Whoops, No One Told The Right That Their Libya Talking Point Doesn’t Work Anymore
It’s obviously premature to celebrate “victory” in Libya when no one knows what will happen next, or how difficult and bloody the process of state-building will be. (And Gadhafi is not yet actually gone.) But the news is good, and Obama’s strategic approach to the conflict — allowing France and NATO to take the lead to minimize the chance that America was seen as leading another Iraq-style war of aggression — seems to have been the right one. (Strategically. Not necessarily legally.) As Steve Kornacki wrote this morning, this should be the end of the “Obama is too weak to lead” talking point from the right. It should be, but … it isn’t.
Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial page takes a break from excusing the criminality of the executives in charge of its parent company to deliver an official house reaction to the developments in Tripoli that starts off cautious and then just descends right back into the exact same lame arguments it’s been using for the last six months:
Having helped to midwife the rebel advances with air power, intelligence and weapons, NATO will have some influence with the rebels in the days ahead. The shame is how much faster Gadhafi might have been defeated, how many fewer people might have been killed, and how much more influence the U.S. might now have, if America had led more forcefully from the beginning.
Planning for this moment is precisely why we and many others had urged the State Department to engage with the rebels from the earliest days of the revolt, but the U.S. was slow to do so and only formally recognized the opposition Transitional National Council in mid-July. The hesitation gave Gadhafi hope that he could hold out and force a stalemate.
Libyans will determine their own future, but the U.S. has a stake in showing the world that NATO’s intervention, however belated and ill-executed, succeeded in its goals of removing a dictator, saving lives, and promoting a new Libyan government that respects its people and doesn’t sponsor global terrorism.
I’m not sure how long the editors of the Wall Street Journal think your average revolution lasts, but assuming Gadhafi’s hold on power is as weak as it appears today, I would argue — as a layman, of course — that NATO’s intervention seems neither “belated” nor “ill-executed.” (I mean, it seems well-executed, in the sense that it seems to have accomplished its goal?)
But it’s the line about America leading “more forcefully from the beginning” that the neocons and GOP hawks will continue to cling to no matter what actually happens in Libya. It’s the same argument BFF Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham used in their joint response to this weekend’s developments: “Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Qaddafi, but we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower.”
All-out war! From day one! With the full force of American airpower! One definite way to make a civil war faster and less bloody is for a foreign country to enter it fully, right? (It tends to unite the populace, for one thing!) And conflicts are always less bloody when America drops more American bombs. That’s how we won Vietnam!
There’s no point in countering McCain and the Journal’s arguments with reason, of course, because these are not actually fact-based responses to news, they’re just rote recitations of Republican dogma: Obama weak! (Except domestically, where he is an autocrat.)
And this is the “respectable” Republican talking point. The line from the real nuts — I’m guessing something along the lines of “radical Obama allows Muslim Brotherhood to seize control in Libya” — will begin bubbling up from the sewers to talk radio and Fox News and Michele Bachmann’s campaign soon enough.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon War Room, August 22, 2011
Brazen: Eric Cantor’s Chutzpah
Eric Cantor’s op-ed laying out the Republican agenda is filled with the kind
of distortions you’d expect, but this passage deserves special commendation.
After decrying a National Labor Relations Board Ruling, he continues:
Such behavior, coupled with the president’s insistence on raising the top tax rate paid by individuals and small businesses, has resulted in a lag in growth that has added to the debt crisis, contributing to our nation’s credit downgrade.
So Cantor is arguing that S&P downgraded U.S. debt because of President
Obama’s future plans to increase the top tax rate. That’s such a mind-boggling
claim that even Cantor cannot bring himself to put it in quite these terms. So
instead he breaks it into a series of steps.
First, he claims that the future promise of upper-bracket tax hikes “has
resulted” in a lag in growth. (Question: if the mere possibility of future tax
hikes is enough to depress growth, why don’t we go ahead and just raise taxes?
If we’re going to get the slower growth anyway, might as well get the revenue,
right?)
Second, the lag in growth “caused” by hypothetical future tax hikes added to
the debt crisis.
Third, the debt crisis contributed to the downgrading of the debt.
It’s a fairly brilliant bit of rhetoric. After all, S&P specifically cited the Republican threat to fail to lift the debt ceiling and Republican refusal
to consider any tax increases as the cause of the downgrade. cantor has
found a way to present Obama’s support for higher taxes as the cause of the
downgrade. That’s so brazen I almost have to admire it.
By: Jonathan Chait, The New Republic, August 22, 2011
Why The Rich Should Pay Higher Taxes
Wealthy Americans will recoil at the suggestion, likely responding with the tired mantra that the top earners pay most of the income tax. But two points can be made in response to that: (1) federal income tax is only a small part of the burden on the middle class.
Based on data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the total of all state and local taxes, social security taxes, and excise taxes (gasoline, alcohol, tobacco) consumes 21% of the annual incomes of the poorest half of America. For the richest 1% of Americans, the same taxes consume 7% of their incomes. And (2) the richest people pay most of the federal income taxes because they’ve made ALMOST ALL the new income over the past 30 years. Based on Tax Foundation figures, the richest 1% has TRIPLED ITS SHARE of America’s income since 1980, AFTER TAXES.
But there are better reasons why the rich should pay higher taxes.
The very rich benefit most from national security, government-funded research, infrastructure, and property laws. Defending the country benefits the rich more, because they have more to defend. Taxpayer-funded research at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (the Internet), the National Institute of Health (pharmaceuticals), and the National Science Foundation (the Digital Library Initiative) has laid a half-century foundation for their idea-building. The interstates and airports and FAA and TSA benefit people who have the money to travel.
Over a hundred years ago, Teddy Roosevelt, facing an epidemic of inequality not unlike today, reminded us that “Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by [democratic] institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.”
Here’s another good reason for the rich to pay more taxes: With the drop in tax revenue, funding for the preservation of American culture is disappearing. Do we want our national treasures deprived of maintenance because of budget cuts, as is currently happening in Italy? Do we want our national parks sold to billionaires? Do we want programs for music and the arts eliminated from schools, so that only children of the wealthy can participate in them?
The 1912 book “Promised Land” by Mary Antin revealed the wonder of a Russian immigrant coming to the U.S.: “In America, then, everything was free…light was free…music was free.”
Not that capitalist markets don’t have their place. But the current view of democracy has gone to the other extreme, in which individualism and personal gain trump societal responsibility, and growing inequality makes community support and safeguards unnecessary for the privileged elite.
Finally, back to the tax statistics. Why should financial earnings (i.e., capital gains) be taxed less than wage earnings from actual work? The richest 10% of Americans own over 80% of the stocks, the gains from which are taxed at a 15% rate. Most wage earners pay more.
Furthermore, over the past 15 years millionaires have seen their income tax rates drop from 30% to 22%. During approximately the same time period, American economic growth declined from an annual 3.2 percent rate to 1.7 percent. Lower taxes for the rich do not lead to productivity.
Will the rich stop investing or move to another country if their taxes are increased? Not likely. They have it too good here. As Warren Buffett recently stated, “I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone – not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 – shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.”
Mr. Buffett is admitting what everyone else is beginning to realize. The rich take much more than they pay for.
By: Paul Buchheit, CommonDreams.org, August 22, 2011
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