[Vision2020] It Takes One to Know One

[Art Deco]

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September 19, 2012
It Takes One to Know One By NICHOLAS D.
KRISTOF<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html>

As I watched a video of Mitt Romney scolding moochers suffering from a
culture of dependency, I thought of American soldiers I’ve met in
Afghanistan and Iraq. They don’t pay federal income tax while they’re in
combat zones, and they rely on government benefits when they come back.

Even if they return unscathed, most will never pay lofty sums in federal
income taxes. No, all they offer our nation is their lives, while receiving
government benefits — such as a $100,000 “death gratuity” to their wives or
husbands when killed.

Maybe I’m being unfair, for I’m sure that when Romney complained in that
video<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/watch-full-secret-video-private-romney-fundraiser>about
freeloaders, he didn’t mean soldiers. But the 47 percent (more
accurately, 46 percent<http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/1001547-Why-No-Income-Tax.pdf>)
of American families whom he scorned because they don’t pay federal income
taxes includes many other modestly paid workers or retirees who have
contributed far more meaningfully to America than some who can shell out
$50,000 to attend a fund-raiser like the one where Romney spoke in May.

What about the underpaid kindergarten teacher in an inner-city school? What
about young police officers and firefighters? What about social workers
struggling to help abused children?

One lesson is the narcissism of many in today’s affluent class. They manage
to feel victimized by the tax code — even as they sometimes enjoy a lower
rate than their secretaries and ride corporate jets acquired with the help
of tax loopholes.

While self-pitying Republicans focus on federal income taxes (mostly paid
by the rich), what’s more relevant is the overall tax bill — including
state, local and federal taxes of all kinds. According to Citizens for Tax
Justice, the majority of American families pay more than one-quarter of
incomes in total taxes — and that may be more than Romney pays.

Romney is a smart man and, his friends say, a pragmatist rather than an
ideologue, so what possessed him to say these things? There’s an underlying
truth there — we do have a problem with entitlements and with freeloaders —
and he inflated it beyond recognition. Perhaps he has passed so much time
in a Republican primary bubble, hearing moans about the parasitic 47
percent, that he didn’t appreciate how obtuse and arrogant such comments
appear.

The furor also reflects the central political reality today: the Republican
Party has moved far, far to the right so that, on some issues, it veers
into extremist territory.

Jeb Bush noted earlier this
year<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/us/politics/jeb-bush-takes-aim-at-fellow-republicans.html>that
even conservative icons like President Ronald Reagan wouldn’t fit
easily into today’s Republican Party. President Richard Nixon, who founded
the Environmental Protection
Agency<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/gallery-why-nixon-created-the-epa/67351/>,
would be a lefty. This year, Republican primary voters have been further
purging the party of centrist remnants, like Senator Richard Lugar, a
foreign policy heavyweight who deserves America’s thanks for helping make
us safer from loose nukes.

When I was growing up in Oregon, it was Democrats who were typically the
crazies. Gov. George Wallace (“segregation
forever<http://web.utk.edu/~mfitzge1/docs/374/wallace_seg63.pdf>”)
tapped into populist resentments in his presidential campaigns. Lyndon
Larouche was a cult
leader<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/cult/larouche/main.htm>seeking
the Democratic nomination.

Oregon’s senators then were Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood, both
Republicans of a kind that barely exist today. Hatfield was a strong
opponent of the Vietnam
War<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/us/politics/08hatfield.html>,
and Packwood supported abortion rights. Oregon’s governor at the time, Tom
McCall, was a Republican and a leading environmentalist.

I called up Packwood and asked him if he and Hatfield would be Republicans
if they were starting over. “We both wondered about that,” he said.

Packwood noted that the Republican Party once attracted union support,
black support, urban and bicoastal support. “Historically, the Republicans
have been geniuses at throwing away advantages,” he said.

The Republican shift shows up in
polling<http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/look-how-far-weve-come-apart/>.
In the 1960s, more than two-thirds of Democrats and Republicans alike
expressed trust in government. That has fallen to about one-third for
Democrats — and to just 5 percent for Republicans.

For me, the saddest polls are those about facts. A Dartmouth poll this
year<http://www.dartmouth.edu/~benv/files/poll%20responses%20by%20party%20ID.pdf>found
that Republicans believe, by a ratio of more than 3 to 1, that “Iraq
had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded in 2003.”

The same poll found that Republicans believe, almost by a 3-to-1 ratio,
that President Obama was born in another country. Democrats also suffer
from self-deception (such as a reluctance to credit improvements under a
Republican president), but today’s Republicans seem disproportionately
untethered to reality.

Another illustration of radicalizing self-delusion comes when the son of a
governor and corporate chief executive says
that<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/full-transcript-mitt-romney-secret-video>“everything
that Ann and I have, we earned the old-fashioned way, and
that’s by hard work.”

Romney has proved himself right: We manifestly do have a problem with
people who see themselves as victims even as they benefit from loopholes in
the tax code.

One is running for president.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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