Taxes, We Don't Need No Stinkin' Taxes

President Obama slam yesterday at the Republicans put them on the defensive. All of a sudden they claimed they were for unemployment extension but they just wanted it paid for. I know take it out of stimulus funding for Boehner's district and McConnell's state. Even so, the Democrats had to muster 60 votes to move the bill in the Senate. Almost all Republicans have voted against unemployment extension seven times during this Administration. Since 1952, unemployment extensions were always approved on a bipartisan basis and never denied until now.

There is an element here that has escaped everyone's attention. The Republicans act like they won the last election, which is why they obstruct everything. Now they are basically forcing the Obama Administration to exert its political capital over chicken shit, making it almost impossible for any heavy lifting in the future. The reason is simply that they know the old paradigm, where they dictated the terms of the political debate is over.

Democrats are thrilled by Republicans fully embracing George W.'s economic policies. It has been an astonishing last two days where the full-blown Republican talking points are now being circulated through the countries. It can't be a coincidence that everyone from Marco Rubio, Senator Barraso, Carly Fiorina and Sharron Angle have embraced the same economic ideas. Rachel Maddow in her show ran Marco Rubio's commercial where he hyped his "ideas for the economy" by saying that Rachel Maddow was against them. Maddow was very funny running a counter-ad of her own explaining why the ideas are really a disaster.

But these ideas are now shared. Make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Grover Norquist, Jihadist, Log Cabin Republican and friend of Jane Hamster of FireDogLake, sent around a memo yesterday alerting conservatives to "prepare for the largest tax increases in history". All of course linked to President Obama. And of course every tax bracket gets increased if you use the logic that the Democrats are just going to let the tax cuts expire in 2010 without any modification. And, of course, if all you want to do is preserve the tax cuts for the wealthiest. Then there should be no estate tax. This also expires in 2010. Democrats are trying to modify this to a situation where estates of 5-7 million would be tax-free and then higher would be subject to a tax. There should be no corporate taxes. This would encourage companies sitting on the $2 trillion in cash reserves to create jobs. Healthcare or Obamacare should be repealed. Even though according to the CBO the healthcare bill is deficit neutral. Social Security should be privatized. Government spending should be cut because of the deficit. As Rachel Maddow pointed out, this really is voodoo economics since all the above would dramatically increase the deficit.

Most people thought Senator Kyl made a gaffe when he advocated maintaining the tax cuts for the wealthy and stopping extensions to unemployment. Even Chris Wallace said that the tax cuts for the wealthiest would lead to greater deficits. Kyl's gaffe was a premature unveiling of the Republican economic program. His statement that tax cuts are paid for became the litany of congressional Republicans the last few days. Mark Pence, who has joined the Teabagger Caucus, used the old supply-siders argument that JFK cut the top marginal tax rate and that stimulated the economy. We are supposed to skip the history of the Republican years.

When I started this blog, I pointed out the Republican politics of deficits. Reagan's were aimed at bankrupting the Soviet Union and restraining Democratic spending in the follow-up years. George W.'s deficit spending was to set the stage for the final dismantling of the social welfare system. The problem was that the disintegration of the global economy and the lack of tools at the FED's disposal forced a situation where old Keynesian economics had to return. Instead of recalibrating their economic approach, the Republicans have now doubled down on W's economics because it was all based on ideology and not practicality.

The overt embrace of George W, at this time in the electoral season is madness. A moderate Democratic group, the Third Way, polled voters about approaches to the economy. 49% preferred someone who supported Obama's economic policies; while 34% aligned themselves with Bush. However, if you excluded Bush's name. The polls revealed that 51% would vote for someone who believed Obama's policies were not working and only 42% for those who supported Obama's policies. In other words, Republicans should have just shut up if they wanted the election to be a referendum on the Democrats.

The United States now has about the same inequality of income distribution as the days before the Great Depression. 1% of the country now holds 26% of the wealth. This is in the realm of being a banana republics. As a comparison in the heydays of John Boehner's America, which he claims Obama is destroying, 1% owned 6% of our national wealth and America was at the zenith of its power and the economy dominated the world.

Everyone knows that small businesses generate the most jobs in America. Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has stressed job creation through small businesses and the middle class. Go back to the 2008 Republican Convention. I never heard the term "middle class" or "small business" mentioned. As we have seen throughout the stimulus debate, healthcare debate and the Wall Street Reform debate, today's Republican party has aligned itself with the largest multinational corporations and with the wealthiest classes. The bone they throw the masses is "family values". To be so overtly large corporation and the wealthy puts the Republican Party back in the late 19th century and early 20th. Herbert Hoover would not be allowed as a member because he was too progressive.

What stung Republicans when Obama spoke was his description that Republicans "lack faith in the American people." Republicans thought they could embrace the faux populist movement of the teabaggers and continue to wrap the flag around themselves without anyone shooting at them. But this constant embrace of the status quo is getting to be old and revealing the extreme ideological morass they have found themselves in.

Last night I watched a spectacular display of religious libertarianism with Glenn Beck lecturing his audience about what an evil idea the "common good" is. It was an awesome display of insulting the American public. He claimed if you embraced the common good then death camps would be next. He said that the individual is the primary good. Ayn Rand meets the Wealth Gospel. But at least Beck was honest--his position is where the Republicans are today. There is no common good. And government should not be used to alleviate the economic distress of the American people.

That's why the tea baggers are caught all in knots over the charges from the NAACP about racism. Racism and nativism are the tools if you're going to persuade people to embrace a corporatist economic ideology. Obama did us a favor by having alongside him unemployed Americans who have been looking for jobs. In one photo opportunity , he drilled home that the 'welfare queen" language coming from congressional Republicans about the unemployed is simply not true and that compassion and empathy are not values that should be removed from governance.

But in New Hampshire,we have our first GOP candidate for the state assembly having been endorsed by the new American Third Position group. The candidate is running on a platform of preserving our white racial identity and claiming that white people should have a home land of their own. So far no Republican has denounced his candidacy. Down in Arizona, the sheriff who appeared in John McCain's "Danged Fence" commercial went on the air on a white supremacist radio show and asked for all the white militias to come on down to help him out.

We forget and most Americans don't know that in September 2008, when the economy melted down, President George W. Bush informed congress that if they didn't approve the bank bailout he would declare martial law. In fact troops had been brought home from Iraq for the occasion. We were just moments away from the complete suspension of our Constitution. Can you imagine today if America actually starts toward a Great Depression , what the threat of fascism would be? All these posters and billboards about Obama as Hitler are simply projections of those who aspire to that ideology taking over the country.