3:58 AM, Apr 17, 2003 
4/17/2003 4:58 AM
I just read this article, and was awakened annoyingly out of the incognizant trance I had settled myself into, regarding Congressman Gephardt, his colleagues, and the opinion of the average voting American. As no one will deny, this country is still quite entrenched in hard economic times. I tend to think things aren't that bad, but that's just my opinion. I have talked to plenty of people who seem to think that the economic angel of death will not have passed us over until sysadmin jobs are growing on trees again.
Richard Gephardt, the Missouri Democrat who is seeking(and will probably get) the nod from his party to oppose the President in next year's election has stated that he opposes the President's tax policy, and says that it isn't doing anyone any good. He purposes to repeal the cut, either in part or in whole, and instead dump inexcusable billions into a healthcare system that will perform almost as well as the education system our government subsidizes.
As my affiliated party says, government has fouled almost every non-governmental entity they have put their hands on(education, unemployment, medication, retirement, highways, etc). I see no reason why they would improve healthcare, in spite of the rest of their failures. But, this entire paragraph is tangential, and is not at all the larger issue I wish to address. I just wanted to make a point that our government is really really good at wasting your money.
The piece of that article that bothered me the most was not something new to me. I have seen it before, but I have never fully responded before, because I thought that mention of such idiocy would be dispelled by most properly functioning minds. Unfortunately, the media have an agenda, too, and is in general pretty well in-line with the agendas of folks like Congressman Gephardt, so they continue to "itemize" a tax cut in dollars, as an expense. An expense! Well, this is an irretrievably stupid thing on which to report, and refer to as "objective journalism."
Income taxes are collected each year from all the little corners into which the Internal Revenue Service has lodged its swarthy grasp, and never once has anyone been able to precisely predict what the total fruit of that legalized theft is, until the money has been counted. Now, politicians and news agencies alike have been "objectively" predicting how much money will be made by the federal government, as many as ten years prior to the actual occurrence of the tax collection, much less the income being earned! That isn't smart journalism, and it isn't good planning. It's pure idiocy.
Against an increasingly unpopular President, and with the media behind him, Congressman Gephardt wants to increase taxes. There are some nice things that he might be talking about doing, but I don't think they will happen, and they won't make a lasting impact on the nation's economy. I refer to reducing/eliminating income tax for the lower/working classes. It is a crime against humanity that these people's incomes are taxed at all, and further, it makes no sense, as their share of the total amount collected is negligible, compared to the highest-earning 10%. However, to offer these people tax relief will not jump-start the economy like putting extra money in the hands of people who start companies and employ these people. Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that the lower classes are paying taxes needlessly, and that that needs to stop, but 1) Gephardt won't do it, and 2) it wouldn't help the economy as quickly.
To elaborate a bit, I will state that when economic prosperity happens, the most successful catalysts are the large moves. The most obvious sign of economic depression I can think of is unemployment. It is directly proportional to crime, substance abuse, suicide, and a good number of the rest of our country's problems. When a large company comes to a small town, or an impoverished neighborhood and opens a facility that offers good, reliable, numerous jobs, the people who get these jobs fill with what is called "consumer confidence." As a result, they buy homes, cars, and send their kids to college. All of this puts even more money back into the economy, and the cycle keeps repeating itself. However, the initial, concrete catalyst was the large company coming in, and employing everybody. If these people are taxed heavily, they do something that even lower-class people do: they stop spending money. Extra, disposable money is the cornerstone of any healthy economy, and tax increases ensure that disposable money is in short supply.
Now, Congressman Gephardt is talking about commiting a double-whammy, against the prosperity of our country. If elected president, he plans to back out of a tax reduction, and pour nonexistent money that he predicts, along with CNN, will somehow exist, into programs that don't work, and will only damage the current healthcare industry, and hence the economy at large. Madness.
I thought about naming this little ditty "Dick Gephardt is an idiot," but I thought better of it, because that would be absolutely untrue. I find that Democratic leftist thought is generally caused by one or a combination of two things: ignorance and evil. Proposing what he proposes, he obviously has no idea what he's talking about, but he's still willing to lead America hopelessly deeper into recession. For that, I name him evil, and probably ignorant, too.
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