Donkey Con

On the Booker Rising site there was a debate surrounding the impending end of the Bush tax cuts. Being a site catering to those of conservative leanings, as expected many touted the party line that the tax cuts should be reinstated when they expire at the end of this year. The religious fervor with which this position was defended mystified me. I think society is best served by the proper level and distribution of taxation, commensurate with the obligations and ideals of the social compact. Since in our form of representative government the people are essentially taxing themselves, the issue becomes what ideals and obligations the people wish to tax themselves to address. Whatever tax rate the government is instructed to enact, the supposed goal is “to promote the general welfare”. If this is the case then the argument becomes, is the general welfare to be a subordinate consideration to the tax rate, or conversely, is the tax rate to serve the general welfare. If it is at all proper to ask this question it means that taxation is more than just a mathematical formulation in an economic abstraction or theory; it has social and moral implications as well. What those implications are, again, must be searched for and found in the meaning of “the general welfare” as inferred by the social compact.

From my perspective, the avocation for the continued tax cuts by some of the commentators at the above site, as far as I could discern, possessed little economic rationality and seemed cult-like repetition of a fairly frayed portion of the conservative mantra. I will state outright that in the broad experience of mankind, tax cuts are not always bad and are sometimes helpful and appropriate, but each situation must be evaluated in its own economic and historic milieu. There is no elasticity of correctness that fits all situations. In fact in this case, a non-ideologically invested objective observer might conclude that either the economic benefits of the Bush tax cuts were so offset by other factors as to be rendered moot, or they were conceptually ineffective at the least, and maybe even economically harmful. We can only consult the record for enlightenment.

If it is assumed that the tax level is an essential factor in the prosperity of our society, then we must conclude since Bush inherited a surplus from the Clinton administration, it is suggested that the higher (proper?) level of taxation in the prior administration did not retard, but did in fact, stimulate the economy. If we further speculate that President Bush acted according to his conservative lights and construed that the economy was running so efficiently and prosperously that tax revenues were bringing in more money than the government needed to function and operate (hence the surplus), it was warranted to lower the tax rate to match government needs and allow tax payers to retain more of their earnings. Under the tax cut theory an already prosperous economy should have become even more prosperous. Yet, the deficit tripled during his tenure and we were drawn into recession. Where is the evidence of a tax-cut boon?

Many will interpret the above remarks as an ad hominem attack on George Bush, but in actuality I am only reiterating a familiar theme, that being, that sometimes neither macro-economics nor life are amenable to the particular requirements of ideology. A useful analogy is that sometimes to win a race the decisions of the jockey are equally or more important than the horse. A sensible jockey will employ different tactics on a muddy track than those used on a dry one. A “one-way” rider is most often less successful than an adaptable one. And as to our discussion, what is more fluid and changeable than macro-economics? Decisions must be made contemporaneously and not as preordained by ideology. If I have an economic or political philosophy, that’s it. I will cross the bridge when I come to it. If it’s there.

So, in this instance I’m not interested in arguing conservative philosophy. My position is that public policy has only one proper template; the promotion of the general welfare. How can I or anyone make the prediction that in six months time it will be advantageous or propitious to extend the Bush tax cuts? If you think you can, you’re either stubbornly thoughtless or suffering from ideological psychosis.

Fruit of the Vine

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog called, “U.S. and Israel”. It was written in response to the incident involving the Freedom Flotilla which attempted to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza. In the blog I suggested that the U.S. could have addressed our own geo-political designs and advanced the interests of peace and the two-state solution in the Middle East by having our U.N. Security Council representative join with the other fourteen members of the Council and make the vote of condemnation against the Israeli action unanimous. Subsequent events have articulated my reasoning better than my words.

Recently Israel has lifted the ban on many non-military and non-lethal items and sundry materials as drywall, food, candy, musical instruments, and shampoo, which had been denied as punishment on the population of Gaza for not accepting and then resisting Israeli hegemony over any and all disputed territory they wish to unilaterally define as Israel. The only weapon arrayed against Israel to force this concession was world opinion. One would have to be a moral contortionist of the first order to twist into objection of this development. My question is what could have been the benefit to the U.S. if it had at least feigned a decent respect for the opinion of mankind and got on the “right” side of this issue? Could our wise, highly educated, and experienced diplomats not have anticipated the righteous anger of the rest of the world when the sordid details of the Israeli blockade were forced onto the brightly lit public stage by the Freedom Flotilla debacle?

I have no objection to friendship, and even alliance with Israel, but when judged by geo-political norms we have more than a “special relationship” with Israel. We treat Israel as if it were “special”. What I mean is that when the U.S. serially takes such pained, uncomfortable, lonely, and illogical positions to stand in support of Israel, contrary to the vast preponderance of world judgment, as after the Goldstone Report and the recent incident for example, the variance with practical global diplomacy and our own broad selfish interests, seems to infer a glaringly atypical and anomalous geo-political stratagem, and a singular compartmentalized Weltansicht reserved for only the “Jewish” state, rather than the political entity of Israel. What other conclusion can be drawn from a side-by-side comparison of the modern, rich, technologically advanced, military powerful, nuclear, first-world nation of Israel, and the weak, impoverished, divided and demilitarized third world indigenous populations of Gaza and the West Bank, whom in the Weltanschauung encouraged in dialectally deprived American minds, somehow threaten the existence of Israel, instead of the other way round? In a particularly Orwellian transposition, this is presented to us by our supposedly “unbiased media” as “moral equivalence”. And after decades of rhythmic repetition this perverted depiction of reality is mostly unquestioned by the American public at large.

So, what if the U.S. had stood with the other members of the Security Council and virtually all of the General Assembly, to oppose a blockade which was acknowledged as immoral, once called under world scrutiny, by it being terminated? I suggest it was an easy call. We would have gained political and moral credibility amongst those who have ceased to hope for fairness and evenhandedness in our Middle East policy. And that could only be a benefit should we seek to find friends instead of simply inheriting Israel’s enemies.