Right-wing commenter Edwin Drood insists that there has never been "credible" critiques of various right-wing media types. Rather than sit and point out the obvious, I am going to assume the role of credible critic. I am going to take on a right-wing talking point that, despite mountains of evidence showing it is not just wrong, but really, really wrong, refuses to die. Unlike zombies, that at least die when you shoot them in the head, this particular bit of nonsense continues on as if there were simply no refutations out there.
The lie: Tax cuts increase revenue.
Since the days of Ronald Reagan's supply-side marginal tax-rate reductions, this lie has been part of our official discourse. Tax cuts increase revenue. You can hear it out there, read it out there, whether on blogs or serious economic journals. Tax cuts increase revenue.
It took me, oh, about a minute to find this site.
The supply-side theory that tax-cut proponents often espouse was demonstrated by the Laffer curve, named for economist Arthur B. Laffer. The curve suggests that a higher tax rate can generate just as much revenue as a lower rate. But most economists are not Laffer-curve purists. Instead, while they may believe in the power of tax cuts to create an economic boost, they don't say that growth is enough to completely make up for lost revenue. For example, N. Gregory Mankiw, former chair of the current President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, calculated that the growth spurred by capital gains tax cuts pays for about half of lost revenue over a number of years and that payroll tax cuts generate enough growth to pay for about 17 percent of what is lost.There is a link embedded in this quote,which takes the curious clicker to a .pdf document co-authored by the aforementioned Mankiw, which yields, through a whole lot of technical lingo, the unsurprising conclusion that tax cuts are not, in fact, self-financing. The author of the FactCheck piece does note that corporate tax cuts may be an exception, because of capital mobility built in to our international corporate legal framework.
OK, Edwin? Is that credible?
On Rush Limbaugh And Right-Wing Media
More to the point of your basic criticism, I will never forget the moment I understood Limbaugh's role. It was the run-up to the Republican primaries before the 1996 Presidential election. Pat Buchanan was preparing to make another run, and many of Rush's listeners were all for it. Limbaugh was having none of it. Repeatedly, in show after show, he came out against Buchanan, with whom any casual listener would have assumed he had far more in common that the quiet Prairie Republican Bob Dole. Then, it dawned on me. Limbaugh was nothing more than a party hack. Period.
His more recent statements that have upset so many liberals - his desire to see Obama fail being one pointed to with so much huffing and puffing - make that perfectly clear. Like Mitch McConnell's statement that his goal is to limit Obama to a single Presidential term, it is nothing more or less than stating the obvious. I was neither surprised nor offended by either comment. Quite the contrary.
More to the point, I have been led very recently to begin thinking very differently about these folks on the right, thanks to an article in no less a pillar of the intellectual left, The New York Review of Books. I don't agree with everything the author, David Bromwich, has to say. On the other hand, I was forced to stop and set aside the usual discussions concerning right-wing talkers and consider them as serious actors on the political stage. Which, in many ways, brings us back to one of my main points - the insouciance toward factual accuracy that is endemic on the right is not a bug. It's a feature.
So, Edwin, is any of this "credible" for you, or do you take view, oft-expressed by others on the right, that liberals, being liars, mean the exact opposite of what they say?
UPDATE: Just to satisfy Edwin's insistence that no one "credible" has provided an instance of Rush Limbaugh uttering a falsehood, here is Rush on Pres. Obama's recent trip across south Asia on his way to the G20 meeting in South Korea:
In two days from now, he’ll be in India at $200 million a day.The trip did not cost $2 billion. Not even close. He was not accompanied by an entourage of thousands, or 34 warships (as Glenn Beck claimed). This is the kind of thing that can be checked easily enough, yet it enters the consciousness of some folks, come out the mouths of others, and becomes "real" regardless of facts.
Look, I have no problem talking about stuff like taxes, or the larger political import of talk radio, or even the success or failure of Pres. Obama's trip across Asia. These are legitimate and worthy topics. I will not sit around and get in to a discussion over crap like this. This is why too many discussions with conservatives end up dying on the vine. I'm not against talking about policy or issues on the merits. I am against talking about stuff that isn't real as if it is. It's really that simple.
