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CounterPunch
January
7, 2003
Bush's
Grand Theft Tax Scheme
It's the Budget, Stupid!
By SAUL LANDAU
How does G. W. Bush's ten year tax plan that purports
to return 1.35 trillion dollars to citizens relate to real wealth
and real poverty? The very sum itself boggles the mind. I try
to imagine what a trillion dollars looks like! And what does
it have to do with the price of a bologna sandwich?
For those who deny that poverty still
exists in the United States, take a road trip and see it for
yourself. You don't have to drive onto Indian reservations to
notice the numerous trailer parks nestled on the outskirts of
every town and city, containing people who cannot afford to buy
a home or pay rent on an apartment. The rural poor also live
in ramshackle homes with front yards full of old cars, clothes
lines full of wind blow and tattered garments, because they can't
afford to pay for a dryer or for the electricity it uses. You
see shabbily dressed kids in rural America. In the cities and
towns, you don't have to seek out ghettoes, barrios or skid rows.
They're ubiquitous.
The poor people, more than 50 million,
most without access to health care and free higher education,
now lose unemployment insurance. About 800,000 workers got their
negative Christmas present when Congress adjourned without renewing
their benefits. Another 100,000 a week will exhaust whatever
state funds remained according to the Washington DC Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities. 2003 should provide devastating
challenges to those who got the pink slip in 2002. The official
unemployment rate hovers around 6% nationally.
Bush called on Congress to help, but
since he has already chosen his military and police priorities,
it remains unclear where Congress will find funds to help out
the unemployed, many of whom might soon become homeless as well.
A December 23 USA Today story uses November data from the Department
of Labor that shows long-term unemployment patterns reappearing.
"1.7 million workers have been out
of work six months or longer -- the most since 1994," the
story reports. Low wage workers, usually poorly educated and
often from minority groups, generally got their discharge notice
first. They are the least able to deal with loss of income and
worst prepared for long term joblessness.
States typically offer 26 weeks of payments,
after which workers turn to federal programs that give up to
26 more weeks of benefits. But these programs were not designed
to meet the issues of long-term unemployment, which has arisen
since March 2001. California Governor Gray Davis announced an
almost 4% cut in education affecting kindergarten through 12th
grade. To make up a $6 million deficit in the prison budget,
Kentucky Governor Paul Patton released prematurely 567 prisoners.
"It's not going to be pretty," he said.
The compassionate conservative Bush government
has thrown the ball where it said it belongs, to the private
charities. But the filthy rich, the reputed backbone of philanthropy
have reduced their donations.
After a decade of relative prosperity,
the middle and working classes ran up their credit card debts.
USA Today cited <CardWeb.com>, which tracks credit card
trends, to show that the average household had almost $8,500
worth of credit card debt in 2002, an increase of 160% in the
past decade.
As we know, under compassionate conservatism,
the Bush government has slashed the social budget while elevating
the military and "security" budgets to a record high
of $400 billion and simultaneously cutting taxes. The President,
with congressional approval, has shifted the burden of maintaining
a highly unequal social order to the states the very entities
that failed to meet such a challenge in the early 1930s.
Indeed, the New Deal arose because there
seemed to be no alternatives to the federal government's taking
an active and guiding hand in alleviating mass misery. Now, the
federal government, the entity that commands trillions of dollars,
refuses to shell out to the people who most need them, but insists
that the way to happiness is to reward the already rewarded.
As if to emphasize that point, Bush restored
cash bonuses to his political appointees, those least needy and
least qualified. The irony of this move was not lost on regular
government workers whose raises Bush reduced from 4.1 to 3.1%,
claiming that the war on terrorism had forced this move.
Compassionate conservatism has become
the euphemism for screw the poor and have a good laugh at their
expense. Administration insiders and Wall Street Journal editors
have found a new label for the poorest of Americans. These "lucky
duckies," because they don't have to pay much income tax
compared to the deeply disadvantaged multi billionaires, have
had a free ride for too long. Why not put a federal tax bite
into their $6.35 an hour wages as well as the $10 thousand an
hour "earned" by those of good breeding? Mark Twain
defined good breeding as consisting "of concealing how much
we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
The Bush victory followed by his high
post 9/11 ratings -- appears to have made possible the dream
of the greediest of the disgustingly rich class to amass more,
consume more and make fun of those who have less. Rush Limbaugh,
my favorite right wing radio huckster, gives the process of looting
the national treasury an ideological bent. He insists that tax
cutting means conservatism. Do not give a penny to the entity
that provides schools, roads, sewage and other necessities. Indeed,
the government subsidizes agri-business directly and other enormous
corporate conglomerations indirectly in the form of insurance
for overseas investment and support for overseas advertising.
Mort Sahl defined these kinds of conservatives as "feeling
that they deserve everything they've stolen."
The new grand theft planners in the Republican
plutocracy, led by ideologues for the ultra rich inside the White
House, propose that shareholders who receive corporate dividends
should pay only half as much tax. This, insist White House and
Congressional insiders, is a core piece of the overall tax plan
that W will reveal this month.
The conservative economic logic that
would make the rich even richer by reducing their already reduced
taxes amounts to faith. W and Limbaugh believe that the most
affluent having possession of even more money will stimulate
the economy. Under the current tax scheme, the legal right wingers
argue, companies have an incentive to not pay dividends. Instead,
they amass debt. I asked several liberal economists. All scoffed
at the notion that such a move would stimulate the economy. It
might give the stock market a kick in the ass, one said.
The real loser, the US Treasury, would
see its income reduced by $100 billion plus over the next decade.
This would mean further cuts in social programs, which would
hurt the poor. Those possessing large stock portfolios would
reap the benefits of course. But the results would not show up
until next year and thus have little chance of tickling the economy
now when it needs it.
I didn't find it difficult to discover
this information about Republican tax plans. And in talking to
people throughout the country over decades, I find that many
share my feelings of disgust and loathing. So, why don't most
Americans vote? Indeed, the majority (some 62% of eligible voters),
according to their massive estrangement from the polls in November
2002, apparently eschew politics.
I confess that after listening to the
car radio and watching the billboards, I too became distracted
by needs I didn't know I had. I became overwhelmed with all the
goods I didn't possess, all the feelings of power, prestige,
status and honorific deference that had been somehow denied to
me. What was wrong with me, I asked. Why do I feel so stressed?
Judging from looks on faces and conversations eavesdropped on,
many others felt the same. The ultra stressful daily activity
of earning a living leaves little time to think about much beyond
the immediate crisis and the deluge to distracting stimuli muddles
the reflective lobes of the brain. The general message of the
ads is to focus on you and what you're missing in life. Not one
of the commercial or political messages directs you to think
about the budget the core of politics.
The AM radio reactionaries rant and rave
about the liberal media (practically non-existent on radio).
The rich deserve all they have and more; the poor have had bad
luck, poor character or suffer from stupidity and laziness. The
sacred subjects merit much attention, abortion, prayer in school,
the alleged right to bear arms. I hear nothing about the right
to food, shelter, jobs, medical attention, and education.
To staunch the depression reaching me
from the Limbaugh, Larry Elder, Dr. Laura and Sean Hannity, I
began making a list of peripheral issues featured in bumper stickers
and posters. Driving California highway 395 from Los Angeles
to Lone Pine, I spotted a "US out of the UN" sign.
I saw numerous "United We Stand" bumper stickers and
posters and one that said "Love your neighbor and don't
despair, but keep your fence in good repair."
The "United" slogans come in
a red, white and blue design accompanied by an actual flag decal.
Remember John Prine sang: "Your flag decal won't get you
into Heaven any more. It's already overcrowded from your last
little dirty war."
On the highway, one woman proudly sported
an NRA designer license plate. I also passed two firing ranges
next to the highway along with several places carved out of the
Mojave Desert where you could ride your newest motorized three
wheeler, round and round in the sand, making all the noise you
wanted.
I observed two anti-abortion bumper stickers
and a sign that advocated prayer in the schools as the answer.
One car's bumper read: "war is not the answer."
OK, I said to myself: "what is the
question?"
I stopped making a list and listened
to news headlines on AM radio. An "expert" said that
President Bush has decided to go to war in Iraq no matter what
Saddam, the UN or anyone else does or says. Colin Powell told
CNN's Wolf Blitzer that the President has made no such decision.
On an AM talk show one "expert"
advocated a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, saying that
he found intolerable the fact that a rogue state possessed nuclear
weapons. Another "expert" advocated diplomacy to resolve
the Korea predicament. Eat a bologna sansdwich, I say.
Why do I see no indication of budget
discussion, the central core of what "experts" used
to call politics?
Saul Landau's
new film, IRAQ: VOICES FROM THE STREETS is distributed by The
Cinema Guild (800-723-5522). He is a fellow of the Institute
for Policy Studies and teaches at Cal Poly Pomona University.
He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org.
Today's Features
Chris White
Deceptions
in Military Recruiting: an Ex-Insider Speaks Out
Tim Llewellyn
Baghdad
Before
Steve Perry
Trent
Lott's Big Sin:
He Was Sooo Old-School
Walter A. Davis
Death's
Dream Kingdom: the American Psyche after 9/11
Anthony Gancarski
Come Fly With Me:
If 9/11 Was a Joke, TSA Was the Punchline
Bernard Weiner
Ellsberg's Secrets and Bush's War
Kurt Nimmo
Desperately Seeking Emmanuel Goldstein
Asif Devji
Yes, Virginia, Santa Really Is American
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