That's the headline of this ABC news story. They write it apparently with no sense of irony, despite the fact that, early on, it contains this quote from the former New York governor:

"Class warfare? He declared the war," Cuomo said at the National Press Club. "He said, 'We're going to give all the money to the rich.'"

Cuomo, who is pushing the Democratic Party to sharpen its difference with the Republicans on issues such as tax cuts, declared: "We're not the ones who started the war. We're just defending ourselves against his attack."

He said, "We're going to give all the money to the rich." Yup, I'll be that's just what he said.

The evil Republicans are pulling a reverse Robin Hood. They're going to round up all the peasants, turn them over and shake all the pennies out of their pockets, and hand the ill-gotten swag over to the rich. All of it.

It couldn't possibly be that the President is simply letting the "rich," who pay most of the income taxes, keep a little more of their own money.

And of course, rather than attempting to put Cuomo's immoderate demogoguery in any kind of rational context, they instead attempt to buttress it, with this:

That cut gives 52 percent of its benefits to the richest 1 percent of Americans by 2010 those with an average income of $1.5 million according to the labor-funded advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice.

Citizens for Tax Justice. It's a non-profit, and it has such a nice name. Who could object to "justice"? They couldn't possibly have an axe to grind.

Glad there's no liberal media bias--just think what the story might have said if there were...

Let's beat that liberal media horse a few more times. . . Might still have some life in it. Especially with Super Mario all over the airwaves now.
This "stimulus package" is a joke, and let's hope some moderate Republicans even have the gonads to call Bush on this crap.

"The evil Republicans are pulling a reverse Robin Hood. They're going to round up all the peasants, turn them over and shake all the pennies out of their pockets, and hand the ill-gotten swag over to the rich. All of it."

...and then go back in 2004 and ask all those peasants for their votes.

Democrats don't give anybody much credit for brains, do they? I think the psychiatrists call it "projection."

The Center can't do math. According to the House Joint Committee on Taxation, for 2000, the top 1% had incomes of $1,146 Billion, and filed 1.4 million tax returns.

This is an average AGI of $818,571, about 55% of what they say.

> He said, "We're going to give all the money to the
> rich." Yup, I'll be that's just what he said.

Well, duh, of course he didn't say it in so many words. Not even George Bush is *that* stupid (notwithstanding the fact that he *did* say that the reason we're going to war against Iraq is to avenge a personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein for trying to kill his father.)

He also didn't say "We're going to waste billions of dallars on a missile defense system that doesn't work, will never work, and even if it did work wouldn't protect us against the real threats we face." But that is in fact, precisely what he's doing.

So, no, he didn't say "We're going to give all the moeny to the rich" in so many words either. But that is in fact precisely what he's doing. And for reasons I absolutely cannot begin to fathom, the American People are going to let him get away with it too.

Errata Gat wrote: "(Bush) *did* say that the reason we're going to war against Iraq is to avenge a personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein for trying to kill his father"

He did say that Hussein had tried to kill his father, but he didn't say that was the reason.

Hallucinogens may be great fun, but not just before political discussion.

I see, Erann. You, too, are unable to make the simple distinction between "some" and "all," and between "giving" and "not taking."

Are you a product of public schools?

Why is it that Liberal Knot Heads still think *all* money derives from the government. If the government does not collect a tax it never existed. And yet, people of a Liberal bent continue to pass on the notion that an un-collected tax harms someone. Hey you jerks controlled the country for most of the last 50 years, give your jaw hinge, and my ears, a break. SHUT UP FOR A WHILE. If you think the tax break is bad, send the difference to a non-profit that needs it. Or give it to the Sierra Club so they can go hug trees in the Amazon. There are many avenues for you "well meaning" Liberals to support their usual causes. Just do it with your money for a change, not mine. I'd like to invest my money in my business and maybe hire another employee or two.

> I see, Erann. You, too, are unable to make the
> simple distinction between "some" and "all," and
> between "giving" and "not taking."

No. The problem is that you Republicans seem to be unable to think more than one step ahead. You think that if your tax bill goes down by a dollar then you have an extra dollar. But 'taint necessarily so. If the price of what you want to buy with that dollar goes up by two dollars then you're actually down a dollar.

The scam goes like this: you cut taxes without cutting spending. Deficits go up, which drives up interest rates, which effectively "taxes" everyone. Your mortgage payment goes up. The price of your house goes down (because fewer people can afford to buy houses). We've seen this before. Go back and look at what mortgage rates (and deficits) were like during the Reagan and Bush-I administrations. There is no free lunch. If you doubt this, just take it to an extreme: if lowering taxes is always such a wonderful thing, why don't we just lower them all the way to zero?

It doesn't really matter to me if the government takes a dollar out of my pocket on my 1040 form, or if it takes a dollar out of my pocket by driving up the cost of my mortgage. The net result is that I have a dollar less. Playing word games about "giving" and "taking" doesn't change the fact that I have a dollar less to spend (or that what I want to buy suddenly costs two dollars more).

If Dubya wanted to cut taxes and at the same time cut spending on stupid boondoggles like missile defense and the Iraq war so we could keep a balanced budget that would be just fine by me. But that's not what he's doing.

> Are you a product of public schools?

Yes, as a matter of fact I am. I am a graduate of Oak Ridge High School in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which was a very fine school in my day. I was able to take enough AP courses there that when I went to college I was able to fininsh a bachelor's degree in two years.

And your point would be?

> He did say that Hussein had tried to kill his
> father, but he didn't say that was the reason.

He said it in the context of a conversation about why we were going to go to war.

Also, sometimes with politicians you have to do a little bit of reading between the lines. Bush's ostensible reason for going to war with Iraq is that we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. But where is the evidence that Saddam still has WOMD? Oh, he can't tell us that, because that would compromise our intelligence sources. But surely he could tell the UN inspectors where to go to look for the smoking gun? And why are we not gearing up to attack Korea? And why not a peep about Iraq before 9/11/01 (despite the fact that there is not a shred of evidence of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda)? Sorry, but it just doesn't add up. To me it seems plausible that when Bush said, "Don't forget, this is the man who tried to kill my father" that he was letting his guard down and showing us his heart of hearts.

> Hallucinogens may be great fun, but not just
> before political discussion.

They're better than blinders.

E.

Erann, as a result of the Reagan tax cuts, a higher percentage of income taxes are paid by the wealthy. Indeed, while around 50% of the tax cut goes to the wealthiest, they in fact pay a higher percentage than that of income taxes. Thus, this cut makes the income tax more progressive. (State tax revenues, relying on sales taxes, are different, yes.)

Regarding interest rates and deficits caused by tax cuts: It's obviously the case that during the large deficits associated with Reagan's tax cuts, interest rates declined massively. In fact, despite the obvious a priori argument for the effect of deficits on interest rates, it is impossible to find a correlation between interest rates and deficits throughout the last 50 years. Perhaps this is because growth-stimulating effects can cause a greater demand for dollars, canceling out the increase in supply.

In any case, try to explain the rapid decrease in interest rates during the Reagan years.

The problem is that you Republicans...

No, the problem is that some simple-minded people like to put other people into convenient but meaningless little boxes. I'm not now nor have I ever been a Republican.

> > The problem is that you Republicans...

> No, the problem is that some simple-minded people
> like to put other people into convenient but
> meaningless little boxes. I'm not now nor have I
> ever been a Republican.

I apologize for my overgeneralization (and for insulting you by implying you were a Republican ;-) ;-) ;-)

> Erann, as a result of the Reagan tax cuts, a
> higher percentage of income taxes are paid by
> the wealthy.

I think this is not because of the cuts, but rather because of the elimination of all the loopholes.

> Indeed, while around 50% of the tax cut goes to
> the wealthiest, they in fact pay a higher
> percentage than that of income taxes. Thus,
> this cut makes the income tax more progressive.

Wow, you must have been smoking something good when you wrote that. 50% of the tax cuts go to the richest 1%, and that makes things *more* progressive? That must be the "new math". They didn't teach us that in public school.

> In any case, try to explain the rapid decrease
> in interest rates during the Reagan years.

Well, I am not an economist but here's a theory: there was another factor pushing up interst rates before Reagan came into office, namely, the historically high inflation that started during the latter days of the Nixon administration, and continued through the Ford and Carter administrations. (Anyone here remember WIN?)

But it's a moot point, because I can make the argument even without a connection between deficits and interest rates. "Cutting taxes" is only equivalent to "giving the tax money back" if the tax cuts are matched by spending cuts. In this case they aren't. These tax cuts are being funded by deficit spending. So we're not letting the rich keep "their" money. "Their" money (along with ours) is already spent. What's happening here is that we're *borrowing* a bunch of money and giving most of it to the rich. If you think that's a good idea, fine. But don't be giving Mario a hard time for telling it like it is.

It's not an insult to be called a Republican. It's an insult to be thought dumb enough to think that the world is as simple, and black and white, as you see it.

You seem to be confusing tax rate cuts with tax revenue cuts. Another sign of a simple mind, unable to deal with dynamic processes.

Amazing that someone can toss out the accusation of oversimplistic thinking while at the same time thinking there is no relation between reduction of tax rates and reduction of spending.

There is a reason that the same people who most like to spend taxpayer's money are the same one who eternally want to grab more of it. It's harder to justify idiot spending programs (like the Robert Byrd Pre-Memorial Freeway to No Place Any Sane Being Would Wish To Venture) if it is knowingly done as a deficit item.

But then certain people have always forgot that tax cuts that result in greater re-investment in business lead to lower unemployment with increased real wages leading to, gasp, greater revenues in the tax base. This was the policy of an obscure Democrat known a JFK and championed to success by Reagan. The Reagan era Democrats managed to blow all the money on stupid stuff but they don't have so much power this time around.

what is also eternally tiresome is the claim that only the rich benefit and the poor get screwed.

Note to those who cannot read the forms: The poor, by dfinition, don't pay income taxes. If you make enough money to pay any significant income tax and live well beyond your means (HBO is purely a luxury yet folks who live paycheck to paycheck seem to know what happened on the last episode of The Sopranos.) you've nobody to blame but yourself.

Rents too high for where you want to live? Get a better job or go where rents are lower. Stable property values are not a birthright.

THe fact is that much of the stimulus package directly benefits those whose lives are most constrained by income taxes. In the example trotted out repeatedly, a couple with two children earning $39K a year are given a greater reduction for those kids resulting in their keeping $1100 more of their money to do with as they wish. I don't know anyone in that situation who thinks $1100 is a trivial sum.

The stupidest of the criticism have been on the proposal to stop taxing stock dividends. This only benefits the rich in the very near term because the existing policy has made it so that only the rich get any use from stock dividends. This was a major contribution to the recent bubble. Rather than building up a nice stable income portfolio, as was once comon, people instead engaged in much riskier speculation. So they got skyrocketing IPO's if they were of the lucky few but everybody got screwed when the entire market followed those companies down the toilet.

Encouraging stable longterm market investment by making dividends a useful source of income is of much greater benefit to middle-class investors than it is to the wealthy.

Dear Rand:

Mr Gat completely outargued you, outmanuevered you, and if this was a debate, or a wrestling match, would have thrown you out of the ring. And all you can come up with is the completely irrelevant rejoinder that "you aren't a Republican." Good for you. I take it you didn't go to Public Schools, Rand?

Mr Gat completely outargued you, outmanuevered you, and if this was a debate, or a wrestling match, would have thrown you out of the ring.

Ummmm...

OK.

So just what color is the sky on your planet?