Interesting table the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compiled based on CBO data:

Big market downturns tend to reduce inequality, but the trend is unmistakable. Higher taxes, more transfers, and more government services.

Amanda Terkel finds an interesting theory about the DHS report on right-wing extremism from Pat Robertson who says “It shows somebody down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left winger or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question.”

Look, the Department of Homeland Security is concerned about the possibility of violent right-wing extremism in the United States because we have a history of violent right-wing extremism in the United States. Nobody is saying that everyone who favors low taxes or whatever is on the verge of becoming a terrorist. But you can’t seriously deny that this history of violence exists and that the potential for future violence exists.

Meanwhile, mainstream conservative leaders are doing things like calling for the assassination of the Governor of Illinois and calling for the armed overthrow of the government. Those were members of congress. I think the overwhelming majority of people will understand that those congressmen don’t really want anyone to kill anyone. But it only takes one person on the edge to take this kind of talk too seriously to produce a tragedy. Responsible people should be avoiding that kind of rhetoric.

Annie Lowery took a look at the countermeasures available to the United States in the unlikely event of a real Texas secession movement:

It would be the world’s thirteenth largest economy — bigger than South Korea, Sweden, and Saudi Arabia. But its worth would crater precipitously, after NAFTA rejected it and the United States slapped it with an embargo that would make Cuba look like a free-trade zone. Indeed, Texas would quick become the next North Korea, relying on foreign aid due to its insistence on relying on itself.

On the foreign policy front, a seceded Texas would suffer for deserting the world superpower. Obama wouldn’t look kindly on secessionists, and would send in the military to tamp down rebellion. If Texas miraculously managed to hold its borders, Obama would not establish relations with the country — though he might send a special rapporteur. (We nominate Kinky Friedman.)

The assumption here, though, is that the United States would want to coerce the Republic of Texas back into the fold. I don’t really see a good reason for doing that. Obviously, we shouldn’t let Texas secede as part of an unpopular governor’s bid to win a primary election against Kay Bailey Hutchison by defining himself as the wingnuttiest guy around. Letting a state secede on a whim would be a bad idea. But the situation in 2009 is very different from the situation in 1860 so if a big state like Texas (or a sizable bloc of states) had a population that was showing a clear and consistent preference for secession, one should consider just letting them go. Situations like the “Velvet Divorce” in which the Czech Republic and Slovakia amicably went their separate ways are rare, but that was a much better outcome than a typical bloody civil war.

The real question is not what could we do to stop Texas from seceding, but what would be reasonable terms?

The core elements of an amicable divorce would, I think, be Texas membership in NAFTA and NATO so as to ensure that disruption is minimized and nobody is a threatening anyone else. Beyond that, you’d need to do something about citizenship. My preference would be for the United States of America to establish a rule such that anyone whose citizenship in the Republic of Texas dates back to Texas Independence Day would have an unrestricted right to move to the USA at a time of his choosing and swap citizenship. We would also need, I think, to create a time period of, say, five years in which any American citizen who wants to become a Texan has the right to become a Texan. After that, Texas may or may not want to adopt a more stringent immigration policy.

Then there’s the issue of the debt. Texas would need to assume responsibility for a portion of the U.S. national debt that’s proportionate to its share of the population. Given that this debt is denominated in dollars, it will be important in the early years for the Republic to maintain a currency that’s strong vis-a-vis the dollar and a current account surplus. Given Texas’ oil that shouldn’t be too hard to pull off, and could be further assisted by having the United States military agree to “lease” military bases on Texas territory for ten years.

One could imagine some other reactionary states choosing to federate with Texas. And I think if that happened then, over the long-run, both sides might wind up happier. Chris Bowers, who’s opposed to secession, argues instead that “the better approach for progressives is to try and connect the United States more with other countries and international organizations, rather than fragmenting into smaller countries. More connection, not more division, is the answer.”

My own view, however, is that internationalization goes hand in hand with regionalization. In other words, that the smart money in the 21st century is on the diversion of power both up and down from the nation-state level. For a more practical example, look to Europe, where the United Kingdom’s integration into the European Union has gone hand in hand with some steps to moving away from the UK’s hypercentralized political system. In a world of strong nation-states, a place like Scotland or Wales would just be a weak nation-state. But international economic and security agreements reduce the incentive for a small state to affiliate with a larger neighbor. So we’ve seen the creation of a Scottish parliament. And I believe there’s been a similar devolutionary impulse in Spain. You hear talk sometimes of a “Europe of Regions” rather than a Europe of Nations, and I don’t think it’s a crazy idea.

None of which is to say that Texas will or should secede. But I do think it makes sense to think about ways to facilitate the amicable breakup or reconfiguration of nation-states rather than assuming that every parting of the ways needs to recapitulate the Civil War or the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Steve Benen is hoping to break into the lucrative world of chart-blogging so he made this one based on a table from a Bruce Bartlett column. It shows the effective federal income tax rate paid by the median family in a number of different years:

This is part of the reason why I think Barack Obama’s pledge to eschew any tax increases whatsoever on the bottom 95 percent of the population was fundamentally misguided. Raising taxes on the rich, as per his proposal, is a very good idea. And there’s no need to raise taxes on anyone amidst the current recession. But in the long run we’re going to need more revenue than Obama’s budget calls for. Broader tax increases that might bring the median family’s effective rate back to where it was in the Reagan years could raise impressive sums of money. The bulk of that money would be coming from the wealthiest households, and the impact of the expenditures would be highly egalitarian.

I’m strongly inclined, in many respects, to agree with Glenn Greenwald and Michael O’Hare that the Obama administration’s unwillingness to really hold anyone accountable for illegal torture during the Bush years is setting a very bad precedent. I won’t restate the argument, because I think it’s pretty clear how it works, but read Greenwald & O’Hare if you want to see it well-stated.

I think the counter-evidence comes from post-communist Eastern and Central Europe. But especially from “central” Europe—the former Soviet satellite states that are now pretty successful liberal democracies. Places like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, etc. If you look at these countries you’ll see that in many instances there’s been shockingly little accountability for Communist-era crimes. The general pattern is that opposition governments were elected in 1989 or 90, and then in the mid-nineties members of the old regime came back into power with their parties rebranded as social democratic parties. In Romania the pattern was different in that the former regime people came to power right away then lost power in the mid-nineties and then came back in in 2000.

But in no case did you have a really thorough investigation and punishment for past misdeeds. And that hasn’t led to a comeback of totalitarianism.

What you did have, though, was the establishment of a clear national political consensus about certain things. People largely agreed that Russian domination was bad, that Communism was bad, that joining the West was good, that elections were good and that whatever might have happened in the past there was no going back. This was different from the situation in Russia, where there was always the sense that the end of Communism was tied up with the idea of Russia “losing” a geopolitical struggle. And it’s also different from what’s emerging in the United States where there’s a continuing sense of partisanship—Democrats say torture is wrong, Republicans say torture is good, so the media talks about “contorversial” “interrogation tactics” and everyone knows that in the event of a new terrorist attack conservative politicians will run, aggressively, on an assertive pro-torture platform.

That’s a very grave problem. But that is the real problem that needs a solution. We need to find ways to politically delegitimize torture, to help build bridges to people who may disagree with us about tax rates or abortion or even the wisdom of bombing North Korea about the point that torture is wrong, shouldn’t have been done in the past, and shouldn’t be done in the future. And, importantly, about the point that torture actually shouldn’t be done—that you shouldn’t be looking for loopholes in anti-torture rules and seeing legal prohibitions on torture as a big hassle.