The Democrat-led Senate passed a two month extension to our current payroll tax cuts, and then went home for Christmas.

The Republican-controlled House chose NOT to vote on it, and then went home for Christmas.

Not voting means the tax will increase effective January 1.

The new-age GOP plays zero-sum politics. All of their efforts, on every topic, are designed to defeat the president, or at least to make him look bad.

They won control of the house in 2010 by promising jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs.

All of their efforts in the two years hence have been to further limit access to abortions, to limit health care to only those who can afford it, and to give tax breaks to the already-wealthy.

They have done nothing, made zero effort, to create jobs. So the ‘jobs’ talk was all smoke. All lies.

More jobs would probably reflect well on Obama, so no effort is made to create jobs.

It has come to the point where the GOP cannot even vote for a tax cut.

Anything that President Obama supports must be defeated, even a proposal to support lower taxes on working Americans.

This is a payroll tax.  This means that people who work for a living will be getting a tax increase.

A tax increase.  Dictated by the Republican party.

Who is the ‘never raise tax’ party?

Correction: Who CLAIMS to be the ‘never raise tax’ party?   Republicans.

If this tax cut was designed to benefit millionaires and billionaires, the Boehner-led Republicans would have stampeded everything in their path to pass it.

Do you think I am full of it? It is okay if you do. Conservatives who read Winkest Link will point out how I am always railing about how the GOP seems to be off base on a number of issues. Maybe I am just a liberal wacko.

I don’t think of myself as a liberal wacko. I don’t even think of myself as especially liberal at all. I believe in the free market and a strong military. I believe America is a uniquely outstanding country.

I am liberal on some things, conservative on others. I try to let facts and logic dictate which views I take. I try (really) to leave emotion out of my decision-making.

Regular liberal readers might be disappointed in how conservative I can be on certain issues.

I don’t ‘like’ taxes. In that way I am conservative. I do, however, understand why tax is necessary: To maintain an orderly society, we need a strong central government, which requires tax. We need good roads and bridges. We need to educate our children. We need military and police and firefighters to protect us.

So we need tax.

In a pure economic sense there are times to lower corporate tax rates, and there are times to raise them.

Many conservatives, and especially teabaggers, hate tax. They don’t believe there is EVER a good time to raise tax. Naturally they accept the fallacy that all corporate tax just falls back on to the consumer.

The GOP, as it is currently constituted, preaches only one tax theory: Lower taxes create more jobs. The more money corporations have, the more they share!

Nope. Sometimes corporations just have more money than they know what to do with. Let us test the theory…

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, in the second quarter of 2011 American Corporations made $1.94 trillion in profits. Record profits.

That number is not operating expense. It is not gross income. It is profit. And that amount is after tax. (It is also after unimaginable executive salaries, and after those ‘horrible’ union wages.)

I repeat: $1.94 trillion profit after tax. Record profits. So apparently the tax they pay is not such a horrible drain.

BUT, the unemployment rate did not improve. Why? Because ‘More jobs’ is not a corporate goal. ‘More money’ is the only goal. And they already have more money than they know what to do with.

If making profits created jobs, we would be swimming in jobs right now.

So, if the corporations refuse to hire, now is the time for the government to do it. Private industry is sitting on trillions of dollars. (Remember, the $1.94 trillion profit mentioned above is for ONE QUARTER.)

Time to raise the corporate tax rate and/or remove loopholes.

This will help our whole economy. Bridges and roads are in desperate need of repair. We need more teachers and more police. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. These are jobs that will create more jobs.

Notably, this will also help the industries that are being taxed. People with jobs will buy the products/services they produce. More jobs help everybody, even the wealthy!

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But let us, for a moment, take the Republican technique, and apply it to the 2nd quarter. Instead of $1.94 trillion profit, let’s say taxes were lower and these companies netted $2.5 trillion profit. Would that have created more jobs?

Rhetorical Answer: Why didn’t $1.94 trillion profit create more jobs? What difference would another half a trillion make?

It just becomes more and more profit, not more and more jobs.

Obviously more profit does NOT equal more jobs. These companies already have MORE PROFIT. More than ever. Ever.

Republicans (except for the stupider among them) know this. They just use the phrase ‘more jobs’ to convince you to give more money to the already wealthy.

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When companies are struggling, taxes should be lowered. When companies are robust (and ‘robust’ does not begin to describe $1.94 trillion profit in three months time) we have to look at the big picture.

Big-picture circumstances have now converged to swing to pro-tax.

• Companies are flush
• Unemployment is high
• Infrastructure has aged to a dangerous point

Lowering tax will fix none of America’s problems.

Is it cynical to think the GOP is happy about our ongoing recession?

Are their actions based on total cluelessness, or is this intentional?

What Americans need are jobs. The last thing the GOP seems to care about is jobs.

Putting people to work would …

• Take them off unemployment (which saves money)
• Fix failing infrastructure, like bridges and roads
• Increase the tax base (income, after all, is taxable)
• Create tumble-down jobs (remember, people who have money, spend money. And those at the lowest income levels tend to spend ALL their money, just to pay bills and buy necessities.)
• The tumble-down jobs create additional jobs. And so on.

Oh, Republicans TALK about jobs, but their only ‘method’ is to give tax breaks to the wealthy. There is no historical scientific evidence that shows giving money to the rich will create jobs. (Yes, we know how much Republicans hate science.)

Do you think the Teabaggers have some really good ideas? Here is a quote from a Republican, Allan Sloan (an admitted moderate):

“Some policies and statements you hear from Tea Party types about the economy and the debt markets are utterly insane. Any competent economics instructor would give you an F if you asserted the same sort of nonsense on an exam.”

Do yourself a favor and read his whole article, which is from the September 5, 2011 issue of Fortune.

I forgive the Teabaggers. They genuinely have no idea what they are doing. Their credo, tax = bad, is mindless drivel, but at least they are stupid enough to believe it.

Republican leaders in Congress, on the other hand, know better. They are just trying to corral Teabagger votes to maintain a majority in the House. (Subtle warning to the GOP: If you allow one cockroach in your house, you will end up with a LOT of cockroaches in your house.)

Republicans must feel the only way they can beat Obama is if the economy gets even worse. They need unemployment to remain high, and are hoping to ride public anger/frustration into a takeover of the White House in 2012. A horribly unhappy America may just vote to oust the incumbent, even though it is the GOP that is causing this mess…

They cut benefits for the sick, the poor and the elderly, maintain tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, and do nothing to create jobs. This should stir even more public distrust of our government.

Since he is the head of that government, let’s blame Obama for the poor shape we are in!

You know what? They are partly right. Obama and the Dems are the minority in the House, but they should still have the courage to fight for what they know is right and what is good for America.

They don’t fight. No courage. How sad.

Dinking around, delaying raising the debt ceiling, has cost us money. The U.S. taxpayer is now on the hook for $1.7 billion that we never would have owed had we simply acted more timely to do something we were going to do anyway….

I told you so. Economists told you so.  This was not a prediction, it was a fact.

Teabaggers turned a simple housekeeping maneuver into a civil war. I would say they didn’t care about the consequences, but ‘care’ is not accurate. ‘Care’ would imply they knew what they were doing.

Teabaggers don’t know what they are doing. They don’t know government, They don’t know economics. They don’t know history.

They are, by definition, morons.

They fuss about ‘taxpayer money’ because the one thing they DO know is that they hate paying tax.

I repeat….. one-point-seven-billion-dollars.  This should be called ‘Teabagger Tax.’

They could read the link attached to this article and STILL not get it.  Most of them don’t believe photo proof of the president’s birth certificate, so why would they believe this needless delay would cost the taxpayer $1.7 billion?

By leveraging the threat of the nation’s first-ever default, they crushed Obama into accepting trillions of dollars in spending cuts. This is no way to pull out of a recession. Obama knew it, but he caved anyway. Anything to avoid defaulting and REALLY screwing up the U.S. economy.

Teabaggers don’t seem to know this or care.

We are NOT overtaxed. This country is at a 50-year LOW for tax collected to GNP.

The lack of tax income is one reason we are horribly in debt.

Remember, when Clinton was the president the wealthy were paying two percent (2%) more, and we were running surpluses and paying down our debt. ‘W’ and a Republican congress gave all of that away to the wealthiest. They flushed the surplus and, ultimately, the economy.

So what now?

The new budget cuts will do nothing to help the economy. In fact, a second recession is likely. Unemployment, already high, may get worse. The unemployed/underemployed pay little to no tax, further exacerbating a poor economy. .

If you are unemployed or underemployed, expect to stay that way. Make sure to thank the GOP, and specifically the teabaggers. Their ignorance is costing you, and America.

We at the Winkest Link were stupid enough to believe that the House of Representatives would eventually see the light and just pass raising the debt ceiling. To all presidents of both parties this has always been a formality in the past. But now morons run the House, so we at W-L will have to delay the follow-up to our ‘Voter Fraud’ article to make time to beg for two-cents worth of maturity from the GOP. Here goes….

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Dear GOP: (I will address the GOP directly, and not the teabaggers, because teabaggers are to thoughtful discussion what Neanderthals are to aeronautics…. “Ugh… me not get joke”) This is so stupid. Just raise the debt ceiling already. Don’t attach anything to it, just pass it.

This is not a budget bill, this is just (to paraphrase Ronald Reagan) ‘housekeeping.’

Raise the debt ceiling already, we can argue about the budget later.

The debt ceiling is arbitrary and should be totally non-controversial. Only one other country on the planet even has one. It is a made-up number.

For this stupid “principle” you would trash the U.S. economy? Especially when we are trying to recover from this last recession?

The only reason it is controversial is because the teabaggers want all conflicts to go nuclear. They control about 80 of the 535 House seats, but they have John Boehner’s private parts in a vice. He cannot breathe without their approval.

Boehner must be the weakest speaker in modern times. He knows additional taxes are needed to help the budget, but he dare not whisper that….

Teabaggers don’t know and don’t care about our responsibilities to maintain our standing in the world/financial community. Don’t know, don’t care.

Interest rates will rise on everybody, including you and me and the small businesses the GOP so often claims to care about.

This is the REAL job-killer. If a business can’t afford to borrow money, they can’t grow the company, or hire people.

Raising the debt ceiling should be perfunctory. We must pay our bills. This is not the same as passing a budget, it is simply paying our bills.

Teabaggers want every issue with Obama to be nuclear war. That is not real governance. Certainly not MATURE governance.

Raise the debt ceiling already. And raise it to at least 2013 so we don’t have to go through this B.S. again during election year 2012.

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Additional Comments

By Kasson

Ostensibly (I like that word), the reason for Republican’s insistence on balancing the budget is to prevent economic and financial collapse in the future.  This is a noble goal, and that is why it works in the polls.But if the purpose is to prevent economic collapse, why would they flirt with it now?  Neither side is willing to take a bitter pill.

I think of it this way.  The United States has a cancer (the national debt).  Everyone agrees that in the short, medium, and long terms we need to deal with it to prevent it from metastasizing at least any worse than it has.  But I don’t feel the solution is to go on a murderous, suicidal rampage, taking out the global economy.  Sure it would “fix” the problem of debt.  But it is like curing an ice cream headache by shooting yourself in the head.  Solves the pain, sure, but it isn’t forward looking.  You need to look ahead and plan for the future.  Think of the consequences of your choices.

I am confident something will get passed, albeit it wont be a solution anyone likes.  They punted on the problem for too long, and now have to accept a less than desirable outcome.  You know it’s bad when NFL owners are laughing at the inability of congress to come to some sort of deal.

The GOP talking point to regain the House in 2010 was the following mantra: “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.” Nothing else…just ‘jobs.’

It worked fabulously. They took complete control of the House and narrowed their deficit in the Senate.

What have their objectives been SINCE the election?

• Embarrass President Obama.
• Protect the extremely wealthy from a massive two-percent tax increase (back to what they paid in the 90’s)
• Embarrass President Obama.
• Cut Budgets (on social programs, and anything else that helps the poor)
• Embarrass President Obama.

Notice what is missing? Jobs.

After the 2010 elections, the GOP’s first act when taking office was to ensure continued tax cuts for the very most wealthy. Priority number one.

Was anyone surprised?

In the ensuing 20 months they have done nothing to create jobs. Not a single bill. Do you know why? Because cutting tax for the wealthy is their only ‘jobs program.’

They keep beating this drum and it keeps NOT WORKING.

It didn’t work when the economy spiraled out of control under Bush, and it isn’t working now, after the GOP majority in the House forced Obama to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

Giving money to the wealthy does not create jobs. Didn’t then, doesn’t now. (Ironically though, it DOES increase deficit spending)

Know what would create jobs? Fixing things, like our roads and bridges. These would be real jobs, not the minimum wage jobs the GOP is so fond of.

Republicans will oppose any real jobs program, no matter how desperate our economy, no matter the crumbling state of our infrastructure, if an upsurge in jobs might make Obama look good. Republicans would do anything, including tanking our economy, rather than make Obama look good.

Balancing budgets is normally a great idea, but not when jobless rates are high. Excessive fiscal tightening does not create jobs, it slows job growth or, worse, creates more unemployment.

Budget cutting is not a solution to all problems, but the GOP (which is being driven by the tea-baggers) is laser-beam focused on budget cuts.

Tea-baggers know nothing, and care nothing, about economics or creating jobs, they just want to pay less tax. What this tells you is that most tea-baggers have jobs, and don’t give a damn about those that don’t.

Wanna know what the newest GOP legislative goal is? Jobs? Don’t make me laugh. They now want to repeal the law requiring government use of energy-saving light bulbs. Republicans are pro-choice when it comes to which type of light bulbs we use. God-forbid we should save millions of dollars in energy costs.

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If the budget is ever lowered to the satisfaction of the tea-baggers (and it never will be), then their next priority will be helping the jobless.

Ha!!! Just kidding! The only concern for these loons, after tax, is abortion.

They don’t care about the unemployed, and the ‘Highway and Bridge Fairy’ will probably take care of those problems.

But when election season comes around, they will TALK about jobs, like they did in 2010. And morons will buy it again….

Not too long ago (February 14 to be exact) we at Winkest Link expressed our displeasure about how often opponents just make up s*** to trash the president.

In the political arena we don’t mind a little hyperbole. Politics, after all, is hardball, so….

1. GOP: Feel free to say Democrats spend tax dollars like drunken sailors.
2. Dems: Go ahead and say the GOP are heartless bastards who only care about their rich friends.

It is okay to say both of these things because they have just enough truth to qualify as hyperbole. They are not outright lies.

‘Hyperbole’ is not how you would describe the statements by Michelle Bachmann in the attached article. These are lies. She is making up s***.

Ignore the John Wayne comments. She was in Iowa, John Wayne was born in Iowa. Close enough. (Okay, it is a LITTLE bit humorous that Waterloo, the town she was bragging up, was once the home of John Wayne Gacy).

But the rest of it is typical Bachmann, and comes from the GOP playbook.

Just make s*** up, repeat it and repeat it.

The GOP plays to an important axiom: A microphone in your face gives you the appearance of credibility. People will believe whatever you say as long as they would otherwise agree with you.

And never apologize. Apologizing is NOT in the playbook.

Democrats are not clean on this issue either. They too get snagged for specious statements.

But this is not a rare occurrence for Republicans. It is not a slip-up, it is a tactic. This is a scorched-earth strategy that makes people hate all politicians. They will even use it against fellow Republicans if they have to.

Let us examine a Carl Rove example, since he pretty much wrote the playbook on how to trash your opponent.

Early in the 2000 Republican primaries John McCain was gaining some momentum against George W. Bush. Rove, for Bush, “push-polled” South Carolina, auto-dialing thousands of people, telling them John McCain had a biracial child out of wedlock. (Yes, McCain has a ‘biracial’ child, an adopted daughter from Bangladesh.)

It worked. Bush beat war-veteran McCain in South Carolina, which eventually led to Bush taking the GOP nomination, etc.

The ‘biracial child out of wedlock’ story wasn’t hyperbole, it was a crass attempt to stir up racist sentiment in South Carolina.

Make up s***, scorched earth.

Nowadays there are outlets to double-check these statements, most notably politifact.com, but it doesn’t matter too much. People believe what they want to believe, in spite of documented evidence to the contrary. How else can you explain the high percent of Iowa Republicans who STILL believe Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.?

Make up s***. It sticks.

Here is an interesting chart, from the Harvard Business School, showing the distribution of wealth in America.

it is not a complicated chart, but please focus on the top bar, because that is real. The other two are just opinions. They are interesting opinions, worthy of discussion, but opinions nonetheless.

The dark blue area represents the total wealth of the lowest-earning 20% of people who live in the U.S. The light blue is the next 20%. The red is the next 20%.

Those three categories represent 60% of us including, presumably, you and me. Our cumulative wealth is shown WAY over on the right end of the chart.

This chart didn’t surprised you, did it? You knew the top groups own almost all of everything in America. Fine, we accept that.

Look again at the chart. Of these color bands, who does the GOP most represent/protect? The orange, certainly, but most especially the yellow group.

Republicans never want to raise taxes on the wealthy. Never. They refuse to even consider removing the tax breaks that Bush and a Republican congress showered on them ten years ago.

Before the tax breaks, during the Clinton administration, the U.S. was flush. Businesses were booming, and our government was running surpluses and paying down our debt.

Bush and company would have none of that. Surpluses were ‘excess tax,’ in their opinion, and needed to be given back.

You know who they gave it back to, don’t you? Using the clever line of ‘it’s your money” they gave ‘your money’ to their donors, the very-very wealthy.

America instantly plummeted from the black into the red. Ultimately the country tanked into our current recession. (In fairness, the horrendous greed/malfeasance of home mortgage companies exacerbated our current condition.)

So President Obama agreed to bail out a few U.S. industries, including financial institutions and car companies. This was costly initially, but is slowly being repaid.

NOW the GOP wants to talk about fiscal responsibility, but not if it includes bringing tax rates back to what they were in the 90’s.

Republicans will walk out on meetings with the president, and have done so, to prevent Mr. Orange and Mr. Yellow from paying 2% more in tax than they now do. Two percent.

The GOP talks about balancing budgets, but they only really care about protecting those that ‘have.’

We pay taxes, you and I. Most likely you fall into the red or blue areas of this chart. If you do you probably can’t afford a tax accountant to find you loopholes to avoid paying tax.

Not only can Mr. Orange and Mr. Yellow afford tax accountants, they can also easily afford the congressmen who are forever protecting them.

Today’s recommended reading is the autobiography of former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey, titled ‘When I Was a Young Man’.

This book, published in 2002, is NOT the story of ‘how I became a governor/senator/president of a university’. It is a simple telling of him as a young child, up through the end of his service in the Vietnam War.

‘Simple’ is meant as a compliment here. All of the players, Kerrey included, are just normal people, and we are shown how they (and we) are all affected when we are exposed to dire events.

The soldiers, their families, and all those touched by them are all heroes. Through it all it seems Kerrey is made to wonder why he is one of the few with a medal.

A Navy SEAL team leader, he made it through only 50 days in Vietnam, then had the lower part of leg blown off by a grenade. On a subsequent stay at a military hospital he made a request to the surgeon to save as much of his leg as possible…

What follows is an excerpt from the book, when Lt. Kerrey awakes after surgery …

When I opened my eyes I was in the recovery room. My mother and father were there, sitting in chairs against the wall. They were holding hands. My mother’s eyes were red and puffy. “Mom? Dad? Is that you?” I called. They came to my bedside and looked down upon me. “How are you feeling?” my father asked me. “Fine,” I answered, “Just fine.” My mother held my hand and put a wet washcloth to my lips. Two other men were alone and still asleep in their beds. As my head cleared, I remembered where I was and what had just been done to me. I remembered my question to the surgeon, but could not lift my head high enough to see how much had been taken. “Do you need something, son?” my father asked. I addressed the answer to my mother. “Mom, I need to know how much is left.” She looked down at me, held my hand, and said, “There’s a lot left, Bob. There is a lot left.” She was not talking about my leg. From that moment I did not doubt that my body and spirit would heal.

Kerrey never totally heals spiritually though. An awful wisdom is gained through his personal experience and his witnessing of fellow soldiers who are dealt much more severe circumstances than his missing limb.

He concludes the book with information he has learned about an uncle who was lost toward the end of WWII. His efforts to learn this are made to honor his father’s final wishes.

This is a reflective book, not over-the-top. He underplays many of the significant events in his life. He presents issues of hopelessness, and of renewed hope.

In his eyes, life presents us many heroes, should we choose to notice them. He does not present himself as a hero, however, just as a survivor.

Robert Byrd has passed away at age 92.

The West Virginia senator had a distinctive career to say the least.

I do not intend to give a blow by blow rundown of his life. If you wish that, you can get it from many sources.

I will just touch on a few of the more significant.

• His filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. When he first ran for office he opposed civil rights, even going so far as to join the KKK in the 40’s. He came to regret that as the worst move of his life, and feared it would be in his epitaph (which it does).
• His almost 69-year marriage to Emma (who died in 2006).
• His vote against the resolution that gave George Bush the authority to launch the invasion of Iraq. He later said this was the vote “of which I am most proud.”

He was one of only 23 senators to vote this way. Most others (notably Hillary Clinton) voted in favor of expanding presidential power, because they didn’t have the political nerve to vote against it. (Give credit to ‘W,’ he always made sure these votes would be cast uncomfortably close to elections, so opponents could always question the ‘patriotism’ of those who voted against the president.)

Byrd warned that Congress was abdicating its constitutional power to declare war by giving the president what amounted to a blank check.

“We are rushing into war without fully discussing why, without thoroughly considering the consequences, or without making any attempt to explore what steps we might take to avert conflict.”

Years later, he called the invasion “the blunder of the age.”

He was very old by then, and very ill, but his vision was true.

RIP Senator Byrd.