Dear Santa:
I am tired of getting Speed Stick deodorant in my Christmas stocking each year. Instead, I have been watching the presidential debates and in upcoming broadcasts I want to see the following proposals advanced by one or more of the candidates:
Move Tax Day Beside Election Day:
A virtually no cost way to build grassroots pressure to incent simplification of the 70,000-page Tax Code (note: there are more tax preparers than all the residents of the State of Hawaii) would be to move Election Day to April 16 (the day after income taxes are due), or move Tax Day to the first Monday in November, the day before the elections. I am sure that it is no accident that the current dates are about as far apart as our 12-month Gregorian Calendar will allow.
Make “Tax Cuts” A No-No Obscenity:
The term “tax cuts” should be added to the four no-no words not allowed on network television until we have a chance to educate America on the difference between a real tax cut and Bozo budget gimmicks. Truth is that by law every dollar Uncle Sam spends has to be funded. Hence spending = taxes and taxes = spending. To that notion, George Bush and the GOP never “cut taxes,” instead they grew government by an extraordinary 22 percent over the last seven years and changed revenue stream from pay-as-you-go (inherited from Bill Clinton) to massive new debt, which is just another form of tax. The National Debt has exploded from around five trillion to over nine trillion. (The otherwise venerated Ronald Reagan started the oxymoron of “unfunded tax cuts” in 1981, at which time the National Debt was only one trillion. We have since gone from the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor nation and as a result the Euro may replace the dollar as the de facto international currency.)
Annual National Debt Statement:
Each year my wife and I get statements from the Social Security Administration showing historic contributions and our anticipated monthly income once we retire. I propose a second annual mailer, this one from the Treasury Department, updating each of 130 million taxpayers’ shares of the national debt (about $70,000 per taxpayer currently), the amount of new borrowing on each taxpayer’s behalf over the last year ($4,415 in ’06), and the interest-payment-per-taxpayer in the previous year ($3,123) to pay for the ongoing debacle. It will look just like a credit card bill except instead of you binging on plastic, the clowns in Washington DC binged on your behalf, and you don’t get free airline miles.
NPR Takeover:
I read recently that over 20 million Americans listen to National Public Radio every morning, tops in America. The folks at NPR seem smart and competent, are good at fundraising, and most already live in the DC area and are on Eastern Time. Maybe they should just take over the Federal Government? Nina Totenberg could run the Supreme Court. Joe Morgenstern could run the National Endowment for the Arts. For President? Bring back the affable and compassionate Bob Edwards, who never should have been fired from NPR’s morning show.
Relocate The Capital:
As just about any visitor to DC knows, the Capital’s statues, monuments, museums, and archives are a rich tribute to our Founding Fathers and the principles and values they bequeathed, most notably in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. As long as we are in the business of water boarding, wiretapping without judicial review, effecting extraordinary renditions and second guessing the Geneva Accords, and suspending habeas corpus (a 700-year tradition inherited from English Law), then we shouldn’t be doing it under the bronze and marble noses of Tom Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, and FDR. Where to relocate, at least temporarily, our Capital? Perhaps to Lower Manhattan, where the weekly T-Bill auctions fund our debt (with foreigners picking up much of tab) and keep us solvent. Or maybe to Las Vegas, a city rich in larger-than-life monuments that celebrate the Pursuit of Happiness without the baggage of Life and Liberty.
