Should Congress extend the payroll tax break?

Maybe not. It might feel good now, but have long-term consequences. Or, at least, that's what I say in this week's Scripps column:

Whether he means to or not, President Obama is threatening the future of Social Security and the cause of good governance with his campaign to extend the payroll tax cut.

Sure, the tax break is meant to be temporary. But lots of tax breaks have a sunset clause. Yet somehow we're still stuck (for example) with the tax cuts that were passed under George W. Bush, which helped create our current deficit mess. Why? Because Obama didn't have the political will to let those tax cuts expire and let America's wealthiest citizens start contributing to deficit reduction.

Now the president is traveling around the country, saying the end of the payroll tax break is an attack on the middle class, one that will further undermine an ailing economy, and proves that Republicans only care about keeping taxes low for the rich.

On that last part, he's right: GOP tax-cutting zeal has been mysteriously absent on this issue.

But if the end of the temporary tax break amounts to an unconscionable tax hike on the middle class, it will probably be an unconscionable tax hike on the middle class next year and the year after that, and so forth, for as many times as is needed to renew the "temporary" exemption. If the economy suddenly, finally starts to grow, there will surely be politicians who suggest that letting the break expire at that point will bring the pain back.

Americans will want to keep their tax break. (It amounts to about $1,000 a year for many families.) But they'll also eventually want their Social Security check. It may not be possible to keep both. In the end, we really do have to pay for the government we get, or we'll stop getting that government. We'll end up paying, one way or another.

Ben manages to be down on both the payroll tax cut extension and Social Security. You'll have to click the link to read his take.

The economy must be fixed, then!

Banks show highest profits since ’07 | NAFCU: " Federally insured banks reported third-quarter profits of $35.3 billion, which is up $6.5 billion from the previous quarter and the highest level since 2007, according to the FDIC’s latest Quarterly Banking Profile.

The FDIC report, released last week, noted improved earnings for 63 percent of insured banks from with the same time last year. This is the ninth quarter that earnings improved, the FDIC said."

'via Blog this'

National Review misses good ol' civilian-slaughtering imperialism

The ransacking of the British Embassy in Teheran is a very serious, ugly affair. At National Review, it makes Charles C.W. Cooke wistful for the good ol' days—with the Empire would've responded by killing a lot of innocent people. He fondly remembers one Lord Palmerston:

With the British embassy in Tehran under Iranian control, the Foreign Office issued a statement expressing “outrage” and confirming that the move “is utterly unacceptable. The Iranian government [has] a clear duty to protect diplomats and embassies in their country and we expect them to act urgently to bring the situation under control and ensure the safety of our staff and security of our property.” This, to put it mildly, would not have been Palmerston’s response. Having fumed for a while that Tehran was not close enough to water for a quick naval bombardment, Henry John Temple would have sent a blockade to the Caspian Sea and knocked out coastal towns one by one until an apology was forthcoming and a restoration assured. And then he would have taken to Parliament to defend his decision. Moreover, those who would take over the embassy of another nation while their elected representatives shouted “Death to Britain” would be made aware of the consequences of their actions. Were Palmerston around today, his response would ensure that nobody touched a British embassy for 100 years.

Cooke, apparently, is also nostalgic for the days when the British Empire would slaughter civilians in the name of ... trade policy:

When the Chinese had the temerity to restrict trade with the West — in particular by blocking opium exports from British India — Palmerston sent gunboats up the Yangtze River, indiscriminately destroying the small towns along the banks with such confidence that the Chinese quickly changed their minds. The result was the Treaty of Nanking, by the terms of which various trading posts were ceded to the British, and restrictions on imperial trade were summarily lifted.

Good times!

I don't know. Seems to me we can make a vigorous show of expecting Iran's government to honor international norms, with regards to embassies, without pining for the days when Western governments would impose their will on different continents through indiscriminate slaughter. Cooke's nostalgia is morally contemptible.

Glenn Greenwald: You can dissent without being a dick

Forgive the crudeness of the headline. But that's the thought I had while reading Glenn Greenwald this morning, as he weighed in on l'affaire Sam Brownback. If you've missed the controversy, here's the skinny: A Kansas teen-ager who was part of a group visiting the Kansas governor sent out a tweet suggesting she had criticized him to his face; the tweet contained a crude hashtag. The governor's communications staff saw the tweet, and told the teen's principal. It's all been resolved, now, and nobody has come out of it looking all that great.

But the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus wrote a column this morning castigating the teen for her incivility. And Greenwald has piped up criticizing Marcus for showing undue deference to elected officials:

Behold the mind of the American journalist: Marcus — last seen in this space three years ago demanding that Bush officials be fully shielded from all accountability for their crimes (the ultimate expression of “respect for authority”) — wants everyone to learn and be guided by extreme deference to political officials and to humbly apologize when they offend those officials with harsh criticism. In other words, Marcus wants all young citizens to be trained to be employees of The Washington Post. In a just world, Marcus’ column would be written instead by Sullivan’s mother, who exudes what the journalistic ethos should be — “I raised my kids to be independent, to be strong, to be free thinkers. If she wants to tweet her opinion about Governor Brownback, I say for her to go for it” — but people who think that way only rarely receive establishment media platforms. Instead, we’re plagued with the Ruth Marcuses of the world — “inculcate values of respect for authority”!!! — and that explains a lot.

Only it doesn't. Greenwald's criticism of Marcus presumes that dissenting from and criticizing elected authorities goes hand-in-hand with uncivil rudeness. It doesn't.

Gandhi managed to end British rule in India without saying of Churchill that "he blows a lot." Martin Luther King Jr. challenged entrenched racism in the the American south without saying that George Wallace "blows a lot." And I'm pretty sure that Rosa Parks kept her seat at the front of the bus without saying the bus driver "blows a lot."

Civility doesn't equal deference, nor does it equal silence. In the case of King and Parks, in particular, civility was a key component to making a forceful, sustained, morally unimpeachable challenge to the systems that oppressed them. That doesn't always work: Sometimes a little jerkiness does help.  But not always. Again: It's a huge mistake to assume that civility is surrender.

Brownback's staff overreacted. (I once covered a murder trial with his spokeswoman, back when she was a Topeka TV reporter; let's just say I'm not surprised.) And I don't really disagree with the assessment made by Emma Sullivan, the teen tweeter. To the extent that it revealed a paranoid strain in Brownback's governance, maybe she was even inadvertently successful. But thousands upon thousands of Kansans work against the governor's agenda every day—through donations, communication, and lobbying—without resorting to barnyard language. They aren't showing undue deference; they're just behaving like adults.

Dirty hippies and the First Amendment

Regarding this: I’ve had to make this point a couple of times in the past few days, so I might as well make it here: You don’t have to *like* the Occupy folks to think that abusive policing is bad.

There’s an old saying that—in my view at least—once represented the American ideal: “I don’t like what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” That ideal has been replaced, it seems, with the idea that dirty hippies deserve whatever they get.

I like the old way better. It does require that I hold myself to the same ideal—that I allow room for people to be (say) bigoted or homophobic or, maybe, just a little too solicitous of the rich and powerful. I should defend their right to speak their minds, and get angry if a cop pepper sprays them for doing so. It’s easy to be gleeful when our opponents are silenced, but it isn't actually right.

Those darned cops

In the aftermath of the much-publicized pepperspray incident at UC-Davis, Ben and I use our Scripps column this week to debate the role of police officers in our communities. My take:

Abusive cops are nothing new: Ask your black and Latino friends about their experiences driving around in white neighborhoods, and you're likely to get an earful. What's remarkable about the recent examples of brutality -- why they have our attention -- is the victims in these cases: White, middle-class kids.

And that's fine, because it lets us finally have a big conversation about the role of police in our communities -- a role that has shifted since the events of 9/11. Departments across the country have become increasingly militarized over the last decade, preparing for a terrorist attack that most will never face. They've purchased tanks and drones, and have generally armed themselves for war.

In the absence of an actual external threat, though, those war-making capabilities have been focused on the communities that police officers are supposed to protect and serve. The result is a deepening alienation that serves neither the police nor their communities very well.

While there are many, many good cops serving our communities, there are also a great many bullies -- men whose proclivities probably would've landed them in jail if they hadn't earned a badge and a gun. It has always been thus.

This is where conservatives can serve their communities. Many are willing to cry "tyranny!" in the face of new environmental regulations but happy to support cops, no matter how egregious their abuses. (Fox News has been a shining example of the phenomenon this week.) That must change.

Let's sell the tanks and drones. Let's put the riot gear in mothballs.

Police must be allowed to keep order in their communities -- but they usually need not resort to such extremes to do so. Otherwise, if cops keep treating citizens as the enemy, they might one day find out they're right.

Ben's impulses generally run towards civil-libertarianism, but in this week's column his response is: "Yeah, but: Hippies!"

What good is college football?

Ben and I wrestle with the Penn State scandal in this week's Scripps column. My take:

College football is a blot upon the landscape.

The sport distorts the educational mission of participating schools, draws disproportionately from their financial resources and institutional energy, and badly exploits the young men who play the game.

All this, so we fans can have our Saturday tailgates. 

The scandal at Penn State isn't uncommon. As a young reporter in the early 2000s, I wrote about how Terry Allen, then-football coach at the University of Kansas, was presented with accusations that two of his players sexually assaulted a woman. He didn't go to police; Allen punished the players by making them run extra laps after practice. 

After the story broke, he stuck around another year before losing his job over a poor record. Anybody who has spent time around a top-level college program can probably tell you a similar story -- usually off-the-record. 

KU's current coach, Turner Gill, is by all accounts a decent man -- devoted to molding decent men. But he has a lousy record, and so at the end of this season will probably be given $6 million to walk away. That's $6 million at an institution that, like other public universities, is fighting for an ever-diminishing pool of resources to educate students and pursue vital research. 

The Atlantic's October cover story, "The Shame of College Sports," demonstrates further inequities. The players are young men who often sacrifice their health and well-being in hope of earning an unlikely berth in the NFL -- and who receive little compensation for their efforts, even while universities reap billions of dollars from the sport. 

Burn down the system. Let alumni pay to field their own football clubs, if they want, but let's get colleges out of the game. Penn State is one example of the corrupting effects of college football; it is far from the only one.