Presswatch / Supply-Side and Other Scarcities
Barnes, Fred
Among the beneficiaries of this are handicapped people, broad classes of the economically hard-pressed, youth in qualified cooperative education programs, and certain ex-convicts (felonies...
...OMNIPOTENT GOVERNMENT by Ludwig yon Mists...
...Talese looked dapper and none the worse for having spent the seventies in massage parlors and sex i n s t i t u t e s . Vonnegut look to be, well, confused...
...Assess tax on income without any reductions therefrom...
...price $14.95 2211...
...That hardly qualifies as a revolution, much less as supply-side ecofmmics...
...Kassebaum wrote, "they [i.e., corporations] will claim a huge amount of exemptions this y e a r . . , expense account deductions, equipment deductions, etc...
...The stray cavalier turned out to be Alice K. Turner, the Playboy fiction editor...
...Oh, well, t h a t ' s just the way the Post always is, you say...
...He grinned and shook his head...
...a large number emanate from small, independent (and often highly courageous) presses...
...H i s a d m i n i s t r a t i o n has probably eliminated u n i n t e n t i o n a l l y most seminars on the Declining Presidency or the Modern Presidency's Crippled Structural Defects...
...Broder, as fair-minded a r e p o r t e r as you'll ever find, was enlisted to write the story because none of the regulars on the economics by F r e d Barnes beat were willing...
...it was inevitable...
...In Greeley, "Lawrence Hertzke is not at all apologetic about the 500 acres he sold for housing tracts...
...Indeed, the entire Reagan economic program often seems to have been targeted--not by the editorial writers, but by the reporters...
...I agree to buy 3 additional books over the next year...
...Indicate by number the 3 books you want: (?43 Name Street City State Zip...
...This was especially true of the fictionists...
...2244...
...price $14.95 2250...
...The Post is f a i r e r on most issues than conservatives are usually willing to acknowledge, and its op-ed page is brimming with right-wing columnists...
...One of the most lucid...
...The weak Presidency was not Jimmy Carter's fault...
...We need a heroic writers' movement...
...Over a hundred years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote "The virtue of books is to be readable...
...YOUR ONLY OBLIGATION is to buy 3 books over the next year, first-quality publishers' editions at 20% to 50% off publishers' prices...
...As fresh evidence of the g e n t ' s robust health, I submit the V/all Street Journal piece by Albert Hunt that took umbrage at the conduct of the Senate's 16 freshman Republicans...
...Lots of people have doubts about sex education films for schoolchildren, but Senator Jeremiah Denton of Alabama was gauche enough to show such a film to other senators...
...Last October, for example, Dan Balz reported from Minnesota that " a three-year experiment in supplyside economics here has left the Republicans in a shambles and the once dispirited Democratic Farmer Labor Party has its confidence back...
...Anything to shake the Doonesburys out of their morbid self-absorption...
...Better"to lend one's name as a sponsor than to mix with the radical hoi polloi one had helped to create...
...While Democrats are crowing these days over Ronald Reagan's problems with the economy, some influential voices are warning them to watch out...
...c o r r e c t the record...
...Simon says "flatly no" to the question of whether population growth means too much land is being paved over...
...True, Republican Governor Albert Quie's prospects for re-election in 1982 a r e n ' t g r e a t , but it is not because of "the tax revolution" that Balz blames Quie for instituting...
...Now that we know the Presidency is about as hobbled as Herschel Walker, where are all the scribes to _9 Princeton University P r e s s , $14.50...
...THE TIME OF STALIN, Portrait of a Tyranny by Anion Antonov-Ovseyenko...
...by one of the great conservative thinkers of our century...
...and John Adams, Barry Goldwater, Alexander Hamilton, George F. Will...
...And perhaps they would discover that Julian Simon is correct in dismissing the disappearing farmlands t h r e a t as a n o t h e r environmental canard...
...That p r o p o s a l . . , is usually advanced by s u p p o r t e r s of an unWHY DO ALL BOOK CLUB ADS LOOK THE SAME...
...Although unpublished, she would support any organization that supported writers, including a union, which might help her become pub26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1982...
...The shattering account of one of the longest and most depraved tyrannical epochs in modem history...
...THREE BOOKS FOR ONLY $2.99 (A Value of Up to $67.45) To join the Conservative Book Club and begin participating in all the benefits our members enjoy - - j u s t select three of the books listed at the right (fittingly enough) for only $2.99 (a value of up to $67.45...
...I think not...
...What they lack...
...Unfortunately, New York's largest literary cocktail party did not live up to its potential...
...The first and the definitive study of President Reagan's economic plan to cure America's financial ills...
...1 P.O...
...Since he has been p r e s i d e n t , both problems and the president's actions are rarely described as 'intractable...
...Q _9 _9 Remember the Crippled Presidency...
...The Great Big Concepts were simply too much...
...Saturday morning...
...Pub price $16.95 "FILE HILL OF SUMMER, A Novel o.[ thc Sot'tel ("onqt,,st b 3 Alien I)rurv Best selling conservative journalist and novelist Allen Drury at his best...
...price $27.50 2232...
...Poor planning and the participatory crush of true believers had forced the Nation Institute to close panels and shift part of the show to Town Hall...
...And small wonder...
...THE NATION'S FLAPJAW Friday night, the Roosevelt Hotel...
...To begin with, although the list of inviting sponsors comprised a Who's Who of American l i t e r a r y liberals, even before the congress convened, a number of its b r i g h t e s t and richest stars were expressing doubts...
...In Garden City, the county commissioners were proud of "choosing the benefits of urban growth over preserving the farmland...
...That left the working p r e s s , and, so far as I could see, a couple of hundred very solemn Doonesburys...
...Though a tax assessed on gross income has many virtues, not the least of which is simplicity, it is striking ifi its kinship to a national sales tax which liberals invariably describe as "regressive...
...Often, due to the long-standing liberal bias of reviewers and booksellers, they are not...
...Lewis and countless others whose ideas and words have helped "the cause...
...price $12.95 2292...
...My, my...
...No, not a fun party...
...9 _9 _9 I~n the annals of trenchant skewerings of the pretensions of the press, Tom Wolfe ranks high...
...Washington is a one-paper town now, and the Post has taken upon i t s e l f the task of discrediting the supply-side approach...
...My own personal indicator on how well any president is doing, at any particular time, is the incidence of newspaper and magazine a r t i c l e s advocating the single term of six years fi~r all presidents...
...When suspect deductions begin to include something so ordinary and necessary to the running of a business as the expenditure for equipment, then the argument is proceeding, at least implicitly, away from a tax assessed on net income to a tax assessed on gross income...
...The b e e r ran out at 10:30...
...We agree wholeheartedly...
...The.motives of the other non-attending big names seemed fairly obvious...
...A postage and handling charge is added to each shipment...
...A clear statement of the beliefs of the great Christian visionary who stands as a giant against Soviet tyranny...
...The political warnings are coming from economic forecasters, some of them long identified with the Democratic party," he said...
...And Senator Paula Hawkins o f Florida committed the unforgivable act of palpably hungering a f t e r publicity to the d e g r e e that she upstaged a colleague...
...sometimes, its penchant for accuracy have vanished...
...price $14.95 162...
...So to him goes the Victorian gent's medal with oak leaf cluster...
...Since "loopholes" and "tax expenditures" are suspect, this argument says in effect, let's eliminate even more of them, including equipment expenses...
...Or the victimology pieces about the suffering under the budget cuts...
...Reagan clearly believes, as most of us grew up believing, that one man can make a difference," Shields said...
...Besides, one probably had some writing to do...
...In November, with only a fraction of the Reagan tax cut in place, Caroline Atkinson's analysis on "Supply Side: Is the Bubble Bursting...
...posited that "never has so powerful a leader been so impotent to do what he wants to do, what he is pledged to do, what he is expected to do and what he knows he must do...
...it's entirely possible that Republican fortunes will be rosy again in time for the 1982 congressional elections," Broder wrote...
...Studs Terkel of Chicago introduced 80-year-old Meridel LeSueur who remembered it all--Eugene Debs, the Wobblies, the Palmer raids, Sacco and Vanzetti, the glorious writers' congresses--in a John S. Peterson is a vhild-care worker and writer living in New York City...
...As I listened to the keynote address in the Grand Ballroom it was obvious that the liturgy hadn't changed much...
...After President Reagan, Congressman Jack Kemp, and Paul Craig Roberts of the Treasury Department, the supply-side ranks, never swollen, grow woefully thin...
...Among the beneficiaries of this are handicapped people, broad classes of the economically hard-pressed, youth in qualified cooperative education programs, and certain ex-convicts (felonies only...
...I had hoped to attend Language as Ideology--' 'Do our metaphors reflect an impulse to colonize or liberate ? " - - but found the doors blocked...
...The agenda was political and, of course, stacked far to the Left...
...REAGANOMICS, Supply-Side Economics in Action by Bruce R. Bartlett...
...Sometimes these books are available (at much higher prices) at bookstores...
...Bgtween Friday and Sunday the congress ran a series of mini-talk shows designed to boost consciousness and illuminate the crisis facing the American writer...
...Naturally, the implication was that supply-side economics was failing badly...
...Afterwards, a Washington Post reporter found it all a bit quaint: "I mean, when is the last time you heard Engels quoted at a w r i t e r s ' conference...
...As recently as a year ago, there was handwringing galore on editorial pages and in tony publications like Foreign Policy about the inability of Presidents to accomplish anything, confronted as they are with mighty interest groups and a recalcit r a n t Congress...
...All of these points still may not persuade us that language is being d i s t o r t e d to serve certain political objectives...
...DEFENDING THE WEST by Winston Churchill 11...
...Freedom is something you do with o t h e r s , " Raskin intoned, gathering us round, " . . . though not in lockstep, certainly not in lockstep...
...price $12.95 2257...
...Lewis A spiritual classic in a striking new edition, gold-stamped cover...
...S u r p r i s i n g l y , there is one, Mark Shields, the liberal columnist, television commentator, and wit...
...But Hunt scolds some of them for expressing sentiments in public that might be quite innocuous if voiced in private...
...Morrison called upon the brothers and sisters to begin" thinking collectively...
...In fact, it was time to organize...
...It will be sent automatically...
...In December, the Post quoted J a n e t Norwood, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to the e f f e c t that " t h e economic downturn is widespread...
...If you wish to order the Main Selection, do nothing...
...I t can be said that the Republican newcomers have contributed t h e i r v o t e s , " Hunt wrote...
...But on supply-side economics, its sense of f a i r n e s s and, Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the Baltimore Sun...
...C.S...
...Many of these titles come from major publishing houses...
...What was odd was the b y l i n e - - p o l i t i c a l r e p o r t e r David Broder...
...Something has gone out of the literary Left...
...The coverage has been so one-sided that it's easy to remember the stories that have been" even-handed or perhaps favorable to supply-side economics, there having been so few of them...
...Both these credits effectively reduce the cost of employing certain workers...
...3 Books for $2.99 (A value of up to $67.45...
...Credit the Washington Post with at least a measure of responsibility for this phenomenon...
...SUPPLY-SIDE AND OTHER SCARCITIES F o l k s in Washington these days aren't exactly stampeding forward to secure a public reputation as partisans of supply-side economics...
...To portray the Minnesota case as a true supplyside test is at best an exaggeration, at worst a full-blown inaccuracy...
...Box 10655, Des Moines...
...It ignored her testimony that unemployment was at a six-year high mainly because it had never receded fully from earlier recessions and that the p a t t e r n of joblessness in the c u r r e n t recession more closely resembled the s t a r t of the mild 1980 slump than the disastrous 1974-75 recession...
...price $19.95 2281...
...L Prices somewhat higher in Canada and a b r o a d . . ~ 2195...
...Deciding to shift with it, I stopped in a coffee shop on the walk to West 43rd Street and fell into conversation with a d e l e g a t e who had made her writing her identity, she said, her life...
...price $2(1.(10 As a Conservative Book Club Member: * You'll receive 15 Conservative Book Club Bulletins per year, filled with news of interest and current Club offerings...
...To be sure, the gang of 16 is an unruly crew with yahoo tendencies...
...It always makes it easier when the fault is institutional rather than individual...
...So there...
...We are toys, things to be played with by little kings . . . who dismiss us . . . " hissed Toni Morrison, Random House editor and four-time novelist, a black female who last spring made the cover of Newsweek...
...And to his shock, the r e p o r t e r found that the farmers selling off their l a n d were not concerned a whit about the looming environmental crisis...
...Consider, for example, Marcus Raskin, the co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies...
...It used to be said, by Galbraith I believe, that the Left has more fun...
...Simon, in his intriguing book The Ultimate Resource, says that environmental hysterics fail to take into account " t h e key idea t h a t land is man-made, just like other inputs to farm production . . . . Though the stock of usable land seems fixed at any moment, it is constantly being increased--at a rapid rate in many cases--by the clearing of new land or reclamation of wasteland...
...Who wanted to be subjected to political harangues while being hit for change and deluged with manuscripts...
...Tut, tut, senator...
...This trend, the study said, raises "some very serious long-term risks...
...A final irony may be noted in the way an argument, once ill-defined, tends to fall back on itself...
...2258...
...SOLZHENITSYN, The Moral Vision by Edward E. Ericson...
...This was not surprising given Nation editor'Victor Navasky's source of inspiration_9 The idea of a congress had bubbled through his mind while reading accounts of the t h i r t i e s ' writers' congresses run by the Communist Party...
...New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato's faux pas consisted of admitting to a magazine writer that the anti-abortion lobby has pressured him into supporting a bill outlawing all abortions...
...Like other papers, the Post reported on Budget Director David Stockman's comment in the Atlantic Monthly that the Kemp-Roth tax cut of 30 percent over three years was "always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate" without mentioning that liberal Democrats had first formally proposed to drop the top rate in a single swoop...
...Bill me just $2.99 plus postage and handling...
...9 Belief in God and the family _9 Belief in military strength _9 Belief in fiscal prudence _9 Belief in the individual _9 A fierce commitment to political/economic freedom We offer these books to our members at prices far below what they cost in bookstores - - 20% to 30% and more, sometimds up to 80% off list price...
...I f Ronald Reagan heard those pronouncements, he did not heed them...
...All have been neutered and turned into respectable nine-toby John S. Peterson five humanists scrambling to become creative writers-in-residence...
...Oddly, one of the most telling economic pieces in the Post was a favorable one...
...If you receive a Selection without having 10 days to exercise your option, you may return it at Club expense...
...THE REAGAN REVOLUTION by Rowland Evans & Robert Novak...
...Well, maybe there really is a national farmlands problem...
...of government, racial and sexual quotas, and other matters that concern - - and often trouble - - conservative Americans...
...9 _9 D Nothing promotes the suspension of skepticism among normally quite cynical r e p o r t e r s like an environmental scare...
...Simon & Schuster, 112.95...
...She wanted to see me lynched, I think, and had it been someone else, a Mother Jones editor say, I probably wouldn't have minded...
...Thanks to Hunt we are kept abreast of such revolting conduct...
...Still, this panel and others afforded many glimpses into the tortured liberal psyche...
...price $12.95 I'HE ]'AX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS by Willi,un H. Mcllhany I1, Shows how taxexempl money is often funneled to partisan, even radical causes...
...But I have lost count of the gloom-and-doom stories reporting that the recession is sure to be "deeper than expected...
...These tax benefits, t h e r e f o r e , are designed at least in part to offset the unemployment caused by minimum wage laws...
...Do it today...
...Huge capitalist publishing conglomerates were apparently ganging up to crush and silence the little writer, the person who cared...
...Their deportment is another matter_9 _9 . . There is little evidence to suggest that this year's new Republicans as a group are cultivating a favorable public image...
...what makes them so indistinguishable, one from another, i s . . . a point of view...
...The Conservative Book Club is distinguished by a very clear point of view...
...SEMPER FIDELIS, The Hi.~torv Of The United States Marine Corl)s by Allan R. Millctt...
...Doctorow hadn't seemed particularly anxious to rap with the c r a n k s - - " W r i t e r s love t o talk about t h e i r problems, but if this turns into a general complaint session, it will be a b u s t . " William Styron struck an elitist note--' Tm not against unions, but I think its a far cry between mine workers and writers...
...Quie managed to index the s t a t e tax system, and later he boosted the sales tax...
...As quoted in the Soho News, E.L...
...For almost two decades now, we've been providing thoughtful Americans with books that are concerned with individual freedom, limited government, a strong America and the preservation of our unique way of li(e All our books, no matter the subject reflect basic American values...
...In mid-evening, I crossed paths with the V/ashington Post man and asked, "How's Vonnegut...
...Twenty minutes into the first one-The Writer in American Society . . . . "What, at bottom, are we doing when we w r i t e ? " - - I gave up all attempt at keeping a coherent set of notes...
...Or the accounts of a not-so-new dimension of the essential inequity of the supply-side tax cuts...
...British journalist Godfrey Hodgson, in his well-reviewed All Things to All Men,a...
...A stunning explanation of the causes of the two World Wars...
...In a fleeting passage in The Right Stuff, he characterized the press as " t h e consummate hypocritical Victorian gent_9 Sentiments that one scarcely gives a second thought to in o n e ' s private life are nevertheless insisted upon in all public utterances...
...A classic, nov, m its sixth cditmn...
...Lloyd-Cutler, the counsel to President Carter, wrote of a "general rule of stalemate" that barred Presidents "from reaching their goals...
...flood of loom and furrow imagery . . . "our tender and fearless hearts . . . alive in the solidarity of communal love...
...Called on to render a negative verdict were three critics of supply-side, economists H e r b e r t Stein, Rudolph Penner, and William Nordhaus...
...In addition, we make available books by or about Ronald Reagan and Ednmnd Burke, William F. Buckle,,', Jr...
...And this grave gent lives on in excellent health...
...Pick three books from the selection below, fill out the coupon and return it to us...
...We offer the most up-to-date titles dealing with issues: the Soviet military buildup, inflation, taxation, the courts, morality in (and out...
...If you want one or more Alternate books - - or no books at all - - indicate that on the reply card and return it by the date specified...
...Pub price SI4.95 ALLENDE, Death O[ a Marti.~t Dream by James Whclan...
...And since good agricul24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1982 tural land is converted in chunks of 40 acres here and 400 there over periods of days, months or y e a r s , what is happening here is an indication of how the choice of s h o r t - t e r m gain over possible long-term Consequence has created a national problem...
...1"he thought that supply-side economics might succeed, even temporarily, probably never occurred to them...
...enunciations of conservatism as we know it today...
...The amount of recreational land is i n c r e a s i n g a t a rapid clip and new a g r i c u l t u r a l land is being made as some older land goes out of cultivation, leaving a very satisfactory net result for our agricultural future...
...Maybe it's because all book clubs are the same - - at least basically the same: lots of books, good discounts, attractive mailings to their mcmbers, and so on...
...Our point of view is patriotic, conservative and distinctly American...
...But a final argument may be useful--a reductio ad absurdum...
...Tax revolution...
...It warned that the United States is losing about 3 million acres of farmland annually to development, and it predicted that "by the year 2000 most, if not all, of the nation's 540-million-acre cropland base is likely to be in cultivation...
...All our books are...
...MERE CHRISTIANITY by C.S...
...If we accept the contention that specified tax reductions are expenditures, does anyone then believe that we will have " c u t spending" if we take steps to increase tax collections by a n o t h e r $465 billion in 1986...
...price $12.95 2289...
...The source of this scare is the National Agricultural Lands Study, published a year ago...
...The Right Books 2280...
...THE CONSERVATIVE MIND, From Burke to Eliot b', Russell Kirk...
...We don't need any more writers as solitary heroes," the Random House editor proclaimed...
...Horrors...
...The inside exclusive on the Reagan Revolution and the man who's leading it...
...Its fun side--the pranksters and Whitmanesque bohos--has disappeared...
...Shields noted in his column that "Ronald Reagan has radically changed the public perception of the office he now h o l d s . " A y e a r ago, "Americans were being told by many of t h e i r l e a d e r s t h a t our problems were probably beyond our control and our comprehension and that permanent presidential-congressional stalemate would be the f u t u r e norm...
...But it would be fitting if reporters considered claims of one with the same skepticism with which they approach assertions, say, of Soviet involvement in the Caribbean or Russian spies in Washington...
...Not lucid, not l u c i d . " The moving spirits of the congress, the radical politicos, seemed to be caucusing and furiously writing resolutions for Sunday's plenary session...
...Their liberal elders, the mid-rank authors and critics who would lead the panel discussions, had either gone home or were out dining with friends...
...No supply-siders were quoted, and the critics, even a ferocious one like Stein, were not identified as opponents...
...Iowa 50336 [-] Please send the 3 books I've indicated below and enroll me in The Conservative Book Club...
...The newest one, with appropriate Malthusian overtones, is that highways and urban sprawl are gobbling up America's "prime farmland" at a clip that threatens trouble in food production by around 2000...
...The most comprehensive history' of the Marine Corps ever written...
...And so, in the end it came down to Gay Talese and Kurt Vonnegut, both men moving like royalty in a swarm of reporters and cameramen...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1982 25 successful president...
...This is no longer true...
...What we must do to defend ourselves against Soviet expansionism - - while there is still time...
...appeared on the front page of the Post...
...You'll be in good company (conservatively speaking...
...She sized up my American Spectator name tag, chuckled, and from that point on took great delight in warning people about The Right...
...For on-the-scene coverage of the vanishing farmlands, the New York Times dispatched a correspondent to Greeley, Colorado, then to Garden City, Kansas...
...She had been preceded on the dais by an intellectual from a ~ Havana intellectuals' conference, and by a couple of home-grown old-timers...
...Not really, though...
...In other words, tax the gross...
...The nation, they agree, is in economic recession right now, but they predict a strong recovery in the second half of next year (1982), perhaps vibrant enough to make voters feel good again about the Reagan economic recovery program...
...There is more...
...The full account ol the Chilean Marxist's assassination...
...Without special inducements of this kind some people within these enumerated categories would not be hired at the legal minimum wage...
...We stand for something...
...Arthur Schlesinger, J r . , sent his r e g r e t s . Having been pilloried in the Nation for 20 years, Arthur felt it would require "masochism of the highest order" for him to join the party now...
Vol. 15 • February 1982 • No. 2
