Tell the Super Committee

Reduce the Corporate Income Tax to zero, but replace it with ad valorem Corporate Owned Land Value Tax (not the buildings just the land value) apportioned among the states, raising the same revenue or maybe a bit more up to 5-6% of GDP to reduce deficits. (This tax must be apportioned among the states because it is a non-income direct tax. All this means is that each state will have its own rate of taxation based upon its own valuations sufficient to raise its fair share. If Maryland has 1.8% of the population, then it has to raise 1.8% of the revenue by levying a land value tax on corporate owned land. This provision was put in Constitution to keep states from assessing land too low to avoid paying the full "requisition"/tax under the Articles of Confederation.)

In the 1950s and 60s, the corporate income tax contributed 5-6% of GDP to the federal government, it is now around 2%. Why? Because of loop holes created by lobbyists and well intended "targeted" breaks with little real pay-off. Moreover, there are a lot of very good lawyers and accountants out there who know how to hide income. But land cannot be hidden. Moreover, land's value is created by governmental and community activity, therefore it is a proper source of revenue.

But unlike any other taxation which discourages what it taxes, the taxation of land (which has an inelastic supply) creates economic activity by encouraging use of land through construction. It also means that when banks foreclose or if homeowners walk and transfer ownership back to bank, the banks start paying tax on the land value, so no more incentive for banks to sit on these properties as new land speculators.

As St. Ambrose said: "You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich."

The Super Committee (bio notes from Charles Riley @CNNMoney August 11, 2011: 1:00 PM ET)

Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas (Republican and committee co-chair): Hensarling -- chairman of the House Republican Conference -- served on President Obama's debt commission but voted against it. What did he object to exactly? Tax increases. The debate over taxes is expected to be fierce. If his past positions are any clue, Hensarling is likely to be vocally opposed to any new revenues.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington (Democrat and committee co-chair): Murray is not just a senator. She also chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and it is her job to recruit candidates who can beat her Republican colleagues. Her appointment has already drawn criticism from the Republican National Committee, which views her as an overly political figure. She is a member of the Budget and Appropriations committees.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland (Democrat): Van Hollen played a key role in the debt talks led by Vice President Joe Biden earlier this year, and is the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee. A Pelosi acolyte, Van Hollen frequently appears on television to represent House Democrats on policy issues.

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona (Republican): The No. 2 Republican in the Senate behind Mitch McConnell and a staunch advocate for the military, Kyl is a member of the Finance Committee. Kyl is a reliable conservative vote and is opposed to tax increases. He has said he will not run for re-election and walked out of debt negotiations with Biden earlier this year after an impasse over increasing revenue.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts (Democrat): A former presidential candidate, Kerry is best known on Capitol Hill for his foreign policy experience. He will lend his expertise on national security matters to the debate over cuts to military funding. He is a member of the Finance Committee and has spent 27 years in the Senate so has participated in his share of closed-door negotiations.

Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania (Republican): Elected to the Senate last year, Toomey was a prominent voice in the debate over raising the debt ceiling, arguing that the United States could prioritize its payments in the event of a debt ceiling breach to avoid a true default. In the end, Toomey voted against the debt ceiling bill that created the super committee. He sits on the Senate Budget and Banking committees, and is the former president of the staunchly anti-tax Club for Growth.

Sen. Max Baucus of Montana (Democrat): Baucus -- chairman of the Senate Finance Committee -- served on Obama's debt commission. But Baucus voted against the final Simpson-Bowles recommendations because he said they cut too deeply into farm subsidies and would have changed Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in away he found unacceptable. Those same issues -- changes to those entitlement programs -- are likely to be a central part of any grand bargain to reduce deficits.

Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio (Republican): A former White House budget director in the Bush administration, Portman is a Senate novice and a member of the Budget Committee. More moderate that some of his colleagues, Portman could be a key player in a compromise.

Rep. Xavier Becerra of California (Democrat): A senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Becerra served on the Bowles-Simpson debt commission. But he voted against the plan because he said it cut too deeply into discretionary spending and did not raise revenues to a high enough level.

Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan (Republican): Camp -- the House Ways and Means Committee chairman -- served on President Obama's debt commission, but voted against it. He objected to the plan's tax hikes and said it failed to address rising health care costs. An expert on taxes -- he will bolster GOP credentials on any tax reform that might be discussed.

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina (Democrat): The third-ranking Democrat in the House and veteran of the Appropriations Committee, Clyburn maintains close ties to Pelosi. He also participated in the Biden debt reduction talks.

Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan (Republican): Upton chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He has taken some moderate positions in the past, including attempts to decrease tax cuts in the George W. Bush administration that remain contentious today.

The Senate should vote on House Bill, not the other way around.

Speaker Pelosi, on 3/15, said: "Nobody wants to vote for the Senate Bill." Of course, because it is a poison pill.

Obama and Democrats want an "up or down vote". So let's have one in the Senate on the House bill. After all, tax provisions are supposed to originate in House according to the Constitution. To heck with Senate filibuster rule, also not in the Constitution, at least for bills ORIGINATING in House .

The whole cooling saucer notion (which was not reported until 1888 and is surely apocryphal: http://www.bartleby.com/73/294.html) is satisfied by whether the Senate decides to take up bills already passed by the House.

It's cooled, already. Let's have the Senate take a drink of House's coffee and decide up-or-down on the taste of the House's cup-of-joe.

If the Constitution intended a super-majority for legislation, they would have required it like they did for Treaty ratification. And, there would have been no need to give VP the power to break ties. In a body which by design has an even number, the VP role presumes a simple majority to be the favored mode of operation. Finally, the Supreme Court already ruled in U.S. v. Ballin (1892) that Senate rules may be changed by simple majority.

So go "nuclear" and have the Senate vote up or down on the House Bill (and pass the House Bill). Then, do the fixes with regular order.

It is easier to get 50+ Biden for House bill, than it is to get 216 for horrible Senate bill with the "promises" and convolution of reconciliation. The Senate did such a bad job on the bill why should anybody in the House trust the Senate to get reconciliation right.

Finally, the alleged "process" hit for reconciliation is no worse than the hit for "going nuclear". Indeed, ending the filibuster on an initial up or down vote for bills passed by the House may well resonate more with the American public. After all, the Supreme Court has so ruled; the Constitution does not mandate the filibuster; and the explicit role of the Vice President tends to favor an interpretation that simple majorities are what was intended for legislation as opposed to treaties. In the end, after all is said and done, I think the American public would like more done than said.

An Open Letter to Senator Barbara Mikulski and her Response

I've never voted for a Republican in my life and never will. Senator Boxer (D-CA) has tried to suggest that she and you would filibuster health care reform over the Stupak Amendment passed by the House.

Flag burning is constitutionally protected (as it should be), but why should we pay for or subsidize the purchase of matches and flags?

I'm for "Medicare-for-all". Medicare doesn't pay for or subsidize abortions. If "Medicare-for-all" was up for a vote, are you telling me that Sen. Boxer and you would filibuster, unless it covered abortion? That implies that government encouraged abortion is a higher priority than health care reform.

It seems to me that what passes for the Left doesn't even know what it means to really be progressive anymore. This wing of the Democratic Party ought consider what would happen if started its own party based upon that prioritization. You’d be less popular than Libertarians.

Nothing in Stupak prevents women from getting an abortion or buying insurance separate, distinct and outside the government exchange to cover that procedure, which on average costs under $500. Nor does it prevent States from setting up their own subsidies as some do with Medicaid.

Does legal tatoo removal need to be covered? How about a host of other legal elective procedures. Pregnancy is not a disease. Elective abortions are not health care. Our President has acknowledged that abortion is a serious moral issue. He told a joint session of Congress that health care reform would not subsidize abortion.

Stupak takes away a Republican straw man argument which they will use to cover their true obstructionism, it prevents the President from seeming disingenuous, and it respects the overwhelming majority of Americans both pro-choice and pro-life who don’t want government to subsidize abortions even though the Supreme Court has upheld a right to abortion under certain circumstances.

Is this a Senator Boxer bluff (why didn’t the House Democrats vote down bill after Stupak was added?) or is it a mindless prioritization of abortion on demand over real social justice?

May the late Msgr. Geno Baroni, one of your mentors, pray that you remember what social justice is and that you organize your priorities appropriately.

May the late Senator Ted Kennedy, whose cause of life was health care reform not abortion on demand, also pray for you.

What is more important to you? "A new hope that we move toward breaking the old gridlock and guarantee that every American -- north, south, east, west, young, old -- will have decent, quality healthcare as a fundamental right and not a privilege" or "government subsidized elective abortion on demand"?

Both your roots and your wings should tell you that the former (health care reform) is more important that the later (government subsidies direct or indirect for an elective procedure).

Very truly yours


John David Kromkowski


John David Kromkowski is attorney in Baltimore, MD. In 1984-5, he worked as staff for the Political Division of the Democratic National Committee and for the Democratic Council on Ethnic Americans to which the Congresswomen Mikulski belonged and which was co-chaired by Congresswomen Marcy Kaptur. (D-OH). Rep. Kaptur was a co-sponsor of the Stupak Amendment. He has also been the attorney for the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, which was founded by the late Msrg. Geno Baroni, whose proteges include Kaptur, the longest serving woman in the House, and Milkuski, the most senior female Senator.

Senator Mikulski Responds

Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 3:55 PM

Dear Mr. Kromkowski:

Thank you for getting in touch with me about abortion and health care reform. It's great to hear from you.

Health care is one of the most important issues facing families and our economy. We need to:

-reduce health care costs for families, business and government

-protect people's choice of doctors, hospitals and health plans

-assure affordable, quality health care for all Americans

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590) represents the combined efforts of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) and the Senate Committee on Finance. This bill takes a giant step forward in providing health care that is available, undeniable and affordable for all Americans.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) follows settled law on abortion and prohibits federal funds from being used to fund abortions. In addition, no health care plan can be required to cover abortion.

I also support the rights of health professional to choose whether to perform abortions. That's why I support the strong conscience clause in the bill which protects individuals and hospitals from having to perform abortions if it goes against their religious, ethical, or moral beliefs.

I believe the most pro-life thing we can do is pass health reform which will improve the health of all Americans by providing universal access to health care.

I appreciate knowing of your opposition to abortion services being included in health care reform. I have given the abortion issue very serious consideration. As someone who represents such a diverse constituency, I support respecting the individual conscience, so that each woman can decide for herself whether and when to have a child.

Your views on health care reform will be helpful to me as the Senate continues to work on this issue. Please let me know if I can be of help to you in the future.

Sincerely,
Barbara A. Mikulski
United States Senator

Community Organizing - What side are you on?

By John David Kromkowski and Dr. John A Kromkowski

People don't live in cities; they live in neighborhoods. Neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are the building blocks of cities. If neighborhoods die, cities die. There's never been a Federal policy that respected neighborhoods. We destroyed neighborhoods in order to save them. – the late Msgr. Geno Baroni

"Community Organizer" may be a dead field now after Guilliani’s and Palin's and other recent speeches at the Republican National Convention.

The fundamental problem was that Obama didn’t explain, define or frame what it meant to be a "community organizer" and what he did. Of course, the Obama campaign could have know it was coming when the Fox News commentator, Sean Hannity,in the earlier part of the summer said: “Community organizer? – what even is a community organizer?” That former Mayor Guilliani, who should know well that vibrant neighborhoods are the building blocks of cities, would mock the field of “community organizer” is shameful. Let’s see what the mainstream media decides to do: Give the Republican caricature of “community organizing” a pass or challenge Obama and mayors of cities across the country to explain and re-legitimate the Neighborhood Self-Help Movement.

Of course, there are at least two strains to this field: "Community Organizer as Agitator" a la Alinsky vs."Neighborhood Organizer" providing technical assistance to actual neighborhood leaders so that neighborhoods can do self-improvement a la Monsignor Baroni’s Neighborhood Movement of the 1970s. The tensions between these two strains is complex because of co-existence, co-evolution and cohabitation.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development was created in part as an outgrowth of the work of Msgr. Geno Baroni, who founded the National Center for Urban Ethnics (NCUEA). NCUEA spawned, funded and trained hundreds of parish, neighborhood and community based organizations, organizers, credit unions, and local programs. Baroni’s tradition is neighborhood strengthening plus a pluralistic notion of ethnicity as a replacement for racialization. Fr. Baroni's catholic social justice in action included notable proteges, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-OH, currently the longest serving woman in Congress and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-MD. Barack Obama's first community organizing project was funded by the CHD.

But even within the Catholic church’s social justice tradition in America, there has been a tension and co-existence between these two styles.

In 1975, the noted Irish-American Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and best selling author, Fr. Andrew Greeley described the demarcation between the “old" catholic social activist and the “new" catholic social activist approaches to activism. In “Catholic Social Activism – Real or Rad/Chic?”, Greeley saw the old social justice action in labor schools, labor priests, and community organizing that “mastered the politics of coalition building with the system.” Leading figures in that “old” tradition for Greeley were Ryan, Higgins, Egan and Baroni. On the other hand, the “new” Catholic action came out of the Berrigan experience, the peace movement and Alinsky’s ideas. It was heavily involved in confrontation and protest. Greeley scathingly predicted, that the “newer” tradition would likely lack the tangible success in comparison to the “older” tradition:

"The old social actionists are largely men of action, doers, not talkers. The new social actionists are intellectuals...They are masters at manipulating words and sometimes ideas...They are fervant crusaders. [But] winning strikes, forming unions, organizing communities are not their 'things', they are much more concerned about creating world economic justice."

Neither Obama nor McCain are Catholic, so neither is required to claim allegiance to either the old social actionist tradition or the new social actionist tradition, but they must decide and speak out on exactly what their positions are about helping neighborhoods be the building blocks of cities.

If McCain and the Republicans want to mock the work of neighborhoods improving themselves with technical assistance from “organizers”, then they’ve cast their die. If Obama and the Democrats are willing to let the mocking pass, then they’ve cast their die. Who knows, perhaps we should ask where Bob Barr and Ralph Nader stand on the issue of neighborhood and community organizing.

John David Kromkowski is an attorney in Baltimore, MD. Dr. John A. Kromkowski, lives in Baltimore and is a professor in the Politics Department at Catholic University of America and since 1979 he has been the President of the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs. They recently co-wrote “An American Catholic Perspective on Urban Neighborhoods: The Lens of Monsignor Geno C. Baroni and The Legacy of the Neighborhood Movement” which is soon to be published by Scranton University as part of a series of papers comparing “The Social Justice approaches of Henry George and the Catholic Church”.

Still Unmelted after All These Years

With acknowledgments to Michael Novak, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics (1972) and Paul Simon’s 1975 album and song.

Are Polish Americans or Italian Americans or African Americans uniformly distributed through the United States? No; in fact, America is stunningly "unmelted". Even a cursory exploration of the Census data reveals this. For example, check out the American Factfinder at the US Census cite.

A bowl of raw meat and uncooked potatoes, celery, carrots and onions is not per se appetizing. But even in a well simmered and tasty soup or stew, you can tell by looking that there are carrots, potatoes, celery, onions and meat. So let’s not despair. Let’s investigate.

The Ancestry Question on the US Census has produced a stunning array of information about how Americans self-describe themselves. The self-describing aspect of the US Census, especially The Ancestry Question is an highly important feature of data collection in a pluralistic democracy. Unlike the Race Question on the US Census which was constitutionally and historically imposed and rooted in pseudo-scientific and political assumptions of exclusion, the Ancestry Question emerged from a more current understanding of ethnicity[FN1] and its organic character and growth through the self-determined iterations rooted in the person, family, household and neighborhoods that constitute the American experience of immigration, urbanization and the attendant cultural pluralism of democratization and freedom fostered by a wide range of forces that accompanied American political development especially for the past seven decades. These social economic, political, and personal dynamics make the demography of ethnicity in America seem messy. Indeed, the ostensible messiness of immigration, the articulation of ancestry and identity rooted in ethnicity may well explain the slow evolutionary process and the significant impediments to collection of demographic information. Uniform data would be achieved by replacing the variety of Race and Ethnic Origin Questions associated with Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous Peoples with a single Ancestry question and the tabulation of the multiple responses that are clearly evident in America. Nonetheless, now that Ancestry data has been collected for the last three Censuses and the computer driven computational revolution is firmly in place, demographic analysis can employ standard protocols and verifiable methods that enable a fresh look at the data and thus establish connections, patterns and places and further discussion, interpretations and a scientific understanding of American pluralism.


FN1. Although, in some ways the Ancestry Question is arguably back to the future. See Saint Francis College v. al-Khazraji, 481 U.S. 604 (1987). A unanimous Court held that that persons of Arabian ancestry were protected from racial discrimination under Section 1981. The history of the definitions of “race”, presented by the Court, is well worth reading because it shows how prior to the 20th century “race” and “ancestry” were synonymous concepts. After outlining the history and usage of the term "race", Justice White and the Court rejected the claim that “a distinctive physiognomy” is essential to qualify for 1981 protection and concluded: "We have little trouble in concluding that Congress intended to protect from discrimination identifiable classes of persons who are subjected to intentional discrimination solely because of their ancestry or ethnic characteristics." William J. Brennan, Jr., in a separate concurrence, added that "Pernicious distinctions among individuals based solely on their ancestry are antithetical to the doctrine of equality upon which this nation is founded." (Emphasis supplied).

This article investigates one such method: State Similarity Scores. A Similarity Score investigates the“distance” between States. Consider three cities: Baltimore, MD; Washington, DC and Chicago, IL. Baltimore is about a 40 mile drive from Washington. The driving distance between Washington and Chicago is roughly 710 miles. Chicago is 720 miles from Baltimore on the interstates. Knowing these distances, we can conceive of the triangle that these cities form and how they are geographically related.

In the two dimensional space of a map, a computer can now easily crunch out distances from a simple formula derived from Phythagoras.

Distance^2 = a^2 + b^2, or
Distance = SQRT(a^2 + b^2 )

For example, using latitude and longitude to get the distance between Chicago and Baltimore, we find the difference between Chicago’s latitude and Baltimore’s latitude and the difference between Chicago’s longitude and Baltimore’s longitude.

a = LatChicago - LatBaltimore and
b = LongChicago - LongBaltimore

So,
Distance = SQRT[(LatChicago - LatBaltimore)^2 + (LongChicago - LongBaltimore)^2]

In three dimensions, we’d add c^2, to handle perhaps altitude for Google Earth. The theorem isn’t limited to our spatial definition of distance. It can apply to any orthogonal dimensions: space, time, movie tastes, colors, temperatures, and even ancestry responses. There is no limit to the number of variables. The focus, however, of this research is race, ethnicity and ancestry data form the US Census 2000. Appropriately, this type of investigation is also known as Nearest Neighbor Analysis. To find out how closely related any two states in terms of ethnicity, our equation would look like this:

Distance = SQRT[ (Ancestry1State 1 - Ancestry1State 2)^2 + (Ancestry 2State1 - Ancestry2State2)^2 + ... + (Ancestry NState1 - Ancestry NState2)^2]

For this paper I used 56 of the largest ethnicities [FN2]as orthogonal dimensions: Asian Indian, Asian Multiple Response, American Indian, “American”, Arab, Austrian, Black or African American, Belgian, British, Canadian, Chinese, Cuban, Czech, Czechoslovakian, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French excluding Basque, Filipino, French Canadian, German, Greek, Guamanian and/or Chamorrian, Jamaican, Japanese, Korean, Hawaiian, Hispanic or Latino Other, Hungarian, Irish, Lithuanian, Mexican, Native Not Specified, Norwegian, “Others”, Other Asian, Other Pacific Islander, Puerto Rican, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Samoan, Scandinavian, “Scotch Irish”, Scottish, Slovak, Slovene, “Some Other Race”, Sub Saharan African, Swedish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh, and West Indian.[FN3]

FN2 Some of these categories also come from the Race and Hispanic origin questions of the Census. Even though the Ancestry Question captures ethnic responses like Japanese, Korean, Cuban, Mexican and Black or African American, the Census Bureau sanitizes its Ancestry data, so that these responses are only readily available from the Race and Hispanic origin questions.

FN3 Older analysis of ethnic disimilarity differs from this method because it grouped ancestry responses into larger but far fewer categories such as “Old Stock”, “Eastern and Southern European”, “Asian”, etc. Calculating similarity in 56 dimensional space was simply not possibly with hand calculations employed by previous researchers

For any two states, we can calculate a measure of similarity. A measure of 0, would mean that the two states are identical, i.e. they have exactly the same percentage of Polish American, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, African Americans, etc. The largest “distance” between two states was between DC and North Dakota at 91.429. The closest “distance” between two states was between Tennessee and Arkansas 3.720. At the end, Table 1 shows each state’s “nearest cultural neighbors” and the “distance” metric.

If we look at only the closest connection for each of state, some distinct networks or groupings emerge. The largest of these clusters happens to correspond roughly to "The South".

Finally, we can also measure the distance of each State to the United States as a whole. Illinois and Florida are very similar to the entire US, while North Dakota, DC and Hawaii are furthest in “distance” from the US in our 56 dimensional ethnic space. See Fig. 1. Table 1. Nearest Neighbors along 56 dimensions of Ethnicity/Ancestry. Table 1, three nearest ethnic neighbors not posted here.

Ethno-Political Mapping

This map shows ethno-political similarities among States. It uses the Census Ancestry Question and the Kerry '04 election results.

DC, for example, is ethno-politically an outlier and is not "connected" to any state.

This was quickly calculated using the 38 largest ancestry responses nationally plus "African American" from the "race" question as well as the Kerry 04 results. A more detailed ethno-political mapping is planned with addition ethnicities and political information that need to be culled from other sources.

This map is not scaled to show "distance". So, for example, while the most closely ethno-politically related states to HI are CA and NM, the distance is rather substantial. and the distance from CA and NM to TX is also rather substantial. On the other hand the distance among the Southern State clusters are extremely close.

Getting Beyond Race to Ethnicity

Are Polish Americans or Italian Americans or African Americans uniformly distributed through the United States? No, in fact, America is stunningly "unmelted" and Presidential political candidates ought to be wise to a careful understanding of this phenomena.