“Warped Moral Universe”: Why The GOP Want’s To Raise Taxes On The Poor
Citing the widely-repeated meme on the right that 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax (not to be confused with taxes in general), James Kwak has two theories:
The first is that the modern Republican Party is funded by the very rich… The result is that the parties’ platforms now reflect the wishes of their major funders, not their median voters. This is why Republican presidential candidates spent the primary season competing to offer the most generous tax breaks to the rich—while Paul Ryan’s budget slashes Medicare, a program supported by the Tea Party rank and file. For the rich people who call the shots, it’s simply in their interest to lower taxes on the rich and raise them on the poor. End of story…
The other, even-more-disturbing explanation, is that Republicans see the rich as worthy members of society (the “producers”) and the poor as a drain on society (the “takers”). In this warped moral universe, it isn’t enough that someone with a gross income of $10 million takes home $8.1 million while someone with a gross income of $20,000 takes home $19,000.* That’s called “punishing success,” so we should really increase taxes on the poor person so we can “reward success” by letting the rich person take home even more. This is why today’s conservatives have gone beyond the typical libertarian and supply-side arguments for lower taxes on the rich, and the campaign to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich has taken on such self-righteous tones.
The most trafficked post ever on my own site continues to be this Graph of Doom look at the Newt Gingrich’s tax plan back when he was still running. It was stunning then and now how much the Republican primary candidates were tripping over each other to demonstrate how much they would give back to the ultra-rich. (See here for a full comparison of all the candidates.)
But, as Kwak says, they really seem to be invested in this Randian stuff. It should also be a reminder how badly Republicans are likely to govern. There on the ups now not because of any actual argument, but because of 1) the continuing unemployment crisis and 2) their skill at organizing. Their actual policy ideas would be laughable if they didn’t have an actual chance of becoming law.
There’s a halfway plausible argument that Romney would prefer to go big on Keynesian stimulus, like Nixon did, but when it comes to domestic policy, a determined Congress holds the whip hand. Be warned.
By: Ryan Cooper, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 6, 2012
Alberto Gonzales: Some Republicans Are “Anti-Hispanic”, Not Connecting With The Latino Community
Alberto Gonzales, the first Latino United States Attorney General, said on Thursday that Mitt Romney needs to do more to connect with the Latino community. In an interview with Yahoo News, Gonzales questioned whether Romney has really made an effort to reach out to Latinos, even as the campaign has tried to woo Latino voters:
“I think that members of our party have spoken about this in a way that’s not only anti-immigration but anti-Hispanic, and I think that’s harmful to the long term future of the party,” Gonzales said […]
“Policy is important, but the tone is equally important,” he says. “He has to find some way to make a personal connection to the Hispanic community. Bush was able to do that. … Many of us had the sense that Bush understood us. He believed in us and we believed in him,” he said.
“I think [Bush] was able to make a personal connection, and I’m not sure that Governor Romney has done that yet.”
Romney’s position on issues important to Latinos, including the DREAM ACT and overall immigration policy, tend to differ from those of the majority of the Latino community. Gonzalez, on the other hand, is an advocate for some version of the DREAM Act and opposes Arizona’s SB 1070.
The former attorney general also reiterated that he did not believe Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the prominent Latino vice presidential favorite, is ready to be president, saying, “What I try to emphasize is that I think a presidential nominee should look [for] someone who can be president on day one.”
By: Annie-Rose Strasser, Think Progress, June 7, 2012
“Women And Children Last”: Was The Republican Party Always This Greedy?
I have a keen interest in military strategy and tactics. Probably because I’m a political strategist and tactician. Wednesday night, I watched a documentary on the Military History Channel about the Battle of Leyte Gulf in World War II. The unselfish actions of U.S. sailors there prevented a military disaster and demonstrated what was great about the Greatest Generation.
General Douglas MacArthur had just landed his invasion force in the Philippines in October of 1944. A large Japanese naval fleet, including the biggest battleship in the world, the Yamato, was bearing down on Leyte Gulf to destroy our invasion forces on the beach. The only American naval force available to stop the attack was a small task force of destroyers and escort carriers called Taffy 3 (Task Force 3).
The large Japanese force dwarfed and outgunned Taffy 3 but the Americans blunted the attack by sending three destroyers up against big Japanese battleships. The small destroyer force was able to slow down the larger Japanese fleet long enough for the main American fleet to ride to the rescue and save the day. In the process, the Japanese sunk all three of the destroyers and hundreds of brave, young American sailors went down with their ships. But the selfless dedication of the men in Taffy 3 saved MacArthur’s invasion force from total destruction.
There’s a world of difference between the selfless sacrifice of Taffy 3 and the Republican Party. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that only four of 10 Republicans believe that government has a responsibility to help people who can’t help themselves. In contrast, six out of every 10 independents and three out of every four Democrats believe that government should step up to help down-on-their-luck Americans. Republicans weren’t always this selfish. In 1987, six in 10 Republicans wanted government to work for the common good.
The GOP slogan for campaign 2012 should be “Every man for himself” or “Women and children last.” Republicans of course, make exceptions for their sugar daddies. If you’re a banker or a billionaire you can count on a lot of help from Republicans in power. If you’re an unwed mother in need of prenatal medical care or a poor hungry kid in need of a school lunch, you can forget about any help from the GOP Mean Machine.
The Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan budget clearly illustrates the party’s fiscal philosophy. The GOP budget cuts aid for prenatal care, school lunches, and child healthcare. The Republican proposal is careful, however, to protect tax breaks for the 1 percent. The best example of the cruelty in the GOP budget is that it cuts federal aid to help seniors pay for home heating oil while it maintains $4 billion dollars a year in federal tax freebies for the oil companies. If you have filled your tank recently you know big oil doesn’t really need the money.
My political philosophy comes from Hubert Humphrey, who said, “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those in the shadow of life, the needy and the handicapped.”
If my belief in these words makes me a bleeding heart liberal, let me bleed.
By: Brad Bannon, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, June 7, 2012
“The End Of 5-4”: The Consequences Of The 2012 Election For The Supreme Court
Of all the things we talk about during a presidential campaign, the Supreme Court probably has the lowest discussion-to-importance ratio. Appointing justices to the Court is one of the most consequential privileges of the presidency, one that has become more important in the last couple of decades since the Court has become more politicized. But there isn’t a great deal to say about it during the campaign, beyond, “If we lose the election, we’ll lose the Court.” The candidates aren’t going to say much of anything about whom they’d appoint other than a bunch of disingenuous bromides (“I’ll appoint justices who will interpret the law, not make law!”), and we don’t actually know who’s going to retire in the next few years, so in the campaign context there isn’t much to be said .
But if there’s anything that ought to make you afraid of a Mitt Romney presidency, it’s this. First of all, if Romney wins he will be under enormous pressure to make sure that anyone he appoints will be not just conservative, but extremely conservative. Remember what happened when George W. Bush tried to appoint Harriet Miers: the right wing had a category 5 freak-out, not because they thought Miers was going to be a liberal, but because they couldn’t be absolutely, positively sure that she wouldn’t be a down-the-line Republican ideologue forever more. Unlike Romney, Bush had no particular need to prove to them that he was a real conservative, but the pressure was great enough that he eventually withdrew her nomination and nominated Samuel Alito, who was exactly what they wanted.
And that will be a shadow of the pressure exerted on a President Romney. So when he gets his chance to make an appointment, there is just no way he will do anything other than select someone pre-approved by the Republican base. And what kind of chance will he get? Well let’s take a look at the ages of the current Court. I’ve arranged them from oldest to youngest:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 79
Antonin Scalia: 76
Anthony Kennedy: 75
Stephen Breyer: 73
Clarence Thomas: 63
Samuel Alito: 62
John Roberts: 57
Sonia Sotomayor: 57
Elena Kagan: 52
Of course, it isn’t necessarily the case that the oldest justices will be the first to retire. A relatively young justice might become ill, or just get bored, and decide to go. And ideological considerations would probably affect that decision; if you were Ginsburg and Mitt Romney was president, you’d know that retiring would dramatically change the makeup of the Court, in a way you wouldn’t like. But all else being equal, one would expect the older ones to be more likely to step down first. And health considerations might leave a justice with no choice.
So if Mitt Romney were president and one of the four liberal justices stepped down, it would be the end of 5-4 decisions. It would also be the end of all the “What will Anthony Kennedy do?” discussions, since Kennedy won’t matter much anymore. There would be five highly partisan, ideologically ambitious justices who would have the majority on every question that came before them. If Kennedy retired during a Romney presidency, we’d be left with many 5-4 decisions, but they’d all be decided in the conservatives’ favor, and the effect would be the same.
The Court hasn’t had an ideological 180 since George H.W. Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall in 1991 (though you might count Alito replacing Sandra Day O’Connor ). But there’s a fair chance that we’ll see one such shift in the next four years. If it happens when Romney is president, it could be the most consequential one in decades.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, June 6, 2012
“Rand Paul’s Twisted Mind”: Protecting Individual Rights Is Not Stalinist
This week Republicans in the Senate once again blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would take further steps to guarantee access to the legal system for women who charge they’ve been paid less than men for doing the same job. (That’s illegal, in case anyone was thinking of trying it.) Justifying his vote against the act, Rand Paul compared it to Soviet communism. This is sort of a dog bites man story; on a given day, Rand Paul probably compares several dozen things to Soviet communism. But here, for what it’s worth, is why he thinks legislation to make it easier for women to sue when they’ve been paid less than men for doing the same job is just like Soviet communism:
“Three hundred million people get to vote everyday on what you should be paid or what the price of goods are,” Paul told reporters on Capitol Hill. “In the Soviet Union, the Politburo decided the price of bread, and they either had no bread or too much bread. So setting prices or wages by the government is always a bad idea.”
Mr. Paul does not appear to understand either the law which he has just voted against, or the class of economic transaction about which he is speaking. If a woman sues because she has been paid less than a man for doing the same work, and a judge rules in her favour, that is not an instance of “setting prices or wages by the government”. The wage in question was set by the employer. What the judge has ruled is that the employer cannot offer different wages to different employees based on their sex. Why might such a hypothetical judge make such a ruling? Because, as noted above, offering different wages to different employees based on their sex is against the law, and has been so since 1963.
I. What Are the Federal Laws Prohibiting Job Discrimination?
1. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin;
2. the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA), which protects men and women who perform substantially equal work in the same establishment from sex-based wage discrimination;
But should it be illegal to offer different pay for the same work based on an employee’s sex? Maybe not. Mr Paul’s argument here implies he thinks it should be okay. So, let’s try a thought experiment. How would you react to seeing a job advertisement that read: “Associate lawyer in patent firm, 3 years’ experience required, salary $100k for man, $77k for woman”? Is that okay? If not, why not? How about this: “Associate lawyer in patent firm, 3 years’ experience required, salary $100k for Christian, $70k for Jew”? How about “Salary $100k for white, $65k for negro”?
The Paycheck Fairness Act, like the Lily Ledbetter Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, is not an instance of government price setting. It is an instance of government prohibition of certain forms of exploitative price discrimination. It is illegal for an employer to pay a woman less than a man for the same work just as it is illegal for a shop owner to charge a Jew more than a Christian for the same loaf of bread. There have been places in the world where at various times shop owners were allowed to charge Jews more based on their religion, to pay untouchables less based on their caste, and so forth.
Those places were not freer than America. Indeed, one place where employers were free to discriminate against women and Jews, and did so avidly, was the Soviet Union. One of the key differences between the Soviet Union and America is that in America, we have an independent judiciary to which individuals can turn for enforcement of their legal rights when someone is screwing them over because they are of the wrong race, colour, religion, sex or national origin.
In America, you have rights, and what makes those rights non-meaningless is that you can use the legal system to defend them. Mr Paul’s ideological system has performed the ingenious trick of twisting his head around 180 degrees, such that he views the fact that Americans have legally enforceable rights not to be discriminated against as a form of communism.
By: M. S., The Economist, June 6, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 