Monday Mashup (11/15/10)

(Posting is questionable for tomorrow, by the way.)

I give you Michael Smerconish of the Philadelphia Inquirer here, who recently attended the Roger Waters production of “The Wall” and appeared to be enthralled…

The first time (he saw the show), I was a high school senior who trekked in a van to the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island with a girlfriend and her two brothers. I'd bought the tickets from a wiry looking scalper named "Mike" outside a defunct restaurant on Old York Road in Willow Grove. The New York show was a hot ticket, even in Philadelphia.

I wanted to see what the New York Times' John Rockwell deemed "the most lavish stage show in the history of rock 'n' roll" - especially after my parents had denied me permission to go to the Spectrum three years prior, when Waters was touring in support of the album Animals.

Another reviewer at the time of the release of The Wall wrote: "A general consensus of opinion is that at first listening, the album sounds strange or weird, but listen to it again and you'll probably like it." That was me, writing for my high school newspaper, The Chatterbux, during my senior year at C.B. West in Doylestown. I guess I was right. Only Michael Jackson's Thriller and the Eagles' Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 were bigger sellers in the United States than The Wall.

Years later, it wasn't my parents from whom I needed permission. Last Monday, I left the house only after my wife and I had eaten dinner with our three sons. What was a van three decades ago was now a sedan in which I picked up a friend who likewise scored a pass on the home front. Headed down the Schuylkill, we both commented that it'd be fine if there were no encore because we each had to work early the next morning.

I’m glad it was an enjoyable experience for him. Apparently, he felt no need to heckle Waters as he did so childishly here.

Next, Ross Douthat of the New York Times tells us the following today (from here, on the “catfood commission” report)…

Liberals defended this (negative) knee-jerk response on the grounds that the commissioners’ vision, ostensibly bipartisan, was actually tilted toward Republican priorities. And it’s true that Bowles and Simpson proposed more spending cuts than tax increases over all. But most of the programs and tax breaks that they suggested trimming — from farm subsidies to Defense Department bloat and the home-mortgage tax deduction — represent the American welfare state at its absolute worst.

In response, I give you the following (here)…

As we’ve reported, the deduction for owner-occupied homes is estimated to cost the government some $100 billion a year, making it the largest government subsidy for housing and one of the most expensive tax deductions. Mark Zandi, a well-known economist, has suggested that the housing industry push to limit it.

But the bulk of Americans want the deduction to stick around, according to a nationwide survey of likely voters commissioned by the National Association of Home Builders. (We can’t say there’s much surprise there.) The survey released Wednesday found that 79% of respondents - both owners and renters - believe the federal government should provide tax incentives to promote homeownership.

So basically, the home mortgage deduction costs the government about a hundred billion a year, and extending Dubya’s tax cuts for ten more years could cost about $3.9 trillion.

There are a lot of reasons why I think the Bowles/Simpson commission report represents a colossal waste of money and effort, but one of them is that it has now given fresh cover to another round of bashing that supposed dastardly home mortgage interest deduction. If the debt were the seashore, the money from the home mortgage deduction would be nothing more than a sandcastle at best.

There isn’t a lot that Mrs. Doomsy and I get in the way of a direct financial benefit from our government, but that is one item that helps us at tax time, and I’m going to fight like hell to make sure we keep it.

Continuing with Douthat…

(Bowles and Simpson) went out of their way to avoid balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.

If that were actually true, then why did Paul Krugman say the following (here)…

There were rumors beforehand that the commission would recommend a rise in the retirement age, and sure enough, that’s what Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson do. They want the age at which Social Security becomes available to rise along with average life expectancy. Is that reasonable?

The answer is no, for a number of reasons — including the point that working until you’re 69, which may sound doable for people with desk jobs, is a lot harder for the many Americans who still do physical labor.

But beyond that, the proposal seemingly ignores a crucial point: while average life expectancy is indeed rising, it’s doing so mainly for high earners, precisely the people who need Social Security least. Life expectancy in the bottom half of the income distribution has barely inched up over the past three decades. So the Bowles-Simpson proposal is basically saying that janitors should be forced to work longer because these days corporate lawyers live to a ripe old age.

Douthat really goes off the deep end here, though…

But pondering what Nancy Pelosi and her compatriots are rejecting gives us a pretty good sense of what they’re for. It’s a world where the government perpetually warps the real estate and health care marketplaces, subsidizing McMansions and gold-plated insurance plans to the tune of billions every year.

First, the real estate market was “warped,” as Douthat puts it, when the Repugs were in charge, inflating the housing market (though they had help from the Democrats who, I would argue, greased the regulatory skids to allow it to happen; still, I think this speaks volumes about which political party is more complicit).

Second, I honestly don’t know how Douthat can seriously claim that the Democrats are the ones catering to the “pay no price, bear no burden” crowd here particularly on health care reform, since Bowles-Simpson didn’t address it, as Dean Baker notes here. Baker also tells us the following…

Simpson and Bowles apparently never considered a Wall Street financial speculation tax (FST) as a tool for generating revenue. This is an obvious policy-tool that even the IMF is now advocating, in recognition of the enormous amount of waste and rents in the financial sector. Through an FST, it is possible to raise large amounts of revenue, easily more than $100 billion a year, with very little impact to real economic activity. The refusal to consider this source of revenue is striking since at least one member of the commission has been a vocal advocate of financial speculation taxes. It is also worth noting that Mr. Bowles is a director of Morgan Stanley, one of the Wall Street banks that would be seriously impacted by such a tax.

And on the matter of Social Security…

…it is striking that the Co-Chairs felt the need to address Social Security, even though it was not part of their mandate. The commission's mandate was to deal with the country's fiscal problems. Since Social Security is legally prohibited from ever spending more than it has collected in taxes, it cannot under the law contribute to the deficit. Their proposal would cut benefits for tens of millions of middle class workers who are overwhelmingly dependent on Social Security for their retirement income.

Douthat then (rather haughtily, I think) concludes with this…

The alternative sketched by Bowles and Simpson last week has its weaknesses, but it has this great virtue: It treats Americans not as clients but as citizens, and not as children but as adults.

And as long as those adults are straight, mind you (here...and I'll be watching to see the House Repugs start churning out the jobs they promised in light of this, by the way).

Finally, I don’t suppose you could talk about the inflation of the housing bubble or any other calamity from earlier in this decade without invoking Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History; as part of his “Oh Dear God Haven’t We Endured This Idiot For Too Long Already” media tour to promote his book and his Fabulous Freedom Institute (or whatever…and all immediately after the November election), he tells us the following from here.

Jeb Bush joined his brother for part of the CNN interview, saying he never publicly disagreed with George W. Bush when he was president and is "not going to start now."

Alluding to the hyperpartisanship in Washington, the former Florida governor said there's still room for civility in politics.

"I don't think you can be against everything, just because someone has a D (for Democrat) by their name and you have an R (for Republican) by your name," Jeb Bush said.

George W. Bush said that he was mindful not to get involved in "name calling" as president, adding that he wasn't bothered when he was targeted. Bush said, too, that he didn't support Republicans challenging Democrats' patriotism just because they disagreed with them.

"I don't remember doing that personally, and that was uncalled for if that was the case," he said. "Patriotic people disagreed with my decisions."

In response, I give you the following from here…

Only a liberal senator from Massachusetts would say that a 49 percent increase in funding for education was not enough.

That line was uttered by Number 43 in an October 2004 debate with John Kerry, who of course was the Democratic nominee for president that year. And as noted here, as a result of Dubya’s “49 percent increase,” 3,000 teachers were laid off in Ohio due to a federal budget shortfall of $614 million.

And don’t try telling me that “liberal” wasn’t meant as an insult (surprised he forgot to refer to Kerry as a member of the “Democrat” Party...and this was worth a yuk or two, I must say).