While flipping through the archives of Slate, I found this. It's from Daniel Altman, author of Neoconomy, a book that describes how people like Glenn Hubbard and Larry Lindsey were/are trying to change the way the economy uses resources by altering how they are taxed. From what I understand, Altman has written for The New York Times and The Economist a doctorate from Harvard in economics, so he's qualified to write about this sort of thing.

Anyway, I'm not well versed in all of the academic literature about this stuff, but I understand the basics. And as long as Altman is straight with us - which it appears he is - then I understand what he's saying. That's why I'm a little scared. Take a look:

The Neoconomists
The Bush administration's other revolutionaries.
By Daniel Altman

While neoconservatives in the Bush administration remake American foreign policy, another cadre of ideologues--call them the neoconomists--is busy attempting to transform American society.  

The revolution in economic policy is not being televised. There was no big speech by President Bush to mark its birth, no "Axis of Evil" catchphrase designed to capture headlines. Yet it is every bit as dramatic and risky a change.

I found this link on altercation.msnbc.com. The information from a site called gastropoda:

You can tell true believers in compassionate conservatism are coming to town when soup kitchens are forced to shut down "for security reasons." The Daily News reports that the Church of St. John the Baptist is a little too close to Madison Square Garden for Republicans' comfort, and so the 500 hardship cases it feeds every week will go without during the staged festivities. It's one way of guaranteeing no reality is left behind for conventioneers to witness.

Bush's average approval ratings, according to realclearpolitics.com, is 49.7, while his disapproval is 49.0. Yes, those figures are close, but Bush's ratings are still kind of high. He needs to be in the low forties before we can really be secure.

I wonder what exactly caused this. While there's been violence and continue chaos in some parts of Iraq, it hasn't been thrown in our faces, and troop deaths have thankfully dropped. And while the jobs report was awful, the inflation numbers were good. All in all, he hasn't had a huge batch of really bad news, like he had in some parts of June and July. Additionally, the Olympics have also started, McGreevey came out, and other noteworthy things happened. So my guess is that his numbers have risen simply because he's out the news, meaning that people aren't thinking about his failures.

Part of me hopes that this stays close up until the end, so that we can harness that enormous base energy and have those undecideds who are supposedly breaking heavily in Kerry's favor swing our direction. I'm not sure if it's going to change a lot, unless there is some really bad or really good news, or unless the debates go heavily in one direction.

What do you guys think?

Is this blatant idiocy by Steve Forbes from today's Wall Street Journal? It seems like it. I don't have the same economic background as Forbes, but I see more than a few problems with this editorial, one of which relate to the Journal's editorial page itself.
For the purposes of saving space, I'll deal with just a few parts.

"Take taxes. Sen. Kerry has openly stated his desire to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for "the rich." Unlike the original JFK, this JFK can't grasp that taxes are a price and a burden. The exactions we pay on our incomes are the price we pay for working. The levies we fork over for profits and capital gains are the price we pay for success and for taking risks that pan out. The idea behind tax cuts is very simple: Lower the burden on such good things as productive work, risk-taking and success, and you'll get more of them. Every time in American history that we've lowered tax rates on capital and labor, the economy has blossomed."

Well, okay. The basic talk sounds decent, but when you mention things that have no sensible value (i.e. "Some people like cheese, others don't") to prove your case, you probably don't have much of one. Okay, okay, maybe he's simply giving background because he feels a lot of people don't understand it - but if he's writing to primarily a business audience, why does he expect them not to know this stuff? And as for his last claim, I'm not sure if he's being dishonest or just plain stupid. Of course lowering taxes helps the economy grow; that's basic economics. But he's glossing over many different things, like who receives what, what services are cut or not implemented, and how lasting the effects of the cuts are.

"Democrats like Sen. John Edwards remain emotionally stuck in 1932 (actually the two Americas today are parasitic trial lawyers and the rest of us). To these folks, hiking taxes on upper-income earners only means fewer baubles for the trophy wives of overpaid executives. The reality: People with high incomes are also predominantly business owners; tax cuts are precisely what helps them grow their businesses and create new jobs, not to mention starting new businesses altogether."

Now Forbes gives us a mischaracterization of what Edwards has been saying along with a possible non sequitur. (If Edwards actually said something about trophy wives, then he needs to stop.)

"A report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation makes this point clearly. The authors found that "(m)ost of the people in the top 1% of earners are business owners and entrepreneurs, not just high-income individuals with trivial business income on the side." In fact, business owners pay 55% of all income taxes. And how does Sen. Kerry propose to treat these small-business people who create most of our jobs and pay most of our income taxes? Kick them in the teeth with higher taxes."

He's right that a lot of wealthy people have a vested interest in small businesses. But his claims are distorted and proven by a stupid statistic.

A while ago, David Wessel of The Wall Street Journal demolished the critics of Kerry's tax plans in regards to small businesses. He illustrates that, yes, 60% of households with income over $300,000 have small business income, just like 45% of households with income over $175,000. But like he says, "most live off their paychecks, not business profits. Of all tax returns that list any small-business income, 60% report that income accounts for less than half of the taxpayer's total income." You know, I will just let Wessel do the talking:

And most small businesses don't make nearly enough money to be touched by Mr. Kerry's tax plan.

The latest Internal Revenue Service data available, from 2001 tax returns, show that less than 4% of taxpayers reporting any small-business income had total income above $200,000. The Tax Policy Center estimates that last year 6.5% of taxpayers with small-business income on their tax returns had total income above $200,000.

Who are these "small-business owners"? Some of them are the heroic job-creating corner stores or start-ups that Mr. Bush's speeches describe. But the pay of anyone whose business is organized as a partnership -- doctors, lawyers, management consultants -- shows up on a tax return as small-business income. The successful ones end up in the top tax bracket where Mr. Kerry's tax plan would bite. Checks that members of corporate boards of directors receive, royalties that authors get, and consulting fees that professors charge show up as small-business income, too, and those folks are hardly the job creators of the modern economy.

Read it in its entirety here: http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB108077042508870641,00.html

One has to wonder how the editorialists of this fine paper can print stuff that blatantly contradicts what is written in the news pages. But stuff like this happens all the time, it seems.

"Reinstate the full tax on dividends -- and restore double or triple taxation? This will damage capital creation. Hundreds of companies have raised their dividends since that cut was enacted. Scores of companies have initiated these payouts, reversing a decades-old trend in the opposite direction. Microsoft certainly wouldn't have handed its shareholders a $32-billion special dividend under the old tax regime."

I'm not sure his facts are correct, but let's assume that they are. Okay, shareholders of Microsoft benefited because earnings were taxed a lot less than they used to be taxed, which means that dividend payments increased. Wat exactly does this prove?

"President Bush, in contrast, wants to make his cuts permanent. He has also proposed creating two new Roth IRA-like savings vehicles that would materially help hardworking Americans create real wealth over time."

So that's his intention. Is it likely to happen? I'm not really sure, but it surely doesn't seem as likely as Forbes wants us to believe. Besides that, is he referring to Health Savings Accounts, or privatized Social Security accounts, or something that I'm simply not aware of?

I was just flipping through the channels, when I happened to catch a few minutes of Alec Baldwin versus Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly said that there were no lies in regards to Iraq. He said that the Butler report, the 9/11 report, the congressional report, and so forth proved this.

Is he telling the truth? I'm skeptical, but to be fair, I haven't had time to read through these reports.

I just read this column by Eleanor Clift. I liked it. I think you guys will, too.

Faith vs. Reason
Kerry needs to win over swing voters. But getting inside their heads may be as much a job for a therapist as a campaign consultant

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 7:25 p.m. ET Aug. 13, 2004

Aug. 13 - John Kerry disappointed a lot of Democrats when he said that he would have voted for the resolution that gave George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq even had Kerry known then what he knows now--that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no ties to Al Qaeda. What then would be the grounds for war? That Saddam Hussein was a despicable human being?

Kerry tried to explain. He stood by his vote, but he would have handled the warmaking authority differently. Bush, on a five-state campaign swing, taunted Kerry for "finally clearing that up."

It was classic Kerry, full of subtleties that get lost in translation. Kerry's position is actually quite responsible, but he's getting no help from the national press corps in conveying it to the voters. In October 2002, when Bush asked Congress to give him war powers, the administration was in the midst of a diplomatic negotiation with Saddam. The threat of force passed by Congress pushed Saddam into allowing the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. Denying Bush the authority would have emasculated American diplomacy.  

Okay, so where's the proof that they lied? I know that they were engaged in a lot of funny business concerning this war: look no further than the discussions about required troop levels and how we were going to be greeted as liberators. But I need a lot of solid (read: well supported and not hysterical) links as evidence.

You people here rock when it comes to that stuff, and tonight, I am being a bit lazy - not that that's different from most other nights, but still. So what can you give me?

Okay, first off, I am sorry for the caps in the title. But it's been almost a week, and like a heroin addict misses his H fix, I missed the Internet, especially dailykos.com

Man oh man, did a lot happen during the week. McGreevey came out, Bush anounced he would withdraw troops from Iraq if the government wanted him to, Rush Limbaugh showed compassion, I learned that weddings in the Midwest are like barbeque's compared to weddings where I live, Hurrican Charley ripped through the South, and so forth.

And from a brief scan of the polls, it looks like they moved in our direction. The only one that really worried me was one from California, where we were only 10 points ahead, but we aren't going to lose that state unless it's a landslide in Bush's favor.

So what else happened while I was gone? Remember that I didn't bring my laptop with me and suffered through a lack of good cable channels. Fill me in, if you will.

I will write a few things before I leave for my week-long trip to go to a wedding/go on vacation (the last part not by choice).

I'm not going to bring my laptop with me, because I don't think that the hotels have the access I want. I don't know how I am going to last almost an entire week. I'm like a junkie who needs a quick fix; all I think about during the day is this stuff.

Anyway, let me say that I really have a decent feeling about this year's race. I think we have good people for policy, like Robert Rubin, Robert Altman, and Alan Blinder, as well as good people for politics, like Mary Beth Cahill and Govs. Granholm and Napolitano (more of a hunch than anything, but still) for the debates, and others. I think we are united; I haven't felt this way in a while. It's great to think that the Democrats are finally coming together and that people from all sides are working to bring down the Bush administration.

I'm not happy about the protectionist like rhetoric that is coming out of our side, but know it will be coming out of the other side, too. I am confident that Kerry and Edwards will make the case for free trade and sound economics, but would like to see it soon.

I'm also thrilled to see that we are getting such great crowds all over. It's such a contrast to the controlled environment-like, "ehh...whatever" response show of the Bush administration.

Oh man, there's so much to research and keep up with now. I need to learn more about people, like Granholm and Napolitano. I need to keep up with the clown show that is Alan Keyes' senate race. I also need to read more policy papers and academic reports.

Oh well, I know this is practically incoherent. But I just felt like I needed to type something before I leave, which I am just about to do.

HAVE A GREAT REST OF THE WEEK!

Frankly, I don't like the GOP plans to privatize Social Security, not because I am against non-public programs, but because it undercuts the basic premise of the program. It won't, in a lot of ways, guarantee retirement money.

But system has to be done about the current system. It is on an unsustainable path.

Unfortunately, however, I am not sure the Democrats, specifically John Kerry, are really heading in the right direction, either. (But to be fair, they seem to understand the whole purpose is to make sure people have something, which is light years ahead of Bush, et al.) We can't "grow our way" out it because it's currently indexed to wages. So as wages keep going up, benefits will keep increasing. The system can never really be drawn back into balance.

I know this because I've read Pete Peterson's "Running on Empty." He's a former Nixon guy and current investment banker - yes, he's a Republican, but he abhors supply side economics, so he's pretty decent, if you ask me - and is very concerned about the path of the retirement system (along with Medicare/Medicaid, but that is for another time). He's been a supporter of privatization in the past, I believe, but what he prescribed in his book doesn't really sound like privatization.

This was from USA Today, which I read after going to realclearpolitics.com. I like the sound of what I've read, especially the part about foregiving the debt and training the security forces. And perhaps best of all, he didn't put himself into a corner by giving a specific timetable about bringing troops home.

Take a look:

Plan is to bring troops home
By John Kerry
I know what our troops go through when they carry an M-16 in a dangerous place and can't tell friend from foe.
I know what they go through when they are out on patrol at night and don't know what's coming around the next bend.

I know what it is like to write letters home telling your family that everything's all right when you're not sure that's true.

As president, I will never send troops into battle without the right equipment or a plan to win the peace. I will bring back our nation's time-honored tradition: The United States never goes to war because we want to. We only go to war because we have to.

I will meet our sacred commitment to our brave troops in Iraq -- to end their mission successfully and bring them home as soon as possible. At stake is whether Iraq will complete its march to democracy or degenerate into the next proving ground for terrorists.

Well, I had typed out this long, partial analysis of Paul Krugman and Bill O'Reilly going at it on CNBC's "Tim Russert." But because I am a fucking idiot and only clicked "preview" and not "submit," that was all lost.

I'm not typing all of that out again, but I will say that I have never seen two guys who despise each other more, at least not in recent memory. Russert actually gave up at times because they were just going at it so heavily. It was something, I tell you.

I hope to see all of it tomorrow. Check it out if you can.

I found this while looking over old stuff from Slate. Michael Kinsley shows us why this tactic from Bush, et al fits under my title and new category, A Particularly Heinous Brand of Stupidity/Dishonesty.

350 Tax Increases?
President Bush applies the Powell Doctrine to running for re-election.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 10:27 AM PT

President Bush seems to be running his re-election campaign on the basis of the Powell Doctrine: Go in with overwhelming force from the start, and strike a blow from which the enemy can never recover. Like the United States in Iraq, the Bush campaign has superior fire power and far more money. The lesson of Vietnam, articulated by Colin Powell, is: Use your superiority--don't fritter it away in gradual escalation.

One of the weapons in Bush's arsenal is an old family heirloom. Bush fired it himself at his big Florida rally over the weekend. He asserted that John Kerry had voted for higher taxes 350 times during Kerry's 20 years in the Senate. Vice President Dick Cheney and other presidential surrogates have been using this statistoid for several weeks, and it has been picked up and repeated in the conservative media echo chamber. In 1992, Bush's father charged that Bill Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, had raised taxes 128 times. This shabby and deeply disingenuous allegation ultimately became an embarrassment to the elder Bush, but it took weeks and months of pounding by the media and the opposition to make it this way. I'm hoping to spare us all that with a Powell-Doctrine-like strike early on.

The purpose of a phony statistic like this one isn't really to persuade people of its own accuracy. The purpose is to trap your opponent in a discussion he doesn't want to have (in this case about his past votes about taxes), bog the discussion down in silly details that few people will follow, and leave a general impression that where there is smoke, there must be fire. And certainly, if what matters to you above all else is paying fewer taxes, you'd be a fool to choose Kerry over Bush. But this isn't about taxes; it's about honesty. Honesty means more than factual accuracy, it means avoiding disingenuousness: not talking crap when you know it's crap. If that matters to you above all, you may be out of luck with either candidate this election. But if you wish to measure comparative crapology, this 350-tax-increases business may be hard for Kerry to top.

Bushenfreude Revisited
How the president's tax cuts have revived Democratic fund-raising.
By Daniel Gross
Updated Friday, Aug. 6, 2004, at 2:53 PM PT

Last November, I noticed a strange new malady affecting the rich: Bushenfreude. Democrats who were big beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts were suffering from a weird mix of confusion, annoyance, exhilaration, and anger. They were enjoying their extra income while loathing its source--a Republican in the White House and Republican-controlled Congress.

Democrats were ambivalent about these ill-gotten gains. One of the main symptoms of Bushenfreude turned out to be a tendency to spend the windfall on luxury goods and on the Democratic Party. In the months since, Bushenfreude has become a major force, so important that it may help send John Kerry to the White House. The left-wing rich--like the right-wing rich--are still shopping at fancy stores, buying expensive real estate, and saving for their kids' sure-to-be Ivy League educations. But thanks to the Bush tax cuts, they still have plenty left over to spend on John Kerry, 527s, and Democratic candidates for Congress. Bushenfreude might be the most important reason why Democrats are raising more money in 2004 than ever before.

The invaluable OpenSecrets.org Web site is a Baedeker to Bushenfreude. This page shows the remarkable success both parties have had raising funds. President Bush raised $228.7 million through June 20, of which $225 million came from individuals. Very impressive. But the Democrats have collectively raised more. John Kerry raised $186 million through June 20--far beyond the wildest expectations of the Kerry team. (Fund-raising activity in July brought that total over $200 million.) Add in the totals raised by Kerry's primary competitors, and individuals have given more than $300 million to Democrats seeking to unseat President Bush. Meanwhile, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has nearly matched the fund-raising prowess of its Republican counterpart.

We all know that Kerry is a free trader. But one of his dominant themes is stopping outsourcing that comes about because of tax incentives. I'm all for this, too. I'm a free trader, just like Kerry, and believe it or not, this actually makes things more efficient and better because it restores market imperatives. Politically speaking, it's good, because it allows Kerry to pander to those who are concerned about outsourcing while still being a free trader. I just hope that the business community doesn't get the wrong impression: I hope they realize he's for free trade, not protectionism.

So what do you guys think?

Okay, so first, I'll tell you about my shitty night, because I need to tell someone that I don't know. I'll keep it brief. I was supposed to go to a steakhouse for my cousin's bachelor party. I had never been there before, nor was I very familiar with the area (I had worked near there once, but where I worked wasn't directly near it), nor do I have the best sense of direction in a car. My night involved me driving around for two hours, being alternately pissed off and relaxed while listening to right-wing and left-wing radio, and nearly drinking liquid fertilizer that someone left in the sink in a juice container.

Anyway, I made a diary entry about Commerce Sec. Don Evans on Sean Hannity's show earlier today, but I forgot to mention one thing. When asked by Sean about the effects of higher taxes, Evans said some very basic things that were correct. But he was also very, very disengenuous on some accounts, I believe. He was talking about the effects of Kerry's proposed tax cuts on small businesses. He said that they would be really hurt by them. I don't know where he's getting his information, but something like 4% of small businesses would be affected by Kerry's tax increases. And you know what Commie rag revealed this? The Wall Street Journal.

I'm not saying that I know more than Evans or that I am more qualified to be in his position. But he's either very ignorant of this basic point, or he's lying and spinning for the Bush campaign. The latter is a lot more likely, I think.

I remember someone saying that Tim Oliphant of the Boston Globe was on some radio or televison program yesterday. He supposedly said that when people mess with Kerry's Vietnam record, they get burned.

Can anyone expand on this?

Okay, so you all have the chance to see my heated post about Hannity and those lying SOB SBVTs. Now comes the calmer, more amusing post.

On the radio, he interviewed Commerce Sec. Don Evans. They proceeded to say that the 32,000 number isn't really bad, which we all know to be a complete load of crap, that it's misleading, and that we can look to other numbers for how the economy is doing. He said not to look at the payroll survey, but the other survey, and that if we did this, we'd see about 600,000 jobs were created in the last survey period. This shows that the economy is doing well, according to them.

Whom do they think they are kidding? (Interestingly enough, Evans suggested that our intelligence was being insulted by the Kerry Campaign when it said that the economy wasn't so great.) 32,000 is a terrible, terrible number. It's only 1/8 of what they expected. And when you combine the revised growth of last month, which was 78,000, with this month's growth, it wasn't even enough to cover the growth in the workforce of new workers for one month!

Oh yeah, they never mention the fact that Alan Greenspan, not exactly a far leftist by any stretch of the imagination, said that the payroll survey is the better measure of the indicator. But why would I expect anything less?

It just goes to show you that spin knows no bounds.