The GOP’s suicide march

 — former presidential candidate Rick Perry

Washington Post

By Charles Krauthammer

It’s the campaign line of the year, and while the author won’t be carrying it into the general election, the eventual nominee will.

The charge is straightforward: President Obama’s reckless spending has dangerously increased the national debt while leaving unemployment high and the economy stagnant. Concurrently, he has vastly increased the scope and reach of government with new entitlements and oppressive regulation, with higher taxes to come (to offset the unprecedented spending).

In 2010, that narrative carried the Republicans to historic electoral success. Through most of 2011, it dominated Washington discourse. The air was filled with debt talk: ceilings, supercommittees, Simpson-Bowles.

What’s the incumbent to do? He admits current conditions are bad. He knows that his major legislative initiatives — Obamacare, the near-trillion-dollar stimulus, (the rejected) cap-and-trade — are unpopular. If you can’t run on stewardship or policy, how do you win reelection?

Create an entirely new narrative. Push an entirely new issue. Change the subject from your record and your ideology, from massive debt and overreaching government, to fairness and inequality. Make the election a referendum on which party really cares about you, which party will stand up to the greedy rich who have pillaged the 99 percent and robbed the middle class of hope.

This charge, too, is straightforward: The Republicans serve as the protectors and enablers of the plutocrats, the exploiters who have profited while America suffers. They put party over nation, fat cat donors over people, political power over everything.

It’s all rather uncomplicated, capturing nicely the Manichaean core of the Occupy movement — blame the rich, then soak them. But the real beauty of this strategy is its adaptability. While its first target was the do-nothing, protect-the-rich Congress, it is perfectly tailored to fit the liabilities of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney — plutocrat, capitalist, 1 percenter.

Obama rolled out this class-war counter-narrative in his Dec. 6 “Teddy Roosevelt” speech and hasn’t governed a day since. Every action, every proposal, every “we can’t wait” circumvention of the Constitution — such as recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess — is designed to fit this reelection narrative.

Hence: Where does Obama ostentatiously introduce the recess-appointed head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? At a rally in swing-state Ohio, a stage prop for the president to declare himself tribune of the little guy, scourge of the big banks and their soulless Republican guardians.

For the first few weeks, the class-envy gambit had some effect, bumping Obama’s numbers slightly. But the story was still lagging, suffering in part from its association with an Occupy rabble that had widely worn out its welcome.

Then came the twist. Then came the most remarkable political surprise since the 2010 midterm: The struggling Democratic class-war narrative is suddenly given life and legitimacy by . . . Republicans! Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry make the case that private equity as practiced by Romney’s Bain Capital is nothing more than vulture capitalism looting companies and sucking them dry while casually destroying the lives of workers.

Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO nods approvingly. Michael Moore wonders aloud whether Gingrich has stolen his staff. The assault on Bain/Romney instantly turns Obama’s class-war campaign from partisan attack into universal complaint.

Suddenly Romney’s wealth, practices and taxes take center stage. And why not? If leading Republicans are denouncing rapacious capitalism that enriches the 1 percent while impoverishing everyone else, should this not be the paramount issue in a campaign occurring at a time of economic distress?

Now, economic inequality is an important issue, but the idea that it is the cause of America’s current economic troubles is absurd. Yet, in a stroke, the Republicans have succeeded in turning a Democratic talking point — a last-ditch attempt to salvage reelection by distracting from their record — into a central focus of the nation’s political discourse.

How quickly has the zeitgeist changed? Wednesday, the Republican House reconvened to reject Obama’s planned $1.2 trillion debt-ceiling increase. (Lacking Senate concurrence, the debt ceiling will be raised nonetheless.) Barely noticed. All eyes are on South Carolina and Romney’s taxes.

This is no mainstream media conspiracy. This is the GOP maneuvering itself right onto Obama terrain.

The president is a very smart man. But if he wins in November, that won’t be the reason. It will be luck. He could not have chosen more self-destructive adversaries.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 13.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 28.

___________________________________________________

So, Charles, is it "Pshhhhh....just be quiet about this?"

Conservative Refocus

By Barry Secrest

It was a damningly nefarious quote uttered by a very, very, high level Executive.

One that, in fact, should easily be instituted as the cornerstone of the 2012 GOP Presidential campaign. And yet few actually know of this particular quote.

" Belief in Capitalism is Blind Faith,This philosophy of letting people fend for themselves has failed" ~President Barack Obama, October 2010

The portent of this quote, quite obviously, speaks for itself, but it also additionally speaks to that which  this nation has been forced to economically endure over the prior three years.

However, the outrageous hypocrisy of the Center-Left and beyond apparatchiks, along with some few others within the uninspired Right,  still choose to blissfully ignore this once and future quote, which could easily drive a number of Independents, and even a few of those preciously modulating Moderates, straight into the arms of an affectionately waiting political Right.

Obama's multi-nefarious, anti-Free Market stances  are a fact that both the Media-at-large, and even certain Moderate Presidential Candidates, tremble in dread at mentioning, despite the reams of evidence readily available.  Obama is clearly not a fan of Capitalism and yet, in a bizarre twist of logic, many of his largest contributors and most vocal supporters, tend to be Capitalists Extraordinaire. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, just to name two, count themselves as ensnared Obama supporters. Another, even more extreme supporter, George Soros, who is the multi-billionaire who financed the genesis of Obama's Presidential run, is an ardent anti-American-American and one-world, Global Capitalist, of the first degree. It is also a documented fact, that George Soros will even tell you, that the World financial crisis of 2008:

"Was stimulating and in a way, a culmination of my life's work."

So, all implications aside from that particular quote and its leering grin at economic upheaval, how can it be that a man who makes billions, while using every basic tenet at Capitalism's disposal, appears to vehemently despise America's "Leader of The Free World" brand of Free Market Capitalism as a thing that is dire need of replacement? It is, even further, a well known fact that Soros has used capitalism to break,  by lever of hedge, a number of various countries' currencies, which ultimately led to massive losses of both property and wealth to many innocent civilians. Soros has broken the British pound, the Thai Baht and the Malaysian Ringgit, among others, to the extreme detriment of millions of citizens and businesses. In many cases, Soros will actually utilize Capitalism to negatively effect political and social changes, shifting the political paradigm to the far Left, whenever possible, unless its to his extreme advantage to manipulate the pieces in an opposite direction.

This mis-utilization of Capitalism is a thing which we more and more frequently refer to as Left-Wing Capitalism, which is nothing more than a distant, if not despised cousin, to actual Capitalism as practiced by most adherents. We would define Left-Wing Capitalism in this way: The reverse usage of historical Capitalism against itself to defund, severely weaken or even bring down the practice of Capitalism in a given system. A self-concealing, outward approach, to chaining markets, limiting free market capitalism, and promoting a centralized Keynesian bureaucracy.

Now,  with regard to George Soros, and his many well-documented evils, the vocal, pro-Capitalism, Right-Wing of the United States, along with all of its stars and political celebrities, will, in virtually each case, abysmally denounce and attack Soros as a fierce, Left-Wing tycoon with great indignant Right-Wing fervor, and to their credit. In fact, none will ever say that Soros' brand of Capitalism is a thing to be defended at all. Ergo, none will ever call an attack on Soros as an attack on Capitalism, despite the fact that what Soros practices is an extreme form of illegitimate Capitalism, (also see Crony Capitalism), nor will our Republican establishment ever call a Conservative attack on Soros as unbefitting to the political Right.

However, very interestingly, and in this same Capitalistic vein quite recently,  the already powerfully answered question of what has made America great, in the form of Capitalism, has surfaced once again in what many have deemed to be "an erroneous attack on Capitalism."  This supposed attack on our way of life, by only the two most Conservative of Candidates in the GOP Primary, specifically targeted the question of Mitt Romney's business past.

You see, it was Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry who took the argument of business ethics to Romney in both campaign ads and verbal rejoinders, and have done some very integral "campaign payback damage" on the question of corporate raiding, as can be meaningfully seen in your morning paper everyday since. However, the lashback leveled at our two Don Quixote, as a result, has been an undulating howl of protests from every single corner of the Right-Wing establishment and beyond.

Indeed, from extraordinarily prominent Conservative Radio show hosts, Conservative TV hosts, moderate Senators, Left-Winging  journalists, Republicans, Socialists, Democrats, Communists, Groundhogs, Rinos, Warthogs, gazillionaires, you name it, each has chimed into some kind of attack against Gingrich and Perry, along with anyone else who spoke up and delivered an opinion that perhaps these alleged instances of possible corporate raiding by Romney should be looked at. And this very fact alone should give each of those continually piling on a most great and extraordinarily significant pause, because when everyone's thinking the same way, then no one is actually thinking.

In fact, we have heard some vary caustic, if not extraordinarily bellicose remarks, from each of the aforesaid prominent individuals, as well, aimed at anyone who agreed in principle with Gingrich and Perry's attacks. My personal favorite, of many, was this one, para-phrased:

"Maybe these people, even Conservatives, just don't really understand what Capitalism actually is."

Another quote which became an establishment talking point, was this one:

"These Republicans are using the language of the Left."

The two quotes, used in tandem above,  predictably erupted into a dashboard pounding, vehicular  tantrum of epic proportions from me.  Because, at this point, I knew that my angry, gut-level, initial reaction to all of this was dead-on, not to mention all of those business ethics classes, dutifully required of my vocation on a bi-annual basis. So, are we to understand that the Republican Establishment, along with some others who apparently leave business ethics completely outside of Capitalism, are embossing a sort of group-think mandated censorship onto the entire Right-Wing of the Republican Party?

In fact, my non-conventional side tells me that this entire sequence of events would seem to beg the question, "Is it actually Capitalism that is being attacked by our two Conservatives, or is it something else, altogether?"

Now, maybe some on the Right will still adamantly agree with those who criticize Gingrich and Perry on this same very basis, as their attacks on Romney's possible Raiding as being anathema.  However, I would submit that they who have joined in  have never had to listen to what their Conservative American Grandfathers would think of this sort of protracted nonsense, being laying companies to waste for profit's sake only, and then cheering about it as if it were a grand playoff game. But my point here would also be for each of our howling members on the Conservative side to note which wing of the Party has been the winner, so far, from the peals of outrage emanating from the Republican establishment at Gingrich and Perry. You see, there is only one man who has actually been the establishment's numero uno choice from day-one, that man being, ....politically Moderate Gov. Mitt Romney.

The possible ethical problems with Romney's highly successful career at Bain Capital are just that. They are not at all questions of attacking Capitalism, but rather, they are an assemblage of evidence that might paint Romney as an unethical Raider, in some cases, rather than an inspired job creator, as he has been sold to many of us on the Republican side of the argument.

The charges leveled state that Romney sacrificed workers, and even entire companies, for the reward of an extreme, if not outrageous profit gain, throughout certain periods of his career at Bain. One of the alleged corporate victims, of the cases most recently pushed into the public eye, occurred in South Carolina, according to The Sun News, and was a steel mill located in Georgetown called GS Industries Inc.

Bain Capital spent $24.5 million in initially acquiring the steel mill in 1993, and for a number of years oversaw the operating of the company until the steel mill eventually declared bankruptcy in 2001. Interestingly, and during that time period , an overall net gain or stock profit to Bain Capital was recorded of over $33.9 million dollars in less than ten years, well better than double the initial investment. However in 2001, the bankruptcy proceedings for GS Steel recorded a figure of $ 158.7 million in unsupported debt to assets. Even more interestingly, and during that time period, Bain reported management fees and dividends, outside of the purchase to sell figure, of nearly $ 1 billion dollars. Now, if we go back and revisit the actual debt recorded at the time of the bankruptcy declaration, and then look at the total amount of income derived outside of the stock purchase realized gain, even a non-business person can easily see that these numbers appear outrageous, on the face of it.

So, why was it necessary to essentially vacuum over $ 1 billion dollars out of the company? Had that amount not been so extreme, would not GS Steel have easily survived? The answer to that question is a resounding "yes" according to James Sanderson, who states that the steel mill was doing fine until Bain Capital bought it out. In fact, Sanderson states that the company was "run into bankruptcy" by its mismanaging owner, Bain Capital.

GS Industries,which was combined with several other companies in 1995 and head-quartered in Charlotte, NC,was, at the time, the largest carbon wire rod manufacturer in North America, with sales of over $ 1 billion dollars annually and 3,800 employees. Sanderson states that Romney's firm was obviously more interested in making outrageous profit than making steel, and that the managers knew essentially nothing about successfully operating a steel mill. Now, does this sound kind of familiar, as in putting a Marxist/Community Organizer in charge of the largest economy on the planet, and balefully assessing the ensuing results?

In fact, this was not the only instance of extreme profiteering at the actual company's demise for Bain Capital. Photo album maker Holson Burns, which is located in Gaffney, SC, was also bought for a cool $ 10 million in 1986, and then eventually bankrupted only four years later, entering a total profit to Bain of over double the initial investment at over $ 22 million dollars. Now, is this profiteering, ultimately at a company's demise, a thing that we would call Conservative, or does it better fit in the venue of Soros' specialty and that of the practice of Left-Wing Capitalism?

You see, when we hear the dreaded Socialists and Statists making regulation, after rule, after regulation in ultimately dragging our economy down, they are hampering those of us who actually believe in growing companies rather than wrecking them for pure profit's sake. In fact, it was billionaire, Carl Icahn, who is credited as being the man who inspired more Securities and Exchange regulations than any other single individual or entity. Is this something to be proud of? I don't personally think so, myself. In fact, if anything, if what one does requires a new regulation, then it was probably something that should not have been done in the first place.

But herein lies the rub, because these regulations and laws are actually enabled by those in the business world who do precisely the very things that are written about above by both Soros and, in these cases, Bain Capital.  Should the act of running a company into the ground, seemingly for pure profit, be against the law? Heaven's no, because of the problems of proving intent, but these types of abuses do not help our cause, especially when we are trying to educate the younglings coming up of what capitalism is truly all about. Further, it should be noted that Bain Capital has been instrumental at growing some of the most successful companies on the planet, such as Staples and the Sports Authority, just to name a couple. So, our particular critique cannot at all be taken as examples of what Bain has done incessantly, but rather, we can look to these examples as instances of how not to conduct our own businesses.

It's also a granted that many of us small business Conservatives can only shake our heads ruefully whenever a gaggle of deskbound journalists or politco's, TV types, etc. can only sit around and raise cain at  us about not being true Capitalists because of a dissenting opinion, even after persevering through the early days of Obama's attack on the Free Market. But, it was Thomas Jefferson who stated "of following the crowd blindly," this:

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, that that of blind-folded fear."

Benjamin Franklin, on the subject of Capitalism, wealth and ethics, said this:

"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."

Here, Franklin was quite obviously stating that wealth at any cost was probably not the wisest of choices, but he made a vague connection to this idea in the form of liberty itself. Was Franklin indirectly warning his Countrymen of the connection between the unethical use of Capitalism  and a loss of Liberty, if not exercised wisely? Indeed, we need only look at the suffocating regulation of the Dodd banking bill to establish a meaningful connection for the one, as it approaches the other.

On the proper execution of Capitalism, economics Professor Walter Williams says this:

"One of the wonderful things about free markets is that the path to greater wealth comes not from looting, plundering and enslaving one’s fellow man, as it has throughout most of human history, but by serving and pleasing him."

On the subject of blaming the system, i.e. Capitalism, rather than the offending party, President Ronald Reagan said this:

"We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."

Finally, in my earliest days of becoming an Account Executive, the company owner and my business mentor,  taught me, one of the most basic, and yet important, of the precepts of service in industry, that which we call the Golden Rule of Business:

"He who has the gold rules."

Now, when you take that rule and apply it to the other Golden Rule, being:

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

You can then understand the Conservative rules of business, that I have seen most of my small business associates utilize on a daily, if not hourly, basis.

Perhaps it's the reason that few of us in business will ever actually become billionaires, but let me assure you that, as it regards Conservatives, the "R" that stands for Republican does not at all also stand for "Ruthless,"  as well.

However, many of those precious Moderates and Independents might be wondering, after all of the bull we have heard spewed about by "some few" Establishment and otherwise Republicans, most recently.

 Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 18.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 22.

Crony Capitalism Comes Home

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Whenever I write about Occupy Wall Street, some readers ask me if the protesters really are half-naked Communists aiming to bring down the American economic system when they’re not doing drugs or having sex in public.

The answer is no. That alarmist view of the movement is a credit to the (prurient) imagination of its critics, and voyeurs of Occupy Wall Street will be disappointed. More important, while alarmists seem to think that the movement is a “mob” trying to overthrow capitalism, one can make a case that, on the contrary, it highlights the need to restore basic capitalist principles like accountability.

To put it another way, this is a chance to save capitalism from crony capitalists.

 I’m as passionate a believer in capitalism as anyone. My Krzysztofowicz cousins (who didn’t shorten the family name) lived in Poland, and their experience with Communism taught me that the way to raise living standards is capitalism.

But, in recent years, some financiers have chosen to live in a government-backed featherbed. Their platform seems to be socialism for tycoons and capitalism for the rest of us. They’re not evil at all. But when the system allows you more than your fair share, it’s human to grab. That’s what explains featherbedding by both unions and tycoons, and both are impediments to a well-functioning market economy.

When I lived in Asia and covered the financial crisis there in the late 1990s, American government officials spoke scathingly about “crony capitalism” in the region. As Lawrence Summers, then a deputy Treasury secretary, put it in a speech in August 1998: “In Asia, the problems related to ‘crony capitalism’ are at the heart of this crisis, and that is why structural reforms must be a major part” of the International Monetary Fund’s solution.

The American critique of the Asian crisis was correct. The countries involved were nominally capitalist but needed major reforms to create accountability and competitive markets.

Something similar is true today of the United States.

So I’d like to invite the finance ministers of Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia — whom I and other Americans deemed emblems of crony capitalism in the 1990s — to stand up and denounce American crony capitalism today.

Capitalism is so successful an economic system partly because of an internal discipline that allows for loss and even bankruptcy. It’s the possibility of failure that creates the opportunity for triumph. Yet many of America’s major banks are too big to fail, so they can privatize profits while socializing risk.

The upshot is that financial institutions boost leverage in search of supersize profits and bonuses. Banks pretend that risk is eliminated because it’s securitized. Rating agencies accept money to issue an imprimatur that turns out to be meaningless. The system teeters, and then the taxpayer rushes in to bail bankers out. Where’s the accountability?

It’s not just rabble-rousers at Occupy Wall Street who are seeking to put America’s capitalists on a more capitalist footing.

“Structural change is necessary,” Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said in an important speech last month that discussed many of these themes. He called for more curbs on big banks, possibly including trimming their size, and he warned that otherwise we’re on a path of “increasingly frequent, complex and dangerous financial breakdowns.”

Likewise, Mohamed El-Erian, another pillar of the financial world who is the chief executive of Pimco, one of the world’s largest money managers, is sympathetic to aspects of the Occupy movement. He told me that the economic system needs to move toward “inclusive capitalism” and embrace broad-based job creation while curbing excessive inequality.

“You cannot be a good house in a rapidly deteriorating neighborhood,” he told me. “The credibility and the fair functioning of the neighborhood matter a great deal. Without that, the integrity of the capitalist system will weaken further.”

Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist, adds that some inequality is necessary to create incentives in a capitalist economy but that “too much inequality can harm the efficient operation of the economy.” In particular, he says, excessive inequality can have two perverse consequences: first, the very wealthy lobby for favors, contracts and bailouts that distort markets; and, second, growing inequality undermines the ability of the poorest to invest in their own education.

“These factors mean that high inequality can generate further high inequality and eventually poor economic growth,” Professor Katz said.

Does that ring a bell?

So, yes, we face a threat to our capitalist system. But it’s not coming from half-naked anarchists manning the barricades at Occupy Wall Street protests. Rather, it comes from pinstriped apologists for a financial system that glides along without enough of the discipline of failure and that produces soaring inequality, socialist bank bailouts and unaccountable executives.

It’s time to take the crony out of capitalism, right here at home. 

It was probably not the intention of liberal investigative journalists to expose Sarah Palin as a figure far more sympathetic than her public image. Twenty-four thousand pages of email voyeurism reveal a politician who has successfully hidden her virtues behind closed blinds.

As Alaska governor, Palin was kind to her staff, responsive to her constituents and protective of her state. She sought God's guidance in difficult decisions, made time for her family and found media questions on the provenance of her youngest child to be "flippin' unbelievable."

Even Palin's vices are unremarkable in a politician. She was ambitious - which defines the breed. She feuded with state politicians - which other governors have been known to do. She paid too much attention to her press coverage - again, hardly unique. From what I've seen, the emails contain just one damning indictment of Palin's judgment: She accepted public relations advice from Newt Gingrich.

Reading through some of the messages brought to mind the rising governor I met in Alaska in June 2007. Palin was a reformer who had opposed the corrupt Republican establishment of her state. She governed from the center-right. Her style was more practical than ideological. Over lunch at the governor's mansion in Juneau, Palin was engaging, informal and earnest. The contemporaneous emails show that she was careful to avoid excessive partisanship - even willing, on occasion, to praise Barack Obama.

Four years later, it is difficult to find this Palin in her public utterances. Her suspicion of the media has become antipathy. Her style is often abrasive and self-pitying. She encourages an odd sort of conservative class resentment, attacking George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush as "blue bloods." Her hyperpartisanship can be embarrassing.

How did a likable, consensus-oriented governor become such a divisive figure?

At the beginning, Palin was given plenty of reasons for grievance. After her selection as John McCain's running mate, some in the press focused unkind attention on her family and faith. From a human perspective, her defensive reaction was understandable. In a memorable convention speech, Palin returned a volley of fist-shaking populism. On the campaign trail, huge Republican crowds - far larger than McCain generally drew - rewarded Palin's feistiness. Following the election, a procession of radio and cable appearances further simplified and purified her persona. The candidate became a caricature. The caricature became a celebrity.

This transformation would be easier for the media to criticize if it did not frequently fall for the same temptation. Audiences for blogs, radio talk shows and cable television tend to reward ringing reassertions of their own certainties. Simplicity is salable. Doubt and complexity are not. Extreme statements attract attention. Soon they predominate. Eventually they define. A pose becomes a brand. A mask becomes a face.

For evidence, it is necessary to go no further than Palin's most persistent critics in the media. It is one thing to disagree with Palin's approach and policy views. It is another to pursue an Ahab-like obsession across endless oceans of emails. And it is another thing to aim a harpoon at her family, which is indeed flippin' unbelievable.

Modern politics has become a vast Pavlovian experiment. The blogs buzz, the ratings come in, the hits are counted. Elements of the press find an audience in criticizing Palin relentlessly. Reflexes become conditioned. People salivate on cue.

In Palin versus the press, neither side has acquitted itself particularly well. Palin became a less sympathetic figure than she once was. The media managed to undermine a low reputation. Their codependence exposes our political culture to ridicule. But it makes for good television.

_______________

Barry Secrest, Conservative Refocus:  "Waiting For Superwoman: Rebuttal to Dana Milbank's "Tour De Farce" on Sarah Palin"

As with all things truly Liberal, sometimes a catalyst is needed in order to smoke the Leftistly wayward out in full, and who better to do that than the lovely and talented Sarah Palin.  When Palin embarked on her "One Nation" tour, not even we Conservatives could ever have dreamed of the angst it would cause the Axis Press and their Liberal Acolytes, the Mainstream Columnists. And at the forefront of this plague of left-wing blow-hards was none other than the ever-so-cunning  Dana Milbank. Milbank, to me, often seems to operate much like an ideological chameleon, similar to Gerson, in fact. While it is painfully obvious to the true Conservatives both who and what Milbank ascribes to be, he has a way of writing that often leaves many in doubt.

So bad had it become, at one point, that upon seeing search string after search string pop up in our site analytics, asking the question is "Dana Milbank a Liberal?" I decided to write a quick report answering this question and did so with facts which emanated from none other than Milbank himself. Sometimes, one need only look at that which a subjective writer is constantly attacking in order to understand what, precisely, their ideology is made up of. Milbank, historically, has made a lucrative career of always going after the Conservatives and attacking the most vibrant personalities rather than their ideas, in case you hadn't noticed.

Understanding The Smallish Minded

In that vein, it was Eleanor Roosevelt who stated that "great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people." This is often why so many confuse the nature of Milbank who seems constantly preoccupied with the who rather than the what. He often refers to both the Liberals and the Conservatives as if they are each apart from him, but the Liberals certainly are not, and no one should be fooled by this ploy be it purposeful or otherwise. This is why so many have asked the question:  "Will the real Dana Milbank please stand up?"

Ah! There he is now, he appears to be saying something and gesticulating madly...what's that? Oh, a Tour De Farce? Who? Oh, Sarah Palin got you down again, Dana? Well, you think you're angry now, Milbank, just wait until she's President.  Talk about payback.

Milbank, it would seem, has something mean and nasty to say about Sarah Palin in volumes, and we are not surprised in the least. Milbank has taken issue with Govenor Palin and her "One Nation" tour, and he appears to be first at issue with Palin's two stopping points of choice: Fox News and Donald Trump. Indeed, Dana, you silly man, would you have expected her to visit with the New York Times and George Soros first? Not so terribly sure that she would have been well-received by either of those, as Milbank must have somehow gathered by now.  Milbank also takes issue with the three foot letters of Sarah's name emblazoned on her bus and the fact that she appears to be seeking publicity.

Understanding The Largish Minded

Milbank, in a cloud of confusion, still doesn't seem to understand what Palin is doing. In fact, Milbank's entire column focuses on Palin's mad publicity tour because she doesn't appear to be running. So here it becomes necessary to clue Milbank and perhaps a few others in on what is actually happening with Palin, and I am glad to be the one to do it. Palin is not doing this for her looks; she is well-endowed in that respect. Sarah is not doing this for publicity; all she has to do is tweet her whereabouts to get tons of that. So listen carefully and learn:  Palin is conducting an exploratory campaign to see how much money her SarahPAC can garner, along with how much presidential publicity she can access, along with understanding how popular her showing is to the people of the United States. It's simply that simple, and it is a brilliant way to preliminarily run without actually running. She is reserving the right to make that decision in what we could call a grand experiment.

Got it? Sheez, what a bunch of amateurs working at the Washington Post.

She is actually probing around, quite brilliantly, in order to ascertain if she has a meaningful chance at success at the Presidency. We do understand that Milbank doesn't understand this type of tactic, and yet we thought it should be painfully clear to those who keep their noses mired in politics. It's not about popularity at all Milbank, it's about being President, and if the Socialist Obama could do it, then...well, you know.

But to this we should also remind Milbank that, unlike the two of us, Palin is what is commonly referred to as a Celebrity, and she makes gazillions just by appearing; the only difference being that this fact doesn't bother me, or Conservatives in general, in the least, as opposed to Milbank and his brethren. In fact, MSNBC's Charlie Cook actually stated that "Palin won't run, she's making more money now than God ever intended her to make." Indeed that's true, but Cook's and Milbank's version of God in the form of the Obama Administration may have something to say about that, perhaps sooner rather than later, if they have their way.

An Illogical Premise

Milbank goes on to make what must be one of the strangest and gaudiest of comparisons yet when he wheels out none other than Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has fittingly had enough of the Obama Administration. Milbank goes on to slather the praise on Gates while somehow drawing comparisons to Palin's tour and denigrating Palin at the same time. The comparison it must be noted,while creative, simply doesn't pass the smell test, a thing that has probably plagued Milbank for much of his life. Comparing Sarah Palin to Robert Gates is like comparing an Air Force One to the Capital building and oohing and awing over the marked differences between the two. An exercise in protracted buffoonery at best.

Milbank, in one stretch, remarks on how Palin is playing cat and mouse on Interstate 95 with the Axis Press while Gates is touring Asia and Europe. Should we mention the fact that Palin's tour is costing the American people nothing but a large number of the patriotic outbursts that Milbank despises? Should we also point out that a more accurate comparison might involve how much the Axis Press earns from either of the two when we compare reader draws between Gates and Palin? In fact, a media search string with the name Robert Gates yields a healthy 15.8 million Google responses, while Sarah Palin's Google response yields an astounding 81.8 million hits, and she's not even employed by the Government.

At least now we can begin to understand why the media is stalking Sarah.  It's not because they hate her so much, but rather it's how they ingratiatingly use Palin to sell print for themselves while at the same time incessantly vilifying her--anteing up the pot in the process. So please don't talk to us anymore about how noble yours and the media's aims are when we can all clearly see what your efforts are actually about, Milbank.

Dueling Pathos

But Milbank persists in the illusory comparison by noting how Gates agreed to stay on and work towards Obama's Authoritarian schemes and anti-constitutional war aspirations, while Palin chose to quit as Governor. It has become common knowledge that the reason that Palin quit, after her run for the Vice-Presidency, was due to the constant flow of harassment lawsuits which were being brought against her as Alaska's Governor by the Progressives. Palin is not even close to being a dummy, and she chose to quit rather than to spend the rest of her term defending herself as Governor in a court of law. No one liked her decision, but most of us could at least understand it, as evidenced by the recent release of her Alaskan emails. Milbanks own paper, the Washington Post, along with the New York Times, among others, actually invited readers to log in and help peruse the Palin emails for damaging facts which could then be forwarded to the attention of the editors.

These facts would then be used to excoriate Palin and vilify her in public. But where is the same journalistic professionalism in efforts against a Government that increasingly seeks to control and alter those same Citizen's lives? Or is it that the Washington Post has become the journalistic equivalent of TMZ? You see, Milbanks says himself that Palin is nothing more than a celebrity. If that be the case, then why the constant efforts to destroy her, Sir, and I use that term euphemistically. It would appear that Milbank might wish to move closer to Hollywood and further away from the Inner-Beltway, his muckraking talents clearly belonging more in the vein of Celebrity Deathwatch than pretending to pursue Watergate-types of  Government excess.

Milbank goes on to establish and typify a non-existent dueling Gates-Palin tour and states that it shows the best and the worst in American public life, noting that Gates exemplifies the best tradition of service while Palin is a study in selfishness. Here we must stop and pointedly inquire if Milbank or Gates, either one, performs their selfless tasks for free? Do either of these men skulk away from the limelight when proffered the opportunity? If the answer is no, then Milbank has once again played the ever-present Liberal Hypocrisy Card that Progressives love to throw out and--once again--we are not at all surprised.

We are all then treated to a litany of rantish adverbs from Milbank which include "self-aggrandizing For Palin, self-effacing for Gates, self-harmonized for Obama foreign policy, bulls-eyes for Palin and even blood libel for Palin as well." At this point, however, it becomes necessary to pause and say "wait just a minute Milbank."

Self-Harmonizing Chaos

Did you just say "Gates produced a self-harmonized American foreign policy?" The Mideast lies on fire and is in tatters, we are on the outs with virtually every nation we have contact with to include Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iran et al; can Milbank actually produce a fact that is not contra-indicated by the actual evidence? The simple truth is that Gates had nothing to do with either the failure or the success of foreign policy, per se. That role lies with both the State Department and the Obama Administration; to wit, things are not looking so very well in that regard, not even with Israel our strongest ally, for Heaven's sake.  Next Milbank calls out virtually every individual within public service stating essentially that, if they do not wish to go home, then something is wrong with them, oddly allowing that "Gates heroically wants to go home while Palin may selfishly want to run for President."

Um...huh?  The last we heard, Obama was seeking a second term, Dana; shall you vilify him as well for not wishing to depart for home, or perhaps Milbank has stumbled into a Tea Party-like anti-incumbent angst. If that be the case, then we are really surprised.  It would be the first time Milbank actually identified with the Tea Party in at least one respect but he actually doesn't. Unfortunately, at this point Milbank begins to lose his grip on mental lucidity as his column moves out into the fringe of Leftist politics. Milbank perfunctorily begins to elucidate Palin's highly-successful resume' of very recent accomplishments, as if they were somehow a horrid crime against political nature:

• Palin's TLC Show--Stunning ratings
• Bristol's Dancing With The Stars Appearance--Stunning Ratings
• Palin's stoking the Birther Conspiracy, causing Obama to produce a possible forgery
• Palin's utilizing Lear 60 or larger private jets (Pelosi still has her beat there)
• Sarah's wildy popular Rolling Thunder appearance--Massive draw
• The crowd-drawing "Pizza With Trump" episode--Media makes wads of cash on story
• The flattering new movie about Palin--results to be seen
• The onslaught of TV news choppers at every event--a veritable Superstar
• The successful SarahPAC funding effort

Then Milbank moves into a list of Gates' seeming accomplishments, which would seem to simply go along with the job that Gates was hired to do. Signing death letters and admitting that we were in trouble in Iraq, along with banning a standing gag order of our returning dead, are things that Milbank finds to be beyond-stunning accomplishments. Doesn't take much to impress Milbank, would be our response. Gates did do a number of things that were great, but Gates, we would have to point out, faltered mightily in other areas, as well. But what could one expect under a President who loves to loathe the US military while using them profligately to meet his own aims.

Meet Milbank's Personal Hero:  "Moi"

At this point, however, we must point out a quote from Gates in which he also euphemistically stated the following:

"America can be either a welfare state or a superpower but certainly not both"

Pshh! Don't anyone tell Dana about this, he will be furious if he finds out after writing his poorly executed piece.

Milbank goes on to speak to Gates' frankness  on many subjects, while even crowing about Gates disagreeing with Obama on his attack of Libya. Wow, he actually disagreed with Obama, and this makes Milbank admiring of Gates? Then I must be a super hero in Milbank's eyes in that respect, because I disagree with Obama on virtually everything. But that's OK, Dana, you need not write an entire column about me with a comparison to Mahatma Gandhi, although that might make infinitely more sense than the one that you just wrote.

Milbank then ends his column with a bit of wishful thinking, in hoping that Sarah Palin might consider emulating Robert Gates' recent quote in which he stated, "The best thing that I could do when I get out of here, for at least some period of time, is keep my mouth shut."

So Milbank wishes Palin to keep her mouth shut, to include every other Conservative in America, no doubt. However, we must point out that we hope Dana Milbank continues his ridiculous comparisons and Liberal politics of individual persecution for at least a little while longer.

I mean, where else will we find any useful material for our rebuttals?

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Blue:  Paul Krugman's "Climate of Hate" / NYTimes / 1/10/2011

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.

Conservatives denounced that report. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has.

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

By Andrew Foy, M.D. and Brenton Stransky

The majority of the taxpayers in our country believe it a foregone conclusion that taxes will rise substantially in the near future and that the Bush tax cuts will soon be no more than a footnote of political history. You don't need to be a genius to see that the government will have to raise more revenue to pay for seemingly infinite spending, but before we resign ourselves to higher taxes, we should consider defending the Bush tax cuts against the left.

Two of the most oft-cited objections to the Bush tax cuts by the left are that it helped only the rich and it was largely responsible for the federal deficit at the end of the Bush presidency. Instead, it is true that if the current administration allows any or all of the Bush tax cuts to expire, economic growth will be slowed and tax revenue could actually decrease, perpetuating our deficit dilemma.

The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 broadly lowered income, capital gains, dividends, and estate taxes. Fanning the lie that only the rich benefited, liberal economists Peter Orszag and William Gale described the Bush tax cuts as reverse-government redistribution of wealth, "[shifting] the burden of taxation away from upper-income, capital-owning households and toward the wage-earning households of the lower and middle classes." This criticism stuck so well that it is difficult to find a liberal today who doesn't believe that these tax relief measures were anything more than "tax cuts for the rich."

But the data does not support this conclusion. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Bush tax cuts actually shifted the total tax burden farther toward the rich so that in 2000-2004, total income tax paid by the top 40% of income-earners grew by 4.6% to 99.1% of the total.

This shift may have occurred because as the wealthy (who are arguably the most industrious and productive citizens) are better-incentivized to be industrious and productive through lower taxes, they create higher incomes for themselves and end up paying more taxes. The Bush tax cuts did shift the tax burden, but not in the direction most liberals think.

The second major misconception spread by the left about the Bush tax cuts is that the lower tax rates caused the federal deficit woes we face today. Keeping with the party line of blaming the previous administration for all of today's problems, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) quipped in a news conference on January 8 of this year: "Let me just say that the tax cuts at the high end ... have been the biggest contributor to the budget deficit." Of course, the Speaker would have us believe that overspending has nothing to do with our deficit.

In fact, the Bush tax cuts actually increased government revenue. According to economist Brian Reidl of the Heritage Foundation, The Laffer Curve (upon which much of the supply-side theory is based) merely formalizes the common sense observations that

• 1. Tax revenues depend on the tax base as well as the tax rate,
• 2. Raising tax rates discourages the taxed behavior and therefore shrinks the tax base, offsetting some of the revenue gains, and
• 3. Lowering tax rates encourages the taxed behavior and expands the tax base, offsetting some of the revenue loss.

If policymakers intend cigarette taxes to discourage smoking, then they should know that high investment taxes will discourage investment and income taxes will discourage work. Lowering taxes encourages people to engage in the given behavior, which expands the base and replenishes some or all of the lost revenue. This is the "feedback effect" of a tax cut.

The following figure is an illustration of the Laffer Curve. The curve postulates that two tax rates exist between the extremes of no tax and 100% tax that will collect the same amount of revenue: a high tax rate on a small tax base and a low tax rate on a large tax base. Whether or not a tax cut recovers 100% of the lost revenue depends on the tax rate's location on the Laffer curve. When tax rates are above the equilibrium point on the Laffer curve, reducing the tax rate increases revenue.

So what was the effect of the Bush tax cuts? The data reveals that tax revenues in 2006 were actually $47 billion above the levels projected by the Congressional budget office before the 2003 tax cuts. Clearly, tax rates were beyond the point of equilibrium.

The Bush tax cuts were intended to increase market incentives to work, save, and invest and thus create jobs and increase economic growth. An analysis of the six quarters before and after the 2003 tax cuts shows that this is exactly what happened. The following table from Reidl's analysis depicts these effects.

The empirical data makes it impossible to validate the liberal claims that the Bush tax cuts were "for the rich," or that they "caused the budget deficit," or that they were in any way responsible for causing this latest economic crisis. In fact, a study by economist John W. Skorburg underscores the positive effects of the Bush tax cuts. Skorburg's study found that the Bush tax cuts, which lowered the total federal tax burden from 20.9% in fiscal year 2000 to 17.9% in fiscal year 2008 and 2009, were responsible for increasing the economic growth rate. Further, the author concluded that "[i]f President Obama raises tax burdens, trend growth in real GDP will fall."

The bottom line is that tax policy has far-reaching effects, and for decades, liberals have refused to acknowledge them. The dire consequences of higher tax burdens in times of economic weakness were made most clear when FDR raised taxes in 1937, causing a double-dip in GDP that prolonged the Great Depression. If the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, recovery from the current crisis will likely be prolonged, and we will have no one to blame but ourselves for not observing the lessons of history.

Andrew Foy, M.D. and Brenton Stransky are authors of The Young Conservative's Field Guide and can be contacted through their website at www.aHardRight.com</a>.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/lying_about_bushs_tax_cuts.html at August 24, 2010 - 09:28:39 AM CDT

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BLUE:  A Windfall for the Wealthy

By Paul Krugman