In fact, that's what the Democracy Underground is calling Marie Burns, a frequent commenter at the New York Times -- a new cult figure. Burns writes well, succinctly, and knows whereof she speaks.
Ross Douthat had another really awful op-ed piece in the Times today about the fiscal commission and the commission of sins by Erskine and Simpson. Here's Marie Burns' response, for which she was voted right into stratosphere by fellow readers. I take the liberty of quoting her in full.
First of all, Ross, why do you suppose Alan & Erskine leaked their diabolical little plan while both the President & Congress were away? I'd submit it was because they knew what a fraud they had hatched & they hoped Nancy Pelosi & President Obama would be too busy to notice (she wasn't; he was).
Second, where did Alan & Erskine get off cutting Social Security benefits? Social Security is a separate fund & not part of the commission's mandate. I guess the boys just couldn't help themselves. While they were busy slashing benefits for the poor & middle class, they figured they might as well invade Social Security, too. MYOB is not something they know how to do.
Third, what gave the boys the bright idea they should decide to cap revenues? They are supposed to be heading up a DEFICIT commission. Revenues can be whatever. Again, they stepped way outside the boundaries of their mandate. They weren't writing a deficit-reduction report. They were writing a small government report. Very Republican -- which brings us to ...
Fourth, where do you get the idea the plan isn't a Republican's dream? This is the work of two men, one an old Republican who has lived off the public all his life, & the other a rich old Southern financier who has lived off the public sporadically in accordance with the elitist "public service" mantra (a/k/a a means of making sure the rich stay rich & the poor stay poor). Do you think either of these guys has ever had so much as a liberal dream, much less a waking liberal thought?
Fifth, rather than accepting your view of what the Alan & Erskine plan does, let's look at how a Nobel Prize-winning economist sums it up:
"... what the co-chairmen are proposing is a mixture of tax cuts and tax increases — tax cuts for the wealthy, tax increases for the middle class. They suggest eliminating tax breaks that ... matter a lot to middle-class Americans ... and using much of the revenue gained thereby, not to reduce the deficit, but to allow sharp reductions in both the top marginal tax rate and in the corporate tax rate.... This proposal clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans." -- Paul Krugman
