Bush Confidence Game

An email from a person using the pseudonym "Michael Moore" responding to a recent letter I penned to the Lima News, beginning his response by informing me I was an "idiot." Insult answered in spades. Mr. Moore shocked at my rudeness. In reference to my assertion that the REAL Michael Moore (which gentleman my interlocutor despises, of course) is accurate in his portrayal of Bush cutting taxes for the rich while telling the average American to go fuck himself, the ironical Moore replies:

"to go fuck himself" - I must have missed when that happened. Was it while Kerry was voting for higher taxes, or was it during Moore's movie? A movie which, most will agree, is hardly a truthful documentary. Somehow Moore manages to bend the truth just a bit...kind of like making it sound like cutting taxes is a bad thing for the middle class while raising them is good. Hmmm......

My response (written more, of course, to help me articulate and clarify my position for myself than in any hope that this prime cut of moron will ever get it):

Cutting taxes FOR the middle class is certainly a good thing for the middle classes. But Bush did not cut taxes for the middle classes in any significant way. The typical American got about $500 from Bush's latest tax cut. That's about the equivalent of one month's house payment for most folks. The majority of those cuts went to the super-wealthy, those making a million or more a year. For example, John Snow, Bush's do-nothing Treasury secretary, was estimated to get back about $250,000. Like he needed "tax relief."

What Bush did, clearly, is loot the Treasury for the sake of a fortunate few--those most likely to support him and other Republican candidates -- then throw the average American chicken feed to keep him quiet. It worked. Meanwhile the lack of revenue coming into the federal government means not only a ballooning deficit but also a lot less money flowing from the fed government to the states, which of course means that state and local taxes shoot up, which of course eats up Joe Smoe's $500 tax cut, which means Joe Smoe ends up with nothing or in the hole. Meanwhile Joe Plutocrat, who probably does not pay taxes in the first place (the super-wealthy can afford clever accountants) has a nice fat check to deposit in his off-shore account. Comprende, Meester Moore?

It's amazing that educated middle class people are too thick to see through this racket.

The reason they are too thick, of course, is that Bush and his gang are appealing to their greed. This is the sine qua non of all confidence games. Most people would be sensible enough to see through the game, if not for being blinded by their greed -- compelled by greed to believe the unbelieveable. Take for example pyramid schemes. Anyone with a lick of sense can see that, eventually, the pyramid, which is built on nothing --on thin air -- must collapse, that most of those who put money into the scheme are going to be losers; the prospect of making a killing before the collapse, however, is too much of a temptation for many, so they plunk their money down and cry "foul" afterwards. Hard to feel sorry for them then.