Hell Freezes Over

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-08-2008
Hell Freezes Over
7
Thu, 10-09-2008 - 4:21pm
...and no, I don't mean yet another crappy reunion tour from that band of lame lite-rockers, The Eagles. No, I mean I agree with Tom "Suck On This" Friedman:


Palin’s Kind of Patriotism

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”

What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.

I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.

Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”

I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.

How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?

We are in the middle of an economic perfect storm, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, and no bank feels that it can fully trust anyone it is doing business with anywhere in the world. Did you notice that the government of Iceland just seized the country’s second-largest bank and today is begging Russia for a $5 billion loan to stave off “national bankruptcy.” What does that say? It tells you that financial globalization has gone so much farther and faster than regulatory institutions could govern it. Our crisis could bankrupt Iceland! Who knew?

And we have not yet even felt the full economic brunt here. I fear we may be at that moment just before the tsunami hits — when the birds take flight and the insects stop chirping because their acute senses can feel what is coming before humans can. At this moment, only good governance can save us. I am not sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates. That may be the only way to get lending going again. Organizing something that big and complex will take some really smart governance and seasoned leadership.

Whether or not I agree with John McCain, he is of presidential timber. But putting the country in the position where a total novice like Sarah Palin could be asked to steer us through possibly the most serious economic crisis of our lives is flat out reckless. It is the opposite of conservative.

And please don’t tell me she will hire smart advisers. What happens when her two smartest advisers disagree?

And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence. Palin happens to be governor of the Saudi Arabia of America — Alaska — and the only energy expertise she has is the same as the king of Saudi Arabia’s. It’s about how the windfall profits from the oil in their respective kingdoms should be divided between the oil companies and the people.

At least the king of Saudi Arabia, in advocating “drill baby drill,” is serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. My problem with Palin is that she is also serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. That’s not patriotic. Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. If Palin has that kind of a plan, I haven’t heard it.
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2007
Thu, 10-09-2008 - 4:30pm

<<And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.>>


What a load!

   

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 10-09-2008 - 4:39pm

>What a load!

Sandy
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2007
Thu, 10-09-2008 - 4:51pm

You left out a few tiny details.


Tax cuts do not create deficits, greater govt spending does.


http://www.ncpa.org/pi/taxes/pdtx64.html


Surplus?

   

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-08-2008
Thu, 10-09-2008 - 4:57pm

Huh? The "free market" will fund our troops to the tune of ten billion dollars a month in Iraq? The "free market" (that's the one that's been crashing left and right, from Washington Mutual to Lehman to Bear Stearns to AIG) will do that?

There are three - count 'em, three - ways for a government to acquire money: they can tax people or organizations to raise it, they can borrow it from wealthy countries, corporations or individuals, or they can print it. The last one I'll leave aside, since it's too fraught with problems of an obvious nature to be a serious contender in the answer to the very real problem facing America right now (unless you want to go the Robert Mugabe route and start printing ten million dollar bills, LOL). That leaves taxes or borrowing. I'd be the last person to say there's no place for borrowing, ever - since, just like individuals who are trying to borrow a house, it's exceedingly difficult to pay cash for such a large expenditure; most people never have that much disposable income available in one place, so a mortgage - borrowing - is necessary. But, as we all know, if you start borrowing to pay for regular things, like meals out, and trips to the department store, and less costly, more "everyday" items, you quickly acquire a mountain of debt which develops a self-sustaining momentum through higher interest rates and minimum monthly payments which are applied mostly to service the interest on the money, not reduce the principal.

And the truth is that under George W. Bush, we've borrowed not only for big-ticket items like the Iraq war - which still stretches out into infinity before us, given that John McCain has said we could be there up to a hundred years or more - but also for regular, everyday, "line-items" which should be funded through a tax on the citizenry (however it's applied). I've heard conservatives moaning lately that, in an economic crisis, the LAST thing you want to do is raise taxes...and I actually agree with that statement, in general: in times of economic hardship, you lower the taxes and increase spending (even if you go into deficits to do it), in order to keep the economy afloat....but in boom times, you do the opposite: you raise the taxes, so that the wealth that's being created flows not just into private coffers, but some of it is also made available to the government to pay off old debt, and as a buffer against the next downturn (because there's always a next downturn). The problem with Bush/McCain-O-Nomics, is that, whether times are good OR bad, their solution is always "cut taxes, reduce government." And it's left us with a government that literally can't afford to pay its bills - even the interest on its debt....at a time when government is needed the most to keep the economy stable. Our national debt clock in Times Square is literally having to be rebuilt, because it just, at the end of last month, topped TEN TRILLION DOLLARS. Think about that for a minute: we broke the scale. That's like if you eat so much and get so fat that you break your bathroom scale. All under the watchful "conservative" eye of George Bush and the Rubber Stamp Republican Congress™.

After all this, do you really mean to tell me that you think borrowing more money and loosening regulations is the way to go? Are you familiar with the definition of insanity, which has it that "insanity is doing the same thing, in the same way, but expecting different results?" That's - right there - the reason NOT to vote for John McSame and Caribou Barbie this November: because they have literally NO way - other than more of the same - out of the mess we're in. They keep screeching "change is coming!".....and they're right....just not how they probably mean it.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-09-2008
Thu, 10-09-2008 - 4:58pm

Absolutely! He is deliberately twisting and distorting her meaning. He makes it appear as if she wants NO taxes paid, when in reality it is HIGH taxes that she is against. Another misleading story from the despicable New York Slimes.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-08-2008
Thu, 10-09-2008 - 5:06pm
The government is REQUIRED to make certain expenditures. Many of them can be changed, but even among the ones which can, it's not as if we can change 'em overnight. And spending is merely the other side of the coin from raising revenue. Sure, if we were somehow able to eliminate the need for all government spending everywhere, we could stop taxing people....but I don't think you want to see what sort of country that would look like. If the government has commitments to spend __X__ dollars, and taxes to cover those expenditures (this would be a balanced budget, which we haven't had since....hey! Clinton!, LOLOL! - but just for ease of math here, we'll say expenditures equal to tax revenue), then if you CUT taxes, it isn't the spending that's causing deficits, it's the intentional reduction of revenue. Now, we can argue that spending in certain areas should be cut, if you want.....but that's quite different from saying that it's EXISTING spending which is responsible for deficits, if the spending's more-or-less flat (with increases for inflation) but the revenue's being cut repeatedly through a reduction of the tax rate.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 10-09-2008 - 7:14pm

>Tax cuts do not create deficits, greater govt spending does.<


And your point is? Reagan's tax cuts dealth with the Laffer curve, the idea that there was an equilibrium point at which one could maximize tax revenues by decreasing the actual percentage on personal income. Are you trying to say that Reagan did not go far enough with his tax cuts? (And that tax increase

Sandy