After just publishing my year-end Fox Nation retrospective of their stupidest posts, they come out with a new one that definitely would have made the list.
The assertion that President Obama has okayed a tax on the poor is blatantly false. Not only is this not a tax on the poor, it isn’t even a tax. It requires a special kind of audacity for Fox to manufacture a story alleging that Obama wants to tax the poor when his administration has been fighting right-wingers for three years to enact tax relief for the poor and middle classes, and a small increase on upper income earners. Even worse, it is the right who actually have advocated for raising taxes on the poor.
What the Fox Nationalists are talking about is simply a legal opinion issued by the Justice Department that “allows states to authorize Web-based, non-sports gambling within their borders.”
This would seem to be the sort of free market, libertarian initiative that Fox and their right-wing audience would support. It grants authority to the states to decide their own course. It relies on the personal responsibility of citizens to make choices for themselves. It benefits businesses seeking to expand and create jobs. It raises revenues without raising taxes. So what’s the problem?
The problem is that President Obama’s administration implemented it. If Obama advocated a flat tax of 9% for every person and enterprise, Republicans would immediately oppose it and call for tax increases. If Obama announced that he re-registered as a Republican, the GOP would become Democrats overnight. These radical contrarians might as well stop pretending and just adopt this as their theme song:
