Sam Nunn And Robert Reich Back Obama
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, DemocratsMore political heavyweights get in line behind Barack.
First, from Reich’s blog…and folks, this is pretty much exactly why Obama is so appealing to me:
Although Hillary Clinton has offered solid and sensible policy proposals, Obama’s strike me as even more so. His plans for reforming Social Security and health care have a better chance of succeeding. His approaches to the housing crisis and the failures of our financial markets are sounder than hers. His ideas for improving our public schools and confronting the problems of poverty and inequality are more coherent and compelling. He has put forward the more enlightened foreign policy and the more thoughtful plan for controlling global warming.He also presents the best chance of creating a new politics in which citizens become active participants rather than cynical spectators. He has energized many who had given up on politics. He has engaged young people to an extent not seen in decades. He has spoken about the most difficult problems our society faces, such as race, without spinning or simplifying. He has rightly identified the armies of lawyers and lobbyists that have commandeered our democracy, and pointed the way toward taking it back.
Let’s also not forget that Reich was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor for four years, so this endorsement of Obama is significant in more ways than one.
Then onto former Georgia senator Sam Nunn, who was part of the bi-partisan Bloomberg summit last year:
In a just released statement, Nunn said Obama “will have the sound judgment to put together an outstanding governing team, bringing people together across old boundaries.”“My own role in this campaign will be as an advisor - particularly in the field of national security and foreign policy,” Nunn said.
Though not a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention, Nunn carries a good deal of gravitas from which Obama could benefit. As one of their numbers, Nunn could also help reassure conservative Democrats still suspicious of Obama’s position on the left-right political spectrum.
That could matter in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
Last year, Nunn was a leader in a bipartisan effort that assembled at the University of Oklahoma and decried decades of political clashes that had reduced serious debate to near-cartoonish arguments. Another organizer of the event, former Oklahoma senator David Boren, also endorsed Obama today.
Here’s the deal…I think we can all agree that these people are 1) not partisan operators and 2) extremely intelligent. So does anybody think they’re just falling for Obama’s supposed wily charms or do they genuinely think he’s a guy who can really bring some change to Washington? I think you could argue that Richardson was doing it for political reasons, but not these guys. They could have just sat on the sidelines and watched it all unfold, but they felt strongly enough to say, “This is the guy.”
I’m just saying…
This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Barack Obama explicitly stated that he would raise tax rates on capital gains, even if it resulted in less overall tax revenue, because it is “fair” to take away wealth from people simply because they have a lot of it. Thats like reaching into your 401K, or the accounts of people who have invested wisely, and just burning the money because Barack Obama believes you have to much!
Its hard for me to believe that Robert “Walmart is good for America” Reich is making this endorsement based on Barack’s wise economic judgment; rather, I think he is jumping on the bandwagon to get this thing over with and stop the damage to his beloved Democratic party, while endorsing the candidate with the best chance to beat McCain, even if it is for superficial reasons.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/images/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-R1-Current-Federal-Tax-Receipts-Near.gif
yeah nice job that cut in taxes, really helped
April 18th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/images/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-R2-Federal-Government-Tax-Revenue.gif
Yup the tax cuts have stimulated our economy so much its takne seven years to get back to old levels
April 18th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Yeah those Republicands really know how to run the country
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/images/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-C2-Government-Spending-Grew-Faster.gif
yes the party of fiscal conservatism indeed
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/images/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-C3-All-Recent-Administrations-Ran-Up.gif
April 18th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
He also presents the best chance of creating a new politics in which citizens become active participants rather than cynical spectators.
There is possibly no more terrifying prospect than this in the current election cycle. All three remaining candidates have mouthed it — heck, it’s practically McCain’s religion.
I don’t want to be an active participant in politics! I don’t want anything to do with politics — I want politics to stay the heck away!
April 18th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
He says while on a poltical web page
April 18th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Jimmy,
Yeah the tax cuts have done a great job our tax revenues have fallen, as a share of GDP they are well below what they were in 2000, wasn’t tax cuts supposed to generate greater revenues?
April 18th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
The democratic primary has shown how badly the system needs to be fixed. It does not represent the will of the people. If michigan and florida voters were allowed to be heard then Clinton would be ahead. Punishing the voters is wrong no matter what the reason.
These latest endorsements are just another bunch of panderers trying to get in with who they think the eventual nominee will be. They are after post election favors.
I have had it with the democratic party. This primary is a farce.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
So the “Donk” has taken over “lephant!” Obama and his “endorsers” are all a bunch of socialists……NOT what this country needs to follow the total lack of fiscal responsibility that has only been one of the Bush Administration failures. And the tax cuts are not the problem with economy…..government meddling in a supposedly free market is the problem.
April 18th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Thanks Avinash for posting those graphs from the conservative Heritage Foundation showing the record tax revenue accrued from 2005-2007, or how the federal deficit was being reduced every year since the tax cuts took effect in 2003 (until the housing bubble burst last year - but look at what happened to those numbers when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, a year before Bush took over). I would say its been a remarkable recovery since then. You did a lot of work for me.
Anyway, It doesn’t matter, does it? Because your guy Obama promised he will tax your retirement plan an extra 100% more, even if it results in a loss of revenue for social programs - simply because his Majesty Barack has arbitrarily decided that rich people earn too much money when they invest in America.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Oh so raising our taxes is somehow evil when we had high revenues under clinton with high taxes, yet under Bush cutting our taxes did nothing to stimulate revenue growth, we are still far below what we had in the 90’s and it was only above the average for two years, and now its falling again, great analysis Jimmy.
Twopositive years out of eight, years where we were above the historical average and those positive years weren’t even close to what we had in the clinton years with higher taxes, not to mention we had more years over the average with Clinton and higher revenues, that’s right higher taxes and more revenue, imagine that, so rasing taxes doesn’t hurt revenues, or growth, oh Jimmy your arguments have big holes, more taxes and yet higher revenue and powerful economic growth, more jobs also, while under Bush’s tax cuts we had declining revenues and even in the positive years we had weak revenues when compared to the Clinton years, and pathetic job growth. I thought you were saying that higher taxes would hurt grwoth, but that’s false, and lower taxes would make the economy grow fast and pay for themselves, but that’s also false, Bush has us with a 400-500 billion dollar deficit this year and McSame is planning to add another 300 billion to it.
So tell me why anyone should support your ideas of tax breaks when tax breaks did not generate a substantial gain in tax revenues, nor generate job growth, in fact tax revenues as a percent of GDP plummeted, yet under Clinton’s higher taxes we had awesome job growth and higher tax revenue and balanced budgets, yeah you’ve heard that word, its something cons like you like to talk about but it takes a dem to do it. Tell me why we shouldn’t tax the rich?
Yeah Obama wants to tax the rich, it worked well for Clinton, we had the best economy in decades, Bush cut taxes or the rich and the economy has been crap, the jobless recovery they called it, now its just jobless, i’ll take taxing the rich for 9 trillion Jimmy.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
And while we are piling on Jimmy, nice misdirection concerning doubling the taxes on retirement money. Maybe Jimmy hasn’t heard that retirement accounts are tax exempt. So doubling those taxes equals still no taxes.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
gljunket, financial irresponsibility is a hallmark of the GOP party, notice something, Dems spend less than the GOP and have smaller deficits.
So much for the socialists bankrupting the nation, lol, if anything its the dems keeping this country standing
April 18th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Look, dude, you are totally missing the point. This isn’t a question of whether or not high capital gains tax rates increase or decrease total revenue or not. During the debate, Charlie Gibson proposed the following proposition:
Obama’s response that it was still “fair” because rich people make a lot of money:
Obama goes on about how we need more money for schools and infrastructure, and that we have to much debt. But Charlie calls him on this obvious mistake (since you pay for those programs with tax revenue) by saying:
Obama then becomes totally evasive:
Do you get the point now Avinash? History shows when you lower tax rates on Capital gains, actual revenue goes up. The same revenue which reduces deficits and pays for schools and social programs.
Obama has clearly showed that he would rather sacrifice that extra revenue he claims would be required to fund government programs and pay down the debt for the mere principle of “fairness” - which simply means arbitrarily taking money away from “the rich.” Its not even wealth redistribution, as you would expect from socialists like Barack. It is wealth destruction!!!
Besides, its 1/3 of the U.S. population who would end up losing money and gaining nothing back in the form of government tax-funded programs. They’re obviously not all “rich” people. In fact, 20% of all Capital gains are payed for by people who make less than $50,000/year!!
How can you possibly justify this?
April 19th, 2008 at 12:13 am
Any movement in revenue from cutting the capital gains tax is small Jimmy, we already discussed this in another thread. the benefit from the capital gains cut is small. However a drop in the capital gains can be used as a loophole by the rich to avoid paying income taxes. So we lose revenue there from the rich taking things like stock options rather than cash and taking lower taxes, and if you hold the investements to death there are no taxes at all, so we lose revenue there as well. So this so called revenue boost is at least partly illusion. We gain revenue one place but lose more elsewhere.
So no the capital gains tax as it is is not a sufficient reason to justify tax cuts, now a revamped system where all income regardless of form, was taxed and then profits off of investements were taxed in a progressive system would work better, sure we shouldn’t have to tax those small investors the 1/5 as you say make less than 50K very much, but the large investors should be taxed based on their investments and profits.
So yeah Obama was caught flatfooted on that question no doubt about it a knock on him, but he is right that the system can be made more fair while still incentivizing investment, he just didn’t know how. We tax the investments of the rich more than the smaller investors, and this way people can’t escape paying taxes so we’d make more revenue.
Also we’ve already seen that raising taxes does nothing to halt growth, especially when the taxes are progressive and target the rich without affecting the middle class, plus revenues are higher.
Basically as i’ve said progressive taxes are the way to go.
April 19th, 2008 at 1:52 am
SUPERDELEGATES SHOULD REMAIN INDEPENDENT UNTILL THE CONVENTION…..
Superdelegates remaining undecided should be left alone and independent to decide which candidate to support.
They should take all the time they need ….
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/04/superdelegates- independence-of-vote.html
April 19th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Oh yeah and McSame’s moronic holiday from gas tax will blow away any economic benefit the current capital gains tax rate gives, more enviromental damage, lost infrastructure jobs, higher inflation, more deficits
April 19th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Avinash……I’ll give you credit for being a great example of supporting a failed ideology with flawed rationale and twisted data. Unfortunately, a glib spin-meister like Obama can actually get gullible people to buy it.
April 19th, 2008 at 7:35 am
Well, Avinash, take it up with Charlie Gibson, the Wall street Journal, and the department of the treasury. It seems that the whole premise of your argument is that these people are simply incorrect, and that raising tax rates on capital gains will always increase revenue from those taxes. Maybe Obama should have taken that route in the debate. When Gibson said, “But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up,” Obama should have just responded, “No they don’t.”
April 19th, 2008 at 8:54 am
@ Jimmy: No that’s not my argument, seems you need to reread what I wrote, I said that the capital gains tax does not generate enough revenue to cover what it loses through people using it to avoid paying higher income taxes and that a reformed system would work better, generating higher revenue while being fair and progressive, while still incentivizing investment, and brining in more small investors. You made that argument that you could either have the revenue and investment or the fairness, I am point out that you can have all three, thereby showing that you are wrong.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:18 am
@gljunket:
I disagree, see i’m not using twisted logic, what I have stated is true, we had higher overall taxes with clinton, and yet growth was stronger than it is now as was job growth, as was revenue, so you can have higher taxes, revenue and growth. Now the argument of the republicans is that lower taxes will generate more revenues and that tax cuts will pay for themselves, while generating growth, however that is not true, as a share of GDP our revenues are far below what they were under clinton and we have been running consistent deficits, with weak job growth, so tax cuts in general are not a good way to generate economic growth.
Now on the issue of capital gains tax in particular, the argument is that there is a rise in revenue from the cut, which should not be taken away i the name of fairness, this is somewhat true, there is a small rise, however as people use capital gains to avoid paying the higher income tax rate, there is lost revenue, and my point is that you can alter it to capture that revenue, while still generating investment, and the key is altering the capital gains tax, which is currently 15% for all but the two lowest brackets, by having a base tax on all income, and then taxing the largest investors the most, at a rate higher than the current 15% while taxing small investors a limited amount or no tax at all. You’d make more revenue off of the bigger investors, the ones who would invest even at higher tax rates, while you’d incentivize more people to invest since they would be more likely to keep more of their profits. Hence you’d have the revenue, the fairness and the investment
April 19th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
For a post on these topics that actually makes sense, go to Alan Stewart Carl’s post on this blog today: http://donklephant.com/2008/04/19/obamas-economic-plan-would-punish-some-hardworking-americans/