The Great Commode Flushing of 2010

“Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree.” So goes the venerable old saw. The modern, progressive version, however, would most likely be: “Let’s tax you, let’s exclude me, and let’s tax every rich person behind every tree until we drive them and all of their assets to Switzerland with its scenic numbered Swiss accounts, and their businesses to China.”

Perhaps the best contemporary defining example of the respective economic philosophies of conservatives and socialists--for that is what the artists formerly know as “democrats” have become--is the battle over the renewal of the Bush Tax Cuts, as they are so euphemistically called. In a rather deranged sense, it’s fortuitous that Democrats are calling themselves Progressives as there is nothing whatever democratic about what they intend to do to America.

Do you ever find yourself sitting in front of the television, clenching your fists and yelling at the screen in amazement as the unarmed hero, pursued by a multitude of bloodthirsty, armed baddies deftly renders a bad guy unconscious, and immediately trots off without picking up his weapons and ammunition?! By the same token, do you find yourself yelling at the TV when a politician makes an absolutely outrageous assertion and the talking head is completely unable to see the obvious, common sense, devastating reply or the simple question that will lay waste their entire ideology?

Witness the recent progressive vacation exodus from Capitol Hill by those brave soles of the overwhelming majority, those demigods (demagogues?) of public virtue who inexplicably lack the ability or fortitude to pass a budget or to vote on the renewal of the aforementioned tax cuts prior to the upcoming Great Commode Flushing of 2010, or as it is less colorfully known, The Off Year Elections. If only their fortitude did not extend to definitions.

Who knew, for example, that the cost of a middling home in much of America was actually the dividing line between the middle class and the rich? While I’d love to experience the Olympian luxury and leisure of making $250,000 per year, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to imagine that it made me rich. Who could have imagined that our earnings were actually the rightful property of the elite Progressive class who know so much better than do we what to do with our money? Who could have known the mere existence of the rich was an impending apocalypse?

One of the great joys and wonders of Capitalism is that it is not a zero sum game. A dollar made by my neighbor is not a dollar unavailable to me. Nothing restrains me from starting a small business, building that better mousetrap, and attaining the unimaginable wealth of $250,000 but my own abilities, knowledge and determination (OK, OK, The Obama Socialist Laser Economic Death Ray would probably burn a hole right through me, my employees and my payroll, but play along...).

There was a time in America when coveting the possessions of others or shamelessly expressing jealousy of them was considered unseemly, a sign of bad upbringing and shabby character, yet such blatant covetousness has been adopted wholesale by President Obama and his followers. One wonders what mothers would say about those who extend such bad manners to include an entire, arbitrarily selected class of people.

If my neighbor is rich, it speaks as well of my character that I sincerely congratulate him on his industry and good fortune as when I clothe and feed the poor and hungry. His success should serve as nothing but inspiration to me and others to pursue what he has attained if we are so inclined, and in America, at least as it was PO (Pre-Obama), nothing would stand in our way. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson on religion, his wealth neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, and this particular rising tide does lift all boats, small and great.

The idea, often spouted with smug self assurance by socialists, that if Republicans (and not a few democrats who feel the torches of the enraged, pitchfork wielding villagers on their fleeing coattails) want to extend the Bush Tax Cuts, they must come up with a gazillion dollars to pay for the resulting loss to the Treasury is one of the more brazen economic lies ever created, yet it’s a useful lie. It’s useful in that it clearly reveals the heart and soul of the socialist economic philosophy: Your money is not yours, not only the money in your pocket, but any money you might potentially earn in the future. Neither is your property or liberty. You possess only that which the all knowing, all caring, all wise state deems you fit to possess. Did I mention that the state may also change the rules, all of them, at any time and without notice? Ask GM stockholders about that.

The Bush Tax Cuts are phantoms. They are potential, future taxes, inventions, wishes, ghosts, fairy dust, taxes that need never be levied by the Congress, a Congress that has arranged this particularly bit of legislative sleight of hand so that the taxes will be levied automatically if they do...nothing. In their present form, the BTC's exercise at least minimal restraint on a rapacious, never sated government, allowing citizens to keep more of their own earnings. They are not monies in the mythical Al Gore lockbox that will be stolen from hungry widows, orphans and the infirm elderly if heartless Republicans allow the evil rich to keep their ill gotten gains, gains that do not yet, and may never, exist.

There is no way to know precisely how much money any given new tax will bring in, but if the BTC’s are not extended, hopefully permanently, their expiration in January of 2011 will constitute the single largest tax increase in the history of the Republic. It is this fact, no doubt, that is overflowing the drool buckets of the Congressional Socialists. And will they use it to reduce the deficit? Balance the budget that they could not be bothered to write? Of course not. Even now many of them daydream about a lame-duck manifested second “Stimulus” such as the first that brought us “The Summer of Recovery,” thousands of legally mandated signs lauding shovel ready construction projects that weren’t, billions in government checks sent to the dead (presumably in Chicago and other Democrat strongholds, no doubt as payment for voting services rendered, past and future), and countless other economically brain dead pursuits.

It does seem more than likely, however, that the largest tax increase in history, coupled with an economy poised on the very brink of a double dip recession and 10%+ unemployment, will not only fail to bring in the anticipated drool-covered revenues, but will actually cause the Treasury to lose money. Those fabled laboratories of democracy, the states, have some significant recent experience with exactly that ugly state of affairs. Imagine that. Spend money you don’t have by mortgaging the country to China, vastly increase taxes on everyone, encourage the truly wealthy to shelter their assets and move themselves and their businesses out of the country, destroy all incentive for small business with punitive taxes (let’s not get into Obamacare, shall we?) and tax revenues decrease. As Yogi Berra said, “It’s deja vu all over again.”

Is it too late? Too late to take sincere pleasure in the good fortune and accomplishments of others? Too late to stop spending money we don’t have? Too late to stop drooling with the obscene hunger of spending other people’s money, money spent against their will, money they have yet to earn? Too late to write an honest budget? Too late to actually read bills before votes are cast? Or will we demand that those obvious, common sense replies be made, the questions asked, even if we have to do it ourselves? The answer may determine if, on November 2, that great maelstrom will flush away not only a brace of socialists, but our identity and future as the last, best hope of mankind as well.