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The latest argument in Washington is centered on George Bush's
campaign promise, now his proposal, on taxes. Depending on
your party affiliation, the $1.6 trillion dollar plan can
be viewed as either a well deserved and needed tax refund
or an upscale, Monte Carlo version of "Hungry, Hungry Hippo,"
where the only players are the top income earners from the
previous fiscal year.
Regardless of which side of the debate you take, these are
familiar battle lines, as we've all been through other Republican
attempts, some successful, others just funny, to sling mud
out of the trough they work so hard to be in charge of.
Now, at this point it would be very easy to make pig-type
politician jokes, but I prefer to keep such things to a minimum.
Though, I must confess, nothing would please me more than
to watch our Republican-led Congress writhe around and squeal
until it's time for the slaughterhouse that is our electoral
process to grind the whole mess to a halt.
There is one refrain in particular that pokes (last time,
I promise) at the collective intelligence of the American
people, or at least those that have enough money to own some
means of obtaining news, but not enough money to have made
the voyage to Monte Carlo, only to find that they've never
heard of "Hungry, Hungry Hippo."
The refrain that I'm referring to goes something like this:
The people that pay the most in taxes should get the most
from a tax break, not simply due to some undefined belief
in the God of fiscal symmetry, but because (they say) that
to do otherwise would be a punishment of success.
But what does "success" mean if all the barriers are removed
from its realization? Does it mean that any unlucky person
who inherits enough money to have to pay taxes at the highest
rate qualifies as a "success"?
By this standard, we can all be successful. All it requires
is being born into the right circumstances. Either the idea
of success is so vacuous as to be meaningless or Bush's grasp
of economics is worse than his driving record.
It is readily apparent what kind of success will be rewarded
if Bush's tax proposal succeeds. Let's just hope that legislative
success proves to be more elusive than the kind of success
Bush understands.
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