Thursday, October 30, 2008

Campbell Carries Water

That pail Colleen Campbell is carrying must be getting heavy. Campbell spent her time in today's Post-Dispatch Op-Ed section carrying water for the McCain campaign.

Rather than construct some argument that Sen. Barack Obama's tax proposal-which proposes to cut taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year while slightly bumping up taxes on those who make more-was a plan that made no fiscal sense, she instead trotted out the McCain campaign's second front, that Obama-by modifying existing progressive taxes-is a socialist.

In that respect Campbell both flunks the test for recognition of well-defined political systems, as well as the pop-quiz to see if you are keeping up with your homework.

Even a critical reading of what Obama has proposed elicits nothing more than an increase in already-existing taxes for folks making more than $250,000 a year. At the same time it looks to lessen the tax burden on those who earn less.

The entire point of her column was to continue the line that Obama is somehow a socialist by readjusting the existing tax system.

Had she spent a little less time copy-and-pasting from the McCain campaign emails, she may have noticed that McCain supported the current economic bailout. The one that not only funnels billions of taxpayer dollars to the massive banking industry, but takes an ownership stake in many who accept the deal-the specific term is recapitalization. A less judicious explanation would be the state taking an ownership stake in the means of production: a.k.a. a potentially satisfactory condition for socialism.

The McCain campaign and its surrogates have spent incredible amounts of time trying to weave a narrative that has little to do with reality as you and I know it.

Retooling a tax structure so that is slightly more progressive-Obama's proposed increases in taxation would bring them up to the levels of the 1990's when we all suffered through the tech boom and the economic expansion it created-is a far cry from the government taking an ownership position in banks.

Campbell gleeful quoted the Orlando news anchor (whose Q & A should be recorded in history simply for the absolute dissonance exhibited in the interview, with one interlocutor demanding the interviewee essentially pull a rabbit from their nose, while said interviewee simply tries not to double over in laughter) who kicked off her batty performance with a Karl Marx quote. She went on to demand that Bided prove that Obama was not a socialist, or a Marxist; her evidence being that Obama wants to tweak the existing tax system.

Campbell also chucks in Obama's supposed plan to "spread the wealth", which pulls from a comment Obama made about helping reassert the economic power and potential of the middle class-thus increasing the wealth of the majority of the population.

It was once bragged-though I never saw the numbers, it was touted by enough serious folks that it was likely true-that there was more wealth in the collective bank accounts of the folks living in working-to-middle class South St. Louis that in the sections of the Western St. Louis County known for its big homes and expensive cars.

South City is an example of the source of ingenuity and wealth production Obama's tax plan is targeted at, not the folks whose names sit atop the buildings South City works in.

This country is rightfully renowned for its history of giving a nobody with ambition the chance to become captains of industry or occupy the highest seats in the land. That happens because we encourage and foster new entries and new ideas. Protecting existing business and business owner by giving them tax advantages is not only unfair, but undercuts a future we have promised to the hopeful.

- Murphy

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