Bush's tax-refund

Now, Bush has been pushing his economic policies like a bag-lady pushing her cart of tin cans down Kedzie Ave. Well, well, thats all fine and good, but whatever he has done for this country economically was/will overshadowed by his HORRENDOUS $1.6 trillion tax cut, half of which went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. Now, I hear you cry, they pay a large portion of the taxes! This is true, says I, and I won't blow smoke up your ass by telling you it's not. However, to quote Chris Rock,

"if you make 4 million dollars, and your wife wants to take 2 million, no big deal, you're not starving. But if you make 30 thousand... and your wife want 15, you might have to kill the bitch!"

Now, while the quote is not directly about taxation, you get the drift. The more money you make, the easier it should be to part with larger sums of it, and still maintain a life out of poverty. Anyway...

Back to Bush's tax cut. Now, I was shocked when I heard The Monkey was going to take 1.3 trillion dollars of money, and give it back to the people who pay taxes. Great idea! Fuck, why not, cause the publicly-funded schools are in GREAT shape, all the roads and bridges in the country need no improvements or repairs, the federal prision system isn't floundering with debt, and we have no need for any new aid programs for kids looking to go to college - they're all doing great!

*blink**blink*

I can only assume this was the train of logic that W took... and while all the evidence has stacked up for years, I still try to push it to the back of my brain. "The American people wouldn't elect an idiot," I say to myself, oft times in the sort of pandering tone you use with children if you're some sort of fuckhead who doesn't feel like treating kids as equals in discussions, "they would have seen through his cocaine-fueled lies. There must be something of merit about this coconut that got him elected." But the more I think about it, the more faith I lose in the American people. Now, and only now, do I know why they put those Warnings on the side of hair dryers, that warn you against using it in the shower. It's not a hilarious joke, as I had thought earlier. Oh no, says I, it's all too real. People will use a hairdryer... in the SHOWER! Who lets these people breed?!? These are the same people that are saying "Bush is a great leader!" The scary part is, they mean it, and I think W believes it. I think he really believes that he is some sort of courtly Crusader, righting the wrongs of the world with an oil-fueled, contract-givin' sword of justice. That scares THE HELL out of me! Why? Because the man is probably the same kind of guy that could go out into a sandbox and play soldiers with a 5 year-old child, and lose to a classic pincers movement! Then he would grin at the camera, say a word that doesn't exist, like "Strategery," and then, when the cameras panned away, loose his balance and fall out of the sandbox. Then Dick Cheney would kick sand in the 5 year-old's face, and steal his soldiers.

Here's what Robert Freeman, of Counterpunch.org, has to say about Bush's tax cut plan:

In selling his $1.6 trillion tax cut-half of which went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans-Bush promised in 2001 that it would produce 800,000 new jobs. In fact, the economy has lost 2.7 million jobs since Bush took office, again, the worst economic performance since the Great Depression.

The effects of Bush's tax cut on the deficit and debt are exactly what we would expect having seen Reagan's results-only worse. Bush inherited from Clinton a fiscal surplus of $127 billion. In his first year he turned that into a deficit of $158 billion. In this, his second year, he will run a deficit of over $400 billion-a swing to the worse of over $600 billion in only two years.

The long term effects of these policies are profoundly damaging. When Bush took office, the government's ten year surplus was forecast to total $5.6 trillion. This was critical to building fiscal soundness as the Baby Boomers begin to retire.

Now, the ten year forecast projects a cumulative deficit of $1.1 trillion, a net loss of $6.7 trillion in only two years. With the exception of World Wars, this is the greatest, most rapid destruction of public wealth in the history of the world.

[Robert Freeman CounterPunch.org]

Scared doesn't begin to tell you how I feel when I know people like Bush and Cheney are out there, dancing around in a huge pile of money, singing something along the lines of "We Fucked 'Em Good (and we'll do it again!)". Get this man out of office, and at the biz end of a cattle-prod, and get his fat little friend on the swinging end of an oak tree.

C'mon people, get with it.