In their scorched-earth effort to deliver another $700 billion tax cut windfall for the wealthy, Republicans have fittingly appropriated their favorite global warming talking point: "uncertainty." Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and John Boehner are just of the GOP leaders claiming "Congress ought to act today to stop all the tax hikes" because "it would reduce the uncertainty that's affecting employers all across our country." Of course, they are predictably silent about the 1980's, when Ronald Reaganupended the tax code four times in five years, including "the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime." And despite conservative warnings then as now about "job-killing tax hikes," American businesses responded by adding 23 million jobs after President Clinton raised upper-income tax rates in 1993.
Since the age of Reagan, the Republican electoral strategy has been "you can fool some of the people some of the time and that's our target market. At least, that is, when it comes to taxes. Because while the Gipper did deliver steep tax cuts in 1981 (slashing the top rate from 70% to 28%), what Reagan giveth he also taketh away. As Paul Krugman noted, in the face of the staggering deficits Reagan's supply-side tax cuts produced, "no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people":
The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.
Tax historian Joseph Thorndike concurred, noting that the two bills passed in 1982 and 1984 together "constituted the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime."
What a dope. "I've since been studying, and Chile has done this..." During the time of Reagan, Chile's Social Security system was considered to be the wingnut Holy Grail. I guess Sharon didn't get too far in her "studying" and whatnot, or she'd know why the saner people just don't talk about Chile in much detail (of course, there's always the optimists at the Cato Institute):
Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Sharron Angle says the nation's Social Security system needs to be privatized, and she says it was done before in Chile.CBS affiliate 8 News Now reports on what the Tea Party-backed hopeful had to say on the matter in an interview on Thursday:
...Angle's new ads say she's out to save Social Security by protecting it from government raids.
But in the primary, she said that Medicare and Social Security needed to be phased out in favor of something privatized, saying, that it can't be fixed. 8 News NOW asked how is that not a flip flop.
"It is when we have a $2.5 trillion raid and pillaging going on and an empty trust fund and now we are upside down. As of last Friday, they said, (there was a) $41 billion shortfall in Social Security. $41 billion less going in than coming out. It's broken," she said.
Angle then referred to 1980s Chile -- then under a military dictatorship -- to explain her previous statements that the United States should phase out its current system.
"When I said privatize, that's what I meant," explained the Senate contender. "That I thought we would just have to go to the private sector for a template on how this is supposed to be done. However, I've since been studying and Chile has done this."
However, the pension system established in 1981 by right-wing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is no longer a fully private system. Chile's system was revamped in 2008 to expand public pensions for groups left out of its system, including low-income seniors.
There are lots of reasons why, in the real world, a privatized system doesn't work.
For the first ten years, while Chile had high inflation, their investment funds did well, since about half was invested in government bonds that were indexed to inflation. But once the economy cooled down, returns fell and they now pay little in return.
Investors also pay very high fees, which hit the low wage earners harder. (Oh, and by the way? The funds are widely thought to be corrupt cartels, protected by the government. Of course, that would never happen here!) And low wage earners were notorious under-reporters of income. Another problem: the system isn't set up for short-term contract work, which is now a common form of employment.
The funds don't pay out much, especially for low wage earners. (Unlike our Social Security system.) Notice the stories the wingnuts quote all point to "average" return -- but that's artificially high due to the period of high inflation.
And it didn't pay, anyway. Because of transition costs and other factors, the Chilean privatized system costs three times as much to run.
But the regime knew what they were doing: They excluded the military from the private plans, members of which continue to receive pensions under the old, more generous system.
Glenn Beck had another one of those moments yesterday on his Fox News show, talking about the G20 Summit in Toronto:
BECK: Anyway, President Obama was there, and, um, he said something that kind of tripped my Marxism alarms. Here he is.
Mind you, Beck's "Marxism alarm" goes off all the time, with increasing shrillness and volume. It's kind of like the guy who sets his car alarm to such a sensitivity that it shrieks and squonks if you so much as walk within twenty feet of it.
Especially when you see what set it off this time:
Obama: A strong and durable recovery also requires countries not having an undue advantage. I think we all have the same interest -- and that is, the United States can compete with anybody -- as long as we've got an even playing field.
"A strong and durable recovery also requires countries not having an undue advantage. So we also discussed the need for currencies that are market-driven," Obama said. "As I told President Hu yesterday, the United States welcomes China's decision to allow its currency to appreciate in response to market forces."
In fact, American presidents have advocated a "level playing field" within the world's markets for decades. Bush pushed it. So did Ronald Reagan.
What, does Beck think the USA should compete at a disadvantage? Or does this mean he thinks that free-market capitalism operates on an uneven playing field, and that capitalism and fair competition cannot coexist?
Because that, you know, is actually a classic Marxist position.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been arguably the most frank and vocal critic of President Barack Obama's proposal to vastly limit and ultimately eliminate the potential use and supply of nuclear weapons. In an interview withThe National Review on Tuesday, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate called Obama's vision "inept," a liberal fantasia.
"A nuclear-free world has been a 60-year dream of the Left," he said, "just like socialized health-care. This new policy, like Obama's government-run health program, is a big step in that direction."
If only things were so black and white. Of course, one of Giuliani's political heroes, Ronald Reagan, once said that nuclear weapons were "totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization." Indeed, while he irked his detractors for years over a seemingly endless arms buildup, Reagan was, by his own telling, firmly committed to the abolition of nuclear weapons.
"[F]or the eight years I was president," he wrote in his memoirs, "I never let my dream of a nuclear-free world fade from my mind."
While I was researching our new book, I remembered the TV blockbuster movie that starred JoBeth Williams and which freaked out the entire country, including Ronald Reagan.
In 1983, there was a TV movie broadcast to the world entitled " The Day After," about the ramifications of a nuclear war that changed the way Americans viewed the nuclear bomb. It was the highest rated telecast (100 million views) in the history of television at the time and it changed the way Ronald Reagan perceived nuclear arms:
Reagan wrote in his diary that the film "left me greatly depressed," and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a "nuclear war".[2] In 1987 during the era of Mikhail Gorbachev'sglasnost and perestroika reforms, the film was shown on Soviet television. During the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty at Reykjavik, Meyer received a telegram from President Reagan that said, 'Don't think your movie didn't have any part of this, because it did.'[3]
Mushroom clouds covered our television screens in urban cities, but also suburban homes. Nobody escaped. Whether you lived in a mansion by the sea or a tenement in Brooklyn and the horror of that moment was etched into the minds of all Americans. All anybody talked about for days after the broadcast was what would happen if Russia and the US finally pushed the button and mutual destruction ensued.
The Day After influenced Reagan to the point that he told the directed how much it influenced him. Reagan lived in a time when the right-wing hawks like Newt Gingrich and Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist were spreading fearmongering lies to scare Americans into voting for Ronald. They even said that Soviet spies had infiltrated our government, so the paranoia around Russia was very, very high.
For someone like Reagan to realize the death and destruction nuclear weapons can cause should have taught people like Rudy a lesson, but everything that comes out from most of the right wing these days has no basis in reality. They speak only for the purpose of scoring cheap political points.
GE now joins the Reagan History Rewrite project as a new contributor, blanketing the airwaves with this nonsense, celebrating Ronald Reagan's "Centennial" while pandering to the right wing with tales of his majesty and legend.
Angelo (aka StopBeck on Twitter) was kind enough to list some facts as an antidote for GE's spin:
Ronald Reagan destroyed unions...cut the budgets for education, EPA, poverty programs, etc...engaged in a public policy initiative aimed specifically at screwing over the poor...advanced the prison-industrial complex...hollowed out the Federal government to the best of his ability...ironically espoused the belief that government was the enemy (hello! he was the president *facepalm*)...was reckless and neglectful in responding to HIV/AIDS...tried to cut disabled people from social security rolls (that’s right...disabled people)...HUD grant fraud…Sewergate…
GE takes billions of dollars for defense contracts and other goodies from our government, and sees nothing wrong with singing Reagan's praises on Rush hate talk radio?
I'm waiting for their celebration of JFK to balance things. And a unicorn. And maybe a pony, too.
Apparently, some 30 years after he left office and six years after he passed away, David Frum didn't think it members of the GOP needed to still worship at the altar of St. Ronnie.
David Frum, who wrote a widely-circulated blog post Sunday suggesting passage of the health care bill amounted to "Waterloo" for the Republican Party, has apparently been forced out of his fellowship at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Frum posted a resignation letter on his blog following a conversation with AEI President Arthur Brooks announcing that his position is "terminated."[..]
On Tuesday, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page hammered Frum for his "argument that if only Republicans had negotiated with Democrats, they could have somehow made the bill less awful than it is."
"Mr. Frum now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans, which is a stock Beltway role. But he's peddling bad revisionist history that would have been even worse politics," wrote the newspaper.
While I shed no tears for someone who has been smack dab in the middle of some of the most devastating policies ever wreaked on the whole world, it does strike me as more of the same recklessness and frenzied emotion that we see with the tea baggers, but coming from the institutional conservatives of DC. The fact that they cannot bear criticism or self-examination and would rather bash and remove the person who counsels reflection and restraint makes me a little frightened of who is in charge. Could it be that AEI is actually taking orders from the tea baggers?
"Judge Alito's confirmation is also the culmination of a disciplined campaign begun by the Reagan administration to seed the lower federal judiciary with like-minded jurists who could reorient the federal courts toward a view of the Constitution much closer to its 18th-century authors' intent, including a much less expansive view of its application to individual rights and federal power...read on
Ted Kennedy let his thoughts be known about the use of the 'Swift Boat' PR Firm
Good gravy...they've got an airport, a highway, the largest federal building in Washington DC and a freeway and that's still not enough honor for those Gipper-worshiping acolytes:
(S)ome of the late president's admirers are launching a new effort to add another honor: printing his likeness on a $50 bill in place of Ulysses S. Grant's.
In polls of presidential scholars, Reagan consistently outranks Grant, said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), who introduced legislation to make the change.
But at least one Democrat who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, where the proposal has been sent, isn't ready to jettison Grant for "someone whose policies are still controversial."
"Our currency ought to be something that unites us," said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks).
They never stop finding ways to keep throwing Reagan up as some weird conservative messiah (never mind that they sneer at Obama for being messianic). In fact, there is a peak near me called Mt. Diablo. A man--who professed to object to the obvious satanic overtones of the name--has been trying to get the county to rename it Mt. Reagan. Thankfully, the county has so far been unpersuaded.
I've never really gotten the rosy-eyed nostalgia for Reagan. I came of age during Reagan's presidency, and I don't remember things being all that great for most Americans. I do remember being concerned about the cognitive powers of the president when he played dumb for reporters during the Iran Contra scandal, a fear that was--in retrospect--not entirely unfounded. I remember thousands of developmentally disabled individuals dumped on the streets of California, when Governor Reagan turned the mental hospitals over to the Correctional Department, leaving families at a loss as to how to care for them, and the number of homeless in California shot up. I remember watching friends get sick and die of a new and mysterious disease that Reagan wouldn't even acknowledge by name. I know there's a lot of mysticism surrounding "It's Morning In America" meme, but does that really make all these numbnuts forget the massive deficit spending they clutch their pearls over now? Do they forget Iran-Contra when waxing rhapsodic over the end of the Cold War?
Sorry, Grant has his detractors, but I'd much rather keep him on the $50 than give Reagan this particular honor.
Fried Green al-Qaedas:: The Republican party is once again calling out President Obama, this time blasting him for being 'soft on snow' and criticizing his ineffectual handling of the blizzard hitting the Washington area.
I never understood why the Obama campaign and even his administration refused to call out Reagan and conservatism, ever. Is David Axelrod that daffy? I hated his campaign approach during the summer because he allowed conservatives to define Obama without putting up much of a fight until the end of September, and he also allowed them to define the health-care debate and kept Obama on the sidelines for the most part. What is wrong with him? I'd like to say that they are novices, but he's been in politics a very long time.
Digby and I were screaming the last two years that the word "conservatism" should have been called out for being the manifest cause of the destruction wreaked on the American people and the world during eight years of Bush-Cheney-GOP congressional rule. But did you hear a peep out of President Obama? He actually brought up Reagan's name in the election in a positive fashion.
I've been toying with an idea to bring back Bush because his administration laid waste to our land except for the very wealthy. There's a reason why he has disappeared for almost an entire year. His visage still causes a lot of distress in America, even when deployed for a worthy cause such as the Haiti earthquake disaster -- even Bush himself looked like annoyed that he had been roped into helping. Well, we do need someone to look after those Shysters.
Finally, about that narrative: It’s instructive to compare Mr. Obama’s rhetorical stance on the economy with that of Ronald Reagan. It’s often forgotten now, but unemployment actually soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cut. Reagan, however, had a ready answer for critics: everything going wrong was the result of the failed policies of the past. In effect, Reagan spent his first few years in office continuing to run against Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Obama could have done the same — with, I’d argue, considerably more justice. He could have pointed out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America’s economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate the banks.
But he didn’t. Maybe he still dreams of bridging the partisan divide; maybe he fears the ire of pundits who consider blaming your predecessor for current problems uncouth — if you’re a Democrat. (It’s O.K. if you’re a Republican.) Whatever the reason, Mr. Obama has allowed the public to forget, with remarkable speed, that the economy’s troubles didn’t start on his watch.
I remember there was a poll done in the beginning of his term which said that Americans were willing to give the new president at least eighteen months to get it together because we recognized the failure of Bush and Cheney as a nation, but as economic conditions get worse, patience is the first to go. And then Axelrod allowed the populist anger to get away from them, when it was legitimate for his administration to have gone after the Wall Street fat cats right from the beginning of his presidency. And it should have been critical to included conservative principles in their critiques, rather than let the Tea Parties resurrect them as somehow a solution to the very problems they caused in the first place.
It was clear during the campaign that Obama was reluctant to confront the Reagan legacy on its basic terms, preferring to dryly characterize his governing philosophy as technocratic and competent. I think that was a mistake, since people really have no other framework within which to understand their problems, when things go badly, they have no other way of understanding it except for blaming "big government" for either causing it or failing to fix it.
Today, they may be angry at the banks, but they see the problem being that the government gave these institutions preferential treatment over them rather than that they caused this worldwide economic crisis with their irresponsible, swashbuckling, gambling culture --- which now must be regulated by the government. I think most people see the recession, the banking crisis, unemployment and the rest as only a failure of government --- and they are assuming that the way to fix it is by making government smaller. After all, both Democrats and Republicans keep telling them that it's so.
I'm very glad to see that Obama is finally taking some action against the banks. It is the Democrats' best hope of reframing the debate, although I think it's awfully late in the game. Today, he seemed to sideline Geithner and Summers publicly, but the question is whether or not he's finally figured out that they are part of the problem, not the solution.
I don't think Obama's words alone have enough credibility anymore to fix this. He's going to have to take some concrete action.
And Democrats are going to have to accept that need to attack the Reagan legacy more directly and make an affirmative case for government. I would have thought that was obvious, but the Democratic party and Obama himself seem to have believed otherwise. If they persist with merely tweaking the Reagan legacy, they will find themselves in this same situation over and over again. As long as people see government as the problem, progressivism, liberalism, whatever you want to call it, will fail.
As usual it will remain the job of us bloggers to remind America how bad conservatism has been for the country. Maybe someday there will be a few more politicians who will state the obvious and not be afraid of the Broders in the Village, who only hold Democrats to their standard of "bipartisanship."
Obama clearly bought into the Village idea that "bipartisanship" was an ideal end unto itself. He's been disabused by the reality that the Village version of it permits conservatives to lie with impunity while punishing liberals for having the temerity to point that ugly fact out, and forces liberals to compromise on each and every one of their principles in order to prove their "seriousness" (a quality always defined by how far to the right it is). We'll see if the lesson sinks in.
