hard work bein' a republican... settin' up them straw men and such. sometimes a body just got tuh fall back on the ol' saw...

dont want obama tuh fail, shit nah...

he oughta jest let them banks and auto industry go to hell, fergit healthcare for anybody what caint pay fer it,

then when the country is in the midst of the most despicable dilemmas in the history of modern democracy, rush limbaugh and i will come by and kick obama and all you librulls while yer down.

and it'll be yer own damn fault. heh heh heh...

And you can be sure that Evan 'DINO' Bayh will be chirping from the same songbook as the rethugs!

Steve, your rhetorical pretense of naivete wears thin.

You wrote: "One would like to think that being wrong, over and over again, about the exact same issue, might lead some of these characters to back off."

"These characters" are not "wrong". They are LYING over and over again about the same exact issue.

You wrote: "Likewise, one might also like to think that major news outlets, recognizing how wrong these folks have been for the last few decades, might stop taking their prognostications seriously."

One might also like to think that liberal bloggers, recognizing that a handful of giant corporations own virtually all of the mass media in the USA and use it to propagandize the American people in furtherance of their corporate interests and agenda, might recognize that these "major news outlets" are knowingly and deliberately promulgating the deliberate LIES of "these characters".

But no, let's pretend that the likes of Newt Gingrich and the WSJ editorial page are arguing in good faith -- they are just innocently making the same exact "mistake" over and over and over again.

And let's pretend that the corporate-owned mass media is devoted to impartially educating and informing the American people out of the goodness of their hearts, as a public service -- they just can't seem to "get it right" on issues like taxes, and media ownership regulation, where they have billions of dollars in profits at stake, for some inexplicable mysterious reason.

secular, i appreciate your impatience as to steve's faux-naive politeness...

i for one am ready to think that republicans and banksters and all ceos everywhere taste just like chicken...

I don't know that they're lying any more than someone who has any kind of irrational belief can be said to be "lying." A lot of them genuinely believe that higher taxes are always bad, and they really do think it would be disastrous to raise taxes. The fact that they've been proven wrong again and again will, ironically, only strengthen their belief.

It's like trying to argue with someone that they weren't actually abducted and probed by aliens. They believe it so totally that no shred of rationality will be able to reach them on that topic. Taxes are the butt-probing aliens of Republican belief.

"[W]hen Republicans claim that higher taxes will destroy the economy, they should be reminded that they made the same argument in 1982 and 1993 and that the actual economic results were the opposite of what they predicted.

Wrong. What would be the goal -- to convince them to change their mind? To get them to say "Wow, I guess you're correct about that!"

When Republicans spew arguments contrary to facts, the correct response is to:

• address the listening audience, not the Republicans themselves,
  
• remind that audience of the Republicans' abysmal track record, and
  
• clearly highlight the undeniable and causal relationship between
  
  • Republicans' abysmal track record, and
    
  • their utter inability to recognize the incontrovertible facts in front of their face, and/or
    
  • their slavish devotion to outmoded ideologies long-since discredited by the historical record.
    

"Here we see, again, the flawed reasoning that brought us Enron, Mission Accomplished, Katrina, Terry Schavio, poisonous deregulation of food industries, and most recently the financial debaucle we're all suffering through. Those who don't learn history are condemned to repeat it, and Republicans are condemned to continued failure so long as they remain ignorant of the track record of their own history."

I ran across this very long but very cogent essay titled "Conservatives are always wrong" yesterday. It's not an exercise in snark, it's a serious look at historical errors by conservative movements. It tries to address your suggestion that "being wrong, over and over again, about the exact same issue, might lead some of these characters to back off."

@ Steve, I third Secular. Get a grip, man.

Actually, seems to me that your faux-naivety contributes to the problem. Just be real about it: the oligarchs and their enablers will do whatever it takes to retain privilege, at the expense of the rest of us.

Steve is not part of the problem. He understands, his style just isn't blowhard, hysterical or firebreather. Personally I really love his tone. Keep up the great work, steve.

As for the post, this needs to be a major dem talking point- as soon as a gooper says raising taxes during a recession is a liberal disaster plan, they just need to say, "really? Because that's what Reagan did."

Watch their faces get redder than a fire engine. :)

Off topic but, WTFIU with Andrea MItchell? After working her ass off to establish that the 25 police officers who were hired in a Ohio city was small potatoes, she tried to get the mayor to co-sign an attack on the stimulus as insufficient. When the mayor didn't go along she tried to get in a dig about the financial burden on the city of providing security for the president. The mayor politely reminded her that a presidential visit was an honr and his city provided for President Obama's security in the same manner and fashion as it had done for Presidents Bush and Clinton. What a hack.

In addition, the GOPers who are complaining about budget deficits and national debt right now should be asked how they voted on the budgets passed while the GOP was in control of Congress during the Bush years.

The commenters at Forbes seemed to have had their minds blown by that piece. They're all spouting off various incarnations of the same line which clearly shows that they refused to even contemplate anything they had just read. It MUST be wrong because they've been told that it was wrong.

One poor soul was lamenting how Obama's tax increase is going to force them to fire their nanny, so his wife would have to quit her job to watch their children; all as a way of showing how Obama's tax plan is costing two jobs. I didn't read the whole thing so I don't know why the nanny was the only possible expense they could cut, but the whole story sounded just as phony as all the other layoff stories I keep hearing.

Likewise, one might also like to think that major news outlets, recognizing how wrong these folks have been for the last few decades, might stop taking their prognostications seriously.

One might think that, if one didn't recognize that said media outlets are overwhelmingly owned by those who seek to profit from confusing the message with historical facts.

As Digby has noted, the media are going to be the death of this country.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/boy-if-only-life-were-like-this-by.html

Nice link...linkmeister.
Here's another on the same topic, conservatism at least. Long but worth the read:

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html

It's a problem if the money supply ONLY goes up the economic food chain which seems to me is part of the problem. If trickle-down isn't functioning, then money needs to be syphoned to the bottom so that it can recycle. That is one problem trying to view the global economy through the simple lens of trickle-down; the money can trickle down, but it ends up in places like China or India. Not bad for those countries, but bad for average Americans who do not see the trickle.

Reagan perhaps knew this, or just acted on gut instinct..who knows. But taxes can be that syphoning mechanism.

Bruce Bartlett is a fact-crazed loon

One poor soul was lamenting how Obama's tax increase is going to force them to fire their nanny, so his wife would have to quit her job to watch their children; all as a way of showing how Obama's tax plan is costing two jobs.

Let's look at the math for a minute:

At a minimum, that guy has to be paying his nanny $11,752 a year (pre-tax), because that's the federal minimum wage. Is he telling us that he and his wife combined make so much money that their taxes will increase by more than $11,000 per year if the top marginal rate goes from 35% to 39%, so therefore they'll have to give up their nanny?

Of course, if they're paying their illegal nanny under the table at $2 an hour with no overtime then, yeah, I can see that they might have to give her up because of a tax increase since that would only be about $5,000 a year. But should we really be adjusting our tax code so people can keep underpaying their illegal workers?

This observation, (I haven't checked your facts) would dovetail with my coalescing understanding of macroeconomics.

The wealthy preserve capital when taxes are low. They can earn enough between income and investments to be "comfortable".

When the economy slows down, they, like we, tighten up and draw back from the markets concerned about investing in businesses where no one else is investing. Vicious cycle.

Then there's interest rates. As they plunge, investment income dries up. They tioghten up even more. Layoffs abound, invoentory shrinks, orders cease. Save teh money! There isn't enough to live large!

Only when taxes increase do the wealthy fall behind and become uncomfortable. They have to drink California wines rather than French. They need to keep their cars a year longer than they want to.

They get unhappy enough that they want more money. They cannot make more money except by investing more aggressively in stocks or new ventures. Investing in stocks boosts the price and the companies can dilute their shares, raise funds and invest the money for the shareholders.

This would explain robust economies being caused by increases in taxes.

When you DON'T raise taxes and the economy tanks, you can instead BORROW massive sums. This increases the interest rates we must bwrrow at. Speculators assume that we will inflate our currency and demand higher interest. The money inflates and wealthy people can't buy as much... just as if they'd been taxed.

The unhappiness of the upper crust is what makes economies hum and low taxes make them happy and the economy sick.

That's the kernel I'm getting... it could use refinement. Inflation or taxes... there's only so long the wealthy can sit on their money before they need to take risks. Wealth does not benefit from inertia.

My local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, recently ran a column by John Yoo and another one featuring an interview with John Bolton. My buddies and I all wrote in about "What is wrong with you folks running pieces by and about criminals and losers?" I mean, dude, even Bush realizes that appointing Bolton to be the UN Ambassador was a stupid move!

It's a reminder of just how wrong the exact same cast of characters has been for quite a long while. When Reagan raised taxes, Gingrich, the WSJ editorial page, and conservative activists thought it would produce awful results.

How do you know what they thought? At most you know what they said.

I think Bartlett has his facts mixed up.

The Reagan plan in 1982 was ERTA, the Economic Recovery Tax Act. It lowered marginal rates by 25 points at the top over 27 months, accelerated depreciation schedules for business equipment purchases and provided a 10% tax credit for new business equipment purchases.

I think the plan did spur economic growth, though it was a deficit funded growth. I remember at the time that my firm purchases new computers for everyone and a new phone system (and new cars for the partners) and the tax cuts were a direct incentive for all of the spending.

At the same time, of course, Reagan was cutting the HUD budget from $36 billion per year to $9 billion per year, going to war with people on Social Security disability claims (denying thousands of claims on questionable grounds and forcing claimants to litigate in federal court) etc. etc. And his Social Security payroll tax increases a couple of years later, combined with the 1982 marginal rate cuts, represented the biggest two-step shift of tax burden from the rich to the middle classs in history.

By 1986 as the deficits were growing, Donald Regan convinced Reagan to support TEFRA, which raised taxes primarily by closing loopholes, one of the biggest was passive investors in real estate partnerships taking depreciation deductions in excess of their actual contributions. (Some authors blame this change for a correction in the commercial property market that led to the Savings and Loan crisis.)

Donald Regan's book is interesting because he describes Reagan as intellectually not too inquisitive about details, but as someone who could be led through to a result by a discussion of examples. He asked Reagan how much Reagan had paid in taxes the prior year. Then he asked Reagan how much Reagan thought General Electric had paid the prior year. (Reagan used to be TV spokesman for GE.) The answer was zero. General Electric, after all the deductions and loopholes in the tax code, had paid less in income taxes than Reagan had individually. What can we do about it, Reagan asked. Regan told him they had to address the loopholes in the tax code.

TEFRA was a big tax hike, but not as big as the cuts enacted four years before.

I think Bartlett has his facts mixed up.

The Reagan plan in 1982 was ERTA, the Economic Recovery Tax Act. It lowered marginal rates by 25 points at the top over 27 months, accelerated depreciation schedules for business equipment purchases and provided a 10% tax credit for new business equipment purchases.

I think the plan did spur economic growth, though it was a deficit funded growth. I remember at the time that my firm purchases new computers for everyone and a new phone system (and new cars for the partners) and the tax cuts were a direct incentive for all of the spending.

At the same time, of course, Reagan was cutting the HUD budget from $36 billion per year to $9 billion per year, going to war with people on Social Security disability claims (denying thousands of claims on questionable grounds and forcing claimants to litigate in federal court) etc. etc. And his Social Security payroll tax increases a couple of years later, combined with the 1982 marginal rate cuts, represented the biggest two-step shift of tax burden from the rich to the middle classs in history.

By 1986 as the deficits were growing, Donald Regan convinced Reagan to support TEFRA, which raised taxes primarily by closing loopholes, one of the biggest was passive investors in real estate partnerships taking depreciation deductions in excess of their actual contributions. (Some authors blame this change for a correction in the commercial property market that led to the Savings and Loan crisis.)

Donald Regan's book is interesting because he describes Reagan as intellectually not too inquisitive about details, but as someone who could be led through to a result by a discussion of examples. He asked Reagan how much Reagan had paid in taxes the prior year. Then he asked Reagan how much Reagan thought General Electric had paid the prior year. (Reagan used to be TV spokesman for GE.) The answer was zero. General Electric, after all the deductions and loopholes in the tax code, had paid less in income taxes than Reagan had individually. What can we do about it, Reagan asked. Regan told him they had to address the loopholes in the tax code.

TEFRA was a big tax hike, but not as big as the cuts enacted four years before.

"One would like to think that being wrong, over and over again, about the exact same issue, might lead some of these characters to back off."

Fat chance.

RightWing Zombie propaganda never dies.

pfgr,

"I think Bartlett has his facts mixed up."

Nope.

"The Reagan plan in 1982 was ERTA, the Economic Recovery Tax Act. It lowered marginal rates by 25 points..."

That was 1981, and as a result, federal income tax revenues PLUNGED to 1940s levels, which is why they had to turn around a raise taxes just months later.

Except for Bizarro World, when you cut federal income tax rates, federal income tax revenue decreases, when you raise federal income tax rates, federal income tax revenue increase.

Is he telling us that he and his wife combined make so much money that their taxes will increase by more than $11,000 per year if the top marginal rate goes from 35% to 39%, so therefore they'll have to give up their nanny?

As I read that letter, it seemed pretty clear to me that he was committing the usual fallacy of assuming that *all* of their income would be taxed at the higher rate which, of course, isn't true.

I seem to recall reading about a CBO report that pointed out that the average family of four was paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes in 1988 than they were in 1980. If true, funny how that never seems to get mentioned.

Equally funny is the fact that Obama just passed one of the largest tax cuts in our history and yet all we're hearing about in the news today is a tax hike -- a hike that won't take effect until next year, will only affect 2% of the population, and that will be caused, not by Obama, but by Bush and Congressional Republicans, who placed an expiration date on their tax cuts solely to avoid having to reveal just how much they would cost.