Paul Berman and Sarah Kerr

Reader Comments From The Fray:

[Friday Fray Notes: Thank you Roger for an incisive discussion on Central American history, and a great line on cabs in Mexico City. A.G.Android doesn't get to the "Breakfast Table" nearly enough these days, but he kicked off a splendid thread on Stalin here. And Tartwater O'Connor got things going here by asking where Fray posters live. Hazel Motes wants to add Ayn Rand to the moratorium mentioned below. Tom R explained why that would cause consternation at Fray HQ.]


Actually, in the less than safe confines of Mexico City were several prominent independent leftists, like Victor Serge, who were bodily threatened by Stalinist thugs. There's a rumor, in fact, that Tina Modotti was murdered in the back of a taxi cab (the taxi union was Communist dominated) after she started distancing herself from her boyfriend, who had helped to arrange Trotski's murder. As for Arbenz--of course, the CIA intervention was inexcusable, but even back as far as August Sandino, the PC line was not to support nationalist leftists, but to defame them, loudly. So painting Stalin's portrait was not the wholly innocent act Kerr implies--especially as Kahlo and Rivera knew, if anybody did, who the killers of Trotsky were, and what the threat to people like Serge was about. (Serge, by coincidence, also died of a heart attack in the back of a cab in Mexico City--it wasn't a safe mode of transport for a leftist dissenter); whereas I would have to defend those champagne guzzling Manhattan stalinists, who were probably, in the fifties, not guzzling champagne at all. They were probably desperately trying to find money for bail, as they were under attack by the forces of "democracy" in this country--the forces that decided to make being a communist illegal. A little ban on opinion that would have made John Adams, the current fashionable president, very happy, since it reproduced the reasoning of the Alien and Sedition acts.

--Roger

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Sweden and France as so egalitarian because they charge VAT at rates greater than 18% plus they have higher tax rates than the U.S. A tax heaven they are not, but the services that everyone can benefit from are superb from health care to transportation so it could very well be a good trade-off.

I also find the horror at Vincente Fox not doing anything about the two environmentalists convicted based on confessions elicited by torture to be quite so typically American. America might protect US citizens from such actions, but who do you think trained so many of the torturers in Latin America. The CIA plus its allies like Argentina have trained the worst thugs in places such as Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. I am sure that we are now in the process of training all of the right-wing thugs in Columbia to torture and kill all of their left-wing "narco"-terrorists. Mexico is certainly a very nasty and unfair palce, but America is also nasty and unfair outside of the US

----Martin Kannengieser

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[Wednesday Fray Notes: We haven't had this one for a while: A-Z suggests a moratorium on some words (including Orwellian--see also Slate's "Idea of the Day" on Monday) in the "Breakfast Table." Arthur Stock wants to add "declare a moratorium" onto the list, and, yes, big surprise, lots of Fraysters have ideas for the list.]


It's not the type of tax, but the enforcement that determines tax compliance. During the first years of the Clinton administration, the IRS stepped up its enforcement of income tax laws, and the government's return on this investment was massive. When the Republicans got hold of the Congress, they held hearings where wealthy tax cheats complained about IRS mistreatment and cut the IRS's budget. The results were what you'd expect: more wealthy Americans avoiding the law

--Andrew W. Cohen

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I could hardly agree more with Mr. Berman's sage advice, that readers ought to learn to distinguish between reporting in the New York Times and reporting in the New York Post. When the New York Post has an axe to grind, you know it immediately; it doesn't dress up its political agenda in the guise of "objective journalism" as does the New York Times in virtually every story within its covers. With that in mind, I wonder which Mr. Berman thinks is the more dangerous: the "unserious" propaganda you can spot and immediately discount as faux-news/entertainment, or the "serious" propaganda you can't.

--Adam

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