The Wall Street Journal came out strong against Wesley Clark's new tax plan, opining that they hope he knows more about war than he does about tax reform. Of course, the WSJ is in a tizzy because anyone making over $1 million a year would have to pay an extra five percent in taxes for all the money they earn over a million. Everyone reading this who makes more than $1 million a year please raise your hand.
Eric Alterman, quoting his book "What Liberal Media", had an interesting take on this today:
"When, after twelve years of supply-side-inspired deficits threatened to cripple the economy, Bill Clinton was forced to clean up the economic mess, Journal editors had no doubt about what would happen. Clinton's proposals, they predicted, would 'cripple' the economy. When the plan passed, the paper promised, "[W]e are seeing the early signs of the stagflation that we knew so well during the Carter presidency."
"Hysteria" would not be too strong a term to describe the Journal's reaction to the Clinton plan. The headline, "The Class Warfare Economy" was attended by a cartoon of a guillotine. The tiny rise in the nation's top marginal tax rates to a level where they remained the second lowest in the industrialized world did not turn out well for the editors. The Clinton years resulted in an unbroken expansion of the economy in which the vast majority of its benefits were tilted towards the very wealthy--in other words, the people on whom "class war" had allegedly been declared."
And then Alterman wrote this about the WSJ attack on Clark:
"So I guess it's a good sign that similarly misplaced knives are out for Wesley Clark's excellent new tax program. They term it a "Clintonian tax hike." The Clark campaign should trumpet that endorsement to the heavens."
Posted by brettdavey
at 9:10 AM EST
