Let it burn: Syria edition

Graphic video: Free Syrian Army has child behead Assad loyalist with sword israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2012/12/graphi…
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) December 10, 2012

Ok, that's it. I've been mulling Syria for as long as the civil war has been raging. The knee-jerk answer was that Assad has to go, and we should help him do it, through any means necessary. He started this by assaulting peaceful demonstrators over a year ago. Then, it was an easy thing to oppose.

Now that the "rebels" have either been transformed into or entirely replaced by radical jihadis, we should not and cannot support them in any way, even by the deposing of Assad. We should instead lend only humanitarian support to the people, not fighters, where necessary, and let the regime and jihadi forces kill as many of themselves as possible. Two vile, inhuman birds; one stone.

(Full disclosure: I did not actually watch the video linked above, nor do I intend to or suggest you do.)

Two things certain: Taxes and death, in that order

If Republicans agree to raise taxes to avoid the fiscal cliff, the 2014 elections will be a massacre. We should put our plan on the table, walk away, and let the chips fall where they may. Any surrender on the issue will result in a much worse outcome for the party in the next election.

Democrats (in the media) are giving us poll numbers in an attempt to convince us that the public wants taxes on the rich to go up as part of a deal. While this is true, they're not providing us this information for our own benefit. If Republicans agree to raise taxes this year, everyone who does so will be challenged by more conservative candidates in the 2014 GOP primary. Some of those challengers will win their primary, unseating longstanding and virtually unbeatable representatives. Some of those primary winners will turn around and lose the general election.

We need look no further than Richard Mourdock in the race this year for the Senate in Indiana to see how well that turns out. Sure, we occasionally get a Marco Rubio out of the deal, but at what cost? If poor candidates like Angle, O'Donnell, Buck, Akin, and Mourdock hadn't lost seats in the last two elections, Republicans would have at least a 50-50 tie in the Senate right now, if not a majority.

Caving on taxes ensures a 2014 GOP primary civil war, which is a strategic goldmine for Democrats, giving them a chance to get back a supermajority in the Senate and a majority in the House. We cannot let that happen, especially for the last two years of the Obama administration.

"Necessary" revenues?

In the ongoing "fiscal cliff" negotiations (read: public gamesmanship; there have been no actual negotiations yet) to avoid the expiring tax rates and automatic budget cuts previously enacted by Congress, the White House has created an arbitrary requirement for a certain amount of revenue that it says it must reach for any meaningful proposal. From a response to Jake Tapper in the White House press briefing today:

"[We] have not seen and no outside independent economist has seen a credible proposal that says you can achieve the kind of — the kind of revenues that are necessary for a balanced approach just by closing loopholes or capping deductions."

Who decided what amount of revenues are "necessary" for a "balanced approach"? One might think he means (and a good approach would be) the revenue necessary when combined with complimentary spending cuts to reduce the deficit to $0 and balance the budget. However, the total amounts we're talking about in any potential deal are literally fractions of the annual deficit. President Obama's proposal is $2 trillion, Speaker Boehner's proposal is $2.2 trillion, Bowles-Simpson is $4 trillion, but these are all spread over 10 years, where the deficit every year has been over $1 trillion for each of the last four years. So what is this unspecified target that the amount of new revenue must reach? Assuming the White House likes their own proposal and thinks it is itself "balanced" and meets the targets "necessary", this appears to be roughly 1/5 of the annual deficit. Why is that the proper goal? Why not 1/4 of the deficit? Why not 1/2? Why not the whole thing?

The Obama proposal includes $1.4 trillion in revenue from tax increases and $600 billion from spending cuts. Given the White House's reliance on the "balanced approach" trope, are we to assume that they think the numbers 1,400 and 600 are somehow balanced? Do they even know the meaning of the word? Actually, the House proposal of $800 billion in revenue (from deduction elimination, not rate increases) and $1.4 trillion in cuts is numerically more balanced than the White House proposal. However, in the real world neither of these proposals is actually balanced or even comes close to repairing the enormous fiscal damage done over the last six years.

UPDATE: During the budget/debt ceiling talks in 2011, President Obama suggested that $1.2 trillion in tax revenue could be raised by elimination deductions and credits without raising rates (or even with lowering them). Why isn't that possible anymore? And assuming he thought $1.2 trillion was a "balanced" amount of revenue then, why is $1.4 trillion balanced now and $800 billion not?