ELITE DELUSIONS: Horsies yes, looting no!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 2012

Part 4—Ignoring the craziest plan: Mitt Romney has proposed the craziest plan in modern campaign history.

In a rational country, that might seem like news. You don’t live in that country.

Consider the way the New York Times has covered that craziest plan for its “sophisticated readers.”

On Wednesday, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center released its latest study of Romney’s ludicrous plan. The next morning, Catherine Rampell reported the study’s findings—to an extent:
RAMPELL (8/2/12): A tax system overhaul along the lines that Mitt Romney has proposed would give big tax cuts to high-income households and increase the tax burden on middle- and lower-income households, according to an analysis from economists at the Tax Policy Center.

[...]

[E]ven if all possible loopholes for households earning more than $200,000 were eliminated, this group would still be a net gainer under Mr. Romney’s plan, since the marginal tax rate decreases and other changes lop off much of its tax burden.

As a result, middle- and lower-income households—the 95 percent of the population earning less than about $200,000 annually—would have to make up the difference, according to the review by the center, which is affiliated with the Brookings Institution.
Say what? According to Rampell, the study found that high-income households would get “big tax cuts” under Romney’s plan. Everyone else “would have to make up the difference.”

Rampell’s report was perfectly competent—as far as it went. Given the values of the Times, it didn’t go real far.

Her report totaled 423 words. It was crammed at the bottom of page A10. It didn’t even make the front page of the newspaper’s National section.

By way of contrast:

Last Friday, the Times devoted 1001 words (and some sexy-time photos) to the state of strip clubs in Tampa, where the GOP will hold its convention. (This was the featured report on the National section’s front page.) Today, the Times devotes 861 words to an airy-fairy report about the way the Chick-fil-A chain is viewed in Atlanta, its hometown, with an emphasis on the way those southern (white) folk think about things like this.

Kim Severson’s report about southerners and their chicken appears on page one of the National section, complete with a double headline and a color photo of a guy eating his chicken. Along with its superior placement, it got twice as much space as Rampell’s report about the world’s craziest plan.

Why does the New York Times rate its news topics so? We’re not sure, but Rampell’s report was so short that it omitted some basic information. The Washington Post gave even fewer words to its report on the Tax Policy Center study. But Lori Montgomery managed to include the kinds of details which start to flesh out such reports:
MONTGOMERY (8/1/12): What would that mean for the average tax bill? Millionaires would get an $87,000 tax cut, the study says But for 95 percent of the population, taxes would go up by about 1.2 percent, an average of $500 a year.
Even that is pretty fuzzy; with more words, Montgomery could have explained those findings better. But the Times report had nothing to say about the size of the tax cuts and tax increases which individual families would face under this craziest plan. As the New York Times tugged on its dicks and dreamed about strip clubs in Tampa—one of the strippers looks like Palin!—its readers were kept from reading such facts in the 400 words it gave to Rampell’s report.

Today, in an AD WATCH feature, the always horrible Peter Baker includes a few of the facts which didn’t make Rampell’s report. The AD WATCH feature is also short; it too is crammed at the bottom of its page. But Baker does manage to say the following, if you read every word:
BAKER (8/3/12): Those in middle income brackets would pay on average $546 more a year, according to the study, and upper-middle class taxpayers would pay $1,880 more, while the taxes of the richest 1 percent would be cut by $29,282.
If you read every word in the Times and you didn’t blink, you did in fact see that passage. The top one percent will get 30 grand—and that isn’t even the very rich cohort.

The rubes will pay $550 more per year—on average! That means that half will pay more!

(Baker’s AD WATCH barely exists on line. This is where the link takes you.)

Are “sophisticated readers” being well served as the Times selects news topics? On Sunday, the public editor pretended to debate this general issue. He pretended to ask the newspaper’s politics editor what the Times could do to raise the level of this campaign’s floundering discourse (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/30/12).

The manifest dumbness of this campaign “presents an acute problem for The Times, which many people look to for coverage on substantive issues.” So the public editor wrote, wink-wink-winking and extending a long-running scam.

Might we state the obvious? The New York Times has no intention of raising the level of discourse! Brisbane was too polite to say so, but the Times has flooded the market with monstrous bullshit all through this dumbest campaign.

Consider the way this criminal enterprise has dealt with the Romneys:

Is Ann Romney involved in dressage? In late May, that rated a 2300-word report. The report appeared at the top of the Sunday Times’ front page.

Has Mitt Romney proposed the craziest plan in modern campaign history—a plan which would loot low-income people while showering additional wealth on the very rich? The New York Times has been working hard to avoid this delicate topic.

The liberal world, corrupt to the bone, is too dumb and corrupt to notice. The Times is avoiding the Romney tax plan and Joan Walsh isn’t going to tell you. Neither will the fiery performers who play you each night on cable.

Maybe Christopher Hayes will speak up! Or possibly Jonah Lehrer!

This isn’t the first time the New York Times has glossed the Romney proposal. Indeed, the lunacy of Romney’s tax plan has been in clear view for some time now. Back in July, this text appeared in an earlier New York Times AD WATCH:
OPPEL (7/12/12): One of the ad's main claims—that Mr. Romney's plan would raise taxes for 18 million working families—is accurate, according to data from the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Assuming the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts and alternative minimum tax relief, those taxpayers who would see their federal tax bills rise under the Romney plan (almost 11 percent of all filers) would have an average increase of $885, the center found. The overwhelming number of people in this category make less than $50,000, and they would see tax increases under the Romney plan because of the expiration of three provisions passed in 2009, including the expansion of the earned-income tax credit.

The ad does not mention that about 118 million filers would get a tax cut under the Romney plan. That includes nearly everyone making $100,000 or more, as well as about 77 percent of those making $30,000 to $40,000, for example, and 94 percent of those making $50,000 to $75,000.

The ad's other main claim—that ''millionaires'' would get a 25 percent cut in their average tax rate—is also accurate, the data suggests. According to Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings center, the average federal tax rate on incomes over $1 million would fall to 23.3 percent from 31.4 percent under the Romney plan, a roughly one-quarter decline.
If you read every word in the New York Times, you saw that text on July 12, in another obscure AD WATCH feature. But none of this has made its way anywhere near the front page.

Darlings, it just isn’t done! The front page is for reports on dressage. It’s for reports on Mitt Romney’s hair-dresser. And it’s for reports like this, a 1900-word Sunday front-pager about a human interest matter.

Darlings! Rachel Swarns had a book to sell! And she had human interest to peddle:
SWARNS (6/17/12): Joan Tribble held tightly to her cane as she ventured into the overgrown cemetery where her people were buried. There lay the pioneers who once populated north Georgia's rugged frontier, where striving white men planted corn and cotton, fought for the Confederacy and owned slaves.

The settlers interred here were mostly forgotten over the decades as their progeny scattered across the South, embracing unassuming lives. But one line of her family took another path, heading north on a tumultuous, winding journey that ultimately led to the White House.

The white men and women buried here are the forebears of Mrs. Tribble, a retired bookkeeper who delights in her two grandchildren and her Sunday church mornings. They are also ancestors of Michelle Obama, the first lady.

The discovery of this unexpected family tie between the nation's most prominent black woman and a white, silver-haired grandmother from the Atlanta suburbs underscores the entangled histories and racial intermingling that continue to bind countless American families more than 140 years after the Civil War.

The link was established through more than two years of research into Mrs. Obama's roots, which included DNA tests of white and black relatives. Like many African-Americans, Mrs. Obama was aware that she had white ancestry, but knew little more.
Two years of research went into this topic. The same amount of time has been spent avoiding that crazy proposal.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this report was an attempt to explore America’s racial history, because of course it wasn’t. This was an attempt to sell human interest about a major celebrity, packaged in the kind of way which makes Times readers feel smart.

In the New York Times, you have a much better chance of learning about the race of both Obamas’ ancestors than of learning about the craziest tax proposal in history. Just this Monday, the Times did another report about the Obamas’ “surprising” racial ancestry.

This report ran 1222 words. It sat on the front page of the National section. Three days later, the Times buried 400 words about Romney’s tax plan at the bottom of an internal page.

You live in an amazingly dumb period. Until recently, our affairs were in the hands of a small group of elites. In various ways, this arrangement tended to mask our manifest dumbness, which can be avoided no more.

In recent decades, this system has been discarded. Don Imus was allowed on the air—then Howard Stern, then Rush. The Internet let everyone speak. Even Lawrence O’Donnell!

It turns out that we're very dumb. We liberals can see this in The Others. We can’t make it out about us.

This brings us back to that public editor, pretending to worry about the coverage provided by the Times. How can the Times “reset the campaign agenda,” he pretended to ask, pretending to tear his thoughtful hair. The dumbness of the current campaign “presents an acute problem for The Times, which many people look to for coverage on substantive issues,” he pretended to think.

Arthur Brisbane then pretended to ask Richard Stevenson what the Times can do about this. After the requisite fawning remarks about the Times’ “sophisticated readers,” Steven pretended to give an answer.

Let’s recall what Stevenson said as he defined the problem in which he pretends to believe:
BRISBANE (7/29/12): I asked Mr. Stevenson, the political editor, to provide his perspective on the choices The Times faces in covering the election.

''I don't have a problem with high-frequency'' coverage, he told me. ''I guess the question is: Is it worth it in terms of news value? I think we ought to be guided, especially in coverage of politics, by: Are you really adding value for a sophisticated New York Times reader?''

He added, ''I hesitate to say that we don't want to play in that lane at all because I think being up to date and relevant and insidery is not a bad thing, but not at the cost of high-value, high-impact journalism.''

Yet, as he observed, every four years the candidates have a way of defining downward the substance of the debate, reducing important issues to bumper-sticker rhetoric—a process that works against The Times's higher journalistic ambitions.
That was lofty, thoughtful, stuff. The candidates are dumbing things down, this dumbest of all newspapers said, pretending that the Times maintains “higher journalistic ambitions.”

The Times does not maintain such ambitions. The non-deluded could spot that fact as Stevenson gave his reply.

How will the Times get the campaign on track? More blog posts, the politics editor said! If you want to read the full account, you can just click this.

Three days after that column appeared, the Tax Policy Center extended its work on the craziest proposal in modern history. The Times gave it 400 words.

The New York Times does want you to know that a stripper in Tampa looks like Palin. The New York Times doesn’t seem to want you exploring that craziest plan.

The New York Times has also avoided the looting conducted by Bain under Romney. Stories like that don’t seem to float the boats of the folk at the Times.

We can’t tell you why that is—but all the children and hustlers and hacks will keep pretending that this isn’t happening. Darlings! Careers hang in the balance!

The Jonah Lehrers and the rest of the climbers know they have to make nice with the Times. The liberal world has made it clear—we have no plans to notice or care about the utterly fatuous drivel being dished out by the Times.

Tomorrow—epilogue: An amusing example

37 comments:

  1. What do you think accounts for the failings of the Times, which editorially has endorsed, without exception, the Democratic nominee for president every election beginning in 1960 and continuing through 2008?

    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/23/opinion/20081024-endorse.html

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    1. Seriously?
      Try this link: http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com

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    2. Go ahead. Summarize in one sentence or paragraph. Are the Times failings attributable to the greed of Sulzberger, the publisher, and Rosenthal, the editorial page editor?

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    3. I'm not sure if one could summarize it adequately in a paragraph. It would have to be done by someone smarter than me and I've wondered about this for literally decades.

      I think the majority of people at the NYT and some others in the MSM are of course Democrats, but they are out of touch with ordinary people. They're often neo-liberal like Tom Friedman, who was the chief acolyte in the 90's of the omniscience and wisdom of the financial markets. They are liberal on social issues like abortion and gay rights, but on economic issues they don't like unions and they are very quick to support free trade because in the textbooks the total benefits outweigh the costs and the losers can (in theory) be taken care of with retraining and assistance which (almost as though by an invisible hand) never materializes.

      Well after the predictable collapse in 2008, some of the NYT people have come to realize that neoliberalism was wrong, or at least some of them have, but the culture of the NYT has been taken over by the snarkmasters like Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins, and there are still worshippers at the cult of the Centrism like Bill Keller and Matt Bai. These people are just too shallow or stupid or superficial to change.

      I don't know that the above really explains it that well, but I think there's some truth to it. A deeper explanation would involve who pays the bills. But granting that, I'm still curious about why the individuals at the paper behave the way Bob describes and the above is the best I've come up with.

      Donald

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    4. Donald,

      Thanks for that response. I think it would be worthwhile for Bob to try, in a standalone post, to express his thesis for why the Times is the way it is.

      Delete
  2. Catherine Rampell and the supposely non-partisan Tax Policy Center are tricking the readers. Rampell describes a TPC analysis of a tax plan that resembles Romney's plan, but it's NOT Romney's plan. For this fictional plan, they say, "Middle- and lower-income households—the 95 percent of the population earning less than about $200,000 annually—would have to make up the difference, according to the review by the center."

    They imply that Romney's plan would increase taxes for low and middle income earners. It doesn't. Romney's actual proposal does not increase tax rates for lower brackets.

    One can criticize Romney's plan for reducing income to the government, thus increasing the deficit. However, it's simply not the case that Romney has proposed to increase taxes on low and middle earners.

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    1. This claim confused me at first too, but the basic claim is that the tax BURDEN on 95 percent will increase. That is not to say that their taxes will necessarily increase, but only that they will be contributing a larger share to overall tax revenue.

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    2. "Romney's actual proposal does not increase tax rates for lower brackets"

      It eliminates deductions, exemptions, and "tax expenditures" that benefit lower-income earners.

      This elimination will raise those folks tax bills.

      They will pay more dollars to the tax man under Romney's plan.

      David, you are full of it.

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    3. The problem is not the rates Romney is proposing, but the unspecified deductions/loopholes that have to be eliminated to make his tax cuts revenue neutral. Because Romney has been unwilling to specify what he'd eliminate, the Tax Policy Center ran the numbers for various scenarios, all of which resulted in raising the burden on lower earners and lowering it for high earners.

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    4. David knows that, really.

      He just sees it as his life's mission to spew misinformation here.

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    5. ABL, you're on the right track. Romney proposes to keep all the Bush tax cuts and then cut another 20% for everyone. Offsetting, to some degree, he would eliminate unspecified deductions.

      Since he hasn't specified which deductions he would eliminate, there's no way to compute how that would affect high or low or medium earners. So, the figures shown by the Tax Policy center guesses, rather than real analyses.

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    6. So what? Elect him and find out?

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    7. "Since he hasn't specified which deductions he would eliminate, there's no way to compute how that would affect high or low or medium earners."

      WRONG, again, as usual.

      The simple arithmetical value of all the deductions, exemptions, and "tax expenses" available to be cut at High, Low, and Medium level earners tell us that there is no way to make the offset come in the High income category.

      High income earners will have their taxes cut by far more than it is mathematically possible to offset by eliminating unspecified deductions that they have.

      If Romney will remain revenue neutral in his almost completely unspecified tax plan, he will HAVE to do it on the backs of the Low and Medium Income earners.

      It's just math, David. You're an actuary, you can handle it.

      Romney's plan most definitely is to take from the poor and give to the rich.

      There is no approach that adds up that gives any other result.

      Maybe Romney's just lying however -- that should certainly be at least considered.

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    8. Maybe Romney's assumptions were different from the Tax Policy Center's. E.g., Romney may have assumed that the lower tax rates would have a stimulative effect -- an assumption that TPC didn't make.

      BTW the Tax Policy Center themselves admitted:
      Because Gov. Romney has not specified how he would increase the tax base, it is impossible to determine how the plan would affect federal tax revenues or the distribution of the tax burden.

      That's the very point I made in my earlier post.

      Note how tricky the TPC was. On the one hand, TPC admits that it's impossible to determine the distribution of the tax burden. OTOH they more or less claim that Romney's plan will add exactly $546 to the tax burden of the middle and low income filers. That's amazing precision for a calculation that they admit is impossible to do.

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    9. No, David.

      There is a specific study (Not what you linked to, of course) that addresses distributional effects.

      Anyone who cares to find it will see it is the latest thing (as of Aug. 1, 2012) at their site.

      So:

      "Our major conclusion is that any revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers."

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    10. Yes, I agree, Anon 1:28. I guess that's the study the New York Times and Bob Somerby were writing about. Yet, that result contradicts the point the TPC themselves made in the quote I linked. How can TPC do something that TPC themselves said couldn't be done?

      Furthermore, TPC's result depends on the assumptions used. I'm fairly sure TPC did a static analysis. That is, they assumed that the lower tax rates would not stimulate the economy. If one assumes that lower taxes will lead to a stronger economy, then I suspect TPC's 8/1/12 conclusion would not apply.

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    11. "I'm fairly sure TPC did a static analysis."

      And, you're wrong about that one too, David.

      It's been one piece of misinformation after another from you on this.

      As Ezra Klein summarized it today: "mathematically impossible."

      That's the only available conclusion about Romney's "plan" -- and, if you will bother to read the August 1 paper, you will see that every possible (even unrealistic) attempt has been made to be friendly to the plan.

      Page 14 and 15 specifically address the (bogus) issue of stimulation versus static scoring.

      Stop making sh!t up and telling what you "think", okay?

      Delete
    12. You are correct, Anon. They did included one possible stimulative impact, which, in their opinion, was possibly generous. However, any number of other stimulative assumptions are possible. No doubt, with some of them, the stimulative impact would be enough to change their conclusion.

      However, they might well be right. Romney's proposed cuts are so large that they might well reduce the taxes collected.

      However TPC goes completely off the rails when they assume that any shortfall in taxes collected would fall on the backs of the poor and middle class. That's just something they made up. Romney never ever proposed that if his plan didn't produce enough tax revenue then some particular segment would make up the difference.

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    13. "they assume that any shortfall in taxes collected would fall on the backs of the poor and middle class"

      WRONG again, David.

      We are seeing a pattern here -- I keep correcting you. Then you admit I'm right. Then you insert a new misstatement.

      The TPC did not "assume" what would happen in the event of what you call a "shortfall."

      Romney insists the plan will be revenue neutral, and he insists that the reductions in rates will be offset by elimination of other tax preferences.

      To do the offset, TPC assumed that all "shortfalls" as you term them, would be collected from the richest taxpayers first, not that they would come on the backs of the poor and middle class.

      That outcome isn't an "assumption" by TPC. It's just a reflection of the math:

      High income earners will have their taxes cut by far more than it is mathematically possible to offset by eliminating unspecified deductions that they have.

      Unless Romney is lying, his plan raises taxes on the poor and middle class to pay for cuts for the rich.

      It's arithmetic.

      But, of course, maybe Romney is a liar.

      Delete
  3. Human interest/feature writing is sooooo much easier than hard reporting. The stories are easier to track down, no boring numbers to keep track and make sense of, and the risk of offending a source is all but nil, unless you go and get clever at their expense. Best of all, instead having to string together a bunch of lifeless facts into a coherent, simple & direct message about as juicy as a mortgage or a lease, you get to show everyone your lit'ry chops. As a college professor once sarcastically scribbled next to a heart-jerking passage of mine: "Ah, writing."

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  4. Might it be that, given the Republican Platforms and the performance of Republican Presidents in recent history, Romney's proposals are par for the corse rather than "crazy?" Aren't they, along with the runaway Defense Budgets nobody talks about, designed to make the system collapse on itself so they can rid of stuff they don't believe in anyway, like The Department of Education and Social Security?

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  5. Bob,

    You say "The rubes will pay $550 more per year—on average! That means that half will pay more!"

    Sorry but you are wrong. The average is not the midpoint, the median is:
    "median is described as the numerical value separating the higher half of a sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half" (Wikipedia; it is the standard definition).

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    1. In terms of the policy outcome, yours is a distinction without a material difference, but your mathematical pedantry is appreciated...

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  6. The "rich" would have more of their money returned to them under Romeny's plan because they pay most of the federal income tax - it's that simple. The notion that the rich don't pay their share is silly, especially without defining what a fair share means.

    Equally as silly is the assertion that the average federal income taxpayer - which by the way eliminates almost 50% of all income earners - will pay almost $600 more in federal taxes; of course, in every election, liberals make the same argument that somehow 95% of Americans will have to subsidize the ill-gotten gains of the rich.

    During the Bush administration, I was told by the left that I would pay more in taxes to subsidized the cuts in taxes for the rich under its fiscal policies - what garbage! I benefited greatly by those tax policies. Before having children, we saved and lived within our means. While my wife stayed at home for the first four years of our twin children's lives, I went to work teaching in a public school as I have for the last 20 years. We did not pay one cent of federal income taxes during those four years and, in fact, we received between $1200 and $2200 in a so-called "refund" each of those years subsidized by my neighbors! My wife eventually went back to work; last year, we wrote a check for $1300 to the federal government. We will continue to pay federal income taxes each year regardless of what the rich earn or don't earn. To assert that my economic life depends on what the rich pay or don't pay in taxes is absurd.

    While it might be true for some that their economic lives depend on the largess(e) of the federal government, it does not for most Americans - not yet. If the Left reelects President Obama, more Americans will have gambled on the idea that the government is the sole arbiter of one's economic fate - those Americans, over time, will not be disappointed.

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    1. The rich (scare quotes are not needed -- the rich do indeed exist -- they aren't a fantasy) pay the most federal income tax because they collect the most income.

      That they pay the most federal tax doesn't even come close to demonstrating that they pay a "fair" share.

      What we do know is that federal tax rates at the highest income levels are at historically low levels.

      What we also know is that in tandem with the decline in higher-income tax rates we have seen the rich take a larger share of national incomes.

      What we also know is that we have seen, since the 1970s, that while productivity has increased the profits gains from that productivity have gone *only* to the rich -- other income groups have seen no net after-inflation gain in income.

      "To assert that my economic life depends on what the rich pay or don't pay in taxes is absurd"

      And no one has said anything like that. It's your fantasy characterization.

      "the government is the sole arbiter of one's economic fate"

      Your fantasy characterization, again. Does little to address reality, but tells us something about you.

      Your calling the projections of TPC absurd also means nothing to thinking people.

      It is exactly as was said by Anon at 2:33 August 4:

      If Romney isn't lying about his largely-unspecified plan, if it is indeed revenue-neutral, then the simple math of taxes means the large dollar-value of his proposed rate cuts at high income levels cannot be offset by elimination of other tax preferences at those levels.

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  7. "To thinking people" means, "I'm smarter than you" which tell us something about you. My fantasies are based on the Left's characterizations of the "selfish rich" and linking everyone's fate to them. The implication is evident by the Left's daily drumbeat of evil rich Republicans - not fantasy.

    "The rich pay the most federal income tax because they collect the most income." - COLLECT? There are plenty of implications to be made in the careful selection of that word. Don't you mean 'earn'?

    "What we also know is that in tandem with the decline in higher-income tax rates we have seen the rich take a larger share of national incomes." - there is not a finite pile of money in this country or the world for that matter; that pile grows and contracts. People move up and down along with that growth and contraction - income is not stagnant as people are not stagnant over a lifetime of earnings. I have friends who were in the bottom 20% of income earners thirty years ago - not now! They are in the top 10% today but were in the top 2% six years ago.

    "What we also know is that we have seen, since the 1970s, that while productivity has increased the profits gains from that productivity have gone *only* to the rich -- other income groups have seen no net after-inflation gain in income." - only if one were stuck in the same income group since the 70s, which is rare. Income is only part of the picture...wealth is another...as is what was characterized as poor in the 70s has changed with regard to household living conveniences.

    "If Romney isn't lying about his largely-unspecified plan, if it is indeed revenue-neutral, then the simple math of taxes means the large dollar-value of his proposed rate cuts at high income levels cannot be offset by elimination of other tax preferences at those levels." and "...If Romney will remain revenue neutral in his almost completely unspecified tax plan, he will HAVE to do it on the backs of the Low and Medium Income earners." - says who? The Left, of course!

    I could link to so many government programs that are replete with fraud, corruption, and down right indifference to the "use of other people's money" - the scary rich as you put it - but I see no purpose in doing so because the Left doesn't care; that's par for the course when one pines for other people's money. Of course there are monies that can be found to offset more tax cuts - to say that there is not outside of "...HAV[ing] to do it on the backs of the Low and Medium Income earners" is patently absurd!

    "That they pay the most federal tax doesn't even come close to demonstrating that they pay a 'fair' share." - that Leftist drivel says it all...the Left cannot define fair; any definition leaves them open for ridicule when more is not enough 4 years from now. The Left will eventually have to come after my small pile of money.

    The envy, resentment, and the general sense of despair among liberals in power is remarkable to say the least, but I suspect those are emotional contrivances designed to solicit votes. It's inexorable push to spread more despair, envy, and resentment among others only strengthens its hand of power over those aren't "thinking people".

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    1. "says who? The Left, of course"

      Well no, it's the Tax Policy Center, not the left at all.

      They bent over backwards to make Romney's plan work, but it just doesn't add up.

      It's not the left you have a problem with -- it's arithmetic.

      "Objective, Third-Party Analysis" -- that's how the Romney campaign characterizes the Tax Policy Center -- as long as it's saying something Romney likes.

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    2. One of the authors of that objective study worked in Pres. Obama's administration. It was co-authored by a member of the Obama White House, someone who was part of the White House economic team. That is the Left!

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    3. The person you refer to is Adam Looney -- he was an economist on the staff of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, or CEA.

      Another co-author of the study is William Gale, who was an economist for CEA during the George H.W. Bush administration.

      That isn't the left!

      But you know that.

      Again, let's quote Romney on Tax Policy Center:

      "Objective, Third party analysis"

      -- that is, as long as he likes what they're saying!!

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  8. "The rich pay the most federal income tax because they collect the most income." - COLLECT? There are plenty of implications to be made in the careful selection of that word. Don't you mean 'earn'?"

    Nope. Most of the wealth of the rich was accrued as economic rent, which is best characterized as "stolen".

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  9. tl;dr:

    The Tax Policy Center used to be "objective third-party analysts."

    That lasted right up until until they told the truth about Mitt Romney's tax plan to steal from the poor and give to the rich.

    Now, of course, they're biased leftists.

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  10. I'm sure that this source is biased, too:

    http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2012/08/wsj-taxing-the-.html

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    1. Yeah, it's the standard bullsh!t of false centrism.

      As misdirection I guess it's worth something, since it doesn't actually say *anything* about Romney's plan.

      But you have to love a gem like this:

      "On average, the tax bite on the rich is bigger—except for those whose income mainly comes from capital gains and dividends."

      So if we leave out a source of income primarily benefiting the rich, the rich pay more in taxes.

      Thanks for that data, prof!

      Delete
  11. "Yeah, it's the standard bullsh!t of false centrism."

    One man's bullsh!t....but an expected response on your part.

    Hasta luega....time to move on.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, time.

      Time enough to post dismissively, but no time to argue any points of fact -- maybe you've got nothing.

      Moving on's your best bet.

      Delete
  12. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNHywGefNnQ

    ReplyDelete