Have we forgotten how to reason? Or has what we take for reasoning actually become a form of marketing?

That’s the question that came to mind this morning as I thought about the whole debate about tax policy and the rich. At hand is the decision whether or not to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich or pare them back. 

Those who want to retain those tax breaks -- those who get them -- employ the following reasoning to support their position: 

If we tax the rich we are taking away money from the very people who invest in business enterprises, startups and, thereby create jobs, they'll stop doing so. Why take money away from those job creating machines just to give it to the government, which doesn’t create private sector jobs? And at this moment, when we so desperately need job creation?

That’s their story and they’re sticking to it. But there you are, that’s their “reasoning,” and they want us to accept it at face value.

But it’s nonsensical on its face. I mean, we gave the rich $1.6 trillion in extra dough over the past decade and what did they do with it? Rather than create jobs the companies they owned, the ones they purchased  with their extra money, and the ones they started up, boosted profits by shipping existing US jobs to cheap offshore venues. And with the dough left over, they provided fuel for the Wall Street derivatives bubble that later cost additional millions of  their workers their jobs and ordinary investors got to watch their meager nest eggs become significantly more meager.

Oh, and while the Ameriscan worker was down, out of work, and their labor unions neutered, those companies owned by these rich "job creators" took the opportunity to renege on pensions their workers had been paying into for their retirements. The "reasoning" then will sound familiar: if these companies were saddled  with all those pension obligations they would not be able to compete in the a globalized economy. Then they'd go bankrupt and all those workers would lose their jobs. So, welching on those pensions was, by their "reasoning," a way to save jobs. Making them pay would be a way to “destroy jobs.”

You know, the old “One move and the sheriff gets it.” ploy

Now it’s not that the reasoning in an of itself was faulty. Not at all. It worked perfectly, for them. Not so much for the other 98% of us. 

The wealth of the top 2% jumped more than 10% since the Bush tax cuts went into effect.

A 2009 report by University of California, Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez concludes that income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression. The paper, which covers data through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American incomes. On his blog, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called the numbers "truly amazing."

The report shows that:

• Income inequality is worse than it has been since at least 1917.
  
• The top 1 percent incomes captured half of the overall economic growth over the period 1993-2007
• In the economic expansion of 2002-2007, the top 1 percent captured two thirds of income growth.
• The average wage of Americans, adjusting for inflation, is lower than it was in the 1970s.
  
• The minimum wage, adjusting for inflation, is lower than it was in the 1950s.
  
• On the other hand, billionaires have never had it better.
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A veteran’s perspective makes it clear that two major points must be made in response to President Obama’s announcement regarding combat troops leaving Iraq.

First, there is no such thing as “non combat troops.”  It is a contradiction in terms.  It is internally inconsistent.  It is illogical.  It is simply not true.

Ask any of the millions of men and women who went through basic training and they can tell you that every U.S. troop anywhere in the world was indoctrinated and trained in the basics of combat.  While in Iraq, the transition from mechanics or communications back to combat-ready soldier takes but an order.  “Non-combat troops” is simply the latest in a long line of military euphemisms meant to obscure painful reality.

The second point can best be made by drafting a section of the President’s remarks for him.  If Veterans For Peace were to do that it would read something like this.

“And now, fellow Americans, let us begin a new era of candor and honesty about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Specifically, I’m referring to the true costs of war – something that must be considered if we are to judge if continued war is worth it.  

You have seen that the cost to taxpayers of these wars has exceeded one trillion dollars, nearly all of which has been considered ‘off budget,’ appropriated by extraordinary or ‘supplemental’ spending bills.  It may be hard to believe, but large though that figure may be, it is only the smaller portion of what we will spend in total.

We are already investing unprecedented amounts in Veterans Administration staff and facilities to try and cope with the millions of men and women who have cycled through a war zone deployment – and of course many have been through multiple deployments. 

Our experience thus far tells us to expect literally hundreds of thousands of cases of PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injuries – injuries that are often difficult to diagnose at first and difficult to treat.  These are, of course, in addition to the many thousands of visibly wounded who, at great expense, must go through rehabilitation and a lifetime of support in order to function to their fullest.  Thousands more will require years, perhaps decades, of long-term care because their injuries have left them so broken they require round-the-clock attention.

But since we are initiating an era of candor, we go farther – and by that I mean the cost to families, communities and society as a whole.  Volumes have literally been written on this point, but let me leave you with a brief example you can easily expand for yourself.