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No more "Tax giveaways to the rich!"

Posted by Member of the Tribe on Monday, November 10, 2008 11:00:02 AM
I was contacted offline in response to Racist politics and why African Americans vote Democrat urging me to give our president elect a chance, because we should distribute the wealth in the "other direction;" i.e. away from "wall Street" and "the rich."

In my response, I have made an effort to separate fact from opinion

I agree that Obama should be given a chance; he is our president and if he succeeds, we all succeed. By "succeed," I am referring to the most of the post-nomination reversals he campaigned on in the fall (see A Marketing Triumph and other silver linings in the 2008 presidential election below), with the important exception of his proposed tax increases on "the rich," i.e., those earning in excess of $250,000, or $200,000, or $150,000, or $42,000 or whatever it has fallen to this week.

I don't agree with the (quite understandable) sentiment that Obama be given "as much respect as the Democrats showed Bush." Calling Obama a Nazi and unfavorably comparing his policies to the rape rooms, human paper shredders, torture chambers and mass executions of Saddam Hussein, to cite a couple of examples, would make us no better than Air [Anti-] America, Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, and, well, OK most of the mainstream media and Hollywood.

Now from opinion to fact.

It is factually incorrect to assert that any transfer of wealth has occurred from poor to rich, or from "main street" to "Wall Street." Businesses create wealth (corollary: government doesn't), which is redistributed to the poor and middle class in five ways:
  1. job creation (salaries, which provide the opportunity for #2)
  2. investment in the equity of those businesses
  3. our "progressive" taxes on those businesses
  4. our "progressive" taxes on owners of those businesses
  5. redistribution of the proceeds of those taxes to the poor and, secondarily, to the middle class
Liberal critics of McCain's "Joe the Plumber" strategy (if you could call anything in his pathetic campaign a "strategy") charged that McCain was scaremongering because our system is already redistributive in favor of the poor. They were 100% correct as to redistribution. How much redistribution is ideal (or whether it was "scaremongering") is a matter of opinion.

Factually, Obama's repeated references to "tax giveaways to the rich" do not jibe with reality. There has not in fact been one penny of "tax giveaways to the rich." They would be more accurately referred to as tax relief  for the rich, since the money at issue was earned by them in the first place. The question is: how much of these earnings should the government be entitled to confiscate. That is a legitimate matter of opinion on which we can all argue, but to put the argument in proper perspective, let's return to the facts.

Factually speaking "the rich" pay virtually all of the taxes. The top 1% of earners account for 40% of all revenues, up from 20% just 20 years ago. The top 10% of earners account for 70% of all revenues. The bottom 40% account for (read this twice) zero - zip - nada. They account for almost half of the 95% of whom Obama wants to provide "tax relief" (mainstream media - you would make George Orwell proud)!

How can this be? Consider what the Bush and Reagan tax rate reductions had in common. They resulted in the largest revenue increases in history! Tax rate reduction results in wealth creation, resulting in more revenue (i.e., not despite the lower tax rates but because of them). Since we have progressive tax rates, who do you think accounted for all those increased revenues? The poor?

It's worth digesting this: "the rich" paid more taxes under Bush than under Clinton. They also accounted for a greater proportion of those taxes. And all this despite Bush's "tax giveaways to the rich."

Again, factually speaking, there is no way to provide any significant "across the board" tax relief without disproportionately benefiting "the rich." They are the ones who, for all practical purposes, pay all the taxes in the first place.

So the phrase "tax giveaways to the rich" fundamentally runs counter to reality on two levels, because the policies referred to:
  1. affected how much the rich were giving away to everyone else, not vice versa
  2. increased the amount the rich were giving away to everyone else
As to my opinion: no matter how much opportunity we create, the poor will always be with us. Policies that reward individual effort (i.e. low taxes and regulation) must always be balanced with compassion (redistribution). The perfect place on the dial will always be a matter of debate and may objectively shift from time to time.

We do know that twisting the redistribution dial too far fails on three levels, by:
  1. destroying the very wealth creation that offers the only long term hope of helping the disadvantaged
  2. creating and perpetuating a cycle of dependence and poverty (see Racist politics below)
  3. concentrating too much power in government, which has never, not once, not even a little bit, resulted in anything anyone (with the possible exception of Planned Parenthood) would call "good"
Finally, we should become very concerned when the siren song of class warfare is chanted so stridently. This is the same state-as-provider-of-all, scapegoating ("fat cats" "Wall Street" "bankers" stealing the sweat of the workers) we've heard before in 1917 Russia, 1924 Italy and 1934 Germany. The dreams of a greater society paid for by "contributions" from the "controllers of capital" never seem to work out very well for Jews, or, for that matter, anyone else
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Racist politics and why African Americans vote Democrat

Posted by Member of the Tribe on Sunday, November 09, 2008 4:39:24 PM
Jewish theology places more weight on actions and results than on intentions for two very pragmatic reasons:
  1. intentions may be an indication of results, but then again they may not
  2. effects matter more than intentions
Although Jewish and Christian theology have much in common, there are important differences beyond white bread vs. matzah, Pat Boone vs. Jackie Mason and Santa Clause vs. Hannukah Harry ("yes, Rachel, there is a Hannukah Harry"). As an example, even the seemingly identical concepts of Jewish tzedakah and Christian charity - both could be very loosely defined by, or at least characterized as giving to the poor - have an important distinction.

Charity is "giving from the heart," a beautiful appeal to the good in humanity to, if you'll briefly pardon the expression, "share the wealth" with the less fortunate because it feels good. The focus is on the giver's good feelings and altruistic intentions. It rests on the assumption that training the heart to be altruistic will ultimately result in good deeds. Certainly, to the extent that results stem from intentions, charity will make the world a better place.

By contrast, tzedakah is less focused on the giver's intentions. Tzedakah stems from the Hebrew "righteousness," essentially meaning "do the right thing," whether you want to or not. Give, even if you give grudgingly, because it's the right thing to do.

This conjures the imagery of the "harsh 'Old' Testament" as it is sometimes characterized in Christian theology, in which the pre-Jesus Jews grudgingly tithed to the poor without joy in their hearts (when they weren't dodging lightning bolts, famines or Philistines).

However, we really don't know how much (or little) "joy in their hearts" those ancient Hebrews experienced when they had to tithe because the Torah told them so. For that matter, we neither know nor can we measure how much "joy in their hearts" modern Christians - or Jews, for that matter - comes from charitable giving or doing tzedakah.

This is why the concept of tzedakah also focuses less on the donor than the donee. Conditioning and shaping the donor's intentions is certainly a collateral benefit of tzedakah, but it is not the primary purpose. Tzedakah is meant to accomplish something tangible - tikkun olam, or world repair. It's nice if the donor feels good, but better if it accomplishes something for the donee.

Jewish theology does not ignore intention. Maimonides assigned a higher value to an anonymous gift than one of equal value for a naming opportunity. But the point is that, while intentions cannot be accurately quantified, results can.
------------------------------------------
Like most contemporary Jews, I took it as an article of political faith that American political conservatives in general - and Republicans in particular - were greedy selfish gun-totin' bible-thumpin' "fat cats" who crushed the rights of the working poor under their limousine tracks. But of all the things that defined conservatives and Republicans, none stood out more than racist. The racism dovetailed nicely with the rest of the narrative. No other group has a higher correlation with working poor than blacks, so it made sense that about 95% of African Americans (almost 98% in the 2008 presidential election) reliably vote for Democrats.

Needless to say, the three most important influencers of public opinion - the news media, academia, and entertainment media - play a role in advancing this narrative. Spokespersons for the black community are Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Advocates of black self-empowerment like Bill Cosby, Tom Sowell, Shelby Steele and Clarence Thomas are "Uncle Toms" who are "selling out" to "the man." Mysogynistic rappers and the purveyors of hate and victimization are "keepin' it real," and anyone who dares observe that Affirmative Action, ebonics, "community organizing," substance abuse and having children out of wedlock hasn't exactly advanced the plight of most African Americans is - you guessed it - a "racist."

How many McCain voters prefaced the defense of their unenlightened, non-PC position with a required "it has nothing to do with his name or skin color?" Was it protesting too much or was it thoughtcrime created by the media, Hollywood and academic elites that anyone not voting for Obama had to be a racist? By the way, whatever happened to the "Bradley effect" http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/08/persistent-myth-of-bradley-effect.html (not to mention those "rigged" Diebold voting machines - I suppose they all malfunctioned)?

But, again, it's hard to measure the hearts and intentions of voters (you were beginning to wonder when I'd connect all of this up), but much easier to measure the results of policies. As a reward for getting this far, I will prove it to you.

Let's imagine that you are one of those racists. Not the phony ones the mainstream media insisted slipped behind the curtain on November 4. I mean the right-out-of-Central-casting Southern drawlin' white hooded, gun-totin' bible-thumpin' illiterate (except for the Bible) cowardly hypocritical misogynistic card-carrying KKK member. It's 1965 and the Civil Rights Act has just been signed into law, on the strength of Republican votes (you mean Republicans voted for it in greater proportion than Democrats? In both the House and Senate? I didn't learn that in school! or read about it in the paper, or see it on TV, or...). Anyway, looks like just about all of the things that made life fun have just become illegal.

Now, let's say you're at least as high up in the Klan as, Robert Byrd was. [You mean U.S. Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia? Whose name graces practically every government building, highway, dam, school, food stamp distribution center, etc., courtesy of your tax dollars? Who led the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act? How come the media, schoolbooks or TV don't mention that?]. So you call a strategic planning meeting of the KKK, and the leadership (being illiterate) hires a fancy pants Washington consultant to research how they can keep Negroes in their place.

They didn't have Powerpoint back then but they did have tabbed notebooks, so at the following KKK strategic planning meeting, the consultant passes them out, explaining that he had to do a little "out of the box" thinking (an expression that would gain popularity in a couple of decades). "If you want to keep Negroes in the ghetto," he explains, you have to keep them as poor as possible. In this notebook is an eight point program, with the details of each section behind the tabs:
  1. since marriage is the key to family stability and economic advancement, let's pay them not to get married and financially encourage them to have as many children out of wedlock as possible
  2. since teaching someone to fish rather than handing them one could empower them, lets give them just enough food to survive
  3. let's warehouse them in massive public housing projects that will not only destroy their sense of self worth but ruin the entire neighborhood. Don't be daunted by the trillions of dollars it will cost - the "fat cats" who live off the sweat of the working people will pay for it
  4. every ghetto neighborhood should have an abortion clinic, like Margaret Sanger said, in case point 1 gets out of hand and they start multiplying too fast Margaret Sanger Founder of Planned Parenthood In Her Own Words 
  5. even though they're inferior, every so often a clever one pops up. We'll take them and require schools and employers to push them ahead of more qualified workers and students. This will put them in positions where they will likely fail, or have their success attributed to "Affirmative Action." Not to mention the resentment it will cause the people who are pushed out of line (we'll have the newspapers tell em' they're paying the price for slavery)
  6. let's destroy their culture by dumbing down their language and having Hollywood sell them music and movies that glorify misogyny, victimization, promiscuity, crime, prostitution, substance abuse, violence and everything we can think of to reduce their dignity
  7. we have to convince them that their only salvation comes from the government. They must be utterly convinced that they are incapable of achieving anything for themselves and have no hope of betterment except for government handouts, set-asides and preferences
  8. we have to completely neutralize them politically by locking them into the Democratic party so they will be politically irrelevant. Just make sure they see that all of their government goodies are courtesy of the Democratic party
With dramatic pomp and circumstance, he concludes with: "Gentlemen, I present the 'Great Society'"

Remembering the point about clever ones, you ask if any of them - seeing through the scheme, will raise their voices in protest and warn the rest. "That's the real genius behind our program!" he replies! "We can co-opt some ward hacks as "leaders" who will denounce them as 'Uncle Toms.' We can very effectively silence any opposition that way." You snicker at the delicious irony.

OK, that scenario is probably just as fanciful as the standard Hollywood fare, which reliably contrasts small minded, bigoted conservatives with brilliant, witty and compassionate liberals. More to the point, it focuses on the intent of the liberals who cooked up this multi-trillion dollar, quasi-Socialist scheme for dis empowering generations of African Americans.

We really don't know what their intent was. In fact, I'd be willing to stipulate that the majority of politicians who foisted this explosion of government had the very best of intentions. It seems implausible that they could have contemplated just how this massive redistribution of wealth (much of it from productive taxpayers to a bloated bureaucracy, rather than the poor) would backfire against the very population they intended to help.

And yet, whether it was a dedicated compassionate liberals or diabolical racists seething with hate, the results are precisely the same. If you're an African American, isn't that what matters?
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Beyond racism

Posted by Member of the Tribe on Sunday, November 09, 2008 10:45:30 AM
Enquiring minds want to know: does the Obama presidency herald the end of racism in America (or the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning)? Did it just confirm it, to the extent that 53% of the electorate were presumably willing to vote for Obama the day before (and the day before that, etc.), not to mention the the percentage of the McCain electorate who pulled the lever for non-racist reasons? Or will the mainstream media conjure up a "Post-Bradley effect," in which white supremacists secretly voted for Obama to mask their racism?

Similarly, can we find a silver lining in the mainstream media's no-longer-a-secret Obama swooning? Is it proof positive that at least everyone in the media (with the obvious exception of the "haters" at Fox news and Rush Limbaugh) has transcended racism? Or is it part of the soft racism of lowered expectations?

Shelby Steele addresses these issues in his L.A. Times piece

Obama's post-racial promise

Barack Obama seduced whites with a vision of their racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of a racial motivation.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steele5-2008nov05,0,6553798.story
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A Marketing Triumph and other silver linings in the 2008 presidential election

Posted by Member of the Tribe on Saturday, November 08, 2008 6:44:54 PM
The 2008 presidential election was a marketing triumph, and this is exactly what should give us hope. Forget the $600 million to $84 million campaign finance disparity (and put aside the questionable source of much of the $600 million). Forget the ACORN voters, served up courtesy of tax deductible contributions as well as "redistributions" from the "rich" (i.e., productive taxpayers). Forget that the media devoted more resources to digging up dirt on Sarah Palin in 2 months (and Joe the Plumber in 2 weeks) than they devoted to fact checking the president-elect in 2 years. And defer (at least for a couple of paragraphs) the role of mainstream media bias. Among many other things, the election of Barack (can we use his middle name yet?) Obama was a testimony to the power of marketing.

BHO ran hard away from his past and his base. He ran past the center to the right as a tax cutter, oil driller, pro-Israel, anti-gay marriage fiscal conservative. He denounced Reverend Wright and found Bill Ayers' actions (the ones occurring before Obama was born) "repugnant." He said he would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. If his poverty stricken illegal alien aunt was violating immigration laws, than she should be treated "like any other person" because "we are a nation of laws." Economically disadvantaged African Americans should take more individual responsibility for their lives. He came out foursquare against "those who would divide us by race." A regular Reagan clone!

And, other than selecting the one ray of sunshine in his otherwise gloomy campaign for his VP, McCain certainly didn't help himself by muddying his message. He blamed the inevitable burst of the Democrats' multi-billion dollar subsidized mortgage welfare program on "greedy Wall Street fat cats." He wanted mass amnesty for illegal aliens and more government intervention to address the indisputable "man made global warming." He called for more government bailouts and more regulation to protect us from "Wall Street greed." Not exactly a focused marketing message for a Republican!

Media bias? Just because 95 percent of the media self-identify and vote as liberal Democrats? Who says they can't put that aside and call it fair & square, like they learned in journalism school? Could you honestly say you knew for whom Keith Olbermann, Katie Couric or Chris ("chills running down my spine") Matthews was voting? And how can anyone selectively cite ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MS-DNC, taxpayer-funded PBS, Newsweek, Time, the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, just about every broadcast and cable station and just about every major newspaper and newsmagazine - when Fox News consistently gives Hannity more time than Colmes? To say the mainstream media was "in the tank" for Obama is as unfair as accusing announcer Johhny Most of "homering" for the Boston Celtics.

So, unlike my fellow selfish, un-neighborly, big oil, Wall Street "fat cat" Bible & gun totin' bitter McCain voters, I am not despairing. No, it's not just because this country was great enough to survive Jimmy Carter. It's because the number one marketing rule is: marketing must reflect reality (i.e., there must be a "there" there). So the good news is perhaps our President-elect has really divorced himself from Ayers, Alinsky, Farrakhan, Wright, Phleger, Khalidi and his other mentors, spiritual leaders, advisors, financial backers (and financial beneficiaries) who believe that the United States is a hateful, racist, greedy country and the source of the world's evil. Perhaps he has seen the light and become a born-again post-racial unifier (and Reagan clone). If that is true, we may have ushered in a new day of post racial-divisions and post politics of victimization, less big government  intrusion, lower taxes, energy independence and true empowerment for the economic underclasses.

And if the Obama campaign brilliantly applied nearly all the rules of marketing - rules #2 through 687 - while ignoring the first, well, the American people don't like to be hoodwinked
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