An antidote to RW e-mails and relatives (especially ones trying to un-blame Bush)
Crooks and Liars has an article up responding to Jeb Bush's recent 'Right to Rise' op-ed in the WSJ, but it is also a good source for current info to counter RW e-mails making the rounds (such as this http://www.democraticunderground.com/100251953 ) or relatives at holiday gatherings for whom the foam is not just their excitement over the family feast.
December 21, 2011 02:00 PM
Jeb Bush's 'Right to Rise' Falls Flat
37 comments
By Jon Perr
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/jeb-bushs-right-to-rise-falls-flat
Once again, reality's well-known liberal bias belies Bush's, well, lies. As it turns out, the total federal tax burden as a percentage of the American economy is at its lowest level in 60 years. Income inequality has reached record levels not seen in 80 years. And thanks to brother George's lowering of the top income tax rate to 35 percent and the capital gains tax rate to just 15 percent, the top one percent has never had it better.
It's no wonder that between 2001 and 2007- a period during which poverty was rising and average household income had fallen - the 400 richest taxpayers saw their incomes double to an average of $345 million even as their effective tax rate was virtually halved. As the Washington Post noted, "The 400 richest taxpayers in 2008 counted 60 percent of their income in the form of capital gains and 8 percent from salary and wages. The rest of the country reported 5 percent in capital gains and 72 percent in salary."
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To be sure, George W. Bush provided the perfect bookend to era of modern Republican economic management ushered by Herbert Hoover. The verdict on President Bush's reign of ruin was pronounced even before Barack Obama took the oath of office. Just days after the Washington Post documented that George W. Bush presided over the worst eight-year economic performance in the modern American presidency, the New York Times on January 24, 2009 featured an analysis ("Economic Setbacks That Define the Bush Years"
comparing presidential performance going back to Eisenhower. As the Times showed, George W. Bush, the first MBA president, was a historic failure when it came to expanding GDP, producing jobs and fueling stock market growth.
On January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article titled simply, "Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record." (The Journal's interactive table quantifies his staggering failure relative to every post-World War II president.) The meager one million jobs created under President Bush didn't merely pale in comparison to the 23 million produced during Bill Clinton's tenure. In September 2009, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee charted Bush's job creation disaster, the worst since Hoover:
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