Really? Tax Cuts Again? Can't You... I Mean, Tax Cuts? Again?

Welcome to the Moment of Truth: that exhilarating rush of wasabi into your sinuses.

A $150 billion tax cut. That is what our sorry excuse for a president calls an "economic stimulus package."

A tax cut is a single item. What makes it a "package" exactly? That it's wrapped up, maybe? What's it wrapped in besides the garbled speech in the midst of which it was announced?

It's like giving someone a spoon wrapped in a libertarian's used handkerchief and calling it a wilderness survival kit.

Wasn't there a $3 trillion dollar tax cut at the beginning of this fiasco of an administration? What did that accomplish, exactly, besides impoverishing the government to the extent that its emergency services are incapable of aiding in emergencies, and its military is incapable of providing equipment to its soldiers or figuring out which nation it should destroy in the process of freeing it from its dictator?

So a $150 billion tax cut -- that's this idiot's plan to rescue the economy? Oh, and don't criticize me for calling him an idiot, that's what he is, let's be honest for once, it's time to call things by their names. A tax cut. Can there be anything lazier? "Eh, I guess we'll just do another tax cut, I don't feel like thinking right now, too hard on my brain bone." Jesus! If you've got $150 billion dollars to burn, how about thinking up something clever to do with it, instead of just distributing it among the corporate and financial geniuses whose incompetence let our economy down in the first place?

"Here, do some more of your magic."

Lazy, that's what it is. Bush and what's left of his advisory posse of the ideologically deformed just don't feel like bothering to think of anything effective to do. Did they consider, Hey, let's spark some industry development, encourage investment in something American ingenuity and work ethic and entrepreneurship can really sink their teeth into. Like maybe get in on the ground floor of this whole hydrogen economy thing. Whoever positions themselves to profit from that will be riding the crest as the economic powerhouse of the future. Think of all the money that would change hands as researchers came up with better ways of generating and storing hydrogen, think of all the contractors and laborers and tradesmen and engineers busy as beavers converting gas stations to hydrogen stations, and the auto industry and the advertising -- good lord, a few billion judiciously channeled and matching-funded and dangled like carrots in front of the right noses, and this economy would be blazing on all cylinders -- to use a one-day-to-be-outmoded mechanical metaphor. How about we redirect our resources and young men and women out of destroying the Middle East and channel them toward poising the U.S. economy to be the dominant force behind the hydrogen revolution that will end petroleum's reign of terror forever?

Did any of those bums think of anything remotely like that? No, it was: "Just throw the money out the window. Someone will probably pick it up and buy some stuff with it. That'll jumpstart the economy or whatever."

I had a friend whose father was a drunk jerk. Actually, I've had several friends whose fathers were drunk jerks, but this one stood out as drunker and jerkier than the rest. His TV wouldn't get any color but green. So he said, "I'll fix this," and hit it with a brick until was a pile of dangerously jagged rubble.

About a week later, his niece cut herself on some of that rubble. So he said, "I'll fix that," and hit the rubble with the brick some more.

That's our leadership in a nutshell. God, I wish they were really in a nutshell. Because that would hurt them and maybe lead them to think upon their sins.

Some of us tried to warn the populace that this would happen. I remember personally telling people, "That Bush guy is as dumb as lard, please don't vote for him. If there's a problem, he's just going to hit it with a brick. He's that kind of guy, I can tell, I've seen people like that, I had a friend whose father was like that."

I hope we've all learned our lesson now. I hope we've all learned that trying to invigorate a declining industrial economy, in a nation whose farmland is being turned into existentially horrific strip mall zombie communities or bought up by global cyborgs programmed to drain the nutrition and flavor out of all life on Earth and turn the planet into a devastated arid greenhouse blast furnace desert, the stark barren horizons of which are only broken by the occasional nuclear waste-filled mountain, wreckage of a ghost town, or gibbering tribe of post-apocalyptic mutant nomads herding their mutated goats whose viscera developed on the outsides of their bodies so that their living, pulsing entrails drag behind them in the dust -- I hope we've all learned now that trying to invigorate such an economy by farting out tax cuts is like trying to fix a television with a brick.

Okay? So we've settled that.

Although, I guess I shouldn't have used the shift to a hydrogen economy as my example of an industry of broad potential growth, huge huge potential, since Bush's policies foreign and domestic reinforce petroleum as the opium of our economy, because he and his advisory posse of deformed ideologues are heavily invested in oil. But then, maybe it isn't such a bad example, specifically because the Bush administration is such an oily-garchy. Maybe their laziness isn't pure laziness but a kind of calculated laziness. A kind of self-serving laziness, which, along with all the other self-serving machinations of this administration, could be considered a betrayal of duties and oaths, if not a betrayal of the country itself.

But at least we agree that tax cuts are lazy economic policy, especially now. Let's just consider that settled. And let's also consider it settled that Bush is the worst president ever, and when he dies his likeness, rather than on a postage stamp, should appear a on building condemnation notices, parking tickets, government-issue roach motels, and be carved into a nuclear waste-filled mountain, lest we forget to revile the man and everything he stood for or stood by and let happen.

And while we're at it, let's also consider it settled that the strategy of trying to run the world ourselves by abusing our allies and massacring our enemies has also been discredited.

And if we can't prosecute the architects of the War for Profit in Iraq as traitors who pillaged our nation's treasury, institutionalized war atrocities and mocked our Constitution and the values of freedom and human dignity our pagan forefathers attempted to enshrine therein -- if we can't try them for treason and execute them in the public square -- now I know we can't agree that if one of us is driving along and we see Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or Douglas Feith -- let's keep it to guys who we know really hate American values -- if one of them should run out into the street after a stray bar of gold or other such plaything, if the driver finds his or her reflexes a little too slow to spare that august statesman's kneecaps, we all shrug and say, "Hey, what are you gonna do? Stuff happens" -- I know we can't agree on that. It wouldn't be right. Even if the legal authorities are derelict in allowing these monsters to roam free.

But if we could all agree to call things by their names, agree that these officials have knowingly betrayed us and the rest of the world solely for their own vanity and profit, if we could all just join hands and banish them into a wilderness beyond our hearts, outside our love forever, because although we forgive we can never forget, not with the wounds still open and festering -- if we could, each of us, spare just a few seconds to whisper a silent, bitter curse upon them, I think that would be beautiful. I really do. I think there's real beauty in that.

This has been the Moment of Truth. Good day!

Other Moments of Truth can be found in the archives at www.mejeffdorchen.oblivio.com -- and podcasts of the radio program This Is Hell, where these commentaries are originally broadcast, can be found at www.thisishell.net.

Comments

[LateDave]

Modern business is not the hardy craftsman of days long, long gone. As J.K. Galbraith tried to explain forty years ago, money is not the motivator. Capital is passe, land is even more passe. The real motivators for modern business are technological innovation and teamwork. Steves Jobs and even moreso Wozniak personified the core of the creative team idea that has motivated growth for half a century. People identify with the team and try to contribute changes to it. The money just happens, and if it fails, it fails.

What does this have to do with stimulus packages and tax cuts? *Absolutely Nothing.* The money game is irrelevant to the new (!) technocratic model of industry. We talk in terms of money because it is easy to understand, and old-line grubbers are still out to grab all they can for themselves. But the innovators that W&Co (&Mitt&Co) supposedly worship don't care about money as a motivator. The creative guys forget to eat--the helper types live for the team.

Tax scams like this are the worst answer: they lure ripoffs out of the woodwork but don't contribute squat to the effort.

[WhitemoonG]

This is a particularly entertaining bunch of whining, name calling, & one dimensional twaddle.

Since Dorchen can dish out the standard groupthink about

TAX CUTS STUPID, BUSH IDIOT, etc.

maybe he can give an expert commentary on Walter Heller's views of reviving lagging economies with fiscal policies involving the "proven tonic of tax cuts," (quoting Heller) which were recommended for President John F Kennedy to pursue. Recommended, enacted, and after the Kennedy tax cuts, the stimulated economy resulted in an overall INCREASE in government tax revenues.

Since big corporations are all purely evil, black and white, case closed, maybe President Dorchen will increase corporate tax rates, even though in the USA they are already the 2nd highest in the world, (HIGHER even than France!) and likely soon to be the highest.

No matter, sock it to the greedy, all pure evil corporations with even higher tax rates!

Then, to either remain competitive, or in some cases even avoid folding and shutting down, they can outsource even more jobs overseas, to avoid an already CRUSHING taxation, regulations, and liability climate. Tax the evil Bushification corporations more, tax them even more and more, and jobs disappear, and corporate bankruptcy and dissolutions increase.

No matter, with no corporate goose anymore to lay a daily egg, after killing it while assuming it should lay 2 eggs, then all those taxes can be shifted to the middle class that also just lost most of its jobs.

No Big Deal,
Dorcher will provide meaningful jobs for millions and millions himself, because he's caring and morally appalled by all the correct lists of things, and is brilliant enough to write profound articles saying nothing much more than a President's an idiot because all the groupthink cocktail parties and columnists say so!

[veracity]

Thanks for the rant, Jeff. Don't forget Greg Palast's latest bombshell (common sense, really) - that Bush-Cheney have PRIVATIZED TAX COLLECTION... TO THE SAUDIS, via higher oil & gas prices.
http://www.gregpalast.com/george-of-arabia-better-kiss-your-abe-goodbye/the-flow/
Americans are forced to shell out of pocket dramatically more money for gas, then Bush goes to Saudis to beg for loans (they buying in to Citi and other financial former "powerhouses").
Bush BURROWS money from the Saudis, Chinese, Japanese, Canada, and other (oil)exporters to fund his war in Iraq, and then American CONSUMERS pay higher prices for gas, imports, AND INTEREST ON THE national DEBT. What a racket!
Of course all this is actually "old news" - Michael Moore's film Fharenheit 9-11 had a scene where Moore pulled up to the Suadi embassy in Washington DC and informed the Capitol police (and audience) as they walked up to him "Its a good thing you're protecting this embassy, did you know the Saudis own 13% of all assets in the US economy?"
Come to think of it, the Iran-CONTRA wars were run by... Vice President and former CIA Director George H.W. Bush... right out of the White House (remember Ollie North's secretary shredding Ollie's papers in their WH office?), where VP Bush could bypass both the State Department and DoD. That is, Bush Sr. was PRIVATIZING America's foreign wars... even back in the early 80s!
Sad to say, it was a travesty that Independent Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh went after Caspar Wienberger for the Iran-Contra scandal, when "Cap" WANTED TO HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH Bush's Iran-Contra boondoggle, and was an incidental participant at worst. If Walsh had gone directly after (then) President Bush, Bush might not have been able to write those Christmas eve pardons that swept the scandal under the rug until incoming Democratic President Bill Clinton HELPED Washington Republicans SWEEP all the investigations ongoing in Republican malfeasance - ENTIRELY OUT THE DOOR in '93-'94. (Clinton's "sow the seeds of Bush restoration" folly: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/100307.html.

[seawolf77]

When the seas start rising becasue of global warming the Repubs will surely suggest a tax cut for the poor homeowners. It's probably been written already.

[Cathexis]

When all you have is a "Tax-Deferment- Masquerading-as-a- Tax-Cut" hammer, every problem becomes a nail.

[RTIII]

I want to pay MORE taxes!

[nomoredead]

I would like to see a 'halebondad' chart on the increase in corporate profits in the last 10 years. We have all heard about the amount of extra profit and their buying back of their stock with it. So the argument would be ' Why aren't you using that cash to improve the economy?' Some of these corporations are sitting on billions.

[nomoredead]

Up the tax on Hedge Funds from 15% and tax the churches........say hallelujah.

[oldfreedomdude]

Right On!

[vippy]

Gas prices put this economy in a downward spiral. When gas prices rose the market said "we don't see the effects of the price on the people." Little did they know that people
cut other necessities, even charged the fill up
to their credit card which they now cannot pay.
Congress should reign in the Hedge Funds, put laws into place, and then go back to the pricing of oil without the Future's Market.
Only then will our economy recover. But that won't happen because both parties are heavily invested in those funds and making money!

[chappelforpres]

Well I say you've gotten to the very heart of the matter...But its not simply Bush, he's just another monkey on a rope (and certainly one of the dullest bulbs in the room). Let's look at a few of the individuals the uber-conservative, no tax, always enrich us, plunder the planet, special interests, have recently endorsed as prime presidential material. Dan Quale? Mitt Romney? What can anyone expect, but more of the same?

[WASanford]

I laughed and laughed and laughed! This is so true, so true. Thank you, thank you, thank you,

[olda]

That may be a flaw (one we need to keep)about term limits Bush never had any intention of being fiscally responsible this is the "lazy" at work here, why even try to make tough grown up choices when you can just leave the bills due on the desk on your way out the door- it worked for saint Raygun(GW is gonna need a much bigger desk however}All that money so called "lost" in the economy didn't just vaporise its somewhere.

[altohone]

Laying this all at Bush's feet are you?

Let's not forget how quickly some Democrats jumped to "allow" tax cuts in exchange for easy passage of the bill.

Any "emergency" is sufficient for certain Dems to capitulate without a fight for tax codes favorable to their biggest donors too.

[Idytme]

I'll just take one aspect of your post - hydrogen. You are absolutely right that this is the future, but even when our democratic candidates talk about green jobs they do not mention hydrogen. It is the ultimate renewable fuel and we will never run out of it. The whole idea must make the oil companies shudder.
We may help out our (powerfully represented) farmers with ethanol, and it may be a good transitional fuel, but the absolute future is in hydrogen and the country that locks up the patents and gets their infrastructure is going to be the one that wins.
What do you bet that we think short term and just go to bat with ethanol while Europe, or Japan or someone else gets all the patents on hydrogen?