Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Deprogramming in hopes of dialogue

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Mike Peterson Published: December 10, 2012 1 minute 1 comment

Kevin Kallaugher with a pithy analysis of the discussions thus far. He's got a point, but I'm not sure where we go with it, mostly because the "Where's the meat?" questions remain largely at least uncovered if not unanswered.

For instance, I've heard so many versions of "close the loopholes" and "eliminate deductions" that I'm not sure what anybody is proposing and this leads me to wonder if they are actually proposing anything beyond vague generalities.

This I do know: We're still stuck in some ideological traps that make it very hard to come up with sensible solutions.

One of them seems to be falling away:

(Scott Stantis is my very favoritist conservative.)

But we're still hung up on the whole perversion of the social contract. The Norquist clique may have failed in permanently persuading the majority that all taxes are bad, but they've done a pretty good job of implanting the idea that caring for others is an evil socialist conspiracy against All Good Americans.

We need Ted Patrick to kidnap these True Believers and imprison them in motel rooms across the nation. Or we could reduce the deficit by giving them all flowers and sending them out to their local airports.

The process of building this demographic has involved, as all cult inductions do, preying upon natural insecurities, weaknesses and human failings. 

For instance, most people are happy enough to have an excuse not to extend themselves to help. I get that.

I understand that, when Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, and he described the other Jews finding excuses not to get involved and not to stop and not to help, he wasn't talking about something that only applied in Judea 2,000 years ago. Phil Ochs managed to get one of his better known songs out of the image of people seeing a need, recognizing their responsibility, and then saying, "But we've got to move and we might get sued and it looks like it's gonna rain."

But there is no cult simultaneously insisting on their right to be selfish while complaining about not being allowed to worship Phil Ochs in school or put up statues of him in public buildings.

The immediate application of this bizarre belief system is that the libertarian wing insists that charity should be a private answer to societal problems, and that we, as the American people, ought not to do what we, as Baptists, Methodists, Elks, Lions and Rotarians should do. 

Jen Sorensen addressed the utterly asinine lack of scale involved in this moronically idealistic proposal over a year ago, but it hangs on:

But the absurdity of this unworkable non-solution is now being further complicated by proposals to eliminate the tax deduction for charitable contributions.

One of the slightly concrete aspects of the eliminate-deductions concept being floated by Republicans has been that deductions would be capped, not eliminated, so that people could only take a certain amount of deductions, which varies but seems to generally be from $17,000 to $25,000.

Which means that the average family would still be able to deduct both the interest on their mortgage and the 10 percent of their income that all these good Christians put into the collection plate each week. (I've always wondered at the clinking sound you hear on Sunday, but I'm sure it's jewelry being dropped in by people who forgot to bring their envelopes, because there sure as hell aren't a lot of people in this country subsisting on a gross, or even net, income of less than $10 a week.)

But if Bill and Melinda Gates, or Mitt and Anne Romney, or John and Teresa Kerry, or John and Cruella McCain, can no longer reduce their tax bills by making generous donations to charity, will they continue to do so at the levels at which they currently do?

And, if so, on what planet?

We need to hear some discussion. We need to have open debate, and open debate accompanied by honest numbers and sensible, real-world "what-if" scenarios.

The Norquist Pledge is hardly the only thing painting the Republicans into their corner. They are far more trapped by having successfully promoted heartless selfishness as a patriotic virtue, along with the fanciful and completely illogical notion that lower-middle-class people will somehow benefit when the wealthy become wealthier.

We need concrete proposals, and we need honest dialogue and we need to stop pretending that there are no truths to be had or lies to be denounced or foolish premises to be refuted and that "they all do it."

Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.