Politics Archive

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Ben Carson - On the Issues, Part V - Taxes

Ben CarsonThis entry is part of a series looking at Ben Carson's stance on political issues. For this series, I'm mostly looking at the issues identified on Carson's own website in the section, Ben on the Issues. I figured that was a good way to pick the issues he himself found most important to discuss, without anyone being able to accuse me of cherry-picking Carson's worst stances. An index of all the issues can be found on the first post in the series, Ben Carson - On the Issues, Part I.

This entry addresses Carson's stance on taxes. Here are a couple excerpts from Carson's site. Basically, he wants "wholesale tax reform" to make the tax code simpler, and seems to want to do away with "the IRS as we know it".

It [the tax code] is too long, too complex, too burdensome, and too riddled with tax shelters and loopholes that benefit only a few at the direct expense of the many.
We need a fairer, simpler, and more equitable tax system. Our tax form should be able to be completed in less than 15 minutes. This will enable us to end the IRS as we know it.

Not too much to disagree with so far. The tax code is too long and complex and should be simplified. I'm not so sure the IRS can be done away with, but let's ignore that for now and just focus on taxes.

Although he doesn't offer much in the way of policy on his website, Carson has proposed a flat tax (based on Biblical tithing) in other venues. Here's an example going back to one of Carson's op-ed pieces from the Washington Times in 2013, CARSON: Proportional taxation works because it's fair to everyone. But first, even though it's out of order from the article, Carson offered some statements that seem to be behind his rationale for a flat tax.

We need to abandon the idea that some people are too needy and pitiful to be required to make contributions.
Furthermore, if everyone is included in the tax base, it forces the government to be more frugal with the taxpayers' money.

It seems as if Carson thinks that right now, a sizable enough proportion of the population to worry about doesn't contribute to the tax base. Why else would he talk about people not "required to make contributions" or make a statement like "if everyone is included in the tax base"? This is no more true than when Romney made a similar claim back in 2012. Although not everyone contributes to federal income taxes, there are many more taxes out there. The Center for Tax Justice has a page on Who Pays Taxes in America in 2014?. They combined all taxes people paid, not just federal income tax, and then plotted it by income. Here's how it comes out:

Share of Total Taxes Paid by Each Income Group, 2014, Source: Center for Tax Justice

Just to be clear, here are total effective tax rates broken down by income group:

Share of Total Taxes Paid by Each Income Group, 2014, Source: Center for Tax Justice

So, overall taxation in the U.S. is somewhat progressive, but not a huge amount. If you look at the breakdowns on that page, state and local taxes tend to be regressive, putting more burden on the lowest income groups. To compensate, federal income taxes are progressive, making the total tax burden more proportional, and slightly progressive. But the overall point is, most people in the U.S. do pay taxes roughly proportional to their income.

Anyway, on to his proposal:

Many alternative forms of taxation are used throughout the world, but the model that appeals most to me is based on biblical tithing. Under that system, everyone was required to pay one-tenth of their income to the designated authorities of the theocracy.

He did go on to say in that article that 10% was only an example, but in other venues (see Politico), he's said that he only thinks it need to be as high as 10-15%.

There are two things Carson could be talking about with this flat tax, neither of which is an appealing option. If he's talking only about federal income tax (or even all federal taxes), then the above discussion makes it clear that a flat tax would put much more burden on lower income groups because of the other taxes they already pay. If he's talking about replacing the entire taxation system in the U.S., from city to state to federal, then he's talking about a monumental undertaking that quite frankly is unrealistic. There would be one big pot of money that people paid taxes into, that would then be distributed out to all the various levels of government. Who would do the collecting, and who would do the deciding on how much each level of government received?

Further, the tax rate isn't even the complicated part of the tax code. As explained in an op-ed on the Houston Chronicle, Steffy: Why the flat tax is flat wrong:

"I don't think the nominal rates are what confuse people," said Andrew Gardener, a certified financial planner and president of Houston-based Tanglewood Legacy Advisors. "The part of the tax code that tells you what your rate is, is two sentences. That's fairly simple."

The complexity comes in defining income.

The article goes on to give a few examples of this difficulty in defining income, and even when income is taxable. These are the complications that have built up in the tax code that need to be revised, but a flat tax doesn't address that.

This is another of the examples where I agree with Carson (at least partly) in identifying an issue, but not in his proposed solution, which would only make things worse.


On to Part VI, Marriage Equality


Image Source for Ben Carson: Christian Post, Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Updated 2015-09-24: Added graph of tax rates and a bit of extra wording to be more clear on the amount taxes are progressive.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Ben Carson - On the Issues, Part IV - Faith in Society

Ben CarsonThis entry is part of a series looking at Ben Carson's stance on political issues. For this series, I'm mostly looking at the issues identified on Carson's own website in the section, Ben on the Issues. I figured that was a good way to pick the issues he himself found most important to discuss, without anyone being able to accuse me of cherry-picking Carson's worst stances. An index of all the issues can be found on the first post in the series, Ben Carson - On the Issues, Part I.

This entry addresses Carson's stance on Faith in Society. I've covered this topic in more detail in several other blog entries, with one particularly relevant one being a Response to an Editorial by Pat Boone.

Here's how Carson started off this section on his website.

The United States of America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. We can and should be proud of that fact. It served us well for almost 200 years.

The principles upon which the U.S. was founded were largely Enlightenment Ideals, not anything specifically Judeo-Christian. First, consider the founding document of our government, the U.S. Constitution. It has no religious references other than the convention of using 'Year of our Lord' for the date. Consider also a comparison of the First Amendment with the First Commandment. The Amendment is all about freedom to worship however you see fit. The Commandment is all about worshipping one god and one god only. Those are not the same values. (Other Commandments, like don't steal, or don't murder, are universal to nearly all societies, and not specific to Judaism or Christianity.) There are plenty of other examples in that blog entry linked to above.

One particularly interesting example that I've brought up before is the Treaty of Tripoli. It was signed in 1796, just 8 years after the Constitution was ratified, by Senators who could rightly be considered Founding Fathers. And even though it was only a treaty, the circumstances surrounding it illustrate the mindset of those early U.S. politicians. When it was presented to the Senate, it was read aloud in its entirety, so that all present knew the entire contents. It was then confirmed unanimously by all of the members present (23 out of 32). Not only that, but in a somewhat unusual practice, the vote was recorded. To clarify, it wasn't so unusual for a vote to be recorded (this was the 339th time), but it was very unusual for a vote to be recorded when the vote was unanimous - this was only the 3rd time. So what is it about the treaty that makes it so interesting in a discussion on religion? Article 11 (emphasis mine):

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

After the treaty was passed by the Senate, President John Adams issued a statement that he "accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof." Like I said, it was only a treaty, but the politicians of the time seemed to go out of their way to support it and make their support known. If these politicians had any objections to the statement that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion", they certainly didn't act on them.

Carson went on to write.

However, we need to reverse the recent trend of secular progressives using activist, federal judges to drive faith out of our society. Anyone who wishes to practice their faith, for example by praying privately, can and should be able to do so. Equally, the rights of someone to abstain from private prayer should also be jealously protected.

Other than the first sentence, this passage isn't too bad, but also not very provocative. How many places in the U.S. are people being stopped from praying privately? Nearly every example I can think of that the religious right gets upset about is where religious people can't force their prayers in government venues, such as city council meetings or classrooms (or the recent example of Kim Davis trying to abuse her government position and enforce her religious principles on the citizens of her county). There are only a very few isolated cases I've heard of where people really were being stopped from praying privately, and these were usually the results of people misunderstanding the law and have usually been resolved pretty quickly (examples: ACLU Defense of Religious Practice and Expression).

The first sentence is where I disagree. First of all, 'activist' judges are not being used to drive faith out of society in general. Judges are properly interpreting the First Amendment, and using it to keep religion and government separate. The fact that Christianity has had special privilege for much of the history of this country due to the majority of citizens being Christian does not change the fact that many of these instances of special privilege were in violation of the Constitution. Now that Christianity is losing its grip on the country (between 2007 and 2014, Christians fell from 78.4% to 70.6% of the population - Pew), I expect these types of challenges will become more common. And like I said, these legal challenges are usually only where church and state are improperly entangled, not for people privately practicing religion.

Here's the last excerpt from Carson I'm going to discuss.

The First Amendment enshrines our freedom to practice whatever faith we choose from any government intrusion. Our Founding Fathers never meant for the First Amendment to be used to drive prayer out of the public square.

Here are two statements by a very prominent Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government," as well as, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." There's also the very famous passage from his letter to the Danbury Baptists about "building a wall of separation between church and State." Granted, Jefferson was only one of the Founding Fathers, but he was certainly no fan of organized religion, and very clearly wanted religion kept separate from the public square. Consider also the discussion above about the country being founded on Enlightenment ideals, and it seems pretty clear that the founders did indeed intend for the government to be secular.

Outside the legal sphere, it's no secret I'm no fan of faith. I have an entry, Why Do I Spend So Much Time on Religion, listing examples of the harm caused by religion*. Now, I would never advocate for the government to try to suppress religion, since only totalitarian governments try to dictate beliefs, and regimes that have tried this in the past have in effect made the state a new religion. But I would like for society itself to change to the point where admitting belief in gods was no longer automatically seen as a virtue.

I've previously mentioned a study by Gregory S. Paul, Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies. Here are two graphs from that study. (Click to embiggen. I modified this figure somewhat to combine these two graphs into one image, but didn't change anything about how the data was plotted.)

Graphs from Gregory S. Paul's Study

This shows a clear correlation between religion and societal dysfunction. Granted, correlation is not causation, so it's possible people turn to religion for comfort in dysfunctional societies, rather than religion causing dysfunctional societies, but it's certainly clear that less religious societies for the most part are better off than more religious ones.

A related previous entry of mine is A Response to Ben Carson's Comments on Navy Bible Kerfuffle, looking at Carson's misinterpretation of the Establishment Clause, and a truly idiotic claim about religious neutrality promoting atheism.


On to Part V, Taxes


Image Source for Ben Carson: Christian Post, Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst


*To clarify, I don't think religion is universally harmful. There are many varieties of belief, even among 'one' religion like Christianity. On the balance, I think religion as currently practiced does more harm than good, but that's painting with a very broad brush, and could change in the future depending on how religion itself changes. As I wrote in another entry, Hercules Misunderstands Atheists - Responding to Kevin Sorbo, "If religion was all soup kitchens and homeless shelters, or even just spaghetti dinners and Christmas bazaars, religious debates could be mainly academic and philosophical. As soon as religious people quit causing so much trouble in the world, atheists will quit getting angry about religion."

To clarify further, I definitely don't think religious people are usually harmful. Most people are on the whole good, regardless of what religion they practice. Society wouldn't have survived if they weren't. But many otherwise good people do bad things because of religious influences, like continuing to fight against marriage equality, or murdering doctors who perform abortions. To quote Steven Weinberg, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

Updated 2015-09-23: Added section & figures on correlation between religion & societal health. Added parenthetical note about many Commandments not being rules specific to Judaism or Christianity.

Updated 2015-09-24: Added footnote clarifying difference between religion and religious people.

Monday, September 21, 2015

A Response to Mike Huckabee's Misrepresentations of Planned Parenthood

Mike HuckabeeI recently received an e-mail forward that was originally put out by Mike Huckabee's campaign. It appears to be the same article as is on his website, Defunding Planned Parenthood is not enough, and given that it came from Huckabee, I'm sure you can guess that it had some pretty scathing things to say about the organization. Now, I've never followed Huckabee particularly closely before. The issues I had heard him talk about were enough to let me know that I didn't agree with him on those issues (like his shameful behavior around the Kim Davis affair), so I didn't feel compelled to look into his stances further. But while I already knew I wouldn't agree with his political views, I wasn't expecting the level of dishonesty I found in this e-mail forward.

The article was one long screed against Planned Parenthood, calling out the organization for actually performing abortions, while at the same time presenting facts in a very misleading manner to misrepresent the organization and to make it seem as if tax money is funding abortions. Here are two examples, which I'll come back to:

Over the past decade, Washington politicians have pumped more than $4 billion into Planned Parenthood. It's abhorrent and insane that Washington forcibly confiscate money from our paychecks only to bankroll Planned Parenthood's repulsive, revolting butchers.

Congress neglects our veterans' hospitals, abandons our borders, and bankrupts our children, but somehow finds plenty of money for the abortion industry. Talk about priorities! How many harvested organs will it take before this madness ends? The facts are staggering.

Planned Parenthood performs 327,000 abortions per year, approximately one every 96 seconds. Government grants, funds, and reimbursements account for 41% of Planned Parenthood's income. In total, they earn $1.3 billion in annual revenue.

Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton call Planned Parenthood a "healthcare provider," but the facts tell an appallingly different story. They invest virtually nothing on adoption and pennies on prenatal care. In fact, of every dollar they spend on services for pregnant women, 94 cents go to abortion. It's clear that Planned Parenthood isn't a "healthcare provider" any more than a heroin dealer is a community pharmacist.

A quick reading of those passages and the rest of the e-mail certainly makes it seem like Planned Parenthood spends the bulk of their money on providing abortions, and that the federal government is providing much of this money through our tax dollars. But that's not the case at all.

Here's an article from the Washington Post, How Planned Parenthood actually uses its federal funding. By law since 1976, Planned Parenthood can't use any federal funding for abortion services. The money they get for that comes from private donors and organizations. Below is a graph from that article showing a breakdown of how Planned Parenthood spends their total budget from all revenue sources (closely matching a similar breakdown verified by FactCheck.org in 2011). Note that only 3% of their funding goes to abortion services, while the rest goes to other forms of healthcare.

Planned Parenthood Spending

As far as the recent videos that have prompted much of this recent move to defund Planned Parenthood, here's an op-ed from the New York Times, The Campaign of Deception Against Planned Parenthood. The videos were heavily edited to make it look like Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue for a profit, when they were in fact following the law that "facilities may be reimbursed for costs associated with fetal tissue donation, like transportation and storage."

On a related note, if you watched the debate on Wednesday night, you may have heard Carly Fiorina's claim about a graphic scene from those videos that supposedly took place within a Planned Parenthood clinic. This is also untrue. Even giving Fiorina the benefit of the doubt as to having seen such a scene, the most likely source is a separate documentary, where that footage wasn't shot in a Planned Parenthood clinic, and where the events weren't exactly as Fiorina remembered. Even if she wasn't intentionally lying, what she said still wasn't the truth. This is all detailed in a Vox article, Carly Fiorina is wrong about the Planned Parenthood tapes. I know because I watched them.

So, let's go back to those passages I quoted above. Let's take another look at that first one. Recalling the facts of Planned Parenthood's funding and budget that I explained above, pay close attention to Huckabee's wording.

Over the past decade, Washington politicians have pumped more than $4 billion into Planned Parenthood. It's abhorrent and insane that Washington forcibly confiscate money from our paychecks only to bankroll Planned Parenthood's repulsive, revolting butchers.

Congress neglects our veterans' hospitals, abandons our borders, and bankrupts our children, but somehow finds plenty of money for the abortion industry. Talk about priorities! How many harvested organs will it take before this madness ends? The facts are staggering.

Planned Parenthood performs 327,000 abortions per year, approximately one every 96 seconds. Government grants, funds, and reimbursements account for 41% of Planned Parenthood's income. In total, they earn $1.3 billion in annual revenue.

The way each of those paragraphs discusses federal funding in one breath and then abortion in the next certainly implies that much of that government funding is going to abortions, and I think Huckabee intentionally created that association in the reader's mind. But as I pointed out above, no federal funding goes to abortions. So, even though Huckabee may not have lied per se by explicitly stating that the government funds abortions, this method was still dishonest.

Now, let's take another look at the second excerpt.

Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton call Planned Parenthood a "healthcare provider," but the facts tell an appallingly different story. They invest virtually nothing on adoption and pennies on prenatal care. In fact, of every dollar they spend on services for pregnant women, 94 cents go to abortion. It's clear that Planned Parenthood isn't a "healthcare provider" any more than a heroin dealer is a community pharmacist.

Again, notice Huckabee's careful parsing of words. He didn't say that Planned Parenthood spends 94% of their total budget on abortion, but that's what a person might get from a quick reading of this paragraph. And he completely omitted how much of their budget goes to other healthcare services that aren't necessarily for "pregnant women".

So, going through sentence by sentence, you may not be able to find a 'lie' from Huckabee, but the overall impression the article gives is certainly different from reality, which is dishonest.

I guess part of what gets me about this is the right wing's constant mantra of 'morality' and 'family values'. Now, I knew that was all just a bunch of rhetoric to begin with, and I really strongly disagree with a lot of their supposed morality, anyway, but it really does highlight the bankruptcy of their position when they have to resort to this type of dishonesty to try to further their agenda.

---

I've written a few times about abortion already on this site. Not only do I disagree with Huckabee's dishonest methods, but I also think abortion can be justified and that it should remain legal and available, particularly in the first trimester, but also for legitimate reasons later in the pregnancy. If you to want read my views, they're available through the links below:

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Friday, September 18, 2015

Ben Carson - On the Issues, Part III - Balanced Budget Amendment

Ben CarsonThis entry is part of a series looking at Ben Carson's stance on political issues. For this series, I'm mostly looking at the issues identified on Carson's own website in the section, Ben on the Issues. I figured that was a good way to pick the issues he himself found most important to discuss, without anyone being able to accuse me of cherry-picking Carson's worst stances. An index of all the issues can be found on the first post in the series, Ben Carson - On the Issues, Part I.

This entry addresses Carson's stance on a Balanced Budget Amendment. Here's the gist of Carson's argument in his own words.

In January 2009, our public debt was $11.9 trillion. Now, it's more than $18 trillion. Interest payments on the debt now total about $250 billion, the 3rd single biggest item in the federal budget.

We must ratify a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution in order to restore fiscal responsibility to the federal government's budget.

This point is partly pointing out a legitimate problem, partly presenting the stats in a misleading way, and then presenting a 'solution' that's not a good solution at all.

First, I'm going to steal some graphs I used in a previous post, How Big Is the National Debt? (which were themselves taken from US Government Revenue.com). Here are graphs of the U.S. debt and deficit by year as a fraction of GDP.

Federal Debt History as a Percentage of GDP
Federal Deficit History as a Percentage of GDP

Yes, the debt is high and needs to be addressed. On that, I agree with Carson. Still, the current deficit is not unprecedented, unless you naively look at absolute numbers instead of fraction of GDP. In fact, the current debt is less than the debt during WWII. Also, note how much the deficit increased temporarily right around 2009 - the time frame Carson picked out for his example of how much the debt has grown. That was right in the midst of the worst of the Great Recession, when tax revenues were at their lowest and stimulus spending was at the highest. Of course that type of deficit spending is going to push up the debt, but it's exactly what needs to be done in a recession. Imagine how much worse the recession would have been if it wasn't for that deficit spending.

In fact, that brings me to the point of why Carson's proposed solution is a bad one. Almost everyone agrees that budgets need to be balanced in the long term, but there are times, particularly in economic downturns, when the government needs the freedom to do deficit spending to invest in the economy. Paul Krugman has a fairly recent article in the Guardian, The case for cuts was a lie. Why does Britain still believe it? The austerity delusion, discussing this issue of stimulus spending vs. austerity. I recommend reading the whole thing if you have time, but there's one particularly informative graph, showing the economic growth from 2009-2013 of various countries plotted vs. the austerity of those countries. You'll note that harsher austerity correlates with worse economic growth, with the worst austerity actually causing the economy to shrink.

Economic Growth vs. Austerity

Short term stimulus spending during an economic downturn is good for the economy in the long run, and the reason why Congress shouldn't be forced to balance the budget every year. Of course, that doesn't mean Congress shouldn't balance the budget when the economy is doing well, but it needs the freedom to easily practice deficit spending when it's called for.

More Info:


On to Part IV, Faith in Society


Image Source for Ben Carson: Christian Post, Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Ben Carson - On the Issues, Part II - Second Amendment

Ben CarsonThis entry is part of a series looking at Ben Carson's stance on political issues. For this series, I'm mostly looking at the issues identified on Carson's own website in the section, Ben on the Issues. I figured that was a good way to pick the issues he himself found most important to discuss, without anyone being able to accuse me of cherry-picking Carson's worst stances. An index of all the issues can be found on the first post in the series, Ben Carson - On the Issues, Part I.

This entry addresses Carson's stance on the Second Amendment. Here's part of what he wrote on his website.

The right of law-abiding citizens to own firearms is fundamental to our liberty.

It was no accident that our Founding Fathers enshrined the right to own firearms as the 2nd element of the Bill of Rights, immediately after establishing our free speech rights. I cannot and will not support any efforts to weaken The 2nd Amendment.

The 2nd Amendment is a central pillar of our Constitution. Our Founding Fathers added it explicitly in order to protect freedom in the United States of America. It provides our citizens the right to protect themselves from threats foreign or domestic.

I don't agree with Carson's interpretation of the Second Amendment or the Founders' intentions behind it. There's an article I've quoted before, written by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, The five extra words that can fix the Second Amendment, where he explains how for most of the history of the country, the amendment was interpreted differently than the individual right it has recently become. Here's a good excerpt explaining this.

For more than 200 years following the adoption of that amendment, federal judges uniformly understood that the right protected by that text was limited in two ways: First, it applied only to keeping and bearing arms for military purposes, and second, while it limited the power of the federal government, it did not impose any limit whatsoever on the power of states or local governments to regulate the ownership or use of firearms. Thus, in United States v. Miller, decided in 1939, the court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that sort of weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a "well regulated Militia."

Stevens went on to suggest that the 2nd Amendment should be amended to read, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed." This would clarify what seemed to be the Founders' original intent.

I recognize that once the Supreme Court reinterpreted the Second Amendment to be an individual right in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago (damn activist judges </sarcasm>), that makes it the law of the land. And I do believe that guns serve useful purposes and should remain legal*. But I would like to see far more regulation over guns than currently exists. Personally, I think everyone that wants a gun should be required to earn a license, similar to the existing requirements for concealed carry permits, including a background check at the time the license is issued, with an agency monitoring criminal records to make sure that the license remains valid. If people can be required to have photo IDs to vote, the most fundamental right in a representative democracy, a permit for a gun doesn't seem like a big deal. These are useful, but deadly instruments, and a little mandatory training shouldn't be too much to ask.

I've actually written a bit more on gun control that I'm not going to repeat here, but that can be found in the following entries, which among other topics cover how effective guns are for people to "protect themselves from threats foreign or domestic" (short answer: not very effective):


On to Part III - Balanced Budget Amendment


Image Source for Ben Carson: Christian Post, Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst


*Obviously, there's no danger of guns becoming completely illegal anytime soon. It would take a Constitutional Amendment, and one affecting the Bill of Rights, no less, which is unrealistic. Even Barack Obama, who's a proponent of stricter gun control, signed into law a bill allowing loaded guns to be taken into national parks (more info: NBC News).

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