GOP to blame for everything? It ain't necessarily so!

I read, with great interest the very scholarly but very lengthy article written by Todd Cardin, which was published in the Dec. 28 edition of the Daily Inter Lake.

When I began reading his article, I was impressed by one of his beginning statements, “Growing up means allowing the facts to govern the important decisions even if the facts fly in the face of what we want.” So far so good I thought, but which facts? Having been involved with educating students, supervising teachers in my job as principal, and supervising prospective teachers at the college level, I know the importance of relying on facts and I thought, now maybe, I will be able to relate to what this councilor has to say.

However, Mr. Cardin instantly began throwing me curves. It was when he said that it was not his intention to offend devout conservatives that I suddenly realized I should have been more observant and looked more closely at the subhead of his article which was: “GOP appeals to self-interest and forgets greater good.” My macular degeneration had unmistakably let me down.

As I proceed with this discussion, I recall a recent column, “When Facts Are Obsolete,” by Thomas Sowell. He referred to the television series, “Dragnet,” where Joe Friday always said, “Just the facts, ma’am.” Because of Dr. Sowell’s long list of credentials on the subject of economics, he is often my go-to guy for the facts particularly when it comes to anything involving economics. Now, let’s see where the facts lead us.

Let’s begin by examining Mr. Cardin’s statement that, “At its core the contemporary Democratic agenda is a call for a greater shared good.” Oh my, words spoken by a true progressive. When I see statements like “a greater shared good,” it brings to mind the concept of redistribution of wealth or one of President Obama’s other favorite terms “fair share.”

Redistribution of wealth often begins with the idea of taxing the rich. But it was Obama himself who said, “We raised taxes, but the rich still aren’t paying their share.” So, how much is enough?

Mr. Cardin emphasizes that we need to be cognizant of what history teaches us. I agree and let’s look at some of that history when it comes to taxes. It began with what Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon accomplished during the 1920s when he cut taxes. He cut taxes and surprisingly it resulted in the government actually collecting more revenue and the wealthy paying far more.

Also, as history reveals, it has not been only Republicans who have cut taxes. To prove my point, here is what Thomas Sowell, a renowned economist, has to say on that topic: “The actual results of the cuts in tax rates in the 1920s were very similar to the results of later tax-rate cuts during the Kennedy, Reagan and George. W. Bush administrations — namely, rising output, rising employment to produce that output, rising incomes as a result and rising tax revenues for the government because of the rising incomes, though the tax rates had been lowered. The facts are unmistakably plain, for those who bother to check the facts.”

I DO NOT understand why most progressives refuse to recognize what Dr. Sowell so clearly proves in the quote above. Perhaps it is as Mr. Cardin points out in his article, the facts can simply “fly in the face of what they want them to be.”

However, some Democrats do get it. Otherwise, Presidents Kennedy and Clinton would never have gone along with tax cuts. The historical facts seem to reveal it is the policies of most in the Democratic Party that produce lower employment, lower output, lower income and reduced revenue. Some may remember recent reports declaring that unemployment is down, but the truth is that the government has accomplished decreased unemployment by using voodoo statistics. It’s better explained in a Heritage Foundation article where they said, “Today, 6.9 million fewer Americans are working or looking for work. This drop accounts for virtually the entire reduction of the unemployment rate since 2009 because those not looking for work do not count as unemployed.”

The Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman weighs in on redistribution of wealth when he said, “The only way in which you can incentivize effectively the distribution of wealth is by destroying the incentive to have wealth.” He also said, “A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”

Mr. Cardin implies in his article that tax policy during the Reagan years was a failure and permitted major corporations to set up factories overseas. I agree that tax policy bears some responsibility for corporations moving overseas, but not because of Reaganesque politics as he calls them.

The main reason for the growing number of inversions is the high U.S. corporate tax rate. One such company expects to pay 17 percent rather than the 30 percent it’s been paying in the U.S. and will thus save $118 million in the process. The highest tax rate in the U.S. is 35 percent, which is the highest in the developed world.

Mr. Cardin seemed to imply that only Republicans are responsible for redrawing congressional district maps in ways that “protect the power and influence” of their party. A little research, however, discloses that the Republicans do not have a corner on redistricting. Both parties have historically used redistricting to their own advantage.

As suggested by Mr. Cardin one might make a case that this country could, if we are not very careful, find ourselves in the same predicament as Rome. However, Rome’s problems were not as simplistic as the “unbridled pursuit of self interest” which was championed by the author. Historians seldom agree on the real causes of the fall of Rome. Most feel there were sundry reasons.

For example, Rome did not have a fiat currency so they couldn’t just turn on the printing press in order to pay for growing expenses and indebtedness. Nero solved that problem by increasing their coinage. He accomplished this by gradually reducing the amount of gold and silver in each of their coins. Thus began a long history of Rome’s currency devaluation and inflation. Wheat prices went from 1 denarius to 200 denarii.

ROME’S growing indebtedness, like many other great nations such as ancient Athens, went unresolved and contributed greatly to the fall of both nations. The Weimar Republic, like Rome and Athens, with their worthless mark, hyperinflation, and indebtedness all made it possible for a Nazi takeover. So yes, we should learn from history.

On another point, more political than economic, Mr. Cardin reminded us that we need to remember “how well it worked out for the whites in the South during the years leading up to the Civil War.” I believe what we need to remember is that it was the blacks that suffered during the lead up to that war. What we also need to remember is what political party was responsible for wanting to abolish slavery. Of course, it was the Republican Party. And let’s not forget it was a Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who lost his life because he made freeing the blacks a priority.

We should also not forget that Martin Luther King was a Republican. He knew that Democrats wanted to keep blacks in slavery. Democrats were also responsible for passing the Jim Crow laws. Remember the lynching and terrorizing of the blacks? Yes, that was done by Democrats, too, in the form of the Ku Klux Klan. The purposes of all these atrocities were attempts to establish a system of white supremacy. It was Democrats who fought to prevent passage of the civil rights laws of both the 1860s and those of the 1950 and ’60s. It was a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, who finally did get the Civil Rights Act of 1957 passed.

Mr. Cardin refers to conservatives in states who are passing election laws to make it disproportionately harder for minorities to vote. I assume he is referring to Voter ID Laws. I am required to provide my driver’s license to get certain prescriptions filled at my pharmacy. So, how do minorities get the same kinds of prescriptions filled without some form of legal identification?

Being 80 years old and having developed macular degeneration, it’s only a matter of time before I will lose that form of identification. I will, however, find some way to solve the problem, so I can continue voting in Montana. Even Mexico requires identification to vote. So do countries like France, Poland, Singapore, and Brazil.

Mr. Cardin made the point that facts are important and I certainly agree. He and I just rely on different facts. You, the readers, have to be the judge as to whose facts are best or more accurate in your eyes.    

CLEARLY, I don’t always agree with many of the things Republicans (conservatives) do. I also want to admit that I previously (13 years ago) lived in a state where you had to declare your party in order to qualify to vote. I was a registered Democrat in that state. Since moving to Montana and being retired, I have had more time to study the issues and find myself agreeing less and less (almost never) with Democrats. Therefore, I currently refer to myself as a recovering Democrat. Can you tell?

Still is a resident of Kalispell.