From: Jan Rainwater Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 6:29 PM Subject: Krugman and Reich on Money Matters (and some clues for the hapless Democrats)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/opinion/11krugman.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position= Bush's Class-War Budget By PAUL KRUGMAN t may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. And it offers the Democrats an opportunity, if they're willing to take it. First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families. And the budget really does shower largesse on millionaires even as it punishes the needy. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities informs us that even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions - originally put in place under the first President George Bush - that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households. More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars; 97 percent would go to people with incomes exceeding $200,000. It so happens that the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income is about the same as the number of people who would have their food stamps cut off under the Bush proposal. But it costs a lot more to give a millionaire a break than to put food on a low-income family's table: eliminating limits on deductions and exemptions would give taxpayers with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of more than $19,000. It's like that all the way through. On one side, the budget calls for program cuts that are small change compared with the budget deficit, yet will harm hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans. On the other side, it calls for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and for new tax breaks for the affluent in the form of tax-sheltered accounts and more liberal rules for deductions. The question is whether the relentless mean-spiritedness of this budget finally awakens the public to the true cost of Mr. Bush's tax policy. Until now, the administration has been able to get away with the pretense that it can offset the revenue loss from tax cuts with benign spending restraint. That's because until now, "restraint" was an abstract concept, not tied to specific actions, making it seem as if spending cuts would hurt only a few special interest groups. But here we are with the first demonstration of restraint in action, and look what's on the chopping block, selected for big cuts: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health insurance for children and aid to law enforcement. (Yes, Mr. Bush proposes to cut farm subsidies, which are truly wasteful. Let's see how much political capital he spends on that proposal.) Until now, the administration has also been able to pretend that the budget deficit isn't an important issue so the role of tax cuts in causing that deficit can be ignored. But Mr. Bush has at last conceded that the deficit is indeed a major problem. Why shouldn't the affluent, who have done so well from Mr. Bush's policies, pay part of the price of dealing with that problem? Here's a comparison: the Bush budget proposal would cut domestic discretionary spending, adjusted for inflation, by 16 percent over the next five years. That would mean savage cuts in education, health care, veterans' benefits and environmental protection. Yet these cuts would save only about $66 billion per year, about one-sixth of the budget deficit. On the other side, a rollback of Mr. Bush's cuts in tax rates for high-income brackets, on capital gains and on dividend income would yield more than $120 billion per year in extra revenue - eliminating almost a third of the budget deficit - yet have hardly any effect on middle-income families. (Estimates from the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution show that such a rollback would cost families with incomes between $25,000 and $80,000 an average of $156.) Why, then, shouldn't a rollback of high-end tax cuts be on the table? Democrats have surprised the Bush administration, and themselves, by effectively pushing back against Mr. Bush's attempt to dismantle Social Security. It's time for them to broaden their opposition, and push back against Mr. Bush's tax policy. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.tompaine.com/print/boomers_budget_and_a_socalled_bust.php Boomers, Budget And A So-Called Bust Robert B. Reich February 11, 2005 Right now, there are more baby boomers putting money into the Social Security system than there are retirees taking out from it. That means there's a surplus-extra money! But you probably haven't heard what it's being used for, says former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. Here's a hint: Bush's record-breaking deficits are actually a lot larger than you think. Robert B. Reich is the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University, and was the secretary of labor under former President Bill Clinton. Start with this basic fact. The massive post-war baby boom generation is a demographic bulge moving through the American population like a pig through a python. Today's boomers bankroll today's Social Security retirees with their payroll taxes, as does every generation. That's the way Social Security was designed-as a pay-as-you-go system. But boomers outnumber retirees. So there's extra money in the kitty-a Social Security surplus. Here's the dirty little secret. Those surpluses are being used to reduce the president's budget deficits. The president's new budget predicts that this year's deficit will be $427 billion. But it would be much, much larger-a whopping $589 billion-without this year's Social Security surplus. Over the next decade, more boomers will be in their peak earning years, which means the Social Security surplus is going to swell. And the White House plans to use these growing surpluses to reduce future budget deficits even more. In fact, a big reason why they predict their deficits will drop is because the Social Security surplus will grow. So what happens when the boomer bulge moves into retirement? The president says that by then, around 2018, Social Security won't have enough money to pay them all the benefits that they're due. Well, of course it won't. Because the surpluses the boomers generated before then were used to reduce the budget deficits. That doesn't mean Social Security is going bust. It only means the federal government has to start repaying all the money it's borrowed from the boomers Social Security. That's only fair. After all, the Social Security payroll tax is more regressive than other taxes. You pay the same percent regardless of your income, starting with the first dollar you earn all the way up to $90,000 a year-and then over that you don't pay a dime. So if the government's going to depend for years on the boomer's payroll taxes to reduce its budget deficits, by the time the boomers retire it should replenish Social Security with revenues from more progressive income and corporate taxes. And in the meantime, to be really fair, raise the cap on the amount of wages subject to the payroll tax. This commentary originally appeared on Marketplace, public radio's only daily business news program, and is reprinted via a special arrangement between TomPaine.com and Robert Reich. Marketplace is produced by Minnesota Public Radio and is heard on 322 public radio stations nationwide. More online at www.marketplace.org. *** Top American Playwright Arthur Miller Dies at 89 By Mark Egan | February 11, 2005 http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2005/02/11/playwright_arthur_miller_dies_at_89_reuters/ Reuters NEW YORK (Reuters) - Playwright Arthur Miller, a titan of American theater who wrote "Death of a Salesman" and was revered for works that spoke for the common man, has died. He was 89. Miller's personal life, including a stormy marriage to sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, often captivated America. His left-wing views had brought a face-to-face clash with the U.S. Congress during the 1950s crackdown on communist sympathizers. The playwright died of congenital heart failure Thursday night at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, his assistant Julia Bolus said on Friday. His son, Robert Miller, said he was surrounded by relatives and friends when he died. "Death of a Salesman," a tragedy whose central character, failed businessman Willy Loman, became an archetype for shattered dreams, is considered a 20th- century classic. The play won him a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award at age 33. His other major works included "All My Sons," "A View from the Bridge," and "The Crucible." "He was a big man and a deeply American man," said Zoe Caldwell, one of the great Broadway actresses who worked with Miller. "He was busy working on plays right until he got sick. He had such a great life that you don't feel sad for Arthur." Fellow playwright and friend Harold Pinter told the BBC that Miller's plays "are among the finest works that have been produced in the 20th century." Author Salman Rushdie, president of international writers association PEN, said in a statement: "He made plays with the grandeur and power of high tragedy, revealing what he called...the 'dream rising out of reality."' Broadway lights were to go dark at 8 p.m. on Friday as a tribute. "Death of a Salesman" was drew rave reviews when it opened in 1949. "It is so simple in style and so inevitable in theme that it scarcely seems like a thing that has been written and acted," New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson wrote. "(Miller) has looked with compassion into the hearts of some ordinary Americans and quietly transferred their hope and anguish to the theater," he added. POLITICAL VOICE "The Crucible," about the 17th-century Salem witch trials, was a metaphor for U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy's Cold War hunt for communist sympathizers. Miller himself was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956 and was cited for contempt of Congress after he refused to name fellow left- wingers. The decision was overturned on appeal, and Miller remained an active political voice throughout his long career. "I always felt it was a deep tragedy that he never won the Nobel Prize," said Robert Weil, executive editor of publisher W.W. Norton, who noted that he won most other major honors. "He spoke for both the oppressed and the common man in a way that no one else in his generation did." More recently, Miller voiced concern in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks over whether President Bush was up to the task facing him and the United States. "He's not a very good actor. He's too obvious most of the time, he has no confidence in his own facade, so he's constantly overemphasizing his sincerity," Miller said. Miller emerged out of the 1930s Depression to write social dramas with the power of Greek tragedy. His private life was equally dramatic, notably his doomed marriage to Monroe. He wrote his first produced screenplay, "The Misfits," for Monroe based on a short story he wrote before their 1956 marriage. The 1961 film was the last ever made by either Monroe or co-star Clark Cable, who died from a heart attack soon after. Monroe divorced Miller after making the film and died the following year. At the end of his life, the playwright was battling cancer, pneumonia and a heart condition. He had been released from the hospital some weeks ago. He died at the-18th century farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut, he bought in 1958 while married to Monroe and where he spent the last years of his life with his 34-year-old girlfriend, painter Agnes Barley, his son said. "It took him a great effort to get here," Robert Miller told Reuters. "This is where he wanted to be." In a 1987 memoir "Timebends," completed when he was 72, Miller wrote vividly of his five-year marriage to Monroe, describing her as a woman haunted by ghosts of an unhappy childhood that eventually destroyed her. Miller's most recent work "Finishing the Picture" was produced in Chicago last year and drew on his experience with Monroe on the set of "The Misfits." (additional reporting by Claudia Parsons and Steve Gorman) (c) Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company *** http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/02/11/obit.miller.ap/ Playwright Arthur Miller dead at 89 Friday, February 11, 2005 Posted: 11:29 AM EST (1629 GMT) ROXBURY, Connecticut (AP) -- Arthur Miller, the Pulitzer prize-winning playwright whose most famous fictional creation, Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman," came to symbolize the American Dream gone awry, has died, his assistant said Friday. He was 89. Miller, who had been hailed as America's greatest living playwright, died Thursday night at his home in Roxbury of heart failure, his assistant, Julia Bolus, said Friday. His family was at his bedside, she said. His plays, with their strong emphasis on family, morality and personal responsibility, spoke to the growing fragmentation of American society. "A lot of my work goes to the center of where we belong -- if there is any root to life -- because nowadays the family is broken up, and people don't live in the same place for very long," Miller said in a 1988 interview. "Dislocation, maybe, is part of our uneasiness. It implants the feeling that nothing is really permanent." Miller's career was marked by early success. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "Death of a Salesman" in 1949, when he was just 33 years old. His marriage to Marilyn Monroe in 1956 further catapulted the playwright to fame, though that was publicity he said he never pursued. In a 1992 interview with a French newspaper, he called her "highly self-destructive" and said that during their marriage, "all my energy and attention were devoted to trying to help her solve her problems. Unfortunately, I didn't have much success." "Death of a Salesman," which took Miller only six weeks to write, earned rave reviews when it opened on Broadway in February 1949, directed by Elia Kazan. The story of Willy Loman, a man destroyed by his own stubborn belief in the glory of American capitalism and the redemptive power of success, was made into a movie and staged all over the world. "I couldn't have predicted that a work like 'Death of a Salesman' would take on the proportions it has," Miller said in 1988. "Originally, it was a literal play about a literal salesman, but it has become a bit of a myth, not only here but in many other parts of the world." In 1999, 50 years after it won the Tony Award as best play, "Death of a Salesman" won the Tony for best revival of the Broadway season. The show also won the top acting prize for Brian Dennehy, who played Loman. Miller, then 83, received a lifetime achievement award. "Just being around to receive it is a pleasure," he joked to the audience during the awards ceremony. Miller won the New York Drama Critics' Circle's best play award twice in the 1940s, for "All My Sons" in 1947 and for "Death of a Salesman." In 1953, he received a Tony Award for "The Crucible," a play about mass hysteria during the Salem witch trials that was inspired by the repressive political environment of McCarthyism. That play, still read by thousands of American high-school students each year, is Miller's most frequently performed work. Miller and Monroe divorced after five years and in 1962 he married his third wife, photographer Inge Morath. That same year, Monroe committed suicide. Miller wrote the screenplay for the Monroe film "The Misfits," which came out in 1960, and reflected on their relationship in his 1963 play "After the Fall." Reminiscing about Monroe in his 1987 autobiography, "Timebends: A Life," Miller lamented that she was rarely taken seriously as anything but a sex symbol. "To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was," he wrote. "Instead, she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes." Miller's success, so overwhelming in the 1940s and '50s, seemed to be on the wane during the next two decades. But the 1980s brought a renewal of interest, beginning with a Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman" starring Dustin Hoffman in 1984. Enthusiasm for Miller's work was particularly strong in England, which marked his 75th birthday in 1990 with four major productions of his plays. Miller also directed a Chinese production of "Death of a Salesman" at the Beijing Peoples' Art Theatre in 1983. Those who saw the Beijing production may not have identified with Loman's career, Miller wrote, but they shared his desire, "which was to excel, to win out over anonymity and meaninglessness, to love and be loved, and above all, perhaps, to count." In his later years, Miller became increasingly disillusioned with Broadway, and in 1991 he premiered a new play, "The Ride Down Mt. Morgan," in London -- the first time he had opened a play outside of the United States. Miller said at the time he opted for the London opening to avoid the "dark defeatism" of the New York theater scene. "There is an open terror of the critics (in New York) and of losing fortunes of money," Miller said in an interview that year. "I have always hated that myself. All in all, it seemed like we ought to do the play in London." He returned to Broadway in 1994 with "Broken Glass," a drama about a dysfunctional family that won respectful reviews and a Tony nomination, but no big audiences. In London, it won an Olivier award as best play. Even in his later years, Miller continued to write. "It is what I do," he said in a 1996 interview with The Associated Press. "It is my art. I am better at it than I ever was. And I will do it as long as I can. When you reach a certain age you can slough off what is unnecessary and concentrate on what is. And why not?" "Resurrection Blues" had its world premiere at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in the summer of 2002 when Miller was 86. Set in an unnamed banana republic, the satire dealt with the possible televised execution of a revolutionary. In recent years New York even rediscovered Miller's first Broadway play, "The Man Who Had All the Luck," which was a four-performance flop in 1944, but had a successful revival, starring Chris O'Donnell, nearly six decades later. Last October, another new play, "Finishing the Picture," premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. It was based on an episode of his marriage to Monroe. In accepting his lifetime achievement award at the 1999 Tony awards ceremony, Miller lamented that Broadway had become too narrow. "I hope that a new dimension and fresh resolve will inspire the powers that be to welcome fiercely ambitious playwrights," Miller said. "And that the time will come again when they will find a welcome for their big, world-challenging plays, somewhere west of London and somewhere east of the Hudson River." He was born October 17, 1915, Miller was one of three children in a middle-class Jewish family. His father, a manufacturer of women's coats, was hard hit by the Depression in the 1930s, and could not afford to send Miller to college when the time came. Miller worked as a loader and shipping clerk at a New York warehouse to earn tuition money and eventually attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1938. He wrote his first plays in college, where they were awarded numerous prizes. He also published several novels and collections of short stories. He wrote several screenplays, including "The Misfits" (1961), which became Monroe's last movie, and "Playing for Time," (1981) a controversial television movie about the women's orchestra at Auschwitz. He also wrote a number of books with Morath, mainly about their travels in Russia and China. Miller had two children, Jane Ellen and Robert, by his first wife, Mary Slattery, and he and Morath had one daughter, Rebecca. To subscribe: http://lists.portside.org/mailman/listinfo/portside [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! 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