Bill O'Reilly, Taxes and Medicare...Left, Right, Center...What is the best plan?

Great Debates
1

It is hard to find a better advocate of Right Wing conservative ideals than Bill O’Reilly (of Fox News O’Rielly Factor). Although I find many of his views abhorrent…I sometimes enjoy his program. I really want to believe he genuinely is seeking solutions to the problems of our world. When he argues for a position, he usually seems to have a rational argument behind it…as opposed to simply standing behind a position due to blind faith. I also want to believe he would alter his view if he discovered it was flawed, which is a hallmark of a person on a path towards wisdom.

Do I think Bill O’Reilly is wise? Mmm…no. I think he is a little sleazy in the way he uses his show to trounce views he disagrees with. He does invite opposing opinions on the show, but he happily talks over them and bully’s them when it is convenient. Nonetheless, I suppose such tactics are fair game in a public debate. I just personally find them distasteful.

In any case, let’s return the subject that is more important than the character of any single person: The problems of our society. I mention Bill O’Rielly because he was recently generous enough to encapsulate the Right Wing Conservative vision of America in his recent Talking Points Memo. In this memo he credited the recent signs of economic recovery to George Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, but then he goes on to say, “The federal government is spending far too much money on entitlements and wasteful programs that don’t work.” And next O’Reilly very nicely defines the two basic opposing schools of thoughts (from his perspective) regarding taxes and social benefit programs.

He begins with the Left “Liberal Vision”. He says,

“You cannot run a nanny state as the far left wants and have reasonable taxation. That’s impossible. The left wants an economy run by the government, with money going to every social and medical program imaginable…”

Mr. O’Reilly then describes the Right wing view, which he obviously favors:

“The conservative take is a supply side system, whereby consumers spend and jobs are created by the private sector, which profits from the spending, obviously. No one in this country should pay more than half their income to the government. That is not how capitalism works. If we want to change over to socialism, let’s discuss it.”

Well, there we have it, the Left wing liberal vision and the right wing conservative vision. Which one is the right idea? Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Full text of the Talking Points Memo quoted above.

Feel free to visit the Wisdom Project and debate this topic within the Think Tank Forums . :slight_smile: Who knows, you may get published…and even paid for your insight.

2

Well that’s an extremely simplistic and cartoonish presentation of the two sides. The debate, as presented, is so heavily loaded to the right that it prevents a rational discussion. O’Reilly is spouting childish propaganda. Any debate in which the “sides” are defined by a fanatic idealogue is doomed from the start.

3

DtC’s ad hominem attack on O’Reilly notwithstanding, I do agree with him that the talking points memo is extremely simplistic, and not of much use. Let’s list specific policies of “the left” and “right” and debate those individually. Lumping things into broad categories simply polarizes people and encourages partisan bickering.

From my perspective, “the right”, as represented by the Republican party, has not demonstrated an ability to shrink the size of the federal government. If you look at the federal budget over the last 10 years or so, you can see that the total amount of thought going into what it’s proper size should be amounts to: “increase the budget by 5% every year”. This is regardless of which party is in control.

4

If Bush thinks that his tax-rebates were part of a long-term solution, then it probably wouldn’t be wise to start celebrating a little rise in the us economic picture as being ‘proof’ that the rebates worked.
O’Reilly is a sensationalist and so is Bush. The ‘long-term’ of things will reveal their true colors. But in the meantime they are stuffing their pockets and laughing all the way to the bank.

5

Not true…In the last two years, with Bush in control, it’s gone up about 12 or 13% per year! (Or at least the discretionary part.)

Seriously though, if people want to shrink government, then they should shrink government…that is, they should tell us what they are going to cut! What the Bush Administration is doing is creating a fiscal train wreck down the road so government will have to shrink (or taxes go up) but they won’t have to take the blame.

The basic point is that people want low taxes and the government programs funded by the taxes. In the long run, they can’t have both of these. But, they can in the short run.

As for the tax cuts and the economy: For heaven’s sake, it is well-known that the sort of spending binge as well as the tax cut binge is bound to produce some stimulus in the short run by injecting money into the economy. This isn’t rocket science…It is predicted by simple Keynesian economics. However, the questions to ask are:

(1) Was this the best way to do it?

(2) What are the costs?

The answer to (1) is NO. A better way to get bang for the buck is to give the bulk of the tax cuts to those who will tend to spend it immediately, rather than the wealthy. You also get the most bang for the buck if you make it temporary so you get the stimulus when the economy is slack and then you don’t hamper yourself down the road.

The answer to (2) is that the costs are enormous…Deficits as far as the eye can see under most realistic projections.

In other words, we have gotten the minimum gain for the maximum buck.

The Bush Administration gloating about producing some stimulus for the economy is sort of like someone gloating that they really blasted away that annoying mosquito with their nuclear bomb. It may be true…but it doesn’t make it the best policy.

6

Oh yeah…Another point is that the economy goes in cycles anyway. It was bound to eventually recover. And, the fact remains that even with the surge we are having now, Bush will be hard-pressed not to end his term next year with a net job loss…the first President since Herbert Hoover who can boast that dubious distinction.

7

Well, one has to believe that the recent statistic of worker productivity, up over 9%, the highest in 20 years, has something to do with the economic buildup as of late. I don’t believe that the tax cut to the upper class has fully come into effect yet, rather the workers are producing more (one could even say production is humming along at a breakneck speed). We’ll see if the tax cuts did any good in the next couple of months when these products go to market. Will they sit on shelves or will these products be bought? One has to assume that when an equitable amount of profit is made from the sale of these theoretical goods, the businesses will hire more workers to continue to produce, make more of these products, so on and so forth.

Summarily, we’ll see what the tax cuts did in the months to come. I think we have to thank the tenacity of the workers for the current upward trend.

8

When you come out of a recession, you always have an artificially high rate of growth. That’s because it primarily involves the economy putting resources (workers and capital) back to work that had previously lain idle. It’s not the same thing as stimulating a new growth in capacity. Indeed, that’s another reason why recessions are so bad. All those previously wasted resources are wasted FOREVER. That is, society’s income will always be lower than it would have otherwise been without the recession. So it’s simply not sensible to say “look, we solved the recession eventually!” as if that’s tantamount to fixing a broken toilet. The damage that was done is permanent, and if it could have been stimulated faster and earlier, that would have been the superior option, and a lost opportunity.

9

Not true? Since I was clearly talking about the entire federal budget, I’m going to assume that you have made an honest mistake, and were not trying to deliberately decieve people.

Here are the official whitehouse budget figures. For the last few years:

1999 $1.70T
2000 $1.79T (increase of 5.3%)
2001 $1.86T (increase of 4.0%)
2002 $2.01T (increase of 8.1%)
2003 $2.14T (increase of 6.5%)

As you can see, there’s no 12% increase.

10

John,

Okay. It wasn’t entirely clear to me from the source I found whether they were talking the total budget or only the discretionary part when they were saying 27% in 2 years … that is why I put in the phrase “(or at least the discretionary part)”. [I also wasn’t sure whether your 5% per year number was the total budget or applied to the discretionary part?]

It would be interesting to see how much the discretionary part has been rising and compare that to what has been the general baseline rise over time.

11

Yes, it would. Is there a way to define “discretionary spending” that wouldn’t result in a debate in and of itself? By that I mean, does the budgeting process actually categorize items as discretionary and non-discretionary?

12

William F. Buckley
George Will
David Brooks
Bill Kristol
Norman Podherotz
Thomas Sowell
P.J O’Rourke
Florence King
Rich Lowry
Tucker Carlson
Kate O’Beirne

Shall I go on?

Outside of Ann Coulter, I’d be hard-pressed to find a worse advocate of conservative ideals than O’Reilly.

13

Let’s start with the fact that O’Reilly has said repeatedly he isn’t a conservative. You can not be a Leftist without automatically being a Conservative. So, I don’t think he is trying to represent the Conservative viewpoint. I consider his point of view to be the (what’s-in-it-for-me?) philosophy. A lot of people share that point of view.

Also, I think O’Reilly’s show is interesting (more interesting than others like it) because he cuts people off when they begin to get off on tangents. These tangents, on other shows, usually have the show ending without the core issue being addressed. Also, he gets top-level guests because they know that at the end of the show he’ll give them some uninterrupted time to express their point of view.

The economic beliefs of leftists and rightists are pretty well known – and both are rejected by most people.

14

That’s what he means by “no spin”, TWOTfan. His critics don’t seem to get it and complain that when he offers an opinion it is “spin”.

The factor is a news analysis program. He has said repeatedly that they expect the viewer to already be informed of the facts.
They are there to analyse the news. The entire show is O’Reilly voicing his opinion.

Now, he happens to be a somewhat conservative leaning guy. But, that doesn’t mean he is an idealogue who simply bashes liberals and protects conservatives. He calls every issue as he sees it and will cut anyone off if they stray from the topic or dodge a question.

15

Of course, the fact that Bill O’Reilly has been caught repeatedly lying, spinning, and misrepresenting things to promote his own viewpoint doesn’t bother you two, does it? :rolleyes:

16

The only lie he has been caught in that I am aware of is his mistake of confusing a Peobody award with a Polk award.

He is on the radio 3 hours a day. His TV show is for an hour daily. He has a weekly newspaper column. Anything he does say that is factually untrue will be quickly pointed out by one of the dozens of left wing web sites that monitor him. All they get is a slip up like mistaking the name of an award.

As far as spinning and misrepresenting, see my post for his definition of spin. He makes the guests answer the questions. He doesn’t let them spin out of the tough questions. That does not mean he doesn’t have an opinion on things. He does. He admits it. It’s the point of the analysis news program that he hosts.

17

A short list:

[ul]
[li]O’Reilly lied that he registered to vote as an independent, and was affiliated as a Republican by mistake. In reality, he checked the “Republican” box on his registration form. (from Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Franken)[/li][li]O’Reilly alleges that he has been called vicious names like “gasbag,” “bully,” “liar” or “blowhard” in mainstream news stories. A LexisNexus search shows no mainstream news articles using those terms to describe him, and that most of the insults came from either Al Franken and rapper Ludacris. (from Spinsanity)[/li][li]O’Reilly urges his viewers to boycott Pepsi for hiring rap singer Ludacris. Six months later, he denies ever calling for a boycott. (transcript here.)[/li][li]O’Reilly distorts the position of the son of a 9/11 victim who was critical of George W. Bush, and yells at him on the air. (transcript here.)[/li][li]O’Reilly blames Bill Clinton for 9/11, saying Clinton didn’t do anything against terrorism – except for tripling the antiterrorism budget, increasing FBI antiterrorism efforts, and authorizing the assassination of Osama bin Laden (reference)[/li][/ul]
Again, a short list. You might also want to check out the book The O’Really? Factor, which is just jammed with more nonsense from Bill.

18

O’Reilly said he was always a registered independant. It turns out he was registered at one point as a republican. He claims he didn’t remember doing this, or did it as a mistake.

Why not believe him? It’s easy enough to check, so if he were lying he would know it would come out. Either way, this is something that happened many years ago, IIRC. If O’Reilly is such a big fat liar, then why can’t you find anything recent. Like I said, he’s constantly speaking on record, and plenty of liberals are watching him waiting for him to slip up.

From your cite, O’Reilly says:

To which even the left wing spinsanity site admits:

So, your statement above that “no mainstream news articles using those terms to describe him” is proven false by your own cite.

The mainstream news articles are using those terms, but they are attributing them to Franken “or other O’Reilly critics”. As well as appearing in opinion, feature and review columns.

So, admittedly even to an anti-O’Reilly liberal web site, they admit hard news articles are using those terms. They just don’t say it without attributing it to a third party. How nice of them. :rolleyes:

Either way, O’Reilly is not lying here.

Your cite here is another message board? Nice try.

WantaghDem is an unregistered, anonymous user on a message board. A cite his post does not make.

I’ve seen the video of this after another thread on O’Reilly. The kid was a putz. The next day he apologized to his viewers for ever putting him on the air.

The fact that O’Reilly yells at guests when they deserve it makes him entertaining. You might not like it, but it doesn’t make him a liar.

O’Reilly Sucks.com - Great un-biased source you got there.

The first statement of the site is:

Yet, no direct O’Reilly quotes are presented.

You have a date, go and find the quote from a reputable source that O’Reilly blames Clinton for the terror attacks. Good luck.

I get enough left wing factless spew from the SDMB, without seeking more of it out. Thanks anyway.

19

rjung:
O’Reilly, being a very popular talking head, has an army of detractors parsing his every word looking for the slightest slip. If your list is the worst you can come up with, it’s pretty weak. The two most serious, your points #4 and #5, offer an intersting example.

#4. As I read your cite, it sure seems to me that the guy is blaming the US gov’t for training the folks who killed his father. Said killing happend on 9/11, so it sure seems to me he was talking about that terrorist attack (contrary to your cite, which clams he wasn’t), when he says “By radical extremists who were trained by our government” in response to O’Reilly saying “in respect for your father… who got killed unnecessarily by barbarians”

#5. Got a quote from O’Reilly that says “Bill Clinton is responsible for 9/11”? No, because there isn’t one. I’m sure I’ve heard B.O. claim that Clinton was negligent in not capturing ObL when we could have, but claiming that means O’Reilly says Clinton is responsible for 9/11 is exactly the kind of distortion that your cite in #4 is accusing O’Reilly of.

If I heard O’Reilly slamming Clinton by quoting false unemployment figures from the 90s (when Clinton was pres) or pumping up Bush by overstating poll numbers showing popular support for the current pres, I’d be on the “O’Liely bandwangon” with you. Yeah, he can often be a pompous windbag who yells unencessarily at his guests. But someone who deliberately lies to bolster a partisan opinion? I haven’t seen it.

20

Oh come on…That is ridiculous. The whole point of O’Reilly’s claim was to show that there was liberal media bias in these hard news stories. Are these reporters not allowed to quote other people? Did O’Reilly demonstrate that these quotes were attributed in a way that made it sound like the news reporter agreed with the characterization? What if they were writing a story on the decay of current political discourse into namecalling…Do they have to do it without any examples?

Did O’Reilly bother to run this check on liberals who have been called names by others to see if these were reported or not?

The fact is that O’Reilly left the implication that he was being called these names by the media in hard news stories they did on him. He has provided no evidence to back up this claim.