Alternate Realities--President Kucinich and the Great Healthcare Debacle

In a parallel universe, the following really happened:


Dennis Kucinich,starting in the summer of 2007, got serious about launching a real Presidential campaign.  He started by using the free e-mail lists that the Democratic Party provides to send out e-mail blasts to raise money and raise his profile as well.


This resulted in two big developments.  First off, he was able to raise over $500k by January 2008, instead of the 200K that he raised in our reality.  He also tried to raise awareness of his existence outside of Cleveland and the liberal blogosphere by going on late night talk shows, where he played the banjo badly while the hosts made fun of him.  Of course,  "independent progressives" immediately dismissed him as "Just another Democrat who serves his corporate masters".


In the meantime, Karl Rove and James Carville were both upset about the cold shoulders that they got from their respective parties.  So, they secretly joined forces, and kept planting false stories about Obama and Clinton both killing puppies for fun and secretly visiting Goldman Sachs headquarters to masturbate in the executive washroom.  Then Rove hired a sportswriter to spread the word about Clinton and Obama's involvement with GS, which apparently goes back to when GS caused the Dutch tulip bulb bubble to pop.


The misinformation campaign was a rousing success, and Democrats across the country found themselves voting to give Kucinich the nomination, even though most of them didn't even know why.  They just knew that a lot of people were pissed at Hillary and Barack, and they didn't want people to hate them too.


Then they voted him into the Oval Office.  Even most conservatives were scared of McCain because of his choice of running mate and apparent onset of Alzheimer's.  Kucinich decided to look to the Great White North for a running mate as well.  It was interesting watching the clueless Palin debate a confused-looking Gravel.


At the inauguration, people suddenly realized that Kucinich was short and skinny.  Many Democrats started regretting their choice.  After all, Senator Obama was tall and pretty well cut.  They knew that they really didn't want to see Kucinich in a bathing suit.  His wife, hell yeah!  Dennis, no way, man!


Progressives then waited for the amazing first 100 days that they had been expecting.


First off, of course, was introducing a single payer health care bill to the House.  Entitled the "Free Health Care For Everybody Paid For By Goldman Sachs Act", it was quickly labeled "KucinichCare" by Republican PR folks, eager to sabotage the bill with a nice old fashioned scare campaign.


Still, President Kucinich gave a very rousing speech to introduce the bill to a waiting country.  When interviewed afterward, most people said that the most remarkable thing about the President's speech was that they didn't know he was so short.  "He looks like a really old creepy looking kid" said one of those interviewed.  Another one observed "Not only is he short, but he's a commie, too.  A short commie".


 After giving Republicans some time to run negative ads against it, the House approved the now highly altered bill (hey, it's still single payer if your insurance company pays your claims to a government agency instead of your doctor, and the government agency cuts the checks to your doctors--right?), and sent it to the Senate, where Max Baucus nearly busted a gut when Harry Reid told him to take the bill to committee.  "What, Harry, you're serious?  You really want me to take 'KucinichCare'  into the committee room?  I guess that's OK.  There's a shredder in there".


President Kucinich gave another speech, this time begging the Senate to pass something.  Anything.  Even a bandage subsidy.


Please?


Baucus gave the Republicans several weeks to run more scare ads:

"Good evening, folks, my name is Karl Will Jr., President of the National Association of Smart Conservatives and Republicans (NASCR).  I'm here to repeat a few scary talking points about KucinichCare.  Listen closely folks.  It is very important that the following misinformation scares you shitless. 

First, "KucinichCare" will lead to a government takeover of health care.  That can't be good.
Socialist Democrats will force you to turn over lots of your hard earned money to the government, who will waste it by providing coverage to "illegals" and other people with brown skin. You'll even have to pay extra taxes so your asshole neighbor can get a nose job. 

There's even a provision to allow medical students to take your Grandma out of the nursing home to vivisect her in front of a cheering audience. 

Does that sound far fetched?  Does it sound like somebody made it up?  Tell me--do you want to take the chance?  Would you like to be the test case for KucinichCare?  Probably not.
Call your Representative and Senators today, and tell them that you don't want the American health care system taken over by Mexican drug lords.  Tell them that if they vote for KucinichCare, you'll organize a lynch mob. 

This is Karl Will, Jr, and I hope that I've given you something to think about. "

Meanwhile, the Senate rewrote the bill completely, adopting many of the provisions of the McCain plan.  The Senate bill, entitled "The This Is What You're Gonna Get, Like It Or Not, Compassionately Conservative Health Care Act" passed handily.  Also known as KucinichCare, it created a system that:


* Denied care or coverage to "illegals", people with "foreign sounding names", any non-white US residents or citizens, "dirty hippies", Jews,  marijuana users, gays, Muslims, Mormons, atheists, atheist hippie marijuana users, independent voters, and most Democrats.


* Forces everyone to buy health insurance, except if you really don't want to.  Then you have to sign a form that states:

"I don't wanna, and you can't make me buy it if I don't want to.  Unless I get sick."

* Denies coverage for abortions, prenatal care, postnatal care or contraception of any kind.  Not even the rhythm method.


* Only covers physicals if your next door neighbor will do it for a $20 Chili's gift card.


* Doesn't cover cancer treatments, because they're really darn expensive.


*Guarantees the pharmaceutical companies that they could sell their drugs in the US at the world's highest prices.


Of course, it sailed right through Congress. 


Remembering LBJ's words about compromise, and how you can always go back later for more, the President went ahead and signed it.  So, of course, progressives from Alaska to Rhode Island immediately denounced him as a "fascist" and mocked him for "bending over" for Big Pharma and the insurance companies.


It was only March 2010, and there was already quite a buzz developing.  Would Kucinich face a primary challenge in 2012?...


...Meanwhile, in yet a different alternate universe,  John Edwards was somehow elected President, which caused every Republican and Blue Dog Senator and Representative to die of sudden and unexpected heart attacks.  


Health care legislation was passed on January 27th, 2009. Entitled the "Free Health Care Act", and authored by James PB, it created a single payer system that paid for anything you could think of.  Even free tattoos and piercings.  All paid for by Goldman Sachs.

It's Not Fair!

Fair.  Or, as it's known in the tax business, the "F word".

I once ran across an alleged quote by Abraham Lincoln that I can't run down now, so it must be one of those fake Lincoln quotes.  But it's a good quote, anyway.  Very much to the point.  It was something like "If we wait until we craft a tax law that is equally fair to every man, then we should never collect a dime of tax".  You can pretty much imagine Abe saying that.


When  the Republican controlled Congress passed the budget busting tax law known as EGTRRA back in 2001, it had automatic "ratcheting mechanisms".   As the years went by, it would widen tax brackets, lower rates,and make tax credits more generous.


As a result, as of 2009, tax receipts are down over $165 billion from 2008, to around $865 billion.  Which is a whole shitload of money.  But apparently not enough.  More revenue really is needed, and more spending needs to be cut, starting with the military budget that eats up almost all of the income tax receipts.


Where is the money going to come from?  At least some of it needs to come from the bottom 50%.  They make 14% of  the income, and pay 2% of the tax.  Most of them make less than $30,000/yr, so it probably isn't realistic to expect them to pay more.


That doesn't mean that the government needs to pay them, either.  Not only did the bottom 50% only pay $20 billion of income tax, they also claimed $90 billion in refundable tax credits, most of which boils down to paying people to have children.  If we eliminated the income tax on them entirely, and also did away with refundable tax credits, it would increase tax receipts by $70 billion in 2009 alone.


I think that it would be "fair", too (I put fair in quotes, since no 2 people have the same idea of what "fair" is).  Also eliminate all of the non-refundable credits as well.  That would raise the savings from eliminating tax credits to about $200 billion, plus almost another $100 billion if we eliminated all corporate tax credits


Just by eliminating tax credits, we could bring in an extra $300 billion/yr.  Sounds fair to me, even though I've taken some of those credits.


If we took the additional step of returning tax rates on the top 10% to 1980 levels, that would increase revenues by another $175-200 billion.   The top 10%, moreso than just the top 1%, have seen their share of income go up the most,  from about 33% of total agi in 1980, to about 45% today.  So they can afford more than ever.  Raising their effective tax rate from 18% to 24% wouldn't be the end of the world for them.


Sounds fair to me.


So far, I've found maybe as much as $500 billion in tax revenues just by tinkering around the edges of the tax code a bit.  Maybe another, better designed welfare program could replace the $90 billion in refundable tax  credits.


But for crying out loud, is it really "fair" to fund the government largely with a tax that only half of the country has to pay?  The 53% is becoming the 50%.  Pretty soon, payers of the income tax will be a minority.


That's not fair.

Tax The Rich, Tax The Poor

One of the problems with the OWS protesters is that so many of them aren't invested in this country.  They think that they should get more money, without giving any thought to where money comes from.  If the US government is going to take money from people in the form of taxes, particularly the income tax, then everybody who has gainful employment and makes enough money to pay for basic necessities should pay some income tax.  


I don't think that it needs to be a lot.  But it needs to be something.  Enough to make people think that, if, for example, you see people destroying a government building, that those people are destroying something that you paid for.  Otherwise, it becomes too easy to just sit on the sidelines while other people destroy our infrastructure.


If you have an investment, you are less likely to cheer its destruction.


But more and more people pay no income tax, so they have little to no investment in society.  They do pay sales taxes, property taxes, payroll tax etc.  But no income tax, which is the biggest and most visible of all of our taxes.  Why?  Because politicians can't say "NO" to tax cuts, whether it's for GE or Lucy and Jim down the street.


We started in the 1940's by giving people extra exemptions from income for having children.  Then, in 1975, the Earned Income Tax Credit was passed.  We crossed the line from giving people a tax break for having children to actually paying them to do it.


This policy was expanded during the Clinton years.  The big tax bill passed in 1998 created a non-refundable credit called the "Child Tax Credit".  It wasn't refundable, though.  That was taken care of 3 years later, with the tax bill known as EGTRRA.  Now part of it can be refundable.


What this all means is that, for one thing, our biggest welfare program, the Earned Income Credit, is administered by the IRS, an entity  that was set up to collect taxes, not distribute money to people for having children.  While it's true that people without children can still get an EIC, the cutoff is very low ($13450), and it's a maximum of $457.  For people with three children (up until 2009, you only got credit for up to two children), the income limitation is $48362 (above the median income!), and the maximum credit is $5666.


Biggest welfare program?  You betcha.  For 2009, over $60 billion in EIC was claimed.   That's double what it was in 1997, the year that "welfare as we know it" was ended.  In 1997, the bottom 50% of income tax filers made 14% of the total income reported to the IRS, and paid a little over 7% of the income tax.  In 2009, the same group still made that 14% share, but paid less than 3% of the income tax.


The bad news is that this indicates a huge income disparity.  Half of the households in the US make 86% of the country's income.  But they also pay a disproportionate share of the tax.  Should the IRS really be in charge of a $60 billion a year welfare program?  That doesn't even include the Child Tax Credit, which is available to a lot more people, and amounted to another $28 billion.


This is what has happened over the past few decades.


2010--household with 2 earners, 2 children, total income of $50000, standard deduction.
Tax liability $0.  After credits, $34 refund.  CO gets $1109.  Total $1075


1960--same household, same situation, income adjusted to $6250.  Federal tax liability $645.  Colorado, $161.  Total $806.


This means that there are a lot more people now paying no income tax than there were 50 years ago, by percentage.  The income disparity really hasn't changed all that much since then, either.  Even in 1960, the bottom 50% still only earned about 15% of the income.  But they paid over 10% of the income tax.


So this is why so many of the "53%" are pissed off.  This is why we're more driven to go to work than to go downtown and whine about "Wall Street" not giving us money.  It's because we're paying a higher share of the tax than before.  Even the wealthy, contrary to what you've probably heard, are still paying a higher share of the income tax than they were 30 years ago.  Actually, a lot more.  But that isn't because their tax went up.  It didn't.  It went down.  It's because everybody else's tax dropped as well.  


So maybe they should pay more.  Returning to a Nixon era top rate of maybe 70% or so wouldn't hurt the economy. It would only affect the top 1% anyway (ya like that, "99%'ers"?).   And frankly, it's just not worth the trouble to collect what little income tax the bottom 50% actually pays.  So let's get real.


The income tax for anyone shouldn't be much, but it should be something.  Maybe a flat assessment of 3-5% of their income, withheld at the source, whether from wages or investments.  That way, they won't even have to file tax returns, which would save both them and the IRS money.


At the same time, let's also stop using the IRS to hand out $90 billion in welfare every year.  Want to have welfare programs to help the less fortunate?  Fine.  Lobby for that, willya?  But let's do it the responsible way, with more accountability than just having to submit a form that is easily defrauded, and hard to catch the fraud.  There's no reason that anyone should just get $6000 for filing a tax return.  You'd suppose that they'd at least have to prove that they exist first.


Once again, I gotta say to the Occupiers--you are not part of any goddamned 99%.  I would hazard that most of you are part of the almost 50% that pay no income tax at all.  You don't have an ownership stake, so you don't care if you destroy the rest of us.  When you fuck with the 53%, you're not just fucking with the wealthy.  You're fucking with other people that are also having trouble paying the bills.  Other people who also aren't getting free money from "Wall Street".


Most of us just don't bitch about it so much. 

Tax Foundation Income and Tax Shares
2011 IRS Tax Abstract

IRS Earned Income Credit Statistics

The 155 Million

Too many people on the left make the false assumption that everybody is upset about the same things.  That everybody is fighting the same demons.  They think that everybody else either also blames "Wall Street" and the "1%" for all of their problems, or is an uneducated idiot.  Or worse, if you're not on board with their agenda, you're either a supporter of the "police state" that they imagine that they're living in (quite an unusual "police state" that lets dissidents openly whine about the government on their computers), or you're one of those dreaded "one percenters" yourself.


Bullshit.


Like I said, this is one strange police state that allows open dissent and protest.  True, the police are breaking up some of the "Occupy" protests.  After putting up with their vandalism and other assorted law breaking for over a month.


I have a clue for the Occupy folks.  Your right to peaceably assemble ends when you stop acting peaceably.  If you break laws, other than laws specifically aimed at quashing protest and dissent, then you are no longer acting peaceably.


When a protester over a month ago threw a rock at my truck, he forfeited his First Amendment rights.  I have no idea why he threw a rock at my truck. I'm not "Wall Street".  I'm not a "one percenter".  Hell, I'm not even a "ten percenter" anymore.  I used to be, but I'm not anymore.  I don't blame that fact on people more fortunate than myself, or our financial system.  The same financial system that once made me a "ten percenter" didn't change my fortunes one way or the other without input and action from me.


My truck isn't even very new.  Seven years old.  It does look nice, though.  That's because I take care of it, not because I'm a wealthy Wall Street executive (I'm not).


But someone from Occupy Denver threw a rock at it anyway.  I hope that whoever it was was one of the protesters that got a pepper ball as a souvenir from the Denver Police Department.


Way to go, folks!  You're alienating and pissing off the very people whose support you're going to need to get anything done.  The 155 Million.  The 53%.


155 million?  53%?  I deconstructed the numbers a while back, but basically, it really does come down to this.  Half of America basically subsidizes the other half.  Most of us on the subsidizing side don't mind it so much.  It's part of the price of civilization.  Nobody wants to see anybody starve.


Most of the 155M anyway.  There's no particular agreement among us, either.  Some of the 155M are more liberal, and blame some of the same demons as the OWS do for our current economic decline.  Others of the 155M blame the government as much as OWS blames the wealthy and the financial system.


When it comes to the financial system, it doesn't seem that anybody likes them too much.  Especially banks.  It's always fashionable to hate banks.  Can't say I disagree too much.  It is, in fact, a business that attracts a lot of bad actors.


But even though they contributed to the mess, they aren't to blame entirely.


The banks and other financial institutions, the government, the wealthy, and just about everybody else all contributed to the crisis.  Big business had a big hand in it. But jeeziz, folks, people making the median income  didn't cause people below the median income to make less money.  We didn't cause double digit unemployment.


Neither did "Wall Street".  Or "Big Government", either.  Not all by themselves.  We all contributed, each in our own way.  But it takes maturity and courage to admit that the demons didn't cause all of your problems.  To admit that you are also part of the problem takes--balls.


Anyway, as I noted in my last piece, "Trash A Bank", the "Occupiers" sure aren't doing much damage or even inconvenience to actual financial and business interests.  They're just inconveniencing average people who have to get to work.  So they can pay the taxes that pay for, among other things, the damage done to public facilities by the protesters.


The money to fix the damage they're doing comes out of the parks budget.  Way to go!  You Occupiers have yet to cost Bank of America or Wells Fargo a dime, but you're sure trashing the parks budget of a city that has, or at least used to have, very nice parks. 


They're not damaging the bankers.  They're damaging the rest of us.  Folks, there is no such thing as "99%".  Not everybody agrees with you.  Not everybody sees the same demons hiding under the bed.  The protesters sure don't seem to understand that they're becoming a bigger problem for the average working person than "Wall Street" is.  They don't seem to understand that their main problem isn't that the 1% won't play nice and share with them.


So here's a message from me to OWS:


You are mostly a bunch of losers.  But you aren't losers because of "Wall Street", or the "fascist police state".  You're not losers because rich people won't give you free money.  Many, if not most, of you are losers because you won't take risks, you won't behave responsibly, and you expect all of your problems to be taken care of for you.  If you worked hard, lived smart, and took appropriate and calculated risks, most of you would still be poor anyway.  Financial times wouldn't necessarily be any better for you.  Horatio Alger is dead, and his world never existed anyway.


But at least you wouldn't be losers anymore.


As for those of us who are out here plugging along, paying income and other taxes that the top 50% pay almost all of,  we aren't one monolithic group, either.  But maybe we should do some organizing, too.  Because most of us are invested in our society more than the Occupiers are.  99% of Americans may make less money than the other 1%, but 100% of Americans live in better conditions than a good 90% or so of the rest of the world's population.  It's not perfect, but nothing is.  It's not all that bad, either.


It works well enough for the vast majority of Americans that nobody should want to see it torn down and destroyed.  We can always work to improve it, and I'll never stop trying, but there is nothing to be gained from its destruction.  Only from its improvement.


OWS isn't about improvement, though.  It's about destruction.


Watch out, Occupiers.  Watch who you pick as a target.  If your actions truly threaten the interests of people and institutions that have hurt us all, most people will not disapprove.  Even if they don't agree with you. 


But threaten the homes and livelihoods of the majority, and you just might find yourself living in that fascist police state after all.  That would really suck for everybody.  But it would suck worse for you than for me, in all likelihood.


We are the 155M, and we're getting tired of bearing the weight of your temper tantrums.  We're tired of seeing our public facilities trashed and our lives disrupted.  We're getting tired of being your target by proxy because you don't have the strength of your convictions, or the balls, to attack those that you say are causing your problems.


Only destruction comes from destruction.  The 155M, plus the more than 60M that depend on us directly, don't want to see it.  We want to build.  But we shouldn't have to rebuild that which should never have been destroyed in the first place.