Where Is Jack Welch Now? Congressional Republicans Suppress CRS Report

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, currently a pompous right-wing wind bag, made headlines by calling into question the October jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Welch implied that the unexpectedly favorable numbers were a political plot in which BLS officials had connived to make the Obama administration look good. Even conservative commentators like David Brooks thought his accusations were ludicrous. Well the question today is this - "where is Jack now?"

The New York Times reports today that Congressional Republicans connived to suppress a report from the Congressional Research Service that deflates the central tenet of their economic views, namely that there is some well-established, robust relationship between tax rates on those at the very top of the income distribution and economic growth.  You can find a copy of the report and some commentary here at The Washington Post.

The Republicans might have avoided stepping in this particular pile of their own bullshit. As Susan pointed out to me and as this cogent analysis of the CRS report and its putative shortcomings at The New Republic points out: "CRS reports are never released to the public anyway." Oooooppps! Now not only are the Republicans wrong about economics, but they are compounding their mistake by censoring the findings. This surely should outrage so hardheaded a businessman as Welch. Right? Don't hold your breath waiting for him to tweet his criticism of the Republicans. It is more likely that he will join the editorial ideologues at Pravda the Wall Street Journal in impugning the author of the report.
__________
P.S.: (2 November 2012) To punctuate this post I add a link to this news report from The New York Times this morning.  The story is about how job growth - as reported by those dastardly partisans at BLS! - has basically stagnated this month. Unemployment is reported up on the Friday before the election. Hey Jack! We'd love to hear from you.

The Romney Tax Plan - Get the Details

Susan discovered this site on which you can discover the essential feature of the Romeny/Ryan plan for tax reform. It is extremely informative - I highly recommend it.

What is Politically Radical?

“The United States is getting accustomed to a completely crazy level of inequality . . . People say that reducing inequality is radical. I think that tolerating the level of inequality the United States tolerates is radical.”~ Thomas Piketty

Bad News for Libertarians & Conservatives (2) ~ Inconvenient Truths

"I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation." ~ Warren Buffett

Reality Based Talk on Taxes in the United States

Quick, someone tell the Republicans in Congress - and too prominent Democratic mouth pieces like Bill Clinton too - the united States is really not a high tax country. You can find the latest report here; it shows - based on numbers from the OECD, our own Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Census Bureau - that the U.S. actually is, across various dimensions, one of the very lowest taxed countries in the world. Last weekend, The New York Times ran this report (look here too) on the ridiculous amounts that Corporate CEOs are getting paid today - if the companies have that much cash to throw around, then I am not concerned about our Corporate rates being too high. What I am concerned about is why prominent Democrats are on the tax reduction bandwagon too. We got into our deficit mess largely by cutting taxes, any reason to think we will get out of it the same way?

"Shared Sacrifice" Indeed

If this graphic doesn't speak for itself, you can find some elaboration on the comparison here. (N.B.: Even if, implausibly, each of the millionaire households has four or even five members, the number of poor women and children participating in WIC dwarfs the number of rich folks getting tax breaks.) - Thanks again MSH!

Perspectives on the Corruption of American Politics

Over at the Huff Post I came across links to not one but two sharp political entries today: (1) this skewering of the sanctimonious Evan Bayh* for his post-Senate career in shameless lobbying and (2) this graphic presentation of the wildly negative consequences of the Bush-Obama** tax cuts.
__________
* P.S.: To date Bayh has barely risen to the level of visibility - he played bit roles in posts on nepotism and political cronyism. But he is a poster child for my campaign against bi-partisanship.
** P.S.: This label is not my creation I heard it on the radio - but it is true that Obama allowed for the renewal of the tax cuts - due in part to his sincere policy preferences and in part to his political ineptitude.