Much of what you need to know about chapter 3 is captured by Keller’s description of a march, sponsored by the Tri-Cities Welfare Rights Organization (WRO), to Barbara Anderson’s home in Marblehead. The unidentified year appears to have been 1989 or 1990. As Keller tells it, the marchers were surprised to discover that Anderson doesn’t live in a palatial manse. But he goes on (pp. 55-56):
Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan, or any of the right wing’s most accomplished bashers could have had a field day with some of the WRO marchers. The women with the multiple out-of-wedlock offspring pleading poverty when they clearly had never missed a high-calorie meal. The lone man in the group, apparently able-bodied, who told a reporter he couldn’t get a job “because I’m too busy running around getting welfare forms and attending rallies for the homeless.” These were stereotypical gimme girls and gimme guys, made to order for political manipulators. But in Massachusetts, the political elites don’t swap anecdotes about welfare queens, and the taxpayers who vote them in are traditionally generous.
I wasn’t at the march, so I’m in no position to question Keller’s description of its participants. But his “never missed a high-calorie meal,” “gimme girls,” and especially “welfare queens” comments strike me as worthy of, well, “Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan, or any of the right wing’s most accomplished bashers.” Maybe that’s what they mean by self-fulfilling prophecies.
Anyway, the point of chapter 3 is to argue that in Massachusetts, the liberal Dems who run the show all think taxes are good, the people think they’re bad, and only Barbara Anderson stands between them. But if you go through Keller’s argument carefully, a whole lot of it falls to bits.
Keller starts with Prop 2-1/2, which is perhaps Anderson’s signature accomplishment — and he promptly gets it wrong. From p. 57:
[Prop 2-1/2] is even credited with improving public education in one state study by giving schools a strong incentive to “deliver quality education in order to raise property values” and thus generate more revenue without raising the tax rate.
First, I again note one of my biggest complaints about Keller’s book: the unidentified source. What “state study”? Second, as a couple of BMG regulars have repeatedly explained, that’s not actually how Prop 2-1/2 works. Keller seems to be saying that, under Prop 2-1/2, if schools become so terrific that property value skyrocket, tax revenue will skyrocket too, even “without raising the tax rate,” ’cause higher values at the same tax rate means higher revenues, right?
Wrong, though it sounds good. The whole painfully complex story is here, but in short, regardless of how much a town’s property values go up in a year, the town’s total increase in property tax revenues from one year to the next can’t exceed 2.5%. So if values go up too much, the tax rate actually has to go down to compensate.
Anyway, Keller continues (p. 57):
But to a Massachusetts political culture that sees willingness to quietly accept tax hikes as synonymous with good breeding and spiritual wellness, the Barbara Andersons of the world are incomprehensible, unacceptable, and vulgar.
Right, this is the same “Massachusetts political culture” in which the Governor just got elected on a property tax-cut platform (Keller does backhandedly acknowledge that — I’ll get to that in a sec), the Speaker refuses to consider allowing local option meals taxes or to close corporate tax loopholes because they’d be seen as tax increases, and in which the Governor opposes raising the gas tax.
But never mind the facts. Let’s keep going with the myth. Check out this reminiscence of 1984, from p. 61:
Democratic Party nominee Walter Mondale paid homage to another staple Taxachusetts mantra, that the argument over taxation levels was a stark choice between truth and falsehood…. “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”
End result: another crushing Democratic presidential defeat (not to mention the historic tax cut-fueled economic boom that immediately followed).
And of course, Keller is absolutely right — Reagan didn’t raise taxes, either before the 1984 election or after, just like he said he wouldn’t, and it was that 8-year absence of tax hikes that set the stage for that “economic boom.” Oh wait …
It’s conservative lore that Reagan the icon cut taxes, while George H.W. Bush the renegade raised them…. Yet raising taxes is exactly what Reagan did. He did not always instigate those hikes or agree to them willingly–but he signed off on them. One year after his massive [1981] tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous year’s reduction…. Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business….
The historic Tax Reform Act of 1986, though it achieved the supply side goal of lowering individual income tax rates, was a startlingly progressive reform. The plan imposed the largest corporate tax increase in history–an act utterly unimaginable for any conservative to support today. Just two years after declaring, “there is no justification” for taxing corporate income, Reagan raised corporate taxes by $120 billion over five years and closed corporate tax loopholes worth about $300 billion over that same period. In addition to broadening the tax base, the plan increased standard deductions and personal exemptions to the point that no family with an income below the poverty line would have to pay federal income tax. Even at the time, conservatives within Reagan’s administration were aghast. According to Wall Street Journal reporters Jeffrey Birnbaum and Alan Murray, whose book Showdown at Gucci Gulch chronicles the 1986 measure, “the conservative president’s support for an effort once considered the bastion of liberals carried tremendous symbolic significance.” When Reagan’s conservative acting chief economic adviser, William Niskanen, was apprised of the plan he replied, “Walter Mondale would have been proud.”
So let’s not kid ourselves here. Mondale lost the election, but he was telling the truth, because Mr. Reagan did raise taxes. So what are we to make of Keller’s assertion that Mondale’s line was a “staple Taxachusetts mantra”? That the “Taxachusetts mantra” is actually true? That would be awkward for Keller’s narrative, so he avoids the issue by not acknowledging that Reagan raised taxes. Hmm.
Keller returns to the local scene on pp. 63-64, recalling Jim Braude’s response to Barbara Anderson’s latest tax-cut petition.
In rebuttal that night, Jim Braude … could only shrug off her complaint: “We have got to come to the point where we acknowledge no government is waste-free.” Not an especially compelling bumper sticker.
No, it’s not. But it also happens to be true. Again, what’s Keller’s point? That politicians shouldn’t be honest with the voters? And, by the way, let’s not be pollyannas about this — it’s true in the private sector as well. My wife and I both work in the private sector, and we’ve both seen plenty of waste and inefficiency there, in companies large and small (and yes, those companies are doing just fine, thank you, especi
ally the big ones which can absorb waste more easily). I defy anyone to point out a private sector entity remotely comparable to the size of the Massachusetts government ($25 billion budget, 40,000 employees) that operates without waste. You can’t, because it doesn’t exist. Interestingly, Bechtel is about the same size as the Mass. government. Anyone want to make the case that they work perfectly?
Anyway, after declaring that Deval Patrick is the only real exception to the recent rule of Dems who refuse to talk about cutting taxes, Keller declares game over for Patrick as well — and worse (p. 64).
Since taking office, Patrick’s promise of a property tax cut has been shown to be little more than an expedient campaign sham. Challenged in a private meeting with the state senate president on his claim that $735 million in waste could be squeezed out of the budget, Patrick reportedly told the lawmaker that he “didn’t really mean it.”
Once again, Patrick “reportedly” said something, but we have no idea who “reported” the comment, so we can’t judge the credibility of the “report.” In case you had forgotten, Patrick’s $735 million comes from this campaign document, and a fair amount of it depends on the lege going along with it. As we know, that’s been a problem, but it’s not for Deval’s lack of trying.
Now, as for the property tax promise in general, one can’t entirely blame Keller for being wrong — Keller could not know when he finished this book (late 2006/early 2007) that, for example, Patrick would back casino gambling and would seek to dedicate half the revenues to directly property tax relief in the form of a tax credit. But that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? Keller’s finishing his book while Patrick and his staff are still figuring out where the bathrooms in the State House are, and he’s declaring one of Patrick’s central campaign promises “an expedient campaign sham”? Strikes me as a tad early for that kind of definitive pronouncement.
Keller wraps things up in chapter 3 with some peculiar assertions about taxes and health care (pp. 65-66).
This is certainly true of the Massachusetts attitude toward taxes, where unctuous self-righteousness almost always crowds out political common sense. This phenomenon was on display at a 2006 “interfaith organization rally” held in support of a stiff tax on businesses to fund the proposed Massachusetts universal health-care plan.
OK, hold it right there. To read that, you’d think that what was being proposed was, well, “a stiff tax on businesses,” ’cause that’s what the book says. But that’s not true — or, what’s perhaps worse, it’s only half true. As anyone who was following the debate knows, the “stiff tax on businesses” applied only to those businesses who didn’t provide their employees with health care. If you covered your employees, you didn’t pay any new taxes.
After noting that the Globe covered Rabbi Jonah Pesner’s and Rev. Hurmon Hamilton’s remarks at the GBIO rally, Keller says (p. 66) that
the story infuriated lawmakers and businesspeople who’d been trying to negotiate a more modest tax structure and didn’t appreciate having their spirituality questioned. The ensuing backlash played a role in reducing the business tax in the final bill.
I really have no idea whether that’s true. I also have no idea what Keller’s basis for saying it is, because once again he doesn’t tell us. I don’t recall hearing that GBIO created some kind of negative pressure that tipped the balance away from the DiMasi position favored by GBIO and toward the Travaglini/Romney position. But perhaps those who followed the health care debate more closely than I did will refresh my recollection.
Oh, and one last thing — the 2002 ballot question that would have eliminated the income tax all together, that Keller mentions on p. 57? That wasn’t Anderson (Keller doesn’t say it was, but he doesn’t say it wasn’t). That was Carla Howell — and she’s at it again this year. Look for it on a ballot coming soon to your precinct.
But when the marchers arrived on Anderson's street with the reporters in tow, their poitical drama took an unexpected plot twist. Anderson, a divorced mother getting by on her modest CLT salary, wasn't in, of course – it was the middle of a work day. And her home was a tiny five room cottage in need of paint and repair, stuck on a small lot with a view of the street and some tangled underbrush. “Gee”, blurted on welfare mom as she surveyed the dump, “I thought the house would be bigger”.
This is the reality of working class people, David. For the record, I think many of Keller's remarks are gratuitously insulting, thus undercutting the point of his book. But the point remains true, nonetheles.
See? Read the WHOLE book, people!
I have better things to read than Keller’s new book.
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I appreciate the yeoman’s work of David. I wouldn’t make the sacrifice he’s making for all of us, lol.
Why is this person characterized as a “welfare mom”? Why can’t she be characterized as a “woman” or simply a “mother”? Is she any less of a woman or a mother because she gets help from welfare?
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See how much more readable that is, Jon? It’s also nice of Keller to characterize the home of a working mother as a “dump”. I’m glad to see journalist Keller being impartial to people who are not his targets.
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From my post:
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I prefer my economy of verbiage, but that’s a matter of taste. I assuredly did not “leave out” the point of that story.
No harm in posting the full version, though.
It sounds like this is a typical book intending to demonize liberalism by going after a famously liberal state. (Alas, Rhode Island and Vermont duck such attention.) So in that sense, it is a phenomenon many of us will want to learn about without having to undergo reading it.
David's descriptions remind me of liberal criticism of Tom Friedman and his relying on taxicab drivers to get the pulse of the community or of David Brooks' thinly sourced sociological “insights”. So just as Friedman and Brooks may be influential and one may want to know about their influence, they are only worth reading because others read them. Reading them might easily fill your head with unchallenged mythology, thereby making you more stupid. Better to read more solidly sourced material.
So David performs here an enormous service, and tblade, with his wide-ranging reading list, would be better served sticking to that.
…(and thank you for the review, by the way)
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(i) Reagan reduced income tax rates in 1981-82, but he adjusted the adjustments virtually every year thereafter upwardly. Moreover, as was not reported in your cited Washington Monthly column, he set in motion massive increases in social security taxes (thank you, Alan Greenspan) which would not have to be approved by Congress, since they were automatic.
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(ii) The true “welfare queens” are agribusiness, companies like Bechtel and the “defense” industry, who rake in billions from the public coffers. Pardon my french, but why in hell should agribusiness receive public subsidies? And why should companies like Bechtel not be hit for their substandard general contracting practices? It would take all day to describe the shoddy practices of the “defense-industrial-congressional” complex.
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(iii) I agree with you that the idea that the private sector is necessarily able to provide goods and services more efficiently than the government sector is idiotic. I’ll merely cite Bechtel again.
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(iv) Note to Ms. Porc. I have no intention of wasting my time reading a book written by someone who is obviously a lunatic.
Their single-mindedness and shortsightedness about taxes ignores what taxes buy us. The Governor's decision to allow casinos in Massachusetts is directly tied to this singeminded, simple view of taxes. It is far more politically easier to let casinos in, then to even hint at raising taxes to pay for the things most of us feel are necessary. I thought this before, but now I know for sure, Jon Keller is a simpleton.
… but the supply-siders spent years trying to frame the issue that the poor are squeezing the middle class with government programs.
The Tax Reform Act of 1986 indeed resulted in greater capital gains revenues, but, it was because the capital gains rate was cut from 50% to 28% and people were more inclined to sell capital assets.
All-in-all, it's widely recognized that the effect on taxes following 1986, were neutral at best, but likely negative. http://pw1.netcom.com/~rdavis2/taxcuts.html. The assertion that it fueled economic growth is bona-fide, if for no other reason, that it freed up capital by reducing the capital transaction costs (i.e. cap gain tax).
There were in the Bill, aspects of tax increases: tax shelters were limited, the bottom bracket raised from 11 to 15%, but all told it was a bipartisan revision that had, as it's centerpiece, 1) the Republicans' insistence that cap gains tax rate be cut and 2) a simpler tax code (albeit, not much simpler). more…
The Tax Reform Act of 1986 indeed resulted in greater capital gains revenues, but, it was because the capital gains rate was cut from 50% to 28% and people were more inclined to sell capital assets.
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…it certainly would be helpful if you would let us know what you were responding to. A quotation from the thread. A link to another web page. Something.
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I have an idea as to what you may be referring to, but I do not pretend to be a mind reader.
I didn't realize that Prop. 2 1/2 basically caused tax rates to go down as value went up, but I took a look at the first few pages and you're absolutely right. How crazy!
Disclosure: I worked on Greater Boston Interfaith Organization's campaign for health care. GBIO is one of the finest, most honorable, toughest and most effective civic organizations I've ever seen. I've met Rev. Hamilton and Rabbi Pesner briefly. There's no need for quotes around “interfaith organization rally” — that's exactly what it was.
Keller's description of the health care process is so chockful of tendentious, unprovable assertions and bogus attributions it's hard to know where to begin. In any event, I defy Keller to name anyone who thinks that Pesner's or Hamilton's remarks created such a “backlash” that the uninsuring-employer assessment was actually lowered. A far more likely explanation is that powerful industry groups — the Associated Industries of Massachusetts and the Mass. High Tech. Council — opposed it. (Duh?) Keller might as well have attributed the low assessment to sunspots as to GBIO.
Secondly, as David indicates, this “draconian” tax increase was on businesses that didn't provide health care to their workers. What's more “draconian”: a tax, or going without health care? I suppose Keller thinks it's “common sense” for people to go uninsured.
Thirdly: The people who make up GBIO are by and large exactly the kind of salt-of-the-earth, not-rich working folks that Keller claims to champion, many from the tough neighborhoods that Keller claims are representative of “Kennedy Country”. Keller lays on this veneer of “populism”, when in fact he's utterly contemptuous of those very people he claims to represent — indeed even to the point of mocking their ambition to have health care.
It's a shame. Keller has transitioned from useful wiseass straight on to partisan hack. I've enjoyed his stuff before, but what I've read of this book is so dishonest, so willfully one-sided, so out-and-out vicious, so unreflective, that I really wonder if he's beyond redemption. As he likes to say: Sad.
…I was going to post a comment asking what GBIO stood for. I had not done so heretofore, but you have told me.
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I have mentioned that I believe that health care financing in the USofA is a nightmare (and it is largely financing that is the issue), and that it will not be fixed any time soon.
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The inefficiencies in the US health care delivery system are manifest, as I have described and those add to the costs. Just yesterday, we were at our general practitioner in Germany. He wanted to have an ultrasound done on me. Unlike at Lahey, he ran it himself, interpreted it in real time, took screenshots (do you know what your kidneys, pancreas or spleen look like? I know what mine look like). Zik-zak, less than half an hour, and no intermediaries. And that is one reason why health care costs so much less here in Germany than in the USofA.
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He also makes house calls.
…and we aren't the laughingstock of the majority of the nation?
and we're not the only state in the northeast where people are fleeing the land of their birth or adoption?
people here remind me of that old irving berlin song “They were all out of step but Jim.” On the cover of the sheet music a military unit is marching by a reviewing stand and everyone is in perfect lock-step -except for one clown who smiles and waves at the crowd. one of the women watching the parade says “Look, they're all out of step but Jim!”
that seems to be the current, prevailing wisdom around here. “I can't believe the rest of the country is so screwed up. why can't they understand that we here in massachusetts are the only ones who know how to do things the way they should be done?”
that said, having read all of your comments and analyses, i just bought two copies of the book on amazon, one of which i will be sending to my head-in-the-sand (or is it up his arse?) legislator, who shall remain nameless since he's such an inneffectual go-along-to-get-along sheep he only registers when he casts a vote the way the speaker tells him to.
things were so much better in the good, old days.
….we once DID have two party government to slow things down at the Handbasket Turn In Station.
Unless you were black.
Or gay.
Or Jewish.
Or poor.
Or a woman.
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But for everybody else, they were great!
i meant in the days before Governor Patrick, which were less than nine months ago. back in the days when i believed a guy named Deval, who said he wanted those of us who had checked out to check back in. When this same guy convinced me that together we can, and promised he would lower my property taxes even though i knew full well he was blowing smoke out his butt. i want a return to the good, old days when a deval patrick governorship was something to live for, to dream for, to work for. Not something to regret.
You know, I hear this from 'wingers quite a bit, and I'm not sure where it comes from. I have little doubt that conservatives all over laugh at MA … but why? We have arguably the best k-12 education, some of the best health care, low uninsured rate, lots of wealth, pretty good jobs, we're still the engine of a number of industries, low divorce rates, and on and on.
The reason why people are moving out is because of the cost of real estate, which is the product of 1. the bubble, 2. easy credit, and 3. wealth! To some extent, MA is a victim of its own success. They're not moving out b/c they don't like liberals. Maybe you can cite some statistics that say otherwise.
Sure we've got problems — what state doesn't? For cryin' eye, we're not the basketcase you describe. I've lived in basketcase places, and this ain't one.