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“And what do the Republicans want?”
“I think we oughtta work on a bill that doesn’t cut Medicare, that doesn’t raise taxes, that doesn’t put more debt on the American people.” - Rep. Dave Camp, All Things Considered

Dave Camp is the Ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. Reading the above quotation, a person might think he hates America and wishes to see its government collapse.

Maybe that’s a bit harsh. Maybe he just thinks poor people are undeserving of basic medicine.

Regardless, the point is that Camp is either ignorant of reality or actively disavowing it. As the handy graph on this post illustrates, leaving Medicare untouched without raising taxes or increasing the annual deficit isn’t an option.* In the medium-term, either Medicare expenditures must decline or taxes must increase. Without action in at least one of those directions, the deficit will continue to grow. Keep in mind, this is the third option denounced by Camp. Inaction will guarantee an outcome he opposes.

A cynic would assume Camp takes this untenable position to maximize short-term political gains. Looking at his official statement on the matter, however, one sees that he knows neither how to properly punctuate an appositive nor the difference between nouns (Democrat) and adjectives (Democratic). My glass is half-full of his idiocy.

While we’re on the topic of untenable positions, let’s have a look at today’s column from David Brooks. Consider the following selection, in which he considers an excise tax on “Cadillac” health insurance plans:

“Currently, we have a perverse tax system that taxes salaries but not health benefits. This exclusion favors the rich over the middle class. It encourages extravagant health spending.
…
[Unions] demanded a special deal so their members would be exempt from the tax. The Democrats caved and gave it to them.

Now, it’s no secret that Brooks resides in a mythical social locus from whence he can identify with average folks while favoring the nobility of ownership over the inadequacy of labor. Apparently, it’s also a place where implicit contradictions are accepted.

Let’s walk through it. Taxing extravagant health insurance packages would end a policy that benefits “the rich.” Unions opposed the proposed tax. If unions act in the interest of their members, then union members must be rich. Huzzah! The labor movement has won!

Hold on…I work in a union shop. I am decidedly not rich. Technically, I don’t think I’m even middle class. Ahh, there’s the cognitive dissonance I remember so well. Please, Mr. Brooks, stop trying to fool me.

At least one point remains in the realm of contradiction. Many in the chattering class have taken to describing Tea Party people and Ron Paul supporters as Populists. Among the primary causes of these anarchists is a dissolution of the Federal Reserve system and return to the gold standard.

At the very end of the 19th century, a popular movement became a short-lived third party. This party, the People’s Party (adj.: Populist) remained marginal in no small part because one of its primary planks was a departure from the gold standard. In response to the financial panics of the 1890’s and their subsequent deflation, Populists sought to ameliorate lower-class hardship by separating currency from the amount of an arbitrary mineral held in federal vaults. Their enduring gift to the world, of course, was the Wizard of Oz, wherein a naif follows a trail of gold to a city of green only to discover that the promised magic is no more than shenanigans.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize William Jennings Bryan. He supported prohibition, opposed evolution, and served in the Coolidge administration. Please, though, don’t disparage him by lexical association with contemporary anarchists.

*Note: This may just be my own little hobby horse, but ending the cap on Social Security Tax (SST) ought to be part of any revenue appropriation efforts. It’s nominally a flat tax, but the cap actually makes it regressive. This means that a higher proportional contribution is required from those most likely to put their funds back into the economy purchasing necessary goods and services. Yes, I understand that, theoretically, the SST is capped because people like to think Social Security is a sort of baseline pension. I call “Shenanigans!” on that notion. It’s redistribution to old people, and there are many cases where such redistribution has social merit. What isn’t merited is the practice of drawing less from the highest earners into the pool dedicated to redistribution. While we’re at it, let’s tack the retirement age to the average life expectancy and start delivering Social Security benefits on a need-based sliding scale.

“Canadians hate being thought of as boorish. However, this does imply that the home team may have an advantage if this behavior continues at the 2014 games. Maybe the Russians will bring thunder sticks.” - Dan Kasznor

Controversy has wracked Vancouver. Andrea Schoepp and Madeleine Dupont, among others, have complained that the Vancouver Olympic Centre is entirely too rowdy for a proper bonspiel. Welcome to North America.

In all seriousness, one wonders why anyone expected to find a sedate curling locale in Vancouver. Canada likely holds the world’s broadest and deepest field of indigenous curlers, and relatively few of them need to show up at the 5,600-seat Centre for it to echo with enthusiastic support. Even if the Canadians were to observe proper spectating etiquette, there would still be the U.S. contingent for which to account. The States may not be rotten with curlers, but obnoxious behavior is part of the national identity. This is a group for whom crudity is preferable to cru d’etat. You bring the Molson; we’ll bring the cow bells.

Back at the ranch, as it were, the freed colonies’ anarchists have been causing a cacophony of their own by way of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In better times, CPAC attendees have been content merely to condemn any separation between orgasm and parenthood. Clearly, these are not better times. The announcement that Ron Paul had won the CPAC straw poll was reportedly met with cheers from one side and jeers from another.

In case you have thus far lived blissfully unaware of Mr. Paul’s existence, he’s the U.S. Representative from Texas eager to denounce government to anyone who will listen. Maybe that description is too broad. Ron Paul is the author of End the Fed, a polemic in which the author, one assumes, supports his titular argument with his characteristic blend of vitriol, geniality, and magical thinking.

To the casual observer, Paul might appear the perfect figurehead for the Tea Party folks. In fact, the Paulites and TPers hold some heated debates about the rightful standard-bearer of contemporary anarchism. Their main policy disagreement deals with defense. While Paul objects to any semblance of federal government, the TPers object only to civilian government. These are citizens of a democratic republic arguing over whether it would be more ideal to live under a shogunate or partake in a Hobbesian war of all against all. Historians weep.

What makes this nascent talk of revolt more puzzling is that — if polls are to be believed — at least some of these anarchists would prefer stronger controls on campaign funding than the current Supreme Court thinks are Constitutional. Considering our current manifestation of federal government lacks the independent strength to properly regulate either finance [PDF] or campaign funding, a request for either would appear contrary to the call for minimal government.

Here we see how a portion of the populace has failed to adapt its conception of government to its contemporary purpose. When the Framers took their Mulligan on establishing federal government, they did so from the perspective of former monarchical subjects. Hence, the Constitution’s reservation to states and individuals of those rights not explicitly deemed within the federal sphere.

Then, there was the industrial revolution…and analog globalization…and the Great Depression…and digital globalization. Through all this and more, the structure of the federal government allowed it to enfranchise an increasing number of people with the protected individuals’ liberties without unduly infringing upon the existing populace.

On the other hand, corporate power has swelled, and capital has been centralized under the control of a few. Each progressive recession has concluded with slighter returns to employment. Real wages have dwindled. Income homogamy has led to further segregation between high, two-income households and an underclass of single parents.

At some point, rights become frivolous without the means to exercise them. Nominally endowing the populace with an embarrassment of property rights and the like benefits the few who can exercise them at the expense of the many who already find themselves up a proverbial creek.

Monarchy is dead. U.S. citizens have been adequately insulated from the possibility of governmental over-reach. The government must stand as a protector of individuals against the victimization of capital disparity. Follow Ron Paul. End the Fed and dissolve the federal government. Just don’t be surprised when you find yourself living in the fiefdom of Citi or Goldman Sachs.

Luckily, this is a moot point. The Paulites and TPers are fringe groups unwittingly serving corporate interests. We can deal with more pressing matters.

For instance, Cheryl Bernard and Allison Pottinger have both voiced their appreciation of the vigor brought by fans at the Vancouver Olympic Centre. Sure, they curl for Canada and the U.S., respectively, but the point is made. A few hearty shouts and cow bells might not ruin the whole affair.

“So you’ve got Derek Jeter as first-ballot Hall of Fame on the all-boinking squad, right?…but in the post-Tiger world, why would you [marry Minka Kelly]?” - Tony Kornheiser, Pardon the Interruption

The U.S. men’s curling team is winless through the first third of the round-robin. Their last 2 games each went an extra end, and skip John Shuster choked on 3 potentially game-winning hammers in the course of those 2 games. Against Switzerland, there was even a cowbell in attendance, to no avail.

The women’s team has displayed a similar capacity for gracious defeat.

Among the lesser events, however, the U.S. was historically successful yesterday, earning more medals than it has on any other single day in Winter Olympic competition. Moving fast we can do; moving strategically, not so much. Maybe that’s a holdover from the Dubya administration.

Seriously, we in these States United are a bit spoiled in the field of Olympic sport. Nary an event exists for which an American hasn’t qualified to compete, and at least one U.S. citizen can be considered a contender in any discipline besides standalone ski jumping. Real athletes do Nordic combined, anyway.

With such an overflowing bounty of athletic breadth, watching the Olympics can leave one feeling a guilty kinship with Yankees fans. Maple Leafs fans might be the analog for our Canadian friends. It’s a wretched yet enviable existence. No medal is celebrated longer than it takes to win the next. Winning an event is subsidiary to domination of the Games. Curiosity attaches not to which other athletes might contend, but who they are at all.

If you can describe the Latvian flag from memory, then I tip my hat to you.

Therein lies another point of ambivalence. Were it not enough to balance Manifest Destiny against a predisposition toward underdogs, one has to decide whether to condescend or wish failure upon those representing the least of our international brethren. Perhaps I feel somehow connected to the Eastern European lands from which my forbears fled, but I struggle to feel the proper amount of schadenfreude when the Olympians of EuroZone’s periphery fall to Americans. There’s something unsavory about IMF and World Bank stakeholders beating down their clientele.

In the search for satisfaction, then, we ought step back a paragraph or two and see if we can’t find reason to bask in the failure of the few nations threatening U.S. domination of the Games as a whole. Trusting Nate Silver’s stochastic projections, that category would be limited to Germany and Canada.

If you have to wish athletic failure upon a nation, Germany is an excellent candidate. As the anchor of the EuroZone, it represents economic rival numero uno, and they’re taking a hard line with Greece essentially as an exercise of power. Anyone with a perfunctory knowledge of history is aware of the German preference for exercising power. Insert your “annex of Sudetenland” joke here.

Canada, by contrast, is easier to resent than actually dislike. For one thing, it’s not a state, even though such privilege was pre-approved by the Articles of Confederation. Luckily, the attendees of the Constitutional Convention had clearer heads than those at the Second Continental Congress. That doesn’t absolve Canadians, however, for their sins of clean cities, good manners, and universal health care.

Wait a minute. That sounds like a pretty good deal.

The U.S. government took almost 7% of my gross income as Social Security and Medicare tax before even levying its progressive income tax, and that still leaves me tethered by health insurance to a deplorable employment situation. Despite being rendered incapable of progress by the coincidence of Draconian parliamentary rules and a know-nothing minority party, it finds time to sponsor The Real World with military recruiting funds.

Well, the way things are going, I’m bound to be supporting the host country’s curlers once the round-robin is over, anyway. Until then, we can all enjoy the struggles of America’s most pedestrian Olympic team.