The fiscal slope and you

First of all, it ain't no cliff.

But it might feel like a brick wall, especially for the working poor. This story by Tom Abrahams at ABC-13 does a good job of explaining things in layman's terms.

It means some Texans could pay as much as 44 percent of their income in taxes, and it could come from the four elements of the fiscal cliff:

• The Medicare tax, which affects mostly wealthier taxpayers
• The payroll tax, which affects everyone
• The AMT, which impacts most taxpayers
• The Bush cuts, which are set to expire

[...]

The Tax Policy Center says the increase ranges from a few hundred dollars for the working poor to thousands for the so-called middle class. The White House estimates here in Texas, 8.7 million middle-income earners will see an average increase of about $2,200.

"It could be your Catholic school tuition's payment for your child, so it's not a small amount of money," said Joe Birkhofer, a partner at Legacy Asset Management.

Birkhofer says the part of the cliff that impacts everyone is the expiring Bush tax cuts. "People in the lowest tax bracket, 10 percent, will go to 15 percent. And people in the highest tax bracket will go from 35 percent to 39.6 percent," Birkhofer said. At just 3 percent a year, that's the equivalent of no less than a tank of gas every two weeks.

"I don't think that's fair to pay 3 percent more. We all can't afford three percent more," Houston taxpayer Judy Madison said.

Then everyone can tack on another 2 percent -- the amount of the payroll tax holiday which, ends this year. It's money that goes to Social Security and Medicare.

"The problem is the money needs to go back into Social Security and Medicare, and there's not a lot of support on either side of Congress to make that tax holiday stay," Birkhofer said. Add that 2 percent to the pile, and you've lost money for your electricity bill every month.

 "And I don't have a lot of confidence that both sides are really eager to fix the problem," Houston taxpayer David Gaw said.

Then there's the alternative minimum tax, or the AMT, which needs adjusting every year or it costs millions of taxpayers millions of dollars. "It strips away deductions so that your tax rate is higher," Birkhofer said. Throw those away, and there go your groceries every week.

"I'm worried not about 3 to 5 percent but more about 10 to 15 percent," Houston taxpayer Christopher Barron said. 

Obama and the Democrats seem content to let the Republicans push the country off the cliff down the hill, as polling indicates the GOP gets most of the blame. Boehner is under pressure again from his right to stand his ground.

Informal polling suggests many Americans still aren't paying much attention, despite Abrahams' man-on-the-street interviews above. That is likely to change suddenly, when the first payday after the New Year takes the hit. People who aren't getting paychecks, of course -- that would be the very rich and the very poor -- won't notice much.

For vastly different reasons.

Washington legalizes weed and gay marriage

Scenes from a revolution.

At around 1:30am, Larry Duncan, 56, left, and Randy Shepherd, 48, from North Bend, Wash. got their marriage license. The two plan to wed on December 9th, the first day it is possible for them to wed in a church in Washington State. They have been together for 11 years. Originally from Dallas, Texas, they moved here 7 years ago because it's more gay friendly. Randy is a computer programer and Larry is a retired psychology nurse.

How long do you think it will be before Texas catches up?

Update: Charles thinks it will be a long time for one of the two.

Update II: Man- and woman-on-the-street interviews reveal some Texans' responses. One sample...

A lot of people’s lives in that state just got a whole lot better. Makes me sick.

-- Gillian Manifold, systems analyst

Jack Brooks 1922 - 2012

Jack Brooks, an irascible, cigar-chomping former Texas congressman who over 42 years defied fellow Southerners to support civil rights, investigated abuses by Presidents Nixon and Reagan and repeatedly attacked government waste, down to the cost of wrenches, died on Tuesday night in Beaumont, Texas. He was 89.

This was my congressman, for as long as I can remember, growing up. In actuality he wasn't; we lived in the district next door, and my brother served as a page in DC for our actual representative, John Dowdy, in the late '60's. But even Charlie Wilson -- who succeeded Dowdy, and certainly in Wilson's early political career -- paled in comparison to Brooks. When I was in college in the late '70's, my fraternity hosted him as guest speaker. Long before I was a Democratic activist, I was a huge fan of Jack Brooks.

Brooks ascended to the legislative pantheon under the tutelage of two legendary Texas Democrats, House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Lyndon B. Johnson, both as a senator and as president, and became a swashbuckling Texas character in his own right. His politics were pro-labor, pro-gun, fiercely partisan and boldly unapologetic, particularly when it came to funneling federal funds to his East Texas district.

He played a supporting role in one of the most famous news photographs of the 20th century, that of President Johnson being sworn in as president on Air Force One in Dallas after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. Brooks, who had been in the presidential motorcade, stands behind Jacqueline Kennedy.

He had run Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign in his district, where Kennedy won by 40,000 votes. In October 1963, he was the only one of nine Southerners on the judiciary committee to vote for the Kennedy administration’s civil rights bill. When President Johnson took up the bill after Kennedy’s murder, Mr. Brooks was one of 11 out of 92 Southerners to vote for it on the House floor in 1964. 

Brooks was ousted from Congress in 1994, by Steve Stockman, among other reasons because he voted in favor of a crime bill that restricted sales of assault rifles. That's a story all its own; go back to the NYT link to read it.

This video of Lamar University history professor Robert Robertson compresses into a couple of minutes the legacy of Jack Brooks and his witness to the history of the Kennedy assassination and the civil rights movement.

If there were still any fighting Democrats around like Jack Brooks, I might not be a Green today.

Update: The Bayou...

This was back in…September.  I’m pretty sure.  September of 1992.  It was hotter than Hell that day.

Bill Clinton was running for president and he sent Senator Al Gore, his running mate, down here to Beaumont for a rally at Lamar University.

Both of the candidates were good-looking and Southern.

Young.

The youngest men I would remember in the White House after all of the “old men” who followed Nixon.  Something about all of them seemed so stiff and artificial.  Especially Reagan with his hair dye and Hollywood glitz.

Poor Senator Gore was sweating like a pig.  He kept wiping at his brow with a handkerchief and he finally had to take his jacket off.

Gore was introduced by the giants of Southeast Texas politics.  Carl Parker, Charlie Wilson and Jack Brooks.  He didn’t hold a candle to them.  The ‘wonkishness’ that became more exaggerated as he moved up in politics and got older was evident.  He was boring.  But who wouldn’t be after such a grand display local of wit and charm.

The high cost of business incentives (especially in Texas)

This series in the New York Times over the weekend is most searing report ever on how much "doin' bidness" is costing us. From Part I...

A Times investigation has examined and tallied thousands of local incentives granted nationwide and has found that states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year to companies. The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world, encompassing oil and coal conglomerates, technology and entertainment companies, banks and big-box retail chains. 

The cost of the awards is certainly far higher. A full accounting, The Times discovered, is not possible because the incentives are granted by thousands of government agencies and officials, and many do not know the value of all their awards. Nor do they know if the money was worth it because they rarely track how many jobs are created. Even where officials do track incentives, they acknowledge that it is impossible to know whether the jobs would have been created without the aid. 

[...]

A portrait arises of mayors and governors who are desperate to create jobs, outmatched by multinational corporations and short on tools to fact-check what companies tell them. Many of the officials said they feared that companies would move jobs overseas if they did not get subsidies in the United States. 

Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, creating a high-stakes bazaar where they pit local officials against one another to get the most lucrative packages. States compete with other states, cities compete with surrounding suburbs, and even small towns have entered the race with the goal of defeating their neighbors. 

Which state pays the most incentives and has the least to show for it? Why, Rick Perry's Texas.

Under Mr. Perry, Texas gives out more of the incentives than any other state, around $19 billion a year, an examination by The New York Times has found. Texas justifies its largess by pointing out that it is home to half of all the private sector jobs created over the last decade nationwide. As the invitation to the fund-raiser boasted: “Texas leads the nation in job creation.”

Yet the raw numbers mask a more complicated reality behind the flood of incentives, the examination shows, and raise questions about who benefits more, the businesses or the people of Texas. 

Along with the huge job growth, the state has the third-highest proportion of hourly jobs paying at or below minimum wage. And despite its low level of unemployment, Texas has the 11th-highest poverty rate among states. 

“While economic development is the mantra of most officials, there’s a question of when does economic development end and corporate welfare begin,” said Dale Craymer, the president of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, a group supported by business that favors incentives programs.

$19 billion annually. That is more than enough to solve the state's budget woes. 

Eliminating these tax breaks would mean that the Texas legislature would not have to gut education, public health programs like Medicaid, and all the rest. All they would have to do is just ask businesses to pay what they are supposed to pay.

America -- and Texas -- is NOT going broke. We're being robbed.

Update: This diary by Daily Kossack DRo has more.