Thaddeus Gadfly

With Sean Hannity, and his ilk, we hear over and over and over again, the virtues of Bush’s tax cuts.

The Bush administration Tax Cut, with all it’s hoopla, really amounts to a policy of leaving no rich person behind, to wit:

http://www.ctj.org/html/gwb0602.htm

And the most alarming fact is stated:

By 2010, when (and if) the Bush tax reductions are fully in place, an astonishing 52 percent of the total tax cuts will go to the richest one percent—whose average 2010 income will be $1.5 million. Their tax-cut windfall in that year alone will average $85,000 each. Put another way, of the estimated $234 billion in tax cuts scheduled for the year 2010, $121 billion will go just 1.4 million taxpayers.

Also, Bush has given these rich-favorable tax cuts without a concomitant reduction in government spending, a double sin.

This widens the deficit. An ever widening deficit ultimately devalues the dollar, which causes a host of assorted economic problems, one of which is inflation (by virtue of the fact that the Fed has to lower the discount rate in order to prop up the economy. See, what happens is inflation caused the housing market to conjure up some fancy mortgage tools in order to allow people to afford to buy homes, which ultimately gave rise to the subprime fiasco we are in, today).

Here’s the killer: inflation is a tax on the poor, because the rich benefit from inflation, since they can hedge their investments and thereby preserve their wealth, whereas the poor do not have access to such methods. If all an individual has is $800 in savings, how likely is it that an individual who needs liquidity just to meet basic needs is going to buy a Krugerrand?

If a man or woman has $1000 in savings, which can purchase a value of X in goods this year, but next year that $1000 in savings can only purchase ten percent less, then, due to inflation, he or she has paid a hidden tax of ten per cent. Because of a deficit, the Government prints money to make up its cash shortfalls (this is a simplification, but ultimately, this does occur), which ultimately results in inflation.

See, the rich hedged by buying gold, or whatever upward moving financial instrument they purchased in order to preserve their wealth.

Republicans, in their litany of lies, lie again, and on this particular issue, the lie is beyond egregious.

Sean Hannity, on the Hannity & Colmes television program, no matter who is on to debate whatever, rarely fails to steer the conversation in a right versus left direction.

How often do we hear him say that to vote for a democrat is to vote for higher taxes?

But this is the lie that the right is perpetrating on the masses. Democrats only want taxes for those who can afford it. They do not want to raise taxes on those who cannot afford it, and the more responsible Democrats certainly do not want a tax cut without an accompanying reduction in spending to match it. By the way, this idea is supported by McCain, who, on that issue, is correct (insofar as his support of tying tax cuts to concomitant spending reductions. However, he doesn’t seem to mind that Bush’s tax cuts favor the rich).

And, which President was it who left his office with a budget surplus in the last fifty years? I’ll give you a hint: it was a Democrat (Bill Clinton).

During the last 60 years, Republicans were in the White House 57.2 per cent of the time.

During those years the Republicans controlled the White House, stock gains averaged 9.53% per year. During the years in which Democrats were in the White House, stock gains averaged 15.25%. Ah, so you thought or assumed that the stock market would fair better under Republican authority, did you?

Under which President in the last 60 years did the stark market yield the highest gains? I’ll give you another hint, it was not a Republican president (it was Clinton, again).

Give a million dollar tax cut to the poor, and you are going to see a lot of TV sets, etc,  the kinds of hard purchases which really causes jobs.

Give a million dollar tax cut to the rich, and what is purchased? A Van Gogh, A Picasso, which might cause a singular spurt of activity in job market for 15 minutes at a Sotheby’s auction?

Oh, that’s a straw man, you say? Not really, there is a difference between a simplification which accurately represents a larger picture, over the simplistic, which often resorts to straw man arguments which do not represent reality. The above idea presented is the the former catagory.

No, the Democrats are not without sin insofar as allowing the Fed to cause inflation, it’s true. However, I am more inclined to believe a Democrat will fight for responsible fiscal policy more than a Republican would.

The Republicans will tell you otherwise, but their deeds do not support it. They suffer from the simplistic idea that a tax cut is the panacea for the nation’s economic problems.

A tax cut without an accompanying reduction in Goverment spending is a tax on the poor. Not directly, but inevitably via inflation.

In essence, inflation is a transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the Government.

The rich are untouched.

Sorry corporate America. Let me, not you, decide what is, and what is not, a frankenfood insofar as what I’m going to put in my stomach.

Oh, sure, you got proof out the yin yang that cloned foods are no different than that which they were cloned from, right?

It passes all the tests, right?

How about the test of time? How about the idea that the difference might be so slight, that its true effect, harmful, or otherwise, might not be known for years and years to come?

A cloned cow is just as good as a cow with a twin, right?

Wrong. I’ve known twins, and though they, intitially, seemed identical, after a few weeks of familiarity I began to see physical differences. They are NOT exact copies, as, supposedly, clones are.

Until corporate America can prove to the extent which will withstand the test of many years, I will positively boycott any food maker who does not label their food, and give me, not them, the opportunity to decide what I will eat or drink.

It’s not a war. It’s a police action.

Terrorists are not soldiers, they are thugs, criminals. The oft-touted right wing premise that leaving Iraq is equal to “losing the war” is false. If it were a war, it would be true, but it is not a war.

Wars can be one or lost, but we can only put a dent in crime. This must be understood, because if it is not understood, we are being asked to remain in a country without a foreseeable time in the future we can leave, and people are dying.

Terrorism is crime, it is not soldiers trying to achieve some cause. Thwarting terrorism is police activity, not war activity. To say the “war can be won” is not the truth. Sure, it’s a nice sound bite, and dare anyone suggest that a war cannot be one. A war can be one, but only if it is a bona fide war.

Therefore, justifying remaining in Iraq on the basis that to do otherwise is to “lose the war”, is, in fact, causing people to die in vain based on a false premise. Putting an total end to crime is not possible, it isn’t possible anywhere on the earth, though limiting it is possible, of course, and this must be done.

The whole point is that (most) Republicans are not being honest, and not just Republicans, but anyone, such as Leiberman, and anyone else suggesting that what is going on in Iraq is a “war”. That war ended with the fall of Hussein. After that, it was a police action, and it continues to be police action.

The truth is, to leave just means that it is being recognized that police forces should be taking over the police actions necessary to thwart terrorism in the region, and that it is no longer the job of the US military. To equate this with “losing the war”, is hyperbole to sway your opinion in a dishonest fashion.

Thaddeus

Giuliani has warned us of a “new 9/11″ if America elects a Democrat President.

Perhaps with such a short memory Giuliani should do the right thing and get out of the race, since I recall, even as bad as my memory is, the last 9/11, the one and only 9/11 of the magnitude of 9/11, happened under a Republican president, in a city with a Republican Mayor.

This is just more scare tactics, among the litany of scare-the-hell-out-of-US-citizens tactics which has been the mainstay of the neoconservative movement for the last six years.

But, while we are being partisan using twisted logic, Democrats can play that game, too. How about this logic: let’s have a president with a name such as Barak Hussein Obama, because such a name would be more Arab friendly than a McCain, or Giuliani, i.e., if they like our new president a lot more than they like Bush, it is not unrealistic to assert that they might want to hurt us less, right?

Actually, the truth is that both ideas are silly. The truth is that, because as long as our “enemy” sees us as the intruder on their land, it won’t matter who is president.

It doesn’t matter what the Saudi Royalty, or other Arab leaders think, all that matters is what their citizens think, the majority of Arabs. And, I think it is fair to say that they see us as intruders in their land.

Republicans love to stigmatize an otherwise meritworthy idea of total withdrawal as “cut and run”. But the idea that a complete withdrawal is tantamount to a “cut and run” is based on an assumed premise. If our presence was legitimate, then “cut and run” might be a fair characterization, but is it?

What it is, is an assumption, a grandiose, arrogant, assumption, an assumption which is needlessly killing Americans, innocent Iraqis, and our Allies.

So the right wing has found a concept which they believe is bullet proof; a cute little sound-bite called “cut and run”, because, of course, how could any intelligent person worth his self-esteem advocate ‘cut and run’ as a viable policy in the middle east? It’s a slam dunk idea, right?

Not so fast.

It all depends on the point of view.

Allow me to ask the question this way:

An intruder forces himself into your home, would it be more moral if that intruder continued to intrude than if he cut and ran?

I bet that the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East view us as the intruder.

To say that cutting and running would appease the enemy might satisfy the ‘let’s-kill-the-bums” mentality of those who can only see trees, but when you look at the forest, the idea just might be based on a false premise, i.e., an assumed premise, which when scrutinized, is demonstrably false.

If we are in an territory against the wishes of the majority of its population, we are the intruder. Despite the fact that kings and leaders of a few of those regions might approve of our presence, keeping in mind that they don’t have to answer to their population, nor does a dictator, it’s the overall desire of given country’s population, which, for me, is the correct criterion on which to base this sentiment. The moral thing to do is to cease being the intruder in those regions that see us as such.

That is the first thing we should do, because until we do, we haven’t a moral leg to stand on regarding policy in those regions.

The entirety of the neocon foreign policy flows from an assumed premise, a false premise, and they want you to believe that a “new 9/11″ is more likely with a Democrat as president, as if it would really make a difference.

What we really need is a President who has the courage to get America’s butt completely out of the region, corporations, military, everything–let’s get the hell out, period.

Then let us see what their justification for hating us is, because, in my view, our presence is the ultimate source of their hatred. All this stuff about their so-called “kill the infidels” attitude never was a motivation for terrorism against us (on the scale that we are now seeing it) until after we intruded in their territory, so such rhetoric is just rhetoric born out of hate which was ultimately caused by our acts, policies, etc., in the region, and Republicans are using it to further their false argument that “no matter what we do, they will hate us anyway, so lets bomb them”, etc., and it doesn’t work.

With regard to middle east terrorism, fighting fire with fire begets more and more fire. If that isn’t obvious, open your eyes wider.

Of course, it would be foolish of me to suggest that “fighting fire with water” as a philosophical approach, is appropriate for all types of terrorism, but, here, I’m referring to the terrorism arising out the middle east.

Republicans are fond of saying, “we need to fight them there so they won’t be fighting us here”. That’s bass-ackwards; they are here because we are there.

The foreign policy regarding the middle east of fighting fire with fire is a flawed foreign policy, and what we should do is fight fire with water, i.e., water being the moral high ground; we shouldn’t be torturing prisoners or holding prisoners in secret prisons without some level of due process, invading sovereign nations as a “preemptive strike”, or meddling in the affairs of nations whose populations do not want us there.

Unfortunately, I fear that Bush has completely destroyed whatever water we had left, except, perhaps, the one last whirlpool of H₂0 he cannot destroy: the current movement for impeachment.