There is so much damn talent in this country and so many really smart, incisive people that I just get incensed reading the bullshit that nitwits are getting paid six figures to write on the editorial pages of our most prestigious newspapers. Kathleen Parker is a prime example. This column is in the guise of telling hard truths to both parties, so the Republicans naturally come in for some criticism. Let’s watch her set this up with some truly breathtaking false equivalence. But first, let me ask you a question. What’s the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? Did you answer “Not much”? Good, you’re normal.
Republicans aren’t mistaken when they say that President Obama is declaring class warfare. He’s been working that turf with a pretty big shovel. How many times have we heard that millionaires and billionaires (as though there were no difference) refuse to pay their fair share?
But Republicans are also playing the class card when they insist with equal passion that half of all Americans pay no taxes. Missing from this statement is the word “income,” which would make the assertion truer. But it’s more effective to imply that half the country — i.e., the shiftless and dependent — only want something for nothing.
What happens when you win an argument based on half-truths? In politics, it doesn’t matter. Winning is all that matters. In real life, the people lose.
Here’s your first hint that something is wrong. The Republicans are telling a lie, but Parker suggests how they could make that lie truer. The president is stating an opinion, and her only complaint is that millionaires are getting lumped in with billionaires. This is clearly two sides of a coin, right?
First of all, lies don’t really get truer. You can stop lying and tell the truth, but you can’t tell true lies. But, second, the equivalent of lying is lying. When one side says that half the country pays no taxes and the other side says the richest people in the country should pay more in taxes, those two things are not equivalent. One is a lie and the other is a policy statement.
Now, let’s watch her contradict herself.
Obviously, those who pay no income tax earn so little that taxing their income is viewed as further hardship. But one could argue that a fair tax code would ask all Americans to pitch in at a level commensurate with their ability to ante up, thereby allowing them to be more invested in outcomes.
Jesus. A progressive tax code is precisely a fair tax code that asks all Americans to pitch in at a level commensurate with their ability. That’s the whole goddamned point of a progressive tax code. A “flat tax” is an unfair tax code that makes no effort to figure out people’s ability to pay. A flat tax figures a busboy can afford to give up 15% of his income just as easily as Donald Trump can. Only a moron thinks that’s true or “fair.” But the worst part is that she acknowledges that a lot of people can’t afford to pay income taxes right before she asks them to pay income taxes.
Let’s see if she gets any smarter.
In any case, people who have worked hard and succeeded are not the enemy of those who are doing less well. They are the people we all hope to emulate.
Do you remember when rich industrialists brought the Welsh and Scottish and Irish over here and threw them in the mines and paid them nothing and took no thought for their health or even their lives. Were they not the enemy of their workers? Do we not have an entire agricultural economy today built on migrant workers who are in this country without documents and who are paid less than minimum wage? Are we not watching good paying jobs get shipped to Mexico and Indonesia and India and China where the labor is much cheaper and the working conditions are appalling? How much has really changed? Maybe we want to emulate doctors and lawyers and successful inventors or entrepreneurs, but I think Parker may be missing some keys facts about why people are taking to the streets. It’s not because they resent their dentist. It’s because a bunch of super-rich fucks are ripping us off and refusing to pay their taxes. They tanked the economy with their fancy fraudulent financial instruments and now they want to take away our pensions and health care to pay for it. Apparently, we all cost too much.
Are you ready for some more false equivalence?
Nevertheless, people are angry, and justifiably. On left and right, they alternatively resent that government is doing too little or too much. Both Tea Partyers and the Occupy Wall Street crowd are essentially angry about the same things. Both are fundamentally against the establishment.
Maybe this is one of those “truer lies.” Remember that Kathleen Parker just got done complaining that 50% of Americans are too broke to pay any income taxes. But now she’s telling us we’re justified in feeling Taxed Enough Already. Here’s a tip. Taxes haven’t been this low in 50 years, and that includes middle-income families. You want to talk about something that is not justified? Watch taxes go steadily down for a half-century, and when they reach their lowest point ever, launch a movement to complain that your taxes are too high. Oh, and don’t forget to complain that the cash-starved government is running a huge deficit. Doing something that stupid might just get people to protest the Establishment. The government isn’t doing too much. It’s broke and impotent.
Next up, Parker chides the Republicans for turning down a jobs bill that “would have imposed a 0.7 percent surtax on 345,000 millionaires,” saying it “seems an act of principle over sense,” but, “Republicans argue that the bill doesn’t address the fundamental economic issues” so it’s no biggie.
And, in any case, the Democrats are being mean to rich people.
Meanwhile, Democrats’ continued insinuation that the rich are robbing the poor is simply disingenuous. Who employs the poor if not the more prosperous? Who infuses charities with cash but the wealthy? Who grows the economy if not business, now too afraid to part with its money given the current uncertainties?
We could talk about the meaning of robbery for a long time. Selling people fraudulently-rated securities, foreclosing on homes using forged documents, ripping up union contracts, reneging on pension agreements, closing profitable factories, charging people usurious interest rates, larding up contracts with hidden fees, lying about mortgage terms, etc. These things feel like robbery to me. Stagnant wages for the middle class over decades while the richest people double and triple and quadruple their wealth every few years? That seems wrong to me.
Parker goes on to defend the idea that corporations are people and to argue, falsely, that the Occupy movement is challenging capitalism itself, instead of the current state of capitalism.
Here’s her conclusion:
We’re not a red/blue country. We’re a rich/poor nation, and the president is casting himself as Robin Hood.
It’s an ugly gamble that could backfire. People can sustain anger and resentment for only so long, especially when these emotions are fundamentally at odds with the better angels of their identity. Americans are an optimistic, generous lot, confident in their ability to weather difficulties and invent solutions. Ingenuity is in their bones. In the end, they tend to prefer the candidate who can tap into the American reservoir of good will and can-do-ness. The next president won’t likely be the angriest man standing.
If you’re telling a story and Robin Hood is the bad guy then you’re doing it wrong. What do you think she means when she says we’re not a red/blue country but a rich/poor country? Does that mean that we don’t have a disagreement over God, Gays, and Guns but only between the rich vs. the poor? Is she embracing the 99% argument?
But, again, I have to ask. How does asking millionaires and billionaires to pay a 0.7% surtax on their income make the president an angry man who doesn’t have confidence in America’s ingenuity?
Kathleen Parker gets paid a lot of money to write stuff like this, and it’s just worthless, pathetic drivel.
