Ed,
I just realized who I got Jonathan Chait confused with, another great thinker, Jonathan Haidt, the psychologist.
You just recently sent me something about him:
"1. People are not swayed by facts, but by appeals to their values and emotions (see
‘The Righteous Mind,’ by Jonathan Haidt - NYTimes.com "
Did you see that recent interview of him by Bill Moyers where he discussed that book? It was brilliant. I was very excited about this book because this is a topic that I have been thinking about deeply for decades.(the different ways, between conservatives and liberals, of thinking and seeing the world.)
I don't know if you remember, but when we had those MoveOn meetings years ago with Bill Rettig in Floral Park, I was always suggesting that we get together separately just to discuss politics. I said that that topic, the difference between the way cons and libs think, was something I'd like to talk about. Bill and I actually did get together a few times.
Anyway, over the years, I've been developing a hypothesis that I, tongue in cheek, call "The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of Human Nature". Every time someone like Haidt comes along in the media ( George Lakoff is another example) and presents evidence that supports my hypothesis, I become really excited because this mounting evidence is helping to build my hypothesis into a genuine theory. I jokingly fret that I had better publish my results before someone else beats me to it.
Haidt makes some fascinating observations, many of which, I am proud to say, that I have made myself, many years ago. He also does something great; he lists 6 moral concerns and then rates how strongly cons and libs feel about each one. This is a great way of defining and describing what and how cons and libs feel and think, and the differences and similarities between them.
What I love about my theory is that it goes beyond defining and desrcibing to explaining why cons and libs feel and think the way they do. It also explains emotions, what they are and why we have them. It explains our feelings of right and wrong and where that comes from. It explains extreme libertarianism and totalitarian communism and how these are the two extreme opposite ends of conservatism and liberalism. It also explains the paradoxes of this idea (why does libertarianism appear to be liberal on defense and social issues? why does totalitarian communism appear to be conservative in its authoritarianism and control). It explains why cons will take the "individual liberty" position on some issues yet the "government control" position on others and why libs will usually take the opposite positions on those issues.
I believe that my theory can be the foundation of a balanced moral philosophy, one that I have arrived at intuitively in my lifetime and to which I credit my upbringing, my environment and my personality.
So how does that grab you, Ed?
Joe Barton
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Saturday, March 3, 2012
If She's a Slut, What Does That Make You, Limbag?
"What does it say about the college co-ed [Sandra] Fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. [. . .]
If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."- Rush Limbaugh
What does it say about the right-wing radio host Rush Limbag who goes before a national audience and essentially says that, if he's going to be paying money, he must be able to watch college-age women have sex.
And if he's going to be sitting in front of his computer watching women young enough to be his granddaughters having sex, what is he going to be doing with himself? Specifically, I'm wondering, assuming he's right-handed, what is he going to be doing with that right hand?
And if he's going to be doing what we think he's going to be doing, what does that make him? It makes him a pervert, right? It makes him a degenerate.
I have an idea about how to make the conservative dream of "abstinence only" a reality. And no one will have to pay a single dime for it.
If Limbag wants to force young women to post sex videos online for him to masturbate to, we want him to post the video, of him masturbating, online so that any woman who might be tempted to have pre-marital sex can watch it.
The libido destroying effects of such an action would serve as a fool-proof method of birth control by preventing the so called "slut" from experiencing any pleasure whatsoever from sexual activity.
All she would need is a puke-pail to catch the vomit.
I think that this would work a lot better than an aspirin between the knees, plus it would be cheaper, too. Aspirins cost money.
If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."- Rush Limbaugh
What does it say about the right-wing radio host Rush Limbag who goes before a national audience and essentially says that, if he's going to be paying money, he must be able to watch college-age women have sex.
And if he's going to be sitting in front of his computer watching women young enough to be his granddaughters having sex, what is he going to be doing with himself? Specifically, I'm wondering, assuming he's right-handed, what is he going to be doing with that right hand?
And if he's going to be doing what we think he's going to be doing, what does that make him? It makes him a pervert, right? It makes him a degenerate.
I have an idea about how to make the conservative dream of "abstinence only" a reality. And no one will have to pay a single dime for it.
If Limbag wants to force young women to post sex videos online for him to masturbate to, we want him to post the video, of him masturbating, online so that any woman who might be tempted to have pre-marital sex can watch it.
The libido destroying effects of such an action would serve as a fool-proof method of birth control by preventing the so called "slut" from experiencing any pleasure whatsoever from sexual activity.
All she would need is a puke-pail to catch the vomit.
I think that this would work a lot better than an aspirin between the knees, plus it would be cheaper, too. Aspirins cost money.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Right-Wing Republican Rhetoric
"Barack Obama has systematically, in every single way, tried to destroy the very foundational elements of our country..." Rick Santorum in a speech in Plano, Tex. Wednesday night.
"How does a nation that's blessed by an extraordinary supply of American exceptionalism submit inch by creeping inch to the totalitarian state that is descending upon us? How do we submit to something called Obamacare?" Rep Steve King in a speech at CPAC convention.
What I'd like to know is, how do Republican politicians get away with saying things that are so delusional that, under any other circumstance, in any other sphere of society, would brand someone as a deranged crackpot?
Would you trust a lawyer or a doctor, or even an auto-mechanic if they appeared as unhinged as these mainstream Republican politicians?
Can you imagine if your doctor advised you to buy your drugs on the black market because the FDA's regulation of prescription medicine was an assault on your liberty? Or if your mechanic insisted that you let him disable your air bags so as to thwart government control of private industry? How long do you think a person like that would last in his or her profession?
But in the alternative universe of far-right conservatism, the nuttier the rhetoric, the more successful and popular the politician.
Merriam-Webster definition of DELUSION:
"b : a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary; also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs "
Over the years, Rep. King has proven himself to be a jerk-off of the first order. He can be credited with enough asinine and imbecilic statements to fill a book. He is also a perfect illustration of just how delusional these right-wingers are.
His CPAC speech included a rant on one of the conservatives' favorite fairy tales:
The government has banned
incandescent light bulbs!
This treacherous act of oppression is routinely used as just the latest example of Obama's evil plan to destroy the Constitution and rob us of our freedoms.
King went so far as to liken Capital Hill janitors to "Stasi troops" (the East German communist secret police) for their complicity in the Democrats' plan to abolish freedom by banning incandescent light bulbs.
Just for the record, the U.S. Congress passed energy legislation in 2007 by broad bipartisan majorities. President George W. Bush signed it into law. The legislation did not ban incandescent light bulbs. It set new efficiency standards for general purpose lighting. The law requires that new light bulbs be 28 percent more efficient than previous conventional bulbs, which wasted 90 percent of their energy throwing off heat.
The new standard only applies to new bulbs being manufactured, not the old ones.
You won't get sent to a concentration camp if you continue to use the older bulbs.
According to a letter to the editor of the Pierce County Herald,
"Philips, GE and Sylvania have already beat the law’s deadline and have introduced incandescent products that meet the law’s requirements. The new bulbs have that familiar light bulb shape and deliver the same amount of light and produce the same warm coloring."
Having the "Stasi troops" install them in Capital buildings was intended to save money, thus cutting the cost of government, something I can recall hearing conservatives rage about at least once or twice.
Last night I heard a tirade by Santorum where he said that of all the countless acts of anti-American/anti-freedomism that Obama has committed against us, Obamacare is the worst.
Both Santorum's and King's ability, which they share with many of their fellow conservatives, to completely ignore, or to be totally unaware of, certain important facts, is truly astonishing.
These facts, in turn, have an astonishing ability to make these far-righters look like, to borrow an adjective from Mitt Romney, "severe" assholes.
King wants to know how this nation could submit to the totalitarian state of Obamacare.
Well Steve, you see, we have this thing called Congress, whose members are elected by us, the voters, in order to represent our interests.
But just because you're a Congressman doesn't mean you'd know anything about that.
Well, after a long period of debate and deliberation, a majority of those members, in both the House and Senate, voted to pass the legislation that you call "Obamacare".
Then the President, who was also elected to office (by a 53% majority of the popular vote) and campaigned on the issue of healthcare reform, signed the legislation into law.
These powers are given to the President and our representatives by the Constitution, which was written by the Founders of our nation.
So Steve, I guess you can blame the Founding Fathers for our nation's submission to totalitarianism.
Ironic, isn't it?
Here's another bit of irony for you, Steve.
During that healthcare reform debate the majority party (the Dems) wanted to introduce a Public Option.
All the polls had a large majority of Americans in favor of it.
However, the minority Republicans vowed to filibuster.
The Dems would have had a filibuster-proof majority except for a couple of dickhead Dems who refused to go along.
So the Dems gave up and decided to settle for a piece of garbage (a wasteful taxpayer subsidy to a seriously flawed private health insurance system) that is based on a plan devised by the Heritage Foundation, a longstanding bastion of Conservatism.
That's right, Obamacare is the brainchild of Conservatism.
This plan, including the individual mandate, was used by Republicans in the 90's as a counter to Hillarycare.
It was endorsed by numerous conservatives including Gingrich.
And of course Romney adopted it for Massachusetts.
Read this great online article from Forbes.com for all the delicious details. It includes an hysterical exchange between Romney and Gingrich during one of the debates, it's a hoot:
Click here: How the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative Think Tank, Promoted the Individual Mandate - Forbes
So anyway, let's recap:
A minority of representatives, the Republicans, decided to thwart the will of the majority of Americans, thereby, unintentionally, causing the Dems to pass a conservative healthcare plan, that the Republicans now decry as unconstitutional and the worst act of totalitarian oppression committed so far during the Obama administration.
Give me a moment while I see if I can formulate the right question.
OK, i think I got it.
Would it be correct to say that, according to what modern mainstream Republicans say they believe, not only were the Founding Fathers total failures, but The Heritage Foundation is responsible for destroying the very foundational elements of our country?
Wow!
"How does a nation that's blessed by an extraordinary supply of American exceptionalism submit inch by creeping inch to the totalitarian state that is descending upon us? How do we submit to something called Obamacare?" Rep Steve King in a speech at CPAC convention.
What I'd like to know is, how do Republican politicians get away with saying things that are so delusional that, under any other circumstance, in any other sphere of society, would brand someone as a deranged crackpot?
Would you trust a lawyer or a doctor, or even an auto-mechanic if they appeared as unhinged as these mainstream Republican politicians?
Can you imagine if your doctor advised you to buy your drugs on the black market because the FDA's regulation of prescription medicine was an assault on your liberty? Or if your mechanic insisted that you let him disable your air bags so as to thwart government control of private industry? How long do you think a person like that would last in his or her profession?
But in the alternative universe of far-right conservatism, the nuttier the rhetoric, the more successful and popular the politician.
Merriam-Webster definition of DELUSION:
"b : a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary; also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs "
Over the years, Rep. King has proven himself to be a jerk-off of the first order. He can be credited with enough asinine and imbecilic statements to fill a book. He is also a perfect illustration of just how delusional these right-wingers are.
His CPAC speech included a rant on one of the conservatives' favorite fairy tales:
The government has banned
incandescent light bulbs!
This treacherous act of oppression is routinely used as just the latest example of Obama's evil plan to destroy the Constitution and rob us of our freedoms.
King went so far as to liken Capital Hill janitors to "Stasi troops" (the East German communist secret police) for their complicity in the Democrats' plan to abolish freedom by banning incandescent light bulbs.
Just for the record, the U.S. Congress passed energy legislation in 2007 by broad bipartisan majorities. President George W. Bush signed it into law. The legislation did not ban incandescent light bulbs. It set new efficiency standards for general purpose lighting. The law requires that new light bulbs be 28 percent more efficient than previous conventional bulbs, which wasted 90 percent of their energy throwing off heat.
The new standard only applies to new bulbs being manufactured, not the old ones.
You won't get sent to a concentration camp if you continue to use the older bulbs.
According to a letter to the editor of the Pierce County Herald,
"Philips, GE and Sylvania have already beat the law’s deadline and have introduced incandescent products that meet the law’s requirements. The new bulbs have that familiar light bulb shape and deliver the same amount of light and produce the same warm coloring."
Having the "Stasi troops" install them in Capital buildings was intended to save money, thus cutting the cost of government, something I can recall hearing conservatives rage about at least once or twice.
Last night I heard a tirade by Santorum where he said that of all the countless acts of anti-American/anti-freedomism that Obama has committed against us, Obamacare is the worst.
Both Santorum's and King's ability, which they share with many of their fellow conservatives, to completely ignore, or to be totally unaware of, certain important facts, is truly astonishing.
These facts, in turn, have an astonishing ability to make these far-righters look like, to borrow an adjective from Mitt Romney, "severe" assholes.
King wants to know how this nation could submit to the totalitarian state of Obamacare.
Well Steve, you see, we have this thing called Congress, whose members are elected by us, the voters, in order to represent our interests.
But just because you're a Congressman doesn't mean you'd know anything about that.
Well, after a long period of debate and deliberation, a majority of those members, in both the House and Senate, voted to pass the legislation that you call "Obamacare".
Then the President, who was also elected to office (by a 53% majority of the popular vote) and campaigned on the issue of healthcare reform, signed the legislation into law.
These powers are given to the President and our representatives by the Constitution, which was written by the Founders of our nation.
So Steve, I guess you can blame the Founding Fathers for our nation's submission to totalitarianism.
Ironic, isn't it?
Here's another bit of irony for you, Steve.
During that healthcare reform debate the majority party (the Dems) wanted to introduce a Public Option.
All the polls had a large majority of Americans in favor of it.
However, the minority Republicans vowed to filibuster.
The Dems would have had a filibuster-proof majority except for a couple of dickhead Dems who refused to go along.
So the Dems gave up and decided to settle for a piece of garbage (a wasteful taxpayer subsidy to a seriously flawed private health insurance system) that is based on a plan devised by the Heritage Foundation, a longstanding bastion of Conservatism.
That's right, Obamacare is the brainchild of Conservatism.
This plan, including the individual mandate, was used by Republicans in the 90's as a counter to Hillarycare.
It was endorsed by numerous conservatives including Gingrich.
And of course Romney adopted it for Massachusetts.
Read this great online article from Forbes.com for all the delicious details. It includes an hysterical exchange between Romney and Gingrich during one of the debates, it's a hoot:
Click here: How the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative Think Tank, Promoted the Individual Mandate - Forbes
So anyway, let's recap:
A minority of representatives, the Republicans, decided to thwart the will of the majority of Americans, thereby, unintentionally, causing the Dems to pass a conservative healthcare plan, that the Republicans now decry as unconstitutional and the worst act of totalitarian oppression committed so far during the Obama administration.
Give me a moment while I see if I can formulate the right question.
OK, i think I got it.
Would it be correct to say that, according to what modern mainstream Republicans say they believe, not only were the Founding Fathers total failures, but The Heritage Foundation is responsible for destroying the very foundational elements of our country?
Wow!
Monday, January 30, 2012
Who In The World Is Saul Alinsky?
Politicians who run in Republican primaries have learned that the key to success is mastering the art of sounding like a right-wing radio host.
A legion of hard-right talkers have saturated every square inch of the airwaves throughout the country and every place overseas where our troops are stationed.
The propaganda they spew is designed to damage the image of liberals, their beliefs and causes, and the government institutions and programs that implement their version of a civilized society.
Do you know what you get when you give a greedy and bigoted minded person a profit motive, three hours a day and a platform to launch his/her bigotry?
You get people like Rush Limbag, Sean Hannity, vile hate-mongers like Michael Savage and Mark Levin, and the increasingly irrelevant Glenn Beck.
Do you know what else you get?
A bigoted minded audience.
From Merriam-Webster:
Definition of bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices
The right-wing talkers and Fox News have groomed this audience perfectly for Republican politicians to manipulate. They will believe just about any kind of bullshit as long as it feeds their hunger for vitriol, liberal-bashing and Republican style class warfare (denigrating the poor and union workers).
Factual accuracy doesn't matter.
Neither do contradictions, hypocrisies or logical fallacies.
What does matter is knowing the phrases, buzzwords and talking points that are repeated endlessly throughout the right-wing media world.
So who is the master of mastering the art of sounding like a right-wing radio host?
They all know the lines and phrases that will elicit and inflame emotions.
Even Romney, the former moderate, can't string two sentences together without stuffing "European welfare state" and ‘‘government takes from some to give to others’’ in there.
But no one does it better than Newt Gingrich.
There is something special about Newt. His personality is perfectly suited for this kind of pandering.
Belligerent, arrogant, condescending and completely impervious to any sense of shame or embarrassment.
Not only does right-wing bile and Newt's personality mesh perfectly together, but he has been a regular on Fox News for years.
Fox News is the West Point of right-wing politics - an elite training academy in the use of anti-liberal slurs and slanders. Where else would you learn to associate Barack Hussein Obama with the name Saul Alinsky?
Who the hell is Saul Alinsky?
Whenever Fox News wants to convince its audience that Obama is a dangerous left-wing radical who hates America, they'll bring up the names Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky.
Because they haven't been able to point to anything that Obama has said or done himself to prove this allegation, Fox resorts to one of its favorite tricks of the trade: the "guilt by association fallacy".
From Wikipedia:
"An association fallacy is an inductive informal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association. The two types are sometimes referred to as guilt by association and honor by association. Association fallacies are a special case of red herring, and can be based on an appeal to emotion."
Now, Obama's association with Rev. Wright cannot be considered irrelevant because Wright was Obama's pastor for years and Obama praised him in a book he wrote. But, again, Fox hasn't shown anything that Obama himself has said that is racist or America-hating (the two charges they make against Wright).
However, Obama's association with Ayers is totally irrelevant to the charges made about Ayers (former terrorist [?] who used explosives to bomb property in the early seventies).
Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group which included prominent conservative Republicans and was funded by a conservative foundation (Annenberg).
Wait a minute, hold on there, Obama associated with prominent conservative Republicans?
And he worked on a board funded by a conservative foundation?
Now that I think about it, Obama has a long history of associating with conservatives.
Obama, in fact, as editor of The Harvard Law Review, "used some of his appointment power to place conservatives in key editorial positions on the Review. He asserted that each viewpoint deserved a fair hearing" [David Mendell, in Obama: From Promise to Power (2007)]
He appointed conservatives like Dennis Ross and Jon Huntsman as diplomats and ambassadors.
And I saw him paling around with John Boehner on a golf course!
I always knew Obama was a Nazi!
Ayers, by the way, had been a law abiding citizen for decades when Obama first met him.
Ayers was so law abiding, as a matter of fact, that in 1997 Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his work on a school reform project.
In Oct. of '08, William C. Ibershof, the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s, wrote a letter to the Editor at the NY Times in which he said:
" I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.
"Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.
"Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago."
You'd think that with all the time and effort Fox News spent researching and reporting on this "important story", they would have eventually come to the same conclusion.
But then Fox hosts like Sean Hannity would not have been able to use the words "terrorist" and "Obama" in the same sentence over and over and over again for months and months, even to this day.
Although hardly anyone in the rest of the world has heard of Saul Alinsky, anyone who has watched Fox News for any appreciable length of time, as I have, cannot have avoided hearing that name. Glenn Beck in particular loved to sprinkle that name around along with a book Alinsky wrote called "Rules for Radicals".
One of the many amazing things about Fox is their ability to create a seemingly clear image of someone or something despite presenting very little detail about the subject.
Well, you see, the more vague you are about a subject, the easier it is to manipulate that image.
Let me describe the image I got from Fox about Alinsky:
Alinsky, who died in 1972, was a sinister, anti-American America-hater whose goal was to overthrow our American way of life and replace it with a Marxist model that redistributes all the wealth to the poor.
His "Rules for Radicals" was a manifesto intended to groom agents like Obama and teach them how to infiltrate positions of power.
As often is the case with Fox's depictions, a little research reveals a starkly different reality, and in the case of Alinsky, one that appears to be much closer to the exact opposite of what Fox wants you to believe.
I came across a brilliant article online for The Atlantic by Andy Horowitz, a Ph.D. candidate in American History at Yale. This article appears to be much more honest, and certainly much more detailed, than Newt's, Beck's and Fox's hogwash. I strongly recommend it:
Click here: Saul Alinsky: A True American Exceptionalist - Andy Horowitz - Politics - The Atlantic
After reading this and other articles about Alinsky, I began to understand that he had more in common with Thomas Paine than Mao Zedong. What an irony it is that conservatives should miscast this great American hero while they unwittingly use the very tactics he outlined in his "Rules for Radicals" (only for the opposite ends -- empowering the wealthy elites rather than the poor and middle class.)
In my next post I will offer that scrutiny of right-wing campaign rhetoric -- that I promised in my last post -- by entering the mind of Gingrich:
Janitors, Food Stamps and Redistribution of Wealth.
A legion of hard-right talkers have saturated every square inch of the airwaves throughout the country and every place overseas where our troops are stationed.
The propaganda they spew is designed to damage the image of liberals, their beliefs and causes, and the government institutions and programs that implement their version of a civilized society.
Do you know what you get when you give a greedy and bigoted minded person a profit motive, three hours a day and a platform to launch his/her bigotry?
You get people like Rush Limbag, Sean Hannity, vile hate-mongers like Michael Savage and Mark Levin, and the increasingly irrelevant Glenn Beck.
Do you know what else you get?
A bigoted minded audience.
From Merriam-Webster:
Definition of bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices
The right-wing talkers and Fox News have groomed this audience perfectly for Republican politicians to manipulate. They will believe just about any kind of bullshit as long as it feeds their hunger for vitriol, liberal-bashing and Republican style class warfare (denigrating the poor and union workers).
Factual accuracy doesn't matter.
Neither do contradictions, hypocrisies or logical fallacies.
What does matter is knowing the phrases, buzzwords and talking points that are repeated endlessly throughout the right-wing media world.
So who is the master of mastering the art of sounding like a right-wing radio host?
They all know the lines and phrases that will elicit and inflame emotions.
Even Romney, the former moderate, can't string two sentences together without stuffing "European welfare state" and ‘‘government takes from some to give to others’’ in there.
But no one does it better than Newt Gingrich.
There is something special about Newt. His personality is perfectly suited for this kind of pandering.
Belligerent, arrogant, condescending and completely impervious to any sense of shame or embarrassment.
Not only does right-wing bile and Newt's personality mesh perfectly together, but he has been a regular on Fox News for years.
Fox News is the West Point of right-wing politics - an elite training academy in the use of anti-liberal slurs and slanders. Where else would you learn to associate Barack Hussein Obama with the name Saul Alinsky?
Who the hell is Saul Alinsky?
Whenever Fox News wants to convince its audience that Obama is a dangerous left-wing radical who hates America, they'll bring up the names Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky.
Because they haven't been able to point to anything that Obama has said or done himself to prove this allegation, Fox resorts to one of its favorite tricks of the trade: the "guilt by association fallacy".
From Wikipedia:
"An association fallacy is an inductive informal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association. The two types are sometimes referred to as guilt by association and honor by association. Association fallacies are a special case of red herring, and can be based on an appeal to emotion."
Now, Obama's association with Rev. Wright cannot be considered irrelevant because Wright was Obama's pastor for years and Obama praised him in a book he wrote. But, again, Fox hasn't shown anything that Obama himself has said that is racist or America-hating (the two charges they make against Wright).
However, Obama's association with Ayers is totally irrelevant to the charges made about Ayers (former terrorist [?] who used explosives to bomb property in the early seventies).
Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group which included prominent conservative Republicans and was funded by a conservative foundation (Annenberg).
Wait a minute, hold on there, Obama associated with prominent conservative Republicans?
And he worked on a board funded by a conservative foundation?
Now that I think about it, Obama has a long history of associating with conservatives.
Obama, in fact, as editor of The Harvard Law Review, "used some of his appointment power to place conservatives in key editorial positions on the Review. He asserted that each viewpoint deserved a fair hearing" [David Mendell, in Obama: From Promise to Power (2007)]
He appointed conservatives like Dennis Ross and Jon Huntsman as diplomats and ambassadors.
And I saw him paling around with John Boehner on a golf course!
I always knew Obama was a Nazi!
Ayers, by the way, had been a law abiding citizen for decades when Obama first met him.
Ayers was so law abiding, as a matter of fact, that in 1997 Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his work on a school reform project.
In Oct. of '08, William C. Ibershof, the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s, wrote a letter to the Editor at the NY Times in which he said:
" I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.
"Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.
"Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago."
You'd think that with all the time and effort Fox News spent researching and reporting on this "important story", they would have eventually come to the same conclusion.
But then Fox hosts like Sean Hannity would not have been able to use the words "terrorist" and "Obama" in the same sentence over and over and over again for months and months, even to this day.
Although hardly anyone in the rest of the world has heard of Saul Alinsky, anyone who has watched Fox News for any appreciable length of time, as I have, cannot have avoided hearing that name. Glenn Beck in particular loved to sprinkle that name around along with a book Alinsky wrote called "Rules for Radicals".
One of the many amazing things about Fox is their ability to create a seemingly clear image of someone or something despite presenting very little detail about the subject.
Well, you see, the more vague you are about a subject, the easier it is to manipulate that image.
Let me describe the image I got from Fox about Alinsky:
Alinsky, who died in 1972, was a sinister, anti-American America-hater whose goal was to overthrow our American way of life and replace it with a Marxist model that redistributes all the wealth to the poor.
His "Rules for Radicals" was a manifesto intended to groom agents like Obama and teach them how to infiltrate positions of power.
As often is the case with Fox's depictions, a little research reveals a starkly different reality, and in the case of Alinsky, one that appears to be much closer to the exact opposite of what Fox wants you to believe.
I came across a brilliant article online for The Atlantic by Andy Horowitz, a Ph.D. candidate in American History at Yale. This article appears to be much more honest, and certainly much more detailed, than Newt's, Beck's and Fox's hogwash. I strongly recommend it:
Click here: Saul Alinsky: A True American Exceptionalist - Andy Horowitz - Politics - The Atlantic
After reading this and other articles about Alinsky, I began to understand that he had more in common with Thomas Paine than Mao Zedong. What an irony it is that conservatives should miscast this great American hero while they unwittingly use the very tactics he outlined in his "Rules for Radicals" (only for the opposite ends -- empowering the wealthy elites rather than the poor and middle class.)
In my next post I will offer that scrutiny of right-wing campaign rhetoric -- that I promised in my last post -- by entering the mind of Gingrich:
Janitors, Food Stamps and Redistribution of Wealth.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Santorum: "That's Latin for Asshole"
I heard someone say recently that the Republican primary field is like Baskin-Robbins, there are so many great options to chose from that it's difficult to pick just one. I couldn't tell if the person was being ironic or not, but if these primaries were a contest to choose the stupidest, most obnoxious and backward thinking moron in the country, it would indeed be too close to call. As a matter of fact, the only candidates who could be eliminated from contention would be Jon Huntsman, the only reasonable one, and Ron Paul, a creep of a completely different stripe.
Rick Santorum's recent bid to be the latest flavor of the month has given him the media spotlight during the Iowa caucuses.
His post-caucus speech was so nauseating that it moved me to write this blog post. Before doing so I wanted to "bone up" on Rick by going to my computer and accessing that "series of tubes" known as "the interwebs".
We all know about Rick's "google problem" and of course I encountered the notorious search result during my investigations. I used to think that that google bomb was too mean spirited and that the gay community should "think about the children," "hate the sin but not the sinner" and be more tolerant of Rick's intolerance. But after getting a dose of his relentless obsession with homosexuality and his non-stop campaign to treat it like a contagious disease, I'm not so sure that he's not just receiving, as the free market worshipers would say, "the fruits of his labors".
As Jeffrey St. Clair, a writer for the political newsletter "CounterPunch", wrote:
"Like most religious zealots, Santorum is obsessed not just with homosexuals but with visualizing the postures and physical mechanics of homosexual love."
In honor of Rick Santorum’s sudden emergence in the Iowa caucuses "as the anti-Romney du jour", CounterPunch reprinted a 2003 profile by St. Clair of the "Pennsylvania zealot". It descibes his career in the United States senate, "where he was almost universally reviled as both stupid and mean by his colleagues and staff."
You might enjoy the first three paragraphs of St. Clair's article, as I did:
"Rick Santorum had only been in the senate for a few weeks when Bob Kerrey, then Senator from Nebraska, pegged him. 'Santorum, that’s Latin for asshole.' It was probably the funniest line the grim Kerrey ever uttered and it was on the mark, too.
"Such a stew of sleazy self-righteousness and audacious stupidity has not been seen in the senate since the days of Steve Symms, the celebrated moron from Idaho. In 1998, investigative reporter Ken Silverstein fingered Santorum as the dumbest member of congress in a story for The Progressive. Considering the competition, that’s an achievement of considerable distinction.
"Even Santorum’s staff knows the senator is a vacuous boob prone to outrageous gaffs and crude outbursts of unvarnished bigotry. For years, they kept him firmly leashed, rarely permitting him to attend a press interview without a senior staffer by his side. They learned the hard way. While in serving in the House, Santorum was asked by a reporter to explain why his record on environmental policy was so dreadful. Santorum replied by observing that the environment was of little consequence in God’s grand plan. 'Nowhere in the Bible does it say that America will be here 100 years from now.' The reference was to the Rapture, which apparently is impending."
I like this guy's style (St. Clair's, that is).
This article reminded me of when I first heard of Santorum. I remember Kerry's line and also hearing that Santorum is of Italian descent. I was a bit surprised because his name did not end in a vowel like almost all Italian surnames do. The ones that don't are often Latinized variants that are derived from base forms of Italian personal names and nicknames, or vice versa. (I own a copy of the Oxford "A Dictionary of Surnames")
I got this from Italyworldclub.com's Origin and Etymology of Italian surnames:
"SANTORUM: From the medieval first name Santoro, derived from the Latin word Sanctus = Saint, the genitive plural form is "Sanctorum", used also to indicate the All Saints feast. Possibly connected to someone acting as a saint, or who has connection with religious things (a sacristan)"
If Santorum is acting as a saint, he ain't acting like any saint I ever heard of. Saints are New Testament creations and have a liberal sensibility. Santorum, like other religious conservatives of his ilk, has an Old Testament sensibility and has learned to filter out the lessons of the New Testament.
This dude is the antithesis of, say, Saint Francis of Assisi, who was born not too far from where Santorum's father came from in Northern Italy.
St. Francis was born into wealth but, after seeing the hardships and misery that befell the poor, was moved to give up his riches and devote his life to helping the poor.
Santorum sees the poor as having it too easy and, after getting voted out of office in 2006, was moved to trade on his political connections and devote his life to helping himself get rich.
Anyway, his post Iowa speech was filled with the kind of rhetoric that the ultra-conservative Republican base just can't seem to get enough of. Like Pavlov's dogs, they are conditioned to drool at the sound of any right-wing blowhard who talks about food stamps, European welfare states or the government giving the poor "other people's money".
In my next post I will give this rhetoric the scrutiny it deserves.
Rick Santorum's recent bid to be the latest flavor of the month has given him the media spotlight during the Iowa caucuses.
His post-caucus speech was so nauseating that it moved me to write this blog post. Before doing so I wanted to "bone up" on Rick by going to my computer and accessing that "series of tubes" known as "the interwebs".
We all know about Rick's "google problem" and of course I encountered the notorious search result during my investigations. I used to think that that google bomb was too mean spirited and that the gay community should "think about the children," "hate the sin but not the sinner" and be more tolerant of Rick's intolerance. But after getting a dose of his relentless obsession with homosexuality and his non-stop campaign to treat it like a contagious disease, I'm not so sure that he's not just receiving, as the free market worshipers would say, "the fruits of his labors".
As Jeffrey St. Clair, a writer for the political newsletter "CounterPunch", wrote:
"Like most religious zealots, Santorum is obsessed not just with homosexuals but with visualizing the postures and physical mechanics of homosexual love."
In honor of Rick Santorum’s sudden emergence in the Iowa caucuses "as the anti-Romney du jour", CounterPunch reprinted a 2003 profile by St. Clair of the "Pennsylvania zealot". It descibes his career in the United States senate, "where he was almost universally reviled as both stupid and mean by his colleagues and staff."
You might enjoy the first three paragraphs of St. Clair's article, as I did:
"Rick Santorum had only been in the senate for a few weeks when Bob Kerrey, then Senator from Nebraska, pegged him. 'Santorum, that’s Latin for asshole.' It was probably the funniest line the grim Kerrey ever uttered and it was on the mark, too.
"Such a stew of sleazy self-righteousness and audacious stupidity has not been seen in the senate since the days of Steve Symms, the celebrated moron from Idaho. In 1998, investigative reporter Ken Silverstein fingered Santorum as the dumbest member of congress in a story for The Progressive. Considering the competition, that’s an achievement of considerable distinction.
"Even Santorum’s staff knows the senator is a vacuous boob prone to outrageous gaffs and crude outbursts of unvarnished bigotry. For years, they kept him firmly leashed, rarely permitting him to attend a press interview without a senior staffer by his side. They learned the hard way. While in serving in the House, Santorum was asked by a reporter to explain why his record on environmental policy was so dreadful. Santorum replied by observing that the environment was of little consequence in God’s grand plan. 'Nowhere in the Bible does it say that America will be here 100 years from now.' The reference was to the Rapture, which apparently is impending."
I like this guy's style (St. Clair's, that is).
This article reminded me of when I first heard of Santorum. I remember Kerry's line and also hearing that Santorum is of Italian descent. I was a bit surprised because his name did not end in a vowel like almost all Italian surnames do. The ones that don't are often Latinized variants that are derived from base forms of Italian personal names and nicknames, or vice versa. (I own a copy of the Oxford "A Dictionary of Surnames")
I got this from Italyworldclub.com's Origin and Etymology of Italian surnames:
"SANTORUM: From the medieval first name Santoro, derived from the Latin word Sanctus = Saint, the genitive plural form is "Sanctorum", used also to indicate the All Saints feast. Possibly connected to someone acting as a saint, or who has connection with religious things (a sacristan)"
If Santorum is acting as a saint, he ain't acting like any saint I ever heard of. Saints are New Testament creations and have a liberal sensibility. Santorum, like other religious conservatives of his ilk, has an Old Testament sensibility and has learned to filter out the lessons of the New Testament.
This dude is the antithesis of, say, Saint Francis of Assisi, who was born not too far from where Santorum's father came from in Northern Italy.
St. Francis was born into wealth but, after seeing the hardships and misery that befell the poor, was moved to give up his riches and devote his life to helping the poor.
Santorum sees the poor as having it too easy and, after getting voted out of office in 2006, was moved to trade on his political connections and devote his life to helping himself get rich.
Anyway, his post Iowa speech was filled with the kind of rhetoric that the ultra-conservative Republican base just can't seem to get enough of. Like Pavlov's dogs, they are conditioned to drool at the sound of any right-wing blowhard who talks about food stamps, European welfare states or the government giving the poor "other people's money".
In my next post I will give this rhetoric the scrutiny it deserves.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The Payroll Tax Extension
The following is an email reply to a fellow MoveOn member concerning the recent last minute Christmas compromise on the payroll tax extension:
Dave,
One-upmanship (cool word) is exactly the game being played.
It seems that everyone thinks that the Dems won this round, including the right.
This was no victory.This deal was awful for the Dems.
I think that this is as bad as the deal they made last year to extend the deficit-causing Bush tax cuts.
Remember that one?
The Dems wanted to extend them only for income under $250,000, plus they wanted to extend unemployment benefits, which was the right thing to do.
Letting the tax cuts expire on the wealthy, who were not investing because of lack of demand, would have helped pay for the extensions, thereby not adding to the deficit/debt, which the Republicons are always screaming about.
I take that back. They do make one exception. They never scream about the deficit/debt when they are fighting for tax cuts for the wealthy. It doesn't matter how big a hole that puts in the deficit because they will then use that gigantic hole as the excuse to cut government programs that help the non-wealthy.
That's what I call "Starve the Beast" economics.
If Obama and the Dems had held out, the Republicons ('cons for short) would have caved. Instead, the stupid and weak Dems caved. And who knows what effect those tax cut extensions are having on the economy other than growing the deficit/debt?
As far as extending unemployment benefits; the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that each $1 spent on unemployment benefits generates up to $1.90 in economic growth, making it the most effective policy for increasing growth among 11 options it analyzed in 2010.
This current farce is actually worse than that one if you consider the following:
*The Dems caved on something that was absolutely crucial;
a small increase in taxes on income over one million$ to pay for the payroll tax cuts so that we won't have to replace the lost revenue with revenue from the general fund, which will increase the deficit. You know, that deficit that the 'cons are using as the excuse to cut all social programs?
*The Dems wanted to double the size of the payroll cut in order to make it more effective. They caved on that too.
*They gave the 'cons the Keystone Pipeline vote, which Obama will have to decide. Which makes the double cave-ins doubly worse if he decides in favor.
Dave, you made a very important point, "it's completely misleading to call it a tax cut. It's not a tax cut, it's a tax holiday, meaning it's supposed to be temporary."
This is absolutely crucial.
I even fell into the trap of failing to use the term "tax holiday".
Obama and the Dems were going around accusing the 'cons of "raising taxes on the poor and middle class", using the rhetoric of the "Starve the Beast" game plan.
That plan demonizes taxes in order to condition people into believing that raising taxes is always bad and cutting taxes is always good.
Obama and the Dems compound that error by talking about these payroll taxes as a burden, again using "Starve the Beast" rhetoric. The 'cons can use that against the Dems in the future. I already hear some of them saying "let's get rid of the payroll tax completely".
This is all bullshit. These taxes aren't a burden, they are what's keeping you from starving if you are lucky enough to live past the age to which the 'cons want to raise the Social Security minimum to.
Plus, the people paying these taxes are the ones who are working. They are the ones who are doing OK.
It's the people out of work who are struggling or suffering. They are the ones who need the social programs that the 'cons are desperately trying to destroy by increasing the deficit because they refuse to raise taxes on millionaires.
Rather than using the "Starve the Beast", "taxes are a burden" argument, they should be using the Keynesian "tax cuts as an economic stimulus" argument, emphasizing that they are temporary by calling it a tax "holiday".
The Republicons, however, don't like temporary tax cuts. They only like permanent tax cuts and, now that they are fully engaged in "class warfare", only for the rich. That's right, you've heard them complain that "fifty percent of Americans don't pay any taxes".
All of the Republicon candidates, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, want to raise taxes on those Americans. I actually agree with them. I think that all of the Bush tax cuts should expire (immediately on the top percents, eventually, when the economy is strong, on everyone else) because I don't want the deficit and debt to increase and because I want to fund programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
The 'cons just want to raise taxes on the lower classes, take away all of the social programs that help them and give the wealthy really big tax CUTS.
That's class warfare, Republicon style.
What the 'cons don't tell us about those people "who don't pay any taxes" is that they rounded that number up from forty six percent and that it is only Federal Income Taxes that aren't being paid. They don't tell us that these people pay sales, excise, property and a host of other taxes, including those payroll taxes, and that these taxes add up to over fifty percent of all taxes collected by the government.
And here is an even more interesting fact that the 'cons don't tell us: it was Reagan and Bush Jr. who took a lot of these people off the tax roles by lowering the tax rates and then increasing deductions and credits, as part of their "Starve the Beast" economic policy. They used the same rhetoric that the Dems are stupidly using, "relieving the burden of taxes on lower incomes". But they left out the part about blowing a hole in the deficit/debt so that they can take away social programs and leave everyone to the tender mercies of the "free market".
Read my pervious post on "Starve The Beast".
Dave,
One-upmanship (cool word) is exactly the game being played.
It seems that everyone thinks that the Dems won this round, including the right.
This was no victory.This deal was awful for the Dems.
I think that this is as bad as the deal they made last year to extend the deficit-causing Bush tax cuts.
Remember that one?
The Dems wanted to extend them only for income under $250,000, plus they wanted to extend unemployment benefits, which was the right thing to do.
Letting the tax cuts expire on the wealthy, who were not investing because of lack of demand, would have helped pay for the extensions, thereby not adding to the deficit/debt, which the Republicons are always screaming about.
I take that back. They do make one exception. They never scream about the deficit/debt when they are fighting for tax cuts for the wealthy. It doesn't matter how big a hole that puts in the deficit because they will then use that gigantic hole as the excuse to cut government programs that help the non-wealthy.
That's what I call "Starve the Beast" economics.
If Obama and the Dems had held out, the Republicons ('cons for short) would have caved. Instead, the stupid and weak Dems caved. And who knows what effect those tax cut extensions are having on the economy other than growing the deficit/debt?
As far as extending unemployment benefits; the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that each $1 spent on unemployment benefits generates up to $1.90 in economic growth, making it the most effective policy for increasing growth among 11 options it analyzed in 2010.
This current farce is actually worse than that one if you consider the following:
*The Dems caved on something that was absolutely crucial;
a small increase in taxes on income over one million$ to pay for the payroll tax cuts so that we won't have to replace the lost revenue with revenue from the general fund, which will increase the deficit. You know, that deficit that the 'cons are using as the excuse to cut all social programs?
*The Dems wanted to double the size of the payroll cut in order to make it more effective. They caved on that too.
*They gave the 'cons the Keystone Pipeline vote, which Obama will have to decide. Which makes the double cave-ins doubly worse if he decides in favor.
Dave, you made a very important point, "it's completely misleading to call it a tax cut. It's not a tax cut, it's a tax holiday, meaning it's supposed to be temporary."
This is absolutely crucial.
I even fell into the trap of failing to use the term "tax holiday".
Obama and the Dems were going around accusing the 'cons of "raising taxes on the poor and middle class", using the rhetoric of the "Starve the Beast" game plan.
That plan demonizes taxes in order to condition people into believing that raising taxes is always bad and cutting taxes is always good.
Obama and the Dems compound that error by talking about these payroll taxes as a burden, again using "Starve the Beast" rhetoric. The 'cons can use that against the Dems in the future. I already hear some of them saying "let's get rid of the payroll tax completely".
This is all bullshit. These taxes aren't a burden, they are what's keeping you from starving if you are lucky enough to live past the age to which the 'cons want to raise the Social Security minimum to.
Plus, the people paying these taxes are the ones who are working. They are the ones who are doing OK.
It's the people out of work who are struggling or suffering. They are the ones who need the social programs that the 'cons are desperately trying to destroy by increasing the deficit because they refuse to raise taxes on millionaires.
Rather than using the "Starve the Beast", "taxes are a burden" argument, they should be using the Keynesian "tax cuts as an economic stimulus" argument, emphasizing that they are temporary by calling it a tax "holiday".
The Republicons, however, don't like temporary tax cuts. They only like permanent tax cuts and, now that they are fully engaged in "class warfare", only for the rich. That's right, you've heard them complain that "fifty percent of Americans don't pay any taxes".
All of the Republicon candidates, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, want to raise taxes on those Americans. I actually agree with them. I think that all of the Bush tax cuts should expire (immediately on the top percents, eventually, when the economy is strong, on everyone else) because I don't want the deficit and debt to increase and because I want to fund programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
The 'cons just want to raise taxes on the lower classes, take away all of the social programs that help them and give the wealthy really big tax CUTS.
That's class warfare, Republicon style.
What the 'cons don't tell us about those people "who don't pay any taxes" is that they rounded that number up from forty six percent and that it is only Federal Income Taxes that aren't being paid. They don't tell us that these people pay sales, excise, property and a host of other taxes, including those payroll taxes, and that these taxes add up to over fifty percent of all taxes collected by the government.
And here is an even more interesting fact that the 'cons don't tell us: it was Reagan and Bush Jr. who took a lot of these people off the tax roles by lowering the tax rates and then increasing deductions and credits, as part of their "Starve the Beast" economic policy. They used the same rhetoric that the Dems are stupidly using, "relieving the burden of taxes on lower incomes". But they left out the part about blowing a hole in the deficit/debt so that they can take away social programs and leave everyone to the tender mercies of the "free market".
Read my pervious post on "Starve The Beast".
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Job Creators, Part II
Elizabeth Warren has been getting a lot of praise from the left for her remarks concerning the "class warfare" charges being made by conservatives against those who think that the top marginal tax rates should go back up.
It's about time someone on the left finally confronted the conservatives on this issue. Conservatives have been allowed to get away with saying all kinds of crap about the rich and taxes. The "class warfare" charge is a tactic designed to obfuscate the issue and tar Dems and libs as dirty fighters.
However, to my regret, Obama and others do make statements that make it easy to accuse them of using class warfare. By saying things like "the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes", it implies that the wealthy are responsible for writing the tax code. While it's true that some of them use their money to "persuade" politicians to give them all kinds of tax breaks and right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers are doing everything they can to reduce and eliminate taxes on the wealthy, ultimately it is the responsibility of Congress and the President to formulate the tax code. Besides, as we've seen, many wealthy people agree with a progressive tax code and think that in this time of dangerous mounting debt it's only fair and sensible for the wealthy to be paying more taxes. So the problem is tax policy not wealthy people.
So much of what the right says on this topic is truly outrageous but for now I will focus on what Ms. Warren had to say recently and the conservative reaction to it.
It seems as if this is the first time that someone with major media exposure has presented a counter to the right wing argument that the wealthy's money belongs to them, they owe nothing to society and government has no right to steal it from them.
Anyone who has read my blog posts or my emails for the past few years, dare I say, would have come across some pretty good arguments for a more progressive tax code.
And, if I may be so bold, I would suggest that if Ms. Warren had read my last post from August 21, "The Job Creators, Part I", she could have offered a much better response than the one she posed recently.
To tell you the truth, I think it was kinda weak.
Here's what she said:
"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."1
The first two sentences are completely, undeniably true.
But then the following sentences are full of all kinds of problems.
(A big problem that we have in this country, when it comes to debating issues, is a lack of precision in our language. Lack of precision in language leads to faulty reasoning and bad decisions. Conservatives take advantage of this imprecision to construct overly-simplistic arguments that seem plausible on the surface but are really seriously flawed.
And if liberals are not careful with their language they can be stumped by these arguments.)
Apparently speaking to some kind of a business-person, entrepreneur or investor, Ms. Warren says "You built a factory out there".
Wait a second Liz, you're falling for the right wing description of reality. The rich guy didn't build the factory. A bunch of other people built it for him.
It may have been an idea he had or gotten from someone else and he might have used his money or borrowed it from someone else or gotten someone else to invest in it for him in order to pay for the building of the factory, but that's a far cry from him actually building a factory himself, which is exactly what Warren's phraseology implies.
This is the kind of reasoning that lets people think that the rich "create jobs" and gives them more credit than they deserve. It also fails to give credit to the rest of us who contribute much more to the "creation of jobs".
And those people who actually, physically built the factory were only able to do so because they were supplied by a bunch of other people. And those people in turn had to rely on another bunch of people. And so on and so on. And let's not forget the contribution of the architects who designed the factory and the people who trained the architects and so on and so on.
The next mistake she makes is that she limits the contribution we all make to the economy, which gives the rich guy the opportunity to invest in various ways, to what we pay for in taxes through the government.
This gave Rush Limbag the opportunity to say "let's get rid of government so then we won't owe them anything".
I'll have more to say on that later.
We all contribute to the economy independently of the government, as well.
Next, after laying out her argument, which is as good as it goes, she mentions the "underlying social contract" and implies redistribution of wealth "for the next kid who comes along". Which is great. But what about the rest of us who created the economy that created that wealth?
Very importantly, I see that she is addressing her argument to the "rich guy", as if he's saying "you can't tax me because I'm a job creator!" Her argument should be addressed to the Republicans and the right wingers who are saying that, not the rich guy. She is falling into the "class warfare" trap, making this a fight between rich people and the rest of us. This can foster resentment towards rich people just for being rich. This is the wrong reason to base your argument on. It also allows the right to obfuscate the real issue and attack people like Ms. Warren.
Which is exactly what they've been been doing. They are actually playing her statements back to their audiences and using them, very effectively, to attack those of us who want to raise taxes.
Read my previous post. Our beef is with the right and tax policy not the rich. This is where the battleground belongs.
It's about time someone on the left finally confronted the conservatives on this issue. Conservatives have been allowed to get away with saying all kinds of crap about the rich and taxes. The "class warfare" charge is a tactic designed to obfuscate the issue and tar Dems and libs as dirty fighters.
However, to my regret, Obama and others do make statements that make it easy to accuse them of using class warfare. By saying things like "the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes", it implies that the wealthy are responsible for writing the tax code. While it's true that some of them use their money to "persuade" politicians to give them all kinds of tax breaks and right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers are doing everything they can to reduce and eliminate taxes on the wealthy, ultimately it is the responsibility of Congress and the President to formulate the tax code. Besides, as we've seen, many wealthy people agree with a progressive tax code and think that in this time of dangerous mounting debt it's only fair and sensible for the wealthy to be paying more taxes. So the problem is tax policy not wealthy people.
So much of what the right says on this topic is truly outrageous but for now I will focus on what Ms. Warren had to say recently and the conservative reaction to it.
It seems as if this is the first time that someone with major media exposure has presented a counter to the right wing argument that the wealthy's money belongs to them, they owe nothing to society and government has no right to steal it from them.
Anyone who has read my blog posts or my emails for the past few years, dare I say, would have come across some pretty good arguments for a more progressive tax code.
And, if I may be so bold, I would suggest that if Ms. Warren had read my last post from August 21, "The Job Creators, Part I", she could have offered a much better response than the one she posed recently.
To tell you the truth, I think it was kinda weak.
Here's what she said:
"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."1
The first two sentences are completely, undeniably true.
But then the following sentences are full of all kinds of problems.
(A big problem that we have in this country, when it comes to debating issues, is a lack of precision in our language. Lack of precision in language leads to faulty reasoning and bad decisions. Conservatives take advantage of this imprecision to construct overly-simplistic arguments that seem plausible on the surface but are really seriously flawed.
And if liberals are not careful with their language they can be stumped by these arguments.)
Apparently speaking to some kind of a business-person, entrepreneur or investor, Ms. Warren says "You built a factory out there".
Wait a second Liz, you're falling for the right wing description of reality. The rich guy didn't build the factory. A bunch of other people built it for him.
It may have been an idea he had or gotten from someone else and he might have used his money or borrowed it from someone else or gotten someone else to invest in it for him in order to pay for the building of the factory, but that's a far cry from him actually building a factory himself, which is exactly what Warren's phraseology implies.
This is the kind of reasoning that lets people think that the rich "create jobs" and gives them more credit than they deserve. It also fails to give credit to the rest of us who contribute much more to the "creation of jobs".
And those people who actually, physically built the factory were only able to do so because they were supplied by a bunch of other people. And those people in turn had to rely on another bunch of people. And so on and so on. And let's not forget the contribution of the architects who designed the factory and the people who trained the architects and so on and so on.
The next mistake she makes is that she limits the contribution we all make to the economy, which gives the rich guy the opportunity to invest in various ways, to what we pay for in taxes through the government.
This gave Rush Limbag the opportunity to say "let's get rid of government so then we won't owe them anything".
I'll have more to say on that later.
We all contribute to the economy independently of the government, as well.
Next, after laying out her argument, which is as good as it goes, she mentions the "underlying social contract" and implies redistribution of wealth "for the next kid who comes along". Which is great. But what about the rest of us who created the economy that created that wealth?
Very importantly, I see that she is addressing her argument to the "rich guy", as if he's saying "you can't tax me because I'm a job creator!" Her argument should be addressed to the Republicans and the right wingers who are saying that, not the rich guy. She is falling into the "class warfare" trap, making this a fight between rich people and the rest of us. This can foster resentment towards rich people just for being rich. This is the wrong reason to base your argument on. It also allows the right to obfuscate the real issue and attack people like Ms. Warren.
Which is exactly what they've been been doing. They are actually playing her statements back to their audiences and using them, very effectively, to attack those of us who want to raise taxes.
Read my previous post. Our beef is with the right and tax policy not the rich. This is where the battleground belongs.
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