Winter, anarchists, tax cuts, and pipelines

View 706 Wednesday, December 21, 2011

WINTERSET EVE

Conventionally, Winter began on the 21^st of December when I was growing up, but apparently there has been a redefinition to make the winter solstice, which happens tomorrow just after midnight EST, or 2100 Los Angeles time, making tomorrow, December 22^nd, the official Winterset.

Interestingly, the term winterset, which was the popular name for the depth of winter for most of my life, has nearly vanished from Google, replaced at the top by towns of that name, schools, and other commercial information. There is on the front page a link to the 1936 movie made from Maxwell Anderson’s Broadway stage play Winterset, which debuted Burgess Meredith. Anderson did a number of screen plays, including Joan of Arc, Mary, Queen of Scots, and other movies you’ve heard of. Winterset is about the Sacco-Vanzetti case. (note)

The whole thing is explained quite well at http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/celsph.html if you care. Interestingly, in Scandinavia and other very cold places, the beginning of Winter is considered to follow All Saints Day, and the winter solstice, Winterset, is considered the depth of winter. Stonehenge was built to mark Winterset and give a dramatic display on sunrise of the winter solstice; from this day on the days get longer, and the northern hemisphere receives more solar radiation, but due to residual effects the climate in most of the northern hemisphere continues to be colder.

Fur bearing animals generally begin growing winter fur when the days are getting shorter, and cease to grow it when the days are lengthening. Sable seems to have ceased growing winter fur, and has shed a lot of hers during warm snaps, but then she lives here in Southern California. She sleeps outside in what amounts to a dog shed, but we’ve had only a couple of nights cold enough to cause her to curl into a ball. A really cold night causes her to curl up into a very tight ball with her tail over her nose. She likes the current weather.

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(note) The Sacco-Vanzetti case and the 1927 execution of the two anarchists was an item of discussion well into the 1950’s, and sometimes continues to this day. It is worth study in these days of terrorism and counter terrorism – defenders of Sacco and Vanzetti mailed bombs to governors and there were other acts which today would be classed as acts of terror – although not many study it, largely because it has become fairly clear that Sacco was in fact guilty. Vanzetti may have been an accomplice, but to what degree of involvement can be questioned. Carlo Tresca, the anarchist leader who probably knew, said that Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was not; but Tresca meant by ‘guilty’ actual participation in the robbery. The Wikipedia discussion of the case is relatively good, and the story of the controversy itself and the arguments made on all sides is worth knowing for anyone involved in teaching or even writing about courts and justice.

I’ve been rambling to avoid discussing the flap over the budget “tax cut” flap. It’s a mess, and it takes a lot of definitions before rational discussion can even begin.

And everyone is weary of a nation that continues to pay bunny inspectors, borrows money from China to send aid to North Korea, and insists on continued raises for highly paid government employees while desperately finding ways to “raise revenue.”

The House rejection of the 2 month continuation of the FICA “tax cut” has sparked a vicious attack on the Republican leadership from the Wall Street Journal, and this from former Speaker Gingrich:

DES MOINES, Iowa—Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says Congress’s failure to extend a payroll tax cut for millions of workers is an "absurd dereliction of duty." His chief rival, Mitt Romney, declined to comment.

Gingrich especially faulted the Senate, saying its decision to adjourn without extending the tax cut for a full year is an example of why the public is sick of Washington and sick of politics.

The Democratic-controlled Senate had voted to extend the tax cut for two months. But the Republican-led House killed that bill and called for opening negotiations on a yearlong extension of the tax break.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2011/12/21/feud_between_romney_gingrich_intensifies/

Newt went through all this before, during the budget crisis with Clinton in which the government was actually shut down because Clinton vetoed the appropriation bill. As Newt points out, Clinton rejected the budget, but Congress got the blame, with Newt portrayed as the Gingrich that destroyed Christmas.

The Wall Street Journal says

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.

The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play.

Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he’s spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577110573867064702.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Note that what was rejected was a two month extension of what is not supposed to be considered a tax cut at all: that is, the FICA payroll payment funds Social Security and is supposed to go into a Trust Fund, and while it is indistinguishable from a tax to those who pay it, it’s said to be a contribution to a retirement fund, a sort of compulsory savings/insurance payment. It isn’t supposed to affect government operations revenue at all; but since Congress long ago set it up so that the money that goes into the Trust Fund is replaced by Treasury Bonds so that government spending can continue to rise monotonically, FICA revenue certainly does affect operations revenue.

The chief effect of the House rejection of the 2-month extension of this tax cut will be political: which party can spin it better? The Wall Street Journal has conceded that the Democrats will win that. Newt, who was the Gingrich who destroyed Christmas, is on record as saying that it’s pretty hard for the House to win a spin battle with the President. I suspect we are about to have another demonstration of that.

Lost in the noise is the fact that a major element of the Senate Compromise was eliminating the Congressional approval of the Canadian oil pipe line. Everyone is concentrating on extending the ‘tax cut’ for 2 months rather than a year, and is ignoring the oil pipeline crisis. At some point the Republicans might notice this. After all, the pipeline is popular even with the Congressional Democrats; it’s only President Obama who is in thrall to the Greens and particularly the liberal Californians, who hates it.

There are a lot of oil pipelines in the United States. See http://www.pipeline101.com/Overview/crude-pl.html for a quick summary. The pipeline at present at issue is about 600 miles long, tiny compared to the hundreds of thousands of miles of existing fuel pipelines, and its environmental effects are tiny compared to what we’re doing now. The Canadians have oil. They need to sell it to someone. They would prefer to sell it to the United States, and presumably the United States would rather pay money for oil to Canada than to Venezuela or Saudi Arabia. Had the pipeline been offered in the payroll tax cut extension it would have passed overwhelmingly.

We need that oil. Obama is refusing to let us buy it. The Canadians are now talking about building a pipeline west to Vancouver. The Chinese would be very ready to buy it.

There are a great number of economic effects in play here. The Oil Cartel would suffer as crude prices fall. Of course they would never pay lobbyists to oppose the Canadian pipeline. We can think of other affected interests, but surely their lobbyists have no influence with the President, who rejects the pipeline because – well, because he can.

And if Obama remains in office in 2013 the Canadians will build their pipeline to the West.