Fairness and equality are 2012’s version of 2008’s hope and change. Barack Obama is monopolizing those brands while shirking the business of responsible governance and national purpose. Last week, millions of Americans received an unsolicited email from the White House urging individuals to “Just enter a few pieces of information about your taxes, and see how many millionaires pay a lower effective tax rate than you.” This was no ordinary piece of election year propaganda, but rather a draft notice urging citizens to report to duty and fight the class war declared by the president himself. With titanic debt and deficit values assuming the ignorable status of imaginary numbers, he is refocusing our anxieties on the tangible fortunes of our neighbors.
Obama’s case for reelection rests on a false choice: America can retain its basic humanity via government intervention or sell its national soul for private profit. The press, as usual, is the megaphone. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll asks: “What do you think is the bigger problem in this country—unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy, or over-regulation of the free market that interferes with growth and prosperity?” Fifty-two percent said “unfairness,” and 37 percent said “over-regulation.” Some have pointed out that the poll sample is heavily skewed toward Democrats and the results are therefore meaningless. But that misses the larger point. The question is meaningless. Choosing between over-regulation and unfairness is like choosing between lethargy and obesity. For the past 50 years, federal regulation and income inequality have grown in tandem. See charts here and here.
If government intervention corrects unfairness, as liberals insist, why when placed side-by-side, do the two look as cozy as temperature and CO2 in an Al Gore propaganda blockbuster?
Conservatives are failing entirely to take this debate where it needs to go. Over-regulation isn’t just unfair in the “it’s not right to tax my billions because I’ve earned them” sense. Overregulation is unfair for everyone. An over-regulated American housing market saw lenders forced into giving loans to buyers without sufficient credit. When it came time to pay up, the whole scheme went under in a flash, nearly taking financial markets down, and causing the job-killing recession from which we continue to suffer. If the 2008 collapse put you out of work blame a disastrous piece of liberal legislation known as the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act—not millionaires.
Federally instituted “fairness” furnishes undeserved opportunities for house-of-cards companies like Solyndra to edge out less fashionably green, but more worthwhile, competitors. Financial regulation aimed at curbing Wall Street greed only serves to discourage smaller start-up capitalists without the money to troubleshoot the regulation maze as ably as giant corporations.
Obama isn’t offering fairness at all. He’s pitching therapeutic divisiveness: “see how many millionaires pay a lower effective tax rate than you,” get mad, make them pay. In 2008, the guns-and-Bible part of Obama’s “bitter clinger” comment made headlines, but there was more to what he said. He also scolded Americans who “cling to antipathy to people who aren’t like them … to explain their frustrations.” That antipathy is the Obama 2012 campaign message. Just let him pick the targets.
Responsible parents tell their children at the first signs of self-defeating envy, “Don’t worry about everyone else; worry about yourself.” What is beneath the dignity of children is embraced by our president. If indeed our national soul now hangs in the balance, its salvation depends on how Americans respond to the calls for disunity coming from the highest office in the land.
At the root of this "fairness" demagoguery is the fallacious notion that "progressive" tax system is somehow fair. Perhaps this is why the lunatic fringe activists refers to themselves as progressives. Yet there is nothig in the Scriptures to support this myth.
This is not a bright way to reply to an effective stunt. n nThe 'Buffett Rule' has clearly captured the American public. When a billionaire like Warren Buffett pays a lower tax than his own secretary, most Americans know that something is wrong. Very wrong. Buffett himself says so. Repeatedly. n nIt is the fundamental unfairness of our tax system that Obama is using to secure his re-election. The 'Buffett Rule' is its marquee. n nWe have to make a MUCH better reply than this, or it looks to most voters like the Republicans are just trying to protect their fellow millionaires. Obama's strategy is smart. n nWe have to be smarter, or we look like defenders of low taxes for millionaires, and high taxes for their secretaries. And that's a guaranteed loser.
You not only make an excellent point: "It is the fundamental unfairness of our tax system that Obama is using to secure his re-election. The 'Buffett Rule' is its marquee.", and give appropriate counsel: expand it, develop your answer, you are on the right track and seem to have the necessary background and smarts!
"An over-regulated American housing market saw lenders forced into giving loans to buyers without sufficient credit. " n nNow there is some right-wing propaganda. Too much regulation "forced" the banks to give bad loans, and too much regulation "forced" the loans to be bundled into worthless securities, and too much regulation "forced" the big banks to sell these worthless securities to their customers. n nOh those poor banks, being "forced" to commit evil. n nNow, let's get real. The banks are underregulated. They should be banks, not investing for their own profits. There was a time when they had to act like banks, but they bribed Congress to change the law. n nAnyone who believes what Mr. Greenwald says, please contact me. I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. n nRodger Malcolm Mitchell
Nobody is denying that the banks handled their problems with defaulting (meaning loans that looked like they would be in default by recent payment history) loans in an unethical manner available to them, but the regulations required the loans to be made. And, if you are a Bush-hater and want a dig on him, Bush was proud of the number of new home buyers before the Treasury Secretary and Bush staff went to the Democrat Congress led by Pelosi and Reid (and in this case, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, too) to tell them what was on the horizon and that regulation was needed to deal with it … except the Democrats refused to do anything because the beneficiary of the loans were the poor and minorities that they considered their base. Welcome to the results!
Mr. Mitchell, In fact, Community Organizations– ACORN was the most prominent–created the campaign to put minorities in their own homes in the 1980-90s, and theClinton administration and Raines, at Fannie Mae listened. Fannie mae set the rules for loans because it underwrote so many of them and pressured lenders to make loans on factors other than abilitiy to repay the loans. That's why the banks banks made millions of risky loans. . One bank, , Countrywide, in Washington State was even nicknamed The ACORN bank. Lending institutions tried to protect themselves by bundling bad loans and selling them to investment firms , and the scheme fell through ACORN was responsible for many of the bad loans, planned ahead, and after the collapse, demanded the people who got fraudulent loans–with ACORN help– should be allowed to keep the houses and the banks should be punished. n nThe meltdown was caused by federal regulators refusing to do theit jobs, and banks and the construction business joining government mismanagement for some twelve years. It brought down the US economy.
Ah, I see. It was the Republicans who wanted to regulate the banks and the Democrats who prevented it. And the regulations required the banks to make "liar loans" in which absolutely no evaluation of the property or the borrower were made. And the regulations forced the banks to bundle all those bad loans into huge piles of crap, then sell the crap to investors, and all the while bet against the crap. n nSpecifically, which regulations made them do that? n nI've been reading about multiple universes. In which one did all this occur?
The distinctive distorted sound of a human voice amplified by a megaphone is widely recognized, from its use in train and bus stations and sports arenas