The Deficit Reduction Committee I and II (Discussion)

I posted and distributed my commentary "The Deficit Reduction Committee" on November 28, 2011 and "The Deficit Reduction Committee II" on December 4, 2011. I received comments on both and would like to take this opportunity to share them with you. On the first of the two posts:

Ernest Hauser of the Bronx, NY responded to the following observation, which I made:

So we have ended up with $1.2 trillion cuts going into effect beginning in 2013. $600 billion of that will be in defense spending which is in addition to a cut of $450 billion previously agreed to. Not the worst of all possible outcomes, and in 2013 the Bush tax cuts will expire. No Congressional action is needed. Beginning in 2013 the deficit will be reduced over the following ten years by 6.1 trillion. The hammer of using the deficit to justify attacks on needed spending will be gone. Not bad negotiating by our President.

with:

I don't think for one minute that the Republicans having bet and lost will let things go; they are already planning to cut the defense dept budget out of the deal. The generals are planning to cut the medical benefits for dependents and retirees rather then losing one planned multi-billion $ carrier or another new plane.

To which I replied:

They can plan all they want, but executing is another matter.

As far taking defense cuts out of the deal, the President has already said he will veto it if they get through both Houses of Congress, with a 60 vote threshold in the Senate. As for the generals they don't run the defense establishment. The President as Commander in Chief does.

As for medical benefits for military retirees, see the observations of Albert Nekimken below.

Republicans have boxed themselves into a corner and have been outwitted by Obama.

Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia added this observation:

Bravo on a well-written and well-conceived comment. 

 I would add the reminder that Robert Gates also told congress before he departed that the uncontrolled growth of health care (and pension?) costs for the military was unsustainable and must be reformed. (Which without having seen Hauser’s comment appears to be a rejoinder to it)

On the point of what the correct size and scope of the U.S. military establishment ought to be there is clearly a large gap between the views of Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans believe fervently that the U.S. (apparently due to its Christian, moral superiority and exceptional mission in the world) must retain the ability to dominate the world everywhere by force of arms, while Democrats believe that the U.S. is, and should be, only one of many major players in world events. Further, Democrats see attempts by Americans to assure military domination as counter-productive. By coincidence, the primary beneficiaries of the Republican view are defense contractors

And, as we know, one of the largest contributors to the general federal deficit is Medicare and Medicaid. All evidence accumulated to date corroborates that the problem is a lack of control on the "spending" side of the system and the primary causes are an open checkbook to vendors of medical supplies and services, excluding doctors who have already been squeezed hard by prior reforms. To my mind, this forces us to reconsider either a single-payer federal health care system for all citizens, civilian, military and members of congress, or a system of private health insurance that is highly regulated by the federal government as are utilities with limits on profit margin and controls on prices as well as coverage. As an aside, the "individual mandate" idea was ill-conceived from the beginning. National healthcare needs a dedicated source of revenue such as general tax receipts or a national sales tax on all goods and services.

Regarding your criticism of the media for not doing their job, I disagree insofar as we do want news reporters to maintain a line between factual journalism and comment, or other editorial analysis. Your real criticism seems not that the facts are not being made available, but that the analysts have been prostituted into eviscerating their own logical conclusions.

 Overall, I think your views of the consequences of the failure of the supercommittee are accurate.

I did not respond to the observations on Health Care, but I disagree, and will address this subject at a later time, when the subject is Reform of our Health Care System.

On the second of my two posts Robert Malchman responded to my analysis of a Krauthammer column with:

 Does anyone who doesn't believe in Fox News-eque fairy tales, lies and manipulations take Charles Krautkopf -- excuse me, Krauthammer -- seriously? Debunking Krauthammer is like debunking Santa Claus, if instead of a merry, gift-giving elf, Santa were a bitter, miserly troll. I can see taking on politicians who at least have some influence, even nutjobs like Herman Cain because his 9-9-9 plan needed a response like the 4.5-4.5-4.5 one you provided. But using your skills on someone like Klownhammer is like using a flamethrower on a strawman.

To which I issued the following challenge:

Who do you think would be a worthy columnist for a critical analysis of their views? If you would like, nominate someone, and if you are so inclined, I would be happy to have you suggest a particular column for dissection. Would George Will be better? Ann Coulter? Bill Kristol? You name it!

Malchman retorted:

Will and Kristol are at least serious people. Coulter is a self-promoter who believes in nothing but her own self-aggrandizement; her goal is simply to shock and to draw attention to herself, so the best thing one can do is to ignore her. (Did you know she was two years ahead of me in law school? I only knew her by sight, but she did not have the reputation for being insane yet, only a Federalist Society-style conservative; that's what leads me to believe her public persona is an act.)

           

To which I repeated my challenge by saying:

 I await your nomination. Hopefully, a specific column, but if that is asking too much, your choice of a columnist and I will look for a column. There is no rush. Give it some thought and find a column that would be a challenge.

No specific nomination came, but I am considering a column by Ross Douthat entitled: “An Argument Against Redistribution," which has more meat to it, for rebuttal.

In the meantime your comments and observations are welcome and will be distributed with attribution, unless you request to remain anonymous.


With the holidays fast approaching I will take a sabbatical until after the New Year has rung in. Until then חנוכה שמח, Joyeux Noël and Feliz Año Nuevo or Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

The Deficit Reduction Committee II

On November 28, 2011 I posted and distributed my commentary entitled "The Deficit Reduction Committee" on the DRC's failure to reach agreement, and pointed out that Republicans on the committee never made a good faith effort to reduce the deficit, since the only proposal that they made would have increased the deficit. (In this connection it should be noted that in pushing for the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy, they insisted that no offsets were necessary, when it came to to an extension of the of the payroll tax cut, they insisted that offsets are a sin qua non. Tax Cuts for working Americans, according to them, pose a danger to the economy, but Tax Cuts for the wealthy, who they call “Job Creators” are, according to them, good for the economy and need no set offs, no matter how much they increase the deficit.

I have received two comments to this article, but will postpone sharing them with you until the next post because of space constraints. In the meantime I invite further comments.

At the end of my last post, I promised to analyze point by point a column by Charles Krauthammer that appeared in the November 24 issue of the Washington Post, under the heading "The Grover Norquist tax myth." See here.

I suggest you first read it in full by clicking "here” above and then read my comments thereon, for which purpose I reproduce the article and intersperse my responses in contrasting type.

            Democrats are unanimous in charging that the debt-reduction supercommittee collapsed because Republicans refused to raise taxes. Apparently, Republicans are in the thrall of one Grover Norquist, the anti-tax campaigner, whom Sen. John Kerry called “the 13th member of this committee without being there.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid helpfully suggested “maybe they should impeach Grover Norquist.”

            With that, Norquist officially replaces the Koch brothers as the great malevolent manipulator that controls the republic by pulling unseen strings on behalf of the plutocracy.

Nice theory. Except for the following facts:

            ●Sen. Tom Coburn last year signed on to the Simpson-Bowles tax reform that would have increased tax revenue by $1 trillion over a decade  There was no Simpson-Bowles Tax Reform. This refers to a bi-partisan commission appointed by the President, the formation of which Republicans opposed. The President stipulated that its recommendations would only be submitted to Congress if 14 of its members voted for it. That vote was not achieved and the plan died. Sen. Coburn (R) voted for the report, but the Republican leadership in Congress showed no interest in it, and never brought it up for a vote in the House.

            ●During the debt-ceiling talks, House Speaker John Boehner agreed to an $800 billion revenue increase as part of a Grand Bargain. Yes, and then reneged when he found that his caucus would not consider it, despite the fact that cuts would have been three times the size of revenue increases.

            ●Supercommittee member Pat Toomey, a Club for Growth Republican, proposed increasing tax revenue by $300 billion as part of $1.2 trillion in debt reduction. This is precisely, what I was talking about in my last post. The proposal was to increase $300 billion in revenue, provided there was a decrease of $4 trillion in revenue, through a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts. This means a net cut in revenue $3.7 trillion.

Leading, very conservative Republicans proposing tax increases. So why does the myth of the Norquist-controlled anti-tax monolith persist? You might suggest cynicism and perversity. Let me offer a more benign explanation: thickheadedness — the inability to tell the difference between tax revenue and tax rates.

            In deficit reduction, all that matters is tax revenue. The holders of our national debt care not a whit what tax rates yield the money to pay them back. They care about the sum.The Republican proposals raise revenue, despite lowering rates, by opening a gusher of new income for the Treasury in the form of loophole elimination. For example, the Toomey plan eliminates deductions by $300 billion more than the reduction in tax rates “cost.” Result: $300 billion in new revenue. This is unadulterated nonsense! Democrats don’t care how revenues are raised as long as they are raised. It is not a question of rates. Republicans have made clear they will not agree to anything that brings more revenue to the treasury.

The Simpson-Bowles commission — appointed by President Obama and endorsed by Coburn — used the same formula. Its tax reform would lower tax rates at a “cost” of $1 trillion a year while eliminating loopholes that deprive the Treasury of $1.1 trillion a year. This would leave the Treasury with an excess — i.e., new tax revenue — of $100 billion a year, or $1 trillion over a decade. Not extending the Bush tax cuts nets $4 trillion. As indicated, Republicans do not support the Simpson-Bowles plan. So this is a straw man. What is the significance of one Republican supporting it on the commission, when we don’t even know if he is prepared to support it in Congress? And it is one Senator. One!

            Raising revenue through tax reform is better than simply raising rates, which Democrats insist upon with near religious fervor. It is more economically efficient because it eliminates credits, carve-outs, and deductions that grossly misallocate capital. And it is fairer because it is the rich who can afford not only the sharp lawyers and accountants who exploit loopholes but the lobbyists who create them in the first place. This is the latest canard. No Republican reform plan proposed would increase revenue, and none of any kind has been proposed. What they mostly talk about is reforming the tax code, so as to do away with mostly middle class deductions, and a flat tax that would further shift the burden of taxation away from the rich and toward the middle class. This is truly class-warfare. It is war on the middle class and the poor.

            Yet the Democrats, who flatter themselves as the party of fairness, are instead obsessed with raising tax rates on the rich as a sign of civic virtue. This is perverse in three ways:

            (1) Raising rates gratuitously slows economic growth, i.e., expansion of the economic pie for everyone, by penalizing work and by retaining inefficiency-inducing loopholes. We should get rid of the loopholes!!! That is a good start. Lets do it now and reduce the deficit. Increasing taxation on those who can best afford it doesn’t slow growth, no matter how often it is repeated. If we wish to encourage work then we should reduce taxes on those who indeed work, and increase taxes on the “coupon clippers.” Or in other words, tax unearned income the same as earned income. Tax Capital Gains and Dividends the same as earnings from work. Tax Inheritance, at the upper end, since the beneficiaries have never worked for it.

            (2) We’re talking pennies on the dollar. Obama’s coveted repeal of the Bush tax cuts would yield the Treasury, at the very most, $80 billion a year — offsetting 2 cents on the dollar of government spending ($3.6 trillion). This is the ultimate in juggling numbers. It sounds like Enron. That is not 80 billion a year. It is $4 trillion over ten years. And no one expects spending to be anywhere near 3.6 trillion going forward. But of course spending has to be reduced, and the President and Congressional Democrats have proposed spending cuts three times as large as revenue enhancements. Their proposals would begin to bring the deficit under control. The answer has been No and No and No. Every Republican proposal, whether the Ryan budget, or the plan put forward by Republicans on the Deficit Reduction Commission, would actually increase the deficit.

            (3) Hiking tax rates ignores the real drivers of debt, which, as Obama himself has acknowledged, are entitlements. Deficits are driven by lack of revenue or spending or both. Most non-partisan economists feel it is both. Entitlements need structural adjustments and Obams’s “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” makes a number of changes that make a beginning in reducing these expenses, over Republican opposition. In negotiations, other changes have been proposed as part of a comprehensive debt reduction measure. Republicans have rejected each and every one, because small revenue enhancements were to be included.

            Has the president ever publicly proposed a single significant structural change in any entitlement? Yes, Many! Again and again, as part of a balanced approach, only to be rebuffed each time. After Simpson-Bowles reported? No. In his February budget? No. In his April 13 budget “framework”? No. During the debt-ceiling crisis? No. During or after the supercommittee deliberations? No.

Indeed, Obama was AWOL from the supercommittee — then immediately pounced on its failure by going on TV to repeat his incessantly repeated campaign theme of the do-nothing (Republican) Congress. Obama had actively negotiated with Boehner and they had a deal until the Republican caucus rejected it. After this failure, it was agreed to set up the super-committee, which was to work without interference from Boehner or the President.

A swell slogan that fits nicely with the Norquist myth. Except for another inconvenient fact: It is the Republicans who passed — through the House, the only branch of government they control — a real budget that cut $5.8 trillion of spending over the next 10 years. Yes, it does. It does away with SS, Medicare and Medicaid, and the whole safety net, and still has so many tax cuts that it increases the debt by $6 trillion. Obama’s February budget, which would have increased spending, was laughed out of the Senate, voted down 97 to 0. Dems didn’t want the vote, and turned it into a joke by voting against it. As for the Democratic Senate, it has submitted no budget at all for 2 1 / 2 years. Does the filibuster have anything to do with this?

Who, then, is do-nothing? Republicans should happily take on this absurd, and central, Democratic campaign plank. Bring Simpson-Bowles to the House floor Yes, why not, but all of it, not cherry picking it. and pass the most radical of its three deficit-reduction alternatives.

Dare the Senate Democrats to vote down the grandest of all bargains. Dare Obama to veto his own debt commission. Dare the Democrats to actually do something about debt. They already have, most particularly in the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” which Republicans want to repeal.

Krauthammer isn’t even consistent. On July 14, 2011 he wrote: 

 If conservatives really want to get the nation’s spending under control, the only way is to win the presidency. Put the question to the country and let the people decide. To seriously jeopardize the election now in pursuit of a long-term, small-government, Ryan-like reform that is inherently unreachable without control of the White House may be good for the soul. But it could very well wreck the cause. But they would never put their hostility to the entitlements to a vote. They would lose overwhelmingly. Instead, they will talk about anything else, and hope they can fool the voters, and do all they can to keep the economy from improving.

The Deficit Reduction Committee

Surprise, Surprise! The Deficit Reduction Committee did not reach agreement.

Our media, as is their wont, bills it as a failure of our two parties unwillingness to compromise, and as a symptom of our broken government. But it is not the former, and it is the latter, only in so far as one of our two major parties, the Republican Party, is determined to keep government from working. As the old saying goes: “it takes two to tango.”

No compromise was possible because the Right (Republican Party) has no interest in what the Committee was charged with accomplishing, i.e. deficit reduction and they demonstrated this again in blocking any possibility of agreement.

           

As I have demonstrated in past writings on the deficit, Republicans have no interest in deficit reduction. It is simply a weapon with which to destroy the hated, “Welfare State.” I discussed this at length, and I urge you to go back and read my posts starting with my latest post on the subject: "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part VI)" and working backwards from there, using the links provided.

           

To repeat part of what I said in these posts:

Their lack of concern with the deficit can easily be seen in that not one of their proposed “reforms” decreases the deficit. The Ryan plan, which has passed the House with almost unanimous Republican support (four Republicans voted against it and no Democrats voted for it) would, according to Representative Paul Ryan himself, add $6 trillion to the national debt over ten years as reported by the Economist, hardly a left wing source, and as far as I can find nowhere else in the media.

This lack of concern with the deficit surfaced again in the deliberations of the “The Deficit Reduction Committee.” Democrats genuinely concerned with the deficit and anxious to reach agreement offered to agree to cuts in entitlement programs, which need to be cut in any case for their sustainability, as I discussed in my post which you can find here. 

They asked that Republicans come to the table with an agreement that would raise revenues, and until a few days before the deadline the Republicans on the panel would not put one dime in increased revenue on the table. With the deadline fast approaching they finally talked about an “increase (in) tax revenue by $300 billion, which was seen by some lawmakers as a breakthrough given the party’s resistance to increased revenues.”  

Since the committee was charged with coming up with at least 1.2 trillion in reduction to the deficit, this would have meant that Democrats would have to agree to $ 900 billion in cuts, a three to one ratio. The Dems swallowed hard and indicated they might be willing to go along. They thought they had a breakthrough, in so far a Republicans finally appeared to have put “added revenue” on the table. Then came the kicker! In order for them to agree to 300 billion in added revenue, Dems would have to agree to extend the Bush tax cuts, or a decrease in revenue of $4 trillion. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see that if you deduct 2.1 trillion from 4 trillion, you get 1.9 trillion, the amount by which the deficit would be increased. Or to put it another way, it’s the Ryan budget all over again. You cut entitlement spending and you increase the deficit at the same time, which, according to their logic requires further slashing of entitlements and other programs that they don’t like. Or heads we win, tails you lose. Needless to say, there was no agreement.

But where was the media to explain all this? As usual they were missing in action. All they could come up with was a shake of the head and the usual bromide, “Why can’t they agree.” Well there is a damn good reason why! There was no desire on the part of the Republicans to offer anything that remotely accomplishes anything, other than do away with entitlements.

How could any sane Democrat agree to this?

Why doesn’t the media, who even with their fear of speaking the truth is denounced by the Right, speak the truth for once. Why are they so afraid of being accused of partisanship? Telling the truth wherever it may lead, is what good journalism is supposed to be all about.

One of the few media outlets, The Christian Science Monitor reported what happened accurately:

Republicans insisted during the super committee negotiations that curbing tax breaks to raise revenues be coupled with guarantees that all the Bush tax cuts would continue beyond 2012…Democrats countered that the super committee was created to reduce the budget deficit, not add to it by extending tax cuts.

The Economist all alone tells us the way it is:

The game being played here has little to do with the budget itself. It is an ideological debate about the role and obligation of government. First, cut taxes for the wealthy to create a big hole in the budget, have a Great Recession aid the cause by stripping government at all levels of tax revenue, increasing costs of serving people, and creating short-run deficit problems (and a war here and there doesn't hurt the cause either), and finally use the deficit as a club against social insurance programs such as Medicare and Social Security. 

So we have ended up with $1.2 trillion cuts going into effect beginning in 2013. $600 billion of that will be in defense spending which is in addition to a cut of $450 billion previously agreed to. Not the worst of all possible outcomes, and in 2013 the Bush tax cuts will expire. No Congressional action is needed. Beginning in 2013 the deficit will be reduced over the following ten years by 6.1 trillion. The hammer of using the deficit to justify attacks on needed spending will be gone. Not bad negotiating by our President.

In response to my post “What can we, and should we do about the deficit?” Bruce Weintraub wrote:

Republicans should be forced to make choices too:  Either an increase in marginal tax rates for the superwealthy or steep cuts in ‘defense’. But Democrats NEVER put them on the spot.

Well Bruce, they did, and the “Elephants” were maneuvered into agreeing to steep defense cuts.

            

Would Bruce and the Left please apologize to our President and admit he did a brilliant job of negotiating under the most difficult circumstances.


The threat to our National Security according to Admiral Mike Mullin then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is our debt, as shown below:

While Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, has talked about all kinds of disasters from cuts in defense of $1 trillion, this does not square with the facts. As an article in US News and World Report points out: 

Despite the doomsday scenarios continually espoused by Secretary Panetta and the military chiefs, a cut of that size would amount to only 15 percent, in real terms return spending to its 2007 level, and still leave the United States above what we spent on average in the Cold War. Finally, such a cut would be far less than cuts made by Eisenhower (27 percent), Nixon (29 percent), and Reagan, H.W. Bush, and Clinton (35 percent), which were done without jeopardizing security.

           

Now the Republican deception takes full form in a column by Charles Krauthammer that appeared in the November 24 issue of the Washington Post, under the heading “The Grover Norquist tax myth." I will analyze this point by point in my next post.

I regret that I was forced by events to abandon my analysis of where we could beneficially cut spending. Hopefully events will make it possible for me to return to beneficial cutting without ignoring developing news.

Comments are welcome and will be distributed with attribution unless the writer requests not to be identified.

What can we, and should we do about the deficit?

Where can we and should we cut?

I last addressed this in my post of October 28th under the title: "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part VI)," which I urge you to re-read.

In that posting, I address the insincerity of Republicans claims of concern with the deficit, while every one of their proposed budgets would vastly increase the deficit.

I then went on to point out, that despite the gamesmanship, there is only one purpose in creating the deficit and making it an issue, and that is to eviscerate and destroy the safety net that has been built over many decades, and the protections to our health and safety, so that those who already have the bulk of the nation’s income and wealth, can further increase it at the expense of the poor and middle class.

But that does not mean that we should descend into our own fairy tale world, and pretend that the course we are on is sustainable. Increased revenue is essential, but controlling our ever-increasing costs, is equally essential.

For instance if we leave the Bush Tax cuts in place for those making $250,000 per annum or less, as has been proposed by the President, we would be increasing taxes only on the top 3% of earners and we would only be increasing tax receipts by $800 billion over 10 years. See here at 1:44 minutes. When we consider that the deficit was projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) at $1.3 trillion for the year 2010 alone we can see this is a piddling sum. However if all the Bush tax cuts were left in place, the deficit would be decreased over ten years by four trillion dollars, a much more significant sum, but still not enough to solve our projected deficit, which the CBO estimates at six trillion over ten years, without counting interest payments, and assuming that no laws were to be changed, which is unlikely.

But the attempt to put a rosy, but untrue, picture on our outlook can be seen from an article which appeared in the Washington Post, written by E.J. Dionne, a man who has written many insightful columns in the past, but who posits that doing nothing would lead to $7.1 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. Now what is interesting about this is that the CBO says doing nothing would still lead to over a 3 trillion deficit over ten years, and doing nothing is unlikely. Most important, doing nothing would mean not extending the Bush tax cuts for those earning under $250,000, when the President, the Left, and the Wall Street occupiers give us the impression that if we just focus on the top 99% all will be honky dory. It’s a fairy tale! I say wake up!

Furthermore changing nothing, outside the Bush tax cuts, is neither likely nor desirable. If you will look here, you will find the Dionne article reproduced, with my comments interjected in red, showing why many of the things Dionne assumes could be left unchanged, need to be, and are likely to be changed.

Reverting again to my post of October 28th I point out that according to the Social Security Administration, “Projected long-run program costs for both Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable under currently scheduled financing, and will require legislative modifications if disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers are to be avoided.” But I go on to say, “this should be addressed, not as a budget issue, but as a sustainability issue.”

As can be seen from the above we will not solve our deficit problems with increased taxes alone, and certainly not with increased taxes on the top 1% alone, or even those making less than $250,000. We need to end the Bush tax cuts in their entirety and we must look to making intelligent cuts.

It is for that reason that I address this subject. In my post entitled "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part VI)" I began to address some of the areas where we could, and should, beneficially cut, and I begin with the drug wars, where, I point out that there are already major voices across the political divide calling for an end to this destructive and expensive war.

According to Bernd Debusmann, a Reuters columnist:

The budgetary impact of legalizing drugs would be enormous, according to a study prepared to coincide with the 75th anniversary of prohibition’s end by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron. He estimates that legalizing drugs would inject $76.8 billion a year into the U.S. economy — $44.1 billion through savings on law enforcement and at least $32.7 billion in tax revenues from regulated sales. (For a total of 76.8 billion per annum or 760,800 billion over ten years, over 3/4 trillion. And this is before we add in the benefits to the economy. 

The war on drugs has helped turn the United States into the country with the world’s largest prison population…The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population and around 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Ibid  

In addition to the law enforcement expense, we must add in the cost of incarceration. Here we find that his cost alone amounts to over $6 trillion per year to the states with additional costs to the federal government.

We begin to see that cutting in order to deal with the deficit can be beneficial. The only purpose for reducing some benefits in entitlements is to make them sustainable.

I must add, however, that I do not favor states passing laws to make Marijuana available as a medicine. This has the effect of bypassing the FDA, and no substance should be made available for therapeutic purposes without the rigorous double blind studies, that all such drugs are required to undergo.

Comments are welcome and will be distributed with attribution unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. 

An Announcement – Discussion III

I concluded my last post with the comment, “Next time I will continue with my discussion of "what can and should we do about the deficit…Where can we and should we cut?” which I started in my post "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part VI)."

However, after publishing my post "An Announcement – Discussion II" I received a comment from Robert Malchman Esq. of Brooklyn, NY, which led to an exchange that I would like to share with you.

Malchman wrote: 

I think you overlooked a key social policy point. All the current contenders want to see a constitutional amendment that life begins at conception. This is an outrageous, anti-life position for them to take. Every human ovum has the potential to become a life, and it is women's duty to ensure that every oven they have is fertilized. Willful failure to become and remain constantly pregnant during the years of fertility should be prosecuted as a murder every month. Anyone who can prove she tried to become pregnant, but was not able to conceive, should be prosecuted for criminally negligent homicide. 

The piece was fun. I'm stunned that anyone could have taken it for something other than satire -- the tip-off is in the first paragraph where you discuss consulting your dog. I guess the Republican Party has become so cartoonish that satire is indistinguishable from reality, a poor state of affairs. 

To which I responded:

I think your own piece of satire touches upon an important point, but I think you are wrong.

What I think you are suggesting is that the point of the Right's position on abortion is to require women to be continuously pregnant, i.e. to be plentiful, and there is support for this in the Bible. Genesis 1:28 “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

But from what I hear them saying, does not suggest that to me. I rather hear an anti-sex message. More than anything I hear abstain from sex outside of marriage, and this too has support in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 7:1-40 and to have sex only to procreate.

But while I think this underlies their views, they rely on the idea of "when life begins," for which I can find no support in the Bible. Furthermore, the idea that "life" must be protected is silly, since life exists in the form of a mosquito, and surely they do not mean that mosquitoes, or for that matter bacteria, which too is life, must be protected. What they must mean, though they never seem to say it, is that human life must be protected. They then postulate that human life begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg. But that is completely arbitrary. The egg looks no different after fertilization than before. If they argue that this ultimately leads to human life, than it can equally be argued, that the sperm itself, or the egg itself, leads to human life, and there is no doubt that the sperm is alive, even before it enters the egg.

What really drives this, outside the hard-core fundamentalists, is that traditionally, abortion was frowned upon, and the physician who performed them illegally was looked down upon as the lowest of the low. But this always coexisted with the dangerous back-alley abortion, or self induced abortion, and the abortion sought by those with the means to go to a jurisdictions where it was legal.

Just as we have learned, that many prejudices of the past don't make sense, whether it was that left handed was unacceptable, to that being gay is not normal, or that contraception in immoral, so it is simply moving with the reality that abortion is simply a late term contraception.

The question is not when does life begin, but rather when does human life begin. While abortion was frowned upon in past generations, it was never considered the killing of a person. It was never murder. The introduction of the idea that a human life begins at fertilization of the egg, inevitably leads to claims of murder, but it has no basis either in the past, or in logic.

The fertilized egg is no more a human that a tadpole is a frog, or a fertilized hen egg is a chicken, and I think few, if any would claim that to be so.

When does human life begin? I think that even during the time when abortion was always illegal, and even birth control was a violation of law, that it was when the fetus is capable of existing outside the womb, i.e. when the umbilical cord is cut.

Any other approach has no basis in religion, in the Bible or in precedent.

Please let me know if you agree, or if not point out my fallacies.

Malchman in turn rejoined: 

No, of course the point of the Right Wing is not the protection of "human life"; it's to discourage pre-marital sex. That's why it's fraudulent for them to call themselves "pro-life," they are, at best, anti-abortion and anti-sex. The point of my satire is to engage the Right on their own hypocritical term, "pro-life.” If you are really pro-life as opposed to anti-sex, then you would want women to be having sex all the time to get constantly pregnant. 

I hope finally to return to the subject I had embarked upon before digressing into this attempt at satire. So once again Next time I will continue with my discussion of "what can we, and should we do about the deficit…Where can we and should we cut?” which I started in my post "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part VI)" I will do that under the heading, “What can we, and should we do about the deficit… Where can we and should we cut.”

An Announcement – Discussion II

On November 8, 2011 I posted "An Announcement – Discussion" that set forth the comments and my responses with respect to "An Announcement" which was posted on November 4, 2011.

Since then I have received some additional input, which I would like to share with you. Paul Negri of Clifton, NJ the former President of Dover Publications and the editor of more than two dozen books made this comment:

Satire is, I think, one of the most difficult genres to write and you've done a good job with it here. The trick is expressing what you want to say by preposterously advocating the opposite. I think you do that well, particularly with Cain and Romney and your treatment of Obama. Perry and the others get rather short shrift here. I do think Perry and Bachmann make even better targets for satire, as they are truly ridiculous figures (frankly, I think Cain is ridiculous too). 

My taste in satire runs to the absurd, to an even more overtly over-the-top humor and a more poisonous wit. So I've edited the first several paragraphs of your piece to show you what I mean. It doesn't mean that my edits are better, just illustrative of a more absurdist satirical style (see attached).

I'd love to see you skewer Perry and Bachmann in more detail and deflate that windbag Gingrich too. Of course, none of this will convert the conservative faithful, but may tickle the fence-sitters into thinking a bit more.

Had fun with this and only wish American politics was not, at heart, so sad.

 In addition he lent his editing skills to my efforts in "An Announcement" His revisions with his additions shown in blue and his deletions in red can be found here.


Albert Nikemkin of Vienna, Virginia sent my essay to a friend, Benjamin A. Feinberg and shared his exchange, as follows:

I take it that Scheller is kidding or not feeling well?

To which Nikemkin responded:

It's a satire, of course! He anticipated that it would be a risky initiative and, as your response proves, he was right!!

Nikemkin then added this observation directed to me:

I like your foray into satire, especially your willingness to take the risk that some readers might think you serious--which is always the risk of satire. Nevertheless, I hope you will forgive me for not making a campaign contribution, at least for now. Your approach was to push the envelope and exaggerate what we are actually hearing from the Republican candidates--a risky venture since what they really say is veering closer as every day passes to your intended exaggeration!

Next time I will continue with my discussion of, “What can and should we do about the deficit… Where can we and should we cut?” which I started in my post "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part VI)."