Preaching To A Smug, Ill-Informed Choir
By Mitch Berg
One day last winter, I went out to eat at this Vietnamese joint I’ve been eyeing for years.
The next day, there was an epic earthquake in Japan; the quake led to a tsunami killing thousoands, and the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactor.
I guess I won’t eat at that restaurant again. God only knows what’ll happen.
In related news, Joan Walsh at Salon “reports on” yesterday’s tenth anniversary of the Bush Tax Cuts:
I know, a congressman confessed to Tweeting a crotch shot to a woman who is not his wife, along with other online indiscretions that may wreck his marriage. That’s big news. [Or is it? – Ed.] The 10th anniversary of tax cuts that helped wreck the economy? Not so much.
That’s been the left’s chanting point. I heard Dick “Turban” “Let’s Bring Back The Fairness Doctrine” Durbin saying much the same yesterday, something to the effect of “you want tax cuts? Look at how the Bush Administration turned out!”.
And Durbin, like Walsh, does it in terms that make just as much sense as the connection between the Vietnamese restaurant and the Japanese earthquake:
But it’s worth remembering how badly tax cuts worked in stimulating economic growth, as Republicans continue to claim more tax cuts will revive the economy. Most big economic indicators moved in the wrong direction since then, some horrifically.
Under the Bush-Cheney administration, the U.S. saw a series of historic economic lows, and overall, the slowest overall rate of economic growth since World War II.
Right.
Bush cut taxes.
The tax cuts were responsible for the violent deflation of the tech bubble (which seemed like a big deal, back before the Housing bubble), which began months before Bush was even elected.
Meanwhile on another continent, 8,000 miles away, Osama Bin Laden, outraged at the invocation of Reaganism, organized a revenge attack that, three months later, would kill 3,000 Americans and stick another fork in the economy, driving another recession (whose effects were muted by the tax cuts – Ed).
And of course, two years before Bush was elected, the tax cuts prompted the Clinton administration to impel Fannie and Freddie to socialize the risks of the mortgage industry on the backs of the taxpayer while simultaneously easing up home-buying credit.
The lesson is clear.
Stop eating Vietnamese food.
June 8th, 2011 at 6:15 am
Obama is a frikin’ idiot.
His whole “brain trust” operated on the assumptions of classical Keynesian economics: recessions are caused by a lack of aggregate demand. Increase government spending and you increase aggregate demand. Voila! Recession ends!
This may work under some circumstances. Obama’s plan clearly did not work. The excuse the morons who spent hundreds of billions of dollars of your grandkids money with no appreciable effect was that “the hole was much deeper than we thought it was”.
This is an admission of failure. His “brain trust” didn’t make up its numbers, they were calculated using formulas based on their best economic measures and assumptions. “The hole was deeper than we thought it was” means that even if the keynesian ideas are correct, they can’t provide predictable results because he is not applying them using accurate measures of the economy. His economic policies are based on crappy, mistaken assumptions, but they are the best he’s got, and he has shown no inclination to try anything new that doesn’t involve handing out billions and billions of dollars to politically favored industries and constituencies. For a guy the MSM assured us was a genius his bag up tricks came up empty very fast.
The GOP’s tax cut obsession is slightly better. Tax cuts will get reinvested and actually return more money to the economy than building a subsidized light rail system — if the wealthy invest the tax savings in the US and spend the return in the US instead of just buying gold and keeping it in Swiss banks.
June 8th, 2011 at 7:07 am
She has a point. A Democrat commiting an immoral act is not news and should not be reported as such. Doing so holds them to an inappropriate standard of conduct.
Look, we have two major political parties and they hold exactly opposite views on most issues including personal sexual issues.
Republicans are the party of traditional religious-based morality. So when Republicans commit immoral acts, it’s hypocracy, a betrayal of party principles and just grounds for criticism. That’s newsworthy.
Democrats are the opposite of Republicans. Democrats stand for licentiousness (in affairs sexual and fiscal). So when Democrats commit immoral acts, it’s ordinary, normal and strengthens ties to the party base. There’s nothing newsworthy about that. It’d be like criticizing Republicans for failing to send enough crotch tweets – wrong standard of conduct to apply to that person.
It’s newsworthy when angels sin; not when devils do.
Stop reporting about John Edwards, Ahnold and the Weiner-man. Those are dog-bites-dog stories. Worry about the Minnesota GOP cracking, sliding an extra $110 million onto the table, before the shut-down has even begun.
.
June 8th, 2011 at 8:00 am
Um, m I the only one who remembers the mid 90s? We had several straight quarters of double-digit economic growth. Unemployment was relatively low. Compared to today, it was a Golden Age.
Things went to shit when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over Congress.
June 8th, 2011 at 8:03 am
Income & capital gains taxes were higher in the mid 90’s then they are now.
June 8th, 2011 at 8:26 am
Oh, the horrible things that happen when one eats tripe with noodles. Yum!
Kermit, don’t forget that that boom–as well as the one that preceded the current bust–really was derived from cheap Fed funny money. The trouble with modern econometrics, and Keynesianism in general, is that it confuses the effects (economic growth or stagnation, etc..) with the causes (capital investment or lack thereof).
And it goes without saying–which is of course why I say it–that explaining this to the populace is gonna be hard….
June 8th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
All I know is a lot more people were working in the 90s, and after dumping a couple trillion into “stimulus” we got bupkis.
June 8th, 2011 at 12:42 pm
Joan Walsh/Salon was heavily invested in the Weiner story being a hoax (#hacked) and smugly proclaiming it as yet another low point in the antics of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ™ / Brietbart Democrat(ic) Smear Machine (I think she even blamed the Mitchkateers). When Representative Weiner (D) revealed that the photo was indeed of his schwanz and that he indeed had sent it to a 21-year-old woman who was not his spouse, Walsh’s portfolio took a big time hit and it was time to revert back to “I Blame George Bush” mode. Funny, she isn’t ripping President Obama for renewing the Bush Tax Rate Reductions with vigor last fall.
Wonder why she holds Barack Obama to a lower standard than she does George Bush?
June 8th, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Wonder why
If it wasn’t for double standards…
June 8th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Terry, during the campaign and many, many times since then Obama and other Democrats have said that we had the worst economy since the Great Depression. How exactly could he have thought it worse?
If on the other hand he really didn’t think it was that bad, he was lying.
June 8th, 2011 at 2:15 pm
where have all our liberal commentators gone?
June 8th, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Curled up with a bottle of Victory Gin, Ben.
June 8th, 2011 at 5:28 pm
“The tenth anniversary of the Bush tax cuts that helped wreck the economy.” Joan, you mean the the ones that Obama signed an extension of?