The Hyperbolic Inflation of rhetoric

Ran across this little right wing jem thanks to a cutter and paster on craigslist.
It amazes me how the right wing inflates rhetoric to extremes. Obama and Clinton both offer a health care plan that will ultimately lead to insuring the nearly 50 million of uninsured Americans who can not afford health care. So fearful of this prospect, Anthony B. Bradley equates it with the former Soviet Union, not Canada, Norway, Denmark, Iceland or any of the other industrialized Western Democracies. You see what he Bradley did here was to resurrect the old Red fear that worked so well for the McCarthyites for half of the last century.

As to the statement about tax cuts: "Obama will protect tax cuts for poor and middle class families, but he will reverse most of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers." I fail to see the problem here. On CNBC's Closing Bell, Obama said, "we should go back to probably a top marginal rate of 39% -- what it was before the Bush tax cuts. So I would roll back those Bush tax cuts, I would not increase taxes for middle class Americans and in fact I want to provide a tax cut for people who are making $75,000 a year or less." (Emphasis added)

Obama also said that the capitol gains tax could be raised from the current 15% to 20% or 25% without distorting "economic decision making." This would effectively shrink the tax disparity between Warren Buffet and his secretary. As it is the middle class shoulder's a higher tax burden than the top 1%. Obama's proposal would soften that burden.

As to tying the minimum wage to inflation, this is long overdue. Not doing so is essentially lowering the minimum wage every year as the cost of good and services increase. And again, I fail to see the problem with this. The right wing would like everyone to believe that a mandatory minimum wage hurts small business. What they won't tell you is that removing the minimum wage or allowing it to be out-paced by inflation hurts American workers. It is truly the race to the bottom.

It is important to point out that this use of extreme rhetoric by Bradley and others is a tactic that hurts the overall debate and minimizes the discussion to a series of black and white, good versus bad memes. The truth is that the model employed by most Western Democracies has been largely successful at creating a strong middle class while establishing a safety net for those that slip through the cracks. The Bradley's and Kudlow's of the world have never been able to produce one example of a laissez-faire government that has truly been successful at raising the living standards for all of it's citizenry. Yet, they like to site former communist models as examples of nations that have failed to do so. Thus ignoring the Democratic successes of our very own allies.