The Pleasure Killers

I read the piece about the Bush Tax Cuts in the New York Times (link: and you're saying to yourself, 'hmm, he usually quotes the New York Post or Fox News' - there's not everything in the New York Times I disagree with, and this one's pretty good) and how Obama's deal with the Republicans on keeping the current tax brackets and plus an added bonus of cutting the payroll tax by 200 basis points, or 2%.  President Obama could well have left everything as it is, or even hiked taxes to the levels he feels people should pay (not what people are willing to or afford to pay).  I'm not sure what the result would have been, but if there were no extra revenue (or a sharp decline in revenue), then the government would have hiked them even further, engaging in a vicious cycle of tax hikes and revenue drops.

I'm not going to pretend that I don't like what happened.  I'm middle class and I'm not going to complain.  The Republicans tried every way to Sunday to get something moving, and it took the near shutdown of the government (well, that and Election 2010) to get Obama to at least concede that raising taxes is not the way to return to prosperity.

The comments, on the other hand?  Save for one or two good comments, either Obama is the second coming of Bush, Obama should have had more cojones, the Republicans are the Party of No, the rich get away scot free with this, and so on.  Oh, and a smattering of how he's a one term president.  Childish, insecure, ignorant, arrogant, get-the-venom out stuff.

My thought is that there are still a ton of people who hate George W Bush and what he stood for.  I'm also not going to pretend I didn't like him.  Unlike Obama, who I feel surrounds himself with czars, bureaucrats, nanny-staters and the-bus-doesn't-stop-there radicals, Dubya was a steadfast and principled man.  Often he was wrong as he was right.  He too let himself be led by the nose by his advisors, but when he was correct, damn, you had to respect his tenacity, even though you were marching through the streets demanding he be dragged to the Hague in front of the World Court.

It leads me to a good question: some people can't stand others being happy, prosperous, and self-sufficient AND self-reliant.  There's a streak of Puritanism that permeates through certain social circles that happiness and wealth is a sin, one that must be atoned for with brutal acts of contrition.  But within that streak is a rank hypocrisy: it's OK for you to be happy, but not for someone else, and even if you die trying, you're going to prevent someone from their dreams.

It's a toxic stew of jealousy, resentment, and selfishness that rots the soul.  It's the basis of moral panics that end up hurting people more than they help because the person trying to control the panic ends up overcompensating and snowballing unintended consequences.

Take for example the "obesity crisis."  If a person is slightly overweight, the most simple way of doing so is to eat less and exercise more, not to tax items sky-high because someone (Michelle Obama? Mayor Mike Bloomberg?  Deval Patrick?) is afraid that it might lead to being obesity. If you're exercising and eating right, the occasional donut won't kill you, nor will the daily cruller resign you to the pits of a fat camp.  And, those extra tax revenues because you're slapping a dollar on a soda may be a smokescreen for trying to fatten (pun intended) the state coffers.  True, morbid and gross obesity exists, but trying to eradicate it by controlling food, and in turn trying to control people, is the ultimate fools' errand.

The same thing goes for taxes.  If you're a successful employee and make your company the best it is, why in heaven should you be penalized for it through high taxes?   That's the whole gist about keeping the Bush Tax Cuts - if there are people so resentful and jealous of others success that short of running them over with your car or hiring a hit man to liquidate them your feeling is that the money must be taken away from them "for the greater good" (a healthy, steaming pile of total, absolute, pious, self-serving bullshit), those people should be given something to do that will keep them away from the editorial pages.

How about helping the people who should get a lift up from the depths of trash TV and shady lawyers?  No one's going to be Oprah right away, and there will be weeks of  your bank account being very lean, but it's better than handouts and bailouts.  And happiness and success does come, so long as you work hard and you're patient - and anyone who tries to get in your way should be avoided at all costs.

There are people who still take their anger, guilt, bitterness, and disappointment on others because they cannot control things.  It is a religion all its own, and it makes Puritanism look downright hedonistic.  The ones who try to kill happiness have never been successful anyway - because happiness and success always seem to win, don't they?

UPDATE: Despite the House not deigning to vote on it and Bernie Sanders (S-VT)  deciding it would be a great idea to read from the telephone book as a way to filibuster (maybe he did, maybe he didn't), this tax deal will go through with a lot of noses held, because if it doesn't, the Party of No will have a D next to it.

UPDATE #2: China is in a hefty snit because the Nobel Prize committee awarded Liu Xiabao the Peace Prize in absentia.  The three signs I take out of this are (a) even farthest of the far left are demanding his release from Chinese prison, (b) it takes away the spotlight and attention from a like-minded Canberra Julian of W_______s, and (c) China must be really shit-scared of losing its power to ramp up the manipulation to sub-light speed, all because a dissident had a manifesto that wasn't one endorsed by a German aristocrat with money guilt.