Abe was Right, and Here’s Why
Abraham Lincoln is of course one of this site’s spotlight American heroes, not the least for his enduring insights on political morality. From day 1, SherWright.com has presented a page of our favorite Abe quotes. Here are a couple I find particularly compelling in light of the shenanigans of the present “Party of Lincoln” administration. Here’s the first: “I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.” Now does that sound like the Bush Administration? George W’s version would be “I’ll correct an error if I ever make one!” This brings us to the Lincoln quote (emphasis added) that fits current circumstances like a glove: “you can fool some of the people all of the time.” Abe was right, and SherWright.com is now filling in the details. Who has Bush fooled? Pretty much everyone who has voted for him over the last two elections, slightly more that the majority of the electorate in one case and slightly less in the other. How did he fool them? He had them believing in free lunch, in campaign promises for new government benefits and no fewer benefits achieved at the same time that taxes are dramatically cut. Note at the size of the group that bought into a fantasy that every fourth grader knows to be illogical. Still, half the electorate is a pretty large number of people! So how can you as Abe says fool so many people for so much of the time? Here’s how: you can do it when they want to be fooled. The sad truth is that millions upon millions of Americans are ready to be deluded that wealth and prosperity could be achieved in any but the old fashioned way: by earning it. They seem to need to believe that they can be citizens in the sole superpower with third world tax rates. All it took was a party leadership hungry for political power to harness this greed for political gain. Considering how badly Abe’s party has strayed from the moral example he set, could there be any times where his words (as opposed to his party) not stood the test of time? Here’s a candidate: “While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.” An argument can be made that he was off base, considering the impact of Bush Administration fiscal policy over that short period. However, given that so many people have demonstrated their willingness to be fooled, I now understand better than ever what Abe was getting at with his caveat “while the people retain their virtue…”
04.16.05 @ 07:56 PM EDT [link]

Feature of the Week
We’ve honored Karl Rove’s new designation as the official Source of US Policy (complete with an official government title) by making a permanent feature of our funny story on him in action at a Bush inaugural ball. It hangs off of our Rove spotlight page, which has been spruced up a bit.

04.15.05 @ 10:37 PM EDT [link]

Bush’s Blue State Tax
In honor of Tax Day, I’m spotlighting my discovery of the one tax in the universe that Bush apparently views with fondness. Could there be such a thing? Well, consider the “coincidence” that this is a tax on income that hits only high earners, and yet in three rounds of massive cuts benefiting high earners this particular tax has been completely untouched. I’m speaking of the Alternative Minimum Tax, a tax I’ve gained some personal experience with over the last couple of years. As background, this was a tax first imposed in 1969 to pick up “millionaires” whose income was so heavily shielded by deductions that they would otherwise end up paying little or no tax. It was never indexed, so an increasing number of middle class Americans are being picked up, people who would still be paying plenty of tax even with their deductions (ironically, because of Bush’s tax cuts.) I wasn’t surprised to get hit last year, since I had a very nice earnings windfall two years ago (not internet bubble capital gains, BTW. As an aside, one of the outcomes of this windfall is my decision to invest in this very site). Imagine my surprise when doing my taxes for last year’s “normal” earnings situation (including a college professor wife on sabbatical) to find I would be paying twice the AMT amount as the previous year! This definitely caught my interest. What I found is that this is a “bubble” tax – it doesn’t have much impact on the super rich (Bush’s self-acknowledged base, as anyone who’s seen Fahrenheit 911 well knows). Its wallop is reserved for the middle class, and particularly for a certain segment of the middle class. AMT lucky winners tend to have the following characteristics relative to other Americans: high property taxes, high state taxes, high mortgage payments, and high contributions. What segment of Americans does this best describe? Working stiff Blue State Americans! So there’s our answer to the strange inconsistency behind right wing enthusiasm for some forms of tax relief over others. Bush and Rove must view putting a financial hit on the people that most consistently voted against them and also most consistently contributed to their opponents as poetic justice indeed. Two states away I can just about hear their cackling!
04.14.05 @ 09:40 PM EDT [link]

Irresponsibility is SO Sexy!
Who would be more appealing to his target market – an irresponsible rock star who flouted convention at every opportunity, or a reputable rock star with an air of probity and seriousness? Here’s the deal – irresponsibility is viscerally attractive! Most of the time this is a harmless foible of human nature, something that might get you talked into a tattoo you really didn’t want by an irresponsible friend. Irresponsibility only impacts entire nations when its important leaders turn out to be irresponsible; they’re the ones with the power to really screw things up. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to have been a significant historical issue for the United States because there were always natural limits how much irresponsibility a President could get away with. Here’s why: irresponsible behavior ultimately resulted in higher taxes, either immediately to pay for immediate objects of desire (say, a military incursion) or eventually, to clean up a mess (say, a depression). Long-haul irresponsibility has not been feasible because voters pulled the plug when the bill arrived. Not feasible until now. Today we have a major political party that has adopted irresponsibility as its long-term strategy (a strategy of two decades, in fact). And it can’t be disputed that it’s worked for them bigtime! How have they gotten away with it? I see it as a perfect storm, the intersection of three perfectly balanced conditions: 1) Political true believers with an above-average lust for power such that they’ll do Whatever It Takes. (In fairness, though, there’s nothing really special there – plenty of past pols were also into WIT.) 2). An entire generation of voters so self-absorbed as to enthusiastically embrace a siren call to irresponsibility from their leaders in order to score mounds of free goodies from Uncle Sam. (The Boomers are probably special among American generations in this regard, but let’s say they’re just average, for the sake of argument.) Here’s the third and most essential front of our perfect storm of irresponsibility: 3) Foreign governments with extra trillions to invest and a perception that funding US fiscal irresponsibility is a wise use of their money. That’s what’s really unique about the current situation. Can you imagine the money men of the 1930s (or any other era) putting a huge portion of their wealth on the line to bail out foolish behavior by a government? If there’s nobody around to finance federal foolishness, taxes have to go up, which is why irresponsibility has never before worked as a long-term political strategy. Calling it a long-term strategy doesn’t make it a sustainable strategy, though. Despite GOP talk of “permanent” tax cuts, rest assured that taxes will absolutely have to go up for the suckers (AKA American Posterity – our children and grandchildren) stuck with the bill from the last twenty years of GOP free lunch. I wonder if they’ll find irresponsibility to be as sexy as we do!
04.13.05 @ 08:33 PM EDT [link]

So Who’s the REAL Party of No?!
News item: “During last month's Senate debate on Bush's request to extend his $1.85 trillion in tax cuts, only five Republican senators joined the chamber's 44 Democrats and one independent to demand that further reductions be offset by tax increases or spending cuts.” What we have here is a case of the dented, scratched up, rusty, muddy, dirty, grimy, sooty, foul, and polluted pot calling the kettle black. Specifically, the GOP is doing attack ads because Democrats have been effective in countering Bush’s weakly-argued positions on Social Security, calling the Dems “the party of no.” They apparently expect Democrats to be as worked up as they are about fiscal challenges in a single Federal program that will begin to surface in 2042. (As an aside, I don’t count Social Security’s earlier drawing from its trust fund as a “problem,” even when our President described this situation as being “flat broke” and “bankrupt.” I’m going to have to agree to disagree with him over the intrinsic value of the term “full faith and credit of the United States of America.” I happen to think that the phrase has some meaning, while he apparently doesn’t). With the above news item, the extraordinary hypocrisy of the GOP, and its offensive patronization of all citizens, is out there for all to see. Let me spell it out. Republicans say that Democrats are irresponsible for not being on board with extreme right wing solutions to a problem that will only begin happening almost forty years from now. And even then the majority of benefits (70%) will continue to be paid. It may well be that in 2042 the wealth of society will be such that it’s a non-problem. SherWright.com has helpfully offered a number of workable solutions that don’t happen to match the extreme right wing world view. In the meantime, while Reps are branding Dems as irresponsible over a single-program issue four decades out, Republicans are this very day showing breathtaking levels of irresponsibility by being completely unwilling to admit that their own two decade ride on the promise of free lunch must finally come to an end. Just consider that every single Democratic Senator was willing to stand up and say that it’s immoral to further increase the rate at which our current spending on government benefits services is pushed off onto future generations. Less than one out of every ten Republican Senators was willing make even that very basic commitment. And we’re not talking about paying down the debt or even reducing the deficit. When the topic is tax cuts, balancing these cuts only keeps them revenue neutral – another way of saying that the deficit clicks along adding to the debt at the current historically high rate. It’s thus outrageous that we’re getting lectures from the GOP about fiscal conscientiousness, and it’s equally outrageous that they’re getting away with doing it! The GOP is the REAL party of no – the party of absolutely no fiscal responsibility whatsoever, with absolutely no limits on their shameless hypocrisy.
04.12.05 @ 08:57 PM EDT [link]

SherWright.com’s Fair and Balanced Praise for DeLay
Readers of this journal have grounds to believe that SherWright.com’s position on DeLay’s continued leadership role as House Majority Leader is that it’s inappropriate. Upon reflection, though, we should all admit that his role is totally appropriate. While DeLay is hardly a poster boy for ethics, one must recognize that he is an absolute paragon of Truth in Advertising. Remember Bush’s campaign mantra that “what you see is what you get?” DeLay makes Bush look like two-faced Janus! With DeLay as a “Face of the GOP,” you know that what you see in his individual behavior is what you actually get from the GOP at large. In fact, if there is announcement that DeLay is stepping down, crusading District Attorney Eliot Spitzer should immediately issue an injunction until it’s clear that his replacement offers no less a compelling example of what the party stands for! And who could replace DeLay as the literal incarnation of modern Republican Values, a Four-Letter Word made Flesh? Everything about Tom is totally consistent with the right wing view of the world and the Bush Administration’s approach to governance. All that’s missing is the creamy veneer of Compassionate Conservatism, and we all know that’s just eyewash. Tom is the Real Deal, out there for all to see! Pick a characteristic, any characteristic, and see how closely it maps to Republican attitudes and practices at large. Take the “conservative” GOP’s willingness to dump established tradition at the drop of a hat. Tom is right out front, like when he toppled the tradition of scheduling the divisive and disruptive process of reapportioning congressional seats no more frequently than once a decade. In the process he was censured for his inappropriate use of federal resources in a state matter. That’s just one example of another characteristic of the Modern GOP – its willingness to dump cherished Republican notions like states’ rights when expediency demands. Look at DeLay’s leadership in attempting to override the Florida Legislature (and courts) in the Schiavo matter. DeLay’s hypocrisy is perfectly in step with his Party’s. Even DeLay’s religious convictions are on pitch with GOP mainstream extremism. He holds that the End Times are upon us, so shepherding our nation’s fiscal and environmental resources is unnecessary and even foolish. Far better to go after the wealth and power to be gained by sucking out their value in the torrent that his over-the-top means can achieve. In short, Tom DeLay is the personification of what the GOP has become – a vast engine of greed and lust for power.
04.11.05 @ 08:16 PM EDT [link]

The Party of Know
Dems are taking heat from the Bush Administration as “the party of no” because they’re cool to Bush’s Social Security proposals. The Dems seem perfectly content to let the Bush proposals swing in the wind. Bush’s feigned dismay at Democrat unwillingness to play strikes me as cynically disingenuous. When the shoe on the other foot (as it was with the Clinton health plan) Karl Rove played it just the same way that Democrats are now playing Social Security. And they really have to play it this way, because Republicans aren’t really “playing.” Bush claims to be open-mindedly listening to all proposals, yet has explicitly announced that he won’t consider any of the approaches used to fix Social Security in the past. Specifically, he won’t consider allocating some of the increased gains in wealth that American society has seen in the decades since Social Security revenue inflows were last set. Also, he won’t consider a plan that doesn’t include privatization, even though such a plan diverts the money needed to fund Social Security payments already committed to retirees, and would significantly add to the same national debt that the Bush Administration has already significantly added to. The truth is that the Democratic Party, from sad experience with the Bushies, is the Party of Know. They Know how the Administration feels about bipartisanship, captured in the words of right wing ideologue Grover Norquist: “Bipartisanship is another name for date-rape.” Dems Know that any toe in the water on the Social Security debate will just give Bush’s attack ad machine content to work with. And they Know that participating in the debate is a futile exercise. Should Dems come up with a suggestion to rescue the right wing from the corner they’ve painted themselves into, they Know their ideas will go into Republican-only committee deliberations and, in the picturesque phrase from Cokie Roberts, “emerge as an elephant.”
04.10.05 @ 08:57 PM EDT [link]