WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

Ned apologizes to his many followers for his dearth of posts over the past three days. Ned was able to celebrate yet another birthday and so has been involved in a certain amount of moderate revelry. The word 'moderate' is operative here as Ned seeks to emulate Ramsay Macdonald, a rival of Churchill's from the 30's, whom Winston described with perspicacity as "a modest man with much to be modest about."
That said, Ned has been roused from his torpor, as usual, to a state of red hot indignation, by a "letter to the business editor" of the NYT published in the Sunday paper. The letter headlined 'Tax Cuts and the Wealthy" was a snarling wolf in sheep's clothing if Ned ever saw one. The letter's author, one "Standish M. Fleming" decried with sad eyes raised towards heaven and palms up, the very IDEA that this country should consider letting the Bush tax giveaways to the plutocrats expire. On the contrary, he advocated "fiscal discipline" in order to preserve the "social fabric of trust" that he sees holding this country together. Now, of course, heaven forbid that fiscal discipline mean less war spending, but to those of Standish's persuasion, it probably means poor and working people getting by on nothing instead of next to nothing. One wonders where he was when the Bush tax cuts were emplaced, which act represented the single greatest act of fiscal madness and cynical hypocrisy that Ned can recall, even outdoing anything that that madman Reagan proposed.
Standish goes on to ask several rhetorical questions such as, "how can a society systematically discriminate against a minority and expect to maintain its long-term respect and support?" One expects that black Americans would wholeheartedly agree, but does not recall a similar argument being made during the years of Jim Crow. No, friends, white Americans were perfectly happy with their long term respect, thank you very much.
Standish repeats the old canard that if taxation were too high, rich people would simply stop working rather than pay "higher" taxes. Ned wonders if some of his readers would agree with him, that in his opinion, some of these plutocrats SHOULD have stopped working for the good of the country. Ned is thinking of the arrogant plutocrats who ran Lahman Brothers into the ground, of Carly Fiorina and Mark Hurd, who laid off tens of thousands of "productive " workers at HP and then walked away after being "fired" by the Board of Directors, walked away that is with 30 to 40 million dollars and in the case of Carly, her OWN JET PLANE.
One thinks of the idiots who ran GM into the ground, costing thousands of workers their jobs, and those sneering hubristic "captains of industry" who made tens of millions by "outsourcing" hundreds of thousands of American jobs to desperate workers in third world countries. Ned agrees that they should have stopped working decades ago.
But Ned's favorite of Standish's "questions" is so delicious that Ned must quote it in full, to wit: "At what point does selective taxation begin to rend the social fabric of trust and respect that we need for a healthy and productive society?" Ned suggests that point would be at the tax rate under which plutocrats happily amassed fortunes under the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, a 90% marginal rate for incomes over $200,000. But perhaps his readers would prefer something a little less onerous? Ned will oblige by pointing out the radical Kennedy tax cuts, that lowered the marginal rate to 70%!
How about that, Standish? Now you can go back to your country club while your faithful servant prepares you a restorative to calm your fluttered nerves.