usual objection to redistributive economic policies is that the wealthy have earned their wealth, and it is morally wrong to take away what someone has earned.



Well, not so much.



So much for the wealthy having "earned their money."



And the road to shared prosperity is precisely to attack the _unearned_ economic rents of the very wealthy, not the wealth they themselves have actually produced.



The Pay of Corporate Executives and Financial Professionals as Evidence of Rents in Top 1 Percent Incomes | Economic Policy Institute



I have no objection to Bill Gates being wealthy. I have a very strong objection to the Waltons stealing the productivity of their workers, and seeing their inherited super-wealth as somehow morally equivalent to Gates'.