CT Blue

I just returned from watching the Blumenthal debate. I noted in a previous post that I don’t like watching debates. They are stomach churning affairs, particularly when your candidate doesn’t come out with the answers that seem so obvious to you. Another reason is that the questioners are always (well, almost always) press people of very little brain, particularly those hired to sit in front of a camera and talk, such as Mark Davis, who asked Blumenthal a question about a column by Greg Mankiw that was in the New York Times over the weekend. The question was (I can’t quote it) to the effect that a Harvard Professor said that he wasn’t going to work so hard if the Bush tax cuts aren’t extended, so how can you justify saying you want to tax this poor guy?

Dean referred to Mankiw as a Harvard Professor. Blumenthal is a busy guy, so probably hadn’t read the column, didn’t realize it was Mankiw Davis was talking about, and hadn’t read the torrents of criticism the column has elicited. Mankiw’s basic point was that rich guys like him would think twice about working more if they had to pay the same tax rate as they did under Clinton (though there’s no evidence he wasn’t working then), because, well, I’ll lift a quote, with summary, from Kevin Drum:

[Explanation of how $1,000 in income from a writing assignment grows to $10,000 over thirty years without taxes, but only to $1,700 with Obama-level taxes.]

Then, when my children inherit the money, the estate tax will kick in. The marginal estate tax rate is scheduled to go as high as 55 percent next year, but Congress may reduce it a bit. Most likely, when that $1,700 enters my estate, my kids will get, at most, $1,000 of it….By contrast, without the tax increases advocated by the Obama administration, the numbers would look quite different. I would face a lower income tax rate, a lower Medicare tax rate, and no deduction phaseout or estate tax. Taking that writing assignment would yield my kids about $2,000. I would have twice the incentive to keep working.

And I’ll also lift Drum’s observations:

Do you see the card he palmed? Basically, the effect of letting the Bush cuts expire is so tiny that the only way to make it noticeable is to compound it over 30 years, which reduces the eventual payout of his writing assignment from $2,000 to $1,700. (And even that’s probably overstated, since it assumes Mankiw pays all his taxes at their full statutory rate, which virtually no one does.) The rest of the reduction down to $1,000 comes solely from the estate tax. But even on the heroic assumption that you should take this year’s zero rate as the baseline for comparison, the estate tax has an exemption of several million dollars. Unless Mankiw leaves his kids a helluva lot more than they need for a down payment on a house, they won’t pay a dime of estate tax.

And of course, we can’t forget a few points, made here by Brad Delong:

First, start with the fact that tax on Greg’s current writing earnings because he wants to leave more to his children in thirty years will be higher than today’s current Bush-era tax rates. But they will not be higher because of anything Barack Obama has done or failed to do. They will be higher for three reasons. First, George W. Bush and his advisors–of whom Greg Mankiw was one–failed to find any spending offsets in order to pay for the temporary Bush reductions in tax rates. Second, George W. Bush and his advisors–of whom Greg Mankiw was one–enacted a very large long-term spending increase without figuring out any way to pay for it: Medicare Part D. Third, George W. Bush and his advisors–of whom Greg Mankiw was one–enacted a second very large spending increase when they responded to Al Qaeda by greatly increasing the size of a conventional military which is of not much use in our current struggle, and also did so without figuring out any way to pay for it.

Now, it’s probably asking too much to expect Mark Davis to educate himself on any of this. He probably knew that Mankiw was a Bushie, and therefore suspect, but he probably couldn’t be bothered to do any basic research to find out if Mankiw’s argument made much sense. He likely couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask a question with a Harvard pedigree to which it would be impossible for Blumenthal to respond unless, in the middle of a tough campaign, he had taken the time to read the column, read the rebuttals, and absorb them well enough to be able to rebut Mankiw point by point, which would, of course, have taken far more than his allotted time. All in all, a truly stupid and unfair question. I should point out, by the way, that Davis also absolved Linda from having suggested that she would consider lowering the minimum wage when, in fact, that is the only way one can interpret her words, if one understands the English language.

The Courant is attacking Denise Merrill because she called herself an attorney in some campaign literature, but she’s not enough of an attorney to suit them. Seems she hasn’t practiced law for 30 years. Mind you, she hasn’t said she was actively practicing law, nor is the practice of law a part of the job of Secretary of State, the job for which she is running, something Susan Bysiewicz so recently proved. She has a law school degree and passed the California bar exam, and was a member of the California bar, but apparently that’s not enough for the Courant.

I’m a lawyer, practicing at the moment. So far as I’m concerned, for better or for worse, I’ll be a lawyer until they put me in my grave. It’s a curse I’ll have to live with. You can quibble about ethical rules designed to avoid misleading potential clients, but since Merrill hasn’t been seeking clients, it’s really a stretch to say that she’s doing anything unethical and an even bigger stretch to charge that she’s saying anything that’s untrue.

Currently, there are eleven members of Congress that call themselves physicians. One of them is Tom Coburn, which only goes to show that there’s at least one medical school out there that’s got some ‘splaining to do. Whether or not their licenses are active or inactive, they are not practicing medicine at the moment, but they’ve earned their stripes-even Coburn, apparently- and have the right to call themselves doctors, just like Merrill has the right to call herself a lawyer.

The article itself proves that Merrill has not been trying to mislead anyone:

When a Courant reporter researched Merrill’s background during the summer and asked about her status as a lawyer, she explained the California situation, and the newspaper published this accurate description: “Education: UConn, studied at San Francisco Law School, admitted to California bar.”

There’s an entry for Merrill on the State Bar of California website, where she is listed, with “Bar Number 85368′ by her name, along with her current Connecticut address in Mansfield Center and an “inactive” status designation. The website says that Merrill was admitted to the California bar May 1, 1979, at age 30, and that her status went “inactive” on Jan. 1, 1980.

Presumably the interview in the summer had nothing to do with the current story, so it appears that Merrill was the initial source for this startling revelation. Now that’s investigative journalism of the highest order.

The Day has long had a battered spouse syndrome type of relationship with the local right wing. They constantly try to appease them, though it never works. Apparently they’ve upped the ante, having gotten themselves a good right leaning reporter, who is always prepared to carry water for the Republicans. The fellows name is Matt Collette. I really should have collected a bunch of his trespasses before writing this, but I’ll confine myself to three.

First up, this article about the local Republican’s version of the national Pledge to Destroy America:

In a show of party unity not visible among local Democratic candidates, a group of Republicans running for seats in the Connecticut General Assembly pledged to combat the state’s looming fiscal woes with “common sense” solutions.

Whatever is the gentleman talking about? It is quite possible that Democratic unity isn’t visible to him, but that’s because he doesn’t appear to pay much attention to Democrats, other than to trash them. Now, I’ll grant you, Democrats do think for themselves, so they are far less likely than Republicans to march in lockstep (or, since Nazi comparisons are all the rage these days, should I say goose step?), but I’ve seen no evidence that Democrats are not united. So what’s he talking about? Where’s his–you know–evidence?

Next up, we have the why don’t we swallow the Republican talking point whole act. This is from a puff piece about the three Republican contenders for the Second Congressional nomination:

Along with fellow Republicans, they want to reverse Democratic policies like the health care reform bill, enacted by Obama and Democrats in Congress earlier this year, decrease federal spending and restore the Bush tax cuts to reduce the federal deficit and work to improve the economy through job creation and reduced regulations on corporations. (Emphasis added)

Now, an actual reporter might point out that no respectable economist will tell you that preserving this massive transfer of wealth will cut the deficit. It flies in the face of common sense, basic math, and past experience, since both the Reagan and Bush tax cuts produced massive deficits. Where, pray tell, does Mr. Collette think our present deficits came from? Now, Republicans are certainly within their rights to spread these fables. It’s what they do. But it’s a poor reporter that simply passes them on as fact. I’ll be keeping an eye, by the way, to see if Mr. Collette allows Democratic claims to go unquestioned. Note that I’m giving him a pass on swallowing the claim that reducing regulations will improve the economy (talk to the folks around the Gulf about that), but since it takes more than first grade math to wrap your head around that issue, I’m letting that one go, except to add if he was up to third grade history he might recall that it was reduced regulations that tanked the economy in the first place. But that would be asking him to have a functioning memory, and, to be fair, almost no one in the press has one of those.

Finally, here’s one with a local twist.

Last spring, the Groton Long Point Association requested $208,000 for its police department, a sum equivalent to what it would cost the town to police the area itself. In a tight vote, the RTM voted to eliminate that funding, a move it upheld when members tried to reverse the decision.

I’m going to take a page from Dean Baker here. Mr. Collette has no basis on which to assert that the amount in question is equivalent to what it would cost the town to police the area itself. He could report, accurately enough, that the folks from Groton Long Point make that claim, but he has no basis to assert this as a fact. But it does fit the interests of type of folks that appear to be near and dear to his heart.

My wife and I have noticed Collette’s rightward tilt, but I haven’t stooped to notice him in this august space prior to this. But the “unity” quote above tipped me over the edge. In for a dime, in for a dollar. You’ll be hearing more about him if this kind of thing keeps up.