17 November 2011

How the GOP became the party of the 1%

Excerpts from an article by Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone:
Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. But the party of Reagan – which understood that higher taxes on the rich are sometimes required to cure ruinous deficits – is dead and gone. Instead, the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that the wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.

Modern-day Republicans have become, quite simply, the Party of the One Percent – the Party of the Rich.

"The Republican Party has totally abdicated its job in our democracy, which is to act as the guardian of fiscal discipline and responsibility," says David Stockman, who served as budget director under Reagan. "They're on an anti-tax jihad – one that benefits the prosperous classes."..

Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford each fought for higher taxes, while the biggest tax cut was secured by John F. Kennedy, whose across-the-board tax reductions were actually opposed by the majority of Republicans in the House. The distribution of the tax burden wasn't really up for debate: Even after the Kennedy cuts, the top tax rate stood at 70 percent – double its current level. Steeply progressive taxation paid for the postwar investments in infrastructure, science and education that enabled the average American family to get ahead.

That only changed in the late 1970s, when high inflation drove up wages and pushed the middle class into higher tax brackets. Harnessing the widespread anger, Reagan put it to work on behalf of the rich. In a move that GOP Majority Leader Howard Baker called a "riverboat gamble," Reagan sold the country on an "across-the-board" tax cut that brought the top rate down to 50 percent. According to supply-side economists, the wealthy would use their tax break to spur investment, and the economy would boom. And if it didn't – well, to Reagan's cadre of small-government conservatives, the resulting red ink could be a win-win. "We started talking about just cutting taxes and saying, 'Screw the deficit,'" Bartlett recalls. "We had this idea that if you lowered revenues, the concern about the deficit would be channeled into spending cuts."

It was the birth of what is now known as "Starve the Beast" – a conscious strategy by conservatives to force cuts in federal spending by bankrupting the country...

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Norquist expresses pride that the GOP has been so thoroughly transformed since the days of Reagan. "It's a different Republican Party now," he says. Norquist even goes so far as to liken the kind of Republicans common in Reagan's day – those willing to raise taxes to strengthen the economy – to segregationists. The "modern Republican Party," he says, would no sooner recognize a revenue-raiser than the "modern Democratic Party would recognize George Wallace."..

Such extremist rhetoric – equating taxation with theft – is exactly the kind of talk that dismays old-line Republicans. Many of those who fought for years at the side of Ronald Reagan say they no longer recognize traditional GOP values in the new Republican Party. Fighting for the rich, after all, is not the same as championing the right.
Much, much more at the eight-page long article in Rolling Stone

44 comments:

  1. and the sky is blue. gee, imagine my shock! (what's the emoticon for sarcasm, anyway?)

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  2. But sadly we have an "opposition" party that's very much in the pockets of the 1% and corporations as well. That makes today's "left" look awfully right wing compared to more progressive times.

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  3. Yawn. Another Rolling Stone attack piece on the republicans, lapped up by people with no independent idea of what they are talking about.

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  4. As has been made clear in America, time and again, and in Europe to the near downfall of countries, raising taxes only increases the size of government, it does not help the poor, it does not reduce the debt.

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  5. Wrong Dan,
    The most successful and wealthy countries in the world have high tax burdens on the wealthy. If lowering taxes led to overall wealth, then we should have been gaining wealth instead of losing it for that last few decades.

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  6. I wrote about "starve the beast" in Februray of 2006
    [ http://squidjig.blogspot.com/2006/02/bush-push-for-nukeyoulear-option.html ] and also in April, 2008
    [ http://squidjig.blogspot.com/2008/04/starved-beast.html ]

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  7. Which countries are those "most successful and wealthy countries" which the high tax burden on the wealthy? I said nothing about making people wealthy, I said increasing taxes doesn't help the poor and doesn't lower the debt, it only increases the size of the government.

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  8. Steve,

    If you are into losing time, I have a 1979 Britannica collection that needs to be reviewed.

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  9. Dan, if "raising taxes only increases the size of government, it does not help the poor, it does not reduce the debt.", then why is our debt gotten higher and our poor become more numerous AFTER taxes have been reduced numerous times by Republican presidents?

    Taxes on most Americans, particularly the highest income group, are at historical LOWS. Where's all the growth we were promised? Surely you don't think that it will happen if only we go lower yet?

    When you're in a hole, you should stop digging.

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  10. Dan,
    Most of the Scandinavian countries have high tax burdens, they are more wealthy overall and have an extremely low level of inequality. Furthermore, they beat the U.S. at almost every other measure of success: Health, start ups, etc.

    I said increasing taxes doesn't help the poor and doesn't lower the debt, it only increases the size of the government.

    Yes, and you're wrong about that. Increasing taxes on wealthier citizens brings more revenue which in return helps all citizens.

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  11. I consider myself Middle class. I have a house, but I still owe on my mortgage. I have a job, but we have been cut back.
    Somehow I'm afraid that if the "Tax the Rich" crowd gets their way, I'm gonna end up with less than I currently have.
    I also doubt that Millionaires, (people making more than $250,000, or whatever the threshold is these days)will be forced into paying much more into the public coffers.
    They've got a lot more resources at hand to help them avoid paying any more.

    Sometimes you gotta watch out what you wish for.

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  12. Since Switzerland has the lowest tax rates and Finland has among the highest and both are doing quite well, perhaps taxes aren't the defining reason for Scandinavian economic success.

    I know it's unpopular to disagree with popular opinion, but our poor have not become more numerous. Individual incomes have climbed for everyone at flat rates since the 80's. All this talk about the rich getting richer isn't borne out by the census data. Most of popular rich-getting-richer reporting comes from using household data rather than individual income data.

    Our debt has gotten higher because the government spends all the money they collect (and they are collecting at historic highs amounts) and then borrow more to fulfill the promises and buy votes.

    It's pretty silly to say that our tax rates are at historic lows..

    increasing taxes doesn't bring in more revenue because people just avoid paying it. Lowering taxes increases revenue, as have been proven many times through practice.

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  13. Dan, how can you say this -

    "It's pretty silly to say that our tax rates are at historic lows.."

    Do you think federal income tax rates are not low by historic standards?

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  14. I think my taxes are too low (I'm pretty close to the 1%) and wouldn't mind paying more. But if you don't think taxation is theft (albeit legal theft countenanced by the majority) try not paying your taxes and see what happens.

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  15. The Income tax only became legal in 1913, our country was founded in 1776. The top rates at the beginning were 7%. From 1925 to 1931 they were 25%. It seems clear the for most of the life of the country, our income was taxed less than it is now, so how can you say we are at historic low rates unless your history starts with the great depression.

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  16. The Income tax only became legal in 1913, our country was founded in 1776.

    Hilarious. Can't argue with blind faith. Bring back slavery and an agrarian/rural society and everything will shake out.......

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  17. And Dan,
    The lowest tax rates for *real* countries, read: Not tiny, nation state, tax havens, or islands are: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Armenia....etc..

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  18. The article represents most of American discourse nowadays: inarticulate drivel. It starts with a purposefully emotional but empty hypothesis and then seeks to confirm that theory with specious history and out-of-context quotes. This story was written for those who are already convinced of it's premise.

    Since apparently quotes substitute as logical argument, then I prefer these, both by Reagan:

    "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem"

    "I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."

    There might indeed be a problem in this country with respect to wealth inequality. However, that fact is not obvious to me. Nowhere have I seen a cogent argument as to why, minus government involvement, CEOs on Wall Street making an obscene amount of money somehow adversely affects my personal economic situation. Nowhere have I seen a cogent argument as to why we should ignore the fact that CEOs in politically favorable industries making an obscene amount of money DOES adversely affect my personal economic situation through taxation. And nowhere have I seen a cogent argument as to why more Keynesian stimulus and more government control is going to fix the above hypothetical problems.

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  19. Steve says:

    "Yes, and you're wrong about that. Increasing taxes on wealthier citizens brings more revenue which in return helps all citizens."

    What world do you live in? Are there unicorns and leprechauns on such world? Seeing as how public choice theory obviously doesn't apply on this world, do the laws of physics also not apply?

    Increased government funds almost always gets distributed to politically favored parties. Sometimes that means benign endeavors like the moon race or the interstate highway system, but most of the time it means halliburton and solyndra. To the extent that any of this increased revenue "helps all citizens" or even just
    "helps the poor" is happenstance.

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  20. Bret,
    I live in a real world where countries with more progressive policies are wealthier and more successful in nearly every measure than the United States. You live in one where discredited Laffer economics are still taken seriously thanks to years of well paid for propaganda. That bull isn't selling so much anymore.

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  21. "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem"

    No better evidence of the hypocrisy and myth surrounding that fool.

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  22. Steve,

    I'm never going to convince you that humans trying to control other humans (i.e. government) really is the cause to most, if not all, of what ails us, but I would like to make one point and ask one question:

    (1) You can't cherry pick data. You can claim that so-called progressive nations "are wealthier and more successful in nearly every measure than the United States", but even if I take that claim at face value (I don't, by the way) for every successful progressive country you point to I can point out one that ended in abject failure. Failure at best, massive atrocities at worst.

    (2) You do realize that you're advocating the use of force against your own people, right? I just want you (or any other progressive, socialist, etc) to admit that. Granted, you're advocating force in order to create a more successful civilization, but it's still force.

    I can live with people believing that central planning is superior to organic, spontaneous order. It feels like common sense to our human brain and it also explains why so many people support Intelligent Design. What I can't live with is supporters of central planning denying what it truly is. Namely, the use of legal violence to control a population. Not to enforce basic human rights, but to produce a more optimal society.

    I assume you wouldn't support such violence against Iran, then why on your fellow citizens?

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  23. "There might indeed be a problem in this country with respect to wealth inequality. However, that fact is not obvious to me. Nowhere have I seen a cogent argument as to why, minus government involvement, CEOs on Wall Street making an obscene amount of money somehow adversely affects my personal economic situation."

    Bret,

    The issue for me isn't that some are making an obnoxious amount of money. The issue is they are paying a lower tax rate on their income than I am. This means that my taxes need to be higher to fund the government. Or in today's world, my share of the deficit is growing more than it needs too. Can you justify why a hedge fund manager gets to have his salary taxed as capital gains?

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  24. How much do you think Jann Wenner is worth?

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  25. OWS and supporters don't care how much Jann Wenner or Michael Moore are worth. We care that they support progressive politicians who will try to right a sinking ship because there is too much weight on one end, which is being held there by the GOP and corporate politics. We are capitalists who want things to return to the good ole days when the Middle Class was strong.

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  26. I know it's unpopular to disagree with popular opinion, but our poor have not become more numerous.

    Simple observations tells us people have lost jobs and unemployment benefits. "Relative poverty" can be defined as having significantly less access to income and wealth than other members of society. Therefore, the relative poverty rate is a measure of income inequality.

    Individual incomes have climbed for everyone at flat rates since the 80's.

    In 1988, the income of an average American taxpayer was $33,400, adjusted for inflation. Fast forward 20 years, and not much had changed: The average income was still just $33,000 in 2008, according to IRS data.

    All this talk about the rich getting richer isn't borne out by the census data. Most of popular rich-getting-richer reporting comes from using household data rather than individual income data.

    Meanwhile, the richest 1% of Americans -- those making $380,000 or more -- have seen their incomes grow 33% over the last 20 years, leaving average Americans in the dust.

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  27. When I was a kid, I learned that envy and bitterness in response to others' good fortune was a bad thing. Johnny got a dollar for mowing the lawn? That's not fair. Why didn't you tell me I could have mowed the lawn for a dollar? I deserve a dollar too!

    Maybe Johnny should hand over half his dollar...?

    But now I guess this sort of bratty pettiness is acceptable. It's become a political movement! I'm a pretty liberal guy who almost always votes democrat, definitely not in the '1%', and horrified by the undue influence money has in our government, but the '99 percenters' annoy the hell out of me.

    And where to people think the 1% get their money anyway? They act like the government is taking it from the poor and handing it to the rich. That's not the case. The 99% are the ones handing their money to the 1%. If the 99% want to keep some of that money, they should just stop giving it to the 1%.

    Most of the wealth transfer is through the finance industry (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/1008/044.html)

    If the 99% stopped handing their money over to wall street and banks (which simply repackage and sell it to others), the wealth of the 1% would disappear. Simple as that. The inequality would disappear.

    The problem is not taxes or government -- it's cultural. Wealth is the vehicle of status in America, and increasingly the world. The statement: "If he's so smart, why isn't he rich?" sums up American culture. We no longer value hard work, or intelligence, or morals. We admire and envy those who have figured out a way to get rich quick. Our heros are 20 year old tech billionaires and celebrities.

    The 99% handed their money to the 1% willingly, because the 1% promised the 99% easy money. And for the most part, we bought it. And for a while, it worked. People made money in stocks, and everyone took it for granted that their savings would balloon. But pipe dreams are just that. If I dream I won the lottery, and don't, did someone steal that money from me?

    So now we're dissatisfied. Jealous and pressuring the government to get us we never had, never earned, but somehow think was stolen.

    Johnny won't give us half his lawn-mowing earnings, so we're going to get that big kid Billy (the Government) to take it from him. Of course Billy's happy to help, because he'll get a cut.

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  28. "Can you justify why a hedge fund manager gets to have his salary taxed as capital gains?"

    This really burns my britches and you can blame that ratsizfratzis Republican bastich Charles Schumer for this sell-out to the rich.

    Oh, what's that you say, Schumer's a Democrat? Shocked, I'm shocked. You meant the 0.1% has bought both parties?

    The "reason" capital gains are taxed at a lower rate is that you're supposed to get a break because if you hold something x years and the inflation rate is y over those years, then your gain is (1+y)^x composed of inflation and not a real gain. With y at 2% over the past five years and the average duration of holdings not very long this reasoning doesn't hold and capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income based on some sort of adjustment for inflation, but not a flat 15% (since I'm pretty sure we're headed for much higher inflation, it still should be adjusted for).

    This is not going to happen because of the corrupting influence of money on politics.

    If you want to hear an interesting talk by a Harvard professor (who clerked for Scalia - go figure that) on the corrupting influence of money on politics - go here

    http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2011-10-24/lawrence-lessig-republic-lost

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  29. As a Canadian, I often wonder how poor Americans in the southern states can be such staunch supporters of Republican ideals. From up here, it doesn't look like the GOP is working in their interest - health care being the area where it seems most apparent to me.

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  30. Chris,

    This is not mean to be offensive, because honestly I love Canada, but Canada isn't the United States and I would never want to leave there. You need not look any further than your "Human Rights Commission" and how they've decimated free speech to understand that Canadian ideas about personal liberty are fundamentally different than ours. We hold our government and ourselves to a higher standard. To you, it seems obvious that poor southerners would want to steal from their rich neighbors in order to increase their standard of living. America has a proud tradition of rejecting that notion, although recently we've fallen off the wagon a bit.

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  31. Congratulations, Bub, for this comment:

    "The "reason" capital gains are taxed at a lower rate is that you're supposed to get a break because if you hold something x years and the inflation rate is y over those years, then your gain is (1+y)^x composed of inflation and not a real gain..."

    That's the first time on this blog (or elsewhere that I've seen recently) that someone has expressed the logical explanation for why cap gains are taxed at a lower rate. Everyone else (including some politicians) seem to think that cap gains are taxed lower "because the holder took a risk and deserves a reward." That's not it at all; your explanation is the proper one.

    And I think we would both agree that some distortion creeps in when I can hold my equity for a year and a day and get a much lower tax than had I sold the day before. Also some distortions in what is considered a capital gain.

    But anyways, kudos for your comment.

    p.s. - I think your earlier comment ("if you don't think taxation is [legal] theft... try not paying your taxes and see what happens") is a bit weak on the logic side.

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  32. Stan --

    Totally agree on your assessment of Bub's comment. I had always assumed "because the holder took a risk and deserves a reward" was the proper answer. Of course, if that's the answer all the politicians give doesn't it become the de facto reason? Curious.

    I also believe taxation is theft. I wonder what you see as weak logic. It certainly isn't voluntary by any real definition I'm aware of. You could say by not moving I'm agreeing to the terms of taxation, but given my choices and the precedent such an argument sets, that seems the weaker argument logic-wise to me.

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  33. Bret, it's the phrase "try not paying your taxes and see what happens" that doesn't quite fit.

    If I don't pay my taxes, what happens is that I get arrested. And charged with a crime.

    o.k., right. But how does that prove the taxation was a crime? If taxing were a crime, then not paying it would not be a crime.

    It's the kind of statement that on a college exam might be answered with one of those "true, true, unrelated" answers. Sort of.

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  34. When I was a kid, I learned that envy and bitterness in response to others' good fortune was a bad thing. Johnny got a dollar for mowing the lawn? That's not fair. Why didn't you tell me I could have mowed the lawn for a dollar? I deserve a dollar too!


    Perhaps you are annoyed with the 99%, because you are having trouble understanding it, Mr. Jones.

    It's not the idea that we envy the rich for their stuff. We don't want their stuff. That's why people are willing to sleep in tents. This isn't about materialism. The idea of going to Wall St and working for a hedge fund manager to find new ways to sell derivatives is foreign to our brains. We are people more likely to go into social sciences, teaching, writing, art, or, yes, forgoing real careers and opt for just having jobs.

    We don't envy their stuff. We object to the shift down from a strong middle class. GOP policies that have been designed for 30 years to make our social net so small that it can be drowned to death in a shallow bathtub. An average income that is stagnant while tax policies have been changed so that the rich have grown in their wealth exponentially.

    If there weren't a recession, the young (who have been hit the hardest and seen their parents struggle, working hard, to keep their heads above water, and still lose their jobs, then their homes) would be happy to some day have a modest home to start a family. Instead, they have seen a fight for basic healthcare consume our nation, while their friends, and THEM included, have fought and died in two wars. They have seen the Supreme Court say corporations can control elections as much as they want. Bush's tax cuts for the rich were paid for by states that lost the revenue partly by an increase in public college tuitions. Taxes used to be increased to pay for an elective war, such as Iraq.

    Young people have witnessed their whole lives that the GOP influences poor people in the South and elsewhere to vote against their own economic interests using "God, Guns, and Gays" to rile them up.

    These job creators are holding on to at least $1 trillion right now and seeing their profits and our productivity increase. Bank bailouts led to corporate bonuses and bigger CEO golden parachutes, not a willingness to allow people still making payments on rigged mortgages to stay in their homes.

    It's disgust you smell in the wind, not envy.

    It's only class warfare when you fight back.

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  35. Bret, it's the phrase "try not paying your taxes and see what happens" that doesn't quite fit.
    If I don't pay my taxes, what happens is that I get arrested and charged with a crime.

    I didn't say taxation was a crime, I said it was legal theft. What will happen if you don't pay your taxes is that two gorillas with all the joie de verve of 1950s NKVD agents will appear at your threshold to put you in handcuffs - I don't recommend resisting them. They'll take you down to the local courthouse where a judge, who pays the mortgage on his/her (probably much-nicer-than-yours) house with money collected from the public till, will cheerfully attach your bank accounts or sell your property at a loss to pay your tax bill (with interest and penalties). The difference between taxation and someone jimmying your back door to steal your wife's jewelry is that your insurance company won't pay off when you’re taxed (you can get insurance against death, but not taxes). I don't think taxation is immoral or wrong - it's part of the social contract - we pay our taxes and get to live in a pretty nice country. Just because I see it for what it is doesn’t mean I’m opposed to it.

    The problem I see with our country (and really, any democracy) is that our elected representatives have the conflicting objectives of i) manipulating the system to collect as much of the commonweal for themselves and their constituents as possible and ii) growing the commonweal as much as possible for the benefit of the maximum number of their fellow citizens. I think the pendulum has shifted too far in the direction of objective (i) and that it’s been going that way since 1968.

    There are lots of things that we could do to reverse the unfortunate trend toward me-and-mine-first-ism – i) rationalize capital gains taxes, ii) institute a 90% death tax (just because I see it for what it is doesn’t mean I think it’s wrong), iii) reinstitute Glass-Steagall, iv) institute public funding of federal elections, v) eliminate corporate taxes but forbid buying back stock and force corporations to invest or pay out their profits to the shareholders who would then pay taxes on them, vi) put an excise tax (90% on income above the social security maximum) on professions that tax the commonweal rather than increase it (I’m thinking of you hedge fund managers), vii) put an excise tax (90% on income above the social security maximum) on union members who put a tax on large capital investments (I’m thinking of you longshoremen), viii) require presidential candidates to have a PCL-R less than 15 (I despair on this one), viii) sunset federal regulations, ix) allow student loans to be bankrupted (an unholy alliance of bankers and college professors reinstituted debtors prisons for college students of limited means without anyone noticing), x) institute a bonus program at the SEC funded with 20% of the fines they collect on Wall Street bankers, xi) means test social security (I won’t get any), xii) institute some form of market discipline on public school teachers (allowing idiots with union protection to turn kids off to learning is one of the great tragedies of the modern American era), xiii) give an annual bonus of $35,000, paid for by the federal government, for k-12 teachers with less than 5 years of experience starting in 2015 – which will motivate high-quality people to become teachers without rewarding anyone already doing it (presumably because they love it).

    I’m not actually serious about viii (candidates would be taught how to cheat – though they’d never get it) or vi and vii (requires the federal government to pick winners) – but the tragedy is that if you put me in a room with a group of Tea Party members and Occupy Wall Streeters, I could get them all to agree that the rest of those measures would be good for the United States. It’s a tragedy because the same wouldn’t be true if you put me in a room with a bunch of Congress critters.

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  36. Why do the current Republicans even WANT to be the party of the 1%? you may ask.

    Most people are simply not aware that after the Powell Memo in 1971, four billionaires put up money to win back the various institutions in the U.S. from the Liberals. One of the actions taken was to create conservative think tanks. One of the outcomes of the think tanks is what during George W Bush's administration were known as "Daily talking points." These were disseminated (via email, apparently) to every talking head in the conservative pantheon, so that they could all speak with one voice, each day and every day. And to not speak with that same voice was to be found on the outside, and soon. But the reason for the talking points was not to find out who was faithful and who wasn't. The purpose was to propagandize the public, using the old dictum that "If you hear it enough times, it must be the truth."

    It is not a far step from there to using the talking points to not only win elections, but to make the top people in your pantheon the focus of all of it - and without even having to name any of them. Repeating enough times that "The wealthy deserve the most, because they are the ones who create jobs" makes it true in the minds of those who aren't hearing enough else. And once the news networks were bought up by conservatives, it was a quick ride on that wagon to "Anyone who doesn't believe in Laisse faire capitalism must be a (pick one or more) commie Liberal pinko Marxist Nazi Fascist."

    It all starts with centralizing the message, to get people all on the same wavelength. From there it goes downhill - quickly. It took them a long time to put the pieces together, and it took time to repeal laws that prevented them from having free reign as regards information dissemination. They needed to repeal the Equal Time Amendment, which they did during Bush I. Soon after that, we had Rush Limbaugh spewing hatred for all things collective or "social contract," free to characterize Liberals for the nation, any way he wanted. And the Liberals never HAVE discovered that they can't win against this monolith, run by messages sent out daily (and they still are), in order to make it seem like the whole world is conservative, so why would any citizen want to buck the system? The Liberal's main complicity is simply that they don't get it - that when one side speaks with one voice, if the other doesn't also do that, the other gets steamrollered.

    The rest is mainly appeals to knee-jerk thinking (yes, that is an oxymoron).

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  37. Dan -

    Look at the numbers of expenditures by our government, and you will see that the "big government" Democrats have been outspent by the "small government" Republicans - and by a pretty wide margin. Those who talk the talk don't walk the walk. And the same goes for deficit spending, too.

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  38. (1) You can't cherry pick data. You can claim that so-called progressive nations "are wealthier and more successful in nearly every measure than the United States", but even if I take that claim at face value (I don't, by the way) for every successful progressive country you point to I can point out one that ended in abject failure. Failure at best, massive atrocities at worst.

    What "cherry picking"? Please do name which country it is you're talking about. Finland? Norway? Sweden? Denmark? Canada?

    (2) You do realize that you're advocating the use of force against your own people, right? I just want you (or any other progressive, socialist, etc) to admit that. Granted, you're advocating force in order to create a more successful civilization, but it's still force.

    You don't seem to be making a coherent reply to my post: "Socialist"? What? "Force"?

    I can live with people believing that central planning is superior to organic, spontaneous order. It feels like common sense to our human brain and it also explains why so many people support Intelligent Design. What I can't live with is supporters of central planning denying what it truly is. Namely, the use of legal violence to control a population. Not to enforce basic human rights, but to produce a more optimal society.

    "Central Planning"? What the hell are you on about? I'm talking about Democracy and progressive policy.

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  39. "I also believe taxation is theft. I wonder what you see as weak logic."

    Classic. It answers its own question.

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  40. Bub,
    The Capital Gains Tax has been steadily reduced by both parties since Reagan.

    http://news.yahoo.com/top-0-1-nation-earn-half-capital-gains-172647859.html

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  41. I want to eliminate the break capital gains get. Not that that matters since it seems billionaires have found a way to not even pay the reduced tax: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-21/billionaires-duck-buffett-17-tax-target-avoiding-reporting-cash-to-irs.html#

    This is an interesting essay on what happened to the Republican Party (I was once a registered Republican - I didn't leave the party, it left me): http://nymag.com/print/?/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/

    "I also believe taxation is theft. I wonder what you see as weak logic."


    This is a semantics issue (which internet arguments aren't?). Progressives define theft as the illegal taking of property while conservatives think of theft as the forceable taking of property. Taxation, everyone can agree I think, is the forceable taking of property and is therefore, in my eyes, theft (I support it, but feel it should be called what it is). Progressives, with their namby-pamby everything has to be nicey-nicey (isn't that broccoli delicious)feel that the forceable taking of the citizenry's property has to be sugar coated to make it go down easily.

    There's nothing wrong with taxation and there's nothing wrong with calling it theft.

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  42. "Taxation is theft" is ridiculous hyperbole. It implies that nothing comes of it in return, which is of course ridiculous. If we want to discuss ways that tax dollars could better benefit a society, that would be more conducive to an adult conversation.

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  43. So, "Classic. It answers its own question." and "would be more conducive to an adult conversation." are arguments? Seems like classic ad hominems.

    If you broke into my house, stole my wife's jewelry, pawned it and donated the money to the National Cancer Institute, does that make what you did not stealing?

    Why do you care what I call it if I continue to pay my taxes?

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