Ronald Reagan pushing the deadliest drug in
the history of the world.
Ronald Reagan: Paid Cigarette Model
http://forgottenhistoryblog.com/before-becoming-president-ronald-reagan-was-a-paid-cigarette-model/
***
“What Would Reagan Really Do?”
***
A flurry of recent articles
has posed this question: "Has the GOP deliberately sabotaged the economic
recovery to topple Obama in November?"
Bill Maher went so far as to
suggest that economic sabotage is treasonous. http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/09/bill-maher-gop-opposition-to-obama-economic-initiatives-is-treason/
Like every political issue,
economic recovery can be argued from different sides of the aisle - Democrats
promoting Keynesian stimulus, while Republicans push for austerity.
What cannot be argued is that
taxes cannot stay at current low rates forever.
At some point, rates must go
up to procure minimum revenue flow consistent with the post-war average of
"total revenues as a percentage of GDP.
Reagan adviser Bruce
Bartlett, a supply-side economist, offers this
analysis: "Historically, the term “tax rate” has meant the average or
effective tax rate — that is, taxes as a share of income. The broadest measure
of the tax rate is total federal revenues divided by the gross domestic
product. By this measure, federal taxes are at their lowest level in
more than 60 years. The Congressional
Budget Office estimated that
federal taxes would consume just 14.8 percent of G.D.P. this year. The last
year in which revenues were lower was 1950,
according to the Office of Management and Budget.The postwar annual average is
about 18.5 percent of G.D.P. Revenues averaged 18.2 percent of G.D.P.
during Ronald Reagan’s
administration; the lowest percentage during that administration was 17.3
percent of G.D.P. in 1984. In short, by the broadest measure of the tax
rate, the current level is unusually low and has been for some time. Revenues were
14.9 percent of G.D.P. in both 2009 and 2010. Yet if one listens to
Republicans, one would think that taxes have never been higher, that an
excessive tax burden is the most important constraint holding back economic
growth and that a big tax cut is exactly what the economy needs to get growing
again." http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/are-taxes-in-the-u-s-high-or-low/
Grover Norquist -- and the
decisive majority of Republican legislators who have signed Norquist's "No
New Tax" oath -- are demonstrably insane.
History will prove them so.
Whether the current cadre of
Republican legislators is judged "not guilty by reason of insanity,"
their uncompromising resistance to any tax hike is treacherous behavior that
will crush the United States.
If predictable ruin is not
treason, the word has no meaning.
***
Here is an informative Guardian article
that reviews Republican obstructionism. Note that the GOP supported a number of policies currently advocated by Democrats, and abandoned those same policies when Obama took
office. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/06/guardian-did-republicans-deliberately.html
***
In the following "List of
Countries by Tax Revenue as Percentage of GDP," I encourage you to locate those nations with a lower
ratio of Tax Revenues to GDP than the United States' current ratio of 14.8%. This exercise will reveal a gallery of unsavory rogue nations. (Singapore, which has a unique economy, is the one exception.) There is a direct relationship between a nation's low taxation and the tawdriness of its "public spaces." In turn, degraded "public space" is characterized bymiserable measures of personal security. Not only does degraded public space result in more petty crime but "security forces" themselves get paid so little by their respective governments that they resort to bribery just to make a living. The corrupting influence of "obligatory bribery" on a society is horrible to behold. The dream that lower taxes leave more money in everyone's pocket, thus making people "happier," is a kind of delusion associated with "arrested development." The only people who are exempt from the ravages of social degradation are the very wealthy who can afford to finance a personal security force. Everyone else lives in a "social" milieu saturated with distrust, criminality and the need to put bars on all home windows. "You get what you pay for" also applies the physical quality and sociability of public space. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2221.html
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tax_tot_tax_as_of_gdp-taxation-total-as-of-gdp
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tax_tot_tax_as_of_gdp-taxation-total-as-of-gdp
***
Jeb Bush’s heresy
By Dana Milbank
This week’s featured entree in the Republicans’ auto-da-fe is a rather surprising selection: presidential son, presidential brother and presidential timber Jeb Bush.
The former Florida governor, until now a revered figure in the party, had the temerity to state in public what many others think in private: that the Republican Party has become so intransigent that even Ronald Reagan couldn’t fit under its tent.
“Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad — they would have a hard time if you define the Republican Party . . . as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement, doesn’t allow for finding some common ground,” Bush said Monday in a meeting at Bloomberg headquarters in New York, according to the online publication Buzzfeed.
“Back to my dad’s time and Ronald Reagan’s time — they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan support,” Bush added. Reagan today “would be criticized for doing the things that he did.”
This brought immediate condemnation from the Grand Inquisitor himself, Defender of the Faith and Keeper of the Tax Pledge Grover Norquist, who told Talking Points Memo that Bush’s sentiments were “foolish” and “bizarre.”
Coincidentally, Bush made his remarks the same day the conservative American Enterprise Institute held a show trial for Norm Ornstein, its scholar who dared to co-author an article in The Post titled “Admit it. The Republicans are worse” [Outlook, April 29].
Ornstein’s debate opponent, conservative author Steve Hayward, suddenly had the more difficult task of arguing against not only his AEI colleague but also against one of the nation’s most charismatic conservative leaders. After Ornstein invoked Bush’s words, Hayward answered with two Latin debating techniques the Republicans have used with great frequency over the past few years: ad hominem and non sequitur: “Well, all I’ll say about Jeb Bush is the Bush family still has not gotten over losing in 1980 to Ronaldus Magnus, and I’ll leave it at that.”
But what about the substance of Jeb Bush’s criticism? He told the House Budget Committee recently that he would accept a dollar in tax-revenue increases in exchange for every $10 in spending cuts — a hypothetical deal the party’s presidential candidates rejected. Bush later told Charlie Rose that his willingness to accept the reality of tax increases means “I’m not running for anything.”
In that sense, Hayward didn’t lay a glove on Ornstein’s argument, which is that the Republicans are acting like a parliamentary opposition party — rejecting any thought of compromise — in a non-parliamentary system that requires compromise. Typical of the sentiment, Ornstein said, was the view of Richard Mourdock, who recently defeated Sen. Dick Lugar in the Indiana Republican primary: “Bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.”
Hayward all but conceded this. “I actually think there’s quite a bit to be said that the Republican Party — I’m not sure if it’s not understanding the legislative process or isn’t very good at it,” he said. “The Republican Party’s ability as a legislative party atrophied during those decades when they were out of power.” Democrats, he said “are better at running Congress — there’s no question about that. And Republicans are yet to prove they’re any good at governing as a majority.”
Instead, Hayward argued that Democrats have been just as bad as the Republicans are today. “Is it really true,” he asked, “that the partisanship of Republicans today is different in character than the kind of partisanship that led Tip O’Neill to forbid House Democrats to cooperate with Republicans on Social Security reform during Reagan’s first term?”
Well, yes, it is different. House Democrats voted 3 to 1 in favor of the 1983 Social Security compromise between O’Neill and Reagan.
A better case against Ornstein’s hypothesis (developed in a book he wrote with Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution) is that Democrats, learning from the Republicans’ intransigence, would use the same scorched-earth tactics if they become the opposition party. Republicans, conversely, could become more responsible if they became the governing party.
But for now, the burden of responsibility is being carried by only a few heretics, such as Jeb Bush, who dares to say things such as “I don’t have to play the game of being 100,000 percent against President Obama.”
Or does he? On Tuesday, he sent out a series of tweets to clarify his apostasy. “For 4 years, Democrats have held leadership roles w/opportunities to reach across political aisle,” he wrote. “For sake of politics, they haven’t.”
Maybe now Norquist will untie him from the stake.
danamilbank@washpost.com
© The Washington Post Company
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