David Brooks is an insufferable jackass. I have no use for his designation of ‘cluster’ and ‘network’ liberals. But he does come close to approximating the truth with this bit:
The big story of the week is that Obama is returning to first principles, re-establishing himself as a network liberal. This isn’t a move to the center or triangulation. It’s not the Clinton model or the Truman model or any of the other stale categories people are trying to impose on him. It’s standing at one spot in the political universe and trying to build temporarily alliances with people at other spots in the political universe.
You don’t have to abandon your principles to cut a deal. You just have to acknowledge that there are other people in the world and even a president doesn’t get to stamp his foot and have his way.
Cluster liberals in the House and the commentariat are angry. They have no strategy for how Obama could have better played his weak hand — with a coming Republican majority, an expiring tax law and several Democratic senators from red states insisting on extending all the cuts. They just sense the waning of their moment and are howling in protest.
They believe nonliberals are blackmailers or hostage-takers or the concentrated repositories of human evil, so, of course, they see coalition-building as collaboration. They are also convinced that Democrats should never start a negotiation because they will always end up losing in the end. (Perhaps psychologists can explain the interesting combination: intellectual self-confidence alongside a political inferiority complex).
I think it is overstating the case to say that liberal critics had no strategy for how Obama could have done better. I believe our advice was to play chicken with the Republicans and take the tax cuts down to the moment before the ball drops in Times Square. If necessary, let them expire and make damn sure everyone in the country knows why their taxes went up. Yes, it would be damaging to the economy in the short-term and would probably rattle Wall Street a bit (as the White House warned Chuck Schumer). But it would be good politics and great for the budget deficit. And, the GOP would probably have backed down at some point.
The flaw in our thinking isn’t that we had no strategy for how to win the battle over tax cuts. I think the flaw might have been in focusing too exclusively on tax cuts and not enough on what waging that battle would cost in other areas, like getting unemployment insurance extended, getting the START treaty ratified, getting a continuing resolution, passing the Defense Authorization, and whatever else is on the must-do list during the lame duck. The president has to weigh everything, and he apparently made the calculation that fighting it out on the tax cuts had too much downside and too much uncertainty. I find that frustrating but he’s not making easy decisions. I wouldn’t trade the START treaty for millionaire’s tax cuts, so I understand how difficult it is to put everything in proper balance.
On another point, I find it a bit disconcerting to find myself much more temperamentally aligned with Chuck Schumer than the president. Call me a cluster Democrat if you want, but I do basically see the Republicans as “the concentrated repositories of human evil.” I don’t see Dick Lugar or Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski that way. But they are almost irrelevant these days. Most incoming Republicans are petty criminals, paid to have stupid greedhead opinions, or genuinely so stupid as to not know they’re supposed to be putting on a show. You negotiate with them because you have to, not because there is an intrinsic merit in it or because you get better policy that way.
Yet, in the universe of liberal opinion, I guess Brooks would call me a Network Democrat. But that is only because he is an idiot.
“You negotiate with them because you have to, not because there is an intrinsic merit in it or because you get better policy that way.”
I guess Brooks would call me a Network Democrat.
…………………………………….
Yep. Bu$h was ‘stupid’ and Obama is ‘weak’.
How do you keep writing as if such dreck bore any relationship to reality ?
I have much more fun
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2010/12/10-december-liesgossipcharacter.html
It must be nice for Brooks to sit in his chair and write about this as an intellectual exercize.
The UI extension is what the Republicans have as bait for the fat cat tax cuts.
They don’t care if people suffer, after all they aren’t suffering.
It’s also a class battle. Republicans since Reagan don’t want Those People to live the American Dream.
One of the things going on that I don’t see noticed is that the Reagan Doctrine is being taken apart and banished piece by piece. This will have a profound effect on the US over time.
The Reagan Doctrine prevented opportunity for all and narrowed it down to only a few.
The few want things to stay the same. They are fighting tooth and nail against any change in their status.
Huh? How is Reaganism being taken apart and banished? Seems to me it’s never been healthier, in large part thanks to Clinton and to Obama’s pathetic obeisance to it.
So, let’s see: you know a “cluster liberal” because s/he calls the Rep “hostage takers”, thus repeating a phrase from Obama, who is not a “cluster liberal”. Perhaps psychologists can explain David Brooks’s bizarre success at turning cognitive dissonance into a career.
As to strategy, what I want to know is, why did the Dems not bring up separate bills on the middle-class tax cut and the millionaire tax cut? Was there some real parliamentary problem? If so, somebody please explain.
Or were they just, as usual, afraid of embarrassing Reps and turncoats? Or do they really think voters WANT a tax cut for scum like Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the Wall Street thieves? Or are they openly working for those same thieves for money? Or do they just have the strategic smarts of 2-year-olds? I’m honestly baffled by behavior that anybody paying attention knows is both crappy policy and even worse politics.
Seems to me all it would take would be for Obama to explain whatever real obstacles there were to doing the smart and good thing. But all we get are lame attempts at setting up false dichotomies as the only possible choices. Same with DADT. I’ve about had it.
“I think the flaw might have been in focusing too exclusively on tax cuts and no enough on what waging that battle would cost in other areas, like getting unemployment insurance extended, getting the START treaty ratified, getting a continuing resolution, passing the Defense Authorization, and whatever else is on the must-do list during the lame duck.”
What on earth makes you think this unnecessary “compromise” on taxes has anything to do with the other issues you list? I can’t believe you believe this, given history and your own writing. When did being “nice” to Republicans ever do anything but fertilize their bullyboy psyches? Why do you “have to” negotiate with them when there are better ways?
it’s calendar days, not playing nice.
You’re just buying into their lame excuses. Who put all this in the last few days in the first place? This was no some crisis imposed by God or somebody — it was a choice the Dem leaders made. Which is just another perfect case of incompetence, stupidity, or corruption.
No one in my part of the world cares what David Brooks thinks. And his analysis seems always to be of Democrats when he himself is a Republican. Why is that?
There ain’t no cudgel you can use against folks who disagree with you about what the issues are in this dustup in the Democratic Party. That’s because the argument is about the present and the future, not about ideology. The future if this passes is that you add an additional $800 billion to the deficit (and debt), you undercut the financing of Social Security and Medicare, and you get no lasting stimulus from it. It’s a second half-measure stimulus and it depends on the MOTU being satisfied and deciding to restart the economy again. And if that happens, it will be very apparent that the so-called free market is rigged more that even hardcore Marxists are arguing right now, that it really is a socialist planned economy ruled by oligarchs who are private in name only. And the entire Congress is a Potemkin village.
Socialist? Don’t really see that. Fascist or feudal, maybe, but “socialist” implies some economic justice. Fascist and feudal economies are just as much centrally planned as socialist ones are. The “free market” being a complete myth, I can’t think of a single economy in history, maybe this side of some small islands, that have not been centrally planned, one way or another.
Do take what I said technically. There was a dash of hyperbole. (If Brooks can get away with it in his “analysis”, then I can put a sprinkle of hyperbole in my argument, can’t I?) The point is that if the MOTU can start and stop the economy at will, the labor market at least is not a free market. And there are probably some other markets that are also like that.
It really doesn’t matter whether you call it socialist or fascist in commonday parlance. The epithet of choice these days seems to be socialist; that seems to warn people off policies more than the epithet fascist does, although Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Beck have tried mightily to change that.
You last point is technically correct. Every single economy ever in history has been a mixed economy because social action does not follow the nice clean lines academics draw in order to analyze data, and to create a guild of craftsmen who can control supply.
DaveW, thanks for your multiple contributions to this thread (particularly the line about David Brooks using cognitive dissonance as a career strategy!).
I think your tagline (“I agree. Now go out and make me do it.”) is great, and a great reminder for us in these times. My sense of Obama is that, for whatever mix of reasons, he has pretty consistently throughout his career positioned himself in the center of the Democratic coalition. (For supporting evidence, check his voting records in the Illinois and US Senates.)
That suggests that if we’re able to organize a larger, more powerful bloc of voters to Obama’s left, he will respond by moving to the left. If, on the other hand, the organized base of the Democratic coalition moves right, so will Obama.
“The flaw in our thinking isn’t that we had no strategy for how to win the battle over tax cuts. I think the flaw might have been in focusing too exclusively on tax cuts “
I’d argue that the flaw was in waiting until the very last second to figure out what to do. Rove set this trap 10 FRIGGING YEARS AGO, and we’ve been in power for TWO FRIGGING years, and we’re in this mess because we waited to do this at the last second. WTF????
“They believe nonliberals are blackmailers or hostage-takers or the concentrated repositories of human evil, so, of course, they see coalition-building as collaboration.”
A lot of people DO believe this because it’s TRUE. The individual people he cites might not be evil people, but their ends surely are. And the fact that since before the election they would have rather seen the entire economy explode into wordwide depression over their precious ideology, and not provide any cooperation for two freaking years to make things better just proves it. Fuck Brooks.
I can’t let this go, and if that mendacious son of a bitch was in front of me I’d take a baseball bat to his head:”They believe nonliberals are blackmailers or hostage-takers or the concentrated repositories of human evil, so, of course, they see coalition-building as collaboration.”
This little shit obviously can’t remember what’s happened for the last 2 years. This is EXACTLY what Obama told the GOP at their retreat during the HCR battle. All of the lies they spread: death panels, medicare cuts, socialism, a ‘foreign’ POTUS that people like Brooks did NOTHING to refute made it impossible for the Republicans to work with Obama without seeming to be appeasers and traitors to their voters. Obama told them this, and Brooks no doubt heard it, and now he’s saying it’s our side that’s at fault. Goddman him to hell.
I love it…repositories of evil.
Why do Progressives hate rich people so much? Don’t the top 1 percent of income earners, while earning 24 percent of all income, pay 42 percent of all federal income taxes?
If a couple earns $250,000 a year in California, for example, that couple pays 35 percent of their income in federal income taxes, pays 11 percent of their income in California income taxes, and pays 7.5 percent of their income in FICA taxes on the first 109,000 earned.
Throw in the other stuff (i.e. sales tax, property tax, etc. etc.), and that couple easily pays over one-half of their income to Government.
Those evil, greedy bastards! How dare they want keep half of what they earn!
Come on, Progressives, give the evil rich a break…they are paying for you Welfare State!
Liberty for All, isn’t it true that in the real world, your hypothetical California couple will qualify for multiple tax deduction, exemptions and credits that would significantly lower their tax rate, most likely to well below one-half of their income?
Yes and no…if the couple acts irresponsibly and has lots of kids (dependent exemption) and buys a house that’s too expensive (mortgage interest deduction), they’ll get lots of deductions and pay less in taxes…but I doubt that it would be “well below” half.
Why do liberals hate the rich? We don’t. We want to keep them from stealing the rest of our assets.
It’s not all millionaires who are evil, just the ones who buy access in Congress from Republicans and Democrats to feather their own nests.
Who is evil are politicians of any party who refuse to extend unemployment insurance benefits when there are not enough jobs for people, blame the unemployed for their condition, make excuses for the fraudsters who have been stealing innocent people’s homes, covet Social Security money for their Wall Street donors, and then ask the middle class to borrow money from China to pay for tax cuts for the folks who sunk half a billion dollars into their campaigns, and then lecture us about Jesus. And Christmas.
Of course you are only here to assert your lies without data.
How dare they keep half of what they earn? Right. It’s theirs. They stole it fair and square.
So you’re going on record that all rich people stole their money? That’s the official position?
In that case, execute ’em all and take their money!
Prediction…if we were to take all of the money on earth, and distribute it equally to every man, woman and child on the planet…within a generation, for the most part, those who are rich now will be rich then, and those who are poor now will be poor then.
Nope, but the ones most interested in tax cuts seem to have.
Heck, you are so full of abstractions. I’m not saying to take the money and redistribute it. I’m pointing out the asymmetric advantages most rich folks, especially the ones who control corporations have over ordinary people.
If what you said was true, there never would be nouveau riche. They used to have a saying in South Carolina, “galluses to galluses in three generations”.
I’m actually wanting freer markets with more equitable access to information and more equal power of contract. That doesn’t exist now. And the proof of it is the fact that increased productivity of workers has not led to increased wages and salaries commensurate with the growth in productivity. That was not the case in the period from the end of World War II until 1980.
How do you propose to obtain freer markets? I’m all for that. The problem is that you conflate “big business” that does use its considerable resources to access government power to gain economic advantage, with small- and medium-sized businesses that actually create most of the weath and jobs in this country, but do not have the resources to influence Congress. Big business can and does use political influence to thwart smaller, more efficient competitors, but the blame does not lie with Big Business, but with the fact that Government has too much power over the economy. Get government out of the way, and the oligarchic corporations will be forced to compete with smaller, more efficient entrepenuerial enterprises.
We’ve had the discussion about productivity…the problem is the education and skill level of today’s workforce. Want evidence? The unemployment rate among college graduates is 5%.
Very few small business owners have $250,000 incomes; I think the figure is 2%. Very few medium-sized business owners/CEOs have million-dollar incomes. But the fact is that there are small business/medium business owners who pay their employees generously and those who use every trick in the book to get their employees to work for free. The latter ones are more likely in my experience to be affected by the extension of tax cuts on income over $250,000.
We have a belling the cat problem here. Governments from the beginning of time have provided the environment and rules under which trade can take place. So the idea of getting government out of the way completely is an illusion. So if you grant that, the argument is about what the functions of government are in the economy. But the issue you raise is fundamentally political. In a political environment in which the Supreme Court says (1) that money is speech and (2) political contributors don’t have to identify themselves, the government is for sale to the highest bidder, or more accurately to the candidate who can run the most ads and field a ground campaign. Also, the doctrine of free speech means that neither the candidate nor the ads need to tell the truth. In this environment, the folks who runs on a small government platform very soon end up creating legislation that enlarges government subsidies and loosens legal constraints on their donors. More efficient entrepreneurial enterprises, unless they are also large and well-financed, do not have the institutional and money power to compete.
What will happen when you take the government out of the way is that the economic system will evolve to larger and larger and more oligopolistic firms, just because there is an information processing advantage in large firms.
Where the natural alliance is is between small businesses and ordinary people in getting government to police the market so that a competitive environment is preserved. We have lacked that for about 40 years, and we have had “deregulation” since the Carter administration. As a result larger and larger firms have dominated markets and become oligopolistic and oligopsonistic operators.
The government is the only institutional power large enough to counterbalance big corporations, but only if the big corporations and their wealthy investors are not allowed to buy representation in Congress. The public knew this one hundred years ago when anti-trust laws were first enacted.
About productivity, it is misleading to assume that productivity is confined to a college-educated workforce. In fact, overqualifying positions to take only college educated workers often reduces productivity.
As for the unemployment rate, the 5.1% figure applies only to those with a bachelors degree and no advanced degree. But that is:
But advanced degrees don’t necessarily help:
The problem right now is not with productivity, but with demand. The economy could sacrifice a little productivity if it dramatically increased demand. One of the ways to do that is counterintuitive to most business owners. And that is because of the difference between a single owner doing it and the government requiring it of all owners. That way is to shorten the legal workweek and mandate double pay for folks who are required to work overtime or make less than a certain minimum salary. It does not affect competitiveness as long as it is strictly enforced so all employers comply. And it actually increases productivity because less fatigued workers make fewer mistakes and can work faster and with more courtesy. Most importantly, it increases aggregate demand, which then uses growth in consumer purchasing to get the economy out of the hole.
In addition, well-done on-the-job training can further improve productivity. And college graduates in fact need a certain amount of on-the-job training to get up to speed in each organization that they work for. In a world of small government, employers would do this as a practical way of improving their bottom line. Most businesses externalize this to educational instiatutions, especially public ones, and to their competitors (which is why employers like to hire folks with industry experience).
Tarheel…that’s one hell of a response! It may take me all weekend to respond…marital difficulty awaits if I do it now.
Quick note…as a business owner…for a given position, if I pay too little, I cannot attract the talent I need to run my business…If I pay too much, I am at a competitive disadvantage with my competitors…
Generosity and Greed have nothing to do with it…
Have a great weekend.
Figured you probably had a dog in the hunt.
I understand the bind that you are in as an individual business owner. That bind is why minimum wage and work-hour laws apply to all businesses (except for those that bought carve-outs). It raises the floor for everyone so that your talent can be paid adequately to support a family and have a comfortable life and financial independence, and your competitors have to do the same.
I’m glad to hear that generosity and greed has nothing to do with it for you. But there are too many for which the latter is true. The more generous often go out of business, but there are some notable exceptions. It has to do with not looking to labor first to reduce your cost structure.
Then a 100% inheritance tax should be no problem, since according to you wealth naturally goes to those worthy of it. Funny how you guys treat even a small rich kid tax as demonic.
Morally,the estate tax isn’t about the rights of the people inheriting the money, it’s about the rights of dead people to earned money while they were alive to dispose of that wealth as they see fit.
The death tax is particularly reprehensible…you tax the hell out of the poor souls their entire lives, then can’t let them do what they want with wealth they managed to save when they die.
Pitiful.
Its not pitiful, its about a nation that rewards hard work and innovation in each generation. The inheritance tax even at 55% over 1 million is hardly a burden. Its healthy for an enlightened nation. Selfish greed aside of course.
The dirty little secret about the estate tax is that most very rich people have estate planners who can schedule the granting of gifts to heirs while the person is still alive, and donating the remainder to a tax-exempt organization after death (often in a deal that immortalizes the person’s name on a building).
So most large estates are done under a gift tax, which currently has the following exclusions:
You are each entitled to the annual exclusion amount on the gift. Together, you can give $26,000 (effective on or after January 1, 2009).
That is, there is no tax on amounts up to $13,000 for a gift for each person you give to. Couples can give up to $26,000 to each person without tax. Gift tax rates run from 18% for $10,000 taxable ($23,000 gift from an individual rather than a couple) up through a tax of 45% on gifts of $2 million and above (less $13,000). The break point between the gift tax and the proposed estate tax is around $250,000 in gift to a single individual. In addition, there are generation-skipping provisions to lower the tax on gifts to grandchildren.
Estate taxes are not filed on estates under $3,500,000 (the Obama-McConnell “framework” raises it to $5 million).
First of all, it is not a “death tax”, it is an estate tax; folks with estates under $3.5 million don’t even have to file. That means that the number of persons subject to it is substantially less that 50% of persons. And a person who dies with an estate of $3.5 million is not a “poor soul” by an economic standard; there are other standards for judging the worth of a soul that are beyond our knowing. And paying a top marginal rate of 35% is not “taxing the hell out of”. Prudent rich people make arrangement for distribution of their wealth that considerably lowers the taxes. And in a lot of cases, the poor soul doesn’t get to decide anyway because there is a probate fight.
And it is perfectly possible for a hyper-rich person to pay no estate taxes at all by creating a tax-exempt foundation to carry out his/her instructions and interests.
The main function of the estate tax in the US is to provide incentives to donate to non-profit, non-governmental institutions with tax-exempt status. And the activities of these elements of civil society, when adequately supported can reduce the size of government. But the key word there is “adequately”.
But what has tended to happen both with tax-exempt donations and donations from estates is that they go to support a religious institution, its grandiose building, and the highly inflated salary of the minister. And has not social consequence beyond that. So governments at the local, state, and federal level have had to pick up the slack.
I watched senator Sanders and Senator Landrieu today. She spoke about how she “likes making millionaires” but is against giving them an extension on tax cuts. They do not need it. Senator Sanders spoke of the the complete inequality in rich and poor. Landrieu spoke of the immorality of this inequality.
The playing field is no longer level. If you became rich in this country you used an educated work force, an infrastructure and system of laws all paid for by taxes. Therefore you owe a great debt to this nation.
If we continue widening the great divide of wealth. The country has and will suffer. The kind of shortsighted crap you spew is bad for the country and is making it poorer. In order to have real competition the playing field must be level because we need to compete on the world stage. Because its moral and I want everyone to be rich too.
You young man are a shallow Fox Spews debater. I also had to listen to four hours of that crap this morning at work. Lies, half truths and self-righteous hypocrisy.
Thanks again.
Thanks for the compliment…but I’m no young man!
The rich should pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes because, as you note, they realize a greater benefit from, to start, laws protecting property right, courts, police, armed forces, etc.
But, the rich are not here as a means to an end to serve the poor…there needs to be a proper balance…and when someone is forced to pay more than half of the money they earn in taxes…we are out of balance.
I am about what is good for this nation. Not whats good for a small minority. With deductions, with capital gains and dividend taxes far lower then 50 percent like 15% and 0% no one pays more then half their income in taxes.
You are eating your seed corn by screwing the vast majority. I believe in liberty for my countrymen. When your liberty infringes upon the liberty of the majority you are wrong at best and at worst very unpatriotic.
Of course this is a strawman as the well documented fact is that the large numbers of the super wealthy actually pay less in taxes then the average middle class person. Just google Warren Buffet on taxes.
Sure, the “super-wealthy” who are so wealthy that most of their income comes from dividends, taxed at 15%, versus the run-of-the mill small and medium sized business owner and entrepenuers whose income is derived from business income taxed at 35%…
Buffet and Gates can go to hell…
Talk about straw men…you guys manufacture a caricature of “millionaires and billionaires” and the “super-wealthy” that does great disservice to the most productive members of our society that pay for your precious government…
So it upsets you when we inconveniently point out that the argument isn’t really about the magical “small businessman making $250,000” but the small group of super wealthy whose portion of the wealth has exploded while middle class incomes have declined through a decade of Bush tax cuts, and, again, the worst economic growth since the great depression? People whose wealth has come not from “creating jobs” but, of course, destroying jobs or sending them overseas, casino style financial speculation, monopolies, market front-running, government capture and all the rest? Are you unfamiliar with the graphs of exploding executive pay amidst, again, the worst economic growth since the great depression? So spare me the talk of the pitiful small businessman and his 250K.
Hey, here are some graphs for you.
On chart 14. What’s going on in Utah? Is this some effect of the Mormons, or is it related to demographic homogeneity?
Interesting to see you actually respond LFA when you’ve never had a response to the fact that, right-wing ideology notwithstanding, tax cuts for the wealthy don’t stimulate the economy, they don’t create jobs, and they don’t increase revenues. Just the opposite. I eagerly await your explanation why the lowest taxes since the 30’s were coincident with the worst decade of economic growth in the same time.
And of by the way, why does the deficit always go up precipitously under republican presidents?
No, that’s not what has been asserted. What has been asserted is that negotiation should have started with something possibly unrealistic and gradually changed/lowered to something that both sides can agree upon. But that final result comes after both sides gradually move toward each other. One doesn’t go into negotiations with the atitude that result X can’t be achieved.
Digby
Well now I’m just strait crossposting.
My brothers, wake up… Obama ain’t our Savyeh. It’s time to Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out of the Democratic Party. Network liberals, cluster fuck liberals… let it go; you’re trying to make sense of a rotting, sticking corpse. While the rest of the world is engaging in anti-government demonstrations not seen in decades, you guys are debating the merit of David Brooks. Did you not see what happened in London on Thursday? Check out ’15 year old tells establishment to stick it’ on youtube and tell me the revolution we’ve all been waiting for ain’t here.
”Lock up the streets and houses
Because there’s something in the air
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right” John Keen, 1969
Interesting to see you actually respond LFA when you’ve never had a response to the fact that, right-wing ideology notwithstanding, tax cuts for the wealthy don’t stimulate the economy, they don’t create jobs, and they don’t increase revenues. Just the opposite. I eagerly await your explanation why the lowest taxes since the 30’s were coincident with the worst decade of economic growth in the same time.
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