Should Rush Limbaugh be losing sponsors for the things he said?

[AlexxEG]

Well back on topic. I don't think anyone should force his sponsors to stop sponsoring him, but if they don't want to be represented by him that's their choice and I personally agree with them.

[Arthmoor]

TL;DR -- We need higher taxes and spending cuts. Yet I seem to remember all but 10 Republican members of Congress (out of 289) signing a certain pledge that makes this impossible.

 

I don't know in which universe people think raising taxes is actually helpful, but it rarely is. All it does is discourage investment and cause those who can afford to to hoard their money and start cutting employee counts. It happens every time, which is why the Republicans aren't stupid enough to incorporate tax and spend as a policy direction the way the Democrats are famous for.

 

I remember my parents being pretty pissed off at Reagan when he raised taxes. Except that didn't stay that way. Unlike when the Dems do it, by the time he came up for re-election, those taxes had been brought back down to reasonable levels and a massive economic boom took place. Which is why he's hailed as a paragon of conservatism.

 

GW Bush isn't hailed as that because he wasn't one. He's a big government Republican. Conservatives don't tend to support folks like that because in our binary political system, ALL Republicans get tarred with the same brush as being big government supporters. Most of us are not, but the alternative in the current system is too disgusting to even consider.

 

I also notice that there's an awful lot of blaming the Republicans going on with absolutely zero accountability for what Obama has done in the 3 years since he took office that make everything EVERY OTHER PRESIDENT BEFORE HIM look like chicken feed. All of the gains made under GW Bush with the tax cuts have been wiped out entirely. Obama took the deficit from $400 billion to nearly $2 trillion. That's *NOT* helping. Anyone who thinks Obama's policies are useful is being nothing short of ignorant and hypocritical.

 

Back on the subject of Rush Limbaugh, it would seem this boycott movement is going nowhere fast. Word has it he's lost ~50 sponsors out of some 18,000 in total. I'm no expert in the advertising market, but that doesn't seem like it would be much more than the average turnover rate one would expect anyway. It also didn't do Carbonite's stock much good when they dropped him. Their stock plunged hardcore. Yes, they have the right to drop him, but the stockholders also have a right to make them pay for their reckless decision.

[marharth]

What gains from the Bush tax cuts?

 

Are you completely unaware that Obama extended the exact same tax program? Our economy doesn't seem to be doing so well now with those huge tax cuts. Tax cuts are clearly not helping unemployment.

 

What Obama policies?

 

And what do you mean by all the other presidents before him? How far back are you talking about?

[Marxist ßastard]

I remember my parents being pretty pissed off at Reagan when he raised taxes. Except that didn't stay that way. Unlike when the Dems do it, by the time he came up for re-election, those taxes had been brought back down to reasonable levels and a massive economic boom took place. Which is why he's hailed as a paragon of conservatism.

Reagan raised the national debt twice as much as all previous US presidents combined.

[sukeban]

@Arthmoor

 

The fact remains that Reagan exploded the national debt in the 1980s, beginning a trend that has continued into the present. How you square that with somehow being different than what W. Bush did when he was in office is up to you. He both raised and lowered taxes, it's true, but the country has emphatically not been made into a better place since we have been afflicted by this tax-slashing monomania. Unless, of course, you pine for income consolidation or for the creation of a new aristocratic governing caste.

 

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/archive/2010/09/1_123125_2265681_2266033_100902_gd_part1_pikettysaezfig1.gif

 

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/top1percentchart2.jpg

 

Ah, how fabulous it feels... to have literally regressed to the Gilded Age. Now, if I could just figure out where to buy the Great Gatsby's cool gold car.... But seriously, for all the nostalgia that the right places on the 1940s, 1950s, and the early 1960s, you would think that they'd want to go back to the economic policies that actually laid the foundation for the creation of the middle class... and the family values that existed concomitantly with it. Truth is, so would I. And so would, I am sure, the enormous majority of Americans, especially those barely hanging on to their position in the middle class, those dejectedly watching as their salaries and benefits are cut, year after year, while their bosses take yet another bonus and a raise.

 

Repeating it over and over again will not make it true. Higher marginal tax rates do not depress hiring or investment. If there is a profit to be made through investment or by adding staff, a good capitalist will do these things. For what else would he do? Turn down the opportunity? Turn his back on potential profits? Why would he care whether or not this new source of income would be taxed at a rate of 40% instead of 35%? This makes no sense.

 

But nobody is arguing for a top rate of 90%, though this rate existed from around 1945 to 1965. I wasn't alive at the time, but books seem to tell me that this was the golden age of the middle class in America, a time of broad prosperity and of low unemployment. The implications of this for your line of argument should be self-evident. I hardly think that unemployment would jump to 40% if the top rate were changed to 50%. Lowering corporate taxes is probably desirable (to something like 20-25%, down from 35%), as would be beefing up the IRS to crack down on tax cheats, both corporate and individual. But unless the very rich want to renounce their American citizenship and move to Mexico or Grenada or Laos for the purposes of tax evasion, the worst result of increasing rates on the wealthiest Americans would be a smaller national deficit and a less cavernous divide in earned income between our classes (yes, America has classes).

 

What we can probably agree on (again, in the spirit of finding common ground), is that our tax code is needlessly complex as well as inefficient for what it aims to do (collect revenue and smooth excesses of income inequality). I would favor stripping out nearly all tax breaks and deductions in exchange for lowering the marginal rates on the middle and lower classes. These deductions are frequently the result of special interest lobbying efforts (aka corruption), and are unavailable to the majority of Americans without personal tax lawyers on call. The same goes for corporate taxes. There is something to be said for Pigovian incentives, but our present method of implementing them has turned them into cash giveaways for those with the means to exploit them. Thus, our present tax code exacerbates income inequality rather than attenuating it.

 

Anyway, what Obama has or has not done is, for me, basically a null set. He inherited the worst economy in 80 years and... we are now in recovery. Yes, our deficits have ballooned and no, I am not particularly happy about that either. But, it is to make a counter-factual and unknowable argument to say that the Recovery Act (which is largely responsible for that deficit) was unnecessary and unwise. And please remember, it was W. Bush who proposed the auto bailout as well as TARP. Being told that you must either pass these things or face the Great Depression Redux will tend to do this to you. And don't think for a minute that Reagan wouldn't have done the same.

 

Finally, you are right--I think. Limbaugh will not be going off the air anytime soon. Personally, I am glad that he has lost some sponsors, but they are not enough to make a difference. He will continue doing what he does best... lobbing rhetorical dirty bombs at progressives and moderates whilst offering no actual solutions of his own.

Edited March 13, 2012 by sukeban

[Aurielius]

I remember my parents being pretty pissed off at Reagan when he raised taxes. Except that didn't stay that way. Unlike when the Dems do it, by the time he came up for re-election, those taxes had been brought back down to reasonable levels and a massive economic boom took place. Which is why he's hailed as a paragon of conservatism.

Reagan raised the national debt twice as much as all previous US presidents combined.

 

 

"Instead of coming into office with spending cuts, President Obama’s first act was a nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill. In his first two years in office he has already increased federal spending by 28%, and his 2012 budget proposes to increase federal spending by another 57% by 2021.

His monetary policy is just the opposite as well. Instead of restraining the money supply to match money demand for a stable dollar, slaying an historic inflation, we have QE1 and QE2 and a steadily collapsing dollar, arguably creating a historic reflation.

And instead of deregulation we have across-the-board re-regulation, from health care to finance to energy, and elsewhere. While Reagan used to say that his energy policy was to “unleash the private sector,” Obama’s energy policy can be described as precisely to leash the private sector in service to Obama’s central planning “green energy” dictates.

As a result, while the Reagan recovery averaged 7.1% economic growth over the first seven quarters, the Obama recovery has produced less than half that at 2.8%, with the last quarter at a dismal 1.8%. After seven quarters of the Reagan recovery, unemployment had fallen 3.3 percentage points from its peak to 7.5%, with only 18% unemployed long-term for 27 weeks or more. After seven quarters of the Obama recovery, unemployment has fallen only 1.3 percentage points from its peak, with a postwar record 45% long-term unemployed."--Forbes

Edited March 13, 2012 by Aurielius

[sukeban]

@Aurielius

 

I am not in favor of many of Obama's policies either, but the Republicans do not offer any serious alternatives. Republican debates are cartoonish bacchanals of conditioned jingoism, barely concealed racism, and the worst that voodoo economics has to offer. Only the good Dr. Paul brings cogent arguments to bear, but he is largely dismissed or shouted down by the surly crowd without even an attempt at moderation by the hosting authority. I might have taken Romney seriously once, before he emerged from his moderate Massachusetts cocoon as a disingenuous, utterly incredible (in the literal sense) born-again right-winger. If people gave John Kerry grief for being a flip-flopper, good god, this man is a veritable chameleon.

 

I agree, we need fewer regulations, but regulations must be intelligently evaluated before they are abolished. Newt Gingrich declaring that he would "Abolish the EPA" is not what I would consider a serious proposal. I don't want lead in the paint on my walls. I don't want arsenic in my drinking water. I don't want natural gas fracking causing earthquakes in my hometown. In short, I have seen (and lived in) the environmental holocaust that has befallen much of China; I do not want this to happen to the United States. Abolishing various useless regulations is well and good; mindlessly eliminating entire government agencies is not.

 

Quick Thoughts:

 

1. Our healthcare system is trash, for the money. At least one party has a vision for changing this. Obama's health care proposals have not "socialized" medicine, no matter how much I wish this were the case (single-payer ftw).

 

2. Finance needs MORE regulation, not less. Lack of regulation was what led to the Financial Crisis. Dodd-Frank is barely a band-aid when one ponders what might have been done. Such is the clout of Wall Street (Forbes included).

 

3. Green lobby is but one of many competing special interests.

 

4. Reagan Recession was bush league compared to the Financial Crisis. We also have structural problems in our economy that we did not have when Reagan was President. Obama did not create these structural problems.

Edited March 13, 2012 by sukeban

[Lisnpuppy]

As this topic is Rush Limbaugh and not President Obama's policies (or the Republicans) I suggest we get back on topic. If you are interested in this other then go make a new thread.~Lisnpuppy

[Aurielius]

As this topic is Rush Limbaugh and not President Obama's policies (or the Republicans) I suggest we get back on topic. If you are interested in this other then go make a new thread.~Lisnpuppy

Splendid idea, created Election Year Thread for just such a purpose...bows low..doffs hat to the southern belle in yellow.

Edited March 13, 2012 by Aurielius

[Deleted472477User]

As this topic is Rush Limbaugh and not President Obama's policies (or the Republicans) I suggest we get back on topic. If you are interested in this other then go make a new thread.~Lisnpuppy

 

thanks! If it wanders off-topic again, would you please lock it for me? Like anyone else, I don't like having my threads hijacked, even if I do agree with some things said.