I am not an economist. Graphs and charts make my eyes glaze over and want to change the channel - Food Network, nom nom nom. But as a political junkie paying attention in America for 50 years I think I know what I know - in 5 simple words: Roosevelt was great, Reagan sucked. But my political party by default will only ever assert the first clause, and run away from the second - just like they ran away from the tax fight this week. (Seems to me both parties announced they don't really want to win this week - the Dems punting on the tax fight and the GOPers unveiling their nonsensical "Pledge to America" - the donkey and the elephant spit the bit like it was dunked in milk a year over its use by date.
Once upon a time, a Latin American political party promised to help motorists save money on gasoline. How? By building highways that ran only downhill...the truth is that the party received hardly any votes. And that means that the joke is really on us. For these days one of America’s two great political parties routinely makes equally nonsensical promises.
That's Paul Krugman's Thursday column Downhill With the GOP essentially agreeing with something I've been saying to anyone who will listen: the truth is that IF THE MEDIA DID THEIR JOB THE GOP WOULD CEASE TO EXIST, they'd be laughed out of existence, given the same coverage as the LaRouchies or some marginal branch of freaks party way down the ballot. Their "Pledge" to be exactly what they've always been should get them the kind of ridicule and derision the media usually reserves for TV comedians who dare to step into the Washington arena. They should be treated like a party from a Monty Python sketch - the Silly Party or the Very Silly Party. Like Rachel Maddow says "They're Not Embarrassed" by asserting that cutting taxes can in and of itself balance a budget.
... the party’s main concern seems to be the war on arithmetic...In essence, what they say is, "Deficits are a terrible thing. Let’s make them much bigger." The document repeatedly condemns federal debt — 16 times, by my count. But the main substantive policy proposal is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, which independent estimates say would add about $3.7 trillion to the debt over the next decade...
Now, however, Republicans aren’t even pretending that their numbers add up.
So how did we get to the point where one of our two major political parties isn’t even trying to make sense?
Clearly, they're not serious. They haven't been for some time. We know that, but the media with few exceptions gets it. The GOP doesn't deserve to have ANY seats in Congress no less be REWARDED for their bad behavior.
What I believe is that the political media thrives on the two party he said/she said horserace coverage. A third party would gum up the works, but one party domination is a buzz killer, so we have to prop up the party that consistently shows itself to have no interest in the American people and whose U.S. Chamber of Commerce first, people a very, very, verrry distant second policies have driven us into a ditch over 50 years.
The GOP has made tax cuts it's leadoff hitter to get on base with the public since forever and they've won. Let's make no mistake, their 30 year marriage of convenience with the religious right is a failure. The country is always going to move inexorably left on social issues. They may have won a few battles with God Guns and Gays, but that war is a loser. However, while we were looking at the crazies protesting abortion clinics, Terri Sciavo, school textbook wars, gay marriage bans, DADT, the GOP and Chamber of Commerce alliance won the fiscal policy wars.
Over 50 years the top marginal tax rate has declined from 91% to 35% (the effective tax rate plummeted likewise), and they're fighting now to keep it at 35%. As I said, I'm no economist but it seems pretty simple to me - the rich and corporations are paying less and less of the tax burden, the government is going broke and the rest of us are having to fight for the government services that every other industrialized nation offers their citizens as a birthright and has in some cases has done so for decades.
Which brings us to another hero of mine who makes the wonky understandable, today on tax.com Johnston published this Huff Po front page analyis So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy? And guess what they SUCKED for the economy and for the American people.
Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running this year on an economic platform of tax cuts, especially making the tax cuts permanent for the richest among us. So how did the tax cuts work out? My analysis of the new data, with all figures in 2008 dollars:
Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels.
Ignore the cynics who say the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, in Wasilla, and on the airwaves care only about the rich. I don't believe that. I think they are captive to economic theories few of them understand and that are simplistic in the extreme. I take them at their word, that they truly believe their policies will produce broad benefits for all, but accepting that does not diminish the fact that the policies these Republicans promote also produce massive tax savings for the superrich who finance their campaigns.
Johnson argues that the tax cuts panacea is "economic madness," they empirically do not spur investment, and even if you factor out the 2001 and 2008 tax years, the years most effected by recession, total U.S. income was $2 trillion lower than if the 2000 level continued.
In fact, "individual income tax revenues in 2008 were smaller than in 2000, despite a 10% growth in the number of tax payers." What we all feel and know is true, the economy has contracted, especially for the middle class and tax cuts overall, and especially for the rich, trickle down economics, DOES NOT WORK for us or for the overall wellbeing of country.
Johnston asks the question implicit in Krugman's column.
So why in the world is anyone giving any credence to the insistence by Republican leaders that tax cuts, more tax cuts, and deeper tax cuts are the remedy to our economic woes? Why are they not laughingstocks? It is one thing for Fox News to treat these policies as successful, but what of the rest of what Sarah Palin calls with some justification the "lamestream media," who treat these policies as worthy ideas?
The Republican leadership is like the doctors who believed bleeding cured the sick. When physicians bled George Washington, he got worse, so they increased the treatment until they bled him to death. Our government, the basis of our freedoms, is spewing red ink, and the Republican solution is to spill ever more.
Those who ignore evidence and pledge blind faith in policy based on ideological fantasy are little different from the clerics who made Galileo Galilei confess that the sun revolves around the earth. The Capitol Hill and media Republicans differ only in not threatening death to those who deny their dogma.
My ongoing debate with my best friend is whether we're always electing the ridiculous because of the stupidity of the public or the hackery of the media. It's a difficult equation because it's very hard to argue against the American people swallowing loads of nonsense they should never have put a fork anywhere near. But I come back to the question, would you rather argue against someone who is uninformed or someone who is misinformed? I think that's a no-brainer - the uninformed bend when faced with evidence and facts; the misinformed are armed with their own facts and evidence that are uniformly bullshit, fed to them by those who are not embarrassed, the power grabbers, the sycophants of power who phiosophically believe in oligarchy and elite rule. They can never assume power by being honest about their beliefs. So they obfuscate and lie and twist so that up is down and black is white. Orwellian is the word to describe it.
And since everyone in the mainstream media, the media not owned by Murdoch, pretending to be impartial and dedicated to the truth, has read 1984 in high school, you'd think they'd recognize it when someone is doing it right to their face as they do everyday of the week and twice on
Sunday. But no, they play along and prop up the Very Silly Party while the country suffers.