Well, there's one race that may be happening I actually care about.

[LMNO]

And I learned something.  Thanks for the heads up, dok.

[Elder Iptuous]

I wonder if there's a way to separate "actually earned" income (I built a cabinet, I analyzed this document for errors, I cleaned this window), and "magically appeared" income (my savings account grew 5% for no other reason than it just sat in a bank, speculative trading, hedge funds), and then lower the taxes on "actually earned", and raise them on "magically appeared"?

It seems that would encourage people to make money doing things that at least did something in the real world.

Ok, I know in practice this would never happen, because the people with magically earned money make the rules, but are there any other reasons this is a bad idea?

isn't this the idea of capital gains taxes?  the trend now is to reduce that in order to encourage investment, right?

And that's just BRILLIANT, because these spags will of course be investing in other countries, where slave labor ensures a nice fat - tax free - return.

Tax cuts should be tied to verifiable investment in companies at home.  Good luck getting THAT though congress, though.

Yup.  is pretty messed up.
i think if it's invested in companies at home is when they screech that it is 'double taxation' as the corporations are taxed on their end, and then the investor is taxed on his end...

[Jenne]

I wonder if there's a way to separate "actually earned" income (I built a cabinet, I analyzed this document for errors, I cleaned this window), and "magically appeared" income (my savings account grew 5% for no other reason than it just sat in a bank, speculative trading, hedge funds), and then lower the taxes on "actually earned", and raise them on "magically appeared"?

It seems that would encourage people to make money doing things that at least did something in the real world.

Ok, I know in practice this would never happen, because the people with magically earned money make the rules, but are there any other reasons this is a bad idea?

isn't this the idea of capital gains taxes?  the trend now is to reduce that in order to encourage investment, right?

And that's just BRILLIANT, because these spags will of course be investing in other countries, where slave labor ensures a nice fat - tax free - return.

Tax cuts should be tied to verifiable investment in companies at home.  Good luck getting THAT though congress, though.

How much of Congress do you want to BET does this themselves in one way or another?

This is the problem with oligarchical systems such as we have--and we have probably one of the more diversified systems of government there is. 

Financing of campaigns and their current "corporate backing wins all" methodology has unfortuantely been staving off what little "middle class" were able to squeeze through and gain seats in the legislature.

[East Coast Hustle]

It occurs to me that what Libertarians, etc, are trying to do is simplify the system, to inject some sort of simple order to it (not talking about the Koch Bros, here, but your average Starbucks-going, pay'bucker libertarian).

And we all know what happens when you try to impose order, especially a simple order on a complex system.

As one susceptible to this myself, i concur.
I also think that this is perhaps why engineering types seem to be especially drawn to the libertarian line of thinking.  In engineering, we try to create systems to solve a problem, and often to handle problems that arise in the design phase we have engineering creep that leads to a kludgy, overly complex system.  we have to fight this tendency continuously.  When we see a system that solves the problem that it was designed to address with a seemingly particular elegance we get doey eyed and pop a boner.
In the political arena, we can't really tell what will work with good precision before actually trying it out due to the complexity, and frequent irrationality, of human behavior.  So, the mental models of these systems tend to be wrong, but when that's all you have to go on, and you treat it like a state machine with fully understood controls, libertarianism seems great.

I would also like to join DP in stating that this forum is a fantastic influence for someone with tendencies to libertarian idealism.  I, for one, apologize for subjecting anyone here in the past to arguments that may make your neck veins bulge, and plea for understanding in any future occurrences of such.  

Incidentally, the person whose ideas (as i understand them) i am most gravitating towards is ECH.  semi-enlightened self interest solves all the philosophical quandaries for the individual, and fuck the rest of them. (forgive me if i'm misrepresenting your viewpoint, ECH.)

Nope, you're pretty much dead-on in that assessment. For anyone who is ever foolish or drunk enough to ask me IRL what my political views are, my response is "rational self-interest" (rational in this context meaning that sometimes my immediate self-interests have to take a backseat to a longer-term and/or more sustainable view of things).

[East Coast Hustle]

I can't think of a single person that likes a self important asshole with a god complex.

[Cramulus]

forget if this has been posted ITT or not already, but

[Luna]

forget if this has been posted ITT or not already, but

I linked to the video of the speech, awhile back.  Nice to hear, from a politician.

[East Coast Hustle]

Whoops. I have a feeling this won't help her come election time.

http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2011/10/elizabeth-warren-says-she-created-intellectual-foundation-for-occupy-wall-street-movement/eXimmRDbpeHoNBkKRmOsBL/index.html?p1=News_links

[Cain]

Especially not after attacking them last week.

Oh, and it turns out that while Warren may have the right ideas re: financial reform, she's very keen on incarceration for drug offences and continuing overseas adventures.

I'd like a closer look at who is funding her campaign also.

[LMNO]

she's very keen on incarceration for drug offences and continuing overseas adventures.

I'd like a closer look at who is funding her campaign also.

Well, damn. Guess I'm gonna have to Rationalize this one out-- a cost/benefit ratio, or something.

[PopeTom]

"The hardest part of being around this kid," she said, "is that he has the most delicious-looking toes."

OMG and she's a cannibal!

[Cain]

I've heard rumours (and I stress they are only rumours so far) that she is backed by the same set of financial interests as Obama, that in fact the White House is very keen to have her elected. 

Also, she has the endorsement and backing of Harry Reid, one of the most corrupt politicians in the country, bar none.

Yves Smith, of Naked Capitalism, has this to say about Warren as well:

As much as your humble blogger still regards Elizabeth Warren as preferable to Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race, the evidence from her campaign is that she is no progressive, unless you define "progressive" to mean "centrist/Hamilton Project Democrat willing to throw a few extra bones to the average Joe."

We've warned repeatedly that Warren not being all that left leaning was a real possibility. Her views on anything other than consumer banking regulation were unknown; she was a Republican prior to her conversion experience through extensive research into bankruptcies, which revealed that the overwhelming majority were responsible people who hit a stretch of serious bad luck. As much as her and her daughter's book The Two Income Trap is well thought out and argued, they structured the problem as narrowly as possible, around the bidding war for housing and how it led more wives into the workforce, ending their role as secret insurance policy/potential breadwinner. The bigger frame, which Warren ignored, was stagnant worker wages and rising income disparity. Including those issues would have led Warren to consider issues like taxation (how income taxes have become less progressive and have also become more favorable to income from capital) and our multinational-favoring trade deals, and our lobbying-driven industrial policy.

A particularly ugly revelation came in the Boston Herald. On the one hand, the Herald is far from in the Warren camp, so it is possible that her remarks were taken out of context. But on the other, the Herald would see saber rattling as a plus, which perversely means they'd be less likely to exaggerate her views:

"Our number one responsibility is to protect Americans from terrorism, that's our job, so being tough on terrorism is enormously important," said Warren yesterday at a campaign stop in Gloucester.

    "We should take nothing off the table, but the facts are still emerging," the Senate candidate said when asked if she would support military action against Iran.

Huh? Protecting Americans against terrorism is number one? That means it ranks ahead of the rule of law, among other things. And this from a law professor. Glad we got that clear.

Click through to the video here and watch starting at 49:50. The question is "What do you think of the Occupy protests and would you join them?" Two candidates have a go before Warren, giving her time to think. Each answers the question in a direct manner, the first expressing enthusiasm and saying he would join them, the second expressing sympathy and saying he has physical issues that prevent him from participating, but if he were able, he'd probably go. Each gets a positive reaction from the audience.

Warren, by contrast, pointedly avoids giving a straight response and goes a bit off the rails. Her first statement is about obeying the law, and several readers took it to mean she was accusing OWS of being a bunch of lawbreakers. She gave the impression that she's more concerned about whether they play by the rules or not than whether they have real concerns (and those concerns are broader than just bad behavior by banks). Then she talks about how the banks broke the country mortgage by bad mortgage. She may have meant that as part of her "obey the law" message, but it comes off like an effort to save a flubbed opener. Then she says that's why she wants to run for Senate. In other words, her message, at best, is she doesn't agree with how OWS is seeking to effect change. They should vote for people like her instead.

Similarly, there's a troubling part to the preamble to her now famous "nobody got rich on their own" clip. She's evidently been asked about the budget deficits, and she lists three major causes, tax cuts for the rich, failure to raise taxes to pay for the two Iraq wars, and a Medicare drug plan that was a huge gimmie for Big Pharma. That's actually not true. Far and away the biggest driver the growth of our Federal debt, bringing it from roughly 23% of GDP to 75% of GDP, was the global financial crisis. The US suffered both a plunge in tax receipts and an increase in spending due primarily to automatic stablizers like food stamps, where spending goes up in bad times (the stimulus package contributed only at the margin).

But there is more worrisome subtext to her brief discussion here. She talks about putting the Iraq wars on a credit card and leaving future generations to pay for them. She seems to have fallen for the balance budget meme, when the proper role of government fiscal policy is to accommodate the actions of the private sector, meaning households and business. Households want to save for retirement and emergencies, and the tacit assumption is business invests household savings. But as we've discussed in earlier posts, businesses have ceased being proper capitalists and have also been net savers, even during the last expansion, since 2003. Unless a country is running a trade surplus, and the US is not in that category, the government needs to accommodate the desire of the private sector to save by deficit spending. Otherwise wages fall and the economy contracts, and that makes the debt to GDP ratio worse.

Now it is difficult to be certain based on these brief comments, but Warren seemed to regard the debt problem as serious, meaning she'd support Obama's deficit hawkery, which is not a sound approach right now. Moreover, her "don't do things like that again" is unrealistic. She'd clearly favor reversing tax breaks for the rich, which would be a good start, but even if you buy here analysis, that's not a sufficient solution. Her stance on Iran makes it hard to back shrinking the military. And our earlier post tonight citing the work of Tom Ferguson tells us that Congresscritters fall in line with what the leadership wants, and the leadership is bought and paid for by special interest groups. The health care lobby outspends the banks. If she thinks she can dent the influence of Big Pharma on legislation, she is smoking something very strong.

Mind you, if you are in Massachusetts, I am not telling you not to vote for Warren. I am simply warning you that she is not the Great Progressive Hope. She came to a strongly liberal view on a comparatively narrow set of issues, on how banks have looted customers, based on intensive research. She does not have that depth of expertise on many, if any, of the other topics she opines on. She has surrounded herself with mainstream Democratic advisors, the bulk of them with links to Harvard. She may wrap her views in populist rhetoric, but I strongly suspect, ex banking reform and other consumer protections, she'll be far more centrist than most of her enthusiasts anticipate.

[Cramulus]

Whoops. I have a feeling this won't help her come election time.

http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2011/10/elizabeth-warren-says-she-created-intellectual-foundation-for-occupy-wall-street-movement/eXimmRDbpeHoNBkKRmOsBL/index.html?p1=News_links

ehh could spin either way. She does deserve some credit for being one of the few people attacking wall street over the last few years. Her videos being passed around like crazy while this project was kicking off. Most of the Wall St protesters I speak of her very fondly. Quotes like these make people nervous because they get framed like she's trying to co-opt or claim credit for the movement... but in the followup interviews, she's explained herself and her quote pretty clearly

she elaborates her position here: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/10/26/warren_could_emerge_as_voice_of_occupy_wall_street_boston/

Oh, and it turns out that while Warren may have the right ideas re: financial reform, she's very keen on incarceration for drug offences and continuing overseas adventures.

I don't think this tips the scales, IMO. Scott Brown is still clearly the shittier choice.

He's with the tea party, for one.

Scott Brown believes that drugs are a legal issue, not a health issue. He has voted against substance abuse programs.

He supports "enhanced interrogation", and is against granting constitutional rights to enemy combatants. He voted yes on extending the patriot act's roving wiretaps.

Scott Brown is also in favor of adventures in the mid-east and wants to see us send more troops to Afghanistan.

He voted against same-sex marriage.

Brown strongly favors imposing the death penalty in Massachussets.


So given the choice between Brown and Warren... still no contest.

[Cain]

I must have missed the part where I posted that Scott Brown was better than Elizabeth Warren.

[East Coast Hustle]

Yeah, I was pretty sure that everything I've posted in this thread is less "vote for Brown" and more "don't delude yourself that Warren is anything other than another scummy politician who just happens to be slightly less scummy than the guy she's running against."