As it becomes more and more evident that Mitt Romney will be the Republican presidential nominee, a strange thing is happening; strange as in outlandish, but not surprising. For the past year or so, the liberal media has been panting for his nomination as if they were in his employ. He couldn’t have hired more efficient hit men to belittle his rivals or besmirch their reputations. But, as we have seen many times before, this honeymoon is about to come to an abrupt end when they will turn on him faster than warm mayonnaise. This of course will be explained away by noting that Romney will be “running to the right” in the general election, and will thus be transformed from a smooth and articulate business executive into a numbskulled, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. And without fail, he will be labeled with the most damning words in the liberal lexicon: incurious and un-nuanced. He will be subjected to various and sundry spelling and geography tests by the same folks who got the vapors over Dan Quayle’s “potatoe,” yet batted nary an eyelash over Barack Obama’s “57 states.” Yes, you can bet that the keyboards of these paragons of journalism will be working overtime reworking their Mitt bios. Which caused me to wonder: what if today’s leading lights of liberal punditry were to describe some our first presidents and apply their poison pens thusly? Come to think of it, the following blurbs can probably already be found right in your children’s history books. George Washington : A Southern aristocrat who was born to the purple yet cloaked himself in the same false humility as his namesakes in the Bush family, he was purported to be so honest as to have confessed to chopping down a cherry tree, and so athletic that he threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River. Yet our sources have revealed that it was his starving slaves who ravaged the tree, while the tossing of currency was an apocryphal example of his noted profligacy. While he was famous for promoting his own extreme religious views, as a general he launched a unilateral and unprovoked sneak attack against German immigrants sold into military service by their greedy princes, on their holiest day of the year. Best Attribute: Was said to be a prolific dancer and an able horseman. Most outrageous quote: “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.” John Adams : Was primarily known as the author of the Alien and Sedition Acts; the most nefarious legislation the nation had ever known until surpassed by the even more restrictive Patriot Act of 2001. Was admitted to the bar after graduating Harvard, although there is no record of his having published anything in the Law Review. His most famous case was the acquittal of three soldiers who gunned down an unarmed African American community organizer. Was also notable for having appointed John Marshall as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who, in the famous case, Marbury v. Madison , somehow decided that the Courts should be able to decide the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. This decision has, of course, subsequently been disclaimed by more qualified Constitutional experts. Best Attribute: Although he was self-admittedly “obnoxious and disliked,” it was nonetheless rumored that most of his pre-presidential decisions were made by his wife. Most outrageous quote: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.” Thomas Jefferson : Best known as the author of the Declaration of Independence through which he established the separation of Church and State. And although he was a notorious enemy of a strong federal government, he nonetheless expanded U.S. power by seizing nearly one million square miles of land that was rightfully the property of Native Americans, via the so-called Louisiana Purchase. Best Attribute: His record of speaking against slavery while owning hundreds of slaves himself, was greatly mitigated by his marriage to his household slave Sally Hemings, with whom he had six children; subsequently freeing all of them and providing for them in his will. Most outrageous quote: “But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years?” Note: All biographical content is the responsibility of the anonymous authors, although any inaccuracies may well be accounted for on next week’s New York Times Corrections page.
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Past Presidential Punditry
How far to the left do you have to be to compare Obama to Bush? Via Newsbusters: Tuesday’s CBS This Morning rolled over and gave movie star John Cusack a platform to spout his leftist political views. Cusack slammed the Obama administration: “The excesses of the Bush administration…[Obama] had a constitutional obligation to correct that,
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Hollywood Moonbat John Cusack Rips Obama From The Left: “Continued Imperial Presidency” of Bush…
[Posted by Karl] Ross Douthat recently opined on the two faces of liberalism — the optimistic central planner and the demagogue who responds whenever the issue of the collective cost of the plans becomes an issue. RTWT, as I intend to focus on his cautionary note for this year’s election: In parts of the conservative press , the president’s increasingly scorched-earth rhetoric is being treated as a sign of his desperation. By resorting so quickly to partisan demagoguery, this argument goes, Obama is effectively conceding that he has nothing else to run on – that his policies are unpopular, that his agenda has largely been rejected, and there is no positive case for a second term that any swing voter is likely to be persuaded by. There is truth to this: Obama’s legislative achievements are strikingly unpopular . *** But elections won on fear count just as much as elections won on hope. It was fear that gave George W. Bush the edge over John Kerry in 2004, and it was fear that saved the Bill Clinton from political extinction. (Clinton’s rightward pivot helped him win re-election, but his willingness to savage the Dole-Gingrich Republicans on Medicare was just as crucial to his victory.) Douthat is likely overstating the situation. Presidential elections are mostly referenda on the incumbent or the incumbent party. Jay Cost looked at 2004 and found: The election that year was a referendum on Bush: people who disapproved of him voted overwhelmingly for Kerry; people who approved of him voted overwhelmingly for Bush. In fact, the Bush approvers/Kerry voters were more numerous than the Bush disapprovers/Bush voters. Indeed, from Cost’s data it looks like this dynamic was even more true in 1996, when only 4% of Clinton disapprovers voted for Clinton. Moreover, it seems unlikely that dynamic was due to Ross Perot’s third-party run, as 9% of George H.W. Bush disapprovers voted to reeelect him in 1992, when Perot was a bigger vote-getter. Nevertheless, Douthat may have a point in identifying Mediscare as part of Clinton’s relative overperformance relative to the economy in 1996. In the 1996 exit polling , Medicare came in as the second-largest “top issue” to voters. However, the top “top issue” in 1996 – the economy/jobs — was the top issue to only 21% of voters, and appears to have helped Clinton. Can Obama exploit Medicare the way Clinton did? Probably not. In 2012, the economy and unemployment are likely to be the top issue with many more voters and not very likely to help Obama. As of last month, Medicare was an asterisk in Gallup’s open-ended poll of the most important issue to Americans. More broadly, “healthcare” looks to be a secondary or tertiary issue in most polls , although Gallup suggests it could be as important as economic issues. Unfortunately, such results are of limited use, as “healthcare” is not the same as “Medicare” and the response likely encompasses things like dissatisfaction with the existence or operation of Obamacare. Pres. Obama will probably continue to demagogue the House GOP budget on Medicare. But likely GOP nominee Mitt Romney will probably continue to point out that the unpopular Obamacare law is supposed to be funded with $500 billion in (ahem) “future savings” from Medicare. Moreover, polls from sources as diverse as Kaiser and Reason suggest the arguments that reform is necessary to save Medicare and will not affect current retirees both create potential majority support for the GOP approach. –Karl
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Mediscare and the liberalism of fear
On Monday, the United States Senate voted on S.2230 , the Orwellian-of-title “Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012.” (More precisely, senators voted on whether to invoke cloture and end debate on the measure.) Based on the so-called “Buffett Rule,” the bill, authored by Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and cosponsored by the most left-wing members of the Senate, aims to raise the taxes of American taxpayers who earn $1,000,000 or more in a year by forcing anyone who meets the income thresholds to pay a minimum percentage of their total income to the federal government. The tally was 51 votes in favor, short of the required 60 votes, with 45 senators voting against this naked and divisive class warfare. It was a party-line vote other than Susan Collins (RINO-ME) who voted with the Democrats while Mark Pryor (D-AR) voted with the Republicans. (Neither is up for re-election in 2012.) Two Republicans, one Democrat, and Joe Lieberman did not vote, with Lieberman issuing a statement that he was against the Buffett Rule. Specifically, the bill would create a 30-percent income tax rate which phases in beginning at one million dollars of income and is fully effective at $2 million of income. Other than the “phase-in” the tax calculation is simple: If you make more than a million dollars, take your adjusted gross income, subtract charitable deductions, then multiply by 30 percent. From that amount, subtract the income tax, payroll tax, and Alternative Minimum Tax already due or paid, but add back your itemized deductions. (Taxes paid to foreign governments, income taxes withheld from your paycheck, and tax refunds for fuel used on farms and other non-road purposes are not added back to income for “Fair Share” calculations.) Then write a check for that amount to the United States Treasury. For those Americans who are unfortunate enough to have great success in their businesses or investments, this bill effectively disallows deductions for mortgage interest, retirement account contributions, adoption expenses and other common itemized deductions except for donations to charity. Between one and two million dollars of income, the additional tax is reduced based on how far along that scale you are, so that at $1.5 million, your “fair share” punishment is half of the amount calculated based on the above formula. One revolutionary aspect — in the sense that V.I. Lenin or Fidel Castro was a revolutionary — of the “Fair Share Act” is that it does not add a marginal rate increase to those earning above the Democrats’ demonization threshold. Instead, it retroactively increases the tax rate on the first dollar earned, while simultaneously increasing the amount of the victim’s earnings that is subject to taxation. It is a plan that is corrosive to our nation, pitting Americans against each other. It is a plan that will have negligible economic impact, raising less than 1 percent of the anticipated accumulated deficit over the next decade… and even that assumes away the anti-growth impacts of such an anti-entrepreneurial tax. The likely result is even worse than these estimates. And because so many Americans no longer know what has made our nation a success, it is a plan that, even as it fails legislatively, may work politically. To the extent that very-high-income Americans have an effective tax rate that is lower than class warriors think it “should” be, it is primarily from the portion of their income that comes from capital gains (and to a lesser extent from dividends). History has shown us that raising capital gains taxes does not generate more tax revenue. The vaunted Clinton budget surplus, for example, only arose in the second half of his presidency after he signed the 1997 law that cut the capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to 20 percent. According to a Heritage Foundation study , the Treasury Department estimated that the tax cut would cause a small net loss of revenue to the government, estimated at about $30 billion in the fourth year after implementation. Instead, from 1996 to 1999, capital gains tax receipts increased by over 71 percent while GDP growth accelerated and unemployment dropped. To be sure, not all of the increased economic activity and stock price increase of the period was due to the capital gains tax cut. But some of it surely was, a contention boosted by the fact that capital gains tax receipts also jumped almost 25% in just two years following President Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. But this isn’t really about revenue for the Obama administration, and it never has been. When asked in 2008 about whether he would raise capital gains taxes even if it doesn’t raise revenue, he said yes “for purposes of fairness.” Unfortunately for our republic, American citizens’ economic literacy — which should be the body politic’s primary anti-venom against President Obama’s snake oil — is just where the liberals want it, which is to say non-existent. Progressives have spent a century stripping public education and the ivory towers of universities of economic rationality. Such rationality — including the obvious lessons of an untaught history — would reinforce the limited-government principles of our Founding which are directly antithetical to the Progressive vision. Economic and political restraint go hand in glove, as well understood by those who penned our national rulebook called the Constitution. For those of you who went to public school and finished high school in the last 20 years, you know that the Constitution is a barely legible piece of paper, written by a bunch of dead rich white guys. You know that it means what a few people in black robes say it means (regardless of its plain language). And you probably don’t know that the left sees it as “political witchcraft” and an obstacle to their long-held dreams of political nirvana in which the smart people (no conservatives or libertarians need apply) wield power over the rest of us — for our own benefit, of course. In short, you know just what John Dewey (hero of Marxists ) and his disciples wanted you to know — and maybe less, but certainly not more. By offering “everything for everyone for free” (a slogan I actually saw on a 20-foot wide banner during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver), Democrats — with the unforgiveable passivity of decades of Republicans — are creating the political nightmare foreseen in a quote usually attributed to Alexander Tytler: “A democracy…can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits…with the result that a democracy always collapses….” A Gallup poll released on Friday suggest that a majority of Americans favor the thinking behind “Buffett Rule,” including nearly 63 percent of independent voters (with only 33 percent of independents opposing it.) While Karl Marx smiles, Tytler nods grimly, thinking “I told you so.” Another Gallup poll asked people whether they thought their tax bills were too high, too low, or about right. At 47 percent, the “about right” response matched its high for the past decade, and at 46 percent, the “too high” contingent was on the low end of its range. This is, of course, following the Bush tax cuts and before the implementation of the massive Obamacare tax hikes we’re soon to be hit with. For the left, if 47 percent think that tax rates are about right — and especially if the “rich” think so, which the poll suggests — they must be far too low. If there is a true warning sign in this second poll, however, and a message likely to keep Democrats going all-in with the class warfare rhetoric, it is that the income group most likely to say that the tax code is “unfair” and that their own taxes are too high is the lowest income group, those earning less than $30,000 per year. 2012 marked the first time since Gallup began asking the question that those who pay the least in tax had the strongest opinion that the tax code is “unfair.” It is safe to assume that the unfairness they refer to is not that they are not paying enough in tax, or that the current system is the most “progressive” in our nation’s recent history (in terms of what income groups pay what percentage of income taxes), or that their votes are being bought with other people’s money, or that perhaps they should also share some of the cost of our national defense. Yes, those Americans who pay almost nothing in federal income taxes are the most likely to think that they should pay even less and that those who already shoulder nearly the entire burden should shoulder more. According to the National Taxpayers Union , in 2009, those Americans who earned under $32,396 comprised the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers ranked by Adjusted Gross Income. As a group, that 50 percent of taxpayers paid 2.25 percent of all federal income taxes. Their share of taxes has been steadily dropping, going from 4 percent in 1999 to 3 percent in 2005 to 2.25 percent in 2009. In 2009, there were 59 million tax returns filed which either had zero federal tax liability or which resulted in a net tax refund. And this only includes those who file tax returns; millions of low-income Americans file no tax returns. I wonder how many of these people were counted in Gallup’s survey. The fact that these are the people who are most upset about their tax bills — while the top 1 percent of American earners pay more federal income tax than the bottom 90 percent, and the top 0.1 percent pay more than the bottom 75 percent — says all you need to know about how close we are to losing our country. With the ongoing failure of their “Republican war on women” theme (thanks in part to Hilary Rosen and Bill Maher making clear what Democrats actually think of women), the Obama administration aims to win reelection by returning to the left’s longest-running strategy: pitting Americans against each other with beggar-thy-neighbor class-based jealousy. Politicians, including Democrats, of years past have understood the danger of raising taxes, and the benefits of cutting them. John F. Kennedy understood: “The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital from static to more dynamic situations, the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy.” Or, if you don’t want JFK, how about this ultra-conservative quote: “Next year’s tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes, for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital… I am confident that the enactment of the right bill next year will in due course increase our gross national product by several times the amount of taxes actually cut.” Reagan? Goldwater? Thatcher? Coolidge? Romney? Actually, that’s JFK too. Quoting John F. Kennedy’s many pro-growth tax policy views should become part of Republican talking points each and every day, reminding independent voters just which party has really become “extreme” on the economic issues that trouble Americans each and every day. The class warfare — which JFK would disdain — embodied by the “Fair Share Act” is transparent. It is reprehensible. It is un-American. And the bill itself failed in the Senate. But politically, thanks to ignorant voters who know exactly what the left wants them to know, it just might work.
Americans effectively stop paying for government on Tax Freedom Day. Directly, that is. Regulation acts as a huge de facto tax. And many other liberties have been lost to government over the years. However, taxes are the easiest way to measure the price of government. This year Tax Freedom Day falls on April 17 . That is four days later than last year, primarily “due to higher federal income and corporate tax collections,” explains the Tax Foundation. As a result, “Americans will work 107 days into the year from January 1 to April 17, to earn enough money to pay this year’s combined 29.2 percent federal, state, and local tax bill.” The payroll tax cut — approved for this year only in January — has helped hold back TFD. Otherwise we would be working another three days for government. Tax collections represent a sizable amount by any measure. The total is even more in comparison with other expenditures. Americans devote less time working to buy what almost everyone considers to be necessities — clothing, food, and housing — than to pay taxes. And the value that we get for the former is far greater than most of what we get from the decisions of irresponsible and spendthrift public officials. A bit more than a month, 32 days, goes for the income tax. Federal “social insurance” levies — that is, Social Security and Medicare taxes — account for 23 days. State and local sales and excise taxes consume 12 days. So do state and local property taxes. The federal corporate income tax fills nine days. State and local income taxes come in at eight days. Other state and local exactions consume four days. Other federal taxes hit three days. Federal sales and excise levies run two days. State and local corporate taxes consume a day. It’s an imposing list. It is hard for most Americans to imagine, but government in America once was small. In 1900 TFD fell on January 22. Americans paid just 5.9 percent of their incomes to government at all levels. Economic and international interventions did much to change that, as Robert Higgs documented in Crisis and Leviathan . In 1917 the U.S. foolishly entered World War I and TFD was January 24. The following year it was February 8. Government continued to grow. TFD rolled into March during the Great Depression as Washington spent wildly but unsuccessfully in an attempt to boost the economy. In 1943, with the world in flames, TFD first broke into April. It dropped back into March in 1950 before rising inexorably as the Cold War heated up. The Depression and World War II most dramatically expanded the national government, pushing federal spending beyond that of states and localities. In 1932 Americans worked 46 days to pay their state and local taxes, but only ten days to satisfy Uncle Sam. On the eve of entering World War II in 1940 Americans labored 33 days for each. From then on the national government has taxed more. Alas, observes the Tax Foundation, after World War II: “The federal tax burden never returned to pre-war levels. The 1950s and 1960s also saw a rise in state-local tax burdens and a boost in economic growth following the 1964 Kennedy/Johnson tax cut. Vietnam War-era tax increases and the ‘stagflation’ of the 1970s pushed personal incomes into higher tax brackets, and by 1981, Tax Freedom Day arrived on April 24.” Although President Ronald Reagan cut taxes, economic growth increased revenues. When he left office in 1989 TFD was April 22. Notes the Tax Foundation, “That year, federal income tax revenues as a share of the economy were higher than they had been in nearly all years prior, and higher than all but one year (1952) of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, when the top rate exceeded 90 percent.” Although TFD receded further this year, it still doesn’t look too bad compared to recent peaks. The record was May 1 in 2000, before the Bush tax cuts. Despite everything that has happened in the last few years, TFD this year is just a day later than in 2003, after the Bush tax cuts took effect. But this could change next year. The Heritage Foundation’s Curtis S. Dubay warns of the risk that “an enormous, unprecedented tax increase will fall on American taxpayers starting on January 1, 2013.” The Bush tax cuts, which helped roll back the steadily escalating burden during the Clinton years, expire at the end of the year. So does the latest extension of the payroll tax cut and the alternative minimum tax “patch.” Include some Obama administration tax hikes and Americans face a “Taxmageddon” of nearly $500 billion. Dubay urges the president and Congress to “start working together now to prevent this massive tax increase rather than waiting until the end of the year.” The reason for acting sooner rather than later is obvious — reduce the opportunity for political gamesmanship and “assure families, businesses, and investors that their taxes will not rise sharply as the economy is still staggering to its feet.” Tax hikes of this magnitude obviously would dramatically push back TFD (and damage economic growth prospects). But the real TFD would be effectively unchanged.
