We writers are very busy. I know, right now, I have an article on SSH that I really need to finish. I wanted to finish it last night, but I was so tired. Really: I spend about 10 hours per day writing and doing reading in support of it. And admittedly, that is my life. I don’t have much else that I even want to do. But I feel totally rushed all the time. It’s after 3:00 pm today, and I have next to nothing done. I haven’t gotten to the SSH article. I’ve written one Frankly Curious article. My anxiety level is so high, I’d take a Valium, but that would make me fall asleep, get further behind, and make me even more anxious. And I’m sure I’m not alone.

Look at Paul Krugman. He writes a lot. And in addition to that, he has to go out to cool concerts where he hangs out backstage and he has to eat expensive dinners with important people. And he has to go to conferences all over the world. He’s a busy guy. And it must be crushing to use all the time that could be spent talking to John Paul White to write yet another article about how it would be wrong to vote for Bernie Sander like the one he wrote yesterday, How Change Happens.

But I do have more free time because John Paul White never returns my calls. So I thought I would use the one advantage I have over him to help Krugman out. And not just Krugman. What I’m proposing here will help out lots of other people. For example, it will save Jonathan Chait a lot of time. And Martin Longman. And Erik Loomis. And plenty of other liberal commentators who I very much like. That is why I’m doing this. It is a gift. It is a free tool to make their lives better.

So here it goes. It’s really simple, but I can’t pretend that it’s my own idea. I’ve just systematized the process. In general, none of these people are thinking very deeply about any of this, so I’ve just created a system where they don’t have to think at all. Here it goes:

1. Start with some recent good news for the Bernie Sanders campaign: polls or a famous person saying something or money raised. Or nothing at all. Here’s a generic opening that I release to the public domain. I hope that everyone finds many uses for it, “Despite what everyone expected, Bernie Sanders has really caught fire. He’s packing people in at his rallies. And he looks certain to win New Hampshire, and has a good shot at Iowa.”
2. Next, use several paragraphs to talk about how much you like Bernie Sanders. Now if I were writing this for new writers, I’d have to provide a lot of details. But for the top tier writers I’m talking about, it’s easy. All they have to do is go back and look at pretty much every article they wrote about Bernie Sanders as long as he was polling at less than 25%. Don’t plagiarizer! But professional writers know how to rip themselves off without technically plagiarizing. It’s quick and easy. Exactly how many paragraphs you want to spend on this will depend upon your editorial needs. But don’t go overboard, or you’ll make the rest of this harder. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you actually have to argue against yourself!
3. Now turn everything you’ve just said (and written for months) on its head. Point out that this is pie in the sky. Note that no one will elected a socialist. Write whatever you want. Just make the point that despite everything, it would be wrong to vote for Bernie Sanders. It doesn’t even have to make sense. For example, Krugman wrote, “Mr Sanders is the heir to candidate Obama, but Mrs Clinton is the heir to President Obama.” See that?! Candidate and president Obama are the same guy, so that statement actually means the opposite of what Krugman means, given both Sanders and Clinton are in candidate mode. But it doesn’t matter. Clinton is good because whatever and Sanders is bad because whatever, but make sure everyone knows that you actually agree with Sanders more.

Done! File that and go spend some more time with John Paul White. You’ve done enough thinking for a career. As for me, I just made a contribution to the Bernie Sanders campaign and bought a very cool shirt. So I feel I’ve done a good turn for both camps. I’ve given money to Bernie, and I’ve allowed otherwise decent liberals to write their hack Hillary articles more easily.

I’m like a saint or something!

Update (23 January 2016 5:45)

Robert Reich takes on Krugman directly and persuasively, Bernie’s Movement. It’s really short. Give it a read.

I feel like a guy walking around town wearing a sandwich board that read, “The End Is Nigh!” How long can we continue to pretend that the Republican Party is rational? It really is very simple. You have the Republican elites. They are more or less what used to be called the Country Club Republicans: rich people who want the party to give them more money through less taxation, less regulation, and more direct giveaways like bank bailouts. If the Republican Party as an institution stands for anything, this is what it is. They don’t care about balanced budgets; they don’t care about abortion; and they sure as hell don’t care about same sex marriage. In other words, they don’t care about what the Republican base cares about.

The problem, of course, is that a party that is really only interested in catering to the wishes of the 1% (more like 0.01% — but the 1% does very well too) is only really popular with the one percent. And that’s about how much of the vote the party would get if it were honest about what it is all about. Now the knock on the Democratic Party is that it is all about identity politics. This is nonsense. It is the Republican Party that is all about identity. It was Barack Obama who said, “There are no red states or blue states, just the United States.” It’s the Republican Party that talks incessantly about the “real” America, as though anyone not voting Republican isn’t an American. According to them, the Republican base is the only “real America.”

The the Republican elites — starting most profoundly with Ronald Reagan — came up with this idea that they could pander to the Christian social conservatives. They could, as Thomas Frank put it, get them riled up and angry at rich rock stars so that the Republican base would march down to the polls and lower those rock stars’ taxes. These are people who are not interested in more tax cuts for the rich. They don’t think that it is okay to poison a generation of people in Flint, Michigan. They don’t think that trillions of dollars should have been spent bailing out the banks.

So now The National Review is out with a whole issue dedicated to trashing Donald Trump. And I suppose that Jonathan Chait is more or less correct in his assessment, “Conservatives fear him not because he is an ignorant demagogue, but because he’s not their ignorant demagogue.” But the issue is that Republican politics is a con. It is a way of getting a bunch of people to vote about issues that the Republicans won’t do much about, even while the party does do things that the Republican base isn’t that keen on.

Obviously, the Republican Party is reaping what it has sown. But this is always the case. And it is especially true of The National Review. This is the magazine that was originally started to pretend that the conservative movement wasn’t really about hatred but about high minded ideals. The fact that it immediately picked a fight with the Civil Rights movement and showed itself to be a bigoted publication just makes for great irony. But now it is against Donald Trump because he’s a bigot and not a real conservative and ignorant and whatever else the 19 writers I will not be reading have to say.

As with everything Trump on the right, the real issue is that they think he cannot win. Because Trump will provide them with tax cuts. He will cut regulations. He will protect the interests of the power elite. They don’t care about anything else. And Trump is using the same tactic that Republicans have been using to win elections ever since Eisenhower. Whoever the Republicans nominate will not be nominated because he is a big believer in supply side economics; he will be nominated because the rage filled base hears in his rhetoric what they believe: that they are being unfairly attacked by “those people” — where “those people” are anyone you want to name, except for the people who are really responsible: the Republican establishment itself. And if the Republican base thinks that Trump is not part of that establishment, it is just another sign that you Lincoln’s “some of the people all of the time” is the Republican base.

I really like Erik Loomis. He’s a brilliant academic and I’ve learned a whole lot about the labor movement from him. But he really annoyed me yesterday with this article, So What Would Happen if Bernie Sanders Won? For one thing, it is part of the genre that I’ve come to despise: “I love Bernie Sanders but…” Give it a rest. If you want to support Clinton or Martin O’Malley, support them! They are both fine candidates. The Democratic Party is truly blessed to have such fine candidates. And out of a dozen and a half Republicans, they can barely find someone who isn’t a bigot.

Erik Loomis begins by noting that the most important thing the president does is make appointments. And Sanders’ grand rhetoric has made Loomis believe that this means that Sanders is as clueless about this as Barack Obama was. Well, maybe. What I think is what I’ve been saying for months: from a practical standpoint, there wouldn’t be much difference between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But Sanders has been in Congress for 25 years! He does know the system a lot better than Obama did when he came into office. It is presumptuous of Erik Loomis to simply assume (and that’s all he’s doing) that Sanders is going to be lackadaisical about this like Obama was.

But this isn’t Erik Loomis’ big complaint about Sanders. No, the big problem will be that “his base would almost certainly abandon him within a year.” You see, “The left has learned nothing since 2008.” Really?! Was the left all excited about Obama? I don’t remember that. I remember the left thinking that he was a standard variety centrist Democrat — just like Clinton, although mildly more liberal. Actual leftists thought his “hope and change” rhetoric was a joke. They didn’t think or expect much of him and they were fully satisfied.

Now if Loomis wants to say that the whole Democratic base will be disappointed with Sanders, fine. That’s kind of like saying that after a storm, the sun will come out. Everyone is always disappointed with their politicians, because that’s what politics is like. But you will notice that even all those Obama true believers from 2008 still showed up to vote for him in 2012. So liberals will be disappointed with Sanders within a year? And that matters why? Liberals will be disappointed in Clinton on the same time scale. Who cares? This is not an argument for Sanders or Clinton or Donald Trump for that matter.

The truth is that by election day, the Democratic base will be very happy about their candidate — whomever it happens to be. So it is going to take a little time for the base to become discourage. Is it supposed to go something like this? Clinton steps into office, and makes a middle of the road budget deal with the Republics. The entire Democratic base, having such low expectations of her (but still managing to drag themselves out to have elected her) will rise up and cheer, “She’s living up to our low expectations! Hooray!”

As for the almost daily articles that liberals write complaining about Democratic politicians? Well, this is called content creation. It’s an industry. Things that people would have just groused about in private now show up on Huffington Post because God knows nothing more 12 hours old is ever worth reading.

I’m a Sanders supporter. But I have real concerns about him. His association with socialism scares me a bit. His age scares me even more. Yet I will almost certainly vote for him because I think he is the best candidate for the things that I care about. I have no problem with people disagreeing. But the fact that if elected, Sanders will disappoint the Democratic base — just like every other president ever — is stupid.

Do you know what Erik Loomis’ article reminds me of? Something he would just grouse about in private if he didn’t feel that he has to keep the content flowing at Lawyers, Guns, & Money.

I must admit to being somewhat out of it. I’m not that interested in horse race politics anyway and I don’t know what’s going on. Last year, I did write, Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Real Liberal. That was about people going around talking about how Clinton was really a conservative. But it probably speaks to an unfortunate narcissism on my part that once I write about something, I consider the issue settled. But that ain’t reality. And I guess people still make that claim to such a degree that yesterday, Scott Lemieux felt the need to write, Can the “Hillary Clinton Is Really A Moderate Republican” Argument Be Salvaged? (SPOILER! No.)

I’m not really interested in the issue, because as I’ve noted: I have spoken! But Lemieux brought up Jon Huntsman. You can forget the likes of Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or Chris Christie. Huntsman is a guy that almost everyone in the establishment media thinks is a moderate. After all, he worked for the Obama administration! But Lemieux does a good job of summing up what Huntsman actually stands for, and it ain’t pretty. There is no moderation that I can see:

Let me add to this that Huntsman was also one of the guys who said that he so cared about the budget deficit that he would not take a 10-to-1 spending cut to tax increase deal from the Democrats. And then after he was no longer running for president, he went back on it and said that he would take it. He never said what he would require though. 7-to-1? 5-to-1? I’m damned sure he wouldn’t take 3-to-1, and there is no way he would ever take the actually fair 1-to-1 deal.

Lemieux noted that being seen as a moderate Republican “can be purchased on the cheap by taking a standard-issue conservative Republican and appending a few things like ‘maybe we shouldn’t crash the world economy’ and ‘now that I’m not running for office same-sex marriage seems OK’.” But I would say it is much worse than this. What defines being a “moderate Republican” is the same thing that defines being an establishment Republican: style. Huntsman hardly qualifies as a moderate Republican; he’s more in the Josh Barro realm where the press hardly think of him as a Republican at all.

Marco Rubio is the prototypical “moderate Republican.” And it basically just means that he is polite. The same thing can be said of Jeb Bush. Remember Terri Schiavo and all of Jeb’s abuses of power regarding that? What makes both men moderates in the eyes of the press is that they don’t scream; they don’t push a lot of conspiracy theories; and they don’t insult each other’s spouses (although they do insult the spouses of Democrats).

What all this means is that there is no such thing as a “moderate Republican.” It’s not just that any kind of moderation would make someone not a Republican. It is that the Overton window within the Republican Party is so small that to talk about a conservative or moderate Republican is meaningless. And the whole party is so bunched to the right that no one even uses the term “liberal Republican.” So, of course, Hillary Clinton is not a moderate Republican. But the more important point is that no one is a moderate Republican. They simply don’t exist.

There is something that rich people and their apologists talk about a lot. It is the idea that the corporate income tax is wrong because the owners of those corporations have to pay income tax twice: once for the company and once for the individual. Dean Baker provided the standard response to this nonsense, The Myth of the Corporate Income Tax as Double Taxation. Basically, it comes down to this: no one is forcing people to set up their businesses as corporations. People do it knowing that they will have to pay corporate income taxes. And they do it anyway, because they get a great deal of benefit — most especially protection against liability.

But there are several other things that I don’t understand about this whining point of the rich. The first is, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Corporations have First Amendment rights. Why shouldn’t such an entity have to pay income taxes? Really, I don’t get it. This whole discussion seems to be the usual thing where the rich want all the advantages of whatever they have, but none of the responsibilities. And since they only talk to each other, they get the idea that somehow it makes sense their corporate status should give them all kinds of benefits that other business people don’t get, but that they shouldn’t have to pay anything for it.

Let’s consider a little thought experiment. Let’s suppose that I hire you as a maid. I don’t pay you with my pre-tax salary; I pay you with my post-tax salary. I get paid and I pay my taxes. With the money left over, I pay you, and you too have to pay income taxes. How is this any different? The reason that corporations have these special rights is that they are a special kind of person. From the profits of the corporations, shareholders are paid. The fact that they don’t do any work (unlike the maid) doesn’t change things; they are being paid because they put money into the company. So yeah, this is double income tax — just like it is when anyone hires someone else.

But what I really don’t get is the Shakespeare aspect of this, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.” What does it matter that we call these two taxes the corporate and individual income taxes? I’m being taxed all the time. I make money and I pay income and payroll taxes on it. Then I spend the money and I pay consumption taxes. The big issue here is that the rich are laser focused on the federal income tax.

I’ve talked about this a lot, most recently in, Why We Only Talk About the Income Tax. We have a system where property taxes are very slightly regressive (the poor pay more than the rich). Consumption taxes are quite regressive. And payroll taxes are ridiculously regressive. The income tax is the only part of the tax system that is even moderately progressive. So we talk talk talk about the income tax.

The rich and their apologists know that it makes no sense to complain about the corporate income tax. In fact, as Dean Baker noted, “The corporate income tax is a 100% voluntary tax…” It’s a tax they complain about paying, but they aren’t required to pay it. But it’s the usual whining point of the rich about everything: they don’t believe they should have to pay for anything they get. They want special privileges that other people and businesses don’t get, but they think it shouldn’t cost them anything.

I’ve long been in favor of eliminating the corporation — especially when I was a libertarian. So I say we give the rich what they want: repeal the corporate income tax — right along with the corporation as a legal entity. Do I have any takers?

I’ve come to be pretty tired of the Clinton and Sanders camps sniping at each other — especially over healthcare reform. It’s hard for me to be objective, of course, because I am a Bernie Sanders supporter. But I do think more sniping comes from the Clinton camp. It isn’t a question of total sniping. But there is a whole lot more institutional sniping by Clinton supporters. And I understand it: she’s the establishment candidate for a reason: she’s the safe choice. And as a Sanders supporter, I have to admit: I don’t see much in the way of policy differences between the two once they are in office. We live in a democracy, not a autocracy. So I wish everyone would just cut it out.

But there are substantive differences between the candidates that are worth talking about. Healthcare reform is the big one: the “fix Obamacare” approach and the “replace Obamacare with single payer” approach. What I don’t understand is why these have to be different. As you all know, I’m very happy with Obamacare, Covered California: I Died and Woke Up in Canada. I certainly would prefer a universal, single-payer system. Obamacare is a complicated mess. And I don’t really see why I had to decide between the bronze and silver plans. Like I’m in any way qualified to know what is best for me! But that’s the way our neoliberal system works.

Still, it seems to me that Obamacare is single-payer just waiting to happen. For this discussion, forget people who get their insurance through their employers. For one thing, it makes this all easier to think about. But more important, I think that now that we have Obamacare, employer provided health insurance will (Quite rightly!) become a thing of the past. It will probably take twenty years, but eventually, healthcare just won’t be provided in that way. It’s existence is a fluke of history anyway.

So we have a system now in three parts: Medicaid for the poor, Medicare for the old, and the Exchanges for everyone else. Currently, Medicaid provides free healthcare to those making up to 133% of the poverty level. (Because of John Roberts, this isn’t true in most red states, but that will change over time.) What I want to know is why we can’t change the Medicaid level. Why not increase it to 150%? Or 400% (the level where government subsidies end on the exchanges)? Or why can’t we lower the age for Medicare? How about 60 years old as a cutoff? For people like me who want “Medicare for all,” this seems obvious. Whenever the Democrats get control of the government, they can increase the number of people who qualify for Medicare and Medicare. And eventually, you end up with a universal, single-payer healthcare system.

As far as I can tell, there is only one objection to this healthcare reform plan: it isn’t realistic. But it is more realistic than simply jumping to a full out single-payer healthcare system. And it has the advantages of being a gradual process — one where the insurance companies can gradually move into other areas. But even more than that, our healthcare problems are a lot bigger than our fragmented private insurance market.

Dean Baker recently wrote, Paul Krugman, Bernie Sanders, and Medicare for All. He noted, “Getting universal Medicare would require overcoming opposition not only from insurers and drug companies, but doctors and hospital administrators, both of whom are paid at levels two to three times higher than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.” And that’s important. The country needs to get used to the fact that our idiosyncrasies have distorted our system such that healthcare reform is complicated. And it is going to take time on a lot of fronts to deal with this. There is no quick fix.

So in a sense, I agree more with Hillary Clinton about healthcare reform. But I know a little bit about negotiation. And if Clinton is talking about the very reasonable idea of making Obamacare work better and having it cover more people, the most likely result will be that nothing will change. But Sanders’ unreasonable push for single-payer healthcare right now is much more likely to result in good changes to Obamacare. Let’s not forget that Obama ran in 2008 on the unreasonable idea that we didn’t need an individual mandate. We didn’t get his more liberal plan, but we did get a plan that is providing me with healthcare and dental insurance at negligible costs.

None of this means that Clinton is bad. But similarly, none of this means that Sanders is unrealistic. I’ll proudly support either of them.

Bill O’Reilly claims that he is going to move to Ireland if Bernie Sanders becomes president. He says that he is not willing to pay 90% income tax. This is strange because Sanders has said on numerous occasions that he will not raise income tax rates that high. At the 14 November 2015 Democratic debate, Sanders was asked how much he would raise the top marginal tax rate. He responded, “We haven’t come up with an exact number yet. But it will not be as high as the number under Dwight D Eisenhower which was 90%… I’m not a socialist compared to Eisenhower.”

So how is it that “I will not raise the income tax rate to 90%” becomes “I will raise the income tax rate to 90%”? Well, it comes from the man who I have come to think of as the heart and soul of the Republican Party: Donald Trump. Back in October, he was at a rally in Richmond, Virginia where he called Bernie Sanders a communist. And he said, “He’s gonna tax you people at 90 percent.” It must be true, it was on the television.

But television works both ways, and Politifact documented Sanders’ statements going back to 2008 where he has said that he wouldn’t go up to a 90% marginal tax rate. Based upon what I know of Bernie Sanders, I think he would like to go back to a top marginal tax rate that we had under that communist Richard Nixon (70%), but that he’d be thrilled just to get it back what it was under that pinko Ronald Reagan (50%).

There are several things to note about all this. As Martin Longman has pointed out, “Even if Sanders wanted that kind of tax reform, he’d never be able to accomplish it. He couldn’t accomplish it even if the Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.” Despite what idiot conservatives like to claim (but only when a Democrat is in the White House), we do not live under a dictatorship. What really matters in this case is that Sanders thinks that taxes on the rich are way too low, and this is a belief that even most Republicans share. Scary?! I don’t think so.

Part of the problem, of course, is that most people don’t understand marginal tax rates. I still hear urban legends about this guy who got a raise but ended up with less money because he got pushed into a higher tax bracket. Sorry folks, that ain’t the way our tax system works. (Note: this does happen to the poor, as I discussed before, Catch 22 for Poor in America.) But certainly Donald Trump understands marginal tax rates. But it’s like his bigotry: I don’t think he’s a racist; he’s a demagogue — which is far worse.

But at least Bill O’Reilly is being honest that Sander’s mythical 90% tax rate would affect him and not the nation as a whole. But I was really bothered by exactly what he said, “I’m not going to pay 90 percent of my income to that guy. I’m sorry. I’m not doing it.” This is typical of conservative thought and it is something that enrages me. Oh how conservatives like to talk about patriotism, but when it costs them one red penny, they are an island unto themselves.

If the top marginal tax rate went up to 90%, Bill O’Reilly would not be paying his taxes to “that guy.” He would not even be paying his taxes to the US government. He would be paying his taxes to the American people. He would be doing it because that is the price we pay for living in this country. It is the price that Bill O’Reilly pays for living in a country where he can make millions of dollars per year. If he had been born in Zimbabwe, he would have died poor and young of typhoid. Patriotism isn’t putting a yellow ribbon on your car and cheerleading every war that comes along. Bill O’Reilly is at best what Thomas Paine called a “sunshine patriot.” I would go further, I would call him a traitor.

But I think there are tens of millions of people in the US who would vote for Bernie Sanders for the single reason that Bill O’Reilly would go away. Sanders could not have received a better endorsement than this one. Unfortunately, O’Reilly is lying (as usual). He wouldn’t leave this country. To start with, he would have to renounce his US citizenship, or he would still have to pay the taxes. Once there, he would find that his income would plummet; he would no longer be making the $18 million from Fox News. And without that platform, his best selling books would become distinctly midlist. And as it is, his taxes would still be north of 50%.

Still, Bernie Sanders becoming president would really piss off Bill O’Reilly. And if I weren’t already a Sanders supporter, that would be enough to make me one.