Death, Taxes And The Funk That Keeps Me Quiet

Yes… yes, I’m still alive but have been in such a state of funk that blogging – especially about woefully pathetic field of national contestants – seems like a diversion that I haven’t had much use for. I’ll give credit to those that have been stalwart in keeping people honest but that doesn’t alleviate the ignorance that is so pervasive when it comes to the direction of the country. I simply at a loss for words.

But taxes were due last Tuesday and I have decided that many people would rather die than continue to feed the monster for things that have so little relevance to their lives. Combine that with the fact that we’ve entered into an era where new bogymen are divined simply to keep everyone scared and misinformed and one has to realize that the founders had it right that the government in general and politicians in particular are indeed to be feared.

I was listening to my two least favorite senators, Durbin and Schumer, on FNS this morning and damn near swallowed my snuff when I heard Durbin respond to Chris Wallace’s question about Obama not rasing taxes on the middle class. Wallace pointed out that 50% of households with income under $50,000 reported capital gains income in 2007 and wondered how, exactly, an increase in capital gains tax rates wouldn’t be a middle-class tax increase. Durbin, on que, prattled on about the Bush administration’s poor economic performance while avoiding the question all together. The fact is that almost no one in congress has a friggin’ clue about tax policy or, if they do, they think keeping the populous worked up in a froth about greedy SOBs putting the screws to working stiffs consciously developed at some clandestine meeting of heads of a capitalists forum quite like the Trilateralist Commission has profit.

Of course the discussion about NAFTA is equally insane. The two Dem contenders want us to believe that NAFTA is just evil. But the fact is the combined U.S. trade deficit with our NAFTA partners was just under $72 billion which, for anyone who knows bupkis about the economy, equals less than 1/2 of 1% of the U.S. GDP ($14.6 Trillion for those of you who don’t know.) Add that to the fact that in 2007 we imported about $90 billion in oil alone (not even including natural gas) from Mexico and Canada out of total imports of $160 Billion we, excluding energy, are a net exporter to the two countries. And for the life of me I can’t figure out where the “jobs” went if what we’re getting from them what we refuse to increase in our domestic production. It’s all crap and it’s all either demonstrable ignorance or an outright lie.

These candidates are indeed echoing Herbert Hoover – well at least as far as the demagogy re: NAFTA is concerned – and the striking thing is, if Americans are wont to have less illegal immigration from from Mexico we need to develop a system where their primary exports aren’t either humans or oil. So, just like the the run-up to the depression, we’re looking at increased taxes on capital and a modern inclination to the Smoot-Hawley Act. It gives me heartburn.

But that’s why I’m in a funk over all of this. It’s just an attempt to keep us all, as Don Luskin would say, poor and stupid.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 9:01 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.