A Taxing Neocon Nuisance

(I should warn you at the start that I’m probably going to end up calling this guy names, against my better instincts I know.)

In anticipation of the tax filing deadline at midnight tonight (we filed awhile ago), the New York Times’ Deborah Solomon interviewed Grover Norquist in the Sunday Magazine a couple of days ago.

You remember Grover, don’t you? That human mistake who laundered money from a casino-operating Indian tribe to Ralph Reed. That pusillanimous little toad who compared the estate tax to the Holocaust. Even a guy Tucker Carlson once called a "mean-spirited, humorless, dishonest little creep ... the leering, drunken uncle everyone else wishes would stay home" (all noted here).

But yet, in their “wisdom,” the Times thought it was important enough to give this guy column space to plug his causes (including his new book, of course).

Here are some particularly ripe excerpts…

Now that we’re facing an economic slowdown, not to mention a $9 trillion national debt, is it fair to ask whether the Bush tax cuts have damaged the country? Oh, no, no, the spending has done the damage.

The spending in Iraq? That’s what the White House says. But it’s not true. The war spending is a fraction of the spend-too-much problem. When you want an extra dollar for the war, you have to give Congress $2 for other stuff.

There’s a lot that could be said in response, but for starters, I’ll present the following from Democracy Now! here (in which the cost of the Iraq war is estimated at three trillion dollars)...

AMY GOODMAN: Joseph Stiglitz, the White House press spokesperson, Tony Fratto, said yesterday, “People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11.”

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, I think the White House lacks the courage to engage in a national debate about the cost of the Iraq war. The Joint Economic Committee has asked the White House to come down and discuss the numbers; they’ve refused. Security is important, and we don’t deny that. The question is whether this war has been the best way of obtaining the security. And no matter what you’re going to do—you know, what you think about security, you still have to look at the cost. The costs have been important, even for the way we’ve waged the war. The reason the administration presumably did not buy, for instance, the MRAPs, these special vehicles that would have reduced the number of deaths by a very large fraction, is economics. So, you know, no matter what one says, economics is important, and the American people have the right to have an understanding of what those costs are. When we went to war, they said it was going to cost $50 billion. We are now spending that money upfront every three months, and that’s not even including the cost of veterans’ healthcare and disability down the line.

And of course, if Bushco had ever acted like adults and tried to scale back on the war (with Iraq stepping up to pay for it instead of squirreling away its money and letting us foot the bill), then there wouldn’t be a "spend too much problem" on the war, would there?

Are you serving as an economic adviser to the McCain campaign? I was working with all of the Republican candidates. He won, and he’s the tax cutter, so I am with him. He reciprocates by sending at least one person to each of our Center-Right meetings.

As noted by SourceWatch earlier, that would be the Wednesday meetings of Norquist’s “Leave Us Alone” coalition, a gathering of similarly pigheaded conservatives and self-interested shills…

The "Wednesday Meeting" of Norquist's (coalition) has become an important hub of conservative political organizing. President Bush began sending a representative to the Wednesday Meeting even before he formally announced his candidacy for president. "Now a White House aide attends each week," reported USA Today in June 2001. "Vice President Cheney sends his own representative. So do GOP congressional leaders, right-leaning think tanks, conservative advocacy groups and some like-minded K Street lobbyists. The meeting has been valuable to the White House because it is the political equivalent of one-stop shopping. By making a single pitch, the administration can generate pressure on members of Congress, calls to radio talk shows and political buzz from dozens of grassroots organizations. It also enables the White House to hear conservatives vent in private -- and to respond -- before complaints fester.

I detest these people, but I have to admit that they have been effective.

And of course in the interview, Norquist trots out all of the typical winger complaints, such as “having to wear a helmet when we ride a Harley…how much water can be in your toilet bowl (and) how big your car can be…”

You can’t possibly think that American cars are too small. Everyone would have bigger and safer cars if they didn’t have those CAFE standards, corporate average fuel economy.

Well then, Norquist should be pleased to read from here that, in typical fashion…

Last month (January 2004), U.S. EPA chief Mike Leavitt joined Detroit kingpins in a splashy D.C. conference to trumpet the arrival of new vehicles and fuels that reduce sulfur emissions -- a notable achievement, but what Leavitt was passing off as a Bush administration success was in fact an initiative launched under President Clinton. Days later, Leavitt announced additional funding for the Clean School Bus USA program -- some $60 million to replace pre-1991 school buses with new ones that have state-of-the-art emission controls.

This change was regarded by environmentalists as having “a negligible effect on emissions,” by the way.

While these efforts drew lots of media attention, there was one recent car-related announcement that the Bush administration slipped under the radar, and this one is likely to have much broader effects. On Dec. 22, the Bush administration proposed a major rewrite of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program. One notable outcome of the proposal would be the closing of a loophole that currently exempts vehicles over 8,500 pounds, such as the Hummer H2, from any fuel-efficiency standards whatsoever. But despite this welcome tidbit, few environmentalists were pleased with the proposal as a whole.

"The loophole the Bush administration proposes to close may move us one step forward," said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program. "But their proposal also includes another loophole for the auto industry that will move us three steps back."

So Norquist can continue to drive his gas guzzling monstrosities when he wants a break from riding his Harley without a helmet if he wants.

Also…

Many prominent conservatives feel the movement needs to be more environmentally conscious and are recommending big-government solutions like a carbon tax. But nobody listens, because it’s nonsense.

Here’s more about Norquist’s “nonsense.”

The intention of a carbon tax is environmental, to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and thereby slow global warming. It can be implemented by taxing the burning of fossil fuels — coal, petroleum products such as gasoline and aviation fuel, and natural gas — in proportion to their carbon content.

Unlike market-based approaches such as carbon cap-and-trade systems, direct taxation has the benefit of being easily understood and can be popular with the public if the tax is hypothecated or earmarked to fund environmental projects[1].

...

In 1993, President of the United States, Bill Clinton proposed a BTU tax that was never adopted. His Vice President, Al Gore, had strongly backed a carbon tax in his book, Earth in the Balance, but this became a political liability after the Republicans attacked him as a "dangerous fanatic". In 2000, when Gore ran for President, one commentator labeled Gore's carbon tax proposal a "central planning solution" harking back to "the New Deal politics of his father."[2] In April 2005, Paul Anderson, CEO and Chairman of Duke Energy, called for the introduction of a carbon tax.[16] In January 2007, economist Charles Komanoff and attorney Dan Rosenblum launched a Carbon Tax Center[17] to give voice to Americans who believe that taxing carbon emissions is imperative to reduce global warming.

The Wikipedia article also notes that Sweden, Finland, The Netherlands, Norway, Italy, The United Kingdom and New Zealand have all devised their version of a tax, so I guess they’re not listening either.

Do you see your work as a kind of rebellion against the pro-tax activities of your mother (a tax assessor in Weston, MA)? Oh, no, not at all. She is generally with me on the need for overall lower taxes. I thought up the no-tax-increase pledge when I was 14 years old.

What is the point of that? I feel like my children will be paying for the budget follies of this generation for the rest of their lives. Oh, good, then my kids will be off the hook.

Maybe if your kids are born in another century, you selfish neocon turd (sorry – tried to hold back on the name calling as long as I could); this tells us that the budget deficit will likely exceed $350 billion this year, including at least $100 billion from an upcoming deficit-financed economic stimulus measure.

I’m sure the next subject for an upcoming Times Q&A by Solomon will no doubt be Rummy now, since there apparently is no standard that the interview subjects must meet for honesty; he’s got a book coming out now too, as noted here (and no, it’s not titled “How To Commit The Most Horrific Foreign Policy Blunder In U.S. History,” but it should be).

And in regards to the question posed by the CBC link of whether or not anyone would read his book, I got a kick out of this answer in particular…

The question on whether I will read his book is interesting to me, because as we know, there are "known knowns"; there are things we know we know. We also know there are "known unknowns"; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also "unknown unknowns" — the ones we don't know we don't know.

So I don't know if I'm going to read Rumsfeld's book.

Tell you what – if someone sends me a copy, I’ll shred it and use it to line my cat’s litter box, OK (hopefully, he won't object).