Sucker Punch

I hate it when people get suckered by emo-political editorials. Therefore, I feel compelled to examine an article that has had that effect on thousands.

The article in question is Why Americans are so Angry written by Senator Sanders in the Huffington Post.

I won't argue whether his editorial is spot on about why American's are angry or not because I would have to be able to read minds, 308 million minds, to be sure. Let's just assume that everything he says really does make Americans angry. Is what he says makes them angry true? Or, more importantly, is he really on our side?

In my opinion, this article serves only one purpose. It feeds into the popular hate myths of Americans to make you feel that Senator Sanders deserves your support. He is on your side, feeling your pain. It is a political maneuver and it deserves to be resisted on those grounds.

First, I will give a readers digest condensed version of what he says. Republicans and Democrats are all wrong and messing up the country. I'm on your side. Yep, that's it.

Specifics:

The rich are getting richer. Their effective tax rate, in recent years, has been reduced to the lowest in modern history. Nurses, teachers and firemen actually pay a higher tax rate than some billionaires. It's no wonder the American people are angry.

The popular straw man, 'the rich.' A poorly defined target for the common man to funnel his angst against. There are two things to point out about this paragraph. First, while the rich are getting richer (and there really can be found nothing wrong with that) Americans in general are getting richer. Our poor are wealthier. Our middle class is wealthier and our rich are wealthier. Second, the paragraph shifts from generalities to specific cases while leading the reader to feel the statements still apply generally. While I am sure there are some billionaires who found loopholes that allow them to pay a lower effective tax rate than nurses, teachers and firemen this is generally not true and is not something that should generate ire at all wealthy people.

Many corporations, including General Electric and Exxon-Mobil, have made billions in profits while using loopholes to avoid paying any federal income taxes.

This is true and are specific cases that can be addressed. The senator could do more for Americans by proposing bills that close these loopholes than drumming up empty support for a politician proposing no bills to address this issue at all.

The sum of all the revenue collected by the Treasury today totals just 14.8% of our gross domestic product, the lowest in about 50 years.

Again, what is wrong with this? Nothing exactly, but it is lumped with other material that would lead you to believe that we are drawing too little revenue because of tax loopholes. Not true at all. Senator Sanders may be innocent of deliberately misleading his readers, but it is misleading. As a percentage of our GDP, our revenue is lower because our tax rates are lower. Tax rates have dropped over the last 50 years because we are wealthier and can afford to function on a smaller percentage of our productivity. This year, our revenue will be 14.4% of GDP, the lowest it has been since 1950. 50 years ago, in 1961, it was 17.8%. However, actual tax revenue has risen from 94.4 billion current dollars to 2.1 trillion current dollars.

So...we are taxed less but have more. Is that really something to stir up animosity about, Senator Sanders?

In the midst of this, Republicans in Congress have been fanatically determined to protect the interests of the wealthy and large multinational corporations

The Republicans in Congress have been fanatically determined to protect the interests of all tax paying Americans. While Democrats have spun the extension of tax cuts to the middle class as 'The Obama Tax Cuts' and the extension to cuts for the wealthy as Bush Tax Cuts, they were all Bush Tax Cuts. They were all extended during the Obama administration's term.

A lot of confusion has been sewn about the issue but Republicans introduced tax cuts for everyone. Democrats want to end some of the tax cuts. No one made unilateral tax cuts for the wealthy. This segues into...

If the Republicans have their way, the entire burden of deficit reduction will be placed on the elderly, the sick, children and working families.

More hogwash. Not a single fact supports this. In 2007, the last year for which I have reliable data and four years after the Bush tax cuts, the tax group identified by Senator Sanders paid only 3% of tax revenue. 85% of the tax revenue was paid by the top 25% earners. Republicans want ALL Americans to pay less taxes, not just the wealthy. The wealthy, even with tax breaks, still carry the country's tax burden on their shoulders.

The Republican plan with the tax cuts was to give people a chance to do more with their money, hopefully causing an overall increase in revenue with a lower overall tax rate. It actually worked. From 2003 to 2006, the tax revenue from the wealthy doubled even though their overall tax rate was reduced.

President Obama and the Democrats have been extremely weak in opposing these right-wing extremist proposals.

Obama and the Democrats have been weak in resisting proposals they are not in favor of, which is puzzling as they have had the numbers to bulldoze through whatever bills they want. However, while it is largely in the eye of the beholder, I would not consider tax cuts to be 'right-wing extremism.' Sometimes people use terms so much they loose their meaning like the prolific use of terms like rape, slavery and terrorism.

Although the United States now has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major industrialized country...

While this may be true, again it is not a problem on it's own. If the poor were getting poorer so the rich could get richer, that would be morally reprehensible. However, everyone is getting wealthier in America, generally speaking. Humans have an innate sense of fairness. We perceive that the system is unfair if some people have more than others. However, our system was set up to allow people to achieve to the best of their abilities. Through skill, environment, luck, whatever, some people are achieving a great deal. Instead of hating them for achieving more than us, we should congratulate them on what they achieved. If we are actually unhappy with our own achievements, we should recognize that as an unrelated circumstance that we can personally address without attack other people.

Democrats have not succeeded in getting any new revenue from those at the top of the economic ladder to reduce the deficit.

If he means that Democrats have not succeeded in get new revenue as a percentage of their income, that is true. If he means that they have not gotten more revenue in terms of real dollars, that is not true on a federal level. Now at a state level, exactly what you would expect to happen happened. Some states increased their local tax rate on the wealthy and the wealthy moved to another state, lowering their overall tax revenue while increasing the tax rate. Why that lesson from the states does not trickle up to the federal Democrats is beyond me. It is a special kind of naive to say "This doesn't work anywhere else, but it will work for me!"

Instead, they've handed the wealthy even more tax breaks. In December, the House and the Senate extended President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich and lowered estate tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.

The extension to 'The Bush Tax Cuts' (which I remarked on earlier in this post) is not 'even more tax breaks.' They are the same tax breaks since 2003. The estate taxes were lowered, as they have been over and over, from a max of 55% in 2001 to 35% this year. But again, the tax cuts are for everyone, not just the wealthy. The wording only serves to stir hate for the wealthy, Republicans for pushing tax cuts and Democrats for not successfully resisting tax cuts. But again, on it's face, their is nothing inheriting bad about tax cuts. Not only does it mean more money in every tax paying pocket, but it has been shown to actually increase overall revenue in the past.

In April, to avoid the Republican effort to shut down the government, they allowed $38.5 billion in cuts to vitally important programs for working-class and middle-class Americans.

What is a vital program and how much it deserves to be funded is food for another blog meal. I would like to point out the clever crafting of words. 'Republican effort to shut down the government." There is not a complete capitulation on either side of the isle. Why is it not referred to as a Democrat effort to shut down the government?" Or an Obama effort, he is actually working out the plans to shut down the government. My protests hardly matter. Not only do I think the Republicans do share an enormous part of responsibility for this issue, Democrats are much better at spin and will always make the Republicans look like they are on the bad side of an issue. Republicans, in this way, are like the parents of the country. They accept that if they are doing their job right, they won't be appreciated for it for years to come. Right now, however, both sides of the isle are more interested in succeeding against each other than they are in the substance of what they are succeeding at. I mention this in my previous post Universal Health Care.

Now, with the U.S. facing the possibility of the first default in our nation's history...

Word games. America is always facing the possibility of it's first default. The fact that we are still waiting for our first is a testament to how well we are doing.

the American people find themselves forced to choose between two congressional deficit-reduction plans.

If we were a Democracy, this would be true. We are a Republic and Americans are not faced with any choice at all. That, I believe is the real source of American frustration. We are powerless. Even when we think we are voting into office representatives who will act in our interests, we find this not to be true and we are powerless to do anything about it. We can either face up to our share of the blame for putting wankers in office and let them get away with what they are doing or we can channel our frustration at convenient targets, like Republicans, talk show hosts, the wealthy, a sibling with different political views, a Humvee owner...

The plan by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, which calls for $2.4 trillion in cuts over a 10-year period, includes $900 billion in cuts in areas such as education, health care, nutrition, affordable housing, child care and many other programs desperately needed by working families and the most vulnerable.

I haven't read the plan but if it's true, it's despicable and very un...Democrat. I don't bother grumbling too much about proposed bills though. It is pointless. Let's see what bill gets past, after debated and amended. That is what counts.

The Senate plan appropriately calls for meaningful cuts in military spending and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it does not ask the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations to make any sacrifice.

Exactly what sacrifice does Senator Sanders suggest? If he is referring to tax revenue, far from '[not] any sacrifice', they already pay most of the tax revenue to pay for American excesses. Does he want to harvest rich women's embryos for stem cell research? Oh, no, his voting record shows he is against that.

The Reid plan is bad. The constantly shifting plan by House Speaker John Boehner is much worse. His $1.2 trillion plan calls for no cuts in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

A shifting plan is a sign of a responsive planner. However, both plans are obviously too flawed to be passed. But is Senator Sanders correct in the eyes of Americans? Not cutting funding to two wars is much worse than cutting funding to Americans in need? Although I would like to see both wars end, we desperately need to take good care of Americans, their education, health care and welfare.

While all of this is going on in Washington, the American people have consistently stated, in poll after poll, that they want wealthy individuals and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes

Promoting more myth. Yes, polls show that American say they want wealthy individuals to pay their fair share. However, wealthy Americans actually pay more than what the average American considers fair, they just don't know it. Instead of speaking truth, he promotes the myth. I discussed this in a previous post called Blame it on the Rich where Sam Harris tried the same intellectual dishonesty.

In other words, Congress is now on a path to do exactly what the American people don't want. Americans want shared sacrifice in deficit reduction. Congress is on track to give them the exact opposite: major cuts in the most important programs that the middle class needs and wants, and no sacrifice from the wealthy and the powerful.

Congress is going to do what it always does. It is going to drum up constituent support by either proposing bills that make them look better or make other people look worse. It is our responsibility to stop feeding into the emotional game and sternly remind our representatives what we want of them, what we are paying them to do. No where does Senator Sanders suggest any solution at all, even contacting your representative. Instead, he wraps up his article with the real clincher...

Is it any wonder, therefore, that the American people are so angry with what's going on in Washington? I am too.

His "I'm with you guys!" Now that we are all on the same side, he has 7,674 Facebook 'likes' and the American people have ... nothing. We are just reminded of all the angst politicians have been feeding into for the last couple of years. At least there is another clear winner. The company that makes ant-acids.