Morning TMZ

The Morning Joe Rebuttal For November 30th, 2009


Observations:


1) Joe Scarborough takes a courageous stand about not wanting the content of his show to be weighted towards Tiger Woods coverage, yet he is outvoted by producers citing the number of world leaders and CEO’s who watch his show and the fact that they expect him to cover it as a matter of necessity? If I took any part of that self serving failure wrong, please correct me, but that is a level of lousy typically reserved for other people, and your viewers are left 3 hours later screaming: SCOREBOARD.


I’m going to lump the White House crashers in with this. Afghanistan, the Jobs Summit, Palin polling at the top of Republican presidential lists, and the purity test have just lost out to the first time in the history of the show that Willie Geist could’ve anchored. Apologies to WG, but we never mention him for a reason. We’re in it for substance, and rather than waste anyone’s time, we can leave the “features” part of the show to others. Old Mika would’ve never let this happen, but passiveness here is the equivalent of job security run amok.


2) Trading tax gets brought up as an opening line in a roundtable featuring the shows cast, Jim Cramer, and Donny Deutsch and yet again the main point of it all might as well be wearing camouflage clothing. A trading tax is a misguided idea trying to find revenue in a lynch mob sort’ve way. It unfortunately is fatally flawed in that it’s too easy to kill for its misguided-ness, and it turns a blind eye to known economic principle. To hear Joe Scarborough go at it in another attempt to shore up his all tax is bad platform was unoffendingly predictable, but to hear Jim Cramer say it’s worse than actually doing something, and Donny Deutsch explain away the idotic optics is unforgivable.


Please have an economist at the table when you talk about these matters so that the bottom line doesn’t get boiled down to what tax will be cute enough to pass. I at first thought I heard this referred to as a “traitor tax” and boy, that is actually the idea to solve it all at once, and you guys accidentally dithered upon it. Lets leave capitol gains taxes exactly where they are, or better yet lower them, depending on the value of the investment towards the lowering of domestic unemployment, the amount of domestic corporate tax value of the company in question, or any version of value to true domestic national product. That’s right, anti-NAFTA, protectionist taxation at the capital gains level. If you are going to move money around to profit speculatively in a way that either benefits a competing nations economy or creates inefficiency in the market for commodities, lets tax it at the top US Income tax scale, because it’s the government that will have to correct the negative effect of your investment, and
they need the money. Goldman Sachs would owe more than their bonuses in that scenario.


3) Donny Deutsch played the race card. It’s not clear to me if Lou Dobbs deserved it or not, but Lou doesn’t like migrant workers I’m told. I do know this, this column is late today as I was driving the 8 freeway from Phoenix to San Diego all day. At points you could see the new border fence just feet from the freeway. It runs continuously across the entire state of California. We have had it pretty good up here. I’ve had a supposed “Lib” or two say that no matter what ideological position I may have adopted, the southern border needs control or it would be the end to the way of life that Southern Californians and Arizonans have enjoyed for many years. Get to the right ideologically, in the purity test crowd, and it’s a far more disturbing version of what needs to be done for the sake of national safety, as exemplified by the forced construction of this fence.


I don’t buy it. It feels so much like South Africa driving that road, that it has an air of natural unsustainability. The fence may be a most modern technology, but it still boils down to me stopping the car inside the US so that a US Agent can inspect the car and “assume we are all US Citizens”, and if Lou Dobbs is racist, so is that misguided interdiction. I love the people of Mexico and have less animosity for many of those citizens than for many north of the border. Tear down that wall. Make a negative a positive. Take money from coyotes and put it towards a prepayment for a work visa that pays a migrant workers taxes and social payments like our new national health care and make it open to anybody who is not a terrorist. Don’t let anyone tell you that pushing migrant workers into the shadows further is good for America, it’s a kick the can down the road endless shell game that trades humiliation for personal political gain.


Donnie was abandoned by the show on the subject as everyone ducked and quickly moved on, so I had the debate for you.


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.