Category Archives: Politics

After Newtown

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The first entry on this blog was written in response to the massacre in Aurora, Colorado, less than 5 months ago:

https://whereofonecanspeak.com/2012/07/24/insanity/

Tom Tomorrow offers a “generic cartoon” on the theory that nothing will change:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/17/1169578/-Generic-cartoon

But maybe the horror of what happened in Newtown will finally make a difference. The NRA is trying to pretend that nothing happened last week. Certain politicians are reconsidering their positions. Maybe we can decide as a nation that some of us shouldn’t be allowed to exercise the right to bear arms, and none of us should be allowed to exercise that right by owning weapons designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

Nicholas Kristof calls attention to some sensible ways in which we can make this a more civilized country. For example, we could regulate guns as seriously as we regulate cars and ladders:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html

The Forgotten Millions

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I’ve been intending to write something here about how America has become a low-wage nation compared to other developed countries. In the meantime, here’s a link to the latest column from the fairly indispensable Paul Krugman, in which he points out that unemployment is still a terrible problem and briefly explains what will happen if we start down the “fiscal slope” (it’s not really a cliff, since its effects will be gradual):

“The unemployment crisis goes on and on, even though we have both the knowledge and the means to solve it. It’s a vast tragedy — and it’s also an outrage.”

Throw in the issues of underemployment and low wages and the problem is even worse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/opinion/krugman-the-forgotten-millions.html?hp

Sophistry

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines “sophistry” as “the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving”.

Consider, for example, the statement on Mitt Romney’s official website that says he wants to “make permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal (income tax) rates”.

So if you make a lot of money and the last dollar you earn is now taxed at a rate of 35%, your new, lower rate will be 28%. That will lower your taxes by quite a large amount, especially if you earn a million dollars or more.

If you don’t make so much money, and your last dollar is taxed at a rate of 25%, your new rate will be 20%. Your marginal rate will go down by 5%. Not bad, but the high earner’s rate will go down by 7%. That’s how percentages work.

It certainly sounds like Romney is advocating a big tax cut for the highest earners, bigger as both a percentage of income and as a dollar amount.

At the last debate, however, Governor Romney said: “The top 5 percent will continue to pay 60 percent, as they do today. I’m not looking to cut taxes for wealthy people. I am looking to cut taxes for middle-income people.”

Well, if he’s not looking to cut taxes for wealthy people, he’s made a grievous error.

But wait — the top 5% will continue to pay 60% of all income taxes! Doesn’t that mean that the high earners aren’t getting a tax cut at all?

Of course not. Since the total amount of taxes being paid will go down, the top 5% will still pay 60% of that smaller total. At the same time, they will receive a big tax cut on their “earned” income, much bigger in fact than low earners.

As Bill Clinton said today, someone running for President thinks we’re dumb. No surprise, it’s Mitt Romney, sophist.

Ending the War on Drugs

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Back in April, the Summit of the Americas was held in Cartagena, Colombia. President Obama attended the conference, which received quite a lot of news coverage. Unfortunately, the story that dominated the news in the US was that Secret Service agents were caught hiring prostitutes.

A much bigger story was that, for the first time, some Central and South American governments called for an end to the American-led “War on Drugs”. The presidents of Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia vigorously argued that the “War on Drugs” has failed and that a different approach is needed.

Writing in The New York Review of Books, Alma Guillermoprieto describes a discussion at the conference “that for the first time in forty years challenged the United States’ dominance on drug issues (and) focused urgently instead on the ways that the financial health, political stability, and national security of virtually every country in the Americas has been undermined by the drug trade”.

The president of Costa Rica made these remarks:

“For Costa Rica, the road — our road, at least — is not the war on drugs, because we have no army and we are not willing to be hooked onto that convoy of destruction, of militarism, of exorbitant expenditure, that distracts states from their efforts toward social investment….Costa Rica has already made progress in decriminalizing drug consumption, (because) we believe it’s a question of public health, and not of criminal law”.

It might take decades to change our government’s policy, but it seems more likely every year that the use of drugs like marijuana and heroin will eventually be decriminalized, regulated and taxed. Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol and it isn’t working for these drugs either.

“Drugs: The Rebellion in Cartagena” is a long article in The New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/07/drugs-rebellion-cartagena/

A much shorter article about the conference appeared in The Guardian:      http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/18/cartagena-war-on-drugs