Extra: Man bites dog!

What? Are Democrats in Congress showing some interest in engaging in smart politics?

This is an easy one, and Obama needs to be out in front of this one, leading the charge in support of a popular tax cut for the middle class and in opposition to an unpopular tax cut for the wealthiest 1% of Americans. Let the Republicans "hold the middle class hostage" if they so choose. Democrats can hand them the gun to do it. Maybe even cut out the letters for the ransom note.

Our media elites don't like paying taxes

During Obama's "60 Minutes" interview, I applauded the president for pushing back on the idea that raising taxes on the 1% of wealthiest Americans would "stall" a recovery. But I wished he'd gone farther by coming back with a question such as, "Well Steve [Kroft], I have to believe that someone like you makes a wee bit more that a quarter million each year. Maybe more than a wee bit. If we allow your portion of the Bush tax cuts to expire, what is it you won't buy next year that you otherwise would have?"

Jonathan Chait reminds us why this notion that higher taxes for the wealthiest is anti-capitalist is so powerfully intertwined in our senses.

The philophy of marginal tax rates

You know it would be a wonderful thing if the New York Times, when covering tax policy, would employ a reporter who actually understood these things. They used to, but evidently no longer.

In Tax Cut Plan, Debate Over the Definition of Rich
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

Much of the debate about whether to extend the Bush tax cuts has focused on big economic issues: how the decision might affect the fragile economy, the widening federal deficit and hiring by small businesses.

As the political battle drags on, however, it has also veered into a more basic matter of fairness, whether a person who earns more than $200,000 a year should be taxed at rates similar to those who make $5 million.

This is yet another way of approaching the now familiar story of how you just can't make it on $250,000 per year.

And we won't even discuss the fact that the reporter never uses the words, "marginal tax rates." Under Obama's proposal, someone making $250,000 won't see their taxes rise. If they earn $250,001, their taxes will rise. On the extra dollar.

But Dean Baker, not surprisingly, brings the snark -- and the facts -- as only he can.

It might be the case that you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but the NYT is telling us that we need a philosopher to guide our tax policy. An article on the debate over extending the Bush tax cuts told readers:

"As the political battle drags on, however, it has also veered into a more basic matter of fairness, whether a person who earns more than $200,000 a year should be taxed at rates similar to those who make $5 million."

Umm, really? Is the rate at which people are taxed, as opposed to the amount they pay in taxes, really such an important political issue? Do most people even know the rate at which they are taxed? Following the 1986 tax reform, tens of millions of middle income workers paid the same 28 percent tax rate as the very richest people in the country. There was not a big philosophical debate over this issue at that time. (We were lowering rates for the wealthy back then, not raising them.)

The more obvious issue is how much tax people will be paying. The answer for the questionably rich people who are the focus of this article (people with incomes between $250,000 and $500,000) is not very much. The Joint Tax Committee in Congress calculated that the average tax hit for taxpayers with income in this range would be $400 a year. That sort of tax hit would not seem to require very much philosophy.

To be fair, it seems the Times reporters don't read the non-reporters writing at The Times who are less concerned about "philosophy" and more concerned with facts.

Rich journalistic portraits

Roy unpacks the latest Times piece to limn the hardships of our current Repression through the eyes of the rich, in this case, kids whose fallback to not finding a job is attending law school.

That is, I was roused to contempt for Nicholson's whole generation based on the example of some rich kid.

Were I a more paranoid sort, I might think that by using Nicholson as an avatar of disenfranchised youth, the Times was trying to minimize the situation of all jobless young people by making me think of them as slackers. But having been inside the sausage factories I know better. The story is more likely to have had its genesis in a specific access opportunity than in a memo from the Committee for Manufacturing Consent. But a clever editor who heard of it may have foreseen how it would come out, and looked forward to a wave of outraged and dismissive linkage from across the internet. So far I've only seen this, from an apparatchik who can read but still wants to believe ("On the other hand, this story shows that even the privileged, spoiled, affluent youth are hurt by the ObamaEconomy"). But give it time.

I'm not so sure that that's entirely the Times' motives. The economy's effect on the children of the wealthy is simply of inherent interest to the readers of the Times. They know these kids. Good lads who did all the right things, attended the right schools, made the right connections and still cannot find a job that meets their expectations and their location requirements.

I was similarly struck by the story in today's paper about the widow of Robert Parker who assuaged her grief through...redecoration. I wondered, why do editors come up with these stories? Why do they think New York Times readers care?

Then, I notice it's the ninth most emailed story of the day.

Go Galt, already

It's Tax Day, so instead of waxing patriotically about all this country has given them and how proud they are to be able to contribute to the public weal as a result of their hard work but also good fortune, we have whining rich guys.

"Living the dream

Yes, this one is egregious enough -- an op ed a front page news story about the sorry fate of our country's wealthiest executives and the extraordinary pressures they face.

But it's this one that really got me sputtering this morning.

Still, for Ms. Bigbie, an interior designer and aesthetic omnivore, and her boyfriend, Jay Shapiro, 33, a skateboarder who is the bass player for Space Vacation, a heavy metal band in San Francisco, skateboarding — its renegade, Zen essence — is a way of life. And pool skating is the apogee.

This is how the empty pool as metaphor and touchstone became a focal point for the tiny Victorian house Ms. Bigbie and Mr. Shapiro bought in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco four years ago. In the backyard, they planned to sink a swimming pool, and never fill it. As a placeholder, they erected a skate ramp that had belonged to a friend and was made, in part, from reclaimed barn siding.

“It was beautiful,” Ms. Bigbie said mistily. “We called it ‘Living the Dream.’ ”

[...]

Ms. Bigbie and Mr. Shapiro met 10 years ago at Skater Island, a now-defunct skate park in Middletown, R.I. She was studying at the Rhode Island School of Design and living in Providence; he was doing construction in Newport, where he lived. Ms. Bigbie would drive down on Friday nights to hang out at the park, and she noted Mr. Shapiro’s fine skating moves and, she said, “I just thought he was really cute.”

For his part, Mr. Shapiro was happy to meet a female skateboarder “who wasn’t a weirdo,” as he put it. “Claire was really cool. We would skateboard together, have a few beers. After that we were attached at the hip.”

After Ms. Bigbie graduated in 2001, the couple lived in London for a year. Ms. Bigbie — who had been collecting furniture since she was 14 (about the same time she started skating) and had designed a skateboard clothing line by 16 and graphics for the indie record company Tooth + Nail by 18 — worked at the British furniture design company Precious McBane. Mr. Shapiro became an assistant to Richie Hopson, a British photographer.

When he was offered a job as a team manager for Think Skateboards in San Francisco, they returned, and Ms. Bigbie became a stylist for the do-it-yourself magazine Ready Made. They moved into a rental cottage in the Mission along with two dogs (Sen-C, a mutt, and Rollie, a black Labrador), his musical instruments and her furniture.

“I had an apartment’s worth of furniture by the time I left home for college,” Ms. Bigbie said. “The cottage was way too small.”

The real estate market was heating up, and they lost out on a few places before buying this one (2,000 square feet including an in-law apartment) for $1 million in 2005. At first, they thought they could renovate it themselves. But as Mr. Shapiro and his friends began scooping out its innards — the house had been divided into two apartments with tiny, dark rooms — it became clear an architect was needed, if only to obtain building permits.

Ya know, it would be none of my business normally, but since the pair are featured prominently in the New York Times Home section and are portrayed as such counter-cultural hipsters, it would be nice to know how a 30 year old designer and her 33 bassist-sometime construction worker-boyfriend could "live in London for a year," then plop down a cool million for a Victorian in San Francisco's Noe Valley.

One assumes there are some wealthy parents/benefactors out there, but I guess in the elite world of New York Times reporters and editors, it is simply not unusual for young skateboarders to have this kind of money, so there's no need to mention how they acquired such wealth.

And to ignore the fact that they spent that million at the very peak of the housing bubble only makes it worse.

NIMBY, literally

Two Americas, indeed!

As a result of the Secure America Act, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is constructing an 18-foot steel and concrete wall at the Texas-Mexico border that will pass through the backyards of family homes (whose owners face condemnation lawsuits if they protest) but will stop short of the River Bend Resort and golf course. The fence will resume at the other side of the resort. A similarly proposed border wall will bypass the property of Dallas billionaire and friend of President Bush, Ray Hunt. DHS has failed to provide answers about how it decided where to build the border fence but the Texas Observer has learned that SBInet - private consortium of contractors led by Boeing Co. - is making almost all of the decisions. (Texas Observer, Think Progress)

Like Cindy McCain, I am so proud of America.