What a glorious one-liner:

“You are a pyromaniac in a field of straw men.”

It’s Will vs Reich.

Newsbusters has the transcript [bold my emphasis]:

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Can government, should government do what the congressman is doing and allow upward mobility, which stalled?

GEORGE WILL: Big government inevitably exacerbates the problem of inequality. Big government inevitably is a servant of the strong. I’ll give you two examples. The tax code has been changed 4,500 times in the last decade. Every one of those times at the service of a group strong enough and attentive enough and wealthy enough to hire a Washington lawyer to represent them to game the tax code.

The welfare state exists to transfer wealth basically from the working young and retired elderly — working young and middle aged to the retired elderly. The elderly are, according to the CBO study, the net worth of a family of a household on average, household headed by someone 65 years old or older is 47 times larger than that of the net worth of a household of someone 35 or younger. That’s a record, and has doubled in the last five years. Big government is responsive to big, muscular interest groups.

ROBERT REICH: Well, I — let’s just be clear about the facts. I mean, right now, the top 1 percent is claiming in terms of their pay, a larger share of total income than has been at any time since before the Great Depression. And their tax rates — and their tax rates are lower than they have been in 30 years.

You look at that period. I mean, George, you say that, you know, big — rich people and big corporations have undue influence. Yes, I agree with you. But the answer is not to shrink government and not even to have government attempt to invest in education, in job training and all of the ways in which we traditionally have generated upward mobility. The answer is to get money out of politics, to make sure that those who are at the top reaches, that is both individuals and corporations, don’t have the untoward influence they now have.

One final point. In the first three decades after the second world war, we had in this country much more of an equal distribution of the fruits of economic growth. And yet what happened? It turned out that in those days, the economy grew faster than it has grown since. There was, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom nobody accused of being a socialist, a marginal tax rate on the top of 91 percent. I’m not advocating we go back to 91 percent. I’m just saying that for conservatives to say that we cannot tax the wealthy, when all of the nation’s wealth and income, virtually speaking, is at the top, to invest in people and education and training and everything else we need to invest, it’s absurd on its face.

WILL: You are a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen. No one is arguing against government investing in education. That’s not –

CONGRESSMAN BARNEY FRANK (D-MASSACHUSETTS): Wrong. You guys are.

CONGRESSMAN PAUL RYAN (R-WISCONSIN): No, we’re not.

WILL: No, we’re not.

FRANK: I’ll make the point.

WILL: Look, I’m not attacking the elderly. I am elderly.

Reich ignores six decades of tax receipts showing how the “one percent” pay an egregiously progressive amount year after year. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay only a consumption tax, noting on income (further highlighting the need for a flat tax or simple graduated consumption tax to replace our burdensome, economy-killing Rube Goldberg-type system). Furthermore, when rates are cut, revenues increase (see the 1920s, 60s under Kennedy, and 80s). There is a great chance to multiply resources via investment and employment as opposed to the Marxist notion Reich supports: a game of cups, aka wealth redistribution.

Here’s a simple question: if wealth redistribution works so well, then why are record numbers of Russians falling into poverty? Why is China moving (albeit slowly) to a more capitalist-based economic system to combat their high levels of poverty? China arbitrarily defines its own level of poverty because of the UN average was used their poverty numbers would double.

(more…)

Carpe BP?  – That seems to be a theme heard all across the MSM when it comes to what should be done with British Petroleum.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has called for the temporary takeover of the oil giant – at least until we have the situation under control.  Could you have a vaguer timeline, Mr. Reich?  “Under control” means a lot of things to a lot of people.  Some folks in Alaska believe that the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound is not yet under control.

And then we have the great global wisdom of satellite radio star Rosie O’Donnell who told her audience that she didn’t care if you “call it socialism, call it communism, call it anything you want” but she wanted BP’s assets seized by the government: (more…)

Update: HuffPo issued the following correction Saturday:

Correction: This article originally stated that Fox News led the charge against Bill Clinton in the 1994 midterm elections, when Fox News did not start broadcasting until 1996. The story has been corrected.

We thank them for their diligence.

Earlier this week, my colleague Frank Ross highlighted an error in a post by Robert Reich cross-posted at Salon.com, RobertReich.org, and the Huffington Post.  Here is the essential segment from Ross’ post:

Former Obama economic advisor, Clinton Secretary of Labor, and Berkely Prof. Robert Reich claimed yesterday in his column at Salon.com that Fox News played a role in the conservative resurgence of 1994:

In December 1994, Bill Clinton proposed a so-called middle-class bill of rights including more tax credits for families with children, expanded retirement accounts, and tax-deductible college tuition. Clinton had lost his battle for healthcare reform. Even worse, by that time the Dems had lost the House and Senate. Washington was riding a huge anti-incumbent wave. Right-wing populists were the ascendancy, with Newt Gingrich and Fox News leading the charge. Bill Clinton thought it desperately important to assure Americans he was on their side.

But Prof. Reich overlooked one minor detail: Fox News Channel’s first broadcast wasn’t until October 7, 1996.

Salon.com did their due diligence and formally corrected the error, as you may have noticed here, here, or here.  Prof. Reich even edited out the mistake on his own site (though he replaced the case study in Fox Derangement Syndrome with another out-of-context jab at Fox).  Still, three days later, Huffington Post has yet to correct the bogus claim.

At this time, we kindly ask the Huffington Post to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

Update 1/27 4:47pm PST: Salon corrected the mistake.  Reich’s article was cross-posted at Huffington Post (yet to be corrected) and at RobertReich.org, where the professor took out the error and replaced it with a dig at Fox News.

Former Obama economic advisor, Clinton Secretary of Labor, and Berkely Prof. Robert Reich claimed yesterday in his column at Salon.com that Fox News played a role in the conservative resurgence of 1994:

In December 1994, Bill Clinton proposed a so-called middle-class bill of rights including more tax credits for families with children, expanded retirement accounts, and tax-deductible college tuition. Clinton had lost his battle for healthcare reform. Even worse, by that time the Dems had lost the House and Senate. Washington was riding a huge anti-incumbent wave. Right-wing populists were the ascendancy, with Newt Gingrich and Fox News leading the charge. Bill Clinton thought it desperately important to assure Americans he was on their side.

But Prof. Reich overlooked one minor detail: Fox News Channel’s first broadcast wasn’t until October 7, 1996.

The plan for FNC wasn’t even outlined until January of 1996, so what could explain such a patently false claim?  Is the professor suggesting that even in 1994, Fox News’ imminence did in fact play a role in the political upheaval of that year?  Or is this a moment where Fox Derangement Syndrome enters the realm of full-blown paranoia? (more…)