"With our lavish $1 billion American Embassy in Baghdad, Pax Americana will have reached its apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavour at which Islamic people excel is expelling imperial powers by terror or guerilla war.

They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, and the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before - broken and defeated. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."
-- Pat Buchanan

McSame? McWorse.

These guys are going to trash the country to give corporations even more control that they have now.

We really need to consider some sort of reform of the Corporate Person status of these organizations.

Really a few large investors can control the board of directors, they choose the CEO. The CEO runs the company into the ground for short term profit then leaves it with the few more wealthy than before and the workers out of jobs.

The people in charge need to be held financially accountable. By that, I mean running a company into the ground, the execs and few wealthy shareholders should forfeit their wealth to settle the companies debt.

McSame? McWorse.

These guys are going to trash the country to give corporations even more control that they have now.

We really need to consider some sort of reform of the Corporate Person status of these organizations.

Really a few large investors can control the board of directors, they choose the CEO. The CEO runs the company into the ground for short term profit then leaves it with the few more wealthy than before and the workers out of jobs.

The people in charge need to be held financially accountable. By that, I mean running a company into the ground, the execs and few wealthy shareholders should forfeit their wealth to settle the companies debt.

Back on thewar tip, look at the quote from the L.A. Times today:

"The key to victory -- and probably the White House next fall -- McCain said, is whether American casualties start to rise again. If the surge is seen as failing, McCain warned, support for the war will evaporate.

'I am confident about this strategy,' he declared. 'I will stick with it under any circumstances. But I don't know if the American people will stick with it.' "

Support for the war will evaporate? So he's going to "stick with it" no matter what. Shouldn't the Dems be trumpeting this at every opportunity?

I received a solicitation from McCain today, with a postage-paid reply envelope. I wrote on the solicitation letter "Why did you stop opposing torture?" and am mailing it back to his campaign.

Colin

That's why I'm not really bothered by all the gloom and doom from Clinton and Obama supporters if their candidate of choice isn't chosen in the fall or claims by either that the other is "unelectable". McCain literally has nothing to run on and his policies are incredibly unpopular. Once the Democrats start going to town on him, he's in for a world of trouble.

and who said mccain would be just more of the same?

I'm going to scream if I hear one more talking head say that McCain's slip-ups last week, confusing Shia and Sunni, was okay, because "most of the American public didn't understand the difference, either".

Uh, haven't we had ENOUGH of someone who appeals to voters because he ISN'T smarter than they are?
The last eight years have been a disaster for that very reason.

Since most of Kevin's readers will not read the document he links to in this post, let me point out two errors it makes.

First, its authors calculate the regressivity of reductions in the corporate tax rate by reckoning it entirely as a tax on wealth, which they say (correctly) is more unequally distributed in the United States than income. In this line of argument, a reduction in corporate tax increases translates to an increase in stock prices, benefitting the wealthier taxpayers most likely to own stocks. This assumes that corporate taxes are not passed on to corporations' customers, something that no one believes for the very good reason that it isn't true. To believe reducing corporate tax rates would have no benefits at all to consumers requires believing that corporations would simply pocket the money they are not paying in taxes, adding it to their after-tax bottom line and thereby boosting their stock price. If all corporations did this, reductions in the corporate tax rate would indeed be as regressive as Gordon and Kvaal claim. This is, to put it mildly, highly unlikely.

The second, less serious mistake Gordon and Kvaal make is to calculate the cost of eliminating the alternative minimum tax (AMT) by comparing it to baseline. In other words, they compare the revenue lost through eliminating the AMT as Sen. McCain proposes to do with the revenue projected by maintaining it, ignoring the impact of the temporary "patch" Congress enacted last year. This would be fine if the patch were truly temporary, but no one believes that Congress will let it expire and subject to the AMT the estimated 20 million taxpyers exempted by the patch.

Criticism of McCain's tax policy proposals does not require exaggerations of this kind. The fundamental problem with them as a package are that they are recklessly expensive; they would be at any time, and they are particularly so in time of war. Secondly they do not constitute a coherent program; they are instead a wish list of every tax cut proposed by some lobbyist or viewed favorably in some poll.

And thirdly, McCain will not be able to defend them. They contradict his own (correct) criticisms of the Bush tax cuts when these were proposed, and make a mockery of his staple campaign rhetoric about taking up causes greater than one's self-interest. McCain's tax proposals symbolize the price he paid to become the likely Republican nominee this year. He has tied himself tightly to the agendas of President Bush's most dedicated supporters at the precise moment when they, and Bush, are more unpopular than they have ever been -- and when the themes that McCain ran on eight years ago are the only ones that could keep him competitive this November.

"I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated," McCain told the Wall Street Journal in late November.

In December he said, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," as the Boston Globe reported on its "Political Intelligence" blog at the time.

Zathras wrote: "McCain's tax proposals symbolize the price he paid to become the likely Republican nominee this year. He has tied himself tightly to the agendas of President Bush's most dedicated supporters at the precise moment when they, and Bush, are more unpopular than they have ever been -- and when the themes that McCain ran on eight years ago are the only ones that could keep him competitive this November."

If the American electorate was well-informed about McCain's current policy proposals and their implications, which indeed are and should be very unpopular, McCain would not be competitive.

But the corporate-owned mass media, from which the vast majority of Americans get the vast majority of their information, will ensure that McCain is "competitive" in November.

By puffing up McCain with bullshit about the "moderate maverick straight-talking war hero and enemy of lobbyists", and keeping Americans uninformed about the real implications of his policy proposals, while at the same time engaging in an onslaught of character assassination against the Democratic nominee, the corporate media will get McCain close enough to steal the election with voter disenfranchisement and fraud, as Cheney & Bush did in 2000 and 2004.

If John McCain is not sworn in as president in January 2009, I will be very, very pleasantly surprised.

The AMT issue is not quite so cut and dried as the rest, the problem is that the original AMT scheme was not indexed for inflation. So it creeps on down the pay scale having effects where it was never intended to.

The two biggest tax exemptions that are intentionally affected by AMT are state income taxes and ISO stock option grants. The first means that pretty much every middle class family in California tends to end up paying AMT.

ISO stock options were intended to encourage companies to give stock grants across the board. The problem is that during the dotcom bubble the fact that AMT is due on exercise and regular income tax at sale meant that some people ended up with million dollar tax bills on stock that ended up worthless.

Pretty much nobody will issue ISO grants any more as a result so that particular issue is now a dead letter in any case.

Indexing the AMT rates and making sure that incentive options don't cause people to lose their houses both seem like a very good idea to me.

But eliminating the AMT altogether would cost a heck of a lot more because suddenly the top 1% would have an incentive to start using a whole raft of tax evasion measures that are not currently worthwhile because of the AMT. So the cost would be a lot more than stated and favor the top 1% even more.

Wow. James Kvaal, who until a few months ago was on the John Edwards campaign, opposes Sen. McCain's economic policies.

Nice quote, Quotation man

Every once in a while Buchanon says something profound. He is more of a true conservative than a Bushnut. A person could actually talk to him.

We really need to consider some sort of reform of the Corporate Person status of these organizations.

I hear this all the time from lefties. And I don't know why, I think it's one of those things that sounds worse than it is.

The corporate person status is the thing that allows the individual to be able to sue corporations. That makes corporations responsible to consumers and to allow consumers the ability to seek redress in the courts should there be an environmental accident or an injury or death related to a product. None of these abilities exist in other countries.

A classic example is a horrible high speed rail accident in Germany. It's clearly a case of a corporate culture that was negligent on safety. But none of the victims can sue anyone other than the individual executives who of course (a) don't have the financial resources of the corporation to get a payout and (b) the evidence required to win in a case like is much more difficult. Because you actually have to prove that an executive created the culture of safety negligence, which is much harder to do than to prove that the culture exists and that policies weren't put in place by a number of people.

Also, the individual cannot sue another individual based on class-status. The system of heavy regulation that the Europeans require is very often because their is no ability for the individual to use the courts to go after the corporation. In many ways, ours is the system that provides more fairness and justice for the individual and the consumer.

McCain says he doesn't understand economics. By his own admission he's not prepared to be President.

McCain says he supports continuing our occupation of Iraq for 100 years, the longer the better. And yet, he makes no attempt to convince anyone why his view is better for America. He admits he's out of step with the American public and isn't trying to lead us to his view.

John McCain, in his own words, isn't fit to be President.

I wouldn't oppose the elimination of the AMT and reduction of corporate taxes if the personal income tax system increased to keep the federal revenues neutral or slightly higher than now.

Somehow I think McCain thinks deficits don't matter. Someone should ask him how he feels about deficits and the growing federal debt.

", ours is the system that provides more fairness and justice for the individual and the consumer.

Posted by: Christopher / DC1974 on March 23, 2008 at 4:23 PM | PERMALINK "

An interesting argument, Chris. A system with regulation doesn't necessarily preclude a lawsuit and an anecdote doesnt invalidate a sysytem. The whole point is to have a system that doesnt callously, or because of incompetence, injure the public too frequently. You have a ways to go to prove that the European system does that,

But-but-but-

He got his arms broken by the Vietnamese, therefore all his opinions on everything are wise, and if your common sense and the facts tell you otherwise as regards a particular issue, you're just delusional.

Kind of reminds me of a lot of New Yorkers, who seem to think that being raised within the Five Boroughs automatically turns them into a cross between Tony Montana, Donald Trump, and John Gotti. Ditto for lawyers and ultra left-wingers. Sure, the ranks of JDs and commie-paper-pushing wackos aren't swelled with the usual share of punks-- Not!!

Folks, if you think McCain is worth listening to because he's old, white, wears a suit, and is loquacious, I've got to break it to you-- there are a whole bunch of guys in America who both fit that description, and try to make a living offering to jerk people off in bathroom stalls, or swindling old ladies out of their life's savings. Those guys aren't worth listening to, either.

Ah,yes,analysis of McCain's policies.
Sen. John McCain, the candidate who typically speaks his “straight talk� on the record, urged reporters to tuck their notebooks away on Sunday during a cookout for the campaign press at his vacation home in Page Springs, Arizona.
And McCain, in return, got press coverage depicting a relaxed, confident, regular-like-you-and-me-but-also-very-much-in-charge guy holding court at what could well be, as so many reporters noted, the future Western White House. (Could rib-grilling be the new brush-clearing? Just as manly - and sticks to reporters’ ribs!) From CJR.

Yep, there'll be plenty of talk bout McCain, it just will be tinged by fawning over him.

You can make a living offering to jerk people off in bathroom stalls? Who knew. Do you get healthcare?

What matter his policy positions? The Dem Congress will hold him in check, and besides, I've known for years that he doesn't know which end to shit out of unless a crony tells him. What matters is that he's a great guy when he isn't cranky, he tells great stories, and mmmmmm mmmm, but those barbecue ribs of his are tasty!

Besides, just between me and you, do you know what tax bracket I'm in? *Wink*

"Vote for me. I'm not a n***er and I'm not a b**ch."

Everything else is too complicated.
Game over.
We are screwed.

Secular Animist said it beautifully upthread. We have become a society where we don't know and don't seem to care about policy issues. McCain would lose in a landslide if his policies were widely known. Instead, his media handlers play up these irrelevant factoids, like the fact he was a POW forty years ago, as if simply having been a POW automatically entitles someone to the keys to the Oval Office. We have become so shallow and devoid of substance as a country that we are collapsing from within.

Would you say that John McCain is just like Bush only insane.... ier???

How Insane Is John McCain?

Pat wrote:

You can make a living offering to jerk people off in bathroom stalls? Who knew. Do you get healthcare?

Apparently it's the Republicans' economic policy to steer our nation to the point where more and more people will be obliged to try that out. And then to leave them without healthcare, too.

One should wonder why Hillary Clinton is a McCain supporter...

You can make a living offering to jerk people off in bathroom stalls?

Swan, get out of there! Meds time. I'm serious.

One correction of a correction:

If we use the baseline of "temporary" AMT relief in the form of a higher exemption and credits that can be used against AMT liability, then the percent that goes to the top quintile goes UP, not DOWN. Those are the most "progressive" parts of AMT repeal, after all.

And the most common way to score corporate tax changes is as a reduced/increased burden on capital owners, which skews way higher than income just like wealth does. Not perfect either but without looking more closely I'd guess this is the actual methodology.

To believe reducing corporate tax rates would have no benefits at all to consumers requires believing that corporations would simply pocket the money they are not paying in taxes, adding it to their after-tax bottom line and thereby boosting their stock price. If all corporations did this, reductions in the corporate tax rate would indeed be as regressive as Gordon and Kvaal claim. This is, to put it mildly, highly unlikely.

I'm not econ expert, so I'd like to hear from others on this, but I was wondering if what Zathras says is commonly understood economics or what. Because while I do believe that corporations pass corporate taxes on to their customers, I find it doubtful that any tax reduction would also be passed on to the customer; rather than kept by the company. Why would they do that? Prices are generally not based on costs, but on what consumers are willing to pay. And if consumers will pay higher prices for something, I fail to see why a business would charge lower prices just because they made more profit. Like Exxon, we KNOW they won't lower prices for a tax cut. They'll just laugh all the way to the bank; as they always do. They're very funny guys.

So is my basic understanding of this correct, or is there reason to believe that consumers will benefit from a corporate rate reduction? Or am I misunderstanding everything? Again, I'm of the opinion that businesses pass costs on to consumers, but keep savings for themselves. When productivity goes up; they get richer. And if they lowered prices, it'd be because consumers wouldn't pay more; not because of a tax cut. Am I wrong about that?

Doctor Biobrain - having worked in upper level accounting and finance jobs for several Fortune 500 companies, I can tell you the corporate income tax rate has nothing - nada, zero, zilch - to do with the prices a company charges for its products. The tax rate is a "below the line" expense, not part of cost of goods sold (COGS), which is what companies use in measuring their gross margin, which is usually the prime determinant of how they set their prices. Further, the statutory income tax rate is often very different from the "effective" tax rate. This means the statutory tax rate is only applied to taxable income, which is what is left after deductions, credits, rollforwards, carrybacks, etc. Even though the statutory rate may be 35%, the effective rate may be near 0, thanks to sharp-penciled accountants and tax breaks doled out by corrupt Congresscritters who insert targeted tax breaks for wealthy patrons and corporate campaign donors into the tax code.

This right-wing blather about lower corporate tax rates helping common citizens is utter fiction.

I'm afraid that report sounds way too biased for me to read. Throwing that boogeyman "Norquist" right in the title just smacks of red meat for liberals. I already am one, so I don't need to read a report that's just going to tell me what I already know.

re: Why would they do that?
Competition.

Prices are generally not based on costs, but on what consumers are willing to pay.
The upper limit on prices is determined largely by what direct competitors charge for the same goods & services delivered at the same convenience to the buyer. Loss leaders aside, the lower limit is determined by the cost to provide them.

And if consumers will pay higher prices for something, I fail to see why a business would charge lower prices just because they made more profit.

If given a choice, buyers usually chose to pay lower prices for the same goods & services delivered at the same convenience to them.

As mentioned above the base rate and the effective rate may be very different, but a lower effective tax burden does allow lower prices to be charged. Unless they have some sort of monopoly in their market, companies that don't lower prices in response to a lower tax burden will tend to lose market share to those that do.

Some evidence of this is seen by the exodus out of high income tax U.S. states of companies that make easily-shipped products. Although there can be many other factors in a decision to relocate, the tax burden certainly is one of them. (and it's not just the wealthy CEOs who benefit, since they could establish a residence for personal income tax purposes in any state.)

I wasn't clear on what the table is of, so I went to the document to see if there was a caption that explained it, and there wasn't. I'm not impressed. A table that has no label of what its showing. Is it the tax rates for different groups? The tax savings for different groups? Compared to what? Labeling charts and graphs is so basic and was so drummed into me in school and college that it makes me less respectful of this paper.

Posters upthread raise some important methodological issues. Briefly, it is not necessary to assume that all corporations will pass along tax reductions as they do tax increases to their customers, or that if they did this it would be out of their goodness of heart (as opposed, say, to being part of an effort to increase market share), to believe it likely that many of them would. If any significant number of them did, the resulting lower prices for consumers would tend to reduce the regressivity of the tax cut (it should go without saying that an increase in the corporate tax rate would be less progressive than it appears, for the same reason).

The question of nominal vs. effective tax rates is also very important. Gordon and Kvaal recognize this implicitly, by pointing out that Sen. McCain's proposals, taken as a whole, do little to reduce the number of tax shelters that can reduce effective tax rates. However, the prevalence (and to some extent the recent proliferation) of such shelters makes revenue estimates problematic to begin with, and a lower nominal rate can make some tax shelters less attractive, potentially reducing the gap between the effective and nominal tax rates. Without much more detailed analysis it is difficult to say how much this would be true of McCain's proposal to reduce the nominal corporate rate by 25%.

With respect to the AMT, my observation upthread had to do with the revenue loss Kvaal and Gordon estimate for repeal in their campaign document (it is greater if one assumes Congress will not extend the patch enacted last year, and that assumption is almost certainly wrong). I said nothing about the progressivity of AMT repeal.

Nurse Ratched, find a nicer way to talk about Democrats from now, and save the bile for the Republicans.

I've come to a place of hope if this Idiot Nation elects McCain:

Bush has dealt the Repug brand a series of serious blows, but none mortal. If McCain is in office the next four years to take the full, richly deserved blame for their disastrous foreign and domestic policies, I believe it will end them.

We're well fucked no matter what.
I prefer something good to come of it.

I know, I know. We're not supposed to take this stuff seriously.

If McCain isn't serious about what comes out of his mouth on taxes, then let him say so. If it's just red meat for the conservative base and not what he really believes or intends to do, then let him say so.

But I don't see why we should assume he is fibbing. The Republican primary has been effectively over for some time already and he hasn't yet denounced his oft stated view that tax cuts increase revenue (not just growth, revenue).

And even if he is really fibbing that seems kind of noteworthy too. I don't get the journalists' idea that oh, he's just fibbing, so there's no need to report what he says.