The NY Times offers three articles vying for the coveted "Most Absurd du Jour" award. Our first entry comes from the category "Those Daffy Dems":
...Plenty of people in this income range live in high-cost areas of the Northeast and California and stretched, rightly or wrongly, to afford their homes when real estate prices were higher. They may not consider themselves rich at all, laughable as that may seem to people earning far less in the middle of the country. But they’ve been worried sick as the president has persistently defined them as rich enough to pay more in taxes — at the exact moment when their jobs may be in danger or their small businesses or commission income may be suffering.
These Blue Staters voted in droves for a Democrat who promised to raise their taxes - I can only imagine their surprise that he is doing so. The second entry is filed under "Don't Know Much About History (And Don't Want To) and the topic is Obama's return to Big Government:
“There are striking similarities to Johnson and Great Society,” said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian who has written extensively about Johnson’s promise of an end to poverty, a commitment made in a State of the Union address 45 years ago, and one that he was only able to deliver on in part.
Uh huh - because we are really likely to put 500,000 troops in Afghanistan. Don't think of it as a war, think of it as a shovel-ready stimulus program. And set to one side the notion that Johnson's welfare state, eventually reformed under Clinton, was a social experiment with disastrous results.
The winning entry emerged from the "Carbon Dioxide is Not The Only Gas We Blow" division of the Times. Here they reflect dispassionately on global warning and Obama's proposed cap-and-trade regime:
A "benefit whose value is incalculable" - pure genius. "Ambiguous", "Uncertain" and "Ephemeral" would have been more accurate, given the Times own acknowledgment of the lack of consensus on the scope of the problem and the economics of various solutions, but "incalculable" is not only literally and inarguably correct but it has a much more positive connotation.
RETIRING THE TITLE: I loved this death knell for the Reagan Era in headline of a Friday Times piece on the new Obama budget:
So Obama proposes to increase cumbersome regulation, raise taxes, weaken our national defense, and restore the Soviet Empire. I wish I could say I was surprised.
environmental 3 card Monte! That's the ticket. Let's invent more pretend securities so people can get sucked in even deeper! is this a great country or what?
Posted by: matt | February 28, 2009 at 08:47 PM
"Incalculable"--perfect--as in ---Tom Maguire's JOM is an incalculable contribution to online debate and analysis.
(TM, only you can make reading the NYT so much fun.)
Posted by: clarice | February 28, 2009 at 08:59 PM
A Bold Plan Will Prove Reagan Ideas
Clarice, TM reads the NYT so we don't have to--and for that we are extremely grateful.
Posted by: Boatbuilder | February 28, 2009 at 09:44 PM
Boatbuilder, I'm glad I refreshed the page after reading clarice's comment -- because what you said was *exactly* what I was going to write. I'll just say: "ditto"
Posted by: PD | February 28, 2009 at 09:47 PM
As we head into March Madness we should reflect on the 'One" Shining moment of 2008. Please check out the LA Times February 22, 2009 article about China's building boom going bust. However, we had Georgia on our mind because the Devil went down to Georgia.
But no fret because we were on a Rocky Mountain High but now everyone is leaving on a jet plane or on the magical mystery our which is coming to take me away to the funny farm.
The Rocky mountain high has turned into the Rocky Horror show and we are in a Time Warp back to the thirties having not learned the lessons of history.
So we are looking for Somewhere over the rainbow but instead of seeing aunicorn all I see is the Michael Ramirez cartoon in IBD of a jackass dumping on my head and saying it is shovel ready.
Thank God I am a Country Boy
Posted by: rhymin' simon | February 28, 2009 at 10:41 PM
As a student of the FDR and Johnson Administrations might say, rhymin' simon, It's All Been Done Before.
Posted by: Thomas Collins | February 28, 2009 at 10:53 PM
Chinese Potemkin Village
Thanks, rhymin'. I understand that Shanghai is even worse than Beijing wrt empty buildings. I wonder if they'll call them Obamavilles?
Posted by: Rick Ballard | February 28, 2009 at 10:56 PM
Maybe the Chinese can fill all the empty office buildings with carbon dioxide?
Posted by: E. Nigma | February 28, 2009 at 11:56 PM
Rick-
But think of all that brillant infrastructure which impressed Obama so much.
Posted by: RichatUF | March 01, 2009 at 12:53 AM
Can the one do anything right? It will be fun to watch and see. Oh yeah, he kept Gates.
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Posted by: kim | March 01, 2009 at 01:16 AM
These Blue Staters voted in droves for a Democrat who promised to raise their taxes - I can only imagine their surprise that he is doing so
Please keep in mind that blue states does not equal all blue people affected by his policies.
Remember, there is no such thing as blue states and red states, there are just people (like Soylent Green)>
Anyway, when Obama promised to raise taxes- when people finally made up their mind to vote for him- it was well before they watched their net worth dropping and their employment status weakening.
It's easy to be theoretically for higher taxes when you imagine it will all be used wisely.
Posted by: MayBee | March 01, 2009 at 01:56 AM
Thanks, rhymin'
Ditto.
I wouldn't assume the buildings are all that inhabitable anyway. They were put up quickly for the world to see. I can only tell you my friends who have apartment-shopped in Beijing and Shanghai have found construction often lacking.
Posted by: MayBee | March 01, 2009 at 02:01 AM
"while individuals with lower incomes could gain in many different ways."
Well according to the company software Mr. Geithner could not understand, Turbo Tax states that the income tax rates will reset to the 2001 rates for 2011; 15%, 27.5%, 30.5%, 35.5% and 39.6%. President Obama said he would allow them to reset. Presently they are 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% and 35%. And look at the impact on the poorest Americans; the special low 10 percent bracket is eliminated. So not just those over $250,000 will pay more because of their loss of mortgage deduction, charity deductions and the increased tax rates proposed for them next year, but all Americans who pay taxes will be impacted by this return to the 2001 tax rates as well as indirectly by the proposed carbon cap taxes. I also imagine that some of those now not paying taxes, again the poorest Americans, will have to pay taxes since the Bush tax cuts raised the amount earned exempt from taxation. Plus they, I assume, would not receive money from the “negative income tax” program.
Posted by: amr | March 01, 2009 at 02:54 AM
" loss of mortgage deduction"
If this is true then they want to kill mid-range builders as well as the BizJet industry.
Change we can believe.
As an aside. I was listening to The State of the Black Union 2009 on C-Span radio yesterday afternoon (Nothing else on except lawyers or finance specialists).
There was a lot of red meat being thrown out to the masses. Of course, none of this will reach the media.
Posted by: davod | March 01, 2009 at 07:34 AM
It's easy to be theoretically for higher taxes when you imagine it will all be used wisely.
Ya can't cure stupid. Can't even effectively treat it.
Posted by: Pofarmer | March 01, 2009 at 08:26 AM
...the special low 10 percent bracket is eliminated. So not just those over $250,000 will pay more because of their loss of mortgage deduction, charity deductions and the increased tax rates proposed for them next year, but all Americans who pay taxes will be impacted by this return to the 2001 tax rates as well as indirectly by the proposed carbon cap taxes.
Let's hope this is true. The dumbest thing we've ever done is to eliminate income taxes for "poor" people. Look at the 2006 chart here. Since 1982, the percentage of federal tax returns with zero or negative tax liability had gone from 18 to 32. I'm not sure what it is now, but a third of Americans have no reason to give a damn how high the taxes rates go. Such a large proportion having no skin in the game can't be healthy.
Posted by: Extraneus | March 01, 2009 at 08:46 AM
The percentage of non-taxpayers has almost doubled in 20 years.
Posted by: Extraneus | March 01, 2009 at 08:49 AM
Ok, here's some recent data:
37.8% pay no federal income tax. Interestingly, 24% at the $40-50K income level pay no federal income tax.
From the chart I linked above, that number was around 18% in 1984, so it has more than doubled in 25 years.
Posted by: Extraneus | March 01, 2009 at 09:05 AM
Well according to the company software Mr. Geithner could not understand, Turbo Tax states that the income tax rates will reset to the 2001 rates for 2011; 15%, 27.5%, 30.5%, 35.5% and 39.6%. President Obama said he would allow them to reset. Presently they are 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% and 35%.
Barry has said he wants only the top two rates to expire while retaining Bush's other rates.
We'll see if that policy has an early expiration date like so many of his others.
Posted by: Ignatz Ratzkywatzky | March 01, 2009 at 09:54 AM
While there is rough consensus on the science of global warming — with some notable and vocal objectors — there is less agreement on the economics of the problem and very little on the policy prescriptions to address it
I love that first phrase. There IS rough consensus that more CO2 generally means higher temps, even Steve McIntyre agrees with that. Whether that consensus is correct however is not yet known, primarily because the feedback loop is not understood nor are other possible climate drivers.
What is amazingly underdiscussed is whether more CO2, even with some warming, is a bad or good thing (I think it would be overall very beneficial).
There is no consensus on the science of the effects of warming because virtually none of the projections even qualify remotely as science.
It is well known that the costs of bringing CO2 emissions down siginificantly will be catastrophically huge; there is no consensus on it only because the 'warmists' refuse to admit the obvious for idealogical reasons, rather like Obama's stimulus and budget.
Posted by: Ignatz Ratzkywatzky | March 01, 2009 at 10:08 AM
Makes sense, Ignatz. The only way Bush was able to get the thing passed in the first place was to change the lower brackets to combat the "tax cuts for the rich" charge. Now that that's done, why let those expire, especially when those poor folks are so hard hit by Bush's recession and the greedy Wall Street Bankers and Corporationists?
Posted by: Extraneus | March 01, 2009 at 10:11 AM
You have it, Ignatz. The feedback of water vapor to the initial forcing of CO2 is the key and it is where the models are desperately wrong. They have it as a large positive feedback and recent satellite research from Roy Spencer indicates it may be a small negative feedback. The initial forcing most likely has an effect of around 1 degree Fahrenheit for doubling of CO2, far less than the alarmists would have you believe.
icecap.us has an American Thinker precis of a speech just given to Congress by a Princeton physicist who was once head of the Department of Energy. It's well worth a read.
The temperature curve for the last century follows the warming and cooling phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation far more closely than the CO2 curve. This whole drastic and terrifying error has been because the warming phase of the PDO during the last quarter of the last century co-incided with the rise of CO2 during that time. During this century, as the PDO flipped to its cooling phase, the temperature of the earth has stabilized and is now dropping, while CO2 levels continue to rise. This is prima facie evidence, and virtually incontrovertible, that CO2 is not a major climate determinant. And yet on hurtles the train, crashing through the red signals, carrying the most stupendous policy error in history. What is the matter with those scientists?
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Posted by: kim | March 01, 2009 at 01:19 PM
You also have a key point about the benefits of more CO2, Iggie. It is a plant fertilizer, and its benefit for food crops and its minimal warming effect will warm and feed millions during our coming cold times. There is little doubt that the biosphere's response to the sun's energy has resulted in virtually irreversible sequestering of carbon in our crust in the form mostly of carbonates, but also of hydrocarbons, and that from the perspective of long history we are in a CO2 starved state. The problem with beating that drum too loudly, even if true, is that we have evolved in that self same carbon dioxide deprived state.
I happen to believe that the excess CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere will simply speed up the feedback processes that sequester it and that carbon dioxide levels will stabilize and return slowly to prehistoric levels, once hydrocarbons get priced out of the energy market. I believe there is no fundamental harm to doubling or even tripling carbon dioxide levels. CO2 is, after all, a trace gas, and only a tiny percentage of our atmosphere.
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Posted by: kim | March 01, 2009 at 01:42 PM
I also believe that the EU countries have attempted cap and trade. 1. with the recession the market for permits has collapsed. 2. they are not meeting their carbon dioxide reduction targets.
Posted by: Mark_0454 | March 01, 2009 at 02:27 PM
As another article on icecap.us points out, the collapse of the carbon credit market has made it cheaper to use fossil fuels, hampering the changeover to alternatives. Yet another example of unintended consequences of poorly thought out policy.
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Posted by: kim | March 01, 2009 at 02:46 PM
there's a good global warming debate on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACo2OCSJnBI
the graph at 6 minutes is telling.
one presenter has facts, figures, and data to test the global warming hypothesis.
the other guy has hot air.
Posted by: Mark_0454 | March 01, 2009 at 03:55 PM
Small correction here; Professor Happer was Director of Energy Research at the DOE from 1990-1993. He was in charge of all the DOE's climate research.
In other news, the Gore effect, freezing weather and maybe snow will greet those being civilly disobedient about the Capitol coal power plant near DC, tomorrow. James Hansen, NASA'S Madman, has violated the Hatch Act, yet again, by encouraging law-breaking at the event.
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Posted by: kim | March 01, 2009 at 03:58 PM
Mark, as I'm sure you are aware, any honest debate between skeptics and alarmists has the skeptics winning handily. A bellweather debate, the Intelligence Squared debate two years ago in New York City, an Oxford Union style debate, set the stage. The alarmists have avoided public debate since then, counting on the ignorant press and the greedy politicians to carry the ball forward. Science is not supporting the CO2=AGW paradigm.
A recent example is the Nature cover story last month trumpeting that the Antarctic is warming. Steve McIntyre, and many others at climateaudit.org, have dissected that study and found that the data does not support the conclusions. Once again, statistics have been awkwardly used to cherry-pick results a la the Piltdown Mann's crook'd hockey stick. What do you know? Michael Mann is a co-author.
McIntyre and crew have back-engineered the study despite the fact that the authors have not released all the data that they have used. They've promised it, but will likely be embarrassed if they release it. An alternative would be for them to withdraw the paper. In a real world, with a cognizant press, and the criticisms now in the record, the authors would be forced into one action or the other. Instead, we'll probably see what we've seen in the past, the climate scientists will stonewall, continue to mislead the journalists, who'll do the same to the public, until everyone has 'moved on'.
I swear, had Nature not taken matters into her own hand and started cooling the globe, this madness would have reached truly Bunyanesque magnitude. Wait, it already has.
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Posted by: kim | March 01, 2009 at 04:08 PM
Kim,
thank you for the information. I think I had seen reports of the Intelligence squared debate (if it is the one with Michael Crichton). I thought the JLF debate was particularly good. Dr. Christy was compelling and prepared with evidence.
Dr. Schlesinger had artists conceptions of what things might look like if all his computer models are correct. No data, no evidence.
Posted by: Mark_0454 | March 01, 2009 at 04:29 PM
Yep, Chrichton was one of the three skeptical debaters. The debate is on the internets, somewhere. They convinced a tough crowd, Manhattan intellectuals.
The science says now, as opposed to what the public is led to believe it says, that CO2 is a minor player in climate. That's just the way it is.
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Posted by: kim | March 01, 2009 at 04:43 PM
PD--I don't know if you are referring to the Reagan comment or the one about TM reading the Times for us. Either way, "great minds . . . "
I would add "alas" to the Reagan comment and "Thankfully" to the TM comment.
Posted by: Boatbuilder | March 01, 2009 at 07:50 PM
Watts Up has more details of the mess that is Eric Steig's Antarctic paper in Nature magazine. A travesty, yet the news has gone around the world while truth snores in bed. LUN, it may not be the first article, scroll down if not.
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Posted by: kim | March 01, 2009 at 07:53 PM
Barry has said he wants only the top two rates to expire while retaining Bush's other rates.
Posted by: Ignatz Ratzkywatzky | March 01, 2009 at 09:54 AM
If he said that I missed it. I just remember he said the Bush tax cuts would be allowed to expire, period. And the talk of increasing the taxes of those making >$250,000 has not included a statment that the other lower rates and higher earning exemptions would remain. If you are correct, I couldn't find that in Google, please direct me to that info with a comment at the web site post "DC Tea Party and More" so I can correct my post. Thanks.
Posted by: amr | March 02, 2009 at 12:57 PM