Rendell shafts the young
Okay, so the Post-Gazette is reporting that Governor Rendell is looking to bump up the state sales tax on the current range of taxable goods by 1% point, to 6%. Allegheny County and Philadelphia County will see their sales taxes move to 8% as each county has an independent 1% tax on the same list of taxable goods. So what are the policy and political implications?
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette gives us some details on what Governor Rendell wants to do with the additional revenue:
Increasing the sales tax to 7 percent statewide — and 8 percent in Allegheny and Philadelphia counties — would generate $1.4 billion in new funds.
Mr. Rendell says he would use $900 million of the additional revenue over the next two years to lower property taxes for homeowners. That would be in addition to property tax relief of up to $1 billion expected in about two years, when all 14 casinos are open.
If I am reading these paragraphs correctly, $450 million per year out of the $1.4 billion per year in additional sales tax revenue will be used to reduce property taxes. This will marginally harm me, but I think that the shifting composition of taxes will be a fundamental wash for me, plus or minus fifty dollars for the year. However when we apply basic median voter analysis, this move makes a lot more sense.
The typical homeowner is a little bit older, and a little more likely to vote than the general population. Most groups of homeowners will see a small net negative — a little more in sales tax, and and slightly less on the property taxes. However there is one group that has a signifcantly different asset-income-consumption pattern that this plan is targetting and they dominate the vote.
The retired homeowner will receive the most benefits from this plan. Most retired homeowners are on a reduced income compared to the income streams they received while they were working. However home prices, and therefore property values and taxes have increased [assume reasonable assessment practices here... I know, a big assumption]. So under this system, a larger and larger proportion of their income is going to property taxes. However retired individuals have a higher proportion of their income already going to sales tax free services and goods such as medical care. So an increase in the sales tax will have a smaller net effect on them then the general population.
This policy provides some positive benefits for the median voter while continuing the wealth and policy transfer of power from the young to the old.
Here we go again
It is amazing how fast the wardrums against Iran are beating. Just
this morning CNN was breathlessly reporting that Iranian special forces
were behind the snatch and grab operation in Karbala that killed 5 US
soldiers. Quietly and quickly they noted that this was just a theory
with minimal evidence beyond the fact that the raid was well planned
and conducted. And then they went straight back towards how
sophisticated the Iranian operation may have been. The news is heating
up and more examples are popping up.
Via the Spork in the Drawer, is this article in the LA Times on Iran:
The efforts could include more forceful patrols by Air Force and Navy
fighter planes along the Iran-Iraq border to counter the smuggling of
bomb supplies from Iran, a senior Pentagon official said……Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who
advocates military strikes in Iran, said U.S. planes along the border
could be better used to keep bomb-making materials out of Iraq."We know they are doing this. Why do we accept it?" McInerney said. "For every [improvised explosive device] that goes off in Iraq, a bomb should go off in Iran." [Emphasis added.]
My buddy Cernig repeatedly notes that there is minimal evidence of significant evidence of Iranian smuggling of weapons into Iraq. Instead most weapons are either manufactured locally, being bought on the black market, stolen from Iraqi government armories, creatively lost by militia members and found by fellow militia members, or recovered from the vast number of unguarded ammunition dumps.
British forces that have been operating on the Iraq-Iran border in an anti-smuggling/border security mission are seeing next to no evidence of significant smuggling activities in their sectors. And these units are light infantry units that can actually patrol and cover ground. The United States knows that occassional aerial reconnascance flights are unlikely to detect or deter any small scale smuggling activities, so unless there are multiple dozen truck convoys going across the Iraq-Iran border carrying visible rocket launchers, these flights will do nothing to stop the small scale smuggling that exists. Instead, they are most likely another provocation and potentiallity of ‘going off course’ will be a constant potential ratcheting of tensions between the United States and Iran.
Sphere: Related ContentI’m back
Sorry for my long absence from Comments from Left Field. I had been registered to blog via my blogger account for Fester’s Place before Mike invited me to blog here. Fester’s Place on Blogger just was transferred over to Blogger 2.0. Until this morning I was unable to log into Comments to post.
Sphere: Related ContentClap Harder
US News and World Report is reporting that President Bush is looking to go "big" in Iraq in next month’s speech on a new policy:
"senior administration officials" who suggested Bush wants more time because he "is planning to do something big" namely, he is "very seriously considering agreeing with John McCain and increasing troop levels." In fact, the Los Angeles Times reports on its front page that "strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to ‘double down’ in the country with a substantial buildup in…troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government." The Times also notes that strategy would overlap "somewhat a course promoted by" McCain. And the Washington Times says "top military officials with whom Mr. Bush met yesterday backed Mr. McCain’s stance."
The only US combat units that are available for a surge operation into Iraq are the units currently in Iraq. Units will be getting orders to extend their deployments from twelve months to sixteen, seventeen, eighteen months, while the units that were supposed to replace them will instead come in on schedule, or slightly ahead of schedule and fight side by side with the units they were suppose to replace.
This constraint limits the size of the force to an additional four or five brigades above baseline, or roughly one division.
President Bush indicates that he wants this force to take on both the Mahdi Army and reinitiate the fight in Anbar Province against the Sunni Arab insurgencies. However the problem is that an additional four or five brigades is only 25,000 troops or so, and this is not enough manpower for either problem. The Washington Post reported in September that commanders in both Anbar and Baghdad were calling for an extra division in each area.
Introducing a short term surge of American forces into an area will do next to nothing about the violence trend line. There have been several other temporary surges that have not successfully dampened the insurgency; instead as soon as US troops withdraw and Iraqi forces ‘take over’ security, the violence ramps right back and the situation continues to deterioriate. The war is lost, and the ability of the United States to influence events on the ground in a manner that is favorable to US interests (define that as you may) is and has been consistently decreasing. Another 20,000 troops, or 30,000 troops or 60,000 troops for six months will not change this dynamic.
It is time to leave, and to learn how we collectively made and endorsed this horrendous series of decisions. That is the best that we can do today.
Sphere: Related Content
Why I dislike Barnett
Thomas Barnett is one freaking smart dude. That is obvious. And it is also obvious that he has the ear of quite a few people who can make decisions at the national level. However I have a very hard time buying into his seriousness at times, and a post at his blog today illustrates why. But before I go further, let me give you a basic gloss of his views:
His basic idea is that this era of globalization, vastly cheaper communication devices, trade and the flattening of decision making structures is a positive feedback process. From the initial startpoint, there were few free and fairly free countries and regions throughout the world, but the benefits of opening up to the international economy makes countries and global elites want to syncronize their internal rule sets to market and global rule sets that promote initially stability and then secondarily liberty. And this process has been going on for a while and has been pretty successful so now the world can be divided into three groups: the old Core, led by the United States and composed of the Cold War Western Alliance (including Japan, ANZAC and others), the new Core being led by China and India, and then the GAP — most of the resource and rent extraction countries of the Middle East, most of Africa — that barely benefit from globalization, and in some cases are actively hostile to the rule sets that govern other countries.
Okay, up to this point, this is a rehash of Wallenstein combined with a bit of neo-classical economics and Tom Friedman thrown in for some flavor. I have no big problems with this. The problem I have is with his prescription and impatience.
He wants to accelerate the integration of the New Core into the Old Core’s with a synthesized common rule set, AND also bring the GAP into the Core’s synthesized rule set. And he is willing to use a shitload of military force to do this. His idea is to have the US provide the ass-kicking force (much like the US did in Iraq or during the air campaign in Kosovo) while the rest of the Core take care of the peacemaking and keeping process. He does not have a whole lot of faith in the rest of the Core stepping up to support US invasions for either political or capability reasons, so he wants the US military to transform itself from an asskicking Leviathon force to a Systems Adminstration force that can rebuild GAP countries to becoming functioning members of the Core. From here, he figures that demonstration strikes against the ‘rogue’ GAP nation will encourage other GAP members to hasten their process of integration out of fear and motivated self-interest. He argues that Libya’s agreement to stop and dismantle its limited nuclear, chemical and biological weapons program is proof that this works in the real world. He sees it as proof because the demolition of Iraq during the invasion, and subsequently supposedly put fear into Quadaffi and his top leadership cadre that they could be next on the list. And for this reason, among others, Thomas Barnett was and still is a supporter of the decision to invade Iraq.
Your [President Bush's] big-bang strategy to reform the Middle East took down Saddam, which was good; you’ve completely screwed up the Iraq occupation, which is bad; and now you don’t seem to know exactly where you\’re going, which is not so great……
I know, I know. If the mullahs are so weak and scared, then why do they reach so obviously for the bomb?
Look at it from their perspective, Mr. President. Those scary neocons just toppled regimes to Iran’s right (Afghanistan) and left (Iraq), and ourmilitary pulled off both takedowns with ease. Moreover, your administration has demonstrated beyond all doubt that you don’t fear leaving behind a god-awful mess in your war machine’s wake. Frankly,youre as scary as Nixon was in his spookiest White House moments on Vietnam.
So he still thinks that Iraq is producing positive results, and he still supports the concept despite the fact that he admits the occupation and counterinsurgency is screwed up beyond all belief. And part of this screw-up of the occupation as he sees it is because the US military has not transformed itself into his desired System Administration force of linguists and special forces and civil affairs officers who can effectively embed themselves into a foreign society and then do ‘good.’ Another part of this failure as he diagnosises it is the betrayal of the Core’s great mission by the rest of the core (excluding Great Britian) by their refusal to provide troops to be bullet sponges. And he knew that these problems were present by February 2003. And yet he still thinks the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.
With the release of the Baker-Hamilton Report official Washington is finally recognizing reality. The war in Iraq has been lost, and Bush is an incompetent to boot. I do not expect any significant policy changes as the political incentives are not there yet to dictate change, which is an argument made by Matt Taibi in Rolling Stone. [h/t Ian Welsh @ the Agonist.] More of the same has not worked, and will not work. There are no more troops sustainabily available, and the pittance of forces that are available for short surges have not demonstrated in the past an ability to due any more than cause a geographic relocation of violence without disturbing the trendlines. Bruce R at Flit has the graphs, the math and the data to back this point up:
Iraq civilian violence levels are relatively unswayed by changes in U.S. force levels. The two remain, in this comparison, independent variables, with any connection being a fairly transitory one. Again, this pattern might not hold if there were to be a much larger sudden increase in troop levels (50,000-plus), but smaller (10-25,000 size) troop strength increases and decreases appear to have had little lasting impact on the trend up until now.