Last night as I returned from a conservative happy hour to met up with a friend at the Americans For Prosperity Defending the American Dream Summit I stumbled into the middle of an OccupyDC demonstration. As I came to the top of the escalator at the DC Convention Center Metro station an attempt by OccupyDC to blockade an entrance to the center deteriorated into a violent scuffle. Disturbingly the occupiers had intentionally placed two small children directly in the middle of the entire ordeal.

I was able to capture a good amount of what happened on video but it did take me a minute or two to get my phone out and start filming. The video starts just after the little wagon the children were sitting in had been pushed out of the doorway. I’m sure there is video of the entire incident from the very beginning floating out there somewhere since many of the occupiers were taping the whole thing themselves. However, I did personally see all of the physical confrontation between security and the occupiers.

At the start of the scuffle the protesters had been able to get inside the convention center and set up a makeshift barrier. This barrier consisted of what appeared to be several large wood trash cans from the center, a large metal recycling bin from the center, the two small children sitting in their wagon, and several occupiers either sitting on the floor or standing up.

The security guards, which may have been assisted by police officers (I’m not sure), then began moving the trash cans and forcing back the protesters. At first only about 5 or 6 protesters resisted the security guards while the rest filmed everything but as they forcibly pushed the protesters and the children’s wagon out of the doorway other protesters became incensed. At that point several other occupiers began screaming and pushing back against the security guards.

The children were extremely upset and crying by this point.

That is where my video picks up (language warning):

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As we are all well aware of by now Paul Krugman wrote a scathing and astoundingly asinine post trashing several prominent Republicans who played an undeniably important role on 9/11. He, one can only assume out of an abundance of ass-hattery, posted his pathetic screed on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

That is the most obvious and, therefore, most harped upon act of idiocy Krugman committed. But there is a deeper and more despicable act that Krugman and all the subsequent Krugman coddlers have engaged in.

It’s something I like to call highbrow turtherism.

Highbrow trutherism involves abandoning the conspiratorial beginnings of 9/11 trutherism but accepting all the conclusions of it anyway. Sure Bush and the other evil Republican’s didn’t orchestrate 9/11 but heck if they didn’t use it to forward their evil neocon agenda by starting two illegal wars!!11!1!!! Or, as Paul Krugman puts it:

Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

Or, as Glenn Greenwald puts it:

That’s because nobody — least of all those shrieking about Krugman’s “impropriety” — believes that 9/11 Day is meant to be apolitical.  They know that it’s deeply political — primarily political — and want it to be that.  That day has became so important precisely because it enables all sorts of consequential messages to be delivered — about the U.S., its role in the world before 9/11 and after, who is Good and Evil, the need for our Endless Wars and Surveillance State — all with a very emotional punch backing them up: the emotions prompted by the attack that are exploited to reinforce those messages and place them beyond the realm of questioning for decent people.

Or, as Medea Benjamin puts it:

And so on. And so forth. Ad nauseum.

It’s a smart little strategy though, no? Keep all the substantive attacks on your political opponents while disregarding the absolute insanity of the “9/11 was an inside job” crap. Why say Bush orchestrated 9/11 so he could start two illegal wars when you can just say Bush exploited 9/11 so he could start two illegal wars?!

You arrive at the same conclusions in the end without the burden of having to claim fire can’t damage steel. It’s a win-win situation, right?!

Highbrow truthers have the advantage of landing at the same political conclusions as regular truthers all while still being able to show their faces at the New York Times, Slate, Salon, and basically every other liberal publication in existence. Plus they get to keep putting on that air of sophistication and smugness they love so much without being scoffed at by other liberals whose opinion they value so highly.

Honestly, what lefty who has always held a fondness for the conclusions of the 9/11 truth nuts wouldn’t buy into highbrow trutherism? In fact, I bet their are many many more examples out there. Please, feel free to document any you come across down below in the comments.

Since many liberals are calling for new massive tax increases as a part of the debt ceiling deal congress is fighting over right now I figured it might be a good time to review some of the results of the last major attempt at tax reform. The Bush tax cuts that is.

So, what exactly does the data show us about how they performed?

First off we need to understand that the revenues resulting from tax structures are completely dependent on the state of the economy. Of course the opposite is viewed by everybody from across the political spectrum to be true as well. To make things fair I’ll be comparing the best year in terms of (inflation adjusted to 2005 dollars) tax revenues from the pre-Bush tax cuts era and our current era.

Following this rule the best pre-Bush tax cuts year on record for (inflation adjusted) tax revenues was under Clinton in 2000. The best year on record for (inflation adjusted) tax revenues under the Bush tax cuts was 2007.

Now one of the most common standards used by liberals (and even some conservatives) for how well a tax structure is doing is how much money it brings in as a percentage of GDP. In other words many judge a tax structure by how much of the economy it eats up.

This. Is. Absurd.

A tax structure ought to be judged by how many (inflation adjusted) dollars it can bring in. Ideally you could even go a bit further and say the best tax structure brings in the most revenue with the smallest burden on the economy. After all shouldn’t the goal of an efficient tax system be to get the most money with the least affect on the economy?

By either of these standards 2007 bests 2000. In 2007 tax receipts (in 2005 dollars) totaled $2.414 trillion where as 2000 tax receipts (in 2005 dollars) only totaled $2.310 trillion. Additionally in 2007 taxes were only 18.5% of GDP but in 2000 they were 20.6% In other words the best year after the Bush tax cuts was better than the best year before them.

The fact is in 2007, under the Bush tax cuts, we had a larger economy AND greater tax revenue than at any time since at least 1940 which is as far back as the Tax Policy Center keeps score.

We could certainly go around in circles forever debating the pros and cons of theoretical tax systems and I certainly wouldn’t say that our current tax structure, even post Bush tax cuts, is the ideal. However, it is extremely important to take a look at how real world reforms have performed and exactly what that means. This time around the facts clearly show us that a real world conservative supply side tax reform has produced a better, more efficient, and more effective tax system.

UPDATE: For a slightly revised and expanded version of this theory check out my op ed over at Human Events!

As Rory Cooper at The Foundry has noted I had a conversation with White House deputy press secretary Dan Pfeiffer through his official twitter account earlier today. Rory outlines the part of our back and forth that dealt with whether or not the President would sign any deal that made its way to his desk. Pfeiffer said yes but only because he seems to believe that Senate Democrats would never pass a short term deal.

Why does the White House believe Senate Democrats would never pass a short term deal? Well, according to Pfeiffer, a short term deal, despite raising the debt ceiling and staving off any possibility of default, would still likely lead to a downgrading of our national credit rating. Pfeiffer claims that this is what the credit agencies have said.

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It’s time to answer the burning questions in everybody’s mind! Yup, this is the Emo or Springsteen answer key. Match these to your guesses and see how well you did then tell us in the comments!

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