Disposal Day #106: Rehash of the Union

STORY #1: We are the Bosaneks

For those who are unaware, Debbie Bosanek is Warren Buffett’s secretary, and she is the new avatar of tax unfairness as President Obama enters campaign mode. Ridiculous as the tax code is, I can’t say I feel sorry for her; she’s working with a guy who probably treats her very well, and you’d have to be making bank to work that closely with him, however much of it you end up losing. So the question is, why does she pay taxes at a higher rate than him, and does Obama understand why?

Because Buffett makes his money through a variety of investments, he has access to plenty of tax breaks that Bosanek does not. Therefore, when his tax burden is calculated at the end of the year, he pays a lower percentage than she does, even though he should be paying 35 percent. Republicans are quick to assume that Obama’s call for a 30 percent tax rate for millionaires means he wants to raise marginal rates. If he was really referring to closing loopholes, he certainly wasn’t clear about it.

STORY #2: No child’s behind left

The same sort of rush to judgment was at work when Sen. Mike “Exclamation Point” Lee (R-UT) started shrieking (according to the article) about Obama’s call for all states to prevent students from dropping out before the age of 18. Even Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), one of Obama’s biggest irritants, took it as an encouragement instead of a federal mandate. Apparently the federal government can’t even comment on state affairs without some fools assuming an intrusion.

While I personally believe curricular reform, also a state and district priority, is a better way to retain potential dropouts, I would support an age-based restriction. The more time they spend in school, the less time they spend knocking over liquor stores, shooting up in alleys, getting preggers and making “art” that nobody wants to look at. And that’s much more of a drain on the system than a lazy-ass student.

STORY #3: They agree on something!

Despite the distinctly Southern-accented boo at Obama’s support for a ban on congressional insider trading, it’s happening in the Senate as we speak. The logic is that it would prevent members of Congress from using their knowledge of government-induced advantages to certain companies/industries for profit. I like the idea, but how would they enforce it before their tax returns are released? I doubt the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has that level of access. And companies/industries having deep knowledge of government machinations is more pervasive, but has yet to be addressed.

The First Lady says to eat your damn peas

Yesterday for lunch, I had a sandwich made with turkey, bacon, cheese, green peppers and spinach on ciabatta bread. (I also had a venti mocha from Starbucks, which was a bad idea because I’m pretty sure their coffee is partially composed of Ex-Lax.) Except for the bacon and cheese, neither of which I can live without, I’d say it was a fairly healthy option. When you hit your twenties, veggies become much more attractive. Don’t expect new federal guidelines to sway K-12 students in that direction.

The guidelines were announced by First Lady Michelle Obama, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and celebrity chef Rachael Ray, queen of chili cheese fries. They would impose limits on calories, salt, fats (especially trans fats) and various ingredients deemed unhealthy. School districts will receive federal funding to help with the transition, and will extend similar limits on subsidized meals for low-income students to all other meals.

The reasons school lunches have been so unhealthy in recent years is mostly economic. With schools and districts seeing their funding diminish, they have outsourced their food services to private corporations (notably Aramark, the heathens behind the cafeteria at my old college), who mostly depend on frozen and heavily processed food from one or two interstate suppliers. Were they to rely on fresh food from multiple local suppliers, you can bet they’d pass on the costs to the schools.

In short, healthier food is great, when you can get it. That’s the problem. The federal government wants to be the facilitator of less costly access to good food, which they’d be authorized to do if not for the mandate. Making school lunches healthier is relatively low on Americans’ list of “Things For Which We’ll Forgive New Federal Deficit Spending,” if it’s there at all. And with the First Lady spearheading it, it’s hard not to see it as a pet cause, which few want from her.

Instead of specific nutritional guidelines, which would be impossible to enforce without some new task force, they could make this effort simpler: buy local, fresh and healthy and keep current funding; buy the same old crap and get crap in return. It’s not impossible to find people in town who would gladly sell it to schools, often for the same price. Individual schools and districts have done it before without federal help. They need to be giving the advice.

In the end, when it comes to economics, people respond to governments when they offer rewards and punishments at the same time, not one or the other. President Obama has a habit of painting people into a corner when he wants them to do something. A person with better persuasion skills knows this is the surest way to make people rebel.

Ruminations on SOTU 2012

8:13 p.m. CT: The American military is better than the American government. I don’t think you’ll find much disagreement there.

8:14: Education, manufacturing, jobs, technology, investment. Evoking the Greatest Generation. Oh, if only.

8:17: Good delivery tonight. Strong overtone of “there’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be solved by what’s right with America.”

8:21: At least he gets that manufacturing is the most important sector. A bit disconcerting that he measures success by three auto companies.

8:24: Lulz at Boehner’s grudging applause during attacks on outsourcing. Smile, bud. (Although hasn’t Obama been pushing this stuff for four years?)

8:28: Inspections of unfair trade practices and high-tech worker training in conjunction with community colleges. Hell yeah.

8:30: Unemployment into re-employment with training. Damn, that’s good.

8:35: DREAM Act . . . hoo boy.

8:36: Equal pay for women? Really?

8:40: R&D, domestic oil and gas, other domestic energy. Same ‘ol. With oil.

8:43: “I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy.” No, he’ll just shift oil subsidies over there. Tsk tsk.

8:46: So spend half the amount of money you would have spent on the wars on infrastructure, and the other half on debt reduction. Sounds like something I would have come up with.

8:47: “A deficit of trust.” Dude, you DID NOT steal that from Huntsman.

8:49: Lame spilled milk joke. More stealing from Huntsman?

8:52: Plenty of boos for Richard Cordray, but he probably expected that.

8:54: Kind of loving the tone of “Get stuff done or I’ll kick your ass.”

8:59: Ah, “Washington sucks” talk. I think the only people who approve of Congress are in it.

9:00: LOUD boo on insider trading by members of Congress. I bet that guy is rich.

9:03: Booing Lincoln? Assholes.

9:04: Pakistan is officially an enemy now?

9:11: That guy who keeps booing sounds an awful lot like Ron Paul. . . .