This article sucks!

Regarding taxes, Aaron writes, “I don’t believe there will be any damage by raising taxes the way that Obama has indicated he wants to.”

And Lee writes, “But shouldn’t our response to this mistaken belief be to lay out our case for why Obama’s keeping his tax pledge will not be a problem for economic recovery.  That’s part of what I’ve tried to do in the above comments.”

I totally get that both of you believe raising taxes on the wealthy won’t hurt the economy, not even a little bit. I’d love to say I agree with you — because I believe this tax increase is in the country’s best interests over the long term.

But the number of people who think such a tax hike would be “crazy” (like rbates) is enormous, and the number of people who think such a tax hike would be at least a little bit bad is also enormous (like me).

So what I desperately want is a strong argument about why you guys are right and why rbates and I are wrong. So far, you haven’t convinced me. We need a strong argument because if Obama goes ahead and raises these taxes, a lot of people in the media will use the tax hike to attack Obama, and we have to be prepared to defend him in a way that will sway the undecideds.

Why take money out of people’s pockets when everybody is losing tons of money already?

Let me put it this way: You’re on Hardball with Chris Matthews. It’s the day after Obama announces plans to follow through on his tax increase. You’re in a split-screen situation with rbates, who says raising taxes on anybody right now is crazy. How do you convince the American people to trust you and not him?

I need your help! Please!

To Ian:  you seem to be saying that basically you agree with the argument that an increase in taxes won’t damage the economy, mildly or severely.  Or, you’re saying even if it’s true it is politically a bad idea because people will mistakenly be led to believe that it is the case.

But shouldn’t our response to this mistaken belief be to lay out our case for why Obama’s keeping his tax pledge will not be a problem for economic recovery.  That’s part of what I’ve tried to do in the above comments.

First of all, let’s examine how the article uses the words “pragmatic” and “centrist.” First, there’s this: 

“Mr. Obama is being advised largely by a group of intelligence professionals, including some who have supported Republicans, and centrist former officials in the Clinton administration. They say he is likely to fill key intelligence posts with pragmatists.

“He’s going to take a very centrist approach to these issues,” said Roger Cressey, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. “Whenever an administration swings too far on the spectrum left or right, we end up getting ourselves in big trouble.”"

First of all, the article gives no indication whatsoever that Cressey has any inside knowledge about what Obama plans to do. Is Cressey an Obama advisor or supporter? Is he a Bush supporter? A Republican? All we know about Cressey is that he is a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. Perhaps it could be argued that we’re meant to assume that Cressey is an advisor to Obama, based on the prior line — but this is one of the many ambiguities in this article. If Cressey has a connection to Obama, the article should have spelled that out.

Furthermore, Cressey says Obama is going to take a “centrist” approach. What on earth does ”centrist” mean? To just assume “centrist” means allowing torture is way, way, way too big a leap to make. I would argue that it is a “centrist” position to be against torture — as both John McCain and Barack Obama explicity said during their campaigns that waterboarding is torture and torture is wrong.

The only reason to assume that the word “centrist” means allowing torture is that the article doesn’t explain what Cressey actually meant when he used that word — an inexusable ambiguity, considering the specificity of the torture issue.

As for pragmatist, that word is similarly meaningless as it’s used above. What would be the opposite of pragmatist? Ideological? To argue that the word “pragmatist” is equal to “allowing torture,” is to assume that’s what these “intelligence professionals, including some who have supported Republicans, and centrist former officials in the Clinton administration” meant when they used that word. But the article doesn’t explain what these people meant when they used the term “pragmatist.”

To read this article so that “pragmatist” is code for pro-torture is, again, way way way too big of a leap to make. The article’s ambiguity about what these words mean invites you to draw that conclusion, but that’s not actually a defensible way to interpret what these people said.

You say, “it wouldn’t be quoted if it weren’t deemed by the journalist to be an informed opinion.” First of all, I just don’t understand why you would suggest Obama would betray his own values and his base based on no evidence whatsoever, and then totally suspend your skepticism when it comes to the Wall Street Journal. Isn’t it possible that the Wall Street Journal is trying to make a story out of nothing here? When did we stop reading news articles for facts and start reading them for implicit innuendoes?

I never accused you of claiming the article “MUST be accurate” — in that case, we would be arguing about the factual accuracy of the article. Instead, I accused you of saying the “message” of the article Must be accurate — that “some people close to the Obama transition say that Obama is thinking of altering his stance on the use of controversial CIA interrogation techniques, like waterboarding”

Please point out where in the article there is a single shred of evidence to support this “message” that Obama is thinking about altering his stance on waterboarding! It’s simply not there!

Furthermore, you refer to “a claim by the WSJ that there is someone “familiar with the transition” who said “Obama is possibly going to be a ‘pragmatist’ on torture.””

THIS IS FALSE! IT’S NOT TRUE! Nobody in the article says Obama is going to be a “pragmatist on torture.” The article says Obama is likely to fill key intelligence posts with pragmatists — and you’re making way way way too big of a leap to suggest a “pragmatist” is necessarily going to have a right-wing view on torture. The advisors quoted do not offer up this characterization in the context of torture policies — it’s the journalist here who plants this quote (by anonymous sources) into an article about torture.

Cressey says “he’s going to take a very centrist approach to these issues.” What does it mean to say Obama will take a “centrist” approach? It’s way way too big of a leap to assume being “centrist” means being pro-torture.

You write, “With followup research, I discovered Obama’s post-WSJ article 60 Minutes interview where he reaffirms his campaign promise to unambiguously end torture.  I take that as a refutation of the opinion of the person paraphrased in the WSJ article.” Could you specifically point to the “person” quoted in the WSJ article whose opinion was refuted by Obama’s statement on 60 minutes? Because I literally can’t figure out who on earth you could be referring to.

As for why this article appeared in the WSJ — that is an excellent question. I’m guessing the Wall Street Journal is full of people who think it would be just crazy ideological nonsense to stop torturing people, and all their reporting may be based on that assumption. The point of this article may be to reassure people that Obama isn’t really going to go ahead with his crazy left-wing agenda. But this is about the WSJ — it has nothing to do with Obama.

My guess is that the reporter of this article did call up the transition team directly, and the transition team didn’t give the journalist anything the journalist could use. So instead of quoting the transition team, the reporter started fishing around for other, less-reliable sources so he could tell a provacative story. The point of the article is to send a message to the transition team: “If you won’t help me write an article about how you’re going to reform torture policies, then I’m going to write an article that will piss off your base so you’ll have no choice but to answer my questions more specifically.”

But you speak of a “refutation of the opinion of the person close to the transition.”

Now you’re the one who is being ambiguous. Who is this “person”? What is their “opinion”? And how might this “opinion” be “refuted”? I’m honestly wondering. Would you expect Obama’s transition team to say, “Oh, we’re not going to fill key intelligence posts with pragmatists. It’s going to be ideologues, all the way down the line.” Or would you expect the transition to say, “We’re not going to be centrist. We’re going to be far, far left in everything we do.”

It doesn’t take a “centrist” or a “pragmatist” to know that waterboarding is torture and torture is wrong. It takes the Republican Party’s former presidential nominee, who said so quite explicitly during a debate in the Republican primary.

To be clear about the sequence of events:

(1) The WSJ published an unambiguous article claiming that one or more advisors close to the Obama transition suggested Obama MIGHT take a so-called pragmatic approach toward extreme CIA interrogation techniques, aka torture.  Not MUST, MIGHT.  This possibility appeared as part of speculation on the part of the person quoted, but it wouldn’t be quoted if it weren’t deemed by the journalist to be an informed opinion.  (And, it’s worth noting, I don’t believe a single contrary view was quoted in the original article.)

(2) I posted that article for discussion on the blog, and said — in the first post and many subsequent comments — that I hoped Obama was not going to about-face on this very important issue.

(3) You seem to be interpreting my posting this article as equivalent to my believing that the article “MUST be accurate”… well, what does that mean?

It clearly doesn’t mean that I think Obama MUST be about to about-face on torture, just that there is non-negligible evidence that informed people close to the transition think that he MIGHT.

I do take the article’s existence as a claim by the WSJ that there is someone “familiar with the transition” who said “Obama is possibly going to be a ‘pragmatist’ on torture.”  Does such a person exist?  If that person does, then the article was accurate enough and presented evidence of the opinion of someone ‘close to the transition–not his or her opinion about what was right–but his or her informed opinion about what Obama might do.      

(4) With followup research, I discovered Obama’s post-WSJ article 60 Minutes interview where he reaffirms his campaign promise to unambiguously end torture.  I take that as a refutation of the opinion of the person paraphrased in the WSJ article.

What are my conclusions here?  The person the WSJ paraphrases — the shred of evidence you previously claimed doesn’t exist — is maybe (i) grossly misinformed; (ii) lying for political purposes; or (iii) was horribly misinterpreted by the journalist.

At this point, I’m not defending the article.  I’m asking why such a shoddy piece of journalism — with such unambiguous implications on questions of huge national significance — appeared in the WSJ, a supposedly respectable newspaper, in the first place. 

A refutation of the opinion of the person close to the transition could apparently have appeared in the original article if the journalist involved had simply picked up the phone and called the transition team directly.

Why didn’t he?

Thanks to rbates for bringing this opinion to our blog — as this is an opinion held by many (if not most) Americans. To Aaron and Lee: You both obviously disagree with rbates, but do you honestly believe you’ve written anything here that would convince rbates to change his mind about this? Right now, I’m not prepared to debate rbates on this point — I think rbates would win the argument and I would look like an ideologue who cared more about soaking the rich than about economic recovery.

Here’s the rbates argument (correct me if I’m wrong, rbates) Raising taxes takes money away from people and gives it to the government. Individuals are motivated to make money, so they invest their money in ways that maximize their return, and this kind of investment is good for the economy. Governments are full of beaurocrats and politicians who sometimes spend money inefficiently. So why not let the rich keep their money, and if the government wants to spend money, let the government borrow it.

I want to hear more from the people who disagree with rbates about why rbates is wrong.

(sorry to put Aaron and Lee on the spot. They may have lives outside of blogging that interfere with their ability to immediately post dissertations on the economy. But I’ll shout it from the rooftops: right now the USA needs Aaron and Lee, rbates and John and everyone else to share some more of their insight! As a patriotic American, I salute you!)

If there is any actual evidence to support this “message,” I would like to hear it, but I don’t think we should be criticizing Obama based on fact-free “messages” promoted by the WSJ.

Regarding Aaron’s points, he writes:

“It’s not simply a matter of running deficits and spending like Mr. Toad – we are already in the midst of record deficits, thanks to the Banana Republic style financial mismanagement that began in 2001. The U.S. needs revenue – if that means ‘redistributing wealth’ from those who have plenty to, say, public works, then that is simply what it means.”

(I’m assuming Mr. Toad is a big spender.) From what I’ve been hearing, most economists now believe the best thing the government can do to “save” the economy is to inject money into the economy by spending massively on a variety of things, from infrastructure to unemployment benefits to state aid, etc. The fact that “we are already in record deficits” is irrelevant. Our deficits for the next two years should be much larger than our “record” deficits over the past several years, if we’re going to get out of the economic disaster we’re in now, according to the economists Obama is listening to. It’s true that the United States need revenue over the long-term — but over the short term, if we focus on raising revenue to avoid deficits, we’ll be making the same mistake Herbert Hoover made during the Great Depression. Now is NOT the time to be worried about the deficit — now is the time to be worrying about the people who will suffer if the economy continues to contract over the next two years, and there are a lot fewer jobs for an even larger American workforce.

You also write: “Furthermore, the notion that, by taxing the wealthiest of us, we’re somehow risking irreparable economic damage is a shibboleth. Historically, when the wealthiest have been under taxed we’ve found ourselves in crises similar to the present. 150 years of U.S. economic history ought to be sufficiently compelling evidence (though, for some, clearly it is not).”

I don’t believe that taxing the wealthy is “risking irreparable damage.” Of course, that’s ridiculous. The question is, does it risk any damage at all? You could drive an aircraft carrier through the massive distinction that can be drawn between a move that “risks irreparable damage” to the economy, and a move that might damage the economy a bit.

Regarding the 150 years of evidence to support the idea that under-taxing the wealthy is what leads to these crises, I think that bold statement deserves a post all to itself — and I hope you will flesh out that argument more thoroughly in another comment or a guest post.

That said, your point is irrelevant to the question at hand, which is this: Is it a good idea or a bad idea for Obama to follow through on his campaign plan to raise taxes on the wealthy NOW. Will it hurt the economy NOW, even if only a little bit, if Obama raises taxes as he said he would during the campaign? I hear Aaron and Lee saying they think that’s a dumb question, but it’s THE question from a political standpoint. Because if Obama follows through on his plan, he’ll immediately face criticism from people who say he is “preventing new jobs from being created,” and “raising taxes during a recession — the stupidest thing to do.”

If you’re trying to win an argument with people who believe that raising taxes during a recession is counter-productive, you need more than just an ideological commitment to the middle class and a general sense that it doesn’t matter what rich people pay in taxes. You need facts or data or a theory or something to back up these ideas.

Because if Obama raises taxes on the wealthy and then the right-wing manages to convince most Americans that Obama did it for ideological reasons at the expense of our economic growth, then Obama is merely inviting his critics to blame him for the bad economy. And in eight years, when Republicans take over again, they’ll just reduce taxes on the wealthy even more than they’re lower now.