As someone born with a genetically predisposed tendency to express a personality with a liberal sensibility, I've always found myself at odds with the conservative point of view.
Growing up in the 60's and 70's, the prevailing conservative tendency to be close minded, intolerant, backward thinking and bigoted towards those not like themselves was very unappealing to me. At their worst conservatives could be quite pig headed and stupid. But over the decades conservatives' views have "evolved" to the point where the majority of them have rejected those antiquated ways of thinking, especially regarding topics like race and sex roles. For this I give them a lot of credit because these tendencies are very ingrained in our psyche by Evolution and not easily overcome. And in a relatively short amount of time, today we can even see a much more tolerant view by many conservatives toward gay people.
On the other hand, traits that have always been admirable among conservatives, like moderation, self restraint, common sense, loyalty and a duty towards their fellow citizens are being replaced with a twisted mentality that rejects all of these qualities. A new type of conservative has emerged who finds these qualities antithetical to their goal of crushing the left (and many of the things that the majority of Americans strongly support) and forcing their radical right-wing ideology down our throats.
Ideas, notions and beliefs that not long ago would have been considered off the charts and even lunatic are being unabashedly and enthusiastically expressed to rabid right wing audiences by mainstream Republican politicians.
The left has its lunatics, too, but they're out on the fringe. There is no left wing equivalent of the Tea Party type Republican in the Democratic Party.
Ronald Reagan would have to change every one of his moderate positions if he were to have a chance of winning a Republican primary in today's world.
Could today's Republican Party possibly tolerate a candidate who insisted that millionaires pay the same tax rate as a bus driver? Or who called for a world free of nuclear weapons?
Besides the beliefs that Evolution and Global Warming theories are undeniable frauds and hoaxes with absolutely no scientific basis to support them, that there is no economic problem that cannot be solved by permanent tax cuts for the rich and that God will protect us no matter what we do to the planet or the poor (as long as we all behave as ultra conservative Christians), there is yet another troubling trend among today's conservatives.
One is the notion that democracy is actually a bad thing. And that's because it gives power to the losers. You know, average people, like most of us, who would like nothing better than to steal the hard earned money from the wealthy so that we can lay on the couch all day long collecting government checks instead of working.
These modern day conservatives want to take "the Government" out of the equation because that would then free the wealthiest among us (the proven successes) to make all of the decisions that affect our lives.
The other is the notion that taxing the wealthy is as heinous as child rape.
The notion that a multi-millionaire hedge fund manager should be "punished" by having to pay the same tax rate as a small business owner with a taxable income of $150,000 fills them with outrage and disgust. How dare you punish these productive "job creators" with your notions of "fairness!"
By the way, what exactly is it that hedge fund managers produce?
And why have the "job creators" been eliminating more jobs than they've been "creating" for the past 10 years despite all of those super-duper Bush tax cuts?
Says the Republican politician: "This politics of envy is so unbecoming. Don't listen to these Democrats. They are engaging in class warfare! Class warfare I tell you! Class warfare is bad! Those dirty rotten Dems and their class warfare!
Vote for us so that we can permanently cut and eliminate taxes on the wealthy, raise your taxes (so that you 'have more skin in the game' and you can pay off the debt that we created with the Reagan and Bush tax cuts that failed to 'trickle down') while we take away your government services and force you to pay more for less health insurance. We hate class warfare!"
A selfish greedy sociopathic Ayn Rand-like philosophy now dominates the right, which measures a person's worth by the amount of money he/she can accumulate.
As WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ put it in a brilliant article that my friend Chris W. alerted me to:
Fables of Wealth - NYTimes.com
"The poor are lazy, stupid and evil. The rich are brilliant, courageous and good. They shower their beneficence upon the rest of us."
This philosophy regards the efforts of the wealthy as being solely responsible for the creation of jobs and wealth. The rest of us count for nothing. (Do you think I'm exaggerating? Just listen to their rhetoric!)
Rather than "punish" those non-creating "job creators" by taxing them we should just be grateful for all that wealth "they" are producing for themselves without any of it trickling down.
(We are mostly responsible for the production of that wealth, read Deresiewicz's article.
Worker productivity has increased dramatically, wealth at the top has grown exponentially, but wages are stagnant.)
In the modern conservative/libertarian world view, the only thing that deserves more adulation than a wealthy person is an obscenely wealthy one who can get away without paying Uncle Sam any taxes.
That's because we all know that taxing the wealthy is 'punishment' because it is taking away from the "producers" and giving it to the "moochers." That's all and everything that taxes are.
So... that would include those parasitic military personnel who are fighting, dying and coming home crippled for the honor and privilege of protecting the assets of the wealthy.
That's why conservative's New American Heroes are those tax dodging Facebook pricks Zuckerberg and Saverin.
Now these are a couple of pricks who truly deserve our admiration and adulation.
Do you think Facebook was genius?
Just wait till you see how creative their lobbyists are in bribing Republican politicians into giving them more ways to pay even less than the measly 15% they would have had to pay now.
I heard Zuckerberg has already figured out ways how to get out of that.
Saverin is renouncing his citizenship after we took him in, educated him and gave him this ridiculous opportunity to be a multi billionaire.
No. Thank you Eduardo!
Bravo, Facebook pricks! Way to keep the Government from cheating you out of that hard earned money that your Facebook users made for you.
No I'm kidding, you earned every penny of the 16 to 19 billion dollars "you" made the first day of your IPO. And don't worry about that huge monstrous debt that your Republican buddies rang up with their "Starve the Beast" strategy and that you are adding to by not paying your taxes.
Your Facebook users will cover that when the Republicans increase their taxes.
Zuckerberg wants us to think that "his product" is worth over 100 billion dollars. Boy has he got balls. Or "chutz-pa" as Michele Bachmann likes to say.
Hey that's only 108 times what Facebook earned!
If Zuckerberg pulls off this scam -- I mean "brilliant plan -- he might become the richest person in the world!
Hooray! I'm rooting for you Zuck face!
Wow. What exactly did Zuck face do to deserve all this wealth? Cure cancer? End Poverty? Triple crop yields?
Well not exactly. He came up with a ridiculously simple idea that happened to turn into a stupid fucking fad.
The reason I put the words "his product" in parenthesis in the paragraph above is because I question whether Facebook is really Zuckerberg's product.
All he did, after all, was use the things that society created for him.
Like computers and the Internet and computer software and all the industries in which his Facebook users grind out their 40 plus hours a week in order to create the economy that made him rich.
All he did was present a platform, that was already provided to him, thanks to society, and let his Facebook users create the product.
Nice scam -- I mean plan.
You do all the work and Zuck face collects all the profits!
And like all stupid fads, this one has a very good chance of dying down. Which would make many Facebook investors lose money.
But don't worry, I'm sure Zuck face will cash out before that happens.
And he'll be laughing all the way to the bank, tax free!
My hero!
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Great Deceivers: The Art of the Double Talk
In previous posts I've explained how the Republicons defeated the Public Option and made fools out of all of us during the healthcare reform debate by falsely accusing the Dems of precisely what they themselves were guilty of.
I've described their Master Scam: the "Starve The Beast" strategy.
In the following posts I will give some recent examples of Republiconsevative Double Talk before I expose the horseshit that comprises the narrative they've been using since George W Bush put the finishing touches on the Starve the Beast plan.
That narrative goes like this:
Wasteful, out of control government spending on entitlement programs is the cause of the current fiscal crisis.
No political issue provokes more Republicon sleight-of-speak than the topic of taxes; who pays them, who doesn't and how much those who do pay taxes, actually pay.
If you're a right-wing talk show host you and your conservative guests can routinely get away with saying things like "the top 1% pay 50% of all the taxes in this country!" or "the top 10% pay 90% of all taxes!" or "50% of Americans pay no taxes whatsoever!"
That's because those hosts and their guests are not held to any standard "whatsoever."
Serious economists, though, are usually held to a very high standard. Saying something completely false, like the statements above, would seriously harm that person's reputation and credibility.
But if you're a real actual practicing economist with real actual degrees who actually publishes papers, and actually helped to make policy in previous administrations -- you can come really, really close to saying stuff like that... if you're being interviewed by an obliging host on the Fox Business News channel.
I transcribed this from an April 3rd show I recorded:
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, economist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, when asked about Obama's "Buffet Rule" which would make sure that millionaires pay at least 30% (the same rate that people earning much less pay) on taxable income over one million dollars:
"The top 1% of income earners already pay 38% of all taxes.
The top 10% pay 70% of all taxes.
The top half of all income earners pay 98% of all taxes."
The Fox host responds:
"So..."
It is only at this point that Furchgott-Roth adds:
"This is federal income tax."
The host continues:
"...so we should focus more on spending than income and taxes."
Notice how the host was perfectly willing to let that blatantly false statement stand.
And even though Furchgott did add the "oh, by the way" at the very end, she said:
"the top % pay all the taxes" three fucking times before that.
What percentage of Fox viewers do you think registered the fact that she was only talking about federal income taxes?
I'll bet you it's the same as the percentage of Americans who pay "no taxes whatsoever."
Oh, by the way, practically all Americans pay taxes.
So that would mean practically no Fox viewers would have registered that fact.
I say that because practically all the Fox hosts, like Sean Hannity, constantly repeat that "50% don't pay any tax" bullshit, ad nauseam, in order to get their audience really angry, causing the objective part of their brain to shut down so that they will be willing to believe whatever those hosts want them to believe.
So... by the time Furchgott got to her "by the way," the steam emanating from the audience's ears effectively blocked their hearing.
Also notice that Furchgott seemed to be saying that because some millionaires pay an average top effective tax rate of almost 30%, it's perfectly fine for others to be paying much less or nothing at all.
So... it's OK for millionaires to freeload but not those mooching poor and lower middle class (who are sometimes actually paying a higher % than those millionaire freeloaders)
And neither the host nor Furchgott wanted to give their audience a clearer, more "fair and balanced" explanation of who does and doesn't pay taxes and how much is actually paid. That's because if they did they would be forced to tell you that individual federal income taxes make up only 42% of all taxes paid to the federal government. And that doesn't consider state and local taxes, which are regressive.
They would also be forced to tell you (like they should have in the first place) that not only do practically all Americans pay taxes, but that when the total of all taxes actually paid across all income quintiles is taken into account, all quintiles pay close to the same percentage of their income in taxes.
Bet you never heard that on Fox News. And if you did, I bet it didn't register.
I'll show you the proof in an upcoming post.
I've described their Master Scam: the "Starve The Beast" strategy.
In the following posts I will give some recent examples of Republiconsevative Double Talk before I expose the horseshit that comprises the narrative they've been using since George W Bush put the finishing touches on the Starve the Beast plan.
That narrative goes like this:
Wasteful, out of control government spending on entitlement programs is the cause of the current fiscal crisis.
No political issue provokes more Republicon sleight-of-speak than the topic of taxes; who pays them, who doesn't and how much those who do pay taxes, actually pay.
If you're a right-wing talk show host you and your conservative guests can routinely get away with saying things like "the top 1% pay 50% of all the taxes in this country!" or "the top 10% pay 90% of all taxes!" or "50% of Americans pay no taxes whatsoever!"
That's because those hosts and their guests are not held to any standard "whatsoever."
Serious economists, though, are usually held to a very high standard. Saying something completely false, like the statements above, would seriously harm that person's reputation and credibility.
But if you're a real actual practicing economist with real actual degrees who actually publishes papers, and actually helped to make policy in previous administrations -- you can come really, really close to saying stuff like that... if you're being interviewed by an obliging host on the Fox Business News channel.
I transcribed this from an April 3rd show I recorded:
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, economist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, when asked about Obama's "Buffet Rule" which would make sure that millionaires pay at least 30% (the same rate that people earning much less pay) on taxable income over one million dollars:
"The top 1% of income earners already pay 38% of all taxes.
The top 10% pay 70% of all taxes.
The top half of all income earners pay 98% of all taxes."
The Fox host responds:
"So..."
It is only at this point that Furchgott-Roth adds:
"This is federal income tax."
The host continues:
"...so we should focus more on spending than income and taxes."
Notice how the host was perfectly willing to let that blatantly false statement stand.
And even though Furchgott did add the "oh, by the way" at the very end, she said:
"the top % pay all the taxes" three fucking times before that.
What percentage of Fox viewers do you think registered the fact that she was only talking about federal income taxes?
I'll bet you it's the same as the percentage of Americans who pay "no taxes whatsoever."
Oh, by the way, practically all Americans pay taxes.
So that would mean practically no Fox viewers would have registered that fact.
I say that because practically all the Fox hosts, like Sean Hannity, constantly repeat that "50% don't pay any tax" bullshit, ad nauseam, in order to get their audience really angry, causing the objective part of their brain to shut down so that they will be willing to believe whatever those hosts want them to believe.
So... by the time Furchgott got to her "by the way," the steam emanating from the audience's ears effectively blocked their hearing.
Also notice that Furchgott seemed to be saying that because some millionaires pay an average top effective tax rate of almost 30%, it's perfectly fine for others to be paying much less or nothing at all.
So... it's OK for millionaires to freeload but not those mooching poor and lower middle class (who are sometimes actually paying a higher % than those millionaire freeloaders)
And neither the host nor Furchgott wanted to give their audience a clearer, more "fair and balanced" explanation of who does and doesn't pay taxes and how much is actually paid. That's because if they did they would be forced to tell you that individual federal income taxes make up only 42% of all taxes paid to the federal government. And that doesn't consider state and local taxes, which are regressive.
They would also be forced to tell you (like they should have in the first place) that not only do practically all Americans pay taxes, but that when the total of all taxes actually paid across all income quintiles is taken into account, all quintiles pay close to the same percentage of their income in taxes.
Bet you never heard that on Fox News. And if you did, I bet it didn't register.
I'll show you the proof in an upcoming post.
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