You don't have to be a comedy show to cherry-pick history for the facts you like the best. Everyone, including me (maybe even especially me) likes to select incidents and statistics that support their case and bury those items that don't line up on the curve. After all, this is politics, not a double-blind drug test. To build a persuasive argument means paring down the complexity of the real world to a clarity that rarely exists.
But there's a difference between sifting the statistics and making them up. A difference between building an argument and shoveling bullshit. A difference between what's happened in the real world, and the pseudo-history of Amity Shlaes.
Shlaes' book on the economy during the 1930s has been roundly debunked on every point by multiple economists, including Paul Krugman. However, Shlaes refuses to admit error. Instead, whenever she is caught weaving conservative fantasies, she takes a page from the "Intelligent Design" movement and challenges the latest person to tear through her disinformation to "a debate over the New Deal." Shlaes is smart enough to know that her book can't stand up to detailed review, but that a publicized show down would only boost her sales. In other words, she knows she's lying, but she's profiting from the lies, so why stop?
After all, her alternate history novel for conservatives has gotten her writing gigs from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and praise from such luminaries as Glenn Beck. No doubt Amity Shlaes is surrounding us. And just this past week, the public radio program Marketplace invited Ms. Shlaes to give the commentary. In it, she raised the stakes on the wing nut rebellion to a whole new level.
Taxation without representation, that's what our nation's founders rebelled against. ... The course of US history can be seen as progress by those who are taxed to get representation.... Along the way we began to pay out money to people who paid no income tax at all. There's Medicare of course for senior citizens, even if they never worked, welfare for the poor and struggling, at least through the 90s, and more recently there's the earned income tax credit -- a break for low income workers. The credit was designed to make people want to work, and to offset their heavy pension payments for Social Security. The result of expanding it, however, is that many people who work don't pay income tax, instead they get money back. Do we want to help weaker citizens, especially in a downturn? Totally. ... But a tipping point does come, when too many are paying out, and too few are paying in. Maybe that tipping point is now. Today households in the bottom half of earners pays less than 4% of income taxes. One tiny group, the top one percent, pays close to 40%. This can slow the economic recovery we're waiting for. Top earners won't want to keep producing if their burden gets much heavier. ... The mood of the skeptics today is just the reverse of the mood at the Boston Tea Party. Then we said no taxation without representation. Try reversing that line. No representation without taxation.
In this little commentary, Shlaes naturally applies the standard conservative idiocy test. Yes, the top one percent pay thirty-some percent of the income tax. That's because the top one percent have
thirty-some percent of the wealth. (It's worth noting that the top 1% is provided enough tax loopholes and kickbacks that the amount they pay is almost exactly what they would be paying if we had a flat tax evenly applied at all levels.) It's also not difficult to understand how the bottom half of the population on an income basis pays a small percentage of the total income tax -- the bottom 80% of the income distribution controls only 16% of the wealth. In short, Shlaes' numbers here are no better than her numbers anywhere else.Then there's the "Going Galt" threat, the part where she says "Top earners won't want to keep producing if their burden gets much heavier." You mean I only get to keep $9.7m when I would have taken home $10m? Why, it's hardly worth getting up in the morning. Point one: the Laffer Curve is less believable than unicorns. Point two: the horrible burden now looming for the top earners is exactly the same tax rate that they faced back in the fast-growing economy of the 1990s.
Then there's the outrage that some elderly people get Medicaid even if they didn't work! Horrors. And the oh so heavy burden of Social Security. But that, all of that, is only standard right wing manure. Even Twinkies can't be eaten when they're that stale.
No, the point to remember in Shlaes' latest is that final line: no representation without taxation. There's a very simple term for what Shlaes is suggesting. It's called a poll tax. According to Amity Shlaes, if you're too poor to pay taxes, you're too poor to vote. She's urging that we redraw a line that took nearly two hundred years to erase. Of course, since Shlaes is only a pretend historian, she may think this is her own new idea. Totally. But the idea of demoting the poor to sub-citizens is a tendency that's persisted from early voting regulations that required land ownership, up to the current wave of carefully nurtured hatred for the working class. Just as science fiction writer Robert Heinlein wrote about a world in which military veterans were priviledged above most people, conservative science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has long projected a future in which Americans are divided into "taxpayers" and an underclass with fewer rights. Such thoughts appeared decades ago in the magazine of Ayn Rand's objectivist movement. It's not a new idea -- just one that's morally spiteful and repugnant to the whole concept of American democracy.
If you provide a space for commentary on the holocaust, and your main speaker is Bishop Richard Williamson, you know what you're going to get. Likewise, if you have a national show on the economy, and you ask Amity Shlaes to present the commentary, you know what she will deliver: morally prurient lies designed to mislead the public on the best solutions to our economic problems. For Shlaes to keep telling her lies is pitiful. For national media to keep providing her an unchecked platform shows that the media would still rather believe in right wing unicorns than face reality.
Bill Kristol sees an opportunity for the GOP in the backlash over the inexcusable AIG bonuses:
But if capitalism is to survive, shouldn’t the Republican party, the party that defends democratic capitalism, be particularly vehement in denouncing its excesses? Isn’t this a pretty spectacular one? And isn’t this a moment for the GOP to separate itself from the Bush administration as well as the Obama administration, who together have been responsible for an incompetent and improvident bailout? Figuring out the right policy going forward with respect to toxic assets and the rest is, of course, a major intellectual task. But being on the side of a healthy populist reaction to the AIG situation is at least a good political start.Good luck with that:
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) blamed the “tone deaf” bankers for creating the political environment that allows Obama to call for a cap.“Because of their excesses, very bad things begin to happen, like the United States government telling a company what it can pay its employees. That’s not a good thing in America,” Kyl told the Huffington Post.
“What executives have done is troubling, but it’s equally troubling to have government telling shareholders how much they can pay the executives,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL).
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that he is “one of the chief defenders of Obama on the Republican side” for the president’s efforts to reach across the aisle. But, said Inhofe, “as I was listening to him make those statements I thought, is this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?”
Up next, Bill Kristol proposes the GOP get in front of the populist rage over the War in Iraq.
Fun when the wingnut channel makes fun of their number one wingnut. C&L's Neiwert: Chris Wallace Thinks Shep Smith Needs to Get With the Glenn Beck Program
Ali Frick at Think Progress put together a hilarious video of Fox News' Shepard Smith mocking Glenn Beck throughout the day Friday, in the run-up to Beck's big "You Are Not Alone" weepfest. It seems we're not the only ones who think the guy is a joke.
But then Chris Wallace came on and chastised Smith for not toeing the Fox company line:
SMITH: Do you even understand this Glenn Beck Friday? Because I really don’t.
WALLACE: Well, I do, and what pains me — and you know, Shep, how highly I respect you — is you seem upset by Glenn Beck Friday.
SMITH: Upset?!
WALLACE: I mean, Glenn is a meteor here at Fox News–
SMITH: He is the greatest star of all time!
WALLACE: And you should be happy for his success–
SMITH: I am here to worship him.
WALLACE: –and you seem to be begrudging — you’re begrudging him his success. ...
WALLACE: I for one am on the Glenn Beck bandwagon and I advise you to join it as well.
Jawohl, Herr Kommandant!
As Ellen at Newshounds observes, Smith isn't the only Fox anchor to look askance at Beck; last week, Neil Cavuto called him out on his fearmongering as well.
Still, I think it's a safe bet that Chris Wallace is being the voice of Fox News management when he "advises" Smith to get on the bandwagon -- he didn't need to say "if you know what's good for you" to imply it. Either Smith is going to be crawling through broken glass to beg Beck's forgiveness or we may have to start up a Shepard Smith Pink Slip Watch -- to go alongside the Michael Steele Ouster Watch.
In response to Michael Savage being wingnut stupid again, hilzoy says they are Almost Like The Nazis, Except For, Well, Everything ...
Via Media Matters, Michael Savage:
"The fact of the matter is that Obama may be getting ready to organize his own personal army not of brown shirts but of green shirts. And that is why he has given this street thug Van Jones -- in my opinion a street thug, a man who has specialized in harassing the police themselves -- this all-important job. If Obama should appoint thousands, or more than thousands, of people to the environmental green czar to work for him, and then he deputizes them and then gives them guns, and then gives them federal powers over that of the local police, then you will know that we are repeating history in the United States of America.
You see, there was another man in another country who rose to power on an army of street thugs. ... ...
Now you're not able to talk about this because you don't know who I'm talking about, because the vermin in the media are covering up this very dangerous situation that is going on right in front of your nose."
Well: if any President took some federal bureaucracy -- the US Geological Survey, say, or the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, or the Agricultural Marketing Service -- and gave them guns and federal power over the police and the people, and used it as his own private army, that would be scary! I'm not sure why people hired to weatherize buildings or construct a smart grid would be more likely to be transformed into such an army than the other bureaucracies I mentioned, but it's still a sobering thought. But there are a few tiny problems:
(1) It would be illegal.
(2) There is no indication whatsoever that Obama plans to do any such thing.
(3) Jones' job in the Obama administration doesn't involve control over any large agency.
(4) If he did want to create a private army, he'd have a hard time using people who get green jobs under the stimulus package, since they will probably mostly be private contractors.
But if Obama did create a private army under Van Jones, despite his having given no indication whatsoever of doing this, and despite Van Jones' job not having any such powers, and if the courts and the Congress somehow acquiesced in this flagrant illegality, that would be pretty awful! And if, in addition, he started a global war of aggression, opened concentration camps, and committed genocide, then he'd "have almost the same exact policies as the Nazi Party did."
Likewise, if Michael Savage were to take over the US, send its urban population to do forced labor on collective farms, confiscate private property, abolish money, and create a massive famine that killed at least one eighth of the population, he'd be a lot like Pol Pot. And if he had wheels, he'd be a trolleycar.
Obama possibly being a Nazi, Michael Savage possibly being Pol Pot, the horrifying specter of human/trolleycar hybrids: it's a scary, scary world we live in!
Or, you know, maybe not.
***
PS: Anyone want to argue that Savage would have called Van Jones a "street thug" if he weren't black?
John Cole: It Isn’t About The Facts
Larison just rips Captain Ed to pieces for his latest burst of idiocy, and If Captain Ed had any shame, he would put up a post apologizing for being so stupid. Even though Larison is completely right and Ed completely wrong, expect Ed to keep repeating this nonsense from now until the end of time. It isn’t about the facts, it is about the narrative, and we will be hearing about all of Obama’s nonexistent foreign policy gaffes from now until when the Petraeus/Palin ticket is formed.
And for the record- the first time I saw the “Obama lost Kyrgystan stuff” it started with none other than…. Michael Goldfarb and the Weekly Standard. Just expect them to keep repeating it until it becomes one of their undeniable truths, just like blaming Obama for the stock market drops that occurred during President Bush’s term. They have their story, and they are sticking to it.
- Steve Benen:
Let's unpack this a bit. First, there is no "military standoff" with Russia. There's no reason to think there will be a "military standoff" with Russia. The article Morrissey links to doesn't point to a "military standoff" with Russia. Zhikharev was posturing with an obvious hypothetical. A Kremlin official later told the AP that "the military is speaking about technical possibilities, that's all." Morrissey is comparing yesterday's comments to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is obviously pretty silly.Second, Russia is "doing this" now because its leaders think "they can get away with it"? If "this" and "it" refer to hollow posturing then, sure, Russia can "get away with it." Countries engage in bluster and bravado all the time. It does not an international incident make.
Third, I can't imagine why anyone would think George W. Bush was some kind of intimidating international figure, who struck fear in the hearts of would-be rivals. Morrissey asked if we could even "imagine" Russia showing this kind of pomposity under Bush's leadership. Daniel Larison answered the question: "Well, since Russia went to war with Georgia, resumed long-range bomber
Benen on the DUMBEST. COMPARISON. EVER....
Erick Erickson, a far-right blogger at Redstate, argued the other day that President Obama is not only similar to Bernard Madoff, but is in some respects worse."We have a guy who ran a ponzi scheme that stole billions of dollars from people to fund God knows what," Erickson argued. "Granted the American people elected him President, but compare what Barack Obama is doing to what Bernie Madoff did and I fail to see a substantial difference.... Both Madoff and Obama have put people out of work. Both Madoff and Obama have destroyed the financial health of lots of people.... The difference is that Madoff did it to powerful billionaires who are now millionaires. Obama did it to the rest of us."
This is obviously some pretty twisted and insulting inanity. But to appreciate just how far gone today's Republicans truly are, note that this idiocy is not limited to reasonably well-read conservative blogs. It's also fodder for highly rated cable news networks.
Those "pro-America" folks at FOX News were spreading more love for their country yesterday during the two hour wall of Democrat-bashing disguised as a block of business shows, also known as "The Cost of Freedom." But the attacks reached new heights, or, rather, lows, when FOX host David Asman "asked" whether Bernard Madoff or the Obama administration was the bigger scammer. [...]
After Asman teased the segment, he opened the discussion by saying, "Think Bernie's 65 billion dollar Ponzi scheme is the biggest scam ever? Think again! Steve Forbes says President Obama and his friends in Congress are ripping you off more than Madoff EVER could."
While Asman spoke, a banner on the screen read, "Who's the bigger money scammer? Bernie Madoff or Uncle Sam?"
Quentin Hardy, Silicon Valley bureau chief for Forbes magazine, tried to push back against this, saying, "Comparing the government to an ongoing criminal enterprise is just silly and wrong."
But Hardy was ignored and outnumbered. David Asman, the "journalist" in the discussion, pushed Hardy: "It's not the legality issue, it's who does more damage to the market? In that context, who's worse?" When he tried to answer, the Fox News panelists laughed at him.
They seemed painfully unaware of the degree to which they were embarrassing themselves. Alas, on Fox News, that's not an uncommon occurrence.
No comments:
Post a Comment