Idiotic Political Punditry Of The Day - Right Wing Class Warfare Edition

For once, I have taken issue with an opinion piece written by someone other than Martin Peretz. Today's idiotic punditry comes from Politico, the girl-who-will-do-freaky-things-just-to-be-liked of the Washington journalistic scene. George Nethercutt, which as far as I can verify is his actual name, writes an angry screed against the bottom half of taxpayers who don't pay federal income taxes. (note there how I called them taxpayers, more on that in a minute). Here is his general argument:

Roughly 76 million tax filers, or 46 percent of the total, are expected to owe no income tax in 2011, according to the Tax Policy Center. The top 1 percent pays about 40 percent of all income taxes — which means 54 percent of all tax filers are “carrying” the 46 percent who pay nothing.
That’s fundamentally unfair. It has led, over time, to inequities and a dependency on government that is unhealthy for a free society. Forced dependency ultimately breeds contempt.

This man is either an idiot who does not understand how our tax and economic system works, or he thinks the rest of us are. Yes, approximately half of Americans do not pay federal income tax, but that is only saying something about federal income tax. There are other taxes. Indeed, there are no Americans, or even non-Americans in America, who pay no taxes. Every working person pays federal taxes - payroll, Social Security, Medicare. And everyone pays state taxes - property, sales, etc. So again - no one pays no taxes.



I'll be generous and say that Nethercutt, a former congressman and head of a foundation that he had the humility to name after himself, knows that. So why make this argument? All political arguments need an enemy, all politicians need an opponent. When your party is solidly behind cutting taxes for the rich, and the American people are solidly against that, you need to obfuscate the issue. He might as well say 'hey, look at those lazy poor people! Lets make sure they pay their fair share! No one look at how the rich don't.'

But Nethercutt goes further than that, into 'weird argument' territory. I guess that when you're making an argument that you know is bullshit, it's kind of hard to stop. So we get things like this:

During the congressional debates on welfare reform in the 1990s, I recall hearing bout [sic] Americans who were proud to file and income tax return for the first time. Doing so meant that the single mother, struggling to survive, had finally broken free of well-meaning government dependency. It was her own declaration of independence.

Besides the stupid typo that no one caught, there are two problems with this line of argument. First, coming a few short lines after talking about government programs that "warehoused poor Americans in many big cities...creat[ing] a culture of angry residents", Nethercutt surely intended for we the readers to aimlessly wonder as to what race that 'single mother, struggling to survive' must be. Secondly, he is making an explicit argument that paying taxes is good and very American behavior, which one senses is not exactly the overall argument he'd like to make.

For kicks, he ends by saying that political leaders should declare "no representation without taxation." Now, I would like to think that despite my occupying the left of the political spectrum, I do not share the habit of seeing racism in everything the right does, unlike my brothers in political arms. But in the context of this piece, Nethercutt does seem to truly be calling for the poor, an economic group largely comprised of ethnic and racial minorities, to loose the right to vote until they can properly pay for the privilege. In this, Nethercutt betrays his beliefs far more than he intended.