I get 155 billion form a 5% increase on 20-5.

I don’t think 4-2 would bring in more than 50 billion.

100k a year living outside a major metro area doesn’t feel like that much for a family. 5k extra in taxes would be felt.

It would be political suicide. It would validate everything Republicans have been saying. Hlobo wouldn’t be able to post anymore.

Obama might get re-elected but Democrats would at the very least suffer serious losses in both houses.

It’s a tight spot.

I hope I am wrong, but my guess is the upper 1% or so is taxed at something less than 10%, and most of that money goes into new spending. Maybe we get a peace dividend on top of the savings from leaving Iraq and that gets applied to deficits.

So we get more taxes and spending and big but smaller deficits.

Yes, what Stalin is most famous for is increasing the size of the courts.

Not that this thread-branch is anything but rankly silly, it might be interesting to look into Stalin’s judicial appointments. Of course, Stalin is more (in)famous for the Gulag, but he’s also quite (in)famous for the show trials. Maybe some packing the Soviet courts was part of his process of getting the judiciary pointed at his political enemies. Saddam Hussein, a notorious admirer of Stalin, used every chance he got to make judicial appointments favorable to his own career when he was on his way up. (I read somewhere, he says weakly.)

A dictator isn’t someone who gets his way with the pistol on his hip, personally holding entire nations and conquered territories in thrall. Saddam Hussein could barely control his own sons that way, at times. A dictator mostly works as most national leaders do, by leveraging existing institutions and the inherited legitimacy of those institutions. For every show trial in Stalin’s time, there were probably thousands of trials for ordinary (I should say, “real”) crimes. Perhaps most of those trials were adjudicated as fairly as before. Perhaps more fairly for all we know—it would be the sensible way to maintain a grip on power, wouldn’t it? To be seen by most people as tough, ruthless against one’s enemies, but otherwise fair? And what better way to get there and stay, but to appoint judges you can depend on, in a crunch, and can depend on to be reasonably fair at all other times?

Why isn’t it like Hitler’s grip of terror?

Sure, if Obama gives up his mandate for change and agrees to do precisely what the GOP wants, then they’ll be bipartisan with him.

But he’d be a fool to do that. Clinton got two terms to toady for the GOP, but Obama would only get one.

Sushhhhhhhhhhhh! Someone might get ideas. Don’t encourage people who pine for the return of Stalin.

Rich pack-the-court-and-get-rid-of-the-filibuster Pulschasky@26

I always love to see true Stalinist impulses ooze out.

Personally I see no reason for anyone to attempt to “sneak” anything, but then, I’m not taking the irrational perspective that Obama is a closet sociomarxmaoist attempting to undermine our way of life, etc.

“If he governs like a Clinton centrist,”

and the Republicans find a House leader who can scuffle with him, and then create some compelling-sounding soundbites about a Second Contract With America, then there would be some potential for a 2010 backswing, and maybe you’d get your dream, wouldn’t you?

No, we really should not.

(Unless “we” want to destroy the program but have given up on the direct approach.)

Right, because poverty is so much more moral. OTOH, there is this little snippet of 30s folk song:

Back again, back again,
We’ve got Franklin D. Roosevelt back again.
Since Roosevelt’s been elected moonshine liquor’s been corrected,
We’ve got legal wine, whiskey, beer and gin.

The key here is that Obama will not have the cost of the Iraq war (currently in excess of $350 billion), the recession will be over and capital gains taxes will be coming in again, and the rescue of the financial industry should be starting to return a dividend on the original investment.

It is also likely that inflation will have cut the real value of the national debt somewhat in the interim. Maybe by 10% or so.

The key here is that no Republican is going to be competitive in the 2012 election cycle on a message of return to Bush era economics.

There is also going to be a real and urgent effort to scour the tax code and eliminate the $100-200 billion plus of tax breaks targeted at GOP donors. The Dems could not do this with control of Congress alone, they need the administration to tell them about the effects.

There are also many GOP spending plans that can be cut back or eliminated. No point in deploying a missile defense shield that does not work. The Bush era solution was to quit testing, kill that plan and you save $50 billion a year right off.

The cap and trad scheme for carbon emissions will be brought in and used to fund the energy program. But no other spending increases are likely to happen, except for universal health care.

Well, the economic slowdown will almost certainly get worse than it is right now—but we already know that—it’s in the nature of recessions—so it won’t be a surprise. In any case, he’s not going to be able to use worsening economic conditions as a justification for a big upper middle class tax increase.

Wouldn’t he have to persuade the GOP to agree to bipartisan solutions? And aren’t they absolutely, completely over-my-dead-body deadset against that?

But the GOP and Bill Clinton found common ground on quite a few things. If he governs like a Clinton centrist, bipartisanship shouldn’t be impossible at all.

BTW, here’s what I would do if I were Obama and wanted to sneak through elements of a progressive agenda without doing a 180 on taxes and the definition of ‘rich’:

1. On climate change—get the carbon credit auction system in place, but have a very generous allotment of credits during the economic downturn. Emitters would have to buy credits, but they’d cost very little, which would mean a negligible increase in electricity rates. The sale of credits wouldn’t generate much, but whatever couple billion trickled in would be spent on alternative energy, allowing Obama to claim he’d fulfilled a couple of promises (but without much effect or pain…at first). Heat that frog slowly.

2. On health care—use the economic downturn as justification. Give the unemployed ‘temporary’ access to Medicare. And then let them stay on if the new jobs they find don’t provide benefits. What starts as temporary gradually becomes permanent.

How can he create bipartisanship?

Wouldn’t he have to persuade the GOP to agree to bipartisan solutions? And aren’t they absolutely, completely over-my-dead-body deadset against that?

Maybe they’ll come around. But so far they’ve been totally against any positive changes, and there’s no particular reason to suppose they’ll modify that stand.

I think the Democrats should work toward making it easier for third parties. Both campaign finance reform and voting reform, something like IRV. Make it easy for Republicans to switch to the Libertarian party, and work hard for bipartisanship with ex-Republicans.

Bipartisanship with Republicans is a fine thing too, provided they don’t double-cross too much.