The Trojan Horse – Comments II

I have received another comment to my post: "The Trojan Horse - Comments." It came from Leonard Levenson Esq. of Manhattan, whose relatively long dissertation can be found in full here

I am reproducing his arguments in quotations with my responses below.

Levenson’s response is exactly what I have been railing against. It represents a closing of one’s eyes to facts that contradict one’s preconceived notions, which are planted by our “wonderful media and their pundits,” who have even less interest in facts or even logic.

I set forth in my earlier posts, a huge number of major accomplishments by the President and his Administration, some of which Levenson may been have been aware of, and many of which he may have forgotten or never knew. But instead of saying thank you for reminding me, I get “they are minor.”

I was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Obama but like eroding drops of water on granite, his record is eroding my enthusiasm for him. I do not doubt the sincerity of his social views but he has been ineffective in implementing the important changes that concern me.

I have been trying to understand the irrational hatred of our President by those who should be hailing his great accomplishments. I can only come up with one theory that makes any sense. I conclude that in the great enthusiasm that the candidacy of Barack Obama engendered, caused a delinking from reality. As I wrote in my sardonic post of November 2009 entitled Obama Walks on Water," the public has discovered that Obama does not “Walk on Water” and has “no magic wand.” Apparently neither the punditry, nor the “liberal public” has even now been able to come to terms with the fact that the President has no magic wand. They are angry because they feel that he has refused to wave it.

You mention many of his accomplishments but they were largely minor.

Minor? Only someone determined to belittle the President could call the enumerated accomplishments minor.

Universal Health Insurance, which Presidents of both parties have been trying to enact since Truman, and which Clinton spectacularly failed to accomplish is minor? If the Supreme Court Strikes it down, will it show that Obama isn’t strong enough?

Getting rid of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," was a minor accomplishment? It sure was important when it was not yet accomplished!

The stimulus package, which together with the rescue of Chrysler and GM, which probably saved a million jobs, and the bank rescue package, without question, saved this country from a ’29 depression. That is minor? Yes, it should have been bigger, and it should have had fewer tax cuts and more spending in it. But does anybody really think that such a package could have attracted the votes of the two Senators from Maine, without whose votes nothing would have passed.

Schip legislation giving health coverage to millions of children is minor? Tell that to the parents of those children!

What kind of economy would we have if our unemployed did not have unemployment insurance extended again and again? How much worse would it be both for them and the economy?

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act wasn’t important? Tell that to the millions of women who now have the ability to fight back against pay discrimination.

Or the new fuel standards, which is the first time in decades that they have been raised and which will be a major factor in reducing our dependence on foreign oil, in reducing the cost of gas for hard working Americans, and last but least, play an important part in slowing global warming.

Eliminated expensive co pays for birth control, which will for the first time make pre-natal services available for poor women. Minor? Tell that to Planned Parenthood, who hailed it as a major achievement. Tell it to the millions of women who will for the first time have access to such services.

I could go on and on. But, only someone anxious to belittle our President, and join the Tea party in doing so, could call these achievements minor.

But I really can’t blame Levenson, or others who have begun to speak like him, for the so-called liberal punditry, rules the day, though I hope they will rue it one day. But the punditry is so anxious to besmirch Obama that they even have begun to lie like Republicans, and to stay on message in the best style of Karl Rove.

You mention a 9.3% unemployment rate but neglect to mention those who have stopped looking for work and those who are limited to marginal part time work. When these are counted the unemployment rate increases to 17%.

Yes, that is true, but it is still valid for comparison purposes, for the ’29 depression with an unemployment rate of 37% or 38% also didn’t take into account these other casualties, nor did Reagan’s (who Levenson voted for) unemployment rate of 10.3% take these others into account. But whatever the figures are, unless you buy the Romney argument that Obama inherited a bad economy and made it longer and worse, these figures should be used against the Republicans, not against our President. Or does Levenson disagree? (See: Discussion of stimulus package above.)

You mention the Kagan and Sotomayor nominations, but hundreds of District Court and Appellate courts seats remain unfilled. Admittedly, the Republicans are obstructing votes on many Obama nominations but a Clinton, with a majority in the Senate would have pushed them through.

The fact is, he didn’t push them through. From American Progress: “At the beginning of 1998… Senate conservatives were systematically blocking President Bill Clinton's judicial nominees, William Rehnquist, warn(ed) ‘vacancies cannot remain at such high levels indefinitely without eroding the quality of justice.’"

You forget to mention his EPA failure to enforce regulation to prevent oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico.

It wasn’t his failure, and it wasn’t his U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Not EPA). It was Bush’s. It takes time to change direction of an agency, particularly where the Senate refuses to approve your appointments, leaving the old people in place. In addition it is far from clear that the permit should not have been granted, given the facts that were known (or unknown) at the time the permit was issued.

You also neglect to mention his Justice Departments Civil rights failures.

It is impossible to answer all of these slanders without turning this into a book. Therefore allow me to only address just one, which I will highlight in italics.

For example, it is his Justice department under Eric Holder that has supported positions not much different from those of the Bush administration on Civil rights. He has consistently taken positions before the Supreme Court to limit the rights of individuals who were wrongfully imprisoned under Bush era terrorist statutes. He has pushed for limiting or eliminating their right to sue the US Government for the torture of imprisoned "terrorists' even after a clear showing that they were not terrorists. He has severely limited the Guantanamo prisoners effective right to counsel, the right to apply for Writs of Habeas Corpus in Federal courts, has refused (by folding to right wing pressure) to allow these prisoners to be housed in the US where they have easier access to lawyers and he has supported the continued use of Military Commissions rather than civilian courts.

In December 2010, over his objections, the Congress passed a bill forbidding the military to spend its money to transfer detainees from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States, even for trials. It wasn’t Obama; it was a cowardly Congress. But if one wants to slander someone, one always finds a way.

With regard to the economy, he gave up, almost without a fight, any thought of raising taxes in his negotiations with Boehner.

Nothing could be more at variance with the facts. What was his leverage for getting Republicans, not Boehner, to agree to tax increases? Threatening them with defaulting? What? I said not Boehner because Boehner did in fact agree to 1 trillion in tax increases, to balance 3 trillion in cuts, and then couldn’t sell it to his caucus. But what threat was Obama supposed to use? Go to hell, don’t raise the debt ceiling? Well, that might have produced default, but not increased taxes. Did Levenson really think about it, with such glib talk?

The reality (but who cares about that) (And I am also getting tired of defending baseless complaints) is that we will give you more cuts, if you give us additional revenue. But why should Obama have been against cuts. There are many that he, Levenson, and I should have favored. So the next approach is what kind of cuts can we agree on, and one understands that without revenue enhancement it will not be 4 billion, which it really should be. I said that the deficit crisis was a hoax to try to use it to gut entitlements; but the deficit it is nevertheless real and a danger in the long run. So we negotiate for cuts that don’t go into effect during the next two years, we make half of them in the military, and we take entitlements, which really do need addressing, off the table.

What the President got was a fantastic deal, which is why all the Tea Party and all the Presidential candidates have declared against it. Nobody on the Left has given any valid reason to oppose it.

The attempt by the Left, to demagogue this issue by lying, and in the style of Karl Rove “Staying on Message” is disgusting and should be rejected by all who are true liberals. See my post entitled: "The Trojan Horse" where I expose the lies, and write:

…Campaign for America’s Future…

A new undemocratic "Super Committee" is charged with finding $1.5 trillion in savings – from cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements and/or in increased revenues. If a majority agrees, the proposals will be “fast tracked” to passage in Congress—without our elected representatives able to amend their plans.

But these are boldfaced lies. As CNN Money reports in a piece titled “Debt Ceiling: What the deal will do":

The cuts will be “evenly divided between defense and non-defense spending.

Exempt from this round of cuts, however, will be programs that aid low-income Americans… These include Social Security, Medicaid, veterans' benefits and pensions, food stamps and Supplemental Security Income.

While Medicare would not be exempt, the framework would restrict cuts to no more than 2% of the program's cost. And the cuts that occur would not affect Medicare benefits nor would they increase seniors' costs, …

Half the cuts have to come from defense. What is wrong with that?

Or Progressive Change Campaign Committee:

Congress voted for a deal that will cut trillions from important programs like Head Start, asks nothing of the rich, and makes likely future cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

But what about facts? Writes the Wall Street Journal:

The deal included enough money for Head Start, the preschool program for low-income children, to keep enrollment from dropping, and for Pell Grants to maintain the current $5,500 annual maximum award to low-income college students. Republicans had wanted to cut Head Start and proposed freezing the Pell program, which would have cut the maximum grant size.

Why do I have to repeat myself? Is it because that which doesn’t fit the narrative is to be ignored and the lies just repeated?

What is the Left up to? What is their agenda? And I call them the Left advisedly, because they do not deserve the appellation of “liberal” which term I claim for the President and myself.

But since this post is getting entirely too long, I ask both my readers and Leonard Levenson for their patience. I will revert to this in my next posting, where I will address the remaining arguments, and discuss other lies and slanders that have crept into the scribblings of the punditocracy.

The Deficit & Spending

That we are in an economic downturn there can be no doubt but to blame it on the normal cyclical effects of the business cycle and to the price of oil is to ignore, as some would like, the failed policies of the past eight years. When this Administration with its Republican Congress took office we had just completed eight years of economic prosperity. When Clinton took office he inherited from twelve years of Republican misrule a failing economy (see here) and a $290 billion deficit. When he left office eight years later he had succeeded in turning that into a $100 billion surplus that was expected to quadruple in the decade ahead. There was even an expectation that before long the National Debt accumulated since the founding of the Republic would be wiped out. Now eight years later we have, according to the Office of Management and Budget, a deficit projection of $482 billion, the largest deficit in American history eclipsing the previous record of $413 billion set in fiscal 2004. See here.

Deficits matter! In fiscal year 2006, the U. S. Government spent $406 Billion on interest payments to the holders of the National Debt, which for the most part is China. Compare that to NASA at $15 Billion, Education at $61 Billion, and Department of Transportation at $56 Billion. It is the third largest item in the Federal budget after Defense and the Departments of Health and Human Services. If that 406 billion were available it could have been spent at least in part, on shoring up our infrastructure, which is collapsing, on education, and the myriad needs of our country. Right now numerous vital agencies, such as the FDA are under funded. When Congress recently passed a bill putting tobacco under the jurisdiction of the FDA the White House objected on the ground that the FDA is having enough problems dealing with its present jurisdiction for foods and drugs but never considered giving it the resources that it needs. Our National Parks are under funded and not being maintained. Our educational system is in crisis. And of course our energy needs are not being addressed.

In 2001, when this Administration took office gasoline was priced at about a $1.60. Now it is over $4.00. Who is to blame? It is a matter of world supply and demand but the supply has been relatively steady. It is demand that has skyrocketed. Many have pointed to China and India as the culprits and to be sure their demand has gone up. But their demand is a fraction of ours particularly when counted on a per capita basis. According to T. Boone Pickens, a leading oil magnate, (and incidentally a man who helped finance the Swift boat attacks,) we were importing 24% of our oil in 1970. By 1990 that had gone up to 42%. Now in 2008 we are importing 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year or $7 trillion over ten years. Yet when it was proposed that the CAFÉ gas efficiency requirements on autos be raised early in this Administration, this Administration and its cohorts in the Republican Congress wouldn’t hear of it. When other conservation measures were proposed, they wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, they gave away billions of dollars to the oil industry

They like to blame China and India and other emerging economies for causing the increased demand, but again according to Pickens the Chinese have 44 cars per 1,000 people as compared to 750 cars per 1,000 people in the US. The whole world consumes 85 million barrels of oil of which the US consumes 21 million or 25% even though the US population is only 4% of the world population.

Some talk about our present economic malaise as being part of the business cycle, exacerbated by greed in the housing and financial markets but fails to point out that Republican policies were to blame. Now the Administration, through its Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, is calling for regulations but that is closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out. It is the failure to anticipate and to have put regulation in place before the crisis is at the heart of the crisis just as the failure to address the oil crisis before it came upon us is to blame.

They talk about posturing but fail to talk about the real posturing that is being fostered upon us. Instead of real solutions to our problems we are offered drilling off shore. Aside from fouling our beaches and our environment it would do nothing for our economy or the price of oil either in the short run or the long. As Pickens points out we can’t drill our way out of this mess. Any oil extracted would not come on the market for ten years and even then the amount extracted would be insignificant and do nothing to favorably effect supply or the price of this commodity. And McCain stands there and postures and postures and in typical Rove manner slanders and slanders.

In the end they offers us the same policies that got us into this mess. His solution is to cut out wasteful spending, something we can all be for, but that is a bromide that keeps being offered and never turns out to be a solution. The idea that taxes must be reduced and reduced and never increased is what got us into this horrendous deficits, not just on the national scene but in the States as well. Both New York and New Jersey are facing budget crisis.

They talk about Social Security being taxed, but fail to tell us that this is a tax that was proposed by the Reagan Distraction or that it was intended to shore up Social Security and that every cent of that tax goes back into the Social Security Trust fund. Nobody has proposed its elimination, and its elimination would further undermine the solvency of SS.

As for the ATM it is unfortunate that this was not indexed for inflation. As it has been pointed out too much revenue is being generated from this tax for it to be eliminated, but it will be adjusted as it has been in the recent past so that it does not hit the middle class, and it will be indexed for inflation. Even then it will be a large loss of revenue for the Federal government and means must be found to make up for this loss.

The suggestion that tax collections be stepped up is a sound one but there has not been the will on the part of the Bush Administration to tap this source and McCain, despite disclaimers appears to have adopted every one of the Bush policies. It should be noted, however, in order to accomplish this, new laws targeting off shore tax shelters would have to be enacted and there seems to be no desire on the part of Bush/McCain to pursue this avenue. In addition additional funding for IRS’ enforcement would have to be appropriated not something Bush/McCain team has given any indication of favoring.

However, there is no reason why income earned from capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate than income earned from labor. We take pride in being a country that has a work ethos but taxes our labor as if it had less value than a passive return on capital. It is this, of course that causes the enormous inequality in the burden of the rich whose main source is return on capital as opposed to the middle class which earns most of its income from the effort of its labor, whether white collar or blue.

First we must bring our taxes in line with our expenditures. We cannot go on with an ever-increasing deficit. We cannot do this simply by cutting out waste. Cuts in other areas are simply not possible without hurting the middle class and the poor. We must pay for the war in Iran and in Afghanistan and its aftermath, which will cost billions even after those wars are concluded in replacing equipment and caring for our wounded veterans. We will not tolerate an attack on our main social programs such as Social Security, which McCain referred to recently as being an outrageous system, or Medicare or Medicaid. We should put a stop to the huge subsides paid to farm corporations but that is not about to happen. There are definite limits on our ability to substantially cut expenditures.

Thus if we increase tax on capital gains we can close the budget gap and then substantially reduce the tax burden on our working population.

Without a doubt middle class working people invest in the market and any increase in the capital gains tax would, to a limited extent, impact those people but the impact on someone who has a $10,000 or even a $100,000 investment in the market is miniscule, and can be more than offset by lower taxes on his salary or wages. If budget balance is achieved a lowering of taxes on labor may be possible. Right now earnings on capital are favored in so many ways that it is no wonder that that billionaire, Warren Buffet said that his tax rate is lower than his maids. We should consider lowering the payroll tax on the lowest earners and make up for the loss to the SS trust fund by increasing the cap on contributions. Capital gains are favored in so many ways other than by the low rate that substantial additional revenue can be obtained from this source simply by requiring brokers to notify the IRS when a security is bought and its purchase price. Right now brokers are only required to notify the IRS when a security is sold, so that short of an audit, the taxpayer can easily misrepresent its basis and its purchase date.

Under the present code even the small capital gain on investments is taxed only when security is sold but tax payers who are wealthy enough to let the securities increase in value until their death escape paying any tax either by them or their heirs. When the Security is passed to the heir, the heir does not inherit it with a basis of the purchase price, but rather gets a new basis as of the value of the security at the time that he inherits it. This is patently unfair to those who because they need the proceeds of the security before dying must pay capital gains taxes.

The Bush tax cuts which expire in 2010 had this expiration date built in because the figures of lost revenues were so large that the Administration knew that without the cutoff date it could not be passed. This is still true. The revenues lost from a total renewal of this ill conceive tax cut would lock our deficit in and assure its growth for decades to come. That is why no Republican Congress extended it when they had the majority. To now ask the Democratic Congress to take this irresponsible step is the height of Chutzpa. It should be allowed to expire, though tax adjustment to protect the middle class will be passed or as Obama has said, “No tax increases for people making under $250,000.” Personally I would have made that $150,000 but the promise has been made and will be kept.

Bush - Is He Smart?

This article is prompted by an e-mail that I received from Jo-Anna Cooke an American citizen who writes from Dresden, Germany,

"I have appreciated your emails regarding politics. I am learning about the issues and enjoy the debate that can be seen.

"I have a question for you, which I feel a little strange about, but thought you might have some ideas. I am listening through the internet to the NPR interview with President Bush. I am struck (often) by how "simpleton" his answers are to the questions. There are jokes about him being a "tool" and not being very smart. Other people say that he is very smart and knows exactly what is going on. What do you think? I am struck by how often Clinton is referred to as "brilliant", this is very different from what Bush is portrayed as. Just curious! I am realize that I should perhaps ask a spectrum of people, but you were the first person I thought of."

To which I responded:

"It is nice to hear from you and even nicer to receive an interesting and difficult question from you.

"I say difficult because we use so many terms that have multiple meanings. What is the meaning of smart? Is it one's IQ? Is it based on how well educated they are? When Bush went to Yale college he was a C student. By that measure he is not smart. Kerry had similar grades. By that measure he is no smarter. I don't know what kind of grades Clinton got but as I recall he was a brilliant student. They say he was a brilliant politician but he didn't get his health plan through a Democratic Congress and after two years into his Presidency he lost Congress.

"But I come back to what is smart? A long time ago I knew a young women who was a refugee from Ecuador. She was not well educated though she was fun to be with. She set out to become very rich by marriage. In a series of moves, the details of which I will not bore you with, she married a very rich man and became an international socialite. Diplomats and Senators are delighted to be entertained by her. She had three daughters one of whom married a prince in London attended by all the royalty from around the world, another married a Getty and the third married a von Furstenberg. Was she smart?

"Was Reagan smart. He lived in a world of make-believe in which the movies he had had seen were his reality. (See the Reagan Biography by Lou Cannon) and yet he changed the whole political landscape in the US.

"Bush has difficulty speaking the English language. But he won the Governorship of Texas and the Presidency of the U.S. Well, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But so did FDRs and Eleanor Roosevelt's sons and they went nowhere.

"He has been quite successful in effectuating his policies, pushing enormous tax cuts through the Congress and destroying many environmental protections. He has extended the Reagan policies successfully far beyond anything Reagan would have dreamt of or possibly even approved of. Can a dumb man be that successful? I don't know. I don't even know that his poor speech is not an affectation which it was judged would appeal to those who speak no better than he does. His success may be due to having smart people about him, but it takes a kind if smartness to pick people who will effectuate what you want.

"Is he a tool. No, the President is never a tool. Cheney and Karl Rove may be doing the thinking for him but they can only function within the broad parameters of the policies he advocates, which was also true of Reagan or any President.

"I think his policies are outrageous but that goes to belief not smarts.

"All that is a long non-answer to a short question. The greatest difficulty is that our language is so imprecise."