Saturday, November 27, 2010
PETER PRINCIPLE POLITICS
This writer well recalls a long airplane ride from Oklahoma City to Washington, seated beside Father Peter Green, president of St. Gregory’s College, and reading together a brand new book called The Peter Principle. We would read a page, then pause to chuckle and comment. It was a most enjoyable trip, whereas most of those trips were not – even absent the current draconian airport security measures.
Succinctly stated, the Peter Principle said that sooner or later everyone tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence. The author made his point quite well. We have all seen this principle borne out all around us in our contacts in the business, artisan, and professional world.
This point was brought home again this past week in one of our rare instances of tuning in Dancing with the Stars on ABC television, and in reading newspaper accounts quoting one contestant in that show’s competition. Bristol Palin finished third after a dismal performance that evening. A “last dance” from a contestant dropped the previous week was dramatically better than two of the three finalists still there, including Ms. Palin.
Later Bristol was quoted as saying that her wanting to win came from a desire “to give the middle finger to all those who hate my mother and hate me.” I understand that a lot of people detest her mother, but “hate” is an inappropriate word for most. I really do not know anyone who hates Bristol, although there may be some.
But I would like to say to Bristol: “Young lady, you have it all wrong. People don’t hate you. You did not make it as far as you did in the contest on your merit. You made it on the basis of your mother’s intense popularity, and some politically motivated contest voters who campaigned by hook and by crook to keep you there. It is not anyone’s fault you are out. You advanced way past your level of competence.”
In the rounds of commentary, I would like to note further that her mother, the ex-half-term governor Sarah Palin, has noticeably advanced way past her level of competence as well.
This woman demonstrates this time after time. Last week it was “all the 57 states,” and then the latest gaffe was referring to North Korea as “our good friend and ally.” But she regularly makes new ones as often as she speaks from anything but a prepared script. We’d wish that all of these were deviations in use of the English language, such as her Bushisms, or slips of the tongue. But lo, many come from just plain ignorance. Others come from faulty reasoning, or accepting platitudes and talking points provided to her as a rationale. Worse, she does not seem to know a lie when she tells one, but she goes right on.
Despite her status as a political celebrity, which most of us have difficulty understanding, Ms. Palin is in no way ready for political leadership in government. Her incompetence was demonstrated in her failed attempt at a governor’s duties and responsibilities. She then walked away from those troublesome problems to pursue the money making machine of being a celebrity.
Ms. Palin’s popularity has been fed largely by the media. In a similar fashion, Paris Hilton has a name that is known in the households throughout the country. Should Ms. Hilton decide on a right-wing political career, one might suppose that she would receive lots of publicity and would advance rapidly in popularity among a segment of Americans -- and thus shortly reach her level of political incompetence.
Without constant media coverage neither Ms. Palin nor Ms. Hilton would matter much in the universe of human concern. Ms. Palin’s flower would fade and wither because it has no other sustenance. Some of us would, of course, be much less irritable people if this were to be the case.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Succinctly stated, the Peter Principle said that sooner or later everyone tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence. The author made his point quite well. We have all seen this principle borne out all around us in our contacts in the business, artisan, and professional world.
This point was brought home again this past week in one of our rare instances of tuning in Dancing with the Stars on ABC television, and in reading newspaper accounts quoting one contestant in that show’s competition. Bristol Palin finished third after a dismal performance that evening. A “last dance” from a contestant dropped the previous week was dramatically better than two of the three finalists still there, including Ms. Palin.
Later Bristol was quoted as saying that her wanting to win came from a desire “to give the middle finger to all those who hate my mother and hate me.” I understand that a lot of people detest her mother, but “hate” is an inappropriate word for most. I really do not know anyone who hates Bristol, although there may be some.
But I would like to say to Bristol: “Young lady, you have it all wrong. People don’t hate you. You did not make it as far as you did in the contest on your merit. You made it on the basis of your mother’s intense popularity, and some politically motivated contest voters who campaigned by hook and by crook to keep you there. It is not anyone’s fault you are out. You advanced way past your level of competence.”
In the rounds of commentary, I would like to note further that her mother, the ex-half-term governor Sarah Palin, has noticeably advanced way past her level of competence as well.
This woman demonstrates this time after time. Last week it was “all the 57 states,” and then the latest gaffe was referring to North Korea as “our good friend and ally.” But she regularly makes new ones as often as she speaks from anything but a prepared script. We’d wish that all of these were deviations in use of the English language, such as her Bushisms, or slips of the tongue. But lo, many come from just plain ignorance. Others come from faulty reasoning, or accepting platitudes and talking points provided to her as a rationale. Worse, she does not seem to know a lie when she tells one, but she goes right on.
Despite her status as a political celebrity, which most of us have difficulty understanding, Ms. Palin is in no way ready for political leadership in government. Her incompetence was demonstrated in her failed attempt at a governor’s duties and responsibilities. She then walked away from those troublesome problems to pursue the money making machine of being a celebrity.
Ms. Palin’s popularity has been fed largely by the media. In a similar fashion, Paris Hilton has a name that is known in the households throughout the country. Should Ms. Hilton decide on a right-wing political career, one might suppose that she would receive lots of publicity and would advance rapidly in popularity among a segment of Americans -- and thus shortly reach her level of political incompetence.
Without constant media coverage neither Ms. Palin nor Ms. Hilton would matter much in the universe of human concern. Ms. Palin’s flower would fade and wither because it has no other sustenance. Some of us would, of course, be much less irritable people if this were to be the case.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Thursday, November 18, 2010
THE DEFICIT CONUNDRUM
President Obama mistakenly placed confidence in the “bi-partisan” deficit commission he appointed to study and make recommendations about reasonable ways to reach a balanced budget in five years. From the report released by the co-chairmen, it would seem that the work of this group was hi-jacked. No democrats are pleased, but a few republicans like it. One leader has flippantly made the best suggestion of all, observing that he might need to go into a witness protection program to escape the public wrath.
Even as a starting point for talks among the commissioners most of these ideas have little merit. We need not commit now to raising the retirement age for social security to age 70. Doing away with tax deductions for the middle class, such as health care and mortgage interest, while cutting the tax rates for high income earners and corporations is a notion dead on arrival.
While not unrelated to the deficit, reforming the tax system is a whole different issue. Likewise, just as related to deficits is the whole matter of health care costs in this country. Proposing a government-run, price-controlled system like Medicare for everybody would have been just as appropriate and highly effective in curtailing deficits. How far would that have gotten with the republicans?
It is difficult to see the value of some of their ideas, even as points of discussion for the commission. But perhaps the shock will jar some of us out of our sense of complacency.
Perhaps it is strange to say, but Social Security is NOT the immediate problem. Some thirty or so years ago, politicians decided to put SS “on budget.” Social Security itself has been running a surplus for years, right up to now. Politicians wanted that SS surplus to offset and minimize the annual regular budget deficits they were running -- so those would not look so big. They created confusion.
ALL DEFICITS during recent decades were actually much bigger, but showed up less because SS ran surpluses. Now it is headed for a tougher period, and the actual deficits are going to show up big – unless taxes are raised or spending cut. But SS is NOT the real deficit problem! Neither is Medicare, now.
A few tweaks will fix SS for a hundred years. Make a month or so advancement in retirement age every few years. Increase salaries upon which payroll taxes (SS & Med) are levied from $106,000 by $1,000 each year for a decade or two. Increase payroll taxes by 0.1% each decade for three. As a result, Social Security is fixed for a century and Medicare can be made better by a similar increase.
But the rest of the budget is much more of a problem. The big expenditure is military. Stopping wars and reducing our presence abroad in numerous unneeded military bases would be a huge start to a manageable budget. War costs the last decade have exceeded $2 trillion – all unpaid for with tax levies. This is the 800 pound gorilla in the budget room that nobody wants to recognize.
Then we can give up all those fiscally silly and politically hypocritical ideas about cutting taxes – anyone’s taxes. All of the Bush income tax cuts must be allowed to expire now. That takes $1.8 trillion off the anticipated deficit for the next ten years. For fiscal responsibility, that is NOW.
Third, there is a need to reduce the advantage of the rich over everybody else in present tax rates and tax dodges. In 2007 the top 1% got 24% of the income in 2007, compared with 9% in 1976. Their income grew at 10% a year from 2002 to 2007, while the middle class lost purchasing power. That is a tax system out of control and grossly unfair to the working American. It has to be stopped. Raise tax rates, and change the rules favoring the rich over everybody else.
Next, all of our working age people need to have employment, either private or public. America cannot afford the failure of productivity from a huge segment of its population. Unproductive people not only rob the economy of any contribution, but they are a liability and a burden on the worker-producers. Something has to be done about those in our population who do nothing productive, yet draw down the bounty of productivity from others. Those able to work, without private sector jobs, should be trained and working on infra-structure and public service jobs.
A final remedy, as a money producer and a booster to the economy, is a consumer tax on imported goods and services. That may be called a tariff, but it does not deserve its bad reputation. Starting points should be crude oil and manufactured goods. It is unrealistic to expect to maintain our high standard of living and at the same time compete with the low wage levels being paid in much of the world. Some believe that we need a major consumption tax. Rather than retail sales and gas taxes, which have no economic growth value, let’s just tax those things we import and increase domestic production and jobs at the same time.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Even as a starting point for talks among the commissioners most of these ideas have little merit. We need not commit now to raising the retirement age for social security to age 70. Doing away with tax deductions for the middle class, such as health care and mortgage interest, while cutting the tax rates for high income earners and corporations is a notion dead on arrival.
While not unrelated to the deficit, reforming the tax system is a whole different issue. Likewise, just as related to deficits is the whole matter of health care costs in this country. Proposing a government-run, price-controlled system like Medicare for everybody would have been just as appropriate and highly effective in curtailing deficits. How far would that have gotten with the republicans?
It is difficult to see the value of some of their ideas, even as points of discussion for the commission. But perhaps the shock will jar some of us out of our sense of complacency.
Perhaps it is strange to say, but Social Security is NOT the immediate problem. Some thirty or so years ago, politicians decided to put SS “on budget.” Social Security itself has been running a surplus for years, right up to now. Politicians wanted that SS surplus to offset and minimize the annual regular budget deficits they were running -- so those would not look so big. They created confusion.
ALL DEFICITS during recent decades were actually much bigger, but showed up less because SS ran surpluses. Now it is headed for a tougher period, and the actual deficits are going to show up big – unless taxes are raised or spending cut. But SS is NOT the real deficit problem! Neither is Medicare, now.
A few tweaks will fix SS for a hundred years. Make a month or so advancement in retirement age every few years. Increase salaries upon which payroll taxes (SS & Med) are levied from $106,000 by $1,000 each year for a decade or two. Increase payroll taxes by 0.1% each decade for three. As a result, Social Security is fixed for a century and Medicare can be made better by a similar increase.
But the rest of the budget is much more of a problem. The big expenditure is military. Stopping wars and reducing our presence abroad in numerous unneeded military bases would be a huge start to a manageable budget. War costs the last decade have exceeded $2 trillion – all unpaid for with tax levies. This is the 800 pound gorilla in the budget room that nobody wants to recognize.
Then we can give up all those fiscally silly and politically hypocritical ideas about cutting taxes – anyone’s taxes. All of the Bush income tax cuts must be allowed to expire now. That takes $1.8 trillion off the anticipated deficit for the next ten years. For fiscal responsibility, that is NOW.
Third, there is a need to reduce the advantage of the rich over everybody else in present tax rates and tax dodges. In 2007 the top 1% got 24% of the income in 2007, compared with 9% in 1976. Their income grew at 10% a year from 2002 to 2007, while the middle class lost purchasing power. That is a tax system out of control and grossly unfair to the working American. It has to be stopped. Raise tax rates, and change the rules favoring the rich over everybody else.
Next, all of our working age people need to have employment, either private or public. America cannot afford the failure of productivity from a huge segment of its population. Unproductive people not only rob the economy of any contribution, but they are a liability and a burden on the worker-producers. Something has to be done about those in our population who do nothing productive, yet draw down the bounty of productivity from others. Those able to work, without private sector jobs, should be trained and working on infra-structure and public service jobs.
A final remedy, as a money producer and a booster to the economy, is a consumer tax on imported goods and services. That may be called a tariff, but it does not deserve its bad reputation. Starting points should be crude oil and manufactured goods. It is unrealistic to expect to maintain our high standard of living and at the same time compete with the low wage levels being paid in much of the world. Some believe that we need a major consumption tax. Rather than retail sales and gas taxes, which have no economic growth value, let’s just tax those things we import and increase domestic production and jobs at the same time.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
ELECTION A MEDIA SUCCESS
While pundits everywhere are assessing the blame and the rewards, and awarding accolades and censures to antagonist parties and their leaders, let us properly frame this election what it actually was – a remarkable success for the right wing media.
This election was not a repudiation of Mr. Obama’s agenda, upon which he was overwhelmingly elected just two years earlier. The election was not an endorsement of the republican party’s obstructive policy of negativism toward everything.
Studies indicate that the majority of voters never really understood Mr. Obama’s legislative proposals for such intricate problems as health care, unemployment, the banking system crisis and regulation, stimulus program, or any of the other major initiatives. Although in the election of Mr. Obama in 2008, voters gave positive affirmation to generalities and principles of corrective action, they had never seen the details nor did they ever comprehend the legislative process by which a cobbled version of these appeared.
Indeed, voters never understood the proposals or the enactments, even though some became vociferously and viciously antagonistic. How did so many voters go from being basically in favor of fundamental changes in reforming our health care system to a position of totally rejecting an enactment which contained features they had previously endorsed -- without ever giving the careful study to be informed? This brings us to a most significant understanding of the meaning of the election, which appears to be forgotten by many who pontificate as political pundits and columnists.
The fact is that the voters did NOT reject Mr. Obama’s programs on health care, nor most of his other proposals for solution to America’s problems! Instead, voters rejected the CARICATURES of Obama programs shown in the media. Some may have also rejected the CARICATURE of Mr. Obama himself, as depicted to them constantly by the right wing republican media.
Obstructionist republicans made no serious proposals for any of the problems facing the nation. They opposed the effort to stop collapse of the banking system, popularly identified by them as “the Wall Street bailout.” (Nobody notices now that all that money has been paid back.) Likewise they objected to saving America’s auto industry, a success which has also mostly been repaid. When gobs of campaign money came to them from lobbyists, republicans tried to emasculate or kill the banking regulatory and consumer protection bill. Although the stimulus bill successfully created enough jobs to reverse the loss trend, republicans have vilified that as “wasteful spending” while grabbing projects for their own states.
None of this logically adds up to anything but a success for the democrats, yet the republicans have painted a picture of an over-reaching, socialistic government abusing its power, regulating and taking away freedoms from the “people,” anti-business, and not in the nation’s best interest. We have seen the Hitler mustaches and insulting signs. Their media outlets handled those lies for them for them so repetitively well that gullible voters have swallowed it.
Mainstream media are not exempt from blame in the spreading of false and misleading information to the public. Unfounded accusations have no place in the news of ethical journalists and stations. Outright bias and criticism, flying in the face of contradictory facts, have no right to demand news coverage from honest media. Nevertheless, in addition to their own wholly owned media, such as Fox and right wing radio time, the republicans have been able to enjoy a prosperous, but undeserved, pulpit from the mainstream media. One wonders why?
Unfortunately, republicans and their media were not satisfied with their advantage such free and donated time on the air. They also wanted to buy the airwaves for their candidates and their version of the issues. Obliging them, five republicans on the Supreme Court ruled that individuals, groups, and corporations could donate unlimited sums in the support of favored candidates and issues.
From this came a unending plethora of attack advertising like never seen before. In highly contested districts, the blitz must have been a veritable nightmare. No one knows just how much was spent on supporting republican candidates by sources outside their district, outside their state, and even outside the country. Sums gathered by such groups as the U.S. Chamber, Rove’s group, tea party support groups, and others with patriotic sounding names passed well over the $150 million mark at last count. No one really knows because there are no required legal records of either the amounts or the donors. Republicans blocked that disclosure from a vote in Congress.
What a shady way to run an election! Money in the hundreds of millions coming from unidentified sources remaining anonymous in the shadows – is this democracy?
This is certain to bring government by special interest groups with big money – operated in the interests of people with big money. A hundred million – or two or three – is chump change if it does nothing but save these same people $700 billion in taxes over the next ten years by extending the Bush tax cuts favoring them over average citizens. (Look no further for reasons why they hate Mr. Obama.)
Yes, this election was a big victory for the republican media and the special interests, and it was a big money maker for the mainstream media owners.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
This election was not a repudiation of Mr. Obama’s agenda, upon which he was overwhelmingly elected just two years earlier. The election was not an endorsement of the republican party’s obstructive policy of negativism toward everything.
Studies indicate that the majority of voters never really understood Mr. Obama’s legislative proposals for such intricate problems as health care, unemployment, the banking system crisis and regulation, stimulus program, or any of the other major initiatives. Although in the election of Mr. Obama in 2008, voters gave positive affirmation to generalities and principles of corrective action, they had never seen the details nor did they ever comprehend the legislative process by which a cobbled version of these appeared.
Indeed, voters never understood the proposals or the enactments, even though some became vociferously and viciously antagonistic. How did so many voters go from being basically in favor of fundamental changes in reforming our health care system to a position of totally rejecting an enactment which contained features they had previously endorsed -- without ever giving the careful study to be informed? This brings us to a most significant understanding of the meaning of the election, which appears to be forgotten by many who pontificate as political pundits and columnists.
The fact is that the voters did NOT reject Mr. Obama’s programs on health care, nor most of his other proposals for solution to America’s problems! Instead, voters rejected the CARICATURES of Obama programs shown in the media. Some may have also rejected the CARICATURE of Mr. Obama himself, as depicted to them constantly by the right wing republican media.
Obstructionist republicans made no serious proposals for any of the problems facing the nation. They opposed the effort to stop collapse of the banking system, popularly identified by them as “the Wall Street bailout.” (Nobody notices now that all that money has been paid back.) Likewise they objected to saving America’s auto industry, a success which has also mostly been repaid. When gobs of campaign money came to them from lobbyists, republicans tried to emasculate or kill the banking regulatory and consumer protection bill. Although the stimulus bill successfully created enough jobs to reverse the loss trend, republicans have vilified that as “wasteful spending” while grabbing projects for their own states.
None of this logically adds up to anything but a success for the democrats, yet the republicans have painted a picture of an over-reaching, socialistic government abusing its power, regulating and taking away freedoms from the “people,” anti-business, and not in the nation’s best interest. We have seen the Hitler mustaches and insulting signs. Their media outlets handled those lies for them for them so repetitively well that gullible voters have swallowed it.
Mainstream media are not exempt from blame in the spreading of false and misleading information to the public. Unfounded accusations have no place in the news of ethical journalists and stations. Outright bias and criticism, flying in the face of contradictory facts, have no right to demand news coverage from honest media. Nevertheless, in addition to their own wholly owned media, such as Fox and right wing radio time, the republicans have been able to enjoy a prosperous, but undeserved, pulpit from the mainstream media. One wonders why?
Unfortunately, republicans and their media were not satisfied with their advantage such free and donated time on the air. They also wanted to buy the airwaves for their candidates and their version of the issues. Obliging them, five republicans on the Supreme Court ruled that individuals, groups, and corporations could donate unlimited sums in the support of favored candidates and issues.
From this came a unending plethora of attack advertising like never seen before. In highly contested districts, the blitz must have been a veritable nightmare. No one knows just how much was spent on supporting republican candidates by sources outside their district, outside their state, and even outside the country. Sums gathered by such groups as the U.S. Chamber, Rove’s group, tea party support groups, and others with patriotic sounding names passed well over the $150 million mark at last count. No one really knows because there are no required legal records of either the amounts or the donors. Republicans blocked that disclosure from a vote in Congress.
What a shady way to run an election! Money in the hundreds of millions coming from unidentified sources remaining anonymous in the shadows – is this democracy?
This is certain to bring government by special interest groups with big money – operated in the interests of people with big money. A hundred million – or two or three – is chump change if it does nothing but save these same people $700 billion in taxes over the next ten years by extending the Bush tax cuts favoring them over average citizens. (Look no further for reasons why they hate Mr. Obama.)
Yes, this election was a big victory for the republican media and the special interests, and it was a big money maker for the mainstream media owners.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Friday, November 05, 2010
PROFLIGATE REPUBLICANS?
“If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing,” so says David Stockman, budget director for President Ronald Reagan, writing in an opinion column in the New York Times.
Stockman says in his Four Deformations of the Apocalypse that this nation’s fiscal woes come “not from big spending democrats, but instead the republican party’s embrace of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.”
Who would ever have expected such views from the principal fiscal advisor to the iconic conservative republican president revered by all his followers from 1980 down to the present time? One can only presume that (1) Mr. Stockman’s heart may not have been in some of the actions during that past administration; (2) he considers this an entirely different time and circumstance; or (3) he has learned much from studying the economic and budgetary effects of the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush tax cuts. We suspect the latter of the three.
Pointing to the growth in the national debt which he says may become as much as $18 trillion under present projections, Stockman says this huge sum will be 40 times its earlier size of $450 billion in 1970. He points not to growth in spending programs, but to the cutting of revenues. In other words, he is again saying it is not “big spending” but short-sighted revenue tax cuts that are creating the problems now and on into the projected future.
He says, “It is the ideological tax cutters who killed the republican fiscal religion.” Thus he indicates that maintaining a sufficient and reliable revenue stream is the first necessity of true fiscal responsibility.
Stockman says that by 2009 the tax-cutters had lowered the federal revenue stream to only 15% of the gross domestic product, the lowest since 1940. “Republicans joined in a shameless free-lunch fiscal policy,” he says of the tax cuts.
Reagan’s fiscal advisor goes on to name bad tax policy as a primary cause of the current recession, and he abhors the fact that it has weakened the middle class and led to much greater wealth concentration among just a few within the American population. Stockman points to the statistical facts that “from 2002 to 2006 the upper 1% among us received two-thirds of the national income while the lower 90% received only 12% of the nation’s income.” While not mentioned, mathematically that leaves the 9% of the population just under the top 1% (making up the rest of the top 10%) getting a whopping 21% of all income, or two-thirds of that not already taken by the top 1%.
Stockman says that this represents “the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.” Under any standards of judgment, the gross imbalance of income in this nation is unfair and discriminatory in favor of the wealthy. Paraphrasing Mr. Stockman, “It stinks.”
Those who make such calculations tell us that just re-enacting the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy adds another $400 billion a year to our debt. Re-enacting all of the Bush tax cuts would add about than $1.3 trillion to our debt projections for the decade. No true fiscal conservative can rationally justify such actions.
Mr. Stockman is also concerned with “deformations” other than tax-cuts and a tax policy with bad social and economic consequences. He points toward allowing the loss of manufacturing jobs out of the country, both in trade policies and tax policies allowing our own industries to take jobs out and ship goods back. Our trade policies wreak devastation on our economy, our jobs, and on our tax collections.
All of the talk about cutting discretionary expenditures will not solve America’s fiscal problems. No really knowledgeable person believes that this alone will even make a dent in reducing our projected deficits and debt. It is time for politicians to stop lying to the voters about this.
There is nowhere that this basic lesson is needed more than in low tax myopic Oklahoma, where revenues have been successively cut and special interests served with tax breaks and exemptions, until there are insufficient revenues to provide for a decent quality of services to the people. Here we have illogical voters demanding and expecting a quality education system, humanly decent penal institutions, children’s protective services to save the mistreated children, and all the other accoutrements of good government without being willing to carry a tax burden above the lowest states in the nation.
Republicans expect above average schools from below average tax support. They expect the same miracle in more and higher quality degrees from our colleges and universities with barely marginal support, transferring costs to parents.
It is time to stop the political posturing and the grandstanding plays before the voters, and it is time to start facing the hard problems and talking truth. Most rational people, like Stockman, know that it is time to stop blowing smoke at the public and to start making real progress through revenue enhancement, as well as carefully screening expenditures.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Stockman says in his Four Deformations of the Apocalypse that this nation’s fiscal woes come “not from big spending democrats, but instead the republican party’s embrace of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.”
Who would ever have expected such views from the principal fiscal advisor to the iconic conservative republican president revered by all his followers from 1980 down to the present time? One can only presume that (1) Mr. Stockman’s heart may not have been in some of the actions during that past administration; (2) he considers this an entirely different time and circumstance; or (3) he has learned much from studying the economic and budgetary effects of the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush tax cuts. We suspect the latter of the three.
Pointing to the growth in the national debt which he says may become as much as $18 trillion under present projections, Stockman says this huge sum will be 40 times its earlier size of $450 billion in 1970. He points not to growth in spending programs, but to the cutting of revenues. In other words, he is again saying it is not “big spending” but short-sighted revenue tax cuts that are creating the problems now and on into the projected future.
He says, “It is the ideological tax cutters who killed the republican fiscal religion.” Thus he indicates that maintaining a sufficient and reliable revenue stream is the first necessity of true fiscal responsibility.
Stockman says that by 2009 the tax-cutters had lowered the federal revenue stream to only 15% of the gross domestic product, the lowest since 1940. “Republicans joined in a shameless free-lunch fiscal policy,” he says of the tax cuts.
Reagan’s fiscal advisor goes on to name bad tax policy as a primary cause of the current recession, and he abhors the fact that it has weakened the middle class and led to much greater wealth concentration among just a few within the American population. Stockman points to the statistical facts that “from 2002 to 2006 the upper 1% among us received two-thirds of the national income while the lower 90% received only 12% of the nation’s income.” While not mentioned, mathematically that leaves the 9% of the population just under the top 1% (making up the rest of the top 10%) getting a whopping 21% of all income, or two-thirds of that not already taken by the top 1%.
Stockman says that this represents “the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.” Under any standards of judgment, the gross imbalance of income in this nation is unfair and discriminatory in favor of the wealthy. Paraphrasing Mr. Stockman, “It stinks.”
Those who make such calculations tell us that just re-enacting the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy adds another $400 billion a year to our debt. Re-enacting all of the Bush tax cuts would add about than $1.3 trillion to our debt projections for the decade. No true fiscal conservative can rationally justify such actions.
Mr. Stockman is also concerned with “deformations” other than tax-cuts and a tax policy with bad social and economic consequences. He points toward allowing the loss of manufacturing jobs out of the country, both in trade policies and tax policies allowing our own industries to take jobs out and ship goods back. Our trade policies wreak devastation on our economy, our jobs, and on our tax collections.
All of the talk about cutting discretionary expenditures will not solve America’s fiscal problems. No really knowledgeable person believes that this alone will even make a dent in reducing our projected deficits and debt. It is time for politicians to stop lying to the voters about this.
There is nowhere that this basic lesson is needed more than in low tax myopic Oklahoma, where revenues have been successively cut and special interests served with tax breaks and exemptions, until there are insufficient revenues to provide for a decent quality of services to the people. Here we have illogical voters demanding and expecting a quality education system, humanly decent penal institutions, children’s protective services to save the mistreated children, and all the other accoutrements of good government without being willing to carry a tax burden above the lowest states in the nation.
Republicans expect above average schools from below average tax support. They expect the same miracle in more and higher quality degrees from our colleges and universities with barely marginal support, transferring costs to parents.
It is time to stop the political posturing and the grandstanding plays before the voters, and it is time to start facing the hard problems and talking truth. Most rational people, like Stockman, know that it is time to stop blowing smoke at the public and to start making real progress through revenue enhancement, as well as carefully screening expenditures.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
