According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the federal tax rate across all income brackets has reached a 30-year low from 1979 to 2009. Meanwhile:

Although the detailed data that form the basis of CBO’s estimates in this report are available only through 2009, other data can provide some insight into more-recent changes in the distribution of income. Those data suggest that income for households toward the higher end of the distribution increased more rapidly than income for households elsewhere in the income distribution in 2010.

Here’s a chart from the CBO:

Credit: Congressional Budget Office

Here is a little something for those who spew that crazy Tea Party talk about neutering government to the point that it collects few, if any taxes.

100 things these folks should do if they hate paying taxes:

If You Hate Taxes . . . – StumbleUpon.

Far right wing fringe candidates may be gaining influence in Europe, and that is good news for no one, except the crazies of course. It’s definitely bad news for poor people, women and immigrants … and blue collar workers … and sick people.

Here is an article on one of the far-right leaders, Marine Le Pen, president of France’s National Front party.

Is the far right gaining ground in Europe? – CNN.com.

I think New York Times’ Nate Silver may be onto something when he writes that the next GOP presidential candidate may not actually be Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney or any of the Tea Party or lesser known candidates:

Republicans are dangerously close to having none of their candidates be acceptable to rank-and-file voters and the party establishment. It’s not clear what happens when this is the case; there is no good precedent for it. But since finding a nominee who is broadly acceptable to different party constituencies is the foremost goal of any party during its nomination process, it seems possible that Republicans might begin to look elsewhere.

A recent Gallup poll asked Republican voters directly about which candidates they’d consider acceptable nominees. Only two, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, were deemed acceptable by a majority of Republican voters. The other six candidates (including Herman Cain, who has since dropped out) were considered unacceptable by a majority of the party’s voters.

In fact, of the eight candidates listed in this graphic,

Credit: Gallup

six have at one time or another been associated with the Tea Party, and they are all are unacceptable candidates for 50 percent or more of those who were polled. Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann have been among the Tea Party’s most ardent flagship candidates. Bachmann formed and is the chairwoman of the Tea Party Caucus, and Paul has been called the “intellectual godfather of the Tea Party.” It is possible that the tide may be turning against the Tea Party, since the two “establishment” candidates hold the top two positions in this poll and are at the top of most other polls. Cain was third for a time until he dropped out of the race — or, “suspended his campaign” as he phrased it — after one allegation of promiscuity after another smashed his candidacy to bits.

As I have said before, I think Romney’s Mormonism will keep him out of the running, as well as his more moderate stances on gay rights and abortion. It doesn’t help, of course, that he was governor of Massachusetts when that state passed a health care bill similar to the one Barack Obama signed into law in March 2010. Romney’s faith will not win him many votes from evangelical Christians, although to his credit — and equal discredit — he has sometimes either downplayed or spoken around some of the more bizarre tenants of his religion. For instance, as in this passage from the above-linked NPR article:

Mitt Romney has a well-earned reputation as a flip-flopper. But it’s one thing to flip-flop on your politics, and quite another to flip-flop on your faith. So it came as something of a surprise when, during an interview earlier this year with George Stephanopoulos, the presidential candidate disputed the suggestion that Christ would someday return to the United States rather than the Middle East. Mormons, he said, believe “that the Messiah will come to Jerusalem. … It’s the same as the other Christian tradition.”

This was both technically correct and completely misleading: The church’s position is that, while Christ will indeed appear at the Mount of Olives, he will also build a new Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri, which will serve as the seat of his 1,000-year reign on Earth. Romney had conveniently neglected to mention this part of his church’s doctrine.

Yes, NPR is not making that up. Jackson County, Missouri. That said, Gingrich is, at present, the only viable GOP candidate in my mind. But even he has “personal baggage,” as Silver calls it and isn’t exactly known as a devout churchgoer either. Time will tell whether a third “establishment” candidate will emerge (Silver mentions Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty or Chris Christie as possibilities), but if the election were to take place right now, Gingrich would most likely be the guy. Meanwhile, the Tea Party, having failed to move the center permanently to the far right, is in serious jeopardy of becoming completely irrelevant.

POLL: Tea Party, Occupy Movements Fail to Capture Americans’ Hearts:

WASHINGTON (RNS) In a war between the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement to capture the hearts of Americans, who wins? According to a new poll, it’s a draw.

Less than a third of Americans say either movement represents their values, according to a poll released Wednesday (Nov. 16) by the Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service.

One thing, however, is clear: neither movement can make a strong claim to speak for Americans. Near identical majorities say neither movement represents their values — 57 percent for the Tea Party, and 56 percent for Occupy Wall Street.

What’s more, one in five Americans say each of the movements has a negative impact on society, and about four in 10 Americans see both as largely irrelevant.

“They’re mirror images of each other, but the symmetry at the national level hides a very different distribution,” said Robert Jones, the research firm’s CEO. “Support for the Tea Party is more intensely concentrated among Republicans, but support for the OWS movement is less intense among Democrats and more evenly spread among other groups.”

I didn’t think it would take long for one of our numerous obscurantist presidential candidates to make some silly claim about the recent earthquake on the East Coast. Michele Bachmann doesn’t disappoint. Here’s a quote from Bachmann via the St. Petersburg Times:

I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.

Bachmann subsequently brushed the comment off as a joke, as politicians are apt at doing when they get called out for making ridiculous statements. She said on Monday that

If you take everything that a person says as straightforward you misunderstand the intent. So of course I was being humorous when I said that because the American people have tried very hard to get the president to pay attention; he is not listening. And that was really the message that I was trying to give in those comments. So it was a great deal of humor; it would be absurd to think that it was anything other.

I think that’s a curious rebuttal. So, if we take everything the biblical writers say, for instance, as straightforward, as evangelicals urge us to do, are we misunderstanding the intent? I guess so. Well, that settles it then. We can take everything written in the Old Testament about arks and animals being rounded in two-by-two (or was it seven-by-seven?) as laugh-out-loud funny.

I have to admit, Christian Broadcasting Network spokesman David Brody was spot on with his assessment of Bachmann’s particular brand of fringe-right craziness from the same St. Petersburg story:

What Michele Bachmann’s campaign strategy seems to be is to make sure she’s not seen as an extreme candidate and for her not to just appeal to the Tea Party and evangelicals, but also independents. So when she comes out and jokes around like this — her campaign is saying it’s a joke — it does play into the stereotype that’s out there. That’s a danger zone for her, but at the same time she is what she is, so it’s hard for her to rein in at times.

 

As of Sunday evening, the White House and leaders of Congress have agreed upon a new deal that would raise the debt ceiling and avoid a government credit default.

But, and that’s a big “but,” the plan still has to pass the House and the Senate. As we know, Tea Party members have been hostile to any plan that increases the debt ceiling, while Democrats have said they would vote against any plan that does not raise the debt ceiling through 2012.

Read the rest of this entry »

Because signing your name to a document automatically makes you a better candidate and person:

(Michele) Bachmann’s latest attention-getting move came Thursday when she became the first – and thus far only – candidate to sign a pledge drawn up by a Christian conservative group in Iowa. The pledge, called “The Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family,” requires signers to promise, among other things, to keep marital fidelity, support the Defense of Marriage Act and “robust childbearing and reproduction,” and oppose gay marriage, abortion, “Sharia Islam,” “intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds” in the military, and the abuse of women and children through human trafficking, pornography and prostitution. The group, called the Family Leader, run by Bob Vander Plaats, a former Iowa gubernatorial candidate and influential conservative, promises to withhold political support from any candidate who does not sign.

Sadly, she will get votes because of this ridiculous action on an even more ridiculous document. Forcing a candidate to sign something or else withholding political support — sounds like blackmail to me. Full document here.

Cutting it down to the wire, Boehner and Reid have apparently sold their fellow lawmakers on a compromise deal that would cut some $38.5 billion from the federal budget.

Read here.

Boehner best hope that the spending cuts appease his Tea Party friends, who have made quite a fuss in his home state over the federal debt.

So, it’s common knowledge by now that Tea Party proponents kind of take offense to the words “tea bagger” because of the sexual connotations of the term.

Rep. Michele Bachmann seems to be as out of touch with those sentiments as she is about American history. She stood before a group of Republican in New Hampshire literally holding a tea bag while on a stop in Manchester. Prior to speaking at a GOP fund-raiser, Bachmann made this gaffe, as reported by the Associated Press:

… the possible presidential hopeful told a group of students and conservative activists in Manchester, “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord,” according to video posted online by WMUR-TV.

But those first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire. Though Bachmann probably wasn’t the first to confuse Concord, N.H., with Concord, Mass., her mistake was striking given her roots in the tea party movement, which takes its name from the dumping of tea into Boston Harbor by angry American colonists in December 1773, 16 months before the Battle of Lexington Green.

Some 30 miles to the north and with tea bag in hand, Bachmann was greeted with applause when she asked the crowd, “How about a United States president that gets what the American people want in 2012?” and later proclaimed, “Are you in for 2012? I’m in!”

How about elected officials who could pass a high school history exam? Guess my standards are just too high.