MITT SAVES JEEP or unMITTigated chutzpah

sam enderby 

I think the Times had a story on this then but it was their recent story this week about the Senate Republicans, read: Mitch McConnell, asking, nay demanding that the Congressional Research Service "withdraw" a report that was released on Sept 14 titled "Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945" because , as it happens, it doesn't quite fit with what they have been force feeding the Amercian people for the pass thirty years or so, at least since the last three national elections. The report, written by a Thomas L. Hungerford, concluded that reducing the tax rates for the so-called job-creators doesn't produce any more jobs or grow the economy as the Republicans have been proclaiming as Gospel since the Reagan years or as a W. Kim Herron wrote in the Metro Time Blog (from Detroit?), " the trickle-down theory held so dear by conservatives is basically a fairy-tale". 

Thomas L. Hungerford, Hero with a Calculator

http://blogs.metrotimes.com/index.php/2012/09/slicing-the-economic-pie-why-the-rich-get-fatter/. Senator McConnell of course is the guy who proudly pronounced that the   first priority of the republican agenda is to make sure President Obama is not re-elected and so for the past 4 years has moved heaven and earth in obstructing and derailing and filibustering and lying and denigrating most everything Obama has tried to do to alleviate  and heal what ails Amercia - in a time of war, no less, I often wonder why such actions as perpetrated by the so-called Republican leadership throughout the years of the Obama Administration are not considered treason - . Among the other events of the week Mr. Hungerford's report was released were the attack on the consulate in Libya and the killing of our ambassador, which gave the "loyal" opposition plenty of contrived and fertile fodder to attack the president (at a time of national mourning and travail) and it was also the week wherein the Republicans saw fit to obstruct the passage of the "Veterans Job Corps Act of 2012" because the Republicans are all about "supporting the troops".

(I've never seen a credible argument for confidentiality. You can go onto CBO websites and download reports. Why wouldn't you do the same thing with these publicly funded reports? It's been management policy and it's been clearly with the broad support of Congress. And I don't understand why Congress would want the products withheld from the public. - Louis Fisher, former CRS Senior Specialist, from May 3, 2011)

I can't help but consider that this deliberate suppression of knowledge - trying to bury the CRS report, I mean its out, you can google it , go to any number of blog sites to upload it, its out there floating in the ether, go grab it and read it - its interesting to note as an aside that the Mr. Hungerford, the writer of the report, has been to quite a few conferences over the years - academic and otherwise, including participating in tax and economic conferences with such conservative bastions as AEI - defending the research and conclusions of what his report states even before it was publicly published - in other words, its not even new news. But Sen. Mitch wanted it withdrawn- and they did. But not before a whole bunch of wonks downloaded it first. See: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/news/business/0915taxesandeconomy.pdf or http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42729.pdf,at least the attempt at suppressing this fits into the much larger pattern - by both major political parties - to stack the deck if you will or perhaps a better metaphor may be that variation of three-card monty that old Jefferson "Soapy" Smith made his fame and that scam used actual soap. It seems that even before the mayoral election out in Denver in 1889 -see previous post, "Election Day in Amercia", Soapy, to digress for a sec, whose real name was used for the character played by Jimmy Stewart in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes To Washington-

now I'm not saying that there was a definite connection but if you remember the story begins with a governor of an unnamed western state (Happy Hopper played by the adorable Guy Kibbee)  seeking to name a senator to replace the one who just died and of course the film introduced to many of Guy Kibbee's fans the FILIBUSTER, which has certainly changed over the years and been taken to new heights of abuse by the Republicans but back to Soapy who ran what was called the "prize soap racket"- he would  find a busy street corner and set up a traveling display case on a tripod or table and start stacking bars of soap or cakes, as I say, one on top of another all the while proclaiming to the gathering crowd the wonderful qualities of his soap and as he continued with his spiel he would begin wrapping - for the crowd to see - paper money in different denominations from $1 to $100 around selected bars and then he would wrap each bar -the ones with the money and without - with plain wrapping paper and mix them all together. Then he sold them for $1 each. An accomplice in the crowd ( a shill, if you will) would then purchase a bar, open it and yell that he had won money, waving it around making a tumult and soon the selling began (in earnest, of course, as all selling should be), many buying more than a few at a time. After a while with some of the remaining bars still on the table Soapy would announce that the one with the $100 bill was still available and he would then auction the rest off. Of course he had already hidden the cakes wrapped with the money before the selling started, but the truly amazing part of this story is that according to a few sources he did this in and around Denver for 20 years and made himself a considerable fortune. The unfortunate outcome is how such a"racket"

was tolerated for that long and how people somehow always believed there was money to be had and kept buying the soap, not unlike the present-day Republicans and others trying to sell and succeeding too at times, that trickle-down theory of how to fix the economy -now  I don't wish to cast aspersions on the good citizens of Denver as to their intellectual capabilities then but I hear they are having some difficulties even today in trying to figure out how to let everyone who wants to vote- hey, wait a minute that sounds like what is currently happening today in quite a number of states. Anyway you can't say the people of the old west weren't at least clean and nice smelling. The rackets continue. Amercia is a country founded on a racket of one kind or another. The old white guys who we call our Founders knew this and I believe they tried to frame those revered documents in such terms as to not only facilitate their own personal interests but had the prescience to try to figure out how future generations of Amercians may be protected from such unscrupulous practices -in their very limited way of course (try to be contemporaneous - ok forget it). Tomorrow's election will be the most important perhaps of our lifetime not because of what it portends if Mitt wins or President Obama is re-elected but what this singular event has told us about ourselves - as Amercians- and what it has told us is not very flattering. We are a country that still likes to fool itself into thinking that what we do and how we do it is better than anyone else-our "form" of democracy ,we think, is a beacon to the world - sure it may have some problems but those are not insurmountable and we can fix them anytime we want - but it doesn't quite work out that way and - truth, that rare commodity, be told it was never properly fixed in the first place. It was always a "racket" of some kind and the fact that we have come as far as we have perhaps speaks well of the resiliency and faith of the Amercian people.

But how many bars of soap will it take before we realize that there's something crooked going on here. Its bad enough that the Romney campaign can feel as free as they can to out and out lie about anything they want and often do; as a matter of fact is there anything that has been uttered or repeated by Mitt that is not a blatant falsehood or a deliberate lie. The mendaciousness is truly astounding and what is even more remarkable is that even when they are called out on it they refuse to admit let alone apologize and go right on lying - there's plenty of soap to sell - and as of today, Monday, November 5, 2012, the election is considered a toss-up. And you have to wonder what is it that make people want to vote for such a cypher as Romney who has put forth not a single concrete piece of information that shows how he plans to govern. Its only by his previous contradictory statements, his selection of a virulent right-winger for vice-president, his obvious anti-women poses, and any other number of hints and plunders that reveal who this man is and yet we know that most of the social legislation that most of the people in Amercia depend on hangs in the balance if this man is elected with attendant state representatives. He lies about people losing their jobs and lies about what he just previously said and nobody seems to care-at least among his so-called supporters. Obama may have not lived up to many of his supporters hopes and wishes for what could have been for Amercia and like any politician may have had to obfuscate to govern but if Obama has disappointed it has not been through lack of trying. The fact is that there is a Black Man in the white house and the Republicans - to a member- have played on Amercian fears, ignorance, hatred, and its traditional (if I may) racism to oppose him at every turn. That he has been able to govern and lead and even get somethings passed through this Congress is no small feat.

Its been 40 years! since Amercia was just beginning to open up its democratic vistas to all its citizens - and this during the war in Vietnam -; the once disenfranchised were now full voting citizens backed up and enforced by law, in theory of course, and in all our public enterprises and accomodations were given -in theory of course- free and equal access to pursue what was called the Amercian Dream; 40 years ago people who were systematically barred from schools and communities and workplaces were starting to make large inroads to integrate and make Amercia take heed of its promise of life and liberty for everybody but even then when the minorities of Amercia and the poor started to fully establish themselves there was a group of other Amercians who tried -and in many ways and places succeeded- to disqualify them by devaluing the worth of say-their new neighborhoods or jobs and mostly, their schools. It has been that way since in many areas of Amercia. Somehow we have reached a point in our national life, a teacher wrote back in 1972!," that whenever the disenfranchised finally get the right to vote, or go to school, or work, then this intellectually dominant group proclaims the worthlessness of politics (the smaller government-private-is-better-Republicans), formal education and employment (the take-money-from-the public-school-and-give-it-to-the-chartered-school Republicans and others).It is no wonder then that when Blacks elect a mayor, it is in a city that is in state of extreme bankruptcy, or when Blacks get to school, the school is deemed inferior, or when Blacks work, their jobs are considered menial, and a public school diploma doesn't seem to carry the weight it once had. About 50 years before W.E.B. DuBois wrote in an essay called, "The Technique of Race Prejudice", " .

.it is silly to talk of race prejudice as simply a child of ignorance and poverty. The ignorance and poor(whites) may lynch and discriminate but the real deep and the basic race hatred in the United states is a matter of the educated and distinguished leaders of white civilization. They are the ones who are determined to keep black folk from developing talent and sharing in civilization. The only thing to their credit is that they are ashamed of what they do and say and cover their tracks desperately even if ineffectually with excuses and surprises and alibis. But the discrimination goes on and they not only do not raise a hand to stop it-they even gently and politely but in strict secrecy put their shoulders to the wheel and push it forward."

How to break through the false but all-pervasive categories of an Amercia that rarely recognizes its racist past and, yes, present (its not a post-racial world we live in because a Black man had been elected President) and at times seems not to wish to know of it. The finding of Amercia will perhaps come when it loses its racism (good luck and good night, everybody!). Perhaps then we can begin to practice a Democracy that we truly deserve and not some bought-for - lip-service- style democracy that goes to the highest bidder. There is no such thing as Corporate Democracy. The current Supreme Court may call it Citizens Fascism. We must -if we're serious and dedicated enough- find those social forces that are available to build a peoples' consensus to defeat the corporate money that has laid waste to our republic. Its not revolution just rubbing that fairy dust out of our eyes. In order to really practice democracy we have an obligation to be better informed - both for ourselves and for the education of our kids. How is it that such prejudices and small-mindednesses are still passed down from one generation to the next (I'm thinking of that father and daughter from Alabama -see previous post"Teach Your Children").

On this Monday before the election people are actually saying they will vote for Romney because they think that he would have a better chance governing with democrats than Obama will have with the Republicans, even though they prefer Obama ( see previous post-Damned if we do and Damned if we do). The campaign of Fear has indeed worked well for the Republicans-they have intimidated and have gotten state sanctioned voter suppression to disempower voters they simply don't want to have vote because those voters are most likely poor, minority, and Democrats. (And everyone knows this and yet...) And the kicker and what I had originally started out to say is that we have had really no intelligent conversation during this whole campaign because for the past 4 years - for that is how long it has truly been run- certain cogent and responsible voices have been deliberately kept out of the main event. In a better Democracy we may have been able to have a discussion that included, say, the Green Party's program which speaks to the heart-really- of what kind of nation we can be but there never was a chance to hear them discussed because- as we say-the deck was stacked-so all during the previous 4 year campaign most people never got to hear about the : Full Employment Program

• about making the minimum wage a living wage
• cutting the bloated military budget
• eliminating tax giveaways
• about full disclosure of corporate subsidies
• rejecting cuts to Medicare and Medicaid
• Financial reform of banks and restoring glass-steagall
• democratizing monetary policy
• forgiving student debts
• protecting public schools
• single-payer healthcare
• An immediate moratorium on all foreclosures and evictions

And thats just some of the conversation we missed out on. We missed out because we do lack the courage -

 the political courage of our convictions and are too willing to accept the status quo as it is dished out by the corporate sponsors of our democracy. Jill Stein, The Green Party candidate for President, said, "We need courage in our politics that matches the courage of our social movements." Thats true but we are so historically heedless that perhaps we are doomed to this mediocrity called Amercia. And now, for your dining and dancing pleasure we present the conclusion of Mr. Hungerford's "withdrawn" report:  

Concluding Remarks 

The top income tax rates have changed considerably since the end of World War II. Throughout the late-1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was typically above 90%; today it is 35%. Additionally, the top capital gains tax rate was 25% in the 1950s and 1960s, 35% in the 1970s; today it is 15%. The average tax rate faced by the top 0.01% of taxpayers was above 40% until the mid-1980s; today it is below 25%. Tax rates affecting taxpayers at the top of the income distribution are currently at their lowest levels since the end of the second World War. 

The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to how the economic pie is sliced—lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.