Finally!

You can finally see the full detail's on Mitt Romney's tax plan are here.

The Adventures of Romney Hood

Via Huffington Post:

STAMFORD, Conn. — President Barack Obama is labeling opponent Mitt Romney's tax plan as "Romney Hood," saying it takes from the poor and gives to the rich.

Speaking Monday night at a campaign event in Connecticut, Obama said the GOP plan "is like Robin Hood in reverse."

Obama says Romney's tax plan would give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans while forcing middle-class families to pay up to $2,000 a year in additional taxes.

Another Urban Myth At The Trib

From today's Midweek Briefing:

The folks at Human Events, a conservative newspaper, have been running a series of "365 ways to drive a liberal crazy." They're culled from James Delingpole's book of the same name. No. 164: "Quote liberal hero Karl Marx: 'There is only one way to kill capitalism -- by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.'" Sadly, liberals still won't get it.

To begin with, I can't see how Karl Marx is much of a liberal hero. Socialist hero, sure. Communist hero, definitely. But liberal hero? Only if you equate those three very different terms. But I guess in the collective hive-mind that is the Scaife braintrust (and remember they also believe climate change to be a hoax) anything to the right of Scaife himself is a radical Marxist. So this one's iffy at best.

But what of that quotation of Marx?

According to the Irregular Times, MARX NEVER SAID IT:

Anybody who’s actually read Karl Marx knows that Karl Marx would never have written those words. Marx saw taxes as connected to state power, and he held a dubious opinion of state power throughout history, up to and including the modern form of the democratic republic. Marx favored the smashing of the bourgeois state, not its engorgement through taxation.

But why believe the Irregular Times? I've never seen the site before. It could be the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic for all I know.

They do include a link to the Marx & Engels archive - pretty sharp for a schizophrenic, if you ask me.

There's a search engine attached to the archive so you can look to see if Marx actually said what Scaife's braintrust said it said. And so, when I search for the exact phrase "kill capitalism" I get nothing, bupkis, nada, the null set. In short, it ain't in there.

But what does Marx say about taxes? The Irregular Times furnishes us with something Marx did say:

It is high treason to pay taxes. Refusal to pay taxes is the primary duty of the citizen!

So next time you meet a Tea Partier (or Sovereign Citizen, or Grover Norquist acolyte or any other right wing anti-tax zealot) just tell them that when they demand lower taxes in order to starve the guv'ment they're actually quoting Karl Marx.

That'll drive them crazy.

Happy Reagan Day (Part II)

As pointed out previously, this is President Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday.

Now while the wingnuts and the rest of the media regurgitate the usual myths of the Reagan years (Reagan ended the Cold War, Reagan was a tax-cutter, etc), I want to point out some truth.

First, from Think Progress. Did you know that Ronald Reagan raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office?

He did. From the transcript:

Former Senator ALAN SIMPSON (Republican, Wyoming): Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration. I was here. I was here. I knew him. Better than anybody in this room. He was a dear friend and a total realist as to politics.

SCOTT HORSLEY: Simpson's recollection is spot on, says historian Douglas Brinkley, the editor of Reagan's diaries.

Professor DOUGLAS BRINKLEY (Rice University): Ronald Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes. He knew that it was necessary at times. And so there's a false mythology out there about Reagan as this conservative president who came in and just cut taxes and trimmed federal spending in a dramatic way. It didn't happen that way. It's false.

They go on to describe how Reagan never really cut much domestic spending but when his early tax cuts kicked in, he was faced with a decision; cuts in entitlements or raising taxes. Guess what?

...Reagan faced a choice between raising taxes and an even bigger federal debt. He chose the tax hikes.

This is RONALD REAGAN we're talking here.

Did you know that federal spending ballooned during the Reagan Administration. And "ballooned" is not, in fact, my term. It's how Reagan's favorite DC newspaper, the Washington Times described it:

During Reagan’s eight years in office, inflation fell from its staggering late-1970s peak, relations with the Soviet Union thawed, the unemployment rate fell and incomes rose. But measured by other standards, income inequality grew and federal spending ballooned. [emphasis added]

And as Will Bunch, author of Tear Down This Myth points out at the Huffington Post, Ronald Reagan would not have approved of torture. In his letter accompanying his signature on the UN Convention Against Torture, Ronald Reagan wrote:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

Happy Birthday, Ronnie! Ya soft-on-terror, tax-and-spend, big-guv'ment pragmatist!