Dirty Money

Okay, maybe I'm obsessing about this cigarette tax debate, but it does somehow keep pullulating up whenever discussion turns to budgets and Republicans get all sanctimonius about their ideology, which is all the time now. (Republicans feel they are not only entitled to their own opinion but to their own facts--their numbers always seem to add up in a way which says we have to spend less and they aruge the tax-and-spend Democrats really are tax-and-spend because they are afflicted with spendng mania disorder.)

But I digress.

So, the basic Republican argument is, we cannot invent new taxes (e.g. a state income tax as a rider to the federal income tax) because taxes are BAD, and we cannot raise taxes, even on the undertaxed rich, because raising taxes is BAD, but what we can do is look at things like the cigarette tax and figure out how we can generate more money from it.

So the obvious way is to help sell cigarettes and to promulgate more profit from cigarettes.  The purpose of the tax is to raise money. No discussion of the good or ill done by cigarettes is relevant.

I have argued, this is Dirty Money. It is money made on the inevitable suffering induced by cigarette addiction.

But in the nascent years of the twentieth century this concept of "Dirty Money" was examined by George Bernard Shaw in his wonderful play, Major Barbara. Shaw's argument was in a capitalist society, which is highly integrated there can be no such thing as "Clean Money."  The man who makes his living selling bombs and bullets spends his money at the local baker, the local theatre, the local political group--everyone is supported by the income from the bullets and bombs.  The bomb maker, Undershaft, has a strong willed, independent daughter who is an officer in the Salvation Army and she is appalled the Salvation Army would accept money from her father, from the sale of weapons which kill and maim. Shaw argues she should be happy to get the money out of the Devil's hands in into the hands of God.

This argument has been a keystone of terrorists, like the 9/11 terrorists who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center: There are no innocents in America. The entire nation is making money by exploiting the poorer nations and using that money to support Israel over the Palestinian's. It is America's economic power which is the head of the snake--which was the symbolism of choosing the center of world trade in New York as the primary target. The money buys political power, and that's why the Capitol, the White House and the Pentagon were also on the target list, presumably.

Nobody can know, of course, what the terrorists' thinking was. We don't even know who "They" are. But, you certainly hear this line of thinking in the Osama Bin Laden tapes and elsewhere.

But back to cigarettes in New Hampshire.  If there is no such thing as Clean Money, then there is no such thing as Dirty Money. We are all swimming in the same water.

But cigarette taxes are a little different, because there is also the principle the power to tax is the power to destroy. And there is the principle that people make calculations based on cost. And if we make cigarettes expensive enough, we will see some people give up smoking and this, empirically seems to be true. So if you use a tax to influence behavior, not primarily to raise money--and, in fact, the profits from that tax were supposed to be delivered to programs to end smoking--then that is a little different from simply profiting from making bombs, and doing nothing by taxing the bomb maker into making or selling fewer bombs.

On the other hand, I would argue that this Republican line of utilitarian, practical approach to the use of harmful products is actually a very interesting idea and the Republican delegates by arguing against the idea of Dirty Money, have done a very real service to the idea of what the government can and ought to do in governance.

If there is no Dirty Money and no Clean Money, what then is the argument against legalizing and taxing heroin, cocaine and marajuana?  We could sell it at prices which would undercut what any street hopper could offer--which is easy because the street price is several multiples of the price of production, put it in package stores where buyer could be registered, monitored and given clean non HIV infected needles and turn a crime into a public health problem and save real money on policing and on health expenditures and make a little money for the treasury in the process?

We might apply the same thing to legalizing, regulating, taxing prostitution, and we could be sure these professional ladies are licensed, HIV tested, given health care and turned into tax paying citizens, hopefully unionized.

So, all in all, I think the Republicans, by arguing we ought not be worried about the moral costs of a cigarette tax have opened up a really wonderful opportunity to think anew about separating government from the world of ought to be.

Moral Compass

Okay, okay. I have heard from my Republican delegates who say  I have refused to hear them on this cigarette tax thing.

All they are saying, they say, is selling cigarettes is legal and if we want to live within our means in the state of New Hampshire, we have to generate what income we can and one very legitimate way of doing this is by taxing commerce, legal commerce. 

If you object to taxing cigarettes, they say, then make them illegal. 

I have tried to tease out an analysis of this argument, elsewhere, but allow me to set forth the argument as simply as I can, because apparently my Republican colleagues get lost in the complexities:
1/ Cigarettes:  Bad
2/ Government: Good,(or wants to be good.)
3/ Ipso Facto, therefore it follows: Government should not promote selling cigarettes. That is-- Bad.

Is there a problem with seeking a good end (balanced budget) through bad means (trying to figure out how we can sell cigarettes in the most profitable way)?


Yes, there is a problem with this. You can put on your most reasonable face, and use your most reasonable voice, and you still have a problem.

If you want to reach the good end (balanced budget), try good means (fair tax, i.e., tax paid by people who won't miss the money so much.)

What is a fair tax? 


Well, let's look at the current tax burden on the citizens of New Hampshire: The richest 10% pay about 2% of their income in taxes; the poorest 20% pay 8% of their income in taxes.

Bad.


Rich guy, not hurt by taxes: Good.
 Poor guy getting hurt by taxes: Bad.

On Being Nice in New Hampshire Politics

I moved to New Hampshire just as the 2008 Presidential campaign was heating up and I found myself standing on the corner of Route 27 and Route 1, across from The Old Salt, holding an Obama sign.  I thought it might be a way to meet the local inhabitants, a way to  help me learn more about my new state.  Standing next to me was a very trim and proper looking lady in her Talbot's jacket and skirt, every hair in place.

She said, "New Hampshire Republicans are not like Republicans you see on the national news."
"Oh?"  I replied brightly.
"They are Republicans, but they are not assholes."
"Oh," I said, looking at her more closely. This state was home, I realized, to some rather exotic fauna.
Just then a car drove by and a young man in a worn Carhart jacket leaned out of the window and shouted, "Nigger lover!"
"Well," she said, "He's probably not from here.".

One thing about New Hampshire which is different from the more rough and tumble urban places is the amount of energy expended in New Hampshire being Nice.

I noticed this as soon as I moved in to Hampton. Neighbors, even those in the construction trade, my policeman neighbor  typically use no profanity, at least not in the neighborhood, and not just when children were present--they just do not use much profanity, which is one reason I was so shocked to hear the word "Asshole," from that prim and proper Hampton Obama sign holder.

I find myself having to censor my own speech , accustomed as I was to sprinkling my speech with the four letter words so commonly used where I came from. This was not easy, as these had become part of the rhythm of speech and part of the everyday humor. But local New Hampshire speech is different from what you hear on The Wire.

I'm not sure why this is, but it does seem true. At first, I conjectured you have people living in a small town and they see each other every weekend at the Hardware store, the dump, the breakfast place at Depot Square, at Hagans and The Old Salt, at the beach, so they take care not to offend their neighbors.  I

In the suburban metropolitan areas I hail from, you could go weeks without running into anyone you knew. Even your neighbors were not a daily presence. When your neighbor gets up at 4 AM to commute to work and is not back until after dark, and then is off to his kid's soccer games on the weekends, you just don't connect. But here in New Hampshire, you see your neighbors frequently, around town.

At least, that was my hypothesis.

Turns out, Hampton is actualy a big enough small town this is not really true. There are neighborhoods in Hampton I don't pass through for months at a time, and there is no town square, beyond maybe North Beach, where you see people on a regular basis.

So I don't know how to explain the importance of avoiding profanity, of the relentless pleasantness of this town.

It is just a feature of life here, even when the delegates to the state assembly visit a meeting held to listen to their constituents about the current budget wrangling in Concord.

This niceness takes the form of silence when the delegate gets up and makes a speech and he asserts what  the last election meant was Republicans were sent to Concord to cut taxes. 

Members of the audience are expected to sit and to listen politely as ten or fifteen minutes pass while this contention goes unchallenged, and as the Republican delegate says  things like Democrats are tax and spend people, whereas Republicans are responsible about not spending money the state doesn't have.

The unsaid part of his speech--that New Hampshire doesn't have the money only because Republicans choose not to raise the money--goes unchallenged, as the members of the audience sit quietly and listen.

Not having been raised in New Hampshire, I do not have that sort of self control. I could not contain myself and eventually shouted out something like, "In your dreams," when the Republican claimed he knew the voters had sent him to Concord to cut taxes because he had "Counted the votes."

Of course, what I wanted to say was:  You have no idea what that vote said; you only know what you wanted it to mean.  People make good livings trying to study the meaning of voting outcomes and never really know.

But if you can just keep talking and what you say is the only thing said, then even reasonably skeptical people begin to accept what you say, because it is unchallenged. It becomes conventional wisdome, no matter how absurd.

There are lots of examples of this through history: In the South, where I was raised, you heard Negros were happy as slaves. You heard they were happy not being able to eat in restaurants with whites because they felt more at home among their own. You were told they had to use separate bathrooms because they could not be hygenic. You were told if a Negro swam in the community swimming pool, you had to drain that pool because the first thing a Negro did was urinate in the water. You heard all kinds of things and polite people did not stand up and shout down the smiling purveyor of those "truths."

And nothing changed in the South, until people became more concerned about righting wrongs than about being polite.

Maybe New Hampshire can learn something from that experience.

Or maybe it's just a different culture up here.

I don't know. I'm just a dumb Democrat.

When Big Brother Doesn't Care

The Republican delegate to the New Hampshire House of Delegates got me thinking: When questioned about his plan to try to adjust the cigarette tax to maximize tax profits from the sales of cigarettes, he said, well, they are legal. If you don't like the idea, then you have to, logically, make cigarettes illegal.

He had been talking about was how could we make cigaretes more attractive, so our neighbors would buy more cigarettes, or actually would spend more money on cigarettes--he was indifferent to how much they smoked, as long as they delivered more money to New Hampshire. If he could make more money selling fewer cigarettes, he was happy; if he made more money by increasing smoking and selling more cigarettes, that was okay, too.

As far as he was concerned, it's all about the money.

But he was speaking as a public servant, a representative of the people of Hampton, New Hampshire. And he was saying, we don't care whether or not we are encouraging the people of Massachusetts and New Hampshire to smoke more, all we care about is balancing the state budget.

He struck an especially reasonable tone when he said, "Look, we get them to come here to buy the cigarettes and they buy liquor and food and they spend all sorts of things."

Reasonable, right? He doesn't care what we are drawing them in with, as long as we draw them in.

I didn't ask him about maybe opening some brothels--that ought to really attract the big spenders.

I suppose these arguments swril around the opening of casinos. (But at least gambling is thought to be a harmless addiction for most people.)

On the other hand, once upon a time, the government was supposed to be concerned about the health and welfare of the citizens.

So when did our government stop caring about things like health, and only care about not having to raise taxes?

I think the answer is: When we put Republicans in charge of our government.

Small Town New Hampshire Democracy in Action

So, tonight the Hampton Democrats invited the New Hampshire delgates to Concord to speak about the budget at a meeting in Hampton.

First a guy from a non profit, non partisan group outlined where New Hampshire gets its income on both the local (town) and state level.  What surprised me was how much comes from a tax on business and most of that is not on profits from business but from property owned by business. Then there is the cigarette tax (more on that later) and then some from tax on gasoline and sundry other places. The tax code is surprisingly heavy on things which exempt the wealthy and hit the modest income folks--taxes on gasoline cost the poor a greater percentage of their income.

Then he talked about where the spending goes--mostly health and human services and state services like police and highways and a big chunk on education.


Then one of the Republicans got up and said the difference between the two parties was the Democrats decide what they want to do and then decide how to raise taxes to do it and the Republicans look at what we have coming in from taxes and rather than raise taxes decide how to live within the income they have.

Of course, during the original presentation it was clear that only one state in the union (South Dakota) asks less of its citizens in terms of taxes.  New Hampshire citizens pay big property taxes, and while the rich tend to have more and bigger property, there is a whole class of people who are not rich whose property values keep rising while their incomes fall--the retired. 

During the question period various members of the audience suggested dozens of other taxes which could be used to raise income for the state, including a state rider on the federal income tax which would simply be one to three percent of your federal income tax. If your income is low enough to pay little or no federal income tax, you pay little or no state income tax. And, unlike the property tax which hits retired people with paid off homes hardest, the income tax would hardly touch this group. As someone said, "The Tea Party types are always screaming about big government. Well, I'm not afraid of big government; I'm afraid of bad government."

All of this fell on deaf Republican ears, of course. No, no, no they said, there is simply no way to raise new taxes in the state of New Hampshire and even if you could raise money for the state, it could not be transfered back to the towns. Apparently, this inability to send money to the towns and relieve taxpayers of heavy property tax burden is an eleventh commandment which was inscribed on the stones handed to Moses, but it chipped off in transit down the mountain, and found only later on Mount Washington.


What was really disturbing was not what the Republicans said, which was pretty much what Republicans always say. That was pretty well demolished by a Democratic delegate from Portsmouth, who rose to say, "You know, we are not really an impoverished state with no or low sources of income. We choose to be impoverished."

And having seen the way the tax structure hits the middle and low income people hardest (who pay about 8% of their income in taxes)  and leaves the millionaires paying only  2% of their income in taxes, you can see why the rich love New Hampshire and love the New Hampshire Republican party.

But what was most disturbing about the evening were the comments from a Democratic delegate who said, "You know the Republicans did win the election and they won because they promised to cut taxes."  Which was news to me. When I think of clear messages from the voters, I recall voters saying, on TV, they want the government to keep their hands off health care, most especially Medicare. That's how smart and coherent voters are.That's how much we can know what the voters have said. 

This lady Democrat had apparently some version of the Stockholm syndrome--that syndrome where the kidnapped captive comes to love and identify with her captors. During a discussion about the possibility of levying a capital gains tax she suggested rich people might move out of the state of New Hampshire if such a tax were imposed. The guy from the non profit responded that had been studied and basically nobody moves out of a state for that sort of reason. They move to be near family, to escape the cold or because they just cannot stand listening to the drivel coming from New Hampshire Republicans. (He didn't really say that last thing. I just sort of wanted him to.)

Then there was another fun part, when the Republican defended the whole lowering of the tobacco tax in an effort to entice Massachusetts smokers across the border to buy their cancer inducing cigarettes right here in friendly New Hampshire.  This brought questions from the audience about the reasons for the cigarette tax in the first place and did we really think it a good idea to sell our neighbors cancer? "Well, they come across the border to buy our liquor," he said and sat back as if he had just been made vice president of the bank, which for a Republican is likely next to being admitted through the pearly gates.

That same delegate asserted that as long as cigarettes are legal to sell in New Hampshire, there was no reason not to encourage their sale by lowering taxes and reaping the benefits of increased volume of cigarette sales. He actually shrugged when he said this. "If you don't want to sell cigarettes, then make them illegal,"  he said. This has the same ring of logic George W. Bush used to flaunt when he said, "If you are going to lower taxes, you have to lower taxes for those who pay them," by which he meant, the rich. Because, lowering the taxes of the middle class and not lowering them for the rich, was somehow not really lowering taxes. And if you are not determined to jump into bed with cigarette makers, then you should make cigarettes, illegal, otherwise, join the parade and profit.

The Republican Party, party of false choices.



For me, though, the highlight of the evening was one Republican delegate saying he didn't listen to voters who became unpleasant. And if you wanted to get to him with your opinion, you should not write or email because he didn't have time to read those things and they were all form letters anyway.  When one of the members of the audience said, "But I thought that's what tonight was all about, you're coming hear to hear from the citizens," the Republican said, "Well, I guess so." 

And then someone, I think it was the Democratic moderator, said something about how we could disagree without being disagreeable and how everyone had been spirited but respectful.

Of course, I heard the Republican delegates refer to the  "Democrat Party" more than once. Which is to say, the Republicans do not have to show the common courtesy of calling a man by the name he uses himself; they can turn a name into a pejorative, as George Wallace use to do by calling Negros, "Nigras,"  and that's just something Democrats are just supposed to turn the other cheek to, in order to maintain civility. 

One of the Republicans said something to the effect of how we could all disagree but we should remain agreeable.  And I thought, well, that must work for you. If you are the factory owner who is firing all the workers trying to unionize, you can do that in a pleasant way and demand they remain civil. Or, if you are a governor of Wisconsin, you can disband and destroy a union, with a smile and insist those ex state employees smile sweetly. 

Nice place if you can find it.

But isn't that always the way? Republicans bully and get their way and Democrats just say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

Simple Economics

Okay, I need some help here.

I hear every Republican from Limbaugh to Ginta, from Ayotte to Glenn Beck saying the same six sentences: 1/ We have to cut the deficit 2/ We have to cut the deficit by cutting spending. 3/ We have to cut the deficit by cutting spending on pensions of public workers. 4/ We have to cut the deficit by cutting spending on wages demanded by public and private unions.  5/ We have to destroy unions to cut spending and to cut the deficit  6/ We don't like Obama, Obamacare or anything he wants to spend money on, all of which if he is for it, would, by definition  increase the deficit.

I think I've got that right.

I'm not sure where this deficit actually is. I mean, can I look it up on line? Or is it contained in some government publication? Or does Glenn Beck keep it locked in a safe next to his blackboard?

Is it the money we owe on feberal government bonds? Or is it the interest payments we make on those federal government bonds? Or both?

Is there an actual dollar amount we can look up?

Does it change day to day?

If we balanced the budget this year, i.e. spent no more than we took in, would the deficit be smaller? But no, I think the deficit must be like our mortgage--it never gets smaller unless you sell your house and pay it off.  I seem to reall we balanced budgets in the Clinton years and there was talk about "Paying down the deficit," but for some reason, neither Republicans nor Democrats seemed  to think that was a very good idea at the time. The deficit didn't see to matter much then.

So what changed?

Everyone, even Glenn Beck, seems to agree when Saint Ronald Reagan took office he tripled the deficit in four or maybe eight years. And Ronald Reagan is the guy everybody means when they describe themselves as "Reagan Republicans." Which means, I infer, "Good, successful Republicans everyone really liked and wants to be again."

So if Reagan was such a deficit disaster, why do all these Republicans seem to think he was the best Republican ever?

One other thing. Republicans are always talking about how the deficit is just like your own home budget, which for some reason they think everyone does at their kitchen table. Personally, if I tried to do anything other than eat and read the newspaper at my kitchen table,  my wife would be throwing silverware in my direction--I tend to do budgets on my computer, which is not all that far from my kitchen table, so I guess maybe I'm putting  too fine a point on it.

But anyway, the way my budget works is I see how much goes out to pay bills--I call that "Spending." And I see how much comes in--I call that, "Income."

And since there seems to be certain things I have to spend on--house payments, car payments, groceries, the out go is more or less fixed. I might self flagellate over having been foolish enough to buy a house, but I need my car to get to work. And school payments for the kids--well, maybe education is one of those wasteful spending items, but I kind of like my kids and hope if they go to school and actually learn something, maybe someday they can support the baby boomers by paying into social security. So call the education expenses an "Investment." Maybe I'm crazy, but it's just one of those things I remain delusional about. I mean, I hear John Boehner and Mitch McConnell saying every day the deficit is something we are doing to our kids. But, for my money, what we are doing to our kids, or at least what I'm doing to my kids right now, is paying for their education. So, as far as spending goes, okay we won't go out to dinner or buy new shoes or spend on anything other than what my wife considers the bare essentials.

But then, there is the income thing: I can do things to make more money.

The government can do things to make more money: It can raise taxes, for one thing. But last time I remember, the Republicans did not want the government to make more money and they cut taxes. This, I think I understand this correctly, is because the government is: BAD.

Do I have that right?

The deficit is BAD. The Government is BAD. I guess the goverment is more bad than the deficit.  Am I off base here?

But if it really is as simple as my own home budget, the one I write up at the kitchen table, wouldn't the simplest thing be to simply raise taxes?

I can think of a few taxes I wouldn't mind seing raised: Like income taxes on everyone above $250,000, or better yet above $300,000. (I like round numbers, especially those which exempt me.)

And gas taxes. I just paid $3.35 a gallon today. And you know, it wasn't all that painful. If it could eliminate the deficit, I'd be happy to pay $5 a gallon for six months or maybe even a year, which I've read would eliminate the deficit and balance the budget presto slam bang. I figure at 10 gallons a week, that would be an extra $16.50 a week, which would mean maybe skipping one visit to McDonalds. That's the least I can do for my country. It's more expensive than buying one of those red/white and blue stickers for my car or a set of American flag lapel pens, but isn't real patriotism something that should cost you something?

If it is really that easy to do with just one or two tax changes, then what is everyone screaming about?

I mean, we could pay those teachers in Rhode Island and those firemen in Wisconsin and we could finance health care and whatever.

Now, if we could just bring all those boys and girls home from chasing phantoms in Afghanistan and Iraq, then we'd have money to spare. We could pay off the deficit, build roads, finance schools and even maybe have a real health care system.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Kelly Ayotte might even say, "Absolutely."

Michele Bachmann, Farm Socialist

I'm happy to report that darling of the Tea Party, vanquisher of all things socialist, Grand Inquistor of creeping socialism, and representative of the hardy people of Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, has been sucking at the government teat, the biggest nipple of them all, actually, the farm subsidy program, to the tune of $250,000.00. These payments have occured over years.

Ms. Bachmann tells us President Obama is a creepy Islamofascist, determined to convert our fair capitalist nation into a government run collective and all the while, she takes the government dole.


Of course, farm subsidies pose a far bigger problem than simply revealing Ms. Bachmann for what she clearly is.

 We pay farmers to grow the wrong crops: corn, soy, alfalpha, and we subsidize ogres like Monstano and their patented genes to reduce the diversity of our crops, making us sitting ducks for the next micro organism which develops a taste for the one or two varieties of plant in our fields. It's a case of unintended consequences, of which Ms. Bacmann is more than happy to avail herself.

Some CEO's take a dollar a year salary, after they've made millions for years, when things turn sour for their company, or when embarrassing issues arise. They say, Hey, the principle of the thing matters more to me at this point, because I'm rich enough to be able to afford my principles.

Not so with Ms. Bachmann.

So that fine example of moral rectitude and conservative purity, that soul mate of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who extol her daily, is, in fact, happy to be paid by the government she abhors.

Government handouts for welfare queens, government pensions, Medicare, Social Security all ananthemas for Ms. Bachmann.

Well, who is the welfare queen now? I guess, if you are a corporate welfare queen, that doesn't count. Certainly, if you are a Federal employee (as is Ms. Bachmann) getting a government hand out, well, that doesn't count either.