I Think that I Shall Never See

I Think that I Shall Never See
By David Glenn Cox

I think that I shall never see
a site as lovely as a tax rebate, for free
A partisan platform based on greed
by giving more to those who don’t need
To rescue the economy is not a mistake
but throwing life jackets to those not in the lake?

It’s hard to get angry with the people who are passing out money, only once before in my life have I been this angry about found money. A few years ago I bought a TV from a store which shall remain nameless. (Best Buy) They promised me a $50.00 mail-in rebate on my purchase, need I continue? After filling out the paperwork and waiting the required 6 weeks and guessing the name Rumplestiltskin I began to make phone calls. First they claimed that the date of purchase on the store receipt was illegible, then I hadn’t checked the box on line 27, and all the other hoops that I was required to jump through.

I finally got my rebate after explaining to them that the rebate company and Best Buy were partners in this scam. Best Buy induced me to buy this television with the promise of a rebate and if that rebate was to be denied to me then our contract was void and I would return the now 2-month old TV to Best Buy for a full refund. From then on, whenever I happen to see any product with a mail in rebate, it is immediately disqualified from purchase. I think to myself whenever I see a Best Buy advertisement that they spend millions of advertising dollars trying to lure me into the store but have eternally pissed me off by promising a $50.00 rebate and then trying to worm out of it. Why not eliminate the middleman and just spit on every tenth customer coming through the door?

As bad as that was, only the government could do worse, passing out money and screwing it up. Once again, if they give the taxpayer a nickel, they give big business a dollar. A $168 billion program will be divided as follows: 117 million families will divide $118 billion and the other $50 billion is to be divided up among America’s corporations. Exxon Mobil, the world’s most profitable corporation, is entitled, as is Microsoft. Maybe they will invest in a new Japanese-made forklift to haul their profits to the bank for future investment into third world markets, yeah that’ll get our economy going.

The original idea was to stimulate the economy, right? Giving Microsoft a tax credit for buying a new shrink wrap machine or even new desk top computers does nothing to stimulate the economy overall. Theoretically Microsoft could claim tax credits for updating their in-house computers with their own damn software! Exxon could obtain tax credits by purchasing new super tankers from Korea and this is where one third of the money goes.

As they say in the Ginsu knife commercial, “But wait, there’s more!” A fighting Harry Ried proclaimed this as the best deal that they could get, while provisions for home heating assistance and extended unemployment benefits were stripped from the final version.

“We were able to make the House bill better,” he said, pledging to continue to try to corral enough votes to provide more economic stimulus in the months ahead.

God bless his pointed little head, would it have been so hard to win an argument that the poor and suffering in the Michigan ice need home heating assistance more than Exxon needs a new supertanker? Harry thinks so, but he promises to try again later, so you Michigander’s just put another chair on the fire. Besides, why should we extend your unemployment benefits when you’d probably just waste it on food and heating oil anyway?

But the Democrats did manage one small victory with the inclusion of 20 million seniors and a quarter million disabled veterans. Even the cold-hearted Republican bastards couldn’t fight that one down, not in an election year anyway. But wait, there’s more! Will you get $300? Or $600 or even $1,200? Well, as a simple rule of thumb the less you need it the more you get, sounds fair enough now doesn’t it?

If, for example, you were unemployed most of the year and earned less than $3000, regardless of the number of children that you have, go away, you don’t qualify. However, if you earned, as a couple, $149,000 in net income then you would qualify for a $1,200 rebate. If your net take home pay is around $1,400 per week then you are eligible to stimulate the economy. Now if you add 3 kiddies into the mix it jumps to a $2,100 rebate, God Bless America!

Most of us are going to get $600.00 plus $300.00 per child and don’t get me wrong, that’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. But the economy is stalled and the stated purpose of the program is to get it moving again quickly. Millions of Americans are struggling, but most of them do not have a combined net income of $149 K. Yet that’s who gets the biggest piece of the pie, including the corporate pigs at the trough who scooped a third off the top. While a single mother with one child who earned less than $23,000 will qualify for $300 plus $300.00 more per child.

Grocery and gas money for a month and not even that much for the elderly or disabled veterans. More like lifeboat rations than a stimulus package. For the past twenty seven years we have been told that if we stimulate the top income brackets wealth will trickle down upon us but so far they only thing trickling down is poverty. Enough already! The economy is stalled at the bottom and if you put the assistance at the bottom then you might do some good. But by funding more tax loopholes and lavishing rebates among the upper middle class you only compound the problem. You spend money that you don’t have only to make the problem worse.

The bell curve should be inverted, if you made less than $23 K last year you should get $1,200 plus $300 per child and if you made $149 K you should get $300 plus $300 hundred per child. If you’re Exxon and made $40 Billion last year you should get nothing, you’ve had a free ride for seven years, give somebody else a chance. Ditto for Microsoft. The improved economy will help them enough as it is.

Once again the Congress has taken a good idea and turned it into a corporate pork fest. A nickel for you, a dollar for them and the more you don’t need it the more you get!

I think that I have never known a government
made up of such hearts of stone
Of knaves and fools
and outright tools

Who celebrate their victory class
with Perignon in long stemmed glass
As they talk away the fires of Rome,
for its not they that will lose their homes

To criticize the fiddlers tune,
and laugh away the middle class doom
I think I could only enjoy the joke
to see them hanging from a rope