Arthur Laffer

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Glenn Beck has become a cartoon. You can pretty much guarantee that every afternoon, you can tune in and find Beck saying something so stupidly outrageous, so detached from reality, so unhinged in its lunacy, that you just have to shake your head. It's not really a very funny cartoon, though.

Yesterday he treated us all to a long rant about how liberals are indoctrinating our children with inhuman values that are OK with letting grandma die at the hands of death panels, or something. "We have raised a generation of potential killers," he warned, inspired by a letter to the editor from a young woman who wants health-care reform for her generation especially. Yeah, that's exactly the same thing as pushing for euthanasia.

Beck, obviously, hears strange things when he listens to other people -- things they don't actually say. Instead, they seem to be edited by the voices inside his head.

He featured a later segment with right-wing economist Arthur Laffer -- one of the progenitors of Reaganomics -- who tells Beck all the damage could be repaired overnight with just a simple injection of Reagan-style economics. Of course, Laffer neglects to mention that G.W. Bush followed his economic prescriptions (especially those tax cuts for the wealthy, and the deregulation of the financial sector) to the letter, too -- and we can see where that got us.

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But Beck concludes anyway that Obama is marching us right into a Soviet-style decline and crumble:

Beck: Did you ever read Pravda?

Laffer: I did read Pravda, as a matter of fact.

Beck: Did you read that? Where they're like, 'What is wrong with the Republicans?' We're watching what happened to Russia -- Pravda gives us more truth than the American press!

He's referring, of course, the Igor Panarin's dire predictions of the fall of America, which, so far, have proven laughably wrong.

Indeed, Panarin is actually just a classic Russian propagandist, engaged in the process of explaining to his readers why post-Soviet rule has not exactly been a smashing success -- by claiming that the USA is about to go into a similar decline.

We had no idea Beck was such a fan of post-Soviet propaganda. Quick, someone alert Glenn Beck and see if he can do another of his McCarthyite exposes.



Countdown: Worst Persons Aug. 6, 2009

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Countdown's Worst Persons for Aug. 6, 2009 with winner Authur Laffer. Runners up Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh.


10 Republican Lies for Tax Day

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The truth may set you free, but not if you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. After all, 95% of American families as promised received a tax cut from the Obama stimulus package. And while three-quarters of Americans support President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 to their Clinton-era levels, it turns out that affluent voters, too, chose Barack Obama over John McCain. Making matters worse, a Gallup poll Monday revealed that Americans' "views of income taxes among most positive since 1956."

So as their furious followers head off to their April 15th orgy of tea-bagging, the leadership of the GOP and its amen corner in the right-wing media have instead turned to tall tales on taxes.

Here, then, are 10 Republican Tax Day lies:

  1. President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
  2. The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
  3. 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
  4. Tax cuts always increase revenue.
  5. The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
  6. Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
  7. FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
  8. Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
  9. Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
  10. The rich pay too much in taxes already.

For the details behind each of the GOP's Tax Day deceits, continue reading.

Continue reading »


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From Real Time Oct. 24, 2008 the panel of Tim Robbins, Carol Liefer, Matt Dowd and Arthur Laffer discuss how things will go for the Democrats if they do win the Presidency and large enough majorities in the House and the Senate to make the Republicans irrelevant. Matt Dowd of course thinks that for any Democrat to be successful in office they have to govern from the "center" which Bill Maher does a great job of shooting down.

UPDATE:
by John Amato

This is becoming a prevailing theme from the Villagers. That America is a Conservative nation and if Obama wins the election he better not use liberal ideas to govern or he will pay a heavy price for it. Where is the outrage over the eight years of Conservative governance that has destroyed this country while all these so called Conservatives in Congress rubber stamped Bush's policies throughout his entire presidency?

Here's John Meacham's latest. Get used to it.
America remains a center-right nation—a fact that a President Obama would forget at his peril.

Why doesn't Meacham hold Conservative ideology up for public scrutiny and then tell me why we're a Conservative nation? What have they done that has helped the 300 million plus Americans in their quest for better lives? We are creating less jobs for the economy, families are losing income per house household except for the ultra rich and the American dream is being crushed because of the greed that de- regulation has fostered. What the evidence shows is that we've just witnessed the greatest financial melt down since the Depression, but Obama should take heed and not govern with his own policies. To be continued...