----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Pollak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2003 3:10 PM Subject: [PEN-L:33754] Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
> > On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Ellen Frank wrote: > > > Fleischer said that the Dems were engaging in "class warfare," which he > > defined thus: "It's class warfare to say that there are wrong people in > > America and these wrong people are not deserving of tax relief." > > Who was it who said it's not class warfare is only one side is shooting? > It's class massacre. > > I loved your quote Ellen, that Doug brought up on his show on Thursday: > "The rich today don't just want to pay less taxes. They want to be paid > tribute!" > > Needless to say, I think the key to persuading students it to get out of > this box. It rigs the debate. But it rests on the hegemonic idea that > everything that people gain in the private sector is somehow theirs > without the government's help. Which is nonsense. The society, never > mind the economy, wouldn't exist in its present form without the > government. And people who make more have hence profited more from the > government's existence. > > Fleischer's class warfare claim turns reality on its head. Taxes become > not a question of who pays more, but of who we are giving money to in the > form of cuts. > > Michael ======================= Liam Murphy's & Thomas Nagel's "The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice" makes confetti of the "everyday libertarianism" that the Repugs tirelessly appeal to when they discuss taxation/work etc. and is a useful text for dealing with libs. in need of spine. Here's a little ditty I sent to the Wash. Post today after reading David Broder's piece on the Repugs. As the economist Warren Samuels -and the brilliant law professor and economist Robert Hale before him- have never tired of pointing out, it is not so much the size of the government as whose interests it gives effect to. The Republicans are looking more and more like a * blatant* protection racket for the rich with each passing electoral cycle. Using the tax code to further increase the inequalities of wealth in the country is an outrageous form of Rent-Seeking that just goes to show that the Republican rhetoric regarding "the free market" is yet another chapter in their long history of attempting to hoodwink the US citizenry. The task of any substantive resistance is to call for massive transformation of the Swiss Cheese of a tax code the rich have made for themselves.
