Saturday, November 11, 2006
WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS, THERE WILL YOUR HEART BE ALSO: 
It did not take the incoming Demagogocrats long to prove again that verse above from Luke (12:34), by shoving the bulk of their supporters aside from the trough and gobbling up the spoils of victory for their own elitists. According to today's WaPost:
Is it too soon to bellow "We told you so"? If the new bosses really wanted to cement their rule, they would instead be pushing for tax cuts from the bottom up. They might keep committee chairs for a generation if, instead of this payoff for well-heeled apple-polishers, they proposed raising the personal deduction by a very large amount for everyone. The Repubs would be scared to vote against it once the bill got to the floor, and even Our Noble Lame Duck would fear to veto it. Ordinary Americans would celebrate and bring their children up to vote for the donkeys henceforward out of gratitude.
No, I'm not worried the Pelosis and Reids will steal my idea: they are too tone deaf to people not wearing expensive suits to consider the interests of those little people. They will ratchet down even more fiscal irresponsibility, without even scoring political gains from it. It's their usual electoral hari-kari on the installment plan. Thank you, Max and Charlie and Steny. The government in exile welcomes your failure to seize this opportunity.
It did not take the incoming Demagogocrats long to prove again that verse above from Luke (12:34), by shoving the bulk of their supporters aside from the trough and gobbling up the spoils of victory for their own elitists. According to today's WaPost: Democratic leaders this week vowed to make the alternative minimum tax a centerpiece of next year's budget debate.... Fixing the AMT has long been a top priority for Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who is in line to head the Senate Finance Committee. ... Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), the presumptive chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, this week put fixing the AMT at the top of his agenda.... And yesterday, House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who is campaigning to keep his leadership post, said Democrats will make "fixing the AMT ... a priority of tax policy next year."Now, if you're Mr. or Ms. typical Demo voter, you may not be familiar with this tax, because you don't earn enough for it to kick in, and barring great luck or the kind of runaway inflation this fifty-billion-dollar tax cut would help bring us down the road, you never will.
The focus on the AMT is hardly surprising, given that victims of the tax have been concentrated in high-cost urban areas such as Washington, New York and San Francisco -- places that tend to vote Democratic. Rangel, Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the presumptive House speaker, all represent states hit hard by the AMT, which is sometimes called the "blue-state tax." To map states with the highest concentrations of AMT taxpayers is to draw bull's-eyes over California and the Northeastern seaboard.
The impact is harshest on taxpayers with annual incomes of $100,000 to $500,000.What is most galling is that the "party of the people" is
saying the levy threatens to unfairly increase tax bills for millions of middle-class families by the end of the decade.There is no way that this is a burden on the real "middle-class families", who only dream of such salaries. Only the paper shufflers inside the Beltway and over-priced big blue cities like NYC and LA would imagine themselves to be "middle-class", since they don't either know or talk to the great mass of people lured into voting for the Axis of Elitism this year. Not surprisingly, righties in high-tax states like Althouse are also gushing over this. Not everyone is willing to drink the liberal kool-aid over this, though. Don Surber points out
...this plan offers nothing to the 98% of Americans who do not get six-figure salaries. ... This is as hypocritical as it gets.Ah, but those 98% of the people are not the ones who give Campaign Contributions Of Unusual Size, so they aren't first in the hearts of their incoming Solons (or perhaps impending Gracchi would be a better description). Republican Congressleeches may fawn upon and cater to the corporate executives who patronizingly invite them to mix with their betters at the country clubs, but the new Demokakic legisloons only see the ordinary working people who vote for them at rallies, while lending their ears instead to the fat check writers that get into the earlier closed receptions, where the hors d'oeuvres are notably low on the salt of the earth.
Is it too soon to bellow "We told you so"? If the new bosses really wanted to cement their rule, they would instead be pushing for tax cuts from the bottom up. They might keep committee chairs for a generation if, instead of this payoff for well-heeled apple-polishers, they proposed raising the personal deduction by a very large amount for everyone. The Repubs would be scared to vote against it once the bill got to the floor, and even Our Noble Lame Duck would fear to veto it. Ordinary Americans would celebrate and bring their children up to vote for the donkeys henceforward out of gratitude.
No, I'm not worried the Pelosis and Reids will steal my idea: they are too tone deaf to people not wearing expensive suits to consider the interests of those little people. They will ratchet down even more fiscal irresponsibility, without even scoring political gains from it. It's their usual electoral hari-kari on the installment plan. Thank you, Max and Charlie and Steny. The government in exile welcomes your failure to seize this opportunity.
