David Brooks Is Wrong On So Many Levels

via The Atlantic

I have to say, David Brooks’s column today is a doozie even by Brooks’s standards. He goes after the Progressive Caucus’s budget. I guess that’s progress-there was a time when he would ignore those hippies.

His biggest beef is with taxes. He tries to claim all these big important economists are saying horrible things about taxes, usual Republican stuff. However, one part stood out to me-

Edward Prescott, a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, found that, in the 1950s when their taxes were low, Europeans worked more hours per capita than Americans. Then their taxes went up, reducing the incentives to work and increasing the incentives to relax. Over the next decades, Europe saw a nearly 30 percent decline in work hours.

Right now, Greeks work longer hours than Americans and Italians and Spaniards work a comparable time to us. A little over a year ago, David Brooks hearted Germany. Yet, by that same chart I posted, Germans are a lazy, lazy people.

The final passage is just a spiteful swipe at the Progressive Caucus-

The progressive budget in the House seems to have been written by people hermetically sealed in the house of government. They work in government. They represent public-sector workers. 

So, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and the rest of the Republicans in Congress don’t collect a check from taxpayers? Also, Keith Ellison, the Congressman pushing this budget, represents less than 4500 federal employees. Ryan represents over 6000 federal employees. Cantor represents over 11,500.

Low taxes are the drug of choice for Republicans and Brooks is a high-functioning addict. He can act respectable and come across as reasonable. However, when this core belief is threatened, he turns into a cheap AM radio pundit…

Advertisement

You Claim To Be A Player: Rubio Is A Symptom

I have a challenge.  Name me one Republican economic proposal that doesn’t involve cutting taxes, deregulating business or busting unions.

Name one.

Can’t?  Don’t feel bad.  Neither can I.  Honestly, I doubt even the Republicans can.

A lot has been made about Senator Marco Rubio’s water break in the middle of his State of the Union response.  To be fair, I mocked him on Twitter for that.  There is comparisons between that speech and the one Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal gave in 2009.  One speech people are forgetting is when Paul Ryan gave the response in 2011.  As then Congressman Anthony Weiner stated he needed a drink after that speech it was so depressing.

There are many reasons to complain about President Obama.  I do.  However, what ever you may say about his proposals, you must admit he is a public servant trying to implement what he feels are the best public policies to solve real problems.  The same cannot be said of any policy maker in the Republican Party.

Rubio, like Ryan and Jindal, is a rising star in the party.  While everyone conceded giving the response to the State of the Union is hard, people were genuinely hyping up Rubio.  The greatest was when former McCain adviser said Rubio was modern because “he knows who Tupac is.”  Tupac died 17 years ago.  I doubt Wallace wanted to talk about how Rubio defaulted on his mortgage during his Senate campaign or how he tells Catholics, Evangelicals and Mormons he belongs to their church depending on the audience.

The reality is you can’t find any good candidates in the rigid doctrine that is conservatism.  In order to be a conservative, you have to believe the world is falling apart.  You have to think everyone outside the US is depressed because their big intrusive government is destroying your dreams.  You have to believe in Obama’s America, jack-booted government thugs are coming to take your money and your guns and are destroying your vary way of life.  It requires you to ignore the last 30 years when your ideas were implemented and failed disastrously.

More importantly, it requires you not to care about anyone else.  One of the least talked about incidences in the State of the Union was Speaker John Boehner’s response to Desiline Victor.  Victor was the 102 year old African American woman who waited 6 hours in line to vote last year.  Having lived in a time when women and blacks were not allowed to vote, it is quite shocking she had to wait that long.  She received the standing ovation she deserved from the Democrats in the chamber.  What did she get from the highest-ranking Republican?  Nothing-he just sat there, not giving a damn.  She wasn’t going to vote Republican, why should he care?

As much as we may dismiss critiques of style in speeches, style comes from substance.  Even after electoral defeats, Republicans refuse to believe people have rejected their world view.  Instead, they crawl deeper into their bunker, living in a world where everything is falling apart.  If I lived in that world, I’d need a drink too…