Bob Lord

Bob has mostly wound down his 39-year career as a tax and business lawyer (with a 1-year interruption to run for Congress in 2008 (CD3), when he tried to unseat John Shadegg. Bob now serves as the senior advisor on tax policy for the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans who believe the light taxation of America's rich is destabilizing our democracy, and as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Bob has been writing for Blog For Arizona since late 2011, concentrating mostly on federal issues, with an occasional foray into Arizona state politics.

Dr. King’s Nightmare

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The wealth possessed by our nation's 400 richest billionaires is equal to the collective net worth of  all African-American households.

As we commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s 85th birthday, we’ve all come to know his dream. Above all else, he dreamed that one day this nation would rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Yet here’s the grim reality facing black America today:

The net worth of just 400 billionaires, a group that could fit into a high school gym, is on par with the collective wealth of our more than 14 million African- American households. Both groups possess some $2 trillion, about three percent of our national net worth of $77 trillion.

We chose to honor Dr. King by making his birthday a national holiday because of his tireless work for justice. And MLK stood not only for social justice, but for economic justice as well.

Back in 1951, he told his future life partner, Coretta Scott, that a small elite should not “control all the wealth.” “A society based on making all the money you can and ignoring people’s needs, is wrong,” Dr. King explained.

And the “March on Washington” was “for jobs and freedom.” At the time of his assassination in Memphis in 1968, Dr. King was standing with striking sanitation workers in their fight for economic justice.

How would MLK view the Forbes 400 controlling as much wealth as our entire African-American population of about 41 million people? Could that state of affairs co-exist with his dream?

More Momentum For Progressive Populism?

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Posted by Bob Lord

It's not all good news on the progressive populist front, but it's mostly good. This week, the NY Times indulged the zero corporate tax rate crowd with this piece by economist Laurence Kotlikoff. When economists with little knowledge of how our tax system works spout off, they tend to get it wrong, as Citizens for Tax Justice makes amply clear here. I'll be writing more on Kotlikoff and the zero corporate tax rate in the near future.

But Kotlikoff is a lightweight, and his insipid op-ed is small stuff.

It's a bit more troubling that Andrew Cuomo is looking to slash New York's estate tax rate. More on that soon as well.

But the larger developments are going in the right direction. From Salon yesterday: Move over de Blasio: Meet the Big-City Mayor Vowing to Get His City a $15 Minimum Wage. The "big city" would be Seattle, and Mayor Ed Murray seems dead set on implementing his plan to pay city workers no less than $15 per hour.

So, what's going on? Paul Krugman sums it up well in The War Over Poverty:

Inequality Denialists

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Posted by Bob Lord By now, we're all familiar with the pseudo-science of climate change denial. Exxon Mobil, the Koch brothers, or someone of that ilk funds a think tank, which hires a dishonest "scientist" to concoct a "study" to tell us all the peer reviewed papers documenting climate change are wrong.  Now, we have … Read more

Jewish State? Please Explain

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Posted by Bob Lord

Israel-Palestine has percolated to the surface for me. Tammy wanted to read a "balanced" book on the subject, so she purchased Ari Shavit's My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, then persuaded me to get it as well, so we could discuss. Today, I read Roger Cohen of the NYT's op-ed, My Jewish State, then turned to Truthdig and found Stanley Kutler's post, Israel Can Do No Wrong. 

Cohen and Kutler both mention Israel's demand for recognition, which has evolved from the Palestinians recognizing Israel's right to exist, to recognizing Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Why the change?

And what the hell does that mean? It's an easy concept to slide by most people, as we tend to connect Israel and Judaism. Even J Street, the supposedly moderate pro-Israel, pro-peace lobbying group, contends that the two-state solution is the only way Israel can have a future as both a "majority Jewish state and a Democracy." 

Does "Jewish" refer to the religion, the race, or a nationality? Whichever of those options you choose, there are logical dead ends. If the reference is to the religion, how do you square it with the fact that most Israeiis are secular and that is home to 1.6 million Palestinians? What happens if over time less than half the populace are practicing Jews? And what is the significance of being a Jewish state in this context? Do Jews have rights that others don't and, if so, can others achieve those rights through conversion? Is this the equivalent of America being a "Christian nation" and, if so, why do American Jews reject the notion of a Christian nation, yet demand Israel be a Jewish state?

In Print in Arkansas; Who’da Thunk It

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Posted by Bob Lord This is kind of hilarious, at least to me. My syndicated op-ed piece at OtherWords, The Trillion Dollar Question, was picked up in, of all places, Baxter County, Arkansas, home state of the Walton family, albeit with a changed title: Bob Lord: Wealth Concentration in America Has No Visible Limit. This … Read more