Liberals Can Also Be Misinformed And Ignorant In Parsing Our History

-
On reading an article ('Can We Ever Recover from the Murder of John Kennedy?') by Harvey Wasserman, on the liberal blog smirkingchimp.com two nights ago, I was impressed by the insight displayed and why we as a people still haven't come to terms with his killing. However, many of the comments were another thing - demonstrating every manner of ignorance and idiocy one could imagine. It confirmed my belief that liberals are as woefully ill-informed about our 35th President and his record as right wingers. And while not quite in the "Larry Schweikart" "mold they aren't far behind from what I read.

Some examples:

1) One bonehead who goes by the monicker 'RE James50' claimed Kennedy had issued "Reaganesque supply side tax cuts"when President  This ignorant bollocks came straight from the playbook of Charles Krauthammer, resident WaPo neocon, who used it in 2001 when the initial Bush tax cuts were being promoted. It ought not be necessary to say this, but any liberal who incorporates false arguments and claims from the likes of Krauthammer is as misinformed as he is. (Krauthammer attempted to convey a veneer of truth by citing  a JFK speech before the New York Economic Club in December, 1962.  JFK's speech endorsed a general tax cut, and let's bear in mind at the time that the top rate was 91%. JFK proposed lowering it to 65% for the wealthiest, still nearly two times what the current top rate is for them (after the Bush tax cuts).

When a well-informed commentator tried to correct James he simply doubled down on this bullshit - even after the sane contributor presented evidence of Kennedy's proposals from Donald Gibson's excellent monograph: 'Battling Wall Street- The Kennedy Presidency'. To remind readers of what that evidence was,  JFK's tax cut proposals included:

- The elimination of all tax breaks set up in the form of foreign investment operations or companies

- The repeal of all tax advantages by corporations operating in low tax countries, such as Switzerland

- The repeal of the 100% charitable contribution write-off by the wealthy

- Withholding tax on the investments, dividends and capital of the wealthy to ensure revenues could not be lost by too many shelters or at the 'end point'.

- Tax on investment dividends so that all those earning in excess of $180 k would pay a much higher rate.

-Devices that would prevent 'high bracket taxpayers' from concealing income from 'personal holding companies'.

- An anti-speculation provision that would ensure property or investments were kept at least one year - else no benefit from existing capital gains rates would apply

-The elimination of special 'gift' transfers as well as repeal of the $50 dividend exclusion and the 4% dividend credit.

(Source: 'Battling Wall Street - The Kennedy Presidency', by Donald Gibson, Sheridan Square Press, 1994, pp. 22-23)

In addition - again omitted by the conservos - JFK targeted large oil and gas producers who had been manipulating a (1954) law to avoid taxes and gain an advantage over smaller producers.

The character ('RE James') on smirkingchimp averred it didn't matter because Kennedy "didn't get his proposals passed". But this is unmediated rubbish that fails to grasp that what ended up on the table was a compromise that was the best Kennedy could do with a Repub congress,  Granted then that most of his provisions didn't survive the compromises forced by congressional committees (which held JFK's Medicare, and Civil rights legislation up for ransom)  but it represented the best he could do under the circumstances- and in no sense were the cuts "supply side" - first because supply side hadn't even been invented yet! (By Arthur Laffer). and second because supply side is always tilted much more to the richest.

A bit of background:

In 1974, Arthur Laffer,  then an economist at the University of Chicago,  traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Ford's then chief of staff (though Rumsfeld subsequently fobbed him off on Dick Cheney).   Laffer had a new theory on why tax rates were inefficient and high, or one might say "inefficiently high. Laffer then proceeded to sketch his infamous diagram on a napkin on why the rich could be said to be "over taxed".



Laffer's crude napkin diagram is shown here for reference. As drawn, it was totally convincing! Especially for a guy like Cheney with minimal math skills. Note the line defining the highest marginal tax rate of 70% for Gerald Ford's presidency. What Laffer's curve sought to show is that by cutting that rate down, say to 50%, one could increase the revenues by nearly 35%! Of course, the 50% turned out to be wholly arbitrary and in fact after Reagan became President in 1980 the rates were cut down to 50 by 1981, then to 28% (by 1988). After all, if one could increase revenues by cutting taxes 20%, imagine what one could do by cutting them more than 40%!

Thus did Laffer's curve become the basis of Reagan's tax cuts and the whole tax cut meme ever since, despite the fact that in reality no community or even human body has mamanged to GROW by virtue of starving! But try to tell the bulk of Americans, who continue to buy into this codswallop at a mind-boggling rate! (Or that Kennedy actually prescribed them too!)

But the difference between taking a top 91% rate down to 65% and keeping already ridiculously low rates of 36.5% is the difference between night and day. And imposing tax cuts of the magnitude of Reagan's in an already debt exploding environment ($1.5 trillion already splurged on defense by mid -1985) is fiscal insanity. By comparison, idiots like James were totally unaware Kennedy still had a healthy surplus (as opposed to deficit environment) to work in, so could afford his tax cuts without doing untold damage.

Were Kennedy's tax policies really as maimed as RE James suggests? Go look at the record in the press at the time then decide!   For example,  Fortune accused him of an attempt to "manipulate the tax level against the business cycle". ('Activism in the White House', June, 1961, p. 117).  Why the hell would such an organ of finance capital bellyache like this if Kennedy's tax law was a hollow fake?

Two years later, Fortune implored Congress to stop JFK from "using tax policy as instruments to manage the economy". ('The Dream Businessmen Are Losing', Sept. 1963, p. 91).  Again, why the whining if Kennedy's tax cuts were so wussy and "supply sided"? All James had to do was look at the media record, but like too many liberals he was more invested in buying into Kennedy's weakness than his strengths and accomplishments. (Something I partially blame on Kennedy "historians" like Robert Dallek who have no remote clue what the man actually did, and also critics like Noam Chomsky and Seymour Hersh - with his several books, articles on JFK's dalliances)

Along the same lines, the "central organ of finance capital" - The Wall Street Journal, launched various articles and diatribes accusing JFK of being a "statist" and other things. Some of those articles include:

- 8/6/62 'No Cause for Celebration'; p. 6;

- 3/26/63 'Too Much Money, Too Little Thought', p. 18;

- 8/15/63 'When Friends Become Foes', p. 8

Meanwhile, Henry Hazlitt, contributing editor at Newsweek (The Washington Post's sister publication) was airing many of the same complaints against JFK. These polemics, appearing regularly in Hazlitt's 'Business Tides', included taking JFK to task for his tax policies - including the proposed tax on U.S. business earnings abroad while he also chastised Kennedy for "welfare spending".

Never mind! The cynical manipulators out to brainwash citizens are betting that most are ignorant of recent American history and they will surely exploit that deficiency to play their little game. As long as useful idiots and tools such as RE James exist, they will keep on doing it.

Sadly, in scanning the comments, James' foolishness didn't stop there, he actually also took the sane and rational commentator to task for "quoting Curtis LeMay" as evidence that Kennedy  saved the world by refusing to bomb and invade Cuba. In fact, the commentator had referenced the actual transcripts of the tapes at the time in the book, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis’, by Ernest R. May and Philip K. Zelikow (1997, President and Fellows of Harvard College).

The transcripts included the specific reference (p. 347) that "Strategic Air Command moved from the general Defense Condition 3 to Defense Condition 2, the level just below general war. In addition to ICBMs and submarine-based ballistic missiles, every available bomber – more than 1,400 aircraft- went on alert. Scores of bombers, each loaded with several nuclear weapons and carrying folders for pre-assigned targets in the Soviet Union."

But the moron insisted "Khrushchev deserved as much or more credit as Kennedy". He did, in the aftermath, in finally resolving the crisis - hence proposing  the removal of U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets removing theirs from Cuba. But, Khrushchev was not in the Crisis room with JFK facing down the rabid Joint Chief hawks like Lyman Lemnitizer and Curtis LeMay. Thus, it was on Kennedy - man on the freaking spot- who denied them the bombing campaign they wanted followed by invasion. If Kennedy doesn't stand his ground in the Crisis Room, nothing Khrushchev does later matters.

Indeed, as Robert McNamara makes clear in his 'Fog of War' documentary ('Lessons 1, 2) , had Kennedy succumbed to the Joint Chiefs'  demands nearly 160 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (and 93 tactical nukes)  would have been unleashed on the eastern U.S. This McNamara learned when he met with Castro in 1992 for the 30th anniversary of the event. McNamara asked Castro if he;d really have seen his country destroyed in the potential altercation and he responded firmly, "Yes, and you'd have dome the same if faced with massive bombing and invasion of your country -with likely takeover".

McNamara could hardly believe what he heard, but he likely forgot - 30 years after the fact - that the motto circulating in the US of A was "Better dead than Red"

Another doofus weighing in on the comments thread claimed that Kennedy had only managed to get "one minor piece of legislation passed in all his time in office". Which is yet more ignorant drivel and I have noted JFK's major accomplishments in other posts, including:

1) JFK established and promoted the "Alliance for Progress' to enable low-interest loans for Latin  American nations, thereby outraging the 'Street" and the other capitalist bastions of thought which believed this to be a "giveaway"    Because of the program, economic assistance to Latin America nearly tripled between fiscal year 1960 and fiscal year 1961. Between 1962 and 1967 the US supplied $1.4 billion per year to Latin America. If new investment is included, the amount of aid rose to $3.3 billion per year during this time span while the total amount of aid was roughly $22.3 billion. Sadly, once LBJ got in, the amount of aid did not equal the net transfer of resources. 

2) Perhaps the one move that may have signed JFK's death warrant was when he attempted - via Executive Order 11,110 issued on June 4, 1963 - to challenge Fed control of the money supply. (Which under the Constitution authorizes only Congress to create paper money not a private entity) This EO authorized the creation of some $4.2 billion in U.S. Notes - to replace Federal Reserve Notes. These U.S. Notes were issued by Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, and bore his signature.

After the assassination nearly all the notes were recalled. I was fortunate in being able to obtain two from my brother who still had them- a $2 note with Jefferson on the front, and a $5 with Lincoln. Both display the serial numbers in red ink. Not green, like Fed notes. See e.g.

 
In effect, JFK's issuance of U.S. Notes was a shot across the Federal Reserve's bow, as well as the banking class. By releasing all those debt-free notes out of the Treasury he not only undermined the Fed's financial hegemony but challenged their national authority and decision -making powers on money matters. Many observers believe that this alone might well have been enough to put JFK in assorted cross-hairs.

On the level of executive orders, it was perhaps the most daring ever issued, and we remind ourselves again (as RE JAMES  and Robert Dallek ought to) that Presidents can wield power in other ways apart from legislation.

3)Issuance of  National Security Action Memorandum 263, to pull out of Viet Nam by 1965. Many still quibble about whether this was actually done or mere smoke and mirrors  - but any energized citizen can find out for himself if he gets off his butt and digs into the document track!  He would find the main body of the memo actually appears in The Pentagon Papers, while the preface letter (to McGeorge Bundy) is what lazy researchers usually cite.  Bottom line is that NSAM 263 shatters another absurd trope put out by this same "liberal" poster that JFK actually was responsible for all those deaths in Vietnam by first sending personnel - oblivious to the fact it was LBJ's "Tonkin Gulf Resolution" in August, 1964 that ushered in the expansion of the war and tens of thousands of deaths.

4) Though JFK was reluctant for sure, since he could foresee the effects would lead to the now dominant GOP "southern strategy" - he nevertheless federalized the Alabama national guard in the fall of 1963, to protect black students trying to attend academic institutions.

5) In August, 1963 he outraged the extreme right fringe by signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev. (They were particularly enraged at the ban on anti-missile systems)   Another useless dolt on smirkingchimp  ('J Madison') asserted that the "generals were always in favor of doing that anyway" - trying to diminish the achievement again, but he's as clueless as his bosom buddy RE James. In fact none of the military or Pentagon wanted any part of it! As McNamara shows in his documentary (Lesson 2) they were well on the way to developing a 100 megaton H-bomb - one of which had already been tested. So why the fuck would they be in favor of a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to outlaw such tests? Don't these people read? Don't they think? Are they this clueless about recent history? 

In addition, the Pentagon and Generals wanted no part of any Treaty that prohibited the development and use of anti-missile  systems, which they believed left the U.S. open to attack with no credible defense strategy.

6) Launching the Peace Corps, in which more than a quarter million volunteers have already served around the world - helping millions of impoverished people while letting them see the best face of America - as opposed to the usual 'war, invasion and bombing face'.These PC volunteers have worked in such diverse fields as education, health, agricultural development, HIV/AIDS education and prevention, information technology, business development, protecting the environment and developing water resources,.

  I myself served 4 years and an damned proud to have been a part of Kennedy's program, teaching science to rural kids in Barbados - many of those kids having since gone on to productive careers, i.e. as airplane mechanics, electricians, pharmacists, librarians, college lecturers and police- security officers. Making a solid contribution to their nation as opposed to joining a "brain drain" leaving it.

7) Rapprochement with Fidel Castro, starting in late 1962. This has been well documented by National Archives contributor Peter Kornbluh, and paved the way to normalization of relations, including trade. (cf. 'Kennedy and Castro: What Might Have Been', by Peter Kornbluh, in The Baltimore Sun, Aug. 22, 1999, p. 1C)

National Security Archivist Kornbluh shows (by reference to documents he has accessed), it was William Attwood,, a Washington lawyer (who had negotiated the original release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners), who was instrumental. Attwood was charged with becoming the first American emissary to secure Castro’s ear and trust in a year-long rapprochement. In particular, to show good will and good faith, Attwood arranged for $62 million in medicines and food aid as part of the prisoner deal. All this was approved by JFK and likely sealed his death warrant in the Agency.

8) Space- The Apollo Moon Program:   After the ignominy of the Russian satellite Sputnik, launched on Oct. 4, 1957, the U.S. received a wake up call in respect to its science and technology deficiencies. JFK knew that in order to technologically compete, a single program and focus was needed to capture the nation's imagination and to propel it toward a future where it wouldn't be left behind. Thus the manned space program was launched, and Kennedy declared in 1961 that "before this decade is out we will land a man on the Moon". With this single -minded focus the national resources were summoned through NASA, and he was as good as his word, with the Apollo astronauts setting down on July 20, 1969. Look at most of us who became interested in math or space science, especially physics - at the time - and they will tell you it was Kennedy's challenge of going to the Moon, and manned space exploration in general.


Sadly, if people (including professed liberals)  knew more, became the alert citizens Jefferson hoped for, the manipulators and their slick propaganda and disinfo wouldn't stand a chance in diminishing accomplishments such as those of John F. Kennedy. I leave readers with those famous words, from Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia:

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED"

Bravo to Pope Francis for Warning of Capitalism's Tyranny and Consumerism!

Pope Francis: Gives a much needed shot over the bow to capitalists!

Once again, Pope Francis has shown himself percipient and also with the courage to call out the real culprits in our midst - now including Neoliberal capitalism and wanton consumerism.  This he has now done in an 84-page document known as an apostolic exhortation, headed "Evangelii Gaudium" of the Holy Father. which makes official the platform for his papacy. It also is such a formal document that makes it impossible for any claimed Catholic intellectual or moral philosopher to ever again turn a blind eye to economic inequality and suffering that ensues from it. Most especially, it makes clear that NO moral theologian can embrace "trickle down" supply side" economics or the Pareto model that it's based upon.

Readers will recall in an earlier (Nov. 12) blog post on Francis not being appreciated by the conservatives in his flock (the same breed that also like "trickle down" in the general population) I quoted his earlier words: "Everyone has his own idea of good and evil".

And added:

"Which is, of course, true. A starving child or parent of that child will, for example, regard evil as the gross systemic inequality in a supposedly rich nation that permits such a travesty to occur."


Resonant with my own take earlier are Francis' recent words from his document:

"How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us."

The shot at "trickle down" is spot -on and we've been saddled with this bollocks ever since one Arthur Laffer dreamed it up,  later deployed during Ronnie Raygun's tenure. (And also in Barbados in 1986, which nearly sent the country to the international poor house). The story goes that the pivotal event was the invention of the "Laffer curve" (see diagram below) on a napkin and on the fly, by a hyper-excited Laffer in 1974. Laffer was then an economist at the University of Chicago and traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Ford's then chief of staff.                                                                                                           



Based on this Laffer hatched a new theory on why tax rates were inefficient and high, or one might say "inefficiently high". The story then goes that one interested nabob from the WSJ asked Rumsfeld to meet with Laffer on the issue. As it happened, Rumsfeld had other commitments so dispatched Dick Cheney instead to a bar, where the meeting took place. (See, e.g. Economics for the Rest of Us by Moshe Adler, Ch. 6) Laffer then proceeded to sketch his infamous diagram on a napkin on why the rich could be said to be "over taxed".

As drawn, it was totally convincing! Especially for a guy like Cheney with minimal math skills. Note the line defining the highest marginal tax rate of 70% for Gerald Ford's presidency. What Laffer's curve sought to show is that by cutting that rate down, say to 50%, one could increase the revenues by nearly 35%! Of course, the 50% turned out to be wholly arbitrary and in fact after Reagan became President in 1980 the rates were cut down to 50 by 1981, then to 28% (by 1988). After all, if one could increase revenues by cutting taxes 20%, imagine what one could do by cutting them more than 40%!

Thus did Laffer's curve become the basis of Reagan's tax cuts and the whole tax cut meme ever since, despite the fact that in reality no community or even human body has managed to GROW by virtue of starving! But try to tell the bulk of Americans, who continue to buy into this codswallop at a mind-boggling rate! Despite the fact there's never been evidence it's actually worked!  Even the Obama administration played into this by extending the Bush tax cuts when ALL ought to have been sunset 3 years ago!

A  Financial Times Analysis (9/15/10, p. 24) of the Bush tax cuts found:

The 2000s- that is the period immediately following the Bush tax cuts – were the weakest decade in U.S. postwar history for real, non-residential capital investment. Not only were the 2000s by far the weakest period but the tax cuts did not even curtail the secular slowdown in the growth of business structures. Rather the slowdown accelerated to a full decline

For reference, the top marginal tax rate during the Bush years (for income tax) was reduced to 36% from the 39.5% during the 1990s Clinton Years. Over the 1950s and into the 1960s (until about 1964) the top marginal rate was at 91%, going down to 65% by the mid -60s. The lower level of 50% wasn’t hit until Reagan arrived in 1980, and passed his tax cuts. And we've been piling up deficits ever since.

The FT conclusion was blunt:

“Business investment data demonstrate the Bush tax cuts failed to achieve their goal of spurring productive U.S. investment and that failure has contributed to the poor performance of U.S. stocks”

And because of this misguided foolishness, income -economic inequality has been ratcheting up ever since - with NO politician on the left even remotely able to marshal a strong narrative on why higher taxes are needed.

But we who follow these things know this is all part of the Neoliberal free market idiom, especially the sort of "market populism" nonsense that author Thomas Frank excoriates in his excellent book, 'One Market Under God'.   Interestingly, in 2011, as the Occupy Wall Street movement was underway, the Vatican’s Justice and Peace agency called for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a central global bank. The document condemned “the idolatry of the market.” We know also that ever since the 1980s and Reaganism, this idolatry has been on steroids and became endemic in both parties. In this mutation, Neoliberalism declared the only way to "true democracy" and "freedom" was the absolute reign of markets - and in addition, no nation could afford to dispense any security to citizens not market contingent.

To illustrate the perversion of this sort of thinking, Laffer argued that higher tax rates on the rich would only cause them to work fewer hours, or if REALLY rich, invest in fewer projects, enterprises, hence create fewer jobs. Thus, revenues over all would decline, first from the working rich because Uncle Sam would get less taxes by virtue of their reduced work, and also from the investing rich because they'd create fewer jobs and thus no workers would be around to pay the taxes Uncle Sam wants. Thus, Laffer argued, the higher tax rates were Pareto Inefficient! In addition, because of this the common Mickey D or Walmart worker would also suffer.

The argument was further reinforced (mainly in Bush II's 2nd term) that Social Security payments undermined market democratization by providing a stream of income that didn't depend on actual market behavior.  This prompted Ayn Rand acolyte and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to go on record (in an appearance before congress in 2003) to assert that "Social Security benefits need to be cut to pay for Bush’s tax cuts."

Social Security payments, especially with COLAs, do everything the Fed Chairman didn’t want. They pour more money into the economy, but not via productive labor or market indices, returns. People receive their checks merely by existing and breathing day to day, and having paid into the system with FICA deductions. Even then, they receive far more in benefits than actually paid in, making a total mess of Pareto utility.

Since the Bush tax cuts have continued, especially for the Middle class - the supply siders - mainly emerging from the 'Fix the Debt' parasites, have demanded Social Security cuts in the form of COLA revisions i.e. the "chained CPI". The only way to have avoided that would have been terminating the Bush tax cuts for ALL.

Does supply side work? No, not ever - as Francis has clearly observed in his statement,


This opinion.....has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power

And the facts bear him out! Not only the FT analysis (above summary) of the Bush tax cuts, but also the tax cuts in Reagan's administration.   first full examination of the empirical effects arrived in James Medoff and Andrew Harless, The Indebted Society, 1995, wherein they found, p. 23:

"For the health of the economy, Reagan's policies turned out to be just about the worst thing that could have happened: investment did not increase, growth continued to stagnate, and the federal deficit ballooned to new dimensions....

In 1981, the year Reagan took office, the public debt was 26.5 % of the gross domestic product (GDP)....In 1993, the year that Bush left office, the public debt was a staggering 51.9 percent of the GDP."

Thus, we have the first evidence that Laffer was plying bare bunkum not sound economic policy! Yet conservatives continue to embrace this horse shit!

This is all the more reason Pope Francis is to be applauded for specifically calling out one of the most egregious facets of market populism and Neoliberal capitalism overall. While previous popes (e.g. Pope John Paul II, Benedict)  discussed the disenfranchised, they didn’t single out the issue the way Francis has. He has not only done so with his words, but in his actions, such as paying his own hotel bill in person or affectionately embracing a man disfigured by disease.

And he has insisted parish padres do the same, getting their "shoes dirty" instead of remaining in their little domeciles  or rectories, untouched by the world.

He has also condemned over the top consumerism such as will be manifested in the US of A this Friday. I believe his subtext is that any professed "Christians"  who'd let themselves go nuts tomorrow in a shopping frenzy (forsaking family traditions)  or on Friday,  actually worship the god of Mammon and not any true God.

With that sentiment, I couldn't agree more!

Scarborough: "BWWAAAAHAHA! We Can't Have Higher Taxes!"

Joe Scarborough this morning broke into a hissy fit and almost cried at the mere mention (by 'Morning Joe' guest Al Sharpton) that Obama wants a balanced approach to the deficit problem and that means more taxes. Sharpton made the accurate point that Obama had already ceded $650b as part of the fiscal cliff deal, and that had come down from $1.2 trillion.  Meanwhile, over $1.2 trillion in spending cuts had already been made last year. The time was now for MORE taxes, not less.

But why the crying, pissing and moaning from Repukes? THEY are the ones, after all (see graphs) that let deficit spending explode under Bush Jr's reign, for both tax cuts that mainly benefited the wealthy, and unpaid for wars.  While these cretins incessantly demanded TWO "wars" (actually occupations), they never insisted that anyone actually sacrifice to pay for them!

Meanwhile, I not long ago received in the mail (from my first cousin) two war ration books issued to my mom back in 1941 when she was just 19. The ration book allowed access to certain provisions, but with limits. Each book had born a number of war ration stamps which could be used to buy special goods, such as meat, bread, butter etc. The person had to sign and date each time such stamps were accessed for purchase, such that it had been legitimate, with this representation made formally (under penalty of perjury) to the Office of Price Administration. Evidently, mom had three ration stamps left at this point. (Old recovered letters from my grandmother to her son (fighting in Europe), dated 1943-44 noted some meat supplies, such as ham, beef and bacon, were running low by then.)

To me, the war ration book embodied sacrifice of the citizen in the war effort. That, along with increased taxes, disclosed it was a real war as opposed to a fraud and mockery perpetrated for the sake of lining the pockets of defense contractors and padding the payrolls of certain congressonal districts - as occurs now.

But all Americans are aware of anymore are the frauds and make-up "wars" for which no sacrifice is expected, not even higher taxes,  far less ration books with war ration stamps. And so we have a populace for which basically the events in Afghanistan (and earlier Iraq) only existed on a fantasy or unreal level if they existed at all. No surprise there!

But what Americans ought  to be processing is that those recent wars of choice exacted a cost, along with the atrocious tax cuts,  at a time taxes ought to have been raised!  The twin tables, again, show the whole sordid picture and what has really dug us into the existing deficit hole, which the "Simpson Bowlers" and Repukes now propose to extricate us from, via Catfood 2.0 perpetrated on our seniors. (See e.g. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/48217/youve-heard-of-the-birthers-now-meet-the-simpson-bowlers )

Now, logically, since the Repukes dug us into this debt hole by refusal to approve adequate revenue, for both the "wars" and tax cuts (as well as their insane 2003 prescription drug bill - more a giveaway to  Big PhRma), then it is logical that increased revenue must be the way to dig us out of the debt mess.  As a New York Times op-ed put it today, the first major tax hits....errr....hikes.... must come from the hides of those who benefited most from the Bush tax cuts during the "war" years:

"Those taxpayers are the same ones who benefited most from Bush-era tax breaks and who continue to pay low taxes. Even with recent increases, the new top rate of 39.6 percent is historically low; investment income is still taxed at special low rates; and the heirs of multimillion-dollar estates face lower taxes than at almost any time in modern memory."


Incredibly,  despite these facts, the Repukes are resisting any cuts to defense, this despite the fact that they haven't - up to now - paid for any of their earlier defense spending shenanigans. They let TWO "wars" go unfunded, during supposed "war time" - a big hoot if there ever was one- plus they've not paid for the two sets of Bush tax cuts that already produced $3.2 trillion in deficits even before Obama got into office.

These miscreants demand this perfidy despite the fact it would impose "brutalizing cuts in non-defense discretionary areas like education, environment..already set to see their lowest share of the budget since 1950" according to the NY Times op-ed.   The education hits may well mean thousands of college students can't obtain affordable loans. The cuts to the EPA will mean our water here in Colorado, for example, will not be checked for contamination from the recent discovery of nuclear-polluted tailings, or from fracked effluent with xylene, benzene etc. backed up into our aquifers. Hello, more cancers!

The TIMES makes the additional sound point that:

"Raising taxes at the top is neither punitive nor gratuitous. It is a needed step, both to achieve near-term budget goals and to lay the foundation for a healthy budget in the future. As the economy strengthens and the population ages, more taxes will be needed from further down the income scale, both to meet foreseeable commitments, especially health care, as well as unforeseeable developments, from wars to technological challenges"


Will the Repukes pay attention? I doubt it, despite the fact that recent polls all disclose the public is on the side of Obama's solutions not the Tea-Party tainted Repuke House. For example, A USA Today/Pew Research poll released Thursday shows Obama with a strong lead over Republicans in Congress on gun policies (45-39 percent), the budget deficit (45-38 percent), immigration (50-33 percent) and even climate change (47-26 percent). When this news came out it prompted Scarborough to cry out two days ago: "We're gettin' our butts beat by Obama!"  Yeah, Joe! Deal with it!


Meanwhile, a Bloomberg poll from Wednesday had similar findings, with Obama’s approval ratings reaching a 3-year high at 55 percent, while just 35 percent have a favorable view of Republicans. From Bloomberg:


"Americans by 49 percent to 44 percent believe Obama’s proposals for government spending  on infrastructure, education and alternative energy are more likely to create jobs than Republican calls to cut spending and taxes to build business confidence and spur employment."

Now, this ought not come as a shock for anyone with more than air between the ears! I mean, as one wit aptly put it a year ago, referring to the European austerity measures: "Look, it's silly to think you can run a race faster if you cut off one of your feet!"

Adding to Republican troubles: 43 percent of Americans blame Republicans for what’s wrong in Washington, compared with 34 percent who blame Obama.

If any Americans read the recent TIME story concerning the F-35 waste ( Feb. 25, 'The Most Expensive Weapon Ever Built’ ,p. 26), they'd also be asking why have that white elephant when cutting it would mean so much more benefit for the nation, in all domestic spheres. The Repuke answer is "We need to be strong on defense!" but that's a red herring. What they really want is military jobs for their own districts- they care nothing about real national sacrifice, not like during a REAL war (WWII) which saw my mom using ration books and her family paying higher taxes! You can't have a real war and not have a broad spectrum of citizen-public sacrifice, particularly to PAY for said war. Otherwise, you have a shameless farce and one costing lives and wasting treasure unnecessarily!


Bottom line: the shtick of Repukes and their pro-Southern extremist party has been well known since the 1960s: Bleed the government coffers dry using bloated military spending and tax cuts, then demand the next Dem president cut all domestic spending on account of the deficits the war mongers-tax cutters generated.

But I believe too many people are much wiser now, especially as most of us have the first hand evidence - whether from ration books of WWII, or from deficit charts today - to isolate the frauds from the real McCoys. And the Repukes are frauds!

Romney to the 47%: You're all VICTIMS!

Romney screams at an OWS protestor to "Move to North Korea!" if he doesn't like Romney's economic plans. The guy must have been one of the "47%".

Leave it to Willard Mitt to dig his electoral grave ever deeper by shooting from the hip. Last week it was the politically motivated attack on Obama as an "apologist" and "appeaser" in the wake of the attack on the Libyan Consulate. It was unseemly, reeked of desperation and cynicism and didn't go down with the majority of sane voters.

Now, this week, the Mittster's imploded by making a derogatory comment against the "47%" who support Barack Obama in most consistent polls. (It ought to REALLY be at least 90% against this entitled, snot -nosed, 1 % doofus with hundreds of millions tucked away in Swiss Banks and the Caymans!)

Anyway, to cut to the chase, Romney was caught out by Mother Jones magazine, which published the Romney video capturing his derelict remarks, to wit, that "nearly half of President Obama's voters are dependent on the government" and "pay no income tax". Understandably this mind-fucked tommyrot elicited swift, hostile, and passionate reactions and not merely from the Left blogosphere or media.

One of the critics was conservative writer David Brooks of The New York Times who titled his op-ed column today "Thurston Howell Romney," a reference to the wealthy character from the 60s sitcom Gilligan's Island. In that delightful comedy series, you could always count on Thurston Howell to have no remote clue regarding the lives or needs of the other shipwrecked souls. Even in an environment of limited resources and means, where almost every manjack worked his tail off, there was Thurston, invariably reclining in a hammock stretched between two palm trees, demanding his Pina Colatas. This image fits Mitt to a tee, though his millions of acolytes will likely scream "Foul!"

In his op-ed Brooks writes:

"Romney's comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney.”

Well, at least the negative views of sensible and intelligent people. Those of a different economic class from Romney's who aren't prepared to be used by his kind as toilet paper! (But I guess many working class folk, including those receiving gov't benefits, are!)

But Brooks is exactly correct, and why not? Romney is really articulating an embedded Social Darwinism that seeks to impose Darwinian natural selection within the milieu of social classes and economics. The very term "rugged individualist" reeks of this, the adjective "rugged" serving as an indicator that only "rugged members of the species" (i.e. fatass rich guys) are fit to survive and SHOULD survive.

This, of course, echoes the Social Darwinist pseudo-science of British philosopher Herbert Spencer. Richard Hofstadter, in his book: Social Darwinism in American Thought, (American Historical Association, 1955) observes that Spencer rejected all government services for the poor and disabled as encouraging a fundamental weakness in the society which "induced corruption, sloth and all the other vices". It was also Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the phrase "the survival of the fittest".

Author Susan Jacoby (The Age Of American Unreason, p. 70) noted:

"Spencer preached the gospel of laissez-faire economics as the only way to ensure that the fittest would triumph in society through a process of 'social selection' equivalent to Darwin's natural selection".

She adds:

"The British philosopher was unequivocally and fanatically opposed to all government programs that he viewed as obstacles to social selection, including public education, health regulations, tariffs and even postal service."

Just like Mitt Romney, he insisted on no dependence on any government services whatever. From Romney's statement about the 47% it is also quite obvious to me that he agrees with one of Spencer's favorite sayings:

"If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die."

In other words, the fucker prefers that the 47% of us who insist there IS a role for government to act as a positive bulwark against the incursion of corporate fascists, , die. No wonder Josh Barro, in a commentary for Bloomberg, called Romney's remarks "an utter disaster" for the GOP presidential nominee.

Indeed, Romney essentially doubled down on his ill-advised comments captured by Mother Jones! Romney stood by his comments last night, saying his message was "not elegantly stated." Yeppers, I guess when one effectively belches out "I wish those 47% Obama-backing motherfuckers would just die!" it's difficult to put elegantly! Romney in his double-down said:

"The president believes in what I've described as a government-centered society, where government plays a larger and larger role, provides for more and more of the needs of the individuals, I happen to believe instead in a free enterprise, free individual society where people pursuing their dreams are able to employ one another, build enterprises, build the strongest economy in the world."

This is typical entitled, rich man doggerel, and here's why:

- Romney makes not ONE mention that his own party and followers are as "government-centered" as any others in this nation, it's just that they opt for different government baubles. Indeed, the GOP House and assorted lackeys have been screeching that the approach of budget "sequestration" (Jan. 2) is "disastrous" because up to 20,000 or more defense jobs may be lost. These are mainly in Repuke districts, or governed states. The jobs are contract- based meaning the government doles out juicy contracts to support the workers. HOW is this not a form of corporate-worker welfare to those states?

- The recent TIME ('One Nation Subsidized') notes that corporations in this country still receive more corporate welfare by more than three times, than citizens receive via social welfare. So who are the Nanny -state teat suckers here? Really?

- Under Obama's presidency - following the disastrous financial collapse under Gee Dumbya - the government had to help out millions tossed out of jobs because they'd no where else to go! What? Mitt would have them drop dead on the streets like his pal Spencer, or beg at charities, when constant news appeared that all food pantries were running low?

- Mitt talks about people being "free to pursue their own dreams" and "build enterprises to employ one another" but this is only possible when aggregate demand supports it! It also presupposes ample money in circulation to be able to purchase what those enterprises produce. This is why as Matt Miller observes in The Tyranny of Bad Ideas, dissing the continuance of tax cuts in the U.S. as opposed to expanded social welfare programs as in Europe, that those nations (i.e. Germany) which didn't follow the U.S. low tax model fared much better because their strategy fueled aggregate demand, not supply side.

- Mitt's reference to "free enterprise", i.e. laissez - faire economics, shows clearly that he's a Social Darwinist. He believes every manjack -individual needs to make it on his own, despite the fact that corporations (including the multinationals) are all arrayed against the average citizen in whatever goal he seeks to achieve. These impersonal monied forces then, when the citizen is unaligned, can defeat his best efforts over and over....even in such a basic activity as stock investing....since the single citizen is no match for flash trade algorithms or computers.

- As for the "not paying taxes malarkey", the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, notes that about 46% of Americans paid no income tax in 2011. But the reason isn't that they're getting away with anything, but that their incomes are too LOW! More than one-third of those who don't pay income or payroll taxes have incomes of less than $20,000. I'd like to see Willard Mitt try to live on THAT for one year! Of the people who don't pay income or payroll taxes, according to the Center more than half are elderly. In other words, they ALREADY paid 40 to 50 years of income taxes and now are living off meager pensions or Social Security - not fat checks of $2 million per year from capital disbursements arriving from Swiss Banks in Zurich! Oh, and by the way, those seniors still have to cough up for property taxes - often thousands a year!

Mitt also said that citizens aren't entitled to health care as a right (which exactly shows what he will do to Medicaid and Medicare if elected), but he is wrong. The U.S. was actually a signatory to a 1994 UN declaration that health care IS a right! And if it is not to be such under Romney, then what might we expect?

Imagine we're some time into a Romney presidency and he's made all sorts of changes. You're in agonizing abdominal pain and it gets worse and worse. You are beside yourself and phone 911. The ambulance comes, and a resident quickly diagnoses appendicitis and that your appendix may soon burst. However, reps of the collection company that have taken over the hospital's ER descend on you and demand full payment - a tab of $13 thousand, before they lift one scalpel. (See e.g. The Economist, 'Work in Progress' under Mitt Romney's Economics, April 21st, p. 39).

What do you do? Cry boo hoo hoo. Or maybe BWAAAHAHHAHA! Wishing now that you had not voted Romney? Or what? (Understand again that under Obama's health care law such shenanigans will not be allowed, but Romney says he will shoot it down).

So what do you do? Well, how does one say this, repent at leisure? All we can tell the apparent half of the 99 percent determined to support this 1 percenter, is 'Be careful what you wish for' because those birds may come home to roost on your own head!Under a Romney presidency and with Reep help in the House and Senate and Obama's health care law repealed (possibly thanks to the Supremes), it is possible to envisage hospitals across the nation with Accreta Inc. employees "registering patients, taking down sensitive health info and championing aggressive bill collection" even as sickly patients (mostly working class and middle class) lay groaning in the halls begging for help. Think it can't happen? Think again!

If health care is not a right, and by that I mean an affordable medium to access necessary medical treatment, then what Romney is really asserting is that 'Death IS your right!' Hence, playing into the screams of the Yahoos at one Tampa, FL Repug debate where Ron Paul was speaking and asked 'What's to become of them?' (meaning desperately sick people) and the animals, swine in the audience yelled, "Let them die!'

DO you wish a nation immersed in self-seeking swine? Then by all means vote Romney. He will deliver in ways that Herbert Spencer could have only imagined!

Lastly, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus defended Romney yesterday in an interview with CNN, blabbering:

"The point of all of this is the size of the government is too big and if we don't do something about it we're going to really lose the very idea of America,"

Well, how's about putting your money where your mouth is, Priebus, and laying off all those fat, juicy PORK BARREL defense contracts? You know, the ones you want earmarked for your Repug districts? If the "government" is too big, then it has to apply to YOUR interests in the government as well, and that means MILITARY spending! In any case, both you and Mitt need to read the Preamble of the Constitution again and especially the words enjoining government to PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE!

For those who'd like to hear Keith Olbermann's response to Romney's codswallop:

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/18/finally_keith_olbermann_responds/

Oh BWWAAAAA! It’s FISCAL ARMAGEDDON! NOT!!

So whined Media Bimbette Nora O’Donnell this morning as she contemplated the impending “fiscal cliff” and as she put it: “ALL THE TAX CUTS WILL END FOR EVERYONE!”

SO WHAT?

They NEED to end! We have lived in supply side looney-ville and fantasy land long enough. Now is the time to stop ALL supply side bullshit for everyone, middle class and wealthy 1-percenters alike. Moreover, getting the middle class into the mix will expedite the cuts for the richest, without sterile political wrangling and gamesmanship!

Look, we’ve had two unpaid for “wars”, or extended occupations – depending on your point of view – and a succession of unpaid for Bush tax cuts. It is time to terminate this foolish financial fete and demand BOTH parties halt their supply side bunkum. Yes, both parties! The Dems have been as bad as the Reeps, by: a) extending the Bush tax cuts – which were originally intended to sunset by 2009, given the deficits they generated, and b) creating a new “payroll tax cut” which has already gone on two years and made the social benefit programs (which rely on payroll taxes) even more unstable.

All these horror stories being spread about “Armageddon” and going off “fiscal cliffs” is propaganda and bullshit spread by Neoliberal elites, in high finance and the media. These assholes want MORE tax cuts because they know they can use them to justify austerity measures later. Since these cynical and craven twits won’t change then citizens have to be smart enough to parse the BS and not bite. That means understanding that if you get a tax cut this next year it means major benefits cuts later. SO, leave the tax cut sippy cup out!

As a Salon.com article pointedly noted yesterday, :"Every citizen, including every politician, should be expected to memorize the formula for aggregate demand":

AD = C + I + G + (X-M)

Where C is consumption; I is investment; G is government spending and (X-M) is the trade deficit or trade surplus, depending on whether exports (X) exceed or are exceeded by imports (M).

Let the contributions to the GDP now be in terms of fractional proportions, and let's see what happens. While C confers a positive contribution of roughly 0.7 (i.e. consumers contribute roughly 70% to the GDP), we have (X-M) at about a negative contribution of (-0.04), and 'I' near zero, although technically - if military spending is deemed a negative investment (i.e. the production can only be used to destroy resources) then I = - 0.5, and government spending is ~ (-0.1) in terms of public sector jobs lost because of cuts to government jobs-educational investment, etc. that transfers to states (i.e. 550,000 fewer teachers, police, firemen). Then: AD = 0.70 - 0.50 - 0.10 -0.04 = 0.70 - 0.64 = 0.06.

Or what one would regard as barely alive and on the fiscal "respirator".

While the Dems and Obama administration did make a few halfhearted efforts to explain and promote this demand-side agenda and its policy prescriptions (e.g. via increasing revenues), again and again, they subsequently compromised. That is, they settled for Pyrrhic victories on the terms set by Republican obstructionists in Congress rather than risk the defeat of plans that could actually have worked. Hence. the stimulus was half the size of what Obama’s own economic adviser Christina Romer argued that it should be. Nearly one third of it was wasted on tax cuts, instead of food stamps that would have ramped up factor C.

Meanwhile, the Dems out-reeped the Reeps by adding their own nefarious payroll tax cuts, which I already showed to be counter productive, and in fact, fueled the future drive to cut what BOTH sides now erroneously call "entitlements".

Sadly, as the Salon.com author stated it, about the supposedly "liberal" Democrats:

"The truth is that the post-Clinton Democrats are a post-Keynesian — or rather, a pre-Keynesian — party. Between the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, the lessons that New Deal liberals had learned from the Great Depression about demand-side economics were unlearned. The “New Democrats” of the last three decades adopted a completely new economic orthodoxy: supply-side liberalism."

Again, this has been embodied in the willingness to go along with the Reep demand for tax cuts, and even inventing tax cuts of their own (payroll tax cuts) instead of challenging this whole line of egregious thinking which paves the way for social benefits cuts later. This is why I've consistently warned of playing on the Reeps' wicket, but seemingly to no avail.

Again, I associated this tax cut fetishism, this "supply side liberalism" with the discredited beliefs of free market worshipping NEO-liberalism! In this case, the erroneous belief that tax cuts of any type will promote economic growth when the actual empirical evidence shows exactly the converse. See the Financial Times analysis of the Bush tax cuts, from 2001-09 in FT (9/15/10).

As for the upcoming sequestrations which Nora also whined about (referring to “trillions in cuts” – it’s actually only $1.2 trillion for domestic and military - but ought to be twice that for the military alone) don’t get me started. As I’ve noted before these aren’t real cuts in absolute terms, at least to the Pentagon, but rather merely decelerations of existing growth. There’s a difference.

To put a finer point on it, Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Washington University has estimated that even the $600 b in automatic defense cuts that could occur from 2013 to 2021 under the sequester plan adopted last year (by BOTH parties) "would leave the Pentagon with purchasing power equivalent to what it had in 2006". (Denver Post, 'Are Defense Cuts That Bad?', today, p. 19A). Let's also bear in mind that the 2006 defense levels had already been bumped up to twice their (2001) fraction of GDP, which former defense analyst Chuck Spinney noted (in 2004) was tantamount to "a war on Social Security and Medicare."

So, let me laugh when people like Leon Panetta go all weepy at the prospect of these puny forthcoming cuts, which I actually believe ought to be TEN times larger! Btw, another aspect to this has been how the Reeps are now touting increased defense spending as a JOBS bill! When you strip away their bullshit (ibid.) they're not interested in preserving national security per se but preserving "nearly 20,000 jobs" mostly in Reepo districts. Sorry, boys, if you want jobs then we demand you invest in infrastructure, not weapons! And we insist you do so outside the pork-barrel paradigm!

We the People have a choice coming up, as our congress critters keep whining about "fiscal cliffs". We can tell them to STFU and let the tax cuts expire, ALL of them, and use the money for positive investment, or we can play into their hands. That means accepting those cuts, and being much worse off down the line - when a REAL fiscal cliff will be upon us. Arriving with the total insolvency of both Medicare and Social Security - leaving tens of millions to fend for themselves. The choice is ours. We need to be sharpening our letter writing skills right now, to school our reps. And maybe the media hacks like Nora O'Donnell too!

No, there'll be NO 'Tax-amageddon' or 'Fiscal Cliff'!

As the nervous Neolib nabobs and Nellies keep howling (e.g. 'Shift This Cliff', in The Economist, June 16, p. 15) they appear to get more desperate by the second. The U.S. must pay attention! The fiscal cliff is upon us! Or - when they tire of that descriptor, they invoke another: "Tax -a-mageddon'. Of course, neither will prove true, since the tax cut expiries they are so worried about have done nothing but damage to the economy since being implemented. I am not going to go over the evidence for that, namely the Bush tax cuts, but those who are interested can check out my earlier blogs:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/06/fiscal-cliff-balderdash-pushed-by.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/12/bushs-revenge-or-how-zombie-tax-cuts.html

The fact is, once one rips the scales from one's eyes (the scales inserted by the likes of Grover Norquist) one realizes the expiry of the Bush tax cuts especially will lead to a new era of growth. Whatever minor immediate dip in GDP occurs, will be more than corrected for by higher productivity, more jobs and more investments....in labor, not just speculative capital.

This ain't 'rocket science'! Tax cuts the size of those already passed ($3.2 trillion up to last year)  not only starve the public sector and the good it can do FOR PEOPLE (alienating them further from government) but also starve the means, ways and systems needed for the nation to function. We're talking the basics here: highways (fixing potholes); power grids (upgrading them and enhancing transmission capability); public health (enhancing it to cope with a real epidemic - say airborne Ebola, Avian flu, or Yersinias pestis  - 'The Black Death'); and finally repairing the millions of feet of lines of crumbling sewer and water mains across this country. Not to mention the collapsing bridges.

You see, when infrastructure is allowed to corrode and collapse without re-investment in its maintenance, then the whole country is at risk. Its genuine domestic security is under attack- not from without by some al Qaeda phantoms, but from within. By passing tax cuts of multi-trillions magnitude the perpetrators KNEW the result would be erosion of the fundamental systems that allow the nation to work. Meanwhile, they've been prepared to piss away equal trillion in useless "wars" (I call them 'adventures' - since they're not paid for) in the Middle East, and professing to do outlandish "nation building" when it's OUR nation that needs the building and renewed investment, especially in labor!)

All tax cut "job creation" tripe emerged out of  "Supply Side Theory" which was actually invented by one Arthur Laffer, in 1974, when he purportedly drew a curve on a paper napkin at a restaurant and announced he'd found a "new theory that generates wealth" while it cuts income (tax). (See, e.g. James Medoff and Andrew Harless, The Indebted Society, 1995, p. 84, 'Let Them Eat Cake'.)

The curve, as Medoff and Harless note, purports to show the relation between tax rates and revenues. A tax rate of zero naturally produces no revenue. As taxes rise from zero, revenues rise in tandem. But as the rates rise, they discourage the activities being taxed. So at some point, discouragement predominates in the curve. (Laffer showed this with a splash of catsup over the top of his curve, on the napkin.)

In fact, when Medoff and Harless removed the catsup stain from the graph, and looked at actual data, they found (p. 87) that "high tax rates are associated with higher productivity growth" There is a consistent and strong relationship. Moreover this relationship is historical, over decades and hence evidence -based, unlike Bush, Reagan and Romney's "tax cuts create jobs" malarkey! By contrast, for the years when supply side dogma held,  and tax cuts were implemented, productivity retreated by more than 30% and debt exploded- exactly the opposite of what we've been sold.

Based on Medoff and Harless' data, one can offhand predict that within four years of eliminationg ALL the Bush tax cuts (middle class and for the wealthiest) our national productivity will enhance at least 25% and our GDP will actually GROW by 4-5% per year instead of the paltry 1-2% we've been seeing. Removing ALL the tax cuts will also stabilize the tax landscape and remove business uncertainty making corporations (still sitting on nearly $2.4 trillion in capital) invest not only in plant but labor! This labor investment is what will then drive the job creation!

Tax cuts removal - I am speaking of all, including capital gains, Bush middle class and wealthy tax cuts and the payroll tax cuts, will also put more money in the pockets of the average person so they will be more likely to spend. Their spending will then prop up aggregate demand instead of sapping it, and more employment will follow since spending breeds jobs.....not tax cuts!

Follow me on this: tax cut removal will then eliminate the drive of fetishists  (think Alan B. Simpson) to slice into Medicare and Social Security which benefits ought to actually be INCREASED! Especially given the fact that middle class families have lost up to 40% of their wealth since 2007-08 according to the Federal Reserve. (The FR has stated in its latest report that the median net worth of families has plunged from $126,700 to $77,300 or what it was in 1992).

Most of this loss of wealth resulted from loss in home value (Americans biggest asset) but a significant amount also resulted from losses in 401k value due to stock market exposure, or exposure to risky bond funds (e.g. collateralized debt obligations). Most Americans' who lost big believe their remaining wealth (or better financial security)  is tied to future social benefits, whether in Social Security or Medicare. Thus, as those programs are protected and shorn up the beneficiaries will be more secure and willing to spend the money they've saved. However, if those programs are attacked and depleted (as they will certainly be if tax cuts are extended because offsetting spending cuts will have to be made to pay for the tax cuts - which btw go disproportionately to the rich) it will be natural for the affected beneficiaries to pull back on their spending.

This pullback will in turn be a major drag on the economy and accelerate recession such as we saw after 2008. This pullback will be in proportion to the cuts in the social programs advocated. So, if Medicare premiums are doubled, and the Social Security COLA is reduced by 50% look for senior spending to reduce by 20-30% in response with accompanying loss of GDP,  higher unemployment (since seniors tend to have higher median net worths because of working longer, than 30-somethings).

Worse, affected seniors who behold their actual future benefits pared back, will be more committed to working longer and hence, making the employment environment much worse for 20- and 30-somethings, many with monstrous college debt to pay off. The same seniors, adversely affected by massive cutbacks, may be less inclined to take in offspring who need a pad (low cost) to live while they pay back loans and wait for better jobs. It's lose-lose all around.

The bottom line? Tax cut elimination will see higher productivity and growth. Extending tax cuts to appease the idiots who gnash teeth over a "fiscal cliff" or "tax a mageddon) will only make things worse.

So, since Mitt Romney plans to double down on the Bush tax cuts (via the plans of their original architect, Glenn Hubbard), make sure you vote for him if you want your net worth to sink another 30% by the end of his first term.