Have You Read The 15 Biggest Lies?

When Europeans start killing their plutocrats in the next few days, none should be allowed to jump to the front of the line and immigrate here

I hope you didn't miss Josh Holland's incisive book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America. When I picked it up I wondered how he can possibly narrow it down to only 15 lies. And, sure enough, not even halfway through the introduction, he was laying them out-- and brilliantly. I don't think he's counting the meta-lies as part of the 15-- like how propagandists set out to pervert the meanings of words to make an unpopular position seem ordinary and acceptable to the very people it would prove most harmful.

In the spring of 2010, after a bitter yearlong debate over health-care legislation, congressional Democrats set their sights on financial reform. Most analysts agreed that new rules of the road were needed for the Wall Street high-flyers who had almost brought the global economy to a screeching halt in 2008.

Chris Dodd, the Democrat from Connecticut who chaired the Senate Finance Committee, offered up a package of rather mild reforms that most progressive analysts immediately criticized for not going far enough to rein in the banks. The bill would have created a new financial consumer protection agency, allowed the feds to dissolve insolvent banks in an orderly way, and created a new body that would oversee risky behavior on Wall Street.

As you might imagine, it didn’t sit well with the financial industry. The American Bankers Association-- the leading industry group-- released a statement calling the proposals “unwarranted, detrimental regulatory structures” and adding, “we are strongly opposed to the draft regulatory
reform proposal that... Christopher Dodd has advanced.”

Dodd’s bill came amid almost unprecedented public hostility toward Wall Street, so opposing the measure as some radical socialist endeavor-- the usual rhetorical strategy-- was unlikely to get much traction. But an unknown advocacy group calling itself (ironically) the Committee for Truth in Politics took a different tack. The group, organized by a former North Carolina Republican Party operative, started running a series of ads suggesting that Dodd’s reforms were, paradoxically, a gift to the banking industry-- a rich, undeserved bailout that only Wall Street executives could love. The reality, as FDIC chair Sheila Blair put it, was that the bill made bailouts “impossible,” as “it should.” She explained that lawmakers had “worked really hard to squeeze bailout language out of this bill... In a true liquidity crisis, the [government] can provide systemwide support in terms of... lending and debt guarantees-- but even then, a default would trigger resolution or bankruptcy.”

In technical terms, this particular lie might be called a classic example of “chutzpah.” But it wasn’t being uttered only by shady right-wing front-groups. Minnesota representative Michelle Bachmann, one of the most reactionary members of Congress and a darling of the Tea Partiers, had called an earlier version of the bill a “permanent bailout” for Wall Street. Soon after that, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-TN) made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows to spread the meme. All were playing off a script developed by Frank Luntz, the GOP’s super-pollster, who prepared a memo in early 2010 suggesting that opponents of the bill paint it as “punishing tax-payers” while rewarding the very “big banks and credit card companies” that were at that very moment furiously
trying to kill the bill.

It’s likely that nobody would even have thought of characterizing new regulations as a giveaway to the banks if not for the success the conservative movement (backed by corporate America’s deep pockets) has had in framing the economic issues of our day. When the ads went up, Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum commented,

And that, boys and girls, is how the game is played. Just portray a bill meant to rein in banks as a bill meant to bail out banks... Maybe suggest that instead of protecting consumers, it will remove consumer protections. Or that instead of regulating derivatives, it will set them free. Simple. Why bother making up complicated lies when simple ones will do just fine?

Turning reality on its head is nothing new for Frank Luntz, a key figure in the conservative message machine. He’s probably best known for penning an influential 2002 memo to then president George W. Bush suggesting that conservatives undermine the scientific consensus on global warming. He also played a pivotal role in popularizing the term “death tax,” which is much easier than explaining why ordinary Americans should oppose a modest inheritance tax on a few thousand of the richest families in the country.

In other words, the mendacity of the Committee for Truth in Politics was standard fare. And when you pause for a moment to examine this kind of spin, a few themes emerge. Every progressive policy is decried as a “job killer” or an act of wild-eyed social engineering. Almost without exception, those policies are painted as “radical.” Conversely, every measure that affects the wealthiest Americans is spun as an assault on the working class. Minimum wage increases, environmental protections, and even paid sick days “kill jobs,” and anything that impacts huge multinationals’ bottom lines is spun as an issue of vital concern to “small business owners.”

The message is clear-- the United States may be a hyper-individualistic country, but when it comes to our economic policies, somehow we’re all in it together. Bill Gates’s interests always dovetail neatly with those of Joe and Jane Six-Pack.

How do Republicans get away with it? Are people that stupid? Actually, many aren't. Yesterday President Obama's new budget proposed taxing dividends for the wealthiest Americans at a more equitable rate than conservatives prefer. So Republicans accuse him of being a "job destroyer." Most voters aren't buying this bullshit, which is clearly reflected in the 10% approval rating for the Republican-controlled Congress. In fact, many voters-- particularly progressives voters-- are unhappy with Obama's and the Democrats' half measures. Recall-- from the quote just above-- that most progressive analysts of Dodd's financial reform package "immediately criticized [it and him] for not going far enough to rein in the banks. It was the same with the health care bill-- hard to defend a half measure (or a quarter measure) that could just as well been the real single-payer reform the country needs if the cost of health care inflation is ever going to be solved. And did Big Pharma and the insurance industry really need the kind of sweetheart deal Obama tacked onto the bill? None of these "compromises"-- if that's what they were-- got him any more votes in Congress. They didn't stop the Republicans from making up lies and they didn't stop Wall Street from financing a multimillion dollar campaign against them. I bet if Obama proposed taxing dividends for the top 2 percent of income-earners at 60% instead of 39.6%, the Republicans would be happy willing to compromise at 39.6%. James Fallows' most talked about Atlantic piece last week, Obama, Explained concludes with the notion that Obama is getting better as a president. Makes sense. I still want to see him negotiate with the conservatives in such as way that he doesn't wind up giving away the whole store the way he has in the past three years time and time again. Then I'll go along with Fallows that he's on his way to chess master status.