Heritage's Mike Lee: What's next for conservatives?

You know me, I'm all about equal time and the Fairness Doctrine, so I'm linking here in full a speech on October 29 by former Senator Mike Lee, the director of the Heritage Foundation.

Very quickly, Lee has taken Heritage from a right-wing think tank to an activist wing of the Tea Party; and many on the Right call Lee the leader of the Tea Party movement.  He very much positions himself as outside the "Republican establishment," whatever that is. 

(Everybody except John Boehner and Mitch McConnell? I guess "outside the establishment" is what you call yourself instead of "outside the Beltway" when you're actually located inside the Beltway, like Heritage is.)

Just a few interesting lines I'd like to point out that sound OK on the surface, until you get to the ideas part. Such as:

It’s hard to believe, but by the time we reach November 2016, we will be about as far – chronologically speaking – from Reagan’s election as Reagan’s election was from D-Day! Yet as the decades pass and a new generation of Americans faces a new generation of problems, the party establishment clings to its 1970s agenda like a security blanket.

The result is that to many Americans today, especially to the underprivileged and middle class, or those who have come of age or immigrated since Reagan left office the Republican Party may not seem to have much of a relevant reform message at all.

This is the reason the G.O.P. can seem so out of touch. And it is also the reason we find ourselves in such internal disarray.

And here's Lee's guidepost:

Where do we begin? A generation ago, conservatives forged an agenda to meet the great challenges facing Americans in the late 1970s: inflation, poor growth, Soviet aggression,along with a dispiriting pessimism about the future of the nation and their own families.

I submit that the great challenge of our generation is America’s growing crisis of stagnation and sclerosis – a crisis that comes down to a shortage of opportunities.

This opportunity crisis presents itself in three principal ways: immobility among the poor, trapped in poverty; insecurity in the middle class, where families just can’t seem to get ahead; and cronyist privilege at the top, where political and economic elites unfairly profit at everyone else’s expense.

OK, so far, so good. Sounds like good 'ole liberal rhetoric, I'm liking it.

Lee goes on to talk about breaking up corrupt cronyism of business and government elites, of backing the "little guy" again, and helping the middle class with one of its biggest expenses: health care.  (Lee supports "a comprehensive health reform plan proposed by Representatives Steve Scalise and Phil Roe" that I'm sure you all heard about when it was rolled out in September...?) 

Lee says there are, "[F]our leading challenges facing middle-class families today: the cost of raising children; the difficulties of work-life balance; the time Americans lose away from work and home, stuck in traffic; and the rising costs of and restricted access to quality higher education."  

OK, maybe those aren't America's top four problems, but they're definitely up there, so I'm liking the rhetoric.

He says the Republicans have proposed legislation to address these four challenges.  Now we get into the problems....

To address the cost of raising children -- about $300,000 per child, cites Lee -- he proposes (yep, you guessed it), a tax cut for the middle class.  Yet more right-wing social engineering through the tax system.  I'm against trying to do policy through the tax code.  That's what our tax code is so darn complicated.  Moreover, what's to say the right won't turn around and call these same middle-class families "moochers" and part of the "47 percent" that doesn't pay net income tax?  

Anyhow, Mike Lee says the middle class should keep more of its own money, "not give parents more of other people's money."  That's just dandy, but the median U.S. income is $25,000. Double that and a two-income family with two children would owe only about $500 in income tax anyway.  So what good would a $5,000 tax cut do them?

Mike Lee has the answer: a $2,500 per-child tax credit that can offset income and payroll taxes.  Now he's talking about taking the 47 percent of moochers and exempting them from the only taxes they do pay, Social Security and Medicare.  What about our yawning deficits? What about, "You should pay taxes if you want to participate in our democracy"? No answer. It's just more conservative voodoo economics: cut everybody's taxes, then cry about deficits. And then call the middle-class beneficiaries of this tax system a bunch of moochers.

Next, Lee proposes old-school liberal policies: mandatory flex-time for working parents; and more investment in infrastructure and mass transit, so that people don't spend so much time in traffic.  Fine!  Great!  Welcome to the Democratic Party.  

But there's always a "but."  Mike Lee proposes to to build new highways and mass transit... but by cutting taxes (you knew that had to be part of it!) and shifting responsibility for infrastructure projects to the states.  That's not a solution; that's passing the buck. That's magical thinking.

Finally, Lee proposes opening up the accreditation system for higher education and vocational training. This is a pretty complicated subject and I won't go into it now, except to say that accreditation for alternative forms of education like apprenticeships and e-learning matters because only accredited institutions are eligible to participate in federal student loan programs. In other words, Lee wants to allow more educational-training providers to benefit from federally subsidized student loans. This could be good or bad -- bad if it ends up as a federal subsidy for businesses to provide training to their employees, which would not really be the intention.

Lee concludes in very un-Tea Party-like fashion [emphasis mine]:

Especially in the wake of recent controversies, many conservatives are more frustrated with the establishment than ever before. And we have every reason to be. But however  justified, frustration is not a platform. Anger is not an agenda. And outrage, as a habit, is not even conservative. Outrage, resentment, and intolerance are gargoyles of the Left. For us, optimism is not just a message – it’s a principle. American conservatism, at its core, is about gratitude, and cooperation, and trust, and above all hope. It is also about inclusion. [Ha! -- That made me LOL. -- J]  Successful political movements are about identifying converts, not heretics.

But anger sure can pack a town hall meeting!  A message of exclusion -- of welfare-mooching minorities, gate-crashing illegals, and culture-subverting gays and intellectuals -- sure turns 'em out at the polls!  Indeed, Lee's message here is not hopeful -- it's hypocritical and delusional. Anger and fear are the real drivers of today's Republican Party, not optimism.

Interestingly, in a recent highly quoted interview about politics, English comedian Russell Brand quoted the same phrase: that the Left's problem is that it is always looking for heretics -- those who are not pure enough -- while the Right is looking for allies. That may be true of Britain, but the opposite is true in the U.S. right now. The Tea Party is on a perpetual RINO hunt; whereas Democrats are too embarrassed to even call themselves "liberal" anymore; they're grateful to let any politician put a [D] behind his name, even he's a Republican by 1991 standards.

U.S. workers and the real 'freeloaders'

Huffington Post featured three excellent articles in two days about the plight of America's workers, who struggle to work enough hours to pay their bills, while not getting any paid leave or health insurance.

This week a Republican friend was complaining to me about "freeloaders" in America who don't pay any income taxes and thus feel no responsibility for our government; they just want to take, take, take.  This was his version of Mitt Romney's secretly taped complaint about the "47 percent" -- a moment of candor that likely cost Romney the 2012 U.S. presidential election.  (Such complaints are bald assertion: there is no indication that a large number of our fellow citizens feel this way; and people who make such accusations don't feel any need to offer evidence for such a conclusion.)

I replied to my friend, first, that Romney's 47 percent by definition includes millions of Red State Republicans.  Second, I said that nobody who works in America is a freeloader, even if they don't pay income tax.  Why?

The article about KFC provides a pretty good example.  A young man worked hard and was promoted by his boss and given extra hours and responsibilities, with a promise that a raise was just around the corner, but the raise never came. When he said he didn't want to be a manager anymore, it was too much stress for a poverty wage, his boss accused him of being "selfish."  Meanwhile, from 2007 to 2011, KFC (part of Yum!Brands) saw its profits rise 45 percent. 

This is true nationwide, where U.S. corporate profits are at an all-time high, while workers' wages are at an all-time low.  Yes, companies are getting more efficient and workers are getting more productive, but the profit gains from all that increased productivity are not going to workers.  

So just who is freeloading off of whom?  I don't mean to sound like a Marxist, but obviously, that guy working his tail off at KFC while living in his uncle's basement is not seeing any of that 45 percent in profits; it's all going to the corporate managers and shareholders.  His story has been repeated millions of times at other fast-food and retail joints around the country.

Or take the article about Amazon that, like many companies, outsources many aspects of its operations to temp agencies that don't give their workers any job security, full-time hours or benefits. Similarly, the U.S. Government's contractors often employ temp and part-time workers who earn below-poverty wages who then must rely partly on government benefits.  

This is not to mention Wal-Mart, the nation's #1 employer, whose average employee earns less than $9 an hour (less than $19,000 a year, full-time), and who has the most employees receiving federal welfare benefits.

Knowing all this, I don't see how anybody can have the gall to complain about the "selfishness" of U.S. workers who don't pay income tax.  Paying income tax is an elite privilege; and I'm sure these poor working Americans would love to be members of that elite club, earning enough money on salary with benefits to qualify for the "burden" of paying income taxes... while still enjoying all the other tax expenditures that middle- and upper-class Americans receive, which, according to Bloomberg, make up the largest category of government spending, $1.3 trillion:

Middle-class families get an average benefit from the mortgage interest deduction of $139, while families in the top 1 percent get $3,752.

Taken together, individual income tax expenditures are the equivalent of sending $686 each year to those in the bottom fifth of the income distribution, $3,175 to those in the middle fifth, and $30,714 to those in the upper fifth. The average member of the top 1 percent gets nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year -- a statistic that might have proved useful for the folks protesting in Zuccotti Park.

Working Poor Face Long Odds: 'You Have To Just Wait Your Turn, But That Turn May Never Come'

By Saki Knafo

May 7, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/16U5Yr4

Taxpayers Indirectly Employing More Low-Wage Workers Than Walmart And McDonald's Combined: Study

By Jillian Berman

May 8, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/10iQvsy

Amazon Warehouse Workers Sue Over Security Checkpoint Waits

By Dave Jamieson

May 8, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/16YKjhz

The morality of capitalism v. redistribution

Where to begin with the question "Is capitalism moral"? Let's start with the title. Kind of a loaded question. Anyway let's be precise. Pearlstein is really discussing political economy, i.e. how our laws and governance influence commerce and the general welfare. Pearlstein means to debate the role that government should play in the economy. 

To start, Pearlstein correctly notes that, "For most of the past 30 years, the world has been moving in the direction of markets," and yet increasingly over that same period we have "stagnant incomes, gaping inequality, a string of crippling financial crises and 20-somethings still living in their parents’ basements."

Thus Republicans have pivoted, Pearlstein says, to focusing on capitalism's moral superiority because they certainly can't make a prima facie case for capitalism's benefits. Unfortunately, Pearlstein takes their bait and tries to analyze, more or less objectively, which side -- the "free-market capitalists" or the "redistributionists" -- is indeed morally superior, and the flaws with each.

The truth, as with most things, is muddled and complicated.  But I want to lay down a few markers. First, very few liberals/progressives/Democrats insist on having this "moral" debate. Why? Because we liberals are outcome-based. By contrast, conservatives and free-marketeers believe that one's moral principles should determine the rules of the game, and if one's moral principles are sound, then ipso facto, the results will take care of themselves. More precisely, conservatives believe that economic results are morality-free; only our political economics must be morally sound.

Let's admit though that his whole debate has been predicated by recent shitty economic outcomes. For a liberal, a more appropriate question would be to ask: whose political economy is the most responsible for the shitty state of today's economy?  True liberals would be even more precise: what specific policies have led us to these terrible outcomes? Conservatives would obviously like to dodge this question, and instead talk in philosophical or moral abstractions, parables and anecdotes, because the facts -- the results -- of their 30 years of neo-liberal rule do not support the morality of their political economy.

Second marker: to quote Paul Rosenberg: "economics used to be called 'political economy', because the great classical economists never lost sight of the fact that economics was a thoroughly political activity, not something outside of the life of a political community." In other words, economics never, ever, ever happens in a political vacuum. Thus, the notion that, in some ideal country, the free-market capitalism of Adam Smith hums and churns along for the betterment of all, unfettered by and independent of government, is naive and silly. Government has a role to play, it sets the rules of the economic game, we all know that.  To what extent government is involved is a matter of degrees. 

Again, liberals believe that government's role should be evidence- or outcomes-based, i.e. tweaked according to the outcomes achieved, whereas conservatives believe that outcomes, like people, should take care of themselves. What's important for them is to set up a system of rigid, unchanging moral conditions under which people operate.

Third marker: noting the terrible results of recent deregulation, privatization-outsourcing and tax cutting is not the same as saying "capitalism is bad." Conservatives and perhaps Pearlstein would like to provoke us liberals into saying that. It's not necessary, or rather, it's an academic argument rather than a real one, since we have not had a "free-market" system for a very long time, if ever. Indeed the U.S. Government has been "meddling" in the economy for a very long time, just in different ways and to varying degrees. 

The recent political-economic bag is mixed: just as union membership has been plummeting, charter schools have been blooming, taxes on the One Percent were being cut, and regulations on Too Big To Fail banks were being torn down, so was USG spending on the military-industrial complex going through the roof (Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Department of Homeland Security apparatus), not to mention Dubya's tremendous addition to the Medicare entitlement -- altogether resulting in a 91 percent increase in our national debt from 2002-2009. 

To be sure, we also had the Great Recession from 2007-2009 that is almost entirely to blame for our persistently high unemployment and deficits since then. This begs the question: what political-economic philosophy was more responsible for the Great Recession? Because we wouldn't be having this discussion right now if it weren't for the Great Recession. You could skip all the junk I wrote above and below, and if you answer this one question correctly, then you are nearly at the truth....

But anyway, back to Pearlstein. He critiques liberals because "they have yet to articulate the moral principles with which to determine how far the evening-up [redistribution] should go -- not just with education but with child care, health care, nutrition, after-school and summer programs, training, and a host of other social services."  There are two big problems with where Pearlstein is going with this.

First, his critique is simply untrue. Liberals have laid out their moral principles, most eloquently in President Roosevelt's 1941 "Four Freedoms" speech that included the "freedom from want," and then in President Johnson's "Great Society" initiatives in the 1960s.  

In fact, our moral calculus is much easier to understand than conservatives'. We believe that, in the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world, nobody should go hungry, uneducated or without health care. Furthermore, we believe that our nation's children, elderly and disabled deserve special care and protection, including additional food, medical and housing assistance. This is pretty easy to understand, and to verify. Can a child perform well in school relative to his peers? Does a person go hungry or malnourished? Does a child have a roof over his head? And so on. Depending on the answer, we have a moral obligation to do something. It couldn't be easier to understand.

Second problem: Pearlstein asks liberals to lay out: 1) our moral principles [check]; but also, unfairly, 2) a formula for government redistribution that is clear and will work forever and ever, amen. That's just childishly naive, I'm sorry. Pearlstein needs to get real. First, he ignores political reality that demands compromise. Nobody gets his way all the time, 100%. And let's just remind ourselves why this matters: if tomorrow President Obama would say that a "fair share" of taxes on the One Percent was, say, 30 percent, then this would be all anybody could talk about. Conservatives and their armies in think tanks, cable and talk radio would parse and mince it to death for weeks and months. When in fact it's all relative; and liberals don't care what the number is, as long as it generates sufficient revenues and ensures economic growth. (But historically, until the 1980s, the top marginal rate didn't fall below 70%).  At the end of his essay, Pearlstein admits as much:

Moral philosophers since Adam Smith have understood that free-market economies are not theoretical constructs -- they are embedded in different political, cultural and social contexts that significantly affect how they operate. If there can be no pure free market, then it follows that there cannot be only one neutral or morally correct distribution of market income.

Second, Pearlstein fails to acknowledge that liberals, unlike conservatives, think and act according to feedback loops: from problem/result --> intervention --> result/problem, and so on. Therefore, without observations of actual events, we cannot tell you what will be a fair and equitable taxation rate 5, 10 or 50 years from now, or a fair distribution of wealth. We won't even hazard a guess. 

Such tolerance for uncertainty drives doctrinaire conservatives to conniption. But that's a fundamental difference between us.  Therefore, a real liberal would start with our current and projected expenditures and sources of revenue and go from there; he wouldn't start the analysis with, "Well, it's just plain unfair and immoral for somebody to pay more than x percent of his gross income in taxes."  And besides, if that is my "moral" conviction, then how in the world can we debate that? We'd start at an impasse.

Pearlstein does argue that the distribution of economic rewards will shift over time, but liberals already know this:

[T]he way markets distribute rewards is neither divinely determined nor purely the result of the “invisible hand.” It is determined by laws, regulations, technology, norms of behavior, power relationships, and the ways that labor and financial markets operate and interact. These arrangements change over time and can dramatically affect market outcomes and incomes.

Pearlstein's next critique of liberals is that they "have been able to create a welfare state only by addicting a middle-class majority to government subsidies -- subsidies that now can be financed only by taking more and more money from the rich." 

Do I really need to cite statistics about tax and income inequality and the disappearing U.S. middle class?  If so, read this, this, this, this and this. And don't even get me started about the $29 trillion bank bailouts, that primarily went to save financial markets in which the top One Percent owns 42 percent of all financial wealth, and the top 20 percent owns about 90 percent. The TBTF bank bailouts clearly demonstrate who is really "addicted" to Big Government and to what degree! 

Overall, although Pearlstein leans conservative, he touches on most of the important questions. The main take-aways from our debate are these:

• Pure capitalism (or socialism, for that matter) has never existed anywhere, nor can it;
• We are only worried about rising deficits and redistribution payments because of the Great Recession that in turn resulted from financial deregulation that conservatives support, even to this day;
• Liberals should never feel obligated to justify the morality of their political economy, when if fact we are much clearer on this than conservatives who claim to care about the poor just as much as we do, yet have no idea how to remedy persistent poverty;
• Liberals should not fall into conservatives' trap of naming "ideal" marginal tax rates, debt:GDP ratios, or anything of the kind, because 1) it's unwise tactically, in a political system that demands compromise, and 2) the correct answers will change over time.

A final note on political-economic morality: Pearlstein doesn't mention it but I will: conservatives' economic morality depends on personal pain and suffering. They firmly believe that pain teaches us lessons and can be personally redeeming; therefore, for redistributionist Big Government to deny a person the pain that he "deserves" is to deny him the chance to learn and improve himself.  

There is also a religious conservative variant of this belief: even if one's suffering wasn't caused by one's poor decisions, it may still be part of God's plan for that person; therefore, for redistributionist Big Government to prevent that pain and suffering is to interfere with God's plan for that person. Moreover, government assistance to a suffering person denies true Christians the opportunity to curry favor with God by performing charitable works for that suffering person. 

I hope I don't have to explain how sick and twisted such moral reasoning is, much less why it cannot be the basis for our country's political economy....

Finally, a note on redistribution. I will take the liberty here of quoting myself at length:

[L]et's recall for a minute what the U.S. Government -- any government from the dawn of human civilization -- actually does, in pure basics: it collects taxes from the people how it sees fit, and then spends that money how it wants. It does not, for example, say, "Mr. David Koch, since you contributed 0.01 percent of federal income tax revenues in FY 2011, we are allocating 0.01 percent of the FY 2012 federal budget to you."  

Since our government doesn't do this -- since no government has ever done this, ever -- then by definition, what our government does is redistribute wealth.  Moreover, sooner or later all government spending ends up in private hands -- just not necessarily (and not usually) in the hands that gave it its money in the first place.  If that's not redistribution then I don't know what is.

Is capitalism moral?

By Steven Pearlstein

March 15, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/WLTcrp

Median, middle and 'moochers'

MB360 has given us some hard income data to mull over:

• 2011 Census data says the the median U.S. household income is $50,500; that means half of U.S. households make more, and half less than $50,500.
• 2010 Social Security data says the median worker's income is $26,000.
• An individual making more than $250,000 is in the top one percent of all earners in the U.S.  
• A household making more than $250,000 per year is in the top two percent of all U.S. households. 
• A household making more than $100,000 is in the top 20 percent of all U.S. households.

$250,000 and $100,000 are common cut-off points in political discussions about who is really middle class, and who deserves a tax cut or a tax hike.  

Mitt Romney told ABC that, "Middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less."  (A person making $200,000 or more is in the top four percent of U.S. income earners.) Obama more or less agrees with Romney.  By their definition, 96 percent of Americans are middle class.  That's ridiculous on its face.

More to the point, do average Americans believe that the top 1-2 percent need and deserve a tax cut right now?  Both Obama and Romney do.  I don't.  

Does it even make sense to regard a household earning $100,000 -- double the median household income -- as middle class?  Probably not, relatively.  

Meanwhile, we have 46.7 million Americans receiving food stamps, and 56 million receiving Social Security.  That's about one-third of the U.S. population. That's not to mention 48 million Americans on Medicare, and about 4 million on Medicaid.  Meanwhile, 60 percent of those 65 or older receive at least 75 percent of their income from Social Security. How low would U.S. median income be without these programs?  It's frightening to think about how insecure most Americans are, financially.

Here's what these programs cost, or, to put it in Republican terms, how much wealth they redistribute:

• Food stamps, unemployment insurance, welfare: $210 billion
• Medicaid and CHIP grants to states: $265 billion
• Medicare: $550 billion (2011)
• Social Security: $778 billion

          TOTAL:  $1.8 trillion

But what about the deficit?  As a Bloomberg study revealed, "the rise in the deficit -- from an average of 1.9 percent of gross domestic product in the pre-crisis years (2005 to 2007) to 9.3 percent of GDP post- crisis (2009-2011) -- is almost entirely due to the economic decline, which drove down tax receipts and pushed up spending on unemployment, food stamps and other support programs."

But we already knew that, right?  We must know that 33 percent or 47 percent or whatever share of Americans didn't suddenly become lazy moochers while Obama went on a wild spending spree.  No, it's that suddenly our economy got very, very bad: shrinking 6.3 percent in 2008 alone, erasing $15.5 trillion in U.S. wealth, costing 8.8 million U.S. jobs, and dunking 24 percent of houses -- most Americans' most valuable asset -- underwater.  

Given all this, it is madness to suggest that the answer to our economic malaise is to cut spending for needy Americans while reducing taxes for Americans making $200,000 or more.  

Bill Black: Let's test Mitt's 47% myth

Two-fisted ex-regulator William Black is right, as usual, but there's a simpler, purely logical way to disprove Romney's secretly-taped admission of his true feelings about 47 percent of Americans.  Ask yourself: did the 47 percent suddenly get lazier?  Or did the economy suddenly get that much worse?  The answer is self-evident. 

Let's Test Romney's Claims About the 47% by Offering the Unemployed Jobs

By William K. Black

October 1, 2012 | Huffington Post

I have explained how Governor Romney and Representative Ryan have self-destructed because they have followed Charles Murray's demands that the wealthy denounce working class Americans' supposed refusal to take personal responsibility for their lives by refusing to work. Murray is the far right's leading intellectual. Murray's Myth is that the wealthy are rich because they are morally superior to the lazy poor and that the poor are not employed because they are lazy. Murray's explanation for his support for Governor Romney says it all: "Who better to be president of the greatest of all capitalist nations than a man who got rich by being a brilliant capitalist?"

Consider the missing aspect of Romney's famous denunciation of the 47% -- jobs. A careful reading shows that Romney implicitly embraced Murray's Myth.

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.

That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what...These are people who pay no income tax.

...

[M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

I propose that America test Murray, Romney and Ryan's claims about the supposed refusal of the 47% to take "personal responsibility." Romney says "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." I think that Murray, Romney, and Ryan's claims that the 47% are unwilling to take personal responsibility are false. I think that the issue has nothing to do with Romney's persuasive abilities. I also know how to test the validity of their claims.

Even Romney knows that his claims about the 47% fail on many levels. First, many of the 47% vote for Republicans.

Second, Romney knows that many of the 47% are in no position to avoid being "dependent upon government." Tens of millions of the 47% are minor children. Tens of millions are elderly and retired. Millions are profoundly disabled -- hundreds of thousands of them injured veterans.

Third, the adult members of the 47% overwhelmingly took personal responsibility for their lives. They paid taxes -- income, social security, sales, and property and corporation taxes. (A word about tax "incidence" -- the people who actually bear the economic cost of a tax frequently differ from the entity that nominally pays the taxes. Economists generally believe that businesses pass on sales taxes to customers, landlords pass on property taxes to their renters, both the employer and employee portions of Social Security are borne by workers, and that corporations generally pass on corporate taxes to their customers in the form of higher prices.) These members of the 47 percent eventually became elderly, sick, disabled, or unemployed.

Fourth, hundreds of thousands of the 47% are "dependent upon government" because they took "personal responsibility" and cared for our lives at the risk of their lives and health. These are the veterans, police officers, and firefighters who were injured protecting the public, and the families of those who died protecting the public. These are the government employees who sacrificed their health or even their lives to protect us. The disabled former government employees are in fact victims, but they generally do not view themselves as victims. Those that die protecting us often leave minor children who are "dependent on government." Many of them will choose to follow in their deceased parent's path and protect us by routinely risking their lives and their health when they become adults.

In his rant against the 47%, Romney implicitly adopted Murray's claim that the unemployed lack jobs not because of the Great Recession, but because they are shiftless and refuse to work and take personal responsibility. (Romney and Ryan often make inconsistent claims that unemployment is caused by regulation, or taxes, or whatever is their complaint de jour against Obama.)

Testing Murray's Myth

We can test the claim that unemployment is high because the unemployed are shiftless. My colleagues at UMKC have detailed how to create a job guarantee program that offers a job to everyone who wishes to work. Our experience is that such jobs prove very attractive to the unemployed. A jobs guarantee program creates many winners. The public gains from the services provided by the newly employed. The unemployed gain not only income but far greater psychological well-being. The government gains greater tax revenue. Businesses see increased demand for their goods and services.

Americans overwhelmingly seek to take personal responsibility for their lives. Indeed, Americans work extraordinary hours. American mothers with young children frequently work outside the home. So let's put the vicious abuse that Murray urged the wealthy to heap on the purportedly shiftless unemployed a rest and actually test his claims through a job guarantee program.

I predict that the Republicans will fight ferociously to prevent us from testing the truth of their abuse of the poor. They cannot allow a test because they know they are slandering many millions of Americans. Their first nightmare is a job guarantee program that leads to television images of millions of Americans eagerly signing up to jobs. Murray's Myth would be destroyed in full public view. Their second nightmare is that the job guarantee would speed the recovery and provide useful projects and services that Americans would love. The slander is despicable, but the fact that they will do anything to prevent a test of Murray's Myth compounds the slander with a toxic mix of cowardice and hypocrisy.

'Obama phones' are really Reagan phones

So here's the real deal:

But it’s the right that are going to end up looking like the ignorant fools. What Limbaugh, Malzberg -- and likely the majority of the million people who viewed the video -- didn’t know was that these “Obama Phones” are actually a creation of their beloved Ronald Reagan, who began the program in 1984.

Actually called the “Lifeline program,” the legislation permits some households to receive a free landline under Congress’s rationale that "telephone service provides a vital link to emergency services, government services and surrounding communities."

That idea dates back to 1934, under the Communications Act, but Reagan was the first to actually implement the legislation. The program grew under President Clinton, who recognized the advent of the newfangled new technology of cordless phones and expanded it to include cell phones.

To qualify for the program you must live in a household with an income near the poverty line or be already qualified for other assistance programs like public housing or food stamps. 

So once again, even Reagan turns out to be not Reagany enough for today's pro-Reagan GOP.  It's a very high bar, folks; and lots of would-be leaders on the Right get gut-checked hard trying to hop over it... including Zombie Reagan.  Ha-ha-ha!

Ring-Wing Goes Crazy Over 'Obama Phones' Which Are Actually 'Reagan Phones'

Little did they know that the joke was on them.

By Laura Gottesdiener

September 28, 2012 | AlterNet

URL: http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/ring-wing-goes-crazy-over-obama-phones-which-are-actually-reagan-phones

Paying income tax is an elite privilege?

Ravi Agarwal notes that only 1.7 percent of people in China and 2.8 percent in India make enough money to pay income tax.  That's about 1/3 of humanity living income tax-free.

In fact, "in much of the world – across Asia, Africa, and South America – it turns out that not paying income tax is not unusual; paying taxes is unusual."

So here's his big blasphemous idea that would probably get anybody killed for saying it at a Tea Party townhall meeting:

We tend to think of income tax as a burden. Perhaps we should see it as a privilege, a luxury to have an income level that makes us eligible to pay it. Look around the world and you’ll see that income tax payers are part of an elite club. More people want into this club than out.

We’re all makers and takers

By Ravi Agrawal

September 26, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/26/were-all-makers-and-takers/?hpt=hp_bn2

U.S. of Moochers: 96% get federal benefits!

96 percent!?  That's twice as bad as Mitt thought!  Egad, we're all "victims" dependent on Big Government!  

If you include all federal benefits that go to specific households, from Social Security to even tax expenditures like the mortgage-interest deduction, then survey data from 2008 reveals that 96 percent of Americans have received assistance from the federal government at some point in their life:

[...] Young adults, who are not yet eligible for many policies, account for most of the remaining 4 percent.  On average, people reported that they had used five social policies at some point in their lives.

Fortunately for the GOP, most of us don't know we're recipients though, so we can vote against those "moochers" and "leeches" (against ourselves) with a clear conscience and plenty of righteous anger.  Ignorance is bliss!

Survey: 96 percent of Americans have received government benefits

By Brad Plumer

September 26, 2012 | Washington Post

URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/26/do-96-percent-of-americans-receive-government-benefits/

MCPE: The poor pay more taxes

Every State's State/Local Tax System Taxes the Poor More than the Wealthy--And All Exceed Federal Taxes

By Kenneth Thomas

September 23, 2012 | Middle Class Political Economist

URL: http://middleclasspoliticaleconomist.blogspot.com/2012/09/every-states-statelocal-tax-system.html

Lowry: Romney's argument 'flawed & dangerous'

You won't hear (see) me say this often, so get ready: arch-conservative Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, is right.  He's correct.  Take his conclusion:

This tendency [to demand that poor people pay federal income tax] represents a backdoor return to country-club Republicanism, with the approval of part of the Republican base. Fear of the creation of a class of “takers” can slide into disdain for people who are too poor — or have too many kids or are too old — to pay their damn taxes. For a whiff of how politically unattractive this point of view can be, just look at the Romney fundraising video.

Wow.  He actually gets it this time.  No further comment necessary.

Romney’s 47 Percent Blunder 

His tax argument is flawed and dangerous.

By Rich Lowry

September 21, 2012 | National Review

URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/327961/romney-s-47-percent-blunder-rich-lowry

Frum: Mitt played up to the rich's class terror but got burned

Conservative pundit David Frum makes it clear what the 47 percent is meant to mean to Republicans, the facts be damned:

Start with this data point:  When you ask white Americans to estimate the black population of the United States, the answer averages out at nearly 30%. Ask them to estimate the Hispanic population, and the answer averages out at 22%.

So when a politician or a broadcaster talks about 47% in "dependency," the image that swims into many white voters' minds is not their mother in Florida, her Social Security untaxed, receiving Medicare benefits vastly greater than her lifetime tax contributions; it is not their uncle, laid off after 30 years and now too old to start over. No, the image that comes into mind is minorities on welfare. 

It's also a lot of silly and, frankly, disproven fear about Obama's diabolical designs on the wealthy (his first term is almost over and America still exists, pretty much as it was under Dubya):

The background to so much of the politics of the past four years is the mood of apocalyptic terror that has gripped so much of the American upper class.

Hucksters of all kinds have battened on this terror. They tell them that free enterprise is under attack; that Obama is a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, an anti-colonialist. Only by donating to my think tank, buying my book, watching my network, going to my movie, can you - can we - stop him before he seizes everything to give to his base of "bums," as Charles Murray memorably called them.

And what makes it all both so heart-rending and so outrageous is that all this is occurring at a time when economically disadvantaged Americans have never been so demoralized and passive, never exerted less political clout.  [...]

Yet even so, the rich and the old are scared witless! Watch the trailer of Dinesh D'Souza's new movie to glimpse into their mental universe: chanting swarthy mobs, churches and banks under attack, angry black people grabbing at other people's houses.

It's all a scam, but it's a spectacularly effective scam. Mitt Romney tried to make use of the scam, and now instead has fallen victim to it himself.

Here’s Why Mitt’s 100% Wrong on the 47%

By David Frum

September 18, 2012 | Daily Beast

URL: http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2012/09/18/here-s-why-mitt-s-100-wrong-on-the-47.html

Relax, Mitt: The 47 percent includes lots of GOP hypocrites

About that 47 percent, Mitt... It's not only composed of combat troops, children, students, the disabled, and the elderly collecting Social Security, it also includes bumpkins and hypocrites who vote againt their own economic interests because they can't stand a smart black president:

The percentage of people receiving Social Security in Kentucky from 2006 to 2010 averaged 31.4 percent, compared to 27.5 percent nationally, according to U.S. Census figures. About 6.5 percent of Kentuckians received Supplemental Security Income during that time, compared to 4 percent nationally.  [...] 

Still, Romney is expected to win Kentucky easily, even with an estimated 2010 poverty rate of 17.7 percent compared to 13.8 nationally, and median household income well below the national level.

Romney's margin in Eastern Kentucky, home to many of the state's poorest counties, might be greater than across the state as a whole, observers said.

For instance, Owsley County is the poorest in the state by economic measures. More than 41 percent of its 4,900 residents were poor in 2010, and 52.8 percent of the people receive food-stamp benefits, compared with 19.7 statewide, according to state and federal agencies.

But as in several other relatively poor Eastern Kentucky counties, most residents are registered Republican. Romney will win the county easily, said Molly Turner, head of the Owsley County Community Action Team.

So relax, Mitt!  Just because Kentucky and other Southern states are much poorer than the national average, they're still in the bag, even if you publicly write them off as dependent welfare queens. They won't say no to their government cheese, but they'll still hate Obama for giving it to them.  These salt-of-the-earth Southerners have strong principles!

Kentucky residents who rely on federal aid expected to vote for Romney

By Bill Estep

September 19, 2012 | Lexington Herald-Leader

URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/09/19/168970/kentucky-residents-who-rely-on.html

Romney's anti-Obama bombshell goes 'pfffft-sizzle-poof!'

Romney's campaign has obviously been holding back this "bombshell" audio recording of Obama for the right moment, and they decided that now was the time, in light of the campaign-killing secret recording of Romney's remarks to a group of rich private donors in Florida in May.

Here's what Obama said 14 years ago that is supposedly so damning (note that it was edited for "shock effect" on Rush Limbaugh's program, while I'm giving you an unedited excerpt here):

What we’re going to have to do is somehow resuscitate the notion that government action can be effective at all.  There has been a systematic -- I don’t think it’s too strong to call it a propaganda campaign, against the possibility of government action and its efficacy.  [The next few sentences were deleted by Rush for obvious reasons. - J]  And I think some of it has been deserved. The Chicago Housing Authority has not been a good model of good policy-making. And neither necessarily have been the Chicago public schools.  Uh, what that means then, is that as we try to resuscitate this notion that, uh, we're all in this thing together, leave nobody behind, we do have to be innovative in thinking in, how, what are the delivery systems that are actually effective and meet people where they live. Uh, and, and my suggestion, I guess would be, that the trick -- and this is one of the few areas where there I think there are technical issues that have to be dealt with as opposed to just political issues -- I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution -- because I actually believe in redistribution -- uh, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.

This is indeed a teachable moment, but not for the reason Rush Limbaugh says.  

Context: Obama said this in 1998, when Bill Clinton was our President, presiding over a budget surplus and a booming economy, but just weeks before a hyper-partisan Republican-majority House of Representatives impeached him, and a few months before the Senate acquitted him.  Like today, Republicans back then were attacking the role of government, saying, like they always do, that it cannot do anything right and must be cut to the bone.  Like today, they were hysterical about Clinton's imminent diabolical plans to make the U.S. socialistic, take away our guns, hand over U.S. sovereignty to the UN, appease every country except our allies, you name it.

Irregardless (that's not a word, but I still use it) of the context of Obama's remarks, let's recall for a minute what the U.S. Government -- any government from the dawn of human civilization -- actually does, in pure basics: it collects taxes from the people how it sees fit, and then spends that money how it wants. It does not, for example, say, "Mr. David Koch, since you contributed 0.01 percent of federal income tax revenues in FY 2011, we are allocating 0.01 percent of the FY 2012 federal budget to you."  

Since our government doesn't do this -- since no government has ever done this, ever -- then by definition, what our government does is redistribute wealth.  Because, sooner or later all government spending ends up in private hands -- just not necessarily (and not usually) in the hands that gave it its money in the first place.  If that's not redistribution then I don't know what is.

And let's remember that Big Government is part of the GDP formula that everybody learns in Economics 101:  GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports), or GDP = C + I + G + (X-M).

So let me put hammer a big fat nail in the coffin of the idea that government redistribution is somehow new, or controversial, or evil, or conceived by American Democrats.  In fact, that's pretty much all the government does, for good or ill. Chew on that epiphany, then try to come up with an example to prove me wrong.  I'll be waiting....

(Irregardless, we all know that America has become a Socialistic country after almost four years of Obama. That's just a fact.  We all wear government-issued gray pajamas and march each morning to work in the People's National iPhone Factory to the tune of revolutionary hymns and munch on moldy government cheese and sawdust-fortified bread 3x a day.  Right.)

We Didn't Need a Tape from 1998 to Tell Us Barack Obama is a Socialist!

September 19, 2012 | The Rush Limbaugh Show

URL:  http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/09/19/we_didn_t_need_a_tape_from_1998_to_tell_us_barack_obama_is_a_socialist