Sowell Proves Yet Again that He is Either a Dishonest Man or Incapable of Understanding Human Nature.

Today, Thomas Sowell posted to RealClearPolitics an article called the "Invincible Lie."http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/07/11/the_invincible_lie_114757.html In it, he makes a number of swipes at the Obama administration and liberals - or anyone he considers a liberal, which is most everyone outside his small circle of RWNJs - though he does make a valid point that wealth is not the same as income. He, of course, loses any credibility for making this point when he implies that people earning over $250,000 a year are somehow simply like the great mass of middle class Americans. That is simply not true. $250,000 a year puts you in the top 2% of wealth and wage earners in this country. Not the top 2% of wage earners, but the top 2% of the wealthy. So Sowell, who is complaining about the so-called "lie" of taxing this group because they are wealthy, in effect lies about it to make his point.

But it doesn't stop there: He then goes on to state the the really big lie "is that those who oppose raising taxes on higher incomes simply want people with higher incomes to have more money, in hopes that some of their prosperity will "trickle down" to the rest of the people."

He goes so far as to state that he has called for anyone - ANYONE, mind you - to name one economist outside of a lunatic asylum that has made this statement. His argument being that since no economist has ever come out and called it that that must not be what is happening or its intent, ignoring the elephant in the room that all of the GOP Congress argue just that i.e. that if "job creators" can just hold onto more of their money, they will finally create jobs. If you're looking for an Invincible Lie, now there's one you can hang your hat on.

But what really finally throws this piece of idiotic excrement into the crapper is his final argument that people will avoid taxes when taxes are higher and will pay them when they are lower and do so without fuss or complaint. Just look at Mitt Romney: he only used his off-shore accounts when taxes were high.

Oh, wait...

And that's where Sowell really starts making stuff up. Not only does he use Romney as his example that the wealthy will look for tax havens when taxes are high, but it all really depends on the circumstances, don't you know. There's no reason to be a tax cheat when taxes are low. Right?

Except, of course, that taxes have been low, and Romney still did it. Now why would he do that if there's no reason to?

Because Romney behaved as human beings are wont to behave, and it appears Sowell has no idea how human beings behave. At some point, that lower tax rate becomes the norm. It's what its always been - at least to the person now looking at it - and everyone hates paying taxes, no matter how low the rate. And when it becomes the norm, those who are apt to try to avoid paying taxes will do so because TO THEM their taxes are too high. The rate doesn't matter.

If you don't believe this, go talk to a banker who complains about the Capital Gains rate being 15%, the lowest its ever been, because he thinks it should be zero. He believes he shouldn't be taxed for doing absolutely nothing but stealing other people's money.

So, to sum, up Thomas Sowell has either no idea how the world works or he simply believes the rest of us are too stupid to know how the world works. Either way, the real Invincible Lie is that Sowell has anything of import to say. Given how frequently and massively wrong he tends to be, he is a better bell-weather for what not to think since he does so very little of it.

THE FOUNDERS WERE WRONG....AND RIGHT.

The title of this post is meant to be provacative. But it is also true. Let's start with a simple idea and one really that cannot be legitimately disputed: Anyone who tells you they know what "The Founding Fathers" were thinking and that they have some inside track as to what they believed is lying. Plain and simple.

Anyone with the least bit of common sense can see that. There is just no way that anyone can say that they know clearly and unequivically what "The Founding Fathers" thought or wanted, because anyone with the least bit of common sense would notice that there is just no such thing as a monolithic group called "The Founding Fathers." So when you ascribe to "The Founding Fathers" this singular vision for what the United States was and should be, you are just lying out your ass because that never existed.

This is particularly troublesome for conservatives who seem to believe that they have some direct spiritual tie to "The Founding Fathers" and that they know exactly what TFFs wanted, just like they know exactly what God wants and everyone else is simply wrong. But, point out to them that the statement they cherry-picked from, say, Thomas Jefferson is not consistent with other statements Jefferson may have made, and they will state that 1) Jefferson never said that, 2) if he did he didn't mean it, and 3) you're nothing but a Nazi for pointing out that Jefferson contradicted himself.

Recently, for instance, that renowned Constitutional scholar Christine O'Donnell went to absurd lengths trying to deny separation of church and state. Leaving aside her hapless reasoning that it is not a tenet of The Constitution because the phrase as written is not directly written there, the Conservative Never Ever Right came to her defense arguing that she was not claiming that The Establishment Clause - the very first line of the First Amendment - was not there (she did, actually), but that her interpretation of The Constitution was an originalist one, and that those damn Liberals thought so little of TFFs that they would argue that 200 years worth of legal precedence had greater meaning than TFFs.

Now, we're talking Christine O'Donnell here, and let's face it, she has no idea what an originalist interpretation of The Constitution is. But let us discuss the idea of an originalist interpretation - just what does that mean exactly? That we should accept The Constitution on its face as complete and immutable? I doubt you will find many minorities who will willingly give up their right to vote so that we can have that originalist interpretation reinstated, conservative or otherwise. Yes, I know, that was granted by amendment and the only way to change the law of the land should be by amendment only - or so say conservatives, but only when it is not them doing the changing of the law.

For instance, conservatives never bring up the fact that The Constitution of the US was and is a compromise document, the most egregious example of that being the 3/5ths Compromise. Are we to ignore that? James Madison - The Father of The Constitution - placed within The Constitution a compromise which made a black man worth 3/5s of a white one. But, I hear conservatives shouting, he didn't mean it! We fixed it later through amendment! We gave blacks the right to vote through amendment! True, eventually The Constitution included the right to vote for all men and women, but the change didn't come because the Original Constitution allowed for it. It came because of the struggle and sacrifice of individuals willing to fight for it. An originalist interpretation of The Constitution would have kept out voting for all minorities forever.

And on the other side of the coin, we have Coroprate Personhood. The same conservatives who argue that we should follow their originalist interpretation of The Constitution - those very same folks who shout about how those damn Liberals are making up the law as they go - they will defend to the death this concept of corporate personhood - that somehow a corporation has the same rights as an individual, but with none of the responsibilities of the individual. This idea of Coroprate Personhood which came into being because a law clerk added a word which shouldn't have been added to a decision - THIS! Conservatives will defend as right and proper!

Madison - The Father of The Constitution - feared Democracy. Jefferson believed in a small agrarian society. Both men were dead set against having a standing army. Patrick Henry was supposedly a money-grubbing little worm of a man who barely passed law exams. Washington was a wealthy land-owner who wanted more than anything to keep his patrician's place. Thomas Paine and Aaron Burr wanted all able-bodied free men and women to be able to vote. There is no originalist interpretation of The Constitution. TFFs didn't know exactly what they wanted when it was written. Stating that it should remain static because you believe you know what they thought and what they wanted and that you are somehow right while everyone else is wrong is just the most appalling act of hubris.