ACLU Slams Virginia Department Taxation Rules on Married Gays

Despite losing across the board in this year's elections, the Virginia GOP and its puppet masters at The Family Foundation are still committed to an agenda of punishing legally married same sex couples for their failure to adhere to Christofascist religious beliefs.  The latest anti-gay salvo came in the form of new Virginia Department of Taxation rules that bar married gay couples from filing joint state returns.  The rules would also disallow businesses from deducting employee benefits extended to same sex spouse of employees.  In the final analysis, it all comes down to religious based discrimination written into Virginia's laws by those who want to make far right Christian religious beliefs the de facto established religion of the Commonwealth.  Here are highlights from the Daily Press:

The ACLU of Virginia on Thursday slammed the state Department of Taxation for instructing gay and lesbian married couples living in the state that federal tax benefits they are newly eligible to receive won't be available for state income tax filings.

The agency issued a bulletin in response to a Supreme Court ruling that invalidated the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which had denied same-sex couples federal tax benefits available to married couples, Social Security survivor's benefits and several other advantages.

The state Department of Taxation indicated it would not treat those couples like straight married couples for tax purposes. The ACLU said the instructions are punitive not only to lesbian and gay couples but also to businesses that give fringe benefits to their employees' same-sex spouses.

"This bulletin reaffirms the Commonwealth's ongoing hostility toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Virginians, including legally married same-sex couples," said Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia.

K. Sean Packard, a tax specialist at the McLean-based wealth management firm OFS, reviewed the Department of Taxation bulletin at the Daily Press' request. He said the state's approach toward fringe benefits paid by businesses stood out to him.

"Adjustments for deductions in fringe benefits paid for same-sex spouses are never recouped by the business," Packard said. "They are gone forever."  So, he said, "Virginia's position hurts businesses that employ and provide benefits to married same-sex spouses."

He said the bulletin also means that same-sex married couples don't have the same benefits provided to straight couples filing joint tax returns in Virginia.

Packard said such couples, when forced to file as individuals in Virginia, are also being forced to itemize their Virginia returns if they itemize their joint federal tax return. That could hurt such a couple if one of the individuals owns all of the real estate and generates all of their income. The wage earner's partner would not be allowed to take Virginia's standard deduction, which would result in a higher tax bill.

Finally, Packard said a married same-sex couple in Virginia would probably have to pay considerably more to have their taxes prepared.

All so that hate filled Christofascists can feel superior about themselves and look down on LGBT Virginians as less than full citizens.  Hate and bigotry are the "Virginia way" under these foul people. 

 

A ‘Greatest Hits’ of Romney Untruths

If I seem to be harping against the lies of Mitt Romney today, I'm sorry, but there is just so much to comment upon on this front.  In my roughly 20 years as a political activist, I do not think I've ever seen as dishonest a campaign or candidate as Mitt Romney (and his PAC buddies like Karl Rove).  The truth simply doesn't matter and there seems to be a cynicism that views Americans as being too stupid to figure out that they are being told bald faced lies.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at some of the biggest lies being told by the Romney campaign.  Here are some article excerpts:

“If Barack Obama is reelected, what will the next four years be like? One, the debt will grow from 16 trillion to 20 trillion dollars. Two, 20 million Americans could lose their employer-based health care. Three, taxes on the middle class will go up by $4,000. Four, energy prices will continue to go up. And five, $716 billion in Medicare cuts that hurt current seniors.”

— Voiceover in new Mitt Romney campaign ad titled “The Obama Plan”

[A] new ad released by the Romney campaign [see the voiceover above] is almost a “greatest hits” version of claims that have been thoroughly debunked by fact checkers, including this column. Let’s spin the record once again! 

“The debt will grow from 16 trillion to 20 trillion dollars”

Here, the Romney campaign is using “gross debt,” which includes U.S. Treasury bonds held by Social Security and Medicare. Generally, what matters for the federal budget is the publicly held debt, particularly the percentage of debt compared to the overall economy (gross domestic product.) The House GOP budget plan authored by Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, for instance focuses on its impact on publicly-held debt, no gross debt.

“Twenty million Americans could lose their employer-based health care.”

This is the worst case scenario in a recent Congressional Budget Office report, and thus using this “20 million” figure is fairly misleading.  The most positive scenario in the CBO analysis has 3 million people being added to employer coverage. “On balance, the number of people obtaining coverage through their employer would be about 3 million lower in 2019 under the legislation than under prior law,” the CBO concludes.  It’s worth noting that the baseline scenario — 3 million fewer people — represents just 2 percent of the people who now get insurance through their employers.

Of course, Mitt Romney, as governor, ushered in health-care legislation that served as a model for Obama’s health plan

“Taxes on the middle class will go up by $4,000.”

The first time the Romney campaign made this claim, it earned three Pinocchios. But it just gets worse each time this bogus claim gets reasserted. Obama has no plan to raise taxes on the middle class . . . this claim is drawn from a dry report from the American Enterprise Institute, titled “A Simple Measure of the Distributional Burden of Debt Accumulation.” The study tries to calculate the burden of servicing the national debt by various income groups, examining what would happen under current law, current policies and Obama’s budget.

“Energy prices will continue to go up”

What’s the source on this? The Romney campaign based this claim about “energy” on just one fact: Gasoline prices have more than doubled from $1.85 per gallon to $3.82 per gallon during Obama’s presidency.  But this is a misleading comparison because cost of gas had plunged to an artificially low level at the start of Obama’s presidency because of the Great Recession.  What was the price of gas the week of Sept. 15, 2008, before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers triggered the economic crisis? It was $3.84 — virtually the same price as today.

“$716 billion in Medicare cuts that hurt current seniors”

We’re getting tried of writing about this claim, which stems from efforts to restrain Medicare spending in the Obama health care law.  The $716 billion figure comes from the difference over 10 years (2013-2022) between anticipated Medicare spending (what is known as “the baseline”) and the changes that the law makes to reduce spending. Year over year spending on Medicare would continue to go up.

The savings mostly are wrung from health-care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries — who, as a result of the health-care law, ended up with new benefits for preventive care and prescription drugs.

I continue to hope that the American public doesn't prove itself to be as stupid as Mitt Romney and the GOP see them to be.   But if Romney wins, then it will be a sad commentary on the idiocy, racism, extremism and greed of a majority of voters.

Mitt Romney's Real Problem: Today's GOP

The critiques of Mitt Romney continue to analyze why his campaign and the man himself continue to appear so incompetent.  While the far right continue to attack Romney the man, a growing list of pundits are starting to focus on the real problem: the insanity of today's Republican Party which limits what any party nominee is allowed to say.  Anything that might depart from the party base's mantra of no taxes, no rights for gays, no contraception, no rights for racial and ethnic minorities, and the need to destroy government is deemed heresy.  Yet the issues and problems surrounding the nation require serious thought and innovative leadership.  Fareed Zakaria - whom I'm sure the GOP deems some sort of dangerous foreigner - looks at the situation in a Washington Post column.  Here are excepts:

[T]he problem is not Romney but the new Republican Party. Given the direction in which it has moved and the pressures from its most extreme — yet most powerful — elements, any nominee would face the same challenge: Can you be a serious candidate for the general election while not outraging the Republican base? 

Fox News anchor Brit Hume got specific in his critique, saying this month that “Romney’s got the presidential bearing down. . . . What he [hasn’t done is] dwell at length on the economic policies that he would put in place.” Why won’t Romney, an intelligent man, fluent in economics, explain his economic policy? Because any sensible answer would cause a firestorm in his party.

It is obvious that, with a deficit at 8 percent of gross domestic product, any solution to our budgetary problems has to involve both spending cuts and tax increases. Ronald Reagan agreed to tax increases when the deficit hit 4 percent of GDP; George H.W. Bush did so when the deficit was 3 percent of GDP. But today’s Republican Party is organized around the proposition that, no matter the circumstances, there must never be a tax increase of any kind.

So Romney could present a serious economic plan with numbers that make sense — and then face a revolt within his own party. His solution: to be utterly vague about how he would deal with the deficit. 

This is not just a story of the rise of economic conservatives. The same pattern has emerged on immigration.  .  .  .  .  the Republican Party is now so strongly opposed to those proposals — which included a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants — that a co-sponsor of the bill, McCain, has renounced his own handiwork.
Romney has curried favor within the party by opposing the Dream Act, supporting Arizona’s harsh law under which police check people’s immigration status at will and proposing “self-deportation” as a way to get rid of undocumented immigrants.

The Republican Party has imposed a new kind of political correctness on its leaders. They cannot speak certain words (taxes) or speculate about certain ideas (immigration amnesty) because these are forbidden.  .  .   .  .   That’s a straitjacket that even Peggy Noonan’s eloquence cannot get him out of.

Zakaria doesn't even get into other social and societal issues, but the same extremism of the GOP base likewise hobbles Romney from adapting any policy or proposal that might outrageous the Bible beaters and gay haters who now predominate in the party.  American society is changing yet the GOP only wants to move backwards in time.  In my view, only continued electoral defeats can hopefully push the GOP to someday again embrace sanity.

Why is Hate Group Endorsed Scott Rigell Lying to Hampton Roads Voters?

Click image to enlarge

I'll be right up front on my dislike of Congressman Scott Rigell of the Virginia 2nd Congressional District.  Mr. Rigell has (1) been endorsed by Louis Sheldon, founder of Traditions Values Coalition - perhaps one of the most dishonest and virulently anti-gay of the "family values" hate groups in America - (2) voted in lock step on woman's issues with Missouri's insane Todd Akins, and has voted for the Paul Ryan budget plan which would rape and pillage the middle class, and (3) voted for the Paul Ryan budget seven (7) times.  Now, faced with a credible challenger in the person of Paul Hirschbiel, Rigell is out right lying to local media outlets and obviously seeking to dupe voters.  His endorsers and actions in Washington tell the only story voters need to know.  Here's a sampling of the lies and bullshit being spewed by Rigell via the Daily Press: 

NEWPORT NEWS – U.S. Rep Scott Rigell, R-Virginia Beach, said Monday that while he believes federal spending needs to be cut, the economic crisis facing the nation cannot be overcome without also raising taxes.

"The American people are ready for the truth — they can handle the truth," Rigell told the Daily Press editorial board. "They can handle solutions. They want solutions and they want leadership."

And the truth, Rigell says, is that the "Bush tax cuts" coupled with Grover Norquist's "no new tax pledge" signed by the vast majority of Republicans in Congress have locked federal revenue in at a rate that is unsustainable.

Rigell said he's willing to "compromise" with Democrats and bring revenues up to 20 percent of gross domestic product while cutting spending to the same level.

Rigell pointed out that federal revenues are at an 11-year average of 16.9 percent of GDP, which he said was the lowest level since 1959.

He said federal spending stands between 23 percent and 24 percent of GDP — peaking at 25 percent of GDP at the height of stimulus spending.

Rigell said the budget plan put forward by GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., lowers federal spending to 18.5 percent of GDP in 24 years.

But Rigell said the Ryan budget plan, which he has voted for, is "indefensible mathematically" without "revenue enhancements."  Ryan's austere budget plan makes deep cuts to social-safety-net programs, while protecting defense spending.

This change lead Rigell to disavow Norquist's "no new tax pledge" in February. However, he has voted to extend the Bush tax cuts for all income levels.

Steven Jones, spokesman for Rigell's Democratic opponent in the 2nd Congressional District, Paul Hirschbiel, said this is an example of Rigell "saying one thing in Hampton Roads and doing another thing in Washington."  "You can't say you are serious about a bipartisan approach when you have voted seven times to protect subsidies for big oil companies," Jones said.

In the interest of full disclosure, I used to live in the same neighborhood as Rigell and the man is a real bastard to put it mildly. He and his wife are pompous, arrogant, and just as out of touch with the reality of the circumstances as Ann "Marie Antoinette" Romney and her bumbling Louis XVI equivalent.

40 Economists Say The GOP Has Abandoned Economic Reality

Click image to enlarge

In its effort to pander and prostitute itself to religious extremists (some of whom border on serious mental illness in my view) and the know nothings and cretins of the Tea Party, the Republican Party has entered into some bizarre alternate universe where reality is whatever the Party's demagogues claim it to be even if objective reality and actual facts dictate otherwise.  This detachment from objective reality extends to the GOP's economic policy which seeks to emulate the austerity approach that has reaped disastrous results in Europe, including the United Kingdom which is falling back into recession.  A group of forty (40) economists who live in the real world as opposed to the insane world of the Christianists/Tea Party have evaluated the GOP's economic plan and confirmed that it bears no relation to reality.  Here are highlights from Think Progress on the GOP's economic insanity: 

A survey of forty economists from across the ideological and partisan spectrum has concluded that on some of its most cherished issues, the Republican Party has simply taken leave of economic reality. For instance, economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers noted that one of the results from the survey — run by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, which is hardly known for a left-wing slant — is an overwhelming agreement that the 2009 Recovery Act (i.e. the stimulus) brought down unemployment. But GOP leaders have spent years roundly denouncing the stimulus as a failure.

And while there was a bit more disagreement as to whether the benefits of the stimulus bill outweighed its costs, the bulk of the economists surveyed came down in the “Agree” or “Strongly Agree” camps. Other points from the survey’s respondents worth noting:

The nation needs new revenues. Contrary to nearly every Republican, the economists overwhelmingly agreed that the federal budget deficit cannot and should not be closed without increased tax revenue.
No gold standard. They roundly rejected the belief that a return to the gold standard would stabilize prices or lower unemployment. Enthusiasm for the gold standard made a significant comeback in Republican circles during the presidential primaries.
The “Laffer Curve” won’t help. Virtually all of them rejected the notion that cutting income tax rates would actually increase total tax revenue in future years.

While there were a few survey results that could be interpreted as hard on progressive causes as well, none struck at their heart in the same way as the positions taken on core Republican beliefs.

In short, just about all of Romney's economic proposals are flat ass wrong  - not to mention insane based on simple math that indicates that sharply cutting taxes for the wealthy while greatly increasing defense spending will increase the deficit, not reduce it.

The GOP's Phony Worship of Ronald Reagan

It's mind numbing to hear all the references by today's Republicans who claim to give adulation to Ronald Reagan even though were he to run for office with the positions he held, Reagan would likely go down to defeat at the hands of the Christofascist/Tea Party base of today's GOP.  The hypocrisy of these pretend worshipers of Reagan is only exceed by the hypocrisy of the child rapist protecting Roman Catholic Church hierarchy.  On a host of issues, Reagan would be anathema to today's GOP base.  A somewhat tongue in check column in the Washington Post looks at how Reagan would have to be "genetically re-engineered" to conform to today's insane and  extremist Republican Party.  Here are highlights:

Party officials have been making the pilgrimage to the Reagan Library this year to express their wish to re-create the great man. “I believe boldness and clarity of the kind that Ronald Reagan displayed in 1980 offer us the greatest opportunity to create a winning coalition in 2012,” vice presidential aspirant Paul Ryan said at the library last week.

Also making the trip were VP hopefuls Marco Rubio and Chris Christie. “Like Ronald Reagan, I believe in what this country and its citizens can accomplish,” the latter declared. “The America I speak of is the America Ronald Reagan challenged us to be.”

The man they hope to join on the ticket, Mitt Romney, once boasted that he was “not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.” Now he says the party’s standard-bearer should be in “the same mold as Ronald Reagan.”

But before they go filling that mold by mapping the Reagan genome, Republicans may wish to consider some genetic flaws that party scientists should repair in the cloning process. To make the Reagan clone more compatible with today’s Republican Party, a bit of genetic engineering may be in order:

AFL-1  Reagan’s AFL-1 gene, on the labor chromosome, has a mutation that made him susceptible to workers’ rights. He said of unions: “There are few finer examples of participatory democracy.” He said the right to join a union is “one of the most elemental human rights.” And he said collective bargaining “played a major role in America’s economic miracle.”

EPA-4  Reagan’s EPA-4 gene, on the regulatory chromosome, has a protein that can summon anti-industry sympathies. He signed a law establishing efficiency standards for electric appliances and an update to the Safe Drinking Water Act punishing states that didn’t meet clean-water standards.

SSA-2 and MDCR-1  These related genes, on the long arm of the retirement chromosome, are problematic. Reagan expanded Social Security in 1983 and imposed taxes on wealthy recipients. He also signed what was at the time the largest expansion of Medicare in its history.

DEBT-1, DEBT-2, DEBT-3  A trio of abnormalities on the fiscal chromosome caused Reagan to increase taxes several times after his initial tax cut, to embrace much higher taxes on investments than current rates and to sign 18 increases in the federal debt limit.
 
SPND-1, SPND-2, SPND-3  These Reagan mutations, in the same sector as the debt mutations, created a genetic predisposition to expand the federal government. Reagan enlarged the federal workforce and the federal budget, added the Department of Veterans Affairs (one of the largest Cabinet agencies) and pursued a military buildup that would be impossible under spending limits proposed by congressional Republicans.

EITC-1  For all his talk about welfare queens, Reagan had a gene on the compassion chromosome that led him to champion the earned-income tax credit, a program for the working poor that takes more children out of poverty than any other program. Budgets proposed by today’s Republicans would cut or eliminate the credit. A related abnormality caused Reagan to say that bus drivers should not pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than millionaires — one of President Obama’s tax proposals opposed by current Republicans.

By today's standards in the GOP, Reagan would be described as a tax and spend liberal Democrat.  My goodness, he might even be called a Communist!  Today's lunatic GOP base definitely has a very selective memory of the real facts about Reagan and his 8 years as President.

Fight Over Tolls Showcases Virginia GOP Error on Gas Tax

Click image to enlarge.

UPDATED 3-19-2012: The Virginian Pilot has another story that makes it clear that the negative impact of tolls will be a regional problem. And again, the question to be asked is why Hampton Roads Interstates are being singled out for tolls unlike the rest of Virginia.

One of Governor Ultrasound McDonnell's other "big ideas" that is beginning to cause troubled waters in Hampton Roads is his love of so-called "public-private partnerships" that would build long over due highway improvements in the region by places economy killing tolls on bridges and tunnels. The idea rates right up there with Governor Ultrasound's idea of "government so small it fits in a woman's uterus." While only the Downtown and Midtown Tunnels are currently slated for tolls, the scheme eventually would put tolls on numerous more interstate bridges and tunnels - even though no other interstate highways in Virginia are similarly burdened. In short, Hampton Roads is slated to be f*cked over royally compared to other regions in Virginia. It's all part of the GOP's mantra of never raising taxes no matter what - even though the gasoline tax was last raised 25 years ago. The Virginian Pilot looks at the situation with the gas tax and the impact of tolls on local residents who must use tunnels and brides compared to the impact of modest increases in the gasoline tax. Here are some highlights:

The Midtown Tunnel project has revived a debate about the state's gas tax and triggered a fresh round of questions: Why hasn't the tax - a key source of road money - been raised in 25 years, a time span exceeded only by Alaska? And why, if Virginia has the seventh-lowest gas tax in the nation, are our pump prices in the middle of the pack?

With the uproar over tolls rocking Hampton Roads, the answers are more relevant than ever. Since the first dirt road acquired a coat of asphalt, citizens have argued about how to pay for it. Each of us contributes to the cause every time we gas up, paying a tax that's embedded in the price. Part of it goes to the federal government for interstates and the like, and the rest to the states for their own roadways.

But both funds fall shorter by the year, sapped by an aging transportation network, escalating construction costs and a refusal to allow the tax rate to keep up.

Virginia hasn't hiked its rate since 1987, a flat tax of 17.5 cents per gallon (plus a 0.06 cent storage tank fee) that's been whittled by inflation to about 8 cents. "Imagine if you hadn't had a pay raise in 25 years," said Tamara Rollison, a spokeswoman at VDOT. "You've got dwindling dollars to take care of ever-increasing needs."

$10 billion a year is being lost to stagnant rates. With a 10-cent hike, Virginia would bank an extra $500 million a year, while costing the typical driver just under $8 a month. Tolls, on the other hand, swap a smaller, shared pain for a bigger burden on individuals - often those who can afford it the least. The Midtown deal will cost commuters nearly $1,000 a year to travel between the two poorest cities in South Hampton Roads.

[L]ogic says a low gas tax should be mirrored at the pump. But that's not the case, at least not statewide. On AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report, Virginia prices routinely rank in the midrange - even though 43 of those states have a higher gas tax. . . . .Where does the extra money go? "I don't know the answer to that," said Bill Bush at the American Petroleum Institute.

I represent a number of gasoline retailers and they're not making tons of money from retail sales, so one does have to ask where is the money going? Another question to ask is whether all gasoline tax revenues end up going to highway construction and maintenance? Virginia is notorious for shifting revenue streams from the supposedly dedicated use to other purposes - typically without admitting the monetary slight of hand.

Click image to enlarge.

Lawsuit to Challenge Governor Ultrasound's Toll Plan for Hampton Roads

While the Virginia GOP controlled General Assembly found plenty of time to wage a legislative war against gays, women and minority voters, no meaningful plan was devised to address Virginia's huge transportation system deficiencies and what did get passed will saddle Hampton Roads with ultimately economy killing tolls. The first tolls will hit the Midtown and Downtown tunnels and isolate Portsmouth and parts of Chesapeake from Norfolk. In time similar barriers will likely be put in place to create a barrier between the Peninsula and south side Hampton Roads. What makes local residents so upset is other than the Dulles toll road, the expressway tot he Outer Banks and a relatively cheap toll road in Richmond, nowhere in the rest of Virginia is the state inflicting tolls on daily commuters. That burden is targeted for Hampton Roads alone. Now Patrick McSweeney and others are planning to challenge the toll plan which gives too much power to VDOT and bestows future financial windfalls on private developers. Meanwhile, Virginia's gasoline tax - one of the lowest in the nation - has not been raised in 25 years. Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

Predicting they are in for a "long, bitter fight," an attorney who is fixing to wage battle against tolls at the Downtown and Midtown tunnels began to roll out his strategy Monday to hundreds of supportive residents.

Patrick McSweeney said he will file a lawsuit within days in Portsmouth Circuit Court to challenge the legality of the $2.1 billion transportation project the state agreed to in December with a private partner, primarily to expand the Midtown tunnel.

McSweeney said his case will rest on the argument that state legislators unlawfully delegated "unfettered power" to the Virginia Department of Transportation to craft the deal, which relies heavily on tolls.

He spoke to an estimated 500 people who crammed into a funeral chapel owned by state Del. Kenny Alexander, D-Norfolk, who retained McSweeney to work on the suit. . . . Several state legislators who represent Hampton Roads sat at the front of the room, and a few spoke briefly. Del. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, recalled for the crowd his criticism of the Midtown project, including the way it was signed without final public review and the fact that the Downtown Tunnel will be tolled with no expansion of its capacity.

But when Jones said he was still working on a way to bring down the cost of the tolls, people in the crowd shouted him down. They wanted no talk of reduced tolls.
"No!" they yelled. "No tolls! No tolls!"

As the project stands, tolls are scheduled to begin this fall at the tunnels, starting at $1.84 during peak travel times. That would cost a commuter nearly $1,000 a year, an expense critics say will cripple Portsmouth, divide the region and unfairly burden students, low-income households and other regular users.

Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell has promoted the project as a way to get major, much-needed transportation projects funded with scarce public dollars.

McSweeney, a former state Republican party chairman, told the crowd he is not concerned about the policy debate over tolls. Rather, he said, he was focused on finding legal defects with the agreement, a thick, binded copy of which he held up for the crowd.

McSweeney successfully challenged a state transportation plan before, when he filed suit against a regional taxing authority in 2007. The Virginia Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the authority's taxing power, as granted by the General Assembly, was unconstitutional.

Will the GOP be Made to Pay for the Super Committee Failure?

Most Americans are disgusted with Congress's apparent inability to get the nation's work done. Worse yet, many are - in my view belatedly - grasping the fact that the GOP is putting partisanship gamesmanship ahead of the economic well being of millions of Americans. In their quest to destroy Barack Obama, many in the GOP are more than happy to allow the economy to continue to crash and burn. It's rather sick, but welcome to today's GOP. A piece in The Daily Beast makes the case that the public has figured out who is to blame - especially on the so-called Super Committee failure - and that swing voters are particularly displeased.It would be, of course, sweet justice if the GOP's selling the county out for political gain in fact came back to bite them in the ass big time. Here are some column highlights:

There will be an enduring political price to pay for last week’s pathetic face-plant. And while confidence in the entire institution’s [Congress's] capacity to reason together will continue to decline, polls show that congressional Republicans are taking the brunt of the blame, specifically among swing voters.

Here’s why: all the 2010 talk about dealing with the generational theft of deficits and debt ended up taking a back seat to antitax theology when it mattered most.

To add insult to the injury of this lost opportunity, there was actually broad agreement among the American public about a balanced plan that could have reduced the long-term deficit and debt while sacrificing Republican and Democrat sacred cows. People understand this was a failure of political will produced by the disproportionate influence of special interests.

Dig beneath the surface of Gallup’s new poll showing that 55 percent of Americans blame both parties for the failure of the supercommittee, and you’ll see the remaining breakdown leans decidedly against the GOP . . .

40 percent of independent voters would blame Republicans more for a supercommittee failure, while 24 percent would blame the Democrats. Likewise, 47 percent of self-identified centrists said they would blame the GOP, while 25 percent said the Dems would be most at fault. The key dynamic to watch is the nearly 2-to-1 split when independents and centrists are asked which party is to blame for supercommittee failure.

[T]he real question is why such a split exists on the supercommittee. One answer can be found in the support that existed for the broad outlines of a bipartisan compromise. Keep in mind that two thirds of Americans rarely agree on anything—but CNN polling earlier this month found that 67 percent of Americans supported raising taxes on higher-income Americans and businesses as part of a supercommittee plan to deal with the deficit and debt. Likewise, 66 percent supported major spending cuts to domestic government programs.

In other words, there was ample public support for a grand bargain in addition to the congressional Gang of 150. A not-incidental 54 percent of independents say that they wanted to see more compromise from the supercommittee in pursuit of a deal. The supercommittee failed because of a lack of political will—particularly on the part of Republicans who refused to consider any revenue increases unless they were accompanied by major reductions in the top tax rate or a permanent extension of all the Bush tax cuts.

Republican blame for the supercommittee failure is resonating because it calls into question their commitment to actually dealing with the deficit and the debt. After all, it was not a popular conservative cause when deficits first started to explode during the Bush era. . . . When taxes always trump deficit reduction, fiscal conservatism and fiscal responsibility have been delinked.

[S]wing voters are starting to assign blame in ways that should be both a warning and a wake-up call to congressional Republicans as they look to 2012.

Frankly, I do not see the GOP waking up to reality. Increasingly - even among the few remaining GOP moderates I know - the Party lives in a bubble and takes it directions from the Christian Right (which behaves in anything but a Christian manner) and the oligarchs like the Koch brothers. Massive election losses are the only wake up call that will get the message to sink in.

Regulations and Taxes Aren't What Is Killing Small Business

As members and demagogues of the GOP endeavor to turn back the clock to the days of the robber barons when regulations and unions were far and few between one of the mantra's is that taxes and government regulations are the principal obstacles to small business success. Like so much coming out of GOP demagogues like Eric Cantor, et. al, it's a lie. A new survey of small business owners underscores the disingenuousness of the GOP's story line. And not surprisingly, one of the biggest drains on small business after the depressed economy is the sky rocketing costs of insurance of all kinds (for my firm, malpractice insurance and health insurance are big ticket items). Here are highlights from McClatchy on the findings:

Politicians and business groups often blame excessive regulation and fear of higher taxes for tepid hiring in the economy. However, little evidence of that emerged when McClatchy canvassed a random sample of small business owners across the nation.

McClatchy reached out to owners of small businesses, many of them mom-and-pop operations, to find out whether they indeed were being choked by regulation, whether uncertainty over taxes affected their hiring plans and whether the health care overhaul was helping or hurting their business. Their response was surprising.

None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it. Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-09 and its grim aftermath.

"Higher taxes are not good for business, but some of the loopholes and deductions should be looked at," he said. The answer from Rick Douglas — the owner of Minit Maids, a cleaning service with 17 employees in Charlotte, N.C. — was more blunt. "I think the rich have to be taxed, sorry," Douglas said. He added that he isn't facing a sea of new regulations but that he does struggle with an old issue, workers' compensation claims.

Then there's Rip Daniels. He owns four businesses in Gulfport, Miss.: real estate ventures, a radio station and a boutique hotel/bistro. He said his problem wasn't regulation. "Absolutely, positively not. What is choking my business is insurance. What's choking all business is insurance. You cannot go into business, any business — small business or large business — unless you can afford insurance," he told Biloxi's Sun Herald.

"I think the business climate is so shaky that I would not want to undergo any expansion or outlay capital," said Andy Weingarten, who owns Almar Auto Repair in Charlotte. He's thinking about hiring one more mechanic.

Added Barry Grant, the regional president of Meritage Homes Corp., in California, "It starts with jobs. ... There's an awful lot of people sitting on the fence; they're waiting for a sign." One reason hiring remains dampened is the prolonged slump in the housing sector, a driver of the pre-crisis economy.

Jobs - something that the GOP is doing NOTHING to foster is one key to recovery. To that I'd add a return to realistic mortgage and business loan approval procedures (currently, many good borrowers cannot get financing)and a stabilization of the housing market. The later, of course is not on the radar of the GOP.

Wisconsin Democrats Fail to Retake State Senate

In what will likely serve to energize the nastiest elements of the GOP, unofficial results indicate that Wisconsin Democrats failed to take back control of the Wisconsin Senate from Republicans. Two things are striking: (1) the amount of out of state money that was pumped into Wisconsin by the far right and (2) the willingness of individuals in these largely rural districts to vote against the long term interests of their communities out of short term greed to pay lower taxes. The bill will ultimately come due in the form of reduced public services and in some case largely gutted school budgets. Time and time again senior citizens in particular are unwilling to invest in the younger generations. Yet they wonder why America is failing behind other nations in terms of educational outcomes. The Washington Post looks at the recall election outcomes in Wisconsin:

Democrats fell one seat short of a chance at taking back the Wisconsin state senate Tuesday, a result that will disappoint organized labor nationally. According to the Associated Press, State Sens. Dan Kapanke and Randy Hopper were recalled, while Sens. Robert Cowles, Alberta Darling, Sheila Harsdorf and Luther Olsen held onto their seats.

Democrats have questioned the results given that Waukesha County was one of the last to finish reporting. In April’s Supreme Court election — also seen as a referendum on collective bargaining — challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg appeared to have beaten Judge David Prosser, before thousands of lost ballots were found in Waukesha.

In a statement, Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate accused Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus of “once again tampering with the results of a consequential election” and said that a “dark cloud hangs over these important results.” State party spokesman Graeme Zielinski added, “We believe there’s dirty tricks afoot.” The party’s legal team is investigating. If these results stand, its an undeniable defeat for labor and for progressive activists.

Outside groups on both sides poured more than $25 million into this fight, in addition to the more than $5 million raised by the candidates themselves. According to the non-partisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s Mike McCabe, Republicans had a slight edge in the money race, but it was “remarkably close.” Unions were the main source of funds for Democrats; limited-government groups such as the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity invested heavily on the GOP side.

The Angry Rich - Greed and Hypocrisy Unleashed

Paul Krugman has a timely column in the New York Times that looks at the bizarre mindset of many of America's wealthiest citizens who, while income disparages are rising to new heights, average families are struggling to survive financially, feel that they are victims because of potential increases in taxation levels. Besides making me ask myself, "God, where is a lighting bolt when you need one," these rich folk demonstrate a level of self-absorption that is mind boggling. I guess they rather see people homeless, children starving and the nation's infrastructure collapse rather than have to cut back on the purchase of expensive baubles or delay another updating of their already fabulous homes. Here are highlights from the column:
*
These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.
*
Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.
*
[S]elf-pity among the privileged has become acceptable, even fashionable. Tax-cut advocates used to pretend that they were mainly concerned about helping typical American families. Even tax breaks for the rich were justified in terms of trickle-down economics, the claim that lower taxes at the top would make the economy stronger for everyone. These days, however, tax-cutters are hardly even trying to make the trickle-down case.
*
And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes — but that was a long time ago. The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way.
*
You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.
*
[W]hen they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

Creigh Deeds Offers a Real Transportation Plan for Virginia

The reality is that Virginia's transportation infrastructure is crumbling and not keeping up with the needs of both residents and businesses that are currently located in or which would otherwise consider relocating to Virginia. Why? Because of the never ending no new tax mantra of Bob McDonnell and his cohorts in the Virginia GOP who somehow think roads and other infrastructure needs magically fund themselves out of thin air. The grid lock in Northern Virginia is horrific - last December it took us an hour to go five miles on I-95 into Washington, D.C.and that was without any accidents. The situation in Tidewater while not as severe is worsening steadily even with the down turn in new home construction. In an op-ed piece yesterday in the Washington Post Creigh Deeds leveled with Virginians as to the magnitude of the problem which is largely the result of 20 years of GOP obstruction of any new transportation plan and associated funding. The Washington Post today ran an editorial lauding Deeds' candor and comparing it to Bob McDonnell's smoke and mirrors faux plan for addressing the states terrible transportation needs. Obviously, the last 20 years of GOP obstruction have created the problem, so why would anyone with a shred of sanity expect more of the same under McDonnell to yield a different result. Here are some editorial highlights:

*

R.CREIGH DEEDS, the Democrat running for governor in Virginia, has now unequivocally committed himself to support higher taxes to rescue the state's sclerotic road system. His stance is nothing more or less than common sense: Virginia needs tens of billions of dollars in new revenue for roads, and it will not materialize without asking taxpayers -- the same taxpayers who rightly groan about traffic -- to foot a good part of the bill. Still, by articulating that position in plain English on the opposite page Wednesday, Mr. Deeds showed political guts, which is more than one can say for the smoke-and-mirrors, wing-and-a-prayer approach to transportation endorsed by his opponent, Republican nominee Robert F. McDonnell.

*

True to form, Virginia Republicans are betting that an easily misled electorate will be too shortsighted to notice that the state has completely run out of road-building funds. In this fiscal year, Richmond will spend scarcely $1 million to build and improve roads in all of Northern Virginia -- a laughable sum when measured against the billions needed. Two years from now, state spending on new roads in Northern Virginia is projected to be precisely zero. Mr. Deeds doesn't want to hit Virginians in the middle of a recession; he doesn't want to act without bipartisan consensus; but he wants to act.

*

Over the next 20 years, Virginia will need to raise an extra $100 billion -- minimum -- if it is to maintain and expand a transportation network that will meet the state's growth. The commonwealth is business-friendly; it already runs a relatively tight ship, as repeated ratings and studies have shown. Further rounds of streamlining, consolidation and efficiencies will not yield major new savings, and hoping that a new economic boom will unclog the state's roads is wishful thinking.

*

Suffice it to say that anyone who thinks that Virginia can get traffic moving or even slow the deterioration of its road system without fresh revenue -- and yes, a tax increase -- is living in an alternate reality. By his honesty, Mr. Deeds has now prepared the way for a mandate, should he be elected, to address the state's most critical problem.

*

Sadly, Bob McDonnell like most of the Christianists and deranged GOP base ARE living in an alternate reality. One where science and objective facts do not matter and where religious extremism and government by slogans are the norm. Virginia does NOT need Bob McDonnell's reality free world view.

Paying Taxes to a Government that Keeps You Unequal

Richard Rothstein over at QueerSighted (http://www.queersighted.com/) had a good description of how I suspect many of us in the GBLT community feel some mornings. Having worked on my tax return a good part of the weekend so that I can pay my federal taxes and help support the government that currently fails to protect my equality and out right marginalizes my life, Richard’s comment hits home even more than most days:

“Some mornings, before I've even finished my coffee and reading the first news reports of the day, I feel exhaustion for no other reason than the fact that I'm a gay American. I wonder if my fellow citizens who spend their days campaigning and crusading to limit my civil rights - the civil rights that they themselves take for granted - ever consider the inhumanity and irrationality of what they do? And I wonder if the millions of Americans who stand by apathetically and allow this travesty to play out with each passing day ever consider the emotional anguish they are deliberately or carelessly causing to millions of children, teenagers and adults?

This weekend KETV Omaha has provided live coverage of the "Love Won Out," Focus on the Family conference intended to "curb homosexuality" and promote "the truth that change is possible for those who experience same-sex attractions," While this festival of self-loathing and monstrous bigotry plays out, Don Imus is fired for making a horribly tasteless and grossly inappropriate joke about a group of black women. But who cares about a bunch of fags? Obviously not any of our prominent civil rights crusaders.”

As Michael Signorile noted last week on his new blog site, The Gist (http://www.signorile2003.blogspot.com/) , unfortunately GLAAD seems to be asleep at the wheel when it comes to getting down in the trenches to battle to silence the homophobes who are regularly given a free platform to these merchants of hate and easily documented untruths. Oh well, I need to get back to work so I can pay more taxes to a government that treats me with contempt.