Arianna Huffington is the editor in chief of the Huffington
Post, one of the very top hangouts for the left wing of the
Democrat party. These folks are riding high right now, because they
and their champion Barack Obama have just beaten the Clintons for
the Democrat party nomination, and they think they are going to
take over the country this fall. Huffington gives us a clear
insight into what these people are all about in her recent book,
Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America,
Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe (and What You
Need to Know to Stop the Madness) (Knopf).
The book title itself reveals the character of argument featured
not only by Huffington, but of the entire activist left she
represents. These people can’t go more than three lines without
falling into hysterical vituperation, or, in more colloquial
terminology, foul mouthed name-calling. Their opponents are “right
wing lunatics,” who project “the intolerance of religious bigots.”
“The Republican race to replace George W. Bush turned into a
competition to see Who Could Be the Biggest Neanderthal.”
Huffington says even her old friends from her Republican days “are
now just as appalled as I am by the lunatic fringe’s takeover of
the Right, and the Right’s takeover of America.”
Huffington writes:
In the yearly contest for the coveted title of “Dumbest
Senator,” James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, is always in the
running. Even in years when it seems like Kentucky’s Jim Bunning
may edge him out Inhofe will perform a thrilling last-minute,
come-from-behind act of utter stupidity that wins him the tarnished
cup for another year. And, to top it off, Inhofe is usually a
contender for “Craziest Elected Official” as well.
I have seen Inhofe on many occasions engage in calm discussion of
the issues presenting actual evidence for his positions. I have not
seen that from Arianna Huffington.
ANOTHER FEATURE of the argumentation of Huffington and her
left-wing colleagues is that their disagreements with their
opponents never seem to involve a difference of opinion, or of
philosophy, or of the effectiveness or justification of different
policies. What their opponents believe and argue for is always a
scandal. Their opponents are always “unduly influenced by
industry,” or industry stooges, or industry hacks. Their opponents
are bad people with corrupt motives, arguing in bad faith. This
means that the left never even has to engage in debate with
opposing ideas, which is something they don’t seem capable of
doing.
Huffington, in fact, reveals her fascist tendencies when she
repeatedly calls for the media to shut out all conservatives and
their crazy arguments from any coverage whatsoever. “It would help
if the media reacted to the Right’s drivel by treating it with the
contempt it deserves instead of dutifully reporting it as if it
contained an ounce of logic or sanity.” She continues, “The
old-fashioned ‘mainstream’ media have, in many cases, become the
best friend of the Right — simply by adhering to the belief that
every major issue has two sides, two valid perspectives, and both
deserve to be given equal weight.” Indeed, she repeatedly attacks
the late Tim Russert for being too fair to conservatives and
Republicans.
Huffington continues:
There are not two valid sides to issues like global
warming or health care. We can argue about what to do, but unless
you are crazy or a liar, you can’t honestly claim that the drug and
insurance companies aren’t an obstacle to public health…or that
global warming is a fraud and then demand equal time to spout some
nonsense that gains an aura of legitimacy from the “let’s hear from
both sides” approach of the news media.
See the thuggish brown shirt tactics here? They want to shower
conservatives with name calling, then smear them with allegations
that their arguments are made in bad faith, and then demand that
they even be excluded from public debate. This is not a discussion
of ideas, it is all a purely
ad hominem attack.
Huffington’s book should have been entitled
Winning Through
Intimidation.
On global warming, there is no basis whatsoever for saying the
science is settled. Indeed, the better argument is now on the side
of those who argue against the idea that man is causing
catastrophic warming, with most scientists appearing to be
skeptical of the global warming thesis. The left embraces global
warming not because of the science, but because global warming is a
tremendous justification for a massive expansion of government and
a takeover of the private economy, which they ideologically
prefer.
THE BIG PROBLEM for the left on global warming is that there has
been no significant warming to date. (I don’t consider warming of
less than one degree over the last century significant.) Even the
left now admits that there has been no warming over the last 10
years, and that there will be no warming for the next 10 years
either. Indeed, a slight cooling trend has developed in the last
few years and if this continues it will soon completely offset the
very slight warming we have seen.
With the temperature data showing no significant warming, it
makes no sense for global warming advocates to point out this or
that supposed effect of global warming. To have global warming
effects, you first need actual real global warming, which we do not
have yet.
Another problem is that the left is in the completely untenable
position of arguing for a regulatory takeover of the private
economy, when the only scientific consensus that exists is that if
global warming were real their regulatory schemes would not stop
it. The cap and trade legislation pending before the Congress would
impose a trillion dollars a year in unnecessary costs on the
economy as businesses would have to pay for costly permits to emit
supposed greenhouse gases in producing products and services for
the American people. Yet, even global warming advocates admit such
legislation would reduce global warming by only a tiny amount.
On health care, pharmaceutical companies produce drugs that save
lives, cure diseases, and relieve pain. That’s more than anyone at
the Huffington Post has done to promote the public health. Yes, the
public rightly demands a basic safety net so no one suffers without
essential health care when needed. Just as in global warming, the
left is trying to use this as an excuse for massively expanded
government power and a takeover of the entire health care sector.
But as I showed in a recent
column here, such a safety net can be maintained while actually
making government smaller,
Huffington argues for just expanding Medicare to everyone to
achieve universal coverage. She is apparently completely unaware
that we can’t afford all of the entitlement promises we have
already made, and trying to expand Medicare in this way would be
foolhardy, a subject that was also recently fully explored in one
of these columns.
WORST OF ALL, Huffington and her lefty colleagues suffer complete
naivete about the dangers of big government. Will all be peace and
happiness and in the public good when the government rules the
entire health care sector? She shows no recognition of the problems
of rationing and loss of freedom of choice and control over health
care that we have seen uniformly when governments in other
countries have adopted socialized medicine. Indeed, every one of
these programs begins by promising free health care to everyone,
and ends up establishing a bureaucratic monolith with the mission
of denying health care, to control costs.
The left is sadly naive about the failure of big government on
domestic issues across the board. They protest harshly about
alleged failures and misjudgments in military and foreign policy.
But on domestic issues suddenly government bureaucracy will make
everything perfect.
Huffington goes on to blunder in regard to tax policy as well.
She quotes Paul Krugman, an academic version of the Huffington Post
brown shirts, saying,
The reality is that the core measures of both the 2001
and 2003 tax cuts mainly benefit the very affluent. The
centerpieces of the 2001 act were a reduction in the top income tax
rate and elimination of the estate tax — the first, by definition,
benefiting only people with high incomes; the second benefiting
only heirs to large estates. The core of the 2003 tax cut was a
reduction in the tax rate on dividend income. This benefit, too, is
concentrated on very high income families.
But Krugman here leaves out most of the Bush tax cuts, at least in
terms of revenue loss. The tax cut package also reduced the bottom
individual tax rate by 33%, from 15% to 10%. It also doubled the
child tax credit from $500 to $1000. It also eliminated the
marriage penalty.
These Bush tax cuts left the following result of Republican tax
policies going back to Reagan. The bottom 40% of all income earners
now pay no income taxes at all. In fact, they get net payments from
the income tax system due to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
and the child tax credit. The middle 20% in income, the true middle
class, pays less than 5% of the income tax. The Reagan Republican
supply-side tax cuts for the rich actually all but abolished income
taxes for the middle class and lower income taxpayers.
The top 1%, by contrast, pays a whopping 37% of all income
taxes, while earning only about half as much as a share of national
income. Looks like they are paying more than their fair share,
actually. The top 10% of income earners pay 71% of all income
taxes. Some tax cuts for the rich.
It was Reagan who first proposed the EITC, and the Heritage
Foundation that first proposed the child tax credit. These along
with the across the board rate cuts from Reagan through Bush are
what eliminated taxes on middle income earners and below. The tax
rate cuts for “the rich” provided highly successful incentives to
take money out of tax shelters and invest in the real economy,
resulting in more reported income to be taxed.
But Huffington dismisses the notion of any incentives from tax
cuts, saying,
So just imagine you are sitting at the very bottom of
the Forbes 400 with an even $1 billion in net worth. Do you think
that a few million dollars one way or the other in taxes would make
any difference at all in how you conduct your business life? If
you’re a highly competent…CEO, would you really pack it in and
retire to Boca if you could make only $97 million a year instead of
$100 million? Would you really throw in the towel? Similarly, if
you’re a lazy heir do you think you’d convert your investments into
gold bars and bury them in your backyard just because you might
have to pay taxes if you tried to increase your
inheritance?
Amazing. In just one speculative, smart aleck paragraph, Huffington
thinks she has blown away hundreds of studies over decades showing
that taxes do, indeed, have a major, even determining effect on
economic growth, as well as the huge successes of across the board
tax rate cuts at the federal and state levels, and the same
experiences internationally. Taxes do affect economic decisions at
the margin, invest here or there, more or less, expand or contract
a business, start a new business, hire or lay off workers, raise
wages to attract more workers, or cut back, work longer hours to
make money while the economy is hot, or slack off and take a
vacation. These decisions at the margin add up to a major impact,
and a huge tidal wave over the years.
In reading the words of Huffington and her compatriots at her
website, one should remember the words of Jesus Christ, “Beware of
wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
