Category Archives: Social Commentary

Frank Rich’s Column for tomorrow’s New York Times is up on line…

And it’s a good one…

THOSE desperate to decipher the baffling Obama presidency could do worse than consult an article titled “Understanding Stockholm Syndrome” in the online archive of The F.B.I. Law Enforcement Bulletin. It explains that hostage takers are most successful at winning a victim’s loyalty if they temper their brutality with a bogus show of kindness. Soon enough, the hostage will start concentrating on his captors’ “good side” and develop psychological characteristics to please them — “dependency; lack of initiative; and an inability to act, decide or think.”

This dynamic was acted out — yet again — in President Obama’s latest and perhaps most humiliating attempt to placate his Republican captors in Washington. No sooner did he invite the G.O.P.’s Congressional leaders to a post-election White House summit meeting than they countered his hospitality with a slap — postponing the date for two weeks because of “scheduling conflicts.” But they were kind enough to reschedule, and that was enough to get Obama to concentrate once more on his captors’ “good side.”

And so, as the big bipartisan event finally arrived last week, he handed them an unexpected gift, a freeze on federal salaries. Then he made a hostage video hailing the White House meeting as “a sincere effort on the part of everybody involved to actually commit to work together.” Hardly had this staged effusion of happy talk been disseminated than we learned of Mitch McConnell’s letter vowing to hold not just the president but the entire government hostage by blocking all legislation until the Bush-era tax cuts were extended for the top 2 percent of American households.

The captors will win this battle, if they haven’t already by the time you read this, because Obama has seemingly surrendered his once-considerable abilities to act, decide or think.

More:   All the President’s Captors – NYTimes.com.

Sounds good to me…

“To those to whom much is given, much is expected.”

Especially when today’s top earners at Hedge funds, etc aren’t even creating anything….

Drawing on IRS data recently made public in the National Archives, the New York Times created an amazing infographic  showing that in “the good old days” of 1941, upper-income Americans paid far more in taxes than they do today, with some top earners paying as much as 73% of their adjusted gross income in taxes:

Keep in mind that in 2008, people who earned more than $1,000,000 paid 24.1% of their adjusted gross income in taxes. Compare that to some of the numbers in the Times’ infographic:

The head of Bethlehem Steel had an adjusted gross income of $336,953 and paid $222,051 in taxes — 66%.

The head of MGM Studios had an AGI of $202,408 and paid $130,174 in taxes — 64%.

The head of IBM had an AGI of $476,029 and paid $329,666 in taxes — 69%

Gun makers Carl and Hulda Swebilius had an AGI of $893,593 and paid $650,389 in taxes — 73%

Remember, these rates weren’t a result of a war surtax — although World War II began in 1939, the United States didn’t declare war until December 8, 1941, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Yet even though we’ve been fighting two wars for the last decade, and even though today’s tax rates on top earners are a fraction of what they were in 1941, the GOP’s top legislative priority is to keep those top tier tax rates low. And for the most part, even though the polls on their side, Democrats aren’t fighting back.

More:   Daily Kos: State of the Nation.