French Toast
| Thu Mar. 5, 2009 9:49 AM PST
Roger Cohen is scared that Barack Obama wants to turn American into France:
The $3.6 trillion Obama budget made me a little queasy. There is a touch of France in its "étatisme"....For everyone from the oil and gas industry to drug companies, the message was clear: Off with their heads!....I’d thought of Obama as less Robespierre than Talleyrand....The former French President François Mitterrand....manifold sensual, aesthetic and gastronomic pleasures offered by French savoir-vivre....High French unemployment ....French frontiers have not shifted much in centuries....careful to steer clear of his French temptation....The United States is in full post-Bush nemesis. In its core values, un-Gallicized, lies the long road to redemption.
Is there something about having a New York Times column that makes you lose your mind? Obama wants to push taxes on the super wealthy back up to 2001 levels. He wants to move in the direction of carbon pricing and universal healthcare, just like he promised repeatedly during the campaign. He wants to increase defense spending, but increase it slightly less than the Pentagon would like. Stimulus outlays aside, the budget as a whole is up only moderately compared to two years ago.
If you object to this, fine. But Cohen doesn't. "After the excesses of Reagan-inspired deregulation and the disaster that unfettered markets have delivered, the pendulum had to swing." But how much less could Obama swing it and still be making any noticeable difference at all? What, exactly, has Cohen so worried? He never says. He just loses himself in a paroxysm of stammering cliches. Has he been taking lessons from Maureen Dowd?
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Comments
Not necessarily
Submitted by jimBOB on Thu Mar. 5, 2009 10:01 AM PST.
Is there something about having a New York Times column that makes you lose your mind?
Well, Krugman and Herbert are doing OK, so no, it's not having a column that loses it. It's more that with a couple of exceptions, the columnists they hang on to have second-class minds.
One reason I mostly ignore op-eds anymore is that the discussion I find online is (if you look in the right places) of so much higher caliber than the drivel the papers publish. Not to mention quicker, more voluminous, and free.
Oil and Gas taxes will be regretted
Submitted by BigTom (not verified) on Thu Mar. 5, 2009 10:41 AM PST.
In the near future, when oil and natural gas again reach scarcity price levels, there will be a serious political price to be paid for the current practice of piling taxes and insults onto this industry. The cries of drill, drill, drill, and the blaming of the scarcity on democrats will be deafening. This is one area where we can't afford the obstructionist perception that we are currently creating.
But, that probably seems off-topic, though Cohen obliquely references it.
super wealthy
Submitted by John C (not verified) on Thu Mar. 5, 2009 11:12 AM PST.
I agree with President Obama's tax proposals, but I'm not sure we want to call $200-250k "super wealthy" - that might just serve to invite snide backlashing from the wingnutter echo chamber....
He's never heard of Belgium or Luxembourg?
Submitted by alan (not verified) on Thu Mar. 5, 2009 11:25 AM PST.
French frontiers have not shifted much in centuries....
He's never heard of Belgium or Luxembourg?
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If a NYT Op-Ed columnist were to...
Submitted by Greg in FL on Thu Mar. 5, 2009 11:40 AM PST.
do something really crazy, like write a column in Latin, then I think yeah, they've lost their minds.
Kevin- This is a VERY good
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Mar. 5, 2009 1:54 PM PST.
Kevin-
This is a VERY good thing.
Republicans are teasing out Obama's limits without Obama having to actually take any risks.
The other day I heard a Republican describing "cap and trade" as a "carbon tax".
If Obama can push through "Cap and Trade" and people think it's a Carbon Tax and don't reject it - well that means that he can tack on a Carbon Tax too, doesn't it? And if people do turn against it, then dems can depict Republicans as liars and extremists, which in either event is true.
Republicans haven't caught up with 2006. They used to be able to scream 'class warfare!' and get traction, and they're still doing it. But the landscape has changed so much that all they're doing is limiting their own options.
where exactly does wealthy
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri Mar. 6, 2009 4:50 AM PST.
where exactly does wealthy become super wealthy?
top 1/2 a percent? 10X the median income?
where ever it is the marginal rate should be at 43%
If Obama can push through
Submitted by louis vuitton replica (not verified) on Mon Aug. 3, 2009 3:59 AM PDT.
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