Monday Musings: September 13, 2010

Who says that Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation doesn’t have a backbone? What I can say with certainty is that Rep. John Boehner, R-OH, will not willingly ever -  EVER - appear on the show again. Ha! That that!

Schieffer was doing his regular stuff - or so it seemed - softballing power, when suddenly he took the riff right off the tracks talking about his own battle with lung cancer due to smoking, and asked Boehner if he still smoked. He does. I was holding my breath. (09:20 into the show) Where was this going?

“You’ve taken $340,000 from the tobacco industry” … and asked how Boehner ‘squares’ that with the fact that cigarette smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.

Sic ‘em, Bob! As Schieffer says, “how do you justify that in your own mind?”

Make note of the look on Boehner’s face. He was all ready to give more canned answers to canned questions on taxes, and here comes tobacco out of left field! WTF? Mr. Maven and I are sitting there punching each other in the arm.

Boehner’s answer: Tobacco is a legal product. Folks can choose to smoke or not. That’s all. That’s supposed to cover all his sins, whore-ing for the tobacco industry.

“The American people ought to have the right to make those decisions on their own.” says Boehner. Uh, not the point, John. Why are you taking money from the tobacco industry?

Ha! If this isn’t a huge object lesson on why we need robust campaign finance reform in this country, nothing is. We need politicians that are working for us, not private industry. If they want to work for private industry as a pond scum PR hack or lobbyist - more power to them. Just not on our dime.

Why isn’t the Tea Party outraged at this abuse of power?

Assembly Minority Leader Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka must have been wearing the same tin foil space helmet as the Tea Nuts and Sharron Angle when he received a suggestion from the Mother Ship that putting a 2% tax on food would be a great way to help the state out of it’s $3 billion ‘slump’.

I couldn’t believe that the RGJ wasted the paper and ink to Fact Check Goicoehea’s ‘argument’. Yup, it’s not within the state constitution to do that. You might think the Assembly Minority Leader should know that. That’s your first clue that Eureka elected an idiot. But here’s the second question: didn’t Goicoechea take a second to reflect on the fact that a food tax would be highly regressive - hurting those citizen’s least able to take the hit?

This points again to the chasm-like disconnect that the GOP/Tea Party has with its base here in Nevada and elsewhere. They repeatedly score in the 99th percentile  on the ‘WTF?’ meter. Goicoechea must be coaching Sharron Angle in speaking before understanding the facts - which is why the Reid campaign has a treasure trove of actual recorded comments to use against her.

Also in PRINT ONLY - you’re screwed if you missed buying the analog version of the Sunday Reno Gazette-Journal - was Region’s ‘American Nightmare’ recounts tales of woe by nitwits who leveraged themselves into a financial hole based on the real estate bubble.

I wish I could feel sorry for them, but Mr. Maven and I stayed put - we bought our house to live in, enjoy and pay off as soon as possible - not to use as an ill-considered bank overdraft protection system for living beyond our means. Here’s an excerpt:

‘Rich Gray and his wife bought a home in Reno 15 years ago. They planned to raise a family here, then retire and move to Texas for their golden years.

Now, the kids have grown up and Gray is retired. but he won’t be moving to Texas any time soon.

“We owe more than the house is worth,” said Gray, who - like many others - took out a second mortgage during the housing boom. “There was a time when getting your hands on property was income.”

That time has passed for many homeowners in Nevada, where home values have declined by more than 50 percent since the housing peak, and others across the country.

For Gray, home ownership was an elemental part of the “American Dream.” … The American dream is dead,” the 63-year-old Gray said. “The American dream is now the American nightmare.”’

Well, actually not for the people who saw home ownership for just what it was, and not a cash cow. Economists were warning people that this was folly - a type of over-consumption based on a kind of casual market-driven pyramid scheme known to economists as ‘The Greater Fool’ theory.

You know how it works - you foolishly buy a house that is sorta kinda maybe beyond your means, but with the confidence that there will be a next Greater Fool to come take it off your hands, and a next one, and a next one. It’s also known as ‘survivor investing’. It may occasionally work in the stock market, when practiced by those with brass balls, lots of experience and loads of money to burn. But using the Greater Fool theory  to finance the American Dream is a new spin - and one that failed big time for millions of small time investors with brass balls, little experience and now without loads of money to burn. Uh, kinda like the small time investors that got so horribly burned buying stocks on margin in 1929.

It pays to be a diligent student of history and economics.

Oh, talking about idiots … I saw a bumper sticker yesterday on a fancy Detroit POS that read:

Somewhere in Kenya, a village is missing an IDIOT.

The ‘O’, is of course the Obama logo.

On just what planet, politics aside, could Obama be considered an idiot? The man’s resume seems to, uh, belie that.

Compare, if you will, to the resume of George W. Bush. Or this one. Or even this sorta real one.

It also definitely pays to comparison shop.

Talking about comparison shopping on credible information about taxation here in Nevada, there was a nice pro/con on the OpEd page by former Nevada Congresswoman Barbara Vucanovic, (R) and PLAN Director Bob Fulkerson.

Bob, of course, making a solid case about the need to raise taxes on that infamous upper 2%. Vucanovich, of course, gives the canned GOP/TeaNut stump speech talking points that go like this:

“One does not need to be an economist to understand that a tax increase during this period of economic uncertainty would have drastic effects.”

Perhaps you don’t need to be an economist, but rather a Republican to keep flogging this dead horse. In fact, most credible economists say that a targeted tax increase now is exactly what the economy needs. Here’s what Noble Prize winning economist  Paul Krugman (I’m currently reading his economics text) says about extending the tax cuts. Here’s what Robert Reich (former Labor Secretary and currently teaching at UC Berkeley) says about extending the tax cuts to the wealthy in his “Guide to the Perplexed”. If those two economists don’t work for you, then try former International Monetary Fund economist Simon Johnson of the Baseline Scenario.

Take your pick. It’s not a cabal. They’re all independent thinkers and …. uh, economists that think it’s a patently bad idea to extend the Bush tax cuts to those earning above $250,000.

Barbara should get out more or learn how to Google information, but I shouldn’t pick on her. She’s, unfortunately, not at all unique in this.

Sheesh.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ve got to get to sleep so I can get up and meet a friend in Washoe Valley at Bower’s Mansion where we’ll do about 24 miles or so on the bikes. Yikes, I could have spaghetti for dinner. Hmmmm.

Hey, I’ll be adding some good stuff to the Food page, and more other Lifestyle and Health items throughout the week, so check in regularly.

Talk to me about what you would like to see here besides my political rants. I love to hear from you.

Cheers.

-maven

Update on Monday, September 13, 2010 at 16:16 by mavenandmeddler

I did it…. all 27.4 miles of it and my bike odometer turned over a solid 3,000 miles.

Yippee.

and here is friend ‘R. G.’ - who has put about 2,500 on his Trek just this year alone ( that includes 10 … count ‘em 10 circuits of Lake Tahoe this season so far) who will turn 80 this year. I had to hustle to keep up and not look too bad.