Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.

–Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I’m Russian, let’s just get that out of the way. May 9th is a special day for any Russian. It’s both a joyous celebration of our victory over fascist Germany in 1945 and also a day of reflection and remembrance. To many people it’s the most treasured and most profound, a knot-in-the-throat holiday, as sacred as 4th of July is for any American. Every family has a relative who died or fought in that war. With sadness I watch more and more veterans leave our ranks every year and I contemplate over these special men and women and wonder what I would do if I was born in 1924. Would I have the guts to do what they did, to be on the frontlines, to face an armada of German tanks pacing toward me when I had just a rifle and a grenade? There’s no place of cynicism and individuality on the battlefield. My generation grew up watching war movies and talking to live witnesses of those events, we played “war” and our heroes were young partisans. We grew up picturing ourselves in those situations and admiring real war heroes, just like young Americans grow up admiring comics superheroes. During those games and those daydreams what was always present is the collective spirit. “We’ll show them!” – our thinking went. There was no “I” on our imaginary playground battlefield. Contemplating the victory in World War II (or Great Patriotic War) for a Russian is to invoke the “us” narrative.

“Collective” is a dirty word in typical American conservative circles. “Individual” is word-du-jour in the current Right’s ideology. Cowboys or lone heroes are admired. Every American actor who played a lone ranger or an oddball police officer is a conservative in real life – Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Stallone, John Wayne. Rugged individualism rules the day. This is odd because collective effort is what makes military forces – a staple of any conservative stump speech – function. Collective effort is what makes a sports team win. Collective is what made the “war effort” possible. Everyone had to contribute; everyone was part of the game. Collective effort during those war years did not turn Americans into Communists. In fact America faced the best economic growth in the 1950s, when those fighting in the war came home and joined the labor force. In fact it was the so-called “Golden Age of Capitalism”. 

Conservatives’ fear of a slippery slope from communal to communist has atrophied their ideology into a very narrow set of ideas. First of all, they don’t even distinguish between the two, as if any deviation from the party line would be a betrayal of conservative values (reminds me of late 70s-early 80s crumbling Communist ideology, that was afraid of its own shade, thus banning any hint of even the most trivial discourse). Second, their own rigidity, the insistence on ideological purity, is their own version of “communal values”, the kind of values that would not allow good public servants like Dick Lugar to remain in their ranks. Their hatred of everything “public” or “common” has evolved into a very perverted view of community. Conservative “Community” means “us vs. them” where “them” are not the outside enemy but their fellow Americans. I am dismayed to see how the top 1% of earners in this country is up in arms at the proposition they should pay as much taxes as anyone else in this time of crisis. Not more – but just the same share as everyone else!

A typical Wall Street worker fancies himself to be a combatant on the battlefield, killing and getting killed, but he nonetheless demands to get paid and be praised as an individual hero. They demand the acknowledgement from the public of their superior qualities and special superhero treatment. Imagine if our soldiers in Afghanistan were as demanding, which in my opinion they have a full right to do. As I do not tire of mentioning, I believe Wall Street needs to justify their own activities as socially useful, because if they are honest with themselves, they would acknowledge they are not really funding that cupcake or barber shop down the road by trading CDS. And it’s a depressing thought to live with. After you made millions and millions of dollars your next goal is not just another million but the public recognition of your own benevolence, of your own social usefulness, of your humanity. Wall Street demands the appreciation of its communal values! Suddenly Wall Street wants public respect! Even though what made their benevolent position possible is a path of destruction. What made their charitable impulses possible is the scorched earth approach to everything and everybody not in their closest circle, and the corpses left in the process. I guess those corpses are needed, after all, as a reason to conduct charity auctions at the high-end, closed up, black-tie venues. You know, fighting poverty, ending hunger, aiding education – all those things that are not supposed to depend on the mood and whim of the richest citizens but on communal contributions, aka taxes. You need to sow destruction to create an opportunity to show your own good will later. Not a bad business plan, if you think about it. Not a bad individual self-promotion scheme. Isn’t that what conservative individualism comes down to – making a hero of oneself at the expense of everybody else?

Gone are the days when victory was a communal celebration with a sense of togetherness. Today’s victors are lone wolfs, celebrated for cheating the “suckers”, for taking advantage of their own fellow citizens. Because it is somehow those citizens’ fault that they didn’t grow up to be predators or don’t want to participate in this ‘game of thrones’. Somehow, teachers and fire fighters and “art history majors” are losers in our new social order. Somehow, being a calculating jerk is now the highest public virtue. How did we come to this?

Romney seems to have settled on the emerging theme of Obama being a “nice guy generally” but who is “in over his head”. This kind of positioning is supposedly meant to attract voters who like Obama personally but are unsure about his managerial abilities to run the country. What I think is really happening is that various conservative operatives have resigned to the idea that Romney is not going to excite new voters into voting. The scenario that they have assumed in their models is that Romney is a stiff, uninspiring, polenta candidate that simply has to appear on stage, wear a suit and say dull things. That’s all that is required of Romney now. The real job of winning an election will fall onto Right-leaning Super PACs, like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and various political-minded billionaires. And can we really expect them to spend their hundreds of millions of dollars on a lukewarm message that Obama is a nice guy who’s just not up to the task? I doubt it. There will be a tsunami of crazy shit coming Obama’s way the closer we get to the election.

I, of course, do not underestimate the power of slime. Just recall what happened to John Kerry in 2004. We have to expect more of the “Secret Muslim” and “Where’s the real Birth Certificate” lines of attacks to resurface again among other things. These ads, to be clear, will not be designed to make any new converts, they will be designed to rile up the paranoids to come and vote in droves. So for Republicans these sorts of ops are more of a Get out the Vote (GOTV) exercise rather than converting the undecideds.

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[ Above: 2012 SOTU by Pete Souza / Romney at CPAC by Mark Taylor ]

This Tuesday, April 17, when most Americans are filing their tax returns and writing their checks to Uncle Sam, Mitt Romney will be taking an extension until October.  You can get this six-month extension too if you need one — such as if you’re running for president and would rather not make your tax returns public right now.

While the highest income tax bracket is currently taxed at 35%, the Romneys have estimated an income of $20.9 million for 2011 and a tax bill of $3.2 million, for an effective tax rate of just 15.3%.  Similarly, Mitt’s 2010 returns showed income of $21.6 million taxed at a rate of only 13.9%.  (By comparison, the Obamas did file their tax returns last week, reporting income of $789,674 taxed at 20.5%.)  The reason for Romney’s sizable tax break is that most of his income comes from capital gains, dividends, and “carried interest” (his share in profits of private equity firm Bain Capital), all of which, particularly since the Bush tax cuts, have been taxed at a much lower rate than salary.

I don’t begrudge Romney his financial success.  But given his steadfast opposition to raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, I do have to ask why Romney should be paying such a smaller share of his income in taxes than the rest of us.  Or, to put it bluntly, why am I being forced to subsidize Romney’s comfortable lifestyle (including a San Diego beach house so massive it has its own lobbyist and a planned private elevator for four of Romney’s cars)?

This week, Congress will take up the question of tax equality as the Obama administration and Senate Democrats push a vote on the “Buffett Rule,” which would automatically tax all income over $2 million at 30%, and phase in an increased rate of tax for income over $1 million.  The proposal got its name from a 2011 op-ed by billionaire Warren Buffett, who famously asked why he should be paying only 17.4% of his income in taxes while his office staff, including his secretary, paid an average of 36%.  Indeed, studies show that the 400 richest Americans currently pay only about 18% in taxes, compared with 30% during the Clinton economic boom.  The Buffett Rule, although not expected to survive Republican opposition in the Senate, remains extremely popular with voters, nearly two-thirds of whom support it.  And for a simple reason:  it doesn’t make any sense that Buffett, or Romney, should pay a lower tax rate than you and me.

Let’s look at the potential justifications for taxing Romney less than the rest of us.  Tax experts are fond of saying that all foregone tax revenue is a “tax expenditure“:  in other words, a government subsidy for the group receiving the deduction or exemption.  For example, when the government foregoes $131 billion in tax this year by allowing deductions for mortgage interest, it’s heavily subsiding home ownership.  So what exactly is the government (and thus, we as taxpayers) subsidizing when we forego billions in tax on carried interest, which makes up a large portion of hedge fund compensation?  Or when we slash the rates on capital gains and dividends, a key component of the Bush-era tax cuts?  Most Americans do not earn significant income from dividends or capital gains, and only a small cadre of financiers (including Romney) will ever earn carried interest.

The old trickle-down argument goes as follows:  ”We’re giving tax cuts to people who will spend and stimulate the economy, which in turn will more than pay for the tax cuts.”  Except that research has shown that wealthy people who get tax cuts do not put that money into the economy by spending; instead, they save it.  When we give tax breaks to passive income like capital gains and dividends, we’re subsidizing savings, not spending. Another argument goes, “Savings and investment help the economy too, and we should encourage them.”  But while savings and investment are good things, they come with their own rewards in the form of returns on investment, so there’s no need for huge government incentives.  When was the last time someone told you they weren’t investing their excess income because the government didn’t make it worth their while?

What about this one:  ”Taxing ‘job creators’ at a lower rate enables them to hire more workers, and add jobs to the economy.”  You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again from Romney and the Republicans many times this year.  It’s still wrong.  Analysis shows that businesses make the decision to hire based on the business cycle, not the tax code.  If you give them a tax cut, it may increase profits, but not jobs.

One argument against the Buffett Rule that you probably won’t hear, except maybe whispered privately at a country club, is that the wealthiest few Americans worked hard for their money and are entitled to keep every bit of it they can.  I don’t think I can put the response to that any more eloquently than Elizabeth Warren:

“[T]here is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.  You built a factory out there? Good for you….But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Governor Romney, I’m not trying to take away your big beach house in La Jolla through socialist redistribution or “class warfare.”  But it’s my tax dollars that enabled you to build that beach house.  Can you explain exactly why it is that your tax rate should be half of mine?

[ Above: Romney at Conservative Political Action Conference by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia ]

Don’t spread this around, but I’ve always wanted to be a stay-at-home Dad. I imagine myself orchestrating craft projects, engineering Guinness-caliber lego cities, trading blog comments with trendy Mormon moms about our flippin’ awesome lives. I manage our overbooked family band, and apologize for the long waitlist to get into my plein-air fingerpainting class (“If only we had a bigger backyard,” I lament to the parents of kids who are jerks). I explain why we avoid split infinitives, and that “quote” is a verb, and astound even myself with how much basic algebra I remember. My cooking becomes first-rate, my baking, edible. I run with the kids to hug Cate and as she stumbles through the front door, home at last from a long day of sticking it to the man.

I’m not a father, but have enough siblings (the youngest is 23 years my junior) to know that the proportion of rubber cement to vomit in these daydreams is somewhat skewed. Raising kids, to quote captain obvious, is hard work. I don’t know anyone who denies this fact, and if such people exist, let’s all agree to think they’re assholes.

But while it may be hard work, parenthood is not wage work. It’s not work you do for fear of starving or losing your home. (The primary consequence of turning down the job of raising kids is the ire of the would-be grandparents that raised you.) It’s (hopefully) not a job you take because no better jobs were available to you. It’s a job you take solely because you want it.

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This election year, one issue that can’t be stressed strongly enough is how Republican state legislatures across the country have quietly engaged in a systematic attempt to disenfranchise voters.

In 2010, Republicans gained control of a number of state governments and promptly began a coordinated campaign of voter suppression through various legislative means:  voter identification laws, restrictions on early voting and absentee voting, restrictions on voter registration and registration drives, and disenfranchisement of those with prior convictions.

This transparent suppression initiative, detailed in a thorough report by Brennan Center for Justice, has been cynically justified by Republicans as necessary to prevent “voter fraud.”  But it’s been demonstrated time and again that voter fraud, much like “death panels” and unicorns, simply doesn’t exist.  Everyone knows the real reason behind Republicans putting up barriers to the right to vote is that such barriers disproportionately affect minorities, the young, the poor, and the disabled, groups who trend Democratic.  By one estimate, these restrictions could make it harder for up to 5 million Americans to cast a ballot.

The Obama administration hasn’t been taking these attacks lying down:  the Justice Department recently used its power under the Voting Rights Act to block restrictive voter id laws in Texas and South Carolina.  And the Obama campaign, with the support of the DNC, labor unions and other groups, has devoted significant efforts to voter registration, voter education, and litigation in states affected by proposed or actual new restrictions.  The courts have intervened too — for instance, striking down proposed voter id legislation recently in Missouri and Wisconsin.

Ordinary voters and organizers like you and me have a role to play too in this fight:  spreading the word about what the right wing has tried to do to keep eligible voters from voting, and asking why the Republicans are so afraid of a fair fight that they have to try to rig the game.  Who knows, maybe this unapologetic Republican attempt to disenfranchise voters — along with their war on women — will end up being the Republicans’ biggest recruitment and fundraising gift to Democrats yet.

[ Above: President Johnson Signing the Voting Rights Act by White House Photos via Flickr ]

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear three consecutive days of arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) a.k.a. “Obamacare”. That might not sound like much time to consider such a momentous issue, but it is nearly unprecedented in the court’s history. Most cases include only an hour of oral argument. That such unusual accommodations are being made suggests that this case is of great importance not just to the American People, but to the Supreme Court itself.

Audio recordings will be posted at the end of each day’s arguments, so we’ll be able to listen to the whole thing—in almost-real-time. What follows is a crash-course on the context and history of the arguments you’re likely to hear (if, like me, you’re nerdy enough to listen).

First, a quick disclaimer: I’m a first-year law student, and by no means an expert. An actual lawyer would likely be able to explain this subject with more nuance than I. But the writings of actual lawyers are generally incomprehensible to most people, so I’ve made a layperson’s guide to the Epic Battle for Obamacare.

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s get down to it.

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[ Above: 2012 SotU address by Pete Souza/Justice Antonin Scalia by The Higgs Boson ]