Taxing the rich

A few days back, CNN posted an interesting analysis of Obama's tax plan, and how it will impact wealthy Americans . I consider myself a fiscal conservative, but I should say that I'm not particularly opposed to raising the top marginal income rates back to their pre-2001 levels. (I do, however, think it's a bit deceptive for Obama to say he's "rolling back the Bush tax cuts," since Bush was basically rolling back Clinton-era tax hikes).

I am concerned about Obama's plan to lift the cap on income subject payroll taxes. Will employers have to pay an additional 6.2% on every dollar over 250,000? If so, isn't Obama concerned about wage deflation? Or unemployment? Or economic stagnation? Would he consider an exemption for small businesses?

Obama is surprisingly vague on the details. At a time when we're cycling out of a pretty severe contraction, should we really be focusing on this kind of income redistribution?

Christianism comes to town

A few days back, my uncle sent my mother this Townhall.com op-ed. It infuriated me so much I had to write a response.

Anyway, I've reproduced it in full for your entertainment. Let me know if you agree or disagree:

The biggest problem with this article is that pretends to know exactly what “liberals” – as a monolithic political group – believe, and why they believe it. If I argued that all “Christians” espouse Roman Catholic orthodoxy (with the same reverence for saints, the same notions of papal infallibility, and the same liturgy), wouldn’t that seem terribly ignorant? Wouldn’t it be an incredible misunderstanding of Christian thought and tradition? And wouldn’t you say that it’s unfair to lump all “Christians” into a single, homogeneous group?

But what if I went further and suggested that all of the zealots on the lunatic fringe – abortion clinic bombers, for example – represent mainstream Christian ideology?

That’s exactly what this article does. It distorts and diminishes liberal thought, denying its diversity and complexity – and rendering it almost unrecognizable.

But let’s pretend for the sake of argument that there is no diversity of thought on the Left, and there’s a single, unified liberal “perspective” on every major issue. The arguments in this article are still absurd.

1) At what point have liberals tried to “shut down” Fox News or other conservative media outlets? That's an outrageous claim.

2) Since when do all Arabs oppose women’s rights and intellectual freedom? I have Arab friends – some of them Christian – who are not only extremely tolerant, but also happen to support Israel’s right to exist.

3) How can gay marriages be compared to incestuous or polygamous marriages? They're simply not the same thing. But, again, even if they were, on what basis do the majority of conservatives seek to deny marital rights to consenting adults? Is it simply Biblical teaching? Should we also stone adulterers because the Bible suggests that this is an acceptable penalty? [Deuteronomy 22:22-24] The real question is: How can the Bible be the foundation of public policy in such a religiously and ethnically diverse nation?

4) On the issue of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court extended the Establishment Clause to encompass states and local communities only after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment (which, through the Due Process Clause, dramatically widened the scope of the Bill of Rights). This was a pretty thorny constitutional question that was decided by a fairly mixed group of justices. (Quoting from the Establishment Clause without mentioning the Fourteenth Amendment is like discussing the Eighteenth Amendment’s prohibition on alcohol without acknowledging that it was repealed.)

These are just a few examples of how this article is filled with oversimplifications and outright distortions. But, mostly, it’s filled with ignorant assumptions about the nature of liberalism.

Just some things to think about.

The politics of defeat

Bob Herbert addresses the Dem's uncanny ability to lose elections in his NYT column today:

The Democrats have become so psychologically battered by these many decades in the leadership wilderness that they consider the Clinton years, during which the president was impeached and they lost control of both houses of Congress, to have been a period of triumph.

I'm pretty sick of hearing that the Republicans are better at winning elections. Maybe if the Dems stop encouraging this learned helplessness--or, at least, spoke out against Clinton's use of right-wing talking points to attack the likely Democratic nominee--they'd actually win the presidency.

You don't defeat the Republicans by becoming even more Machiavellian than they are. You defeat them by putting forward a real agenda for change, and rallying the support of the people.

I should say that, in spite of all the negative press, I still believe that Obama will win this election.

I prefer hope--yes, even false hope--to cynicism and division.

Gibson versus the facts

FactCheck.org published its review of Wednesday's ABC News Democratic Debate. Clinton and Obama both made some factual missteps, as is to be expected. But I tend to think that Clinton's errors were far more blatant--and on far more significant issues.

The most distressing item, in my mind, was Charlie Gibson's spin about raising the capital gains tax. Not only did he distort Obama's statements on the subject, but he toyed with the facts about the increased revenues resulting from capital gains cuts.

The truth is that there is a great deal of debate among economists about whether cutting the capital gains tax actually increases revenues. (Many economists maintain that cuts offer only short-term gains from asset sell-offs, but ultimately do little to raise revenues.) Gibson asserted definitively that "in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased."

Maybe there's a reason why people are angry about this debate . . .

A brief comment on the debate

The general view seems to be that the ABC News Democratic Debate ("Obama versus Clinton") was a pathetic display of tabloid journalism, with a few "gotcha" questions thrown in for good measure. There was little discussion of actual policy issues, and Clinton's steady barrage of cheap shots clearly threw Obama off his game.

Obama definitely lost the debate.

But Clinton didn't do very well either. Her attacks came off as petty and nasty, and she didn't offer much in the way of vision. Telling voters that you have a detailed and convoluted "plan" for every crisis facing the nation simply doesn't pass the smell test. I think this is the kind of crap that hurt John Kerry in 2004 much more than the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth malarkey. It is, frankly, far more elitist to pretend you have all the answers than to suggest that people in Pennsylvania may be bitter for having lost their jobs, or that Republicans use wedge issues like illegal immigration and gun licensing to win elections.

Still, Clinton seized every opportunity to land a punch, and I'd say that Obama left the debate a looking a bit shaken. Obama still seems surprised when she hits below the belt with bullshit innuendos and outright assaults on his credibility, and this easily plays into Clinton's "lack of experience" narrative. He doesn't seem to realize that she has no limits and no sense of shame.

For me, the most disturbing thing about the whole debate was that George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton political strategist and Clinton White House official, was one of the moderators. His question about Rev. Wright's patriotism ("Do you think that Rev. Wright is as patriotic as you, Sen. Obama?") was completely beyond the pale, and Obama seemed like he wanted to strangle the guy. The question about William Ayers as also pretty ridiculous, and it now appears that it was originally suggested to Stephanopoulos by Sean Hannity. Obama got a good dig in, noting that Bill Clinton had actually pardoned several members of the Weather Underground, but I have a feeling this is going to come back to bite him.

All in all, I think it was a terrible debate, and I think ABC should really have considered the conflict of interest that Stephanopoulous may have presented here.

But, of course, that would take some sense of etiquette, which the MSM now seems to lack entirely.

Bowling for Torture

For those of you who don't know who John Yoo is, I can't say I blame you.

The MSM has barely reported on the so-called "Torture Memo," which Yoo authored while he was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

The memo is pretty damning, since it explicitly endorses the use of torture against enemy combatants, but it seems that the MSM is far more concerned with Barack Obama's bowling skills:

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

"Yoo and torture" - 102
"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73
"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16
"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043
"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607
"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079

Ugh. I'm really beginning to hate the media.

Endgame?

Matt Yglesias seems wowed by this "powerful email" from an American soldier currently serving in Iraq:

In my opinion, what everyone fails to realize is that this is not a counterinsurgency. If we wanted to stay in Iraq, then it would be a
counterinsurgency. But it is clear that our goal is to turn over power and pull out. So, in building our strategic endstate, it's pointless to set goals that relate to our presence in Iraq. If the "insurgency" is a function of our being there, then it is not an insurgency in terms of our endstate. For example, if one of our goals is to stop IED attacks on US forces, that is pointless. When we leave, there will be no more IED attacks on us forces. So our endstate needs to be different. We need to ask "if we left tomorrow, what would happen in Iraq?" and from there, we need to determine which of those anticipated results are unacceptable to us. Then we must aim our efforts on making sure those unacceptable results do not occur.

When I look at the problem that way, it becomes almost impossible to find a purpose in what we do.

It's impossible because this is a wholly irrational way to look at the problem. No objective observer can, at this stage, believe that the insurgency will die down if the United States withdraws its troops. Clearly, the Iraqi government cannot handle its own security.

I think that beginning with the premise that the insurgency is "a function of our being there" is really begging the question. This is by no means proven . . .

Cohen tells it like it is

If you haven't already done so, please read Roger Cohen's op-ed in today's NYT.

Obama's gaffe?

In his interview with Larry King last week, Obama criticized John McCain for conflating al Qaeda and Iran:

[Y]ou heard, I think, the other day, Senator McCain confuse al Qaeda with Shia radical militias inside of Iraq. The president makes the same error. He keeps on conflating al Qaeda with all that's going on inside of Iraq. In fact, Iraq is a majority Shia country that is violently opposed to al Qaeda.

He then went on to correctly identify Iran's relationship with Hamas:

[I]'ve talked about the need for direct diplomacy with countries like Iran to get them to stand down on nuclear weapons and stop the kinds of rhetoric against Israel and the funding of Hezbollah and Hamas.

There's no doubt that, increasingly, Iraqis (Sunni and Shi'ite) are turning against al Qaeda. But if Iran is willing to cooperate with and fund Hamas, a majority Sunni organization, why is it impossible to imagine Iranian agents also backing al Qaeda? The Iranians certainly have an interest in promoting instability in Iraq, and funding al Qaeda could be one way to accomplish this.

That's not to say that Iran necessarily is sponsoring al Qaeda, but it's pretty silly so suggest, as many have, that there's no way the Iranians would put practical concerns ahead of sectarian ideology.

Anyway, this sounds to me like a gaffe on Obama's part.

Kristol's hypocrisy

Bill Kristol comes out against ever talking about race in America:

The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race.

What we need instead are sober, results-oriented debates about economics, social mobility, education, family policy and the like — focused especially on how to help those who are struggling. Such policy debates can lead to real change — even “change we can believe in.” "National conversations” tend to be pointless and result-less.

Once again, this is total bullshit. The day after Obama addressed the issue of race in America, he delivered a major speech on the economy, followed by another speech on the state of the Iraq War.

It was conservative commentators like Sean Hannity and Bill Kristol who chose to focus solely on Rev. Wright's comments, prolong this discussion of race in order to browbeat Obama with a string of ad hominem attacks (many of them based in blatant lies).