RUSH: Interesting. I have two stories here about John Edwards and his tax-the-rich plan. One story from the Los Angeles Times, and the other one from the New York Times. The New York Times takes him out in the story. See, Edwards is leading in Iowa. That’s not the action line. The action line is ‘Hillary Wins the Nomination’ at the New York Times. The LA Times treats this, oh, pretty cool. ‘Edwards Announces His ‘Tax the Rich’ Plan — The Democratic presidential hopeful wants to repeal Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy and raise rates to fund breaks for lower-income families.’ This is, by the way, what every Democrat wants to do. It’s just that Edwards is the one out there making the big to-do about it because he’s trying to move as far left as he can, and so is Obama. Obama and Edwards are both trying to get left of Hillary in order to secure more power here and support in the campaign right now for the primaries that are coming up. ‘Tax hikes, once anathema to Democrats trying to shed their image as tax-and-spend liberals, are back.’ (sigh) How have we let this come back into being fashionable, with the tax cuts that have produced this economy? Well, I know. It’s psychological. I understand. Anyway, they go on to talk about what the plan is. The only dissenting view in this story is provided by a ‘Democratic strategist who is neutral in the campaign but did not want to be named criticizing Edwards” proposal.
”If we have an election where the dialogue is about whether or not taxes should be increased, it’s not a good dialogue for us,” meaning the Democrats. Good point. It’s exactly why we all need to keep talking about this. ‘On taxes, however, Obama and Clinton may be more reluctant to follow Edwards’ lead because of the political risks of proposing tax hikes as big as he has,’ but he’s in third place. He’s got nothing to lose. His campaign is imploding if you want to know the truth. Carl Leubsdorf, writing in the Dallas Morning News today, says it’s over. The whole thing with his wife, everything — putting his wife out there front and center — has backfired. It ain’t working. You go over to the New York Times story about this, ‘Edwards Proposes Raising Capital Gains Tax.’ This is classic wealth redistribution, taking money from the rich, putting it in their ‘investment accounts’ and putting it into accounts for the poor. Now, you go to the end of this story, and listen to this.
‘Robert S. McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a labor-backed group whose calculations are widely respected by tax experts, said that if the cost of extending tax cuts for people earning less than $200,000 was added to the calculation, the plan would create a $35 billion revenue shortfall instead of the extra $50 billion predicted by the Edwards campaign.’ Of course it will, just like a $10 tax on cigars will put the domestic cigar business out of business. Just like the luxury tax on yachts lost the jobs of the people who made the yachts because people went elsewhere to get yachts. Remember that luxury tax they tried in the Clinton years? They had to repeal that inside of a year. But then McIntyre goes on to say, ”John Edwards is trying to do something nice for low-income people. The question is whether he has a way to pay for it. He is repealing tax cuts on the rich that really do not exist and the only part of substance is that he is expanding the Bush tax cuts to everyone else, but doesn’t count it. I don’t want to go overboard in the criticism, but this is very deceptive.” Now, can you imagine the New York Times about anything the Bush tax cut quoting anybody, ‘a labor-backed’ group? That means liberal Democrat tax group. Can you imagine them publishing a story saying he is repealing tax cuts on the rich that really don’t exist? This is the New York Times taking John Edwards out, or trying to. They’re trying to blow this tax plan of his up in his own face.