Tom Friedman: The World Would Be a Better Place If Bush Had Raised Taxes on 9/12
America was in a post-stock market bubble bursting recession, had just suffered its worst mainland attack in its history, and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman believes ten years later all would have been made right if the President of the United States on September 12, 2001, had raised taxes.
This is what Friedman, in his most recent blame all the troubles of the world on George W. Bush rant, called "The Whole Truth and Nothing But" Wednesday:
He used 9/11 as an excuse to lower taxes, to start two wars that — for the first time in our history — were not paid for by tax increases, and to create a costly new entitlement in Medicare prescription drugs. Imagine where we’d be today if on the morning of 9/12 Bush had announced (as some of us advocated) a “Patriot Tax” of $1 per gallon of gas to pay for education, infrastructure and government research, to help finance our wars and to slash our dependence on Middle East oil. Gasoline in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, averaged $1.66 a gallon.
Actually, let's back up a second. The first Bush tax cuts were enacted in July 2001 before the attacks. The second round in 2003 were implemented because the recovery that the first cuts precipitated - the National Bureau of Economic Research lists November 2001 as the end of that period's recession - was still not producing jobs.
As such, The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 was enacted on May 28 of that year. Unemployment peaked at 6.3 percent in June. One year later, unemployment was down to 5.6 percent. A year after that 5.1 percent. A year after that 4.6 percent.
Most people would call that successful fiscal policy - but not liberals when it's implemented by a Republican.
As for Medicare Part D, isn't it hysterical when the entitlement loving class complains about the expansion of an entitlement program? It's to be taken as seriously as a junkie complaining when you give him free drugs.
This is especially hypocritical as Medicare Part D so far has cost the taxpayer less than originally projected, and folks like Friedman are asking the current President to increase deficit spending to help the economy today.
As for raising taxes on gasoline, why don't supposedly intelligent folks like Friedman understand that this is tremendously regressive, meaning that it impacts people at the lower end of the income chain far more than those at the top?
As we were still in a recession on 9/11, and unemployment was actually going to continue to rise for almost another two years, would increasing gas prices 60 percent have improved the situation or made it worse?
How would the already damaged transportation, airline, and tourism industries have been impacted by such a massive increase in their costs?
But such critical thinking is beyond this supposedly critical thinker, especially when Bush is once again being used as a foil:
But rather than use 9/11 to summon us to nation-building at home, Bush used it as an excuse to party — to double down on a radical tax-cutting agenda for the rich that not only did not spur rising living standards for most Americans but has now left us with a huge ball and chain around our ankle.
Yeah, tax cuts for the rich. It appears Friedman is another liberal genius that missed the marvelous assessment by the similarly liberal Brookings Institution last year finding 82 percent of the Bush tax cuts benefited those making under $250,000.
For our liberal readers - and for Friedman assuming he knows how to read - that means only 18 percent went to the top income earners.
Are such facts important to people like Friedman? This is a man revered by the Left as one of our nation's critical thinkers. Is ignoring and distorting facts part of such critical thinking for liberals in the modern era?
It certainly appears so in a piece ironically titled "The Whole Truth and Nothing But."
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Comments
ID 10 T
Submitted by pockets64 on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 10:08am.
Wow. I have handled 2-day-old sun-baked rotten squid and fish guts bait that smelled better than what Friedman is pushing.
This is your brain on liberalism
Submitted by DontFeedTheTrolls on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 10:13am.
Well if Bush was dumb for not raising taxes after 9-11, then Obama must be double dumb for not raising taxes in Jan 2009. At least in Friedman's 'mind'.
That doesn't frost me nearly as much
Submitted by motherbelt on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 10:34am.
as the idea that we should turn 9/11 into a "Day of Service."
What the hell does one have to do with the other?
That, along with calling it "Patriot Day" and overriding the real "Patriot's Day" in April, just makes my head explode.
The attack on 9/11 had nothing to do with patriotism, either.
But, anything to whitewash what the day was really about, right?
And no, I'm not sorry if that offends anyone.
Leave it to a liberal to think that the proper response to a terrrorist attack is to "patriotically" raise taxes on gasoline to fund education and infrastructure.
Or to spend the day volunteering.
Oh, but not to pay for a costly new entitlement in Medicare prescription drugs.
Bush used 9/11 as an "excuse" to do that???
Bush was an idiot to do it, but that had nothing to do with 9/11 either.
Friedman, like Chris Matthews, is becoming not only irrelevant, but incoherent.
Why does anyone pay any attention to this idiot?
Submitted by Red Jeep on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 10:20am.
I need duct tape. Just tell me why. What has this man ever done that we should give 2 hoots about what he says about anything?
Just a Lib hypocrite...married to one of those eeeevil rich women.
From Flat N All That by Matt Taibbi
"Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America’s ability to fall for absolutely anything—just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts— along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-stached resident of a positively obscene 11,400 square foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism."
http://www.nypress.com/article-19271-flat-n-all-that.html
Emergency shipment of duct
Submitted by motherbelt on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 10:36am.
Emergency shipment of duct tape on the way, Jeep!
Compliments of the Duchess.
Thank You!
Submitted by Red Jeep on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 10:53am.
.
Houston, we have a problem.
Submitted by Ashrak on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 10:28am.
President's cannot raise taxes.
Congress must do so if it is to be done and can do so absent any President's approval or denial.
Ignoring facts? Oh yeah. So very many do.
Not in the Liberals' world.
Submitted by almostacowboy on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 11:00am.
It's not so much "ignoring facts" as living in an alternate universe.
Bush and the GOP Congress can be faulted . . .
Submitted by Galvanic on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 10:52am.
. . . for not balancing the budgets. If that meant some combination of cutting spending and raising taxes to pay for two wars, so be it.
Grossly underestimating the cost and commitment to the wars (particularly Iraq, which Cheney and Rumsfeld totally screwed up) and the ability to recover from the recession simultaneously, acted as a double-edged sword that further damaged the national debt. Apparently, the Bush WH believed that the wars would be more publicly acceptible if they didn't inconvenience citizens at home.
They got it wrong.
Doesn't Frieman know that anyone can make voluntary
Submitted by virginia republican on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 11:04am.
contributions to the U.S. Treasury? ( http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm ) He really should do so if he's all that concerned. It can partially offset the cost of security details and Air Force One jet fuel on President Downgrade's next trip to Martha's Vineyard or Moochelle's next trip to Spain or London. Perhaps help fund another golf outing for the Prez. Or funding NPR, the U.N., aid to Hamas or any of the other wise U.S. investments.
What I wish Bush had said/done. Hindsight You know!
Submitted by Woodoggie on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 11:16am.
Bush speech to JSC post 9/11/2001
On September 11th 2001 we were attacked by a radical group of Islamists determined to destroy America, our Freedom and our way of life. Today America mourns the tragic loss of life in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C.. Make no mistake, we will find these cowards who brought down the World Trade Center, crashed into the Pentagon, and brought down Flight 93. We will find them and we will bring our justice to them, all of them.
Tomorrow, America must embark on a 10 year plan to wean ourselves of Mid-Eastern oil as only America can. We must have hope, and change the way we do business, and in a project similar to the construction of Interstate Highway system of the 50's and 60's, the Federal Govenrment will develop and create the infrastructure to produce and distribute hydrogen as a fuel for powering America. - YADA YADA YADA - BLAH BLAH BLAH - I would like Congress to authorize as much as 4 Trillion dollars in pursuit of the goal of transforming our entire economy to this alternative fuel. - YADA YADA YADA - BLAH BLAH BLAH -. Once in place, america can and will licernse this technology to other countries and we will break the back of the oil cartels in the middle east and around the world. In the mean time we must increase all domestic oil production to levels not before contemplated and before the end of my first term we will reduce our importation of oil by 50% and by the end of my second term our oil importation shall be less than 5% and hydrogen will power 25% of our domestic transportation fuel needs. - YADA YADA YADA - BLAH BLAH BLAH - and I would like to close with these words. Only America will control its destiny! Can we do this? - Yes We Can! - America Can!
Thank You, and God Bless the Unites States of America
All I ask of living is to have no chains on me,
And all I ask of dying is to go naturally.
Blood, Sweat, and Tears
Friedman supports Obama's stimulus - not Bush's, & the D's then?
Submitted by Gary Hall on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 11:22am.
Friedman forgets so much. First of all, back in 2001 as we entered the recession caused entirely by the collapse of the dot.com (Enron) bubble, in March 2000, the country had just gone thru a series of energy shocks during the tail end of the Clinton era (on top of the dot.com crash.
By 9/11 - which delivered another back to back economic shock to the nation, the last thing you want to do is push us back into a recession; the recovery was going to be tough enough.
Gasoline prices, nationally, had soared approximately 50% in the year before George Bush was inaugurated -- that would be Clinton's last year.. Click here, and select, under "History," "More Retail Gasoline prices."
The US had just survived the harsh winter of soaring heating oil prices in the NorthEast (remember Gore's botched Strategic Reserves oil auction?), and the CA energy crisis of 2000-2001 was winding down. By the way, time and time again, our national media; specifically I remember the LAT's, a PBS (Moyers?) special, and Time Mag - headlining it as the Energy Crisis of 2001 - or the 2001 Energy Blackouts -- they tend to drop 2000 out of the discussion. Friedman, I suspect, is just stuck in the rut of reading the national MSM, only. That will screw up anyone's thinking.
As we prepared for the inauguration of President Bush, everyone in Congress understood that a recession was on our door step. Wave after wave of economic stimulus proposals were flowing from both sides of the isle. Democrats Daschle, Lieberman and Kucinich were pushing the short term tax rebates, while Democrat Corzine was pushing for dividend and capital gains tax relief. Bush was pushing for long term tax stimulus -- they compromised.
What Tom Friedman, et. al, forget, is that 2001 was a very trying year for the US. The miracle was, that we got out of it - and, in hindsight, he wants to go back in time and kill off any hope of an economic recovery then?
(;~/ gary
PS -- Noel. Super analysis of the hypocritical take on Medicare Part D, from the left. You know that hits home with me. It's come in at under $400 billion (ten years cost); wasn't the Democrats 1st proposal on the table at the time for a $1.2 trillion plan? Love it.
Cripes!
Submitted by stratman on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 11:27am.
How convenient of FriedEggBrainMan to not mention the Left wanted to spend MORE entitlement Medicare Part D monies than Bush, much more.
What an odious little troll Tom's become. I guess money and power do corrupt, even if the money is his wife's and his power is contrived Leftist vapor.
Pass the duct tape, motherbelt.
Raise Taxes???
Submitted by E.S.Blofeld on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 11:58am.
Pres Bush, Dec 2006-
"As we work with Congress in the coming year to chart a new course in Iraq and strengthen our military to meet the challenges of the 21st century, we must also work together to achieve important goals for the American people here at home. This work begins with keeping our economy growing. As we approach the end of 2006, the American economy continues to post strong gains.
The most recent jobs report shows that our economy created 132,000 more jobs in November alone, and we've now added more than 7 million jobs since August of 2003. The unemployment rate has remained low at 4.5 percent. The recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country. And I encourage you all to go shopping more."
It's not about raising taxes...
Ernst
"Isn't it pretty to think that way?"-EH
better world if ------
Submitted by donsaliman on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 12:58pm.
Tom Friedman would shut up, or if Obama was not President or if the MSM would report the facts and not cover up for Obama's faults.
Tom sounds like some Truther OCD case.
Submitted by drsamherman on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 6:02pm.
Using 9/11 as an "excuse". Where in the world have we heard that before? Sounds like variations on a theme of MIHOP/LIHOP. The rest of the screed is so unreadable it might as well be written in Sanskrit transliterated from Aramaic.