A funny thing happened on the way to the debt ceiling.
Little Timothy Geithner, of the planet Vulcan.gov, found “stronger than expected revenue” had materialized, even in this crappy economy. Huh… The never-reported excerpt from his May 2, 2011 letter to the Speaker of the House attesting to this is below:
You’d think Bam-Bam would want to take a victory lap for bringing in more green to the Treasury (since he loves all green of any kind, especially other people’s), but since it came in the wake of extending the Bush tax cuts to the rich, it doesn’t fit the narrative, does it? Of course, neither does the unilateral-executive-ordered-assassination-based-on-intel-from-waterboarding-and-Gitmo, but that was this week’s victory lap, and, I digress…
It’s certainly, undoubtedly, totally & completely unrelated to the extension of the Bush era tax cuts… That’s what the liberals will tell you. I consign this bump to the Kenny G Circular Breathing Category where the failed stimulus lives. It’s a distant cousin to “The patient is dead but the operation was a complete success.” Category... but it goes on & on until the mere witnessing of it puts you into diabetic shock and you drop dead.
Much like Kenny G’s circular breathing, (and the failed stimulus) it’s a head-fake. Private-sector hiring is the only thing that is really curative and that aint’ happening. That’s right, the 2 year extension of the Bush tax cuts producing a positive, like this bump in revenue is a nice reminder that it’s nothing but liberal propaganda that tax cuts decrease revenue, but it’s not a cure. A 10 year renewal? Or better yet, a “permanent” (as permanent as anything can be in government)? Yeah. But only a two year stretch with BamBam telling you (again – really-really this time) he’s gonna axe ‘em? No. Just think it through like a regular person for a second and it’s really, really clear:
1. Unless you work for or rely on the federal government for income, D.C. is where money goes to die. You ain’t gettin’ it & you don’t want their crappy standard of living anyway.
2. If you’re a business owner & you know your tax rates might go up in 2 years, are you going to use that “cash” to hire someone? A million people just applied for 64,000 jobs at McDonald’s a week ago. Are you honestly going to sift through all those desperate job-applicants to fill a position being paid out of the difference between one tax rate and another that may disappear in two years? Really? And with ObamaCare on top of that? Really, really? McD’s is a global corporation, but if you’re Joe’s Hamburger Hut, are you going to hire some guy knowing you’re facing better than even odds you’ll have to fire him in two years? Are you going to look him in the eye, and say “Buddy, you’ve got a job to support your family but I might have to fire you in 24 months?” Or are you going to hire him and not warn him? Or are you going to explain to this perfect stranger the intimate, private details of your company’s finances? Because those are you choices. Be a prick and hire the guy knowing you’ll likely fire him, or tell a perfect stranger your profit margin & balance sheet are razor-friggin’ thin and risk letting that information get to your regular customers who might decide upon hearing this previously confidential info about you to find a more reliable person to do business with? Please… You’re going to hold off until you have some certainty, right? Because you don’t want to be a pr*ck to some poor guy who is just trying to support himself & his family and you don’t want to explain your entire fiscal life to a stranger and have it blow up in your face.
3. You’re going to take that money from the extension of the Bush tax rates and save it until you feel some certainty… Probably in the form of a Republican president being elected in November 2012. Because unless you’re a F.O.B. (used to be “Friend of Bill” in the Clinton days. Now it’s “Friend of Barack”) you’re not borrowing money from the Fed at 0% and profiting from your interest bearing investments (Parenthetically: Any A**HOLE can invest free money and make a profit, okay? You big Wall Street types strutting your peacock feathers just calm the frig down about your bad-bad selves, okay? My 12 year old daughter could do what you are doing right now.) Which leads me to point four…
4. Obama is not business friendly, despite the stock market, despite the liberal propaganda, for reasons I just made plain. Unless you’re big enough to fund a union payroll, Bam-Bam ain’t doing you any favors, and 90% of business in America is not union or ever will be union (God willing).
The revenue is good, but it’s like a sugar-high, or an adrenaline shot to the heart of someone who is clinicallyy brain-dead but the doctor is trying keep them alive long enough for his loved ones to reach his bedside. It’s a ruse, meant to just keep us our attention long enough until we remember we hate Kenny G, crash, realize it’s a scam, can’t take it anymore, or get to 2012, whichever comes first.
But, the bump is real. Real enough so that, of course, nobody in the mainstream media could be bothered to link “stronger than expected revenue” after tax cuts, with this gem from the Robin-Hood-in-Chief:
April 16, 2008 ABC “News” Presidential Debate, Charile Gibson & his Pompous-ass-Glasses-on-his-Nose, Moderating. Excerpt below via page 3 of the transcript. I just cut & pasted it below. Added underline emphasis is mine. Errors are theirs.
GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, “I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton,” which was 28 percent. It’s now 15 percent. That’s almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.
But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.
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