Month: January 2014

Rand Paul’s False Equivalence On Women’s Rights

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

 

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has been fighting some rearguard defensive action in an attempt to counter claims from the Democratic Party that the GOP is waging a “war on women” in their legislative efforts.

Dredging up the memory of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, Paul took to NBC’s “Meet The Press” to make the slightly odd argument that the Democrats have no right to call out the GOP for their retrograde attitude towards women’s equality and freedom because a former Democratic president abused his position of power and treated certain specific women disrespectfully.

Politico reports:

Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday that Democrats and those in the media criticizing Republicans for a so-called “War on Women” give a free pass to former-President Bill Clinton’s “predatory behavior” against Monica Lewinsky.

“The Democrats — one of their big issues is they’ve concocted this, ‘Republicans are committing a war on women,'” Kentucky Republican said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “One of the work place laws and rules that I think are good is that bosses shouldn’t prey on young interns in their office. I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this. He took advantage of a girl that was 20-years-old and an intern in his office. There is no excuse for that and that is predatory behavior.”

“It should be something we shouldn’t want to associate with people who would take advantage of a young girl. This isn’t having an affair — this isn’t me saying, ‘Oh, he’s had an affair. We shouldn’t talk to him.’ Someone who takes advantage of a young girl in their office — I mean really, and then they have the gall to stand up and say that Republicans are having a war on women? So yes, I think it’s a factor. Now it’s not Hillary’s fault. But it is a factor in judging Bill Clinton in history.”

Senator Paul is absolutely right to call out Bill Clinton’s behaviour for what it was – an abuse of his presidential power and symptomatic of a predatory attitude toward women. What makes this different from what the Republican Party has been doing, however, is the fact that the Lewinsky affair was a private indiscretion, and the harm done to women took place in the course of interpersonal relationships between those people directly involved. The Republican Party, on the other hand, has sought to push for legislative outcomes – around contraception, abortion and equal pay to name a few – that would impact all women in the United States. Private action vs. public legislative action. False equivalence.

He waged war on specific women, not all of them as a group. Image from AP.
He waged war on specific women, not all of them as a group.
Image from AP.

 

When it comes to Republicans and standards of personal behaviour, it is all too often a case of “do as we say, not as we do”. Rand Paul now seems to be trying to change this motto into “don’t do as the Democrats say, because of what Bill Clinton did”. It is a flimsy argument, because the uncomfortable truth is that large swathes of the Republican Party have not been marching under the banner of gender equality, even in 2014. And I suspect that it will take more than rushing Rand Paul out on stage to remind us of Bill Clinton’s wandering hands to divert attention from the Repubican Party’s manifold shortcomings in this area.

I find a lot to admire in Rand Paul, who I find infinitely preferable to the GOP’s other main rising star in the US Senate, Ted Cruz. Where Cruz is abrasive and haughty, Rand Paul seems somewhat more collegiate, able to press even his more strident causes (such as his lengthy filibuster against the US policy of drone strikes and targeted assassination of US citizens without trial) without ruffling too many feathers or unduly making enemies. However, by making this false equivalence between the actions of a politician in his private life and the legislative goals of a whole political party, Paul is doing himself, and us a disservice.

Democrats have what Sen. Paul calls “the gall” to accuse Republicans of waging a war on women because unfortunately, a lot of them are. For every tirade by Rush Limbaugh accusing women of being sluts for daring to want birth control to be covered by their health insurance, there is an elected Republican legislator or governor diligently working to actively chip away at women’s rights in slightly more palatable, legislative language.

And so for as long as the Republican Party remains in thrall to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his unenlightened attitude toward gender equality, they will likely continue to be perceived as “warriors against women”. If Rand Paul is unhappy with this reality it is within his power to do something about it. He has a bully pulpit, and his words command attention. But it is some of his own colleagues that he will need to publicly disown; not Bill Clinton.

Labour Reveal Their Priorities

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Miss me yet?

 

It was heavily trailed, but now we know for sure – Labour, who have been feeling the heat as a result of their total lack of credibility on the economy and the fact that the Tories are finally starting to benefit from the fruits of economic recovery, have been forced into revealing some of their plans for the future. And what plans they are. They can best be summarised as “let’s return to how things were in the final days of Gordon Brown’s premiership”.

Whether this makes you want to get out or chequebook and make a huge contribution to the Labour Party or scream and and fall down on the floor in absolute incredulity depends entirely on your political leaning.

The Telegraph reports on Ed Ball’s major policy speech:

[Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls] said it was wrong for the Coalition government to have decided to cut the 50p top rate of tax to 45p from April last year.

“When the deficit is still high, when tough times are now set to last well into the next parliament, when for ordinary families their real incomes are falling and taxes have risen, it cannot be right for David Cameron and George Osborne to have chosen to give the richest people in the country a huge tax cut,” Mr Balls said.

“That’s why for the next parliament the next Labour government will reverse this government’s top rate tax cut, so we can finish the job of getting the deficit down and do it fairly.

“For the next Parliament, we will restore the 50p top rate of tax for those earning over £150,000 – reversing this unfair tax cut for the richest one per cent of people in the country and cutting the deficit in a fairer way.”

Ed Balls calls cutting the top rate of income tax from 50 to 45% a “huge tax cut”. Let us leave aside for a moment the ludicrous presumption on Balls’ part that taking a full half of the incremental pound that someone earns in income tax alone (never mind National Insurance, indirect taxes and VAT) could ever be proposed in a sentence together with the word “fair” and be taken seriously. I am more interested in what Ed Balls and the Labour Party had to say when Gordon Brown decided to raise the top rate of income tax from 40% to 50%. I’m pretty sure that they didn’t call it a “huge tax increase”. In fact, I know that they didn’t sell it to the country that way. So if increasing the top rate of income tax by ten pence in the pound is not a huge increase, how can a partial rollback of five pence be considered a huge tax cut? The answer, of course, is that it cannot.

So a friend of mine had this great idea on tax...
So a friend of mine had this great idea on tax…

 

In what was doubtless intended as a ringing statement designed to assure us of Labour’s new-found commitment to sensible economic management, Balls also committed to eliminating the budget deficit by the end of the next Parliament, in 2020:

Mr Balls announced what Labour said would be a binding commitment to balance the books, deliver a surplus on the current budget and get the national debt falling in the next Parliament.

Quite why we would want to exchange a government that tried and failed to manage this feat in the lifetime of the current Parliament for one that never displayed an interest in doing so until now but which suddenly claims to be able to achieve it in the next Parliament if only they are given the keys to power is never fully explained.

Neither does Balls acknowledge the fact that even when the budget deficit is eliminated, the national debt will remain intact and ominously large – he makes no proposals about running a future surplus to begin paying down this debt and lowering the nation’s interest payments. Neither, of course, does George Osborne devote much of his time to that niggling fact – but if Ed Balls really wants to seize the mantle of economic trustworthiness from Osborne he needs to aim higher and show that he has a better grasp of the longer term picture than his counterpart.

The reaction to Balls’ speech from the business community – who Labour like to malign, but are actually the ones who create the jobs and pay corporation tax and National Insurance contributions – was predictably scornful. Words and phrases such as “absurd”, “disaster”, “unmitigated disaster”, “putting our economic security at risk”, “unhelpful” and “political posturing” were often deployed.

By contrast, the Unite trade union saw Balls’ announcement as a fantastic development, and urged Labour to ever more destructive heights of foolishness and irresponsibility:

However, the Unite trade union, Labour’s biggest donor, welcomed the policy but warned it was only “a beginning”.

A Unite spokesman said: “The commitment to restore the 50p top rate of tax is a sign that a future Labour government understands the need for a fairer taxation system in this country.

“This is a beginning; we would urge Labour to also tackle the disgraceful abuse of the system by the evaders and avoiders too.

You know what would make tax avoidance really difficult, unnecessary and socially unacceptable? A flat tax. But somehow I don’t see Unite advocating for that any time in the near future. Because, though they do not like to admit it in public, high taxes are not a regrettable but necessary evil to people like Ed Balls and his cheerleaders on the left. For Ed Balls, higher taxes are a desirable end in themselves, a last line of defence to ensnare anyone who defies the odds and manages to break through Labour’s dragnet legacy of mediocre standardised education, burdensome regulations and big government and succeed in spite of themselves.

With regard to Labour’s brave new economic stance, the British electorate will cast the only verdict that matters in May of 2015. But I think David Cameron and George Osborne will be sleeping a little more easily in their beds from now on, warm in the knowledge that Ed Balls has set Labour on a firm course back to 2010.