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Tag: conservative fear
Republicans And Democrats Reside In Different Galaxies

Republicans And Democrats Reside In Different Galaxies

It’s often noted that liberals and conservatives tend to see the world differently. But if the Republican National Convention is any indication, liberals and conservatives inhabit not just different worlds but different galaxies — far, far away from each other.

The world in which Republicans live is a grim and frightening place, a landscape of constant terror and crime, of collapsing moral values and inept and unethical government elites. The nation they live in is in free fall, no longer respected by allies or feared by enemies, no longer a leader in world affairs.

The Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, has said that the U.S. military is “depleted,” that American cities have “exploded” with crime, that American leaders are “stupid.” He put it this way in a recent speech: “If we don’t get tough, and if we don’t get smart, and fast, we’re not going to have our country anymore. There will be nothing, absolutely nothing, left.”

It’s no wonder that Trump’s campaign theme is “Make America Great Again.” If the nation is coming unglued, there should be plenty of support for a man promising to restore its former glory.

But what if there is a polar-opposite view of the current state of things, an analysis of our domestic and foreign affairs that suggests things aren’t so bad? Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, certainly has a different view than Trump; she can point to a raft of statistics that show the gloom and doom in which her opponent trades is more than a bit exaggerated.

Let’s start with security, which has been a top concern among Trump’s supporters. Several speakers, notably former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, devoted their time at the podium to nerve-fraying rants about the threat of Islamist terrorism. Others insisted that Trump would restore “law and order” to a land where precious little of that now exists.

Certainly, attacks by radical jihadists have frightened American voters, pushing even some dovish liberals to call for a more aggressive military response to the Islamic State and its followers. Still, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil are hardly routine. In the years since 9/11, fewer than 100 people have been killed in assaults here at home by terrorists associated with radical Islam. For the sake of comparison, more than 38,000 people were killed in car accidents in 2015 alone.

As for ordinary crime, the United States is much safer than it used to be—even factoring in the recent uptick in homicides in a few American cities. In 2015, the violent crime rate continued to decline, according to FBI statistics, as it has for the last three decades. The rate of violent crime in the country is about half what it was in 1990.

What about police officers? Aren’t they victims of what some have called a “war on police”? Certainly, there is no overstating the sense of siege that has overwhelmed police departments around the country after separate barbaric attacks killed five officers in Dallas and three in Baton Rouge.

But the data don’t suggest any war on police. In 2015, according to the Officers Down Memorial Page, 39 officers were killed by gunfire. In 1990, 60 officers were lost to gunfire; in 1995, 70. Again, the broader trends seem headed toward police work as safer, not less so.

Fear, though, isn’t the only emotion that infuses the GOP universe. There is anger, too—a rage against lost status and imagined slights that has found a convenient target in Clinton, Trump’s rival. Though she has never even been charged with any crime—FBI director James Comey criticized her for being “extremely careless” with her emails—she has been indicted and convicted by Republican activists, whose chant on the convention floor, “Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up,” was chilling.

This fearful and angry worldview cannot be attributed simply to political polarization. Nor is it merely the inevitable consequence of years of escalating rhetoric by pols seeking money and votes, though that has certainly played a part. This is a sign of something deeper and more troubling: a nation whose citizens are separated by a light-years-wide chasm that seemingly can’t be bridged.

Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.

 

Photo: U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump supporters carry a banner at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 21, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Why They Hate Warren Buffett

WASHINGTON — Maybe only a really, really rich guy can credibly make the case for why the wealthy should be asked to pay more in taxes. You can’t accuse a big capitalist of “class warfare.” That’s why the right wing despises Warren Buffett and is trying so hard to shut him up.

Militant conservatives are effective because they are absolutely shameless. Many of the same people who think the rich should be free to spend unlimited sums influencing our politics without having to disclose anything are now asking Buffett to make his tax returns public. I guess if you’re indifferent to consistency, you have a lot of freedom of action.

Buffett has outraged conservatives by saying that he pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary. He’s said this for years, but he’s a target now because President Obama is using his comment to make the case for higher taxes on millionaires.

Thus did The Wall Street Journal editorial page call on Buffett to “let everyone else in on his secrets of tax avoidance by releasing his tax returns.”

Somehow, the Journal did not think to ask its friends who battle vigorously for low taxes on capital gains to release their tax returns, too. But aren’t they just as engaged in this argument as Buffett is? Shouldn’t accountability go both ways? Nor, by the way, did the Journal suggest that the Koch brothers could serve the public interest by releasing a full accounting of all their political spending.

Buffett’s sin is that he spoke a truth that conservatives want to keep covered up: Taxing capital gains at 15 percent means that people who make their money from investments pay taxes at a much lower marginal rate than those who earn more than $34,500 a year from their labor. That’s when the income tax rate goes up to 25 percent. (For joint filers, the 25 percent rate kicks in at $69,000.) For singles, the 28 percent bracket starts at $83,600, the 33 percent bracket at $174,400.

So if an investor such as Buffett pockets, say, $100 million of his income in capital gains, he pays only a 15 percent tax on all that money. For everyday working people, the 15 percent rate applies only to earnings between $8,500 and $34,500. After that, they’re paying a higher marginal rate than the multimillionaire pays on gains from investments. Oh, yes, and before Obama temporarily cut it by two points, the payroll tax added another 6.2 percent to the burden on middle-class workers. That levy doesn’t apply to capital gains, or to income above $106,800, so it hits low- and middle-income workers much harder than the wealthy.

No wonder partisans of low taxes on wealthy investors hate Warren Buffett. He has forced a national conversation on (1) the bias of the tax system against labor; (2) the fact that in comparison with middle- or upper-middle class people, the really wealthy pay a remarkably low percentage of their income in taxes; and (3) the deeply regressive nature of the payroll tax.

And it’s worth noticing that while conservatives who talk about religion get a lot of coverage — and I will always defend their freedom to speak of faith in the public square — what really get the juices flowing on the right these days are tax rates. I’m not sure that a politician who renounced the Almighty would get nearly the attention Buffett has received for his renunciation of low capital gains taxes.

Advocates of higher taxes on the wealthy do not want to “punish” the successful. Buffett and Doug Edwards, a millionaire who asked Obama at a recent town hall event in California to raise his taxes, are saying that none of us succeeds solely because of personal effort. We are all lucky to have been born in — or, for immigrants, been admitted to — a country where the rule of law is strong, where property is safe, where a vast infrastructure has been built over generations, where our colleges and universities are the envy of the world, and where government protects our liberties.

Wealthy people, by definition, have done better out of this system than other people have. They ought to be willing to join Buffett and Edwards in arguing that for this reason alone, it is common sense, not class jealousy, to ask the most fortunate to pay taxes at higher tax rates than other people do. It is for this heresy that Buffett is being harassed.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.

(c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group