I've got to give Fox & Friends credit: They blow the dog whistles so loud you almost miss the crazy underneath the din. Star Parker's appearance yesterday on Fox & Friends was a "kitchen sink moment." Between blaming the President, the 99 percent, and the 2008 market crash for hurting those poor wealthy job creators, she managed to puree her word salad right into a whole lot of nothing.

One of the more classic moments:

"There is a disdain for the wealthy in this President, and when you think about this new economy that he's discussing, the reason that poor people or those that are low-wage workers are at risk or are suffering is because of these attacks on the wealthy. Their portfolios fell apart and poor people are not poor because the wealthy are wealthy...."

So first she says our wealthy President is a self-hating whiner and then turns right around and says but gosh, those poor wealthy folks. Their portfolios fell apart. Aw heck, those wealthy folks saw their dividend stream drop a bit and maybe their net worth, but then, they've already recovered. The rest of us? Not so much.

And then she has the nerve to say that low-wage workers are not suffering because of the wealthy. This, in the face of relentless attacks on labor laws, the minimum wage, work safety regulations, and even child labor laws. After all, as Newt Gingrich says, we can bust the unions by letting schoolchildren take over for janitors. Gee, Star. Who benefits from that arrangement, if not the wealthy?

She moves from that little bit of nonsense on to explain to Fox viewers how much liberals hate the free market system and capitalism after describing her own come-to-Jesus moment. Isn't it weird how these conservative blowhards benefit and are enabled into their current position because of the social safety net? Star Parker was a single mother on welfare who had four abortions before finding Jesus and eschewing the same safety net that kept her alive enough to find him at all. She can thank a liberal for keeping her alive in those lean years so that she could stumble into that church long enough to find Jesus and slap the hand that fed her.

I don't know a liberal or progressive out there whose idea of a fair system includes letting the 99 percent stand in a line with their hand out waiting for their monthly allotment of wealth distribution, but for people like Star Parker, it's always an either/or position. Either you're with us or against us. Either you love free markets or you hate them. There's never a sense of fairness, of the idea that to live in a society you have to give to that society, nurture it, and yes, pay taxes so that the community can thrive for the common good of everyone.

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This week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided just the latest analysis confirming that U.S. income inequality is at record levels. But while the income gap is at largest in 80 years even as the total federal tax burden is at its smallest in 60, the 2012 Republican presidential field is proposing to make both much, much worse. As the numbers show, the GOP field's toxic mix of massive upper-class tax cuts, mountains of debt and draconian spending cuts would ensure the yawning chasm between the top 1% and everyone else grows wider still.

On the same day that Texas Governor Rick Perry announced his "Cut, Balance and Grow" program, the Washington Post reported "Republican candidates offer a diverse set of economic plans." Of course, a quick glance at their respective plans shows that diversity is in the eye of the beholder.

After all, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul would all slash the top income tax rate starting in 2013. Each would reduce corporate taxes, already down to their lowest percentage share of federal revenue since 1950, from 35 percent to as little as 9 percent. All would eliminate the estate tax, a $25 billion a year windfall to the richest families in America, only a quarter of one percent of whom now pay it. All but Romney would completely zero out the capital gains tax. (As the Washington Post recently explained the impact of the already historically low 15 percent capital gains tax rate, "Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.")

Regardless of which Republican emerges as the party's standard bearer in 2012, the result as John Harwood explained on CNBC, is that the richest Americans would get back "hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars" annually from the U.S. Treasury.

To which Rick Perry replied:

"But I don't care about that. What I care about is them having the dollars to invest in their companies."

Which is quite evident from Perry's plan. His optional 20 percent flat tax rate would allow the top income earners to pay Uncle Sam at a much lower rate than the already low 35 percent level they pay currently. And Perry would not merely eliminate the estate tax, he would zero out the capital gains tax as well. Reviewing an analysis from the Tax Policy Center, the New York Times' Catherine Rampell concluded:

The highest-income households (at the 99th percentile) in every structure of family analyzed always benefit from opting into the Perry plan.

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The budget office’s numbers show that the federal tax burden has fallen for all income classes, which itself runs counter to the rhetoric you hear from the usual suspects. But that burden has fallen much more, as a percentage of income, for the wealthy. Partly this reflects big cuts in top income tax rates, but, beyond that, there has been a major shift of taxation away from wealth and toward work: tax rates on corporate profits, capital gains and dividends have all fallen, while the payroll tax — the main tax paid by most workers — has gone up.

And one consequence of the shift of taxation away from wealth and toward work is the creation of many situations in which — just as Warren Buffett and Mr. Obama say — people with multimillion-dollar incomes, who typically derive much of that income from capital gains and other sources that face low taxes, end up paying a lower overall tax rate than middle-class workers. And we’re not talking about a few exceptional cases.

According to new estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, one-fourth of those with incomes of more than $1 million a year pay income and payroll tax of 12.6 percent of their income or less, putting their tax burden below that of many in the middle class.

Now, I know how the right will respond to these facts: with misleading statistics and dubious moral claims.

On one side, we have the claim that the rising share of taxes paid by the rich shows that their burden is rising, not falling. To point out the obvious, the rich are paying more taxes because they’re much richer than they used to be. When middle-class incomes barely grow while the incomes of the wealthiest rise by a factor of six, how could the tax share of the rich not go up, even if their tax rate is falling?

On the other side, we have the claim that the rich have the right to keep their money — which misses the point that all of us live in and benefit from being part of a larger society.

Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer who is now running for the United States Senate in Massachusetts, recently made some eloquent remarks to this effect that are, rightly, getting a lot of attention. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody,” she declared, pointing out that the rich can only get rich thanks to the “social contract” that provides a decent, functioning society in which they can prosper.

Which brings us back to those cries of “class warfare.”

Republicans claim to be deeply worried by budget deficits. Indeed, Mr. Ryan has called the deficit an “existential threat” to America. Yet they are insisting that the wealthy — who presumably have as much of a stake as everyone else in the nation’s future — should not be called upon to play any role in warding off that existential threat.

Well, that amounts to a demand that a small number of very lucky people be exempted from the social contract that applies to everyone else. And that, in case you’re wondering, is what real class warfare looks like.

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Credit: Flickr

This is what democracy looks like.

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Credit: cafepress

There’s a knee-jerk response to dismiss the driver as being some dupe naively parroting slogans not meaningful in his tax bracket. (You’d never see that sticker on a Rolls-Royce.) It’s not just the success of Republican “messaging,” there’s more to it than that:

According to the CafePress page selling these bumper stickers, the five-dollar decal was created on December 4, 2008. For all you history geeks, that was before the Obama presidency. This sentiment even existed before the bank bailout. It was also weeks before reputed capitalist, George W. Bush, approved the $17.4 billion American auto industry bailout. Specifically, for GM, the parent company of Saturn.

“If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers,” said Bush in the Roosevelt Room on December 19, 2008.

After GM took government money – taxpayer money – as an emergency loan to save their company suffering from a disturbing combo of willful blindness and ignorance of the market – the first thing the automaker had to do was downsize. They shut down factories and dealerships, shedding jobs; and even eradicated some brands. One of those was Saturn.

Now this driver can look forward to higher prices for parts and repairs for a vehicle that’s essentially worthless since it was discontinued. The Bush bailout of GM was paid for by this driver at least twice. So the trade-in value losses for putting a sticker on that car? No longer an issue.

Why does this anti-wealth distribution sentiment resonate with him? Why doesn’t he want banksters and CEOs to pay up?

“Because everyone deserves some of what you’ve worked hard for.”

This message was written and uploaded before the tea party, when the economy was still in free fall. And even though “thinkers” like Samuel R. Staley, a fellow at the Reason Institute, wrote the unintentionally hilarious talking point now being repeated by GOP lawmakers: “It appears we are two years into a ‘lost decade,’” the fact of the matter is the middle-class has already had a lost decade – the ‘00s.

In the middle-class wages are flat. The three million jobs Bush created in his eight years in office were moot since the population grew by 22 million. Prices have gone up, salaries have not. Home values have fallen, retirement plans are gone, savings are drained. Not since the 1930s has a generation been less prosperous than the one before. In 2008, the economy for the middle-class went from long-term stagnation to suddenly much worse.

And this reasonably caused a fear reaction in this Saturn driver. What is he concerned about? Wealth distribution. Why?

It’s usually assumed that the reason Americans specifically don’t want to see taxes raised on the rich is because, in spite of driving a defunct GM brand four-door, they think of themselves as the “soon-to-be rich.” But a paper published in the National Journal of Economic Research in July suggests otherwise. They offer that it’s not hoping to be on top that makes us not want the wealthier to be taxed more – it’s the fear of being at the bottom. It’s referred to as “last-place aversion.”

The Economist wrote, “In keeping with the notion of ‘last-place aversion,’ the people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them: rewarding the ‘rich’ but ensuring that someone remained poorer than themselves.”

So taxing the rich isn’t about the fantasy that we’re going to someday be rich – it’s about the very real visceral fear of being, well, the poorest. If the government helps those below you, then they’ll be at your level – that’s the unfairness they’re afraid of.

Named one of the worst CEOs of 2008, GM head, Rick Wagoner received a $20 million dollar retirement package and an owner of one of his beaters has a bumper sticker decrying higher taxes for him.

The driver isn’t fantasizing about being Wagoner – he’s terrified of being driven even lower in the middle-class. And the GOP has successfully exploited that fear.

Because when people are afraid, they do all kinds of irrational things…like vote Republican.

After having a painful miscarriage some years earlier, I spent a long period of time in my next pregnancy on pins and needles, worried that I might lose another pregnancy. And as it turned out, I did go into labor early. I stayed on bedrest for the last six weeks of the pregnancy and delivered my eldest about 3 weeks earlier than her due date. She was healthy, thank the deity of your choice. But I also had the luxury of having decent insurance, so I knew that I had options in the event that we could not stop the labor from progressive past the point of no return.

So how can you look at this story and not see it as the so-called "free market" deciding that poor people don't deserve those same options?

For years, a drug given to high-risk pregnant women to prevent premature births has cost $10 to $20 per injection. Next week, the price shoots up to $1,500, meaning the total cost during a pregnancy could be as much as $30,000.

The drug, a form of progesterone given as a weekly shot, has been made cheaply for years, mixed in special pharmacies that custom-compound treatments that are not federally approved. But KV Pharmaceutical recently won government approval to exclusively sell the drug, known as Makena (Mah-KEE'-Nah). The March of Dimes and many obstetricians supported that because it means quality will be more consistent and it will be easier to get.

It seems no one anticipated the dramatic price hike.

"That's a huge increase for something that can't be costing them that much to make. For crying out loud, this is about making money," said Dr. Roger Snow, deputy medical director for Massachusetts' Medicaid program.

Doctors say the price hike may deter low-income women from getting the drug, leading to more premature births. And it will certainly be a financial burden for health insurance companies and government programs.

Children born very prematurely may require extensive and expensive hospitalizations, and ongoing therapy and medical assistance, expenses that can drain and/or bankrupt even a well-off family. Will we really be the kind of society that tells people--on the basis of their bank account--that their unborn child doesn't deserve every fighting chance? There was no substantive need to raise the price of Makena so high.

Thankfully, the FDA is going to allow generic versions of the drug

KV Pharmaceuticals recently won FDA approval of its brand-name Makena (hydroxyprogesterone caproate), a synthetic form of the hormone progesterone. The drug is approved to lower the risk of some preterm births in women who have already had at least one previous preterm birth.

The approval seemed to be good news -- until KV announced that Makena would cost $1,500 a shot -- up from the $10 to $15 that compounding pharmacies charge.

After getting the approval, KV sent a letter to compounding pharmacies telling them that the FDA would enforce the company's exclusive right to make the drug.

"This is not correct," the FDA said today.

"In order to support access to this important drug, at this time and under this unique situation, FDA does not intend to take enforcement action against pharmacies that compound hydroxyprogesterone caproate based on a valid prescription for an individually identified patient unless the compounded products are unsafe, of substandard quality, or are not being compounded in accordance with appropriate standards for compounding sterile products," the FDA announced.

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It's terrible, isn't it? I has a major sad, just thinking about the specter of poor rich Republicans who might even have to start clipping coupons or confine their vacations to the continental USA. It's just not right.

I wonder if they'll have gourmet food at the food banks?

Several top Republicans have said recently that President Obama's plan to allow the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans is "class warfare."

"Instead of resorting to tired old class warfare rhetoric, pitting one working American against another, the president and the Democratic leadership should start working with us this week to ensure a fair and open debate to pass legislation to cut spending and freeze tax rates without any further delay," said House Republican Leader John Boehner on Sunday.

And Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) reportedly also used the term during a Tea Party rally in Washington Sunday: "We will not compromise our economy to accommodate the class warfare rhetoric of this administration."

On Monday, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate elaborated: "I don't think Americans should be pitting Americans against each other," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) on the Senate floor. "Americans agree with President Kennedy's formulation that a rising tide lifts all boats. And Americans believe -- it's our basic idea of a country -- that we want everyone here to succeed, to do well and not to pit one group of us against another group.

"We all aspire to be in the very top groups of whatever we're talking about. And because of the kind of country we have, we have that opportunity and people do move from one income tax bracket up to the next one for example, as we increase our incomes," Kyl continued. "So we don't want to punish anyone for being successful. That class warfare went out of style when the Cold War ended."

Protesters riot yesterday in Toronto at the G20.

It's really, really simple. The rich crashed the world economy. They were bailed out, with their wealth having almost entirely recovered and corporate profits likewise have pretty much recovered. Now, at the G20, the world's leaders are discussing how to make regular people pay for the rich's follies.

The world's developed countries have built extensive public health systems, promised citizens a paycheck for life and erected a welter of protections around some industries and types of jobs. Now their leaders are conferring over a singular dilemma: how to take some of it back without undermining the economies they are trying to sustain.

You notice that somehow, no one is talking about going back to 1950's levels of progressive taxation, with a top rate around 90%. No, what they're talking about is making the middle class and the poor pay for the sins of the rich.

The key thing here to understand is this: there is no crisis for the rich or corporations anymore, therefore as far as they are concerned, there is no crisis.

Dick Durbin once said, ""And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."

It's not just the banks, of course, they are just one of the apex predators of the current court system, along with the Pentagon, pharma and various other predators. The systems is simple enough — they take care of Congress, staffers and everyone else who matters, and those people take care of them. Even if a congress member is not reelected, if they went down doing the bidding of monied interests, they are taken care of. If they don't do the bidding of their masters, on the other hand, their post-Congress career will be much less pleasant.

At the G20, today, what is being discussed is how to take away what's left of your economic future. Ordinary Americans didn't see a pay raise in the last decade. Not only won't they see one this decade, they'll take a loss, and now even the European experiment in taking care of the population is on the chopping board.

This is your future being decided, and no, they don't think you have a say in it.

(Steve Sack, Minnesota Star-Tribune.)

Oh dear, the Democrats have fallen into the fetal position again!

That's because they're 1. Too inarticulate to effectively defend their policies to voters 2. Seemingly oblivious to the fact that Republicans will attack them NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO and 3. are too afraid of being accused of being on the side of the VICTIMS in class warfare.

Which leads me back to the same question, again and again: What, exactly, do Democrats stand for? Besides their own re-relection, I mean:

On one side: teachers, doctors and their patients, the jobless, disaster victims, the troops.

On the other: private equity firms, hedge funds, venture capitalists, real estate partnerships and bond holders.

It would be hard to fashion from scratch a more politically potent standoff, yet the Republican Party is barely being forced to fight -- as Democratic lawmakers balk at deficit spending and hesitate to close a tax loophole on a wealthy class of investors with close social and political ties to powerful Democrats.

At issue are two bills to preserve several soon-to-expire provisions. One of them, the American Jobs and Closing Loopholes Act, colloquially known as the "tax extenders" bill, contains several tax breaks for corporations and families, along with $47 billion to preserve enhanced unemployment benefits for the rest of the year and subsidized COBRA health insurance, $24 billion to help states with Medicaid costs in 2011 and $64.6 billion to preserve elevated Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors for the next five years.

The second cobbles together money for the war as well as aid for teachers and Haiti and Gulf state disaster relief. Though it's moving through Congress as a separate vehicle from the extenders package, it's all part of the same fight. And Democrats can expect little help from the GOP. After years of passing emergency supplemental war bills with no attempt that they be paid for -- and, in fact, while cutting taxes at the same time -- Republicans have decided that troop spending bills are now items that can be opposed without one's patriotism being called into question.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the extenders bill will lard the federal budget deficit with $123 billion, a horrifying sum to Democrats already under attack for spending borrowed money. But the deficit isn't what has some Dems antsy -- rather, they're concerned about a revenue-raiser in the bill that would close a tax loophole through which rich investment fund managers would otherwise funnel $18 billion to themselves over the next ten years.

The bill, pitting the jobless against the cream of Wall Street, should not present a difficult choice for Democrats. But its passage is so far from assured that Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana who is routinely at odds with the party base, chastised his caucus during a Tuesday lunch meeting. "This is why we came here," an unusually fired-up Baucus urged.

Now, think about that. Max freakin' Baucus is telling them to vote for it, and they're still too scared. It never seems to occur to them that they won't need huge Wall Street donations to win if they have the people on their side.

Perhaps we should medicate our highly anxious and flaccid Democratic political class: Xanax - and Viagra.

Taibbi responds to the recent David Brooks column that's clearly aimed in his direction, and pretty much eviscerates him. Fine with me, since I can't stand Brooks' "rational centrist" schtick:

What’s so ironic about this is that Brooks, in arguing against class warfare, and trying to present himself as someone who is above making class distinctions, is making an argument based entirely on the notion that there is an lower class and an upper class and that the one should go easy on the other because the best hope for collective prosperity is the rich creating wealth for all. This is the same Randian bullshit that we’ve been hearing from people like Brooks for ages and its entire premise is really revolting and insulting — this idea that the way society works is that the productive ” rich” feed the needy “poor,” and that any attempt by the latter to punish the former for “excesses” might inspire Atlas to Shrug his way out of town and leave the helpless poor on their own to starve.

That’s basically Brooks’s entire argument here. Yes, the rich and powerful do rig the game in their own favor, and yes, they are guilty of “excesses” — but fucking deal with it, if you want to eat.....

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