I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about sports on here, so if not, here is Sports Post #1.

One of the things I find most fascinating about professional English soccer is all the different levels of clubs and how connected they are through their system of relegation and promotion. It injects drama in the battle for the bottom of the league, whereas without the threat of relegation, poor-performing teams can just kind of go through the motions to get the season over with without any repercussions. Given the money involved in American sports franchises, I’ve always imagined it would be impossible to ever implement something like that over here. But Daryl at theoffside.com has pitched the idea for MLS based on the league’s anticipated expansion to 18 teams. Simply, once the league is at 18, you break it into two divisions of nine teams, and at the end of the season the bottom two or three clubs in Div I drop down to Div II, and the top two or three in Div II move up to Div I.

I don’t follow MLS at all (though I’ve been considering starting this year), but I can say that I listen to various podcasts and check numerous websites on a daily basis following the relegation battle currently going on in the Premier League. I’ve been calculating various scenarios that would keep Newcastle and Portsmouth in the Premier League and trying to decide who out of West Brom, Stoke City, Hull City, Middlesbrough and Blackburn I would be least bothered to see go. If the EPL were run like the NFL, MLB or even MLS, this interest would be completely absent. All of these teams could resign themselves to the fact that they’re not going to win the championship, they’re not going to qualify for Europe, and there’s always next year. BORING.

MLS: Please listen to this guy named Daryl.

• Matthew Yglesias cites a new CBO study (with a great chart) showing the relative effects of carbon credit auctions versus carbon credit giveaways on household income. Simply, auctioning carbon credits to industry and using that money to issue rebates to energy users results in gains for the lowest quintiles and modest losses for the higher ones, and giving away credits to industry results in large losses for everyone but the very highest quintile, who see a large gain.

Naturally “moderate” Democrats such as Jeff Bingaman prefer the cap-and-giveaway out of what they deem pragmatism, but what looks a lot like fanatical devotion to the interests of the well-off to the exclusion of other concerns. […] So if a cap-and-trade bill does pass, I assume it’ll take a cap-and-giveaway form, and you can bet that opponents of auctions will specifically cite the interests of the economically struggling as their main motive for screwing the economically struggling over.

• Both Ben Nelson and Mike Johanns are on the list of the 28 senators who oppose using the budget process to implement cap-and-trade. Nelson previously stated he questioned “…counting revenue for cap and trade policies that haven’t been implemented and could have a negative impact on our economy.” The CBO study estimated both cap-and-auction and cap-and-giveaway would have an almost identical -0.5 percent effect on GDP.

While some loony Republicans attempt to convince high-earners to “Go Galt” by refusing to offer their contributions to society until the lower classes learn to accept their inferiority, you see others going the opposite route. It really is nice to see people looking out for each other and acknowledging that being a low-wage worker doesn’t mean you’re a useless leech.

from Politico:

“I have major concerns about trying to raise taxes in the midst of a downturn of the economy,” said Nelson, the conservative Nebraska Democrat. “On the one hand, you’re trying to stimulate the economy. On the other hand, you’re trying to keep money from going into taxpayers’ pockets. It’s very difficult to make that logic work.”

What we’re seeing here is the same thing we saw during the stimulus debate. Rather than basing his opposition on reality, Ben Nelson is basing his opposition on Republican talking points. Or as Matthew Yglesias said, “It’s particularly depressing here that Nelson seems to have gotten 100 percent of his information about Obama’s tax plans from Fox News and zero percent from participating in the extensive on- and off-the-record briefings for members of congress, congressional staff, and media that the administration has organized.”

For a little context on the top tax rates, check out the graph at Balloon Juice. As John Cole said, “The 2010 proposed rate of 39.60% = socialism. The 2002-2008 rates of 35.00% = capitalist nirvana. The 39.6% rate of the 1990’s = socialism. Everything else = down the memory hole.” It’s a durn shame we never had any economic growth before 1988. Oh, and if you’re really adventurous, check out the last time the top tax rates were in this neighborhood.

In case you missed it, here’s January’s top 10.

#10.

#9.

Continue reading →

What a nightmare this Conservative Political Action Conference has been. I can’t imagine how Republicans think this is going to play well with people who are genuinely struggling with actual problems.

• From Mother Jones: John Bolton at CPAC: The Benefits of Nuking Chicago:

“The fact is on foreign policy I don’t think President Obama thinks it’s a priority,” said Bolton. “He said during the campaign he thought Iran was a tiny threat. Tiny, tiny depending on how many nuclear weapons they are ultimately able to deliver on target. Its, uh, its tiny compared to the Soviet Union, but is the loss of one American city” – here Bolton changes his tone subtly to prepare for the joke – “pick one at random – Chicago – is that a tiny threat?”

Bolton wasn’t the only one who thought this was funny. The room erupted in laughter and applause.

• Thinkprogress: Joe the Plumber suggests some congressmembers should be shot

JOE: “Back in the day, really, when people would talk about our military in a poor way, somebody would shoot ‘em. And there’d be nothing said about that, because they knew it was wrong. You don’t talk about our troops. You support our troops. Especially when our congressmen and senators sit there and say bad things in an ongoing conflict.”

He also wants to slap anyone who “talked treasonous talk about America,” though that presumably doesn’t extend to Republicans wanting the President to fail.

• Speaking of which, Thinkprogress has another interview in which Tom DeLay joins Rush Limbaugh in openly hoping for Obama’s failure

Is there some context that should make me less frightened by this news?

The 25 bank failures in 2008 also depleted the [FDIC’s] deposit insurance fund by $15.7 billion during the fourth quarter to $18.89 billion.

The 25 banks that failed last year, before the worst hit — out of thousands in operation in the United States — nearly halved the government’s deposit insurance fund.

from a former Republican:

One of the chief economic advisers to their then Presidential candidate repeatedly referred to those feeling the pain of the recession as a nation of whiners while suggesting it was all in their heads, and now, as it is blindingly obvious that we are in serious, serious trouble, the leading lights of the opposition party are spending their days getting economic advice from a handyman who could not figure out that because he made significantly less than 250 grand a year he would not be having his taxes increased, taking their political advice from a radio loudmouth, holding panels at their annual conference discussing how Al Franken and ACORN are ruining Democracy, and spending their days questioning whether or not our President is actually an American. Meanwhile, as the DOW looks like it will dip below 7000 on more horrible economic news, the grass roots movement of the party is throwing “tea parties” to protest attempts by the opposition party to address this crisis.

When you hear the wingnuts talk triumphantly about their little tea party today, that is the appropriate context (from the comments: “Remind me, was the original tea party a demonstration against 95% of the colonies getting a tax cut?”). I honestly don’t know how anyone with half a brain still identifies as a Republican or conservative. These guys seem intent on doing to the conservative brand what they did to the name liberal brand, only much more effectively. This is a bankrupt movement.

UPDATE: Cole posted in his comments as well:

Yes, the Democrats are not perfect, and they not only do not have all the answers and should accept much of the blame for where we currently are.

But christ on a crutch, one side is trying to stave off armageddon, the other side is fomenting civil unrest, saying no to everything, and seems to honestly think the path to the future requires little more than a judicious use of twitter and some hip-hop appeal. We have to make a f—ing choice here as our system is a binary construct, and it isn’t even close, so knock it off with the bulls—.

As one reporter observed after the briefing, “Did you notice all the questions about taxes came from reporters making over $250,000 a year, especially the TV guys?”

Check out BREAKING: Press Corps Incredulous That Obama Budget Reflects Campaign Promises at fivethirtyeight.com. Silver points out how the press corps has soaked up every bit of Joe the Plumber rhetoric as if it were somehow textbook economics.

(CBS’s Chip) Reid: On jobs, which is the big complaint up on Capitol Hill right now from Republicans, that this plan is a job-killer. I mean, the $787 billion plan was all about jobs, more than anything else. And now you have a plan in place that — how can you possibly tax people making people over $250,000 something like $667 billion over the next ten years and not have a downward effect on jobs?

Gibbs: Well, Chip, how did it work in 1994 and 1995 and 1996 and 1997?