Sometimes, ya just gotta do it, even if it makes you feel dirty. Reading Paul Krugman that is. Take today’s column; according to Krugman, the money we Americans earn for our work, whether it’s in our own businesses or from an employer, is actually the federal government’s money. How else can one explain this sentence:

But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.

Krugman is talking about conservatives, whom he hates with a passion, whether they be Democrats (which are very few in number, especially on Capitol Hill) or Republicans. And as bad as the quoted sentence is, it gets worse. Much worse.

Krugman’s screed has to do with the return to the 2000 income tax rates after the expiration of the tax rate cuts passed during the Bush administration in 2001 and 2003; in other words, a tax rate increase. Krugman provides a background about how those rate cuts were passed; note that I said Krugman provides a background, not the background, since he needs to revise history, lie, in order to make his case.

Bad as that is, it is nothing compared to how Krugman demagogues what a tax is. He refers to a paper from the leftist Brookings Institution that says if the tax rate cuts for the top income earners were to be increased to the levels they were in 2000, the federal government would reap a $680 billion windfall in tax revenue over the next 10 years. That’s $680 billion of people’s property. But that is not how Krugman frames it; to him, it’s the government’s money that is being doled out [emphasis mine]:

And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent…

How can this kind of giveaway be justified at a time when politicians claim to care about budget deficits?

Let’s look at the facts here. That $680 billion that the federal government wouldn’t get as revenue isn’t the federal government’s money in the first place; it’s the personal property of those individuals, so considering it as a “giveaway” is just dishonestly hateful rhetoric by Krugman. This isn’t welfare or a subsidy, which are true giveaways.

But even the first part of that quote ignores the basic facts; the reason why the wealthiest income earners will benefit as compared to everyone else is because they already pay more taxes than everyone else. As is well known, 50% of the American tax payers, all those at the low end of the income scale, don’t actually pay income taxes after the annual paperwork is figured out. So of course those who pay the most taxes will benefit mostly.

Paul Krugman is lying through his teeth in this piece, something he is apt to do with alarming frequency. But I would like to ask this dishonest oaf a couple of questions. Does Krugman believe himself to be a slave who gets welfare money when it suits the federal government, via the New York Times, to give it to him? Does he believe the rest of us are? Maybe Krugman should read the U.S. Constitution one of these days; they passed an Amendment outlawing slavery over 140 years ago.