Posted 7/20/2011

ANIMALS BEHAVING BADLY

The animals are behaving abominably – especially the donkeys and elephants.

The Democrats started things off by acting as if there was no debt problem and no deficit problem, despite the fact that the government was borrowing 40 cents on each dollar spent. This is the kind of borrowing velocity which bankrupts people, businesses and governments.

The President acted as if he were above it all and should be left alone to play with the Federal Treasury as if it were a toy. He seemed to feel he could charm his way out of anything.

Fortunately, the House Republicans thundered to America’s rescue by proposing huge cuts in the nation’s spending. Aided by their Tea Party allies, the elephants forced the donkeys to back up and consider deficit reduction in their budget proposals.

But the President chose to emphasize tax increases as a way to raise revenue and reduce the deficit, while allowing the debt to continue to grow.

Again the elephants stamped their feet and demanded that deficit reduction should be accomplished by cuts in spending – without raising taxes.

The donkey and the elephant jockeyed and jousted back and forth while the President continued to make charming speeches. Then two things happened:

1. An elephant study group found the best formula for deficit reduction was 85% spending cuts and 15% tax increases.

2. The donkeys concluded they could live with a formula of 82.5% spending cuts and 17.5% tax increases.

They were so close. All the elephants had to do was snap it up.

Instead, pressured by Tea Partyers, the elephants demanded a formula of zero tax increases.

The elephants showed outrageous stupidity in refusing the deal. Now everything has blown apart. There are three different plans being debated and none of them has a chance of passing.

The public properly lays most of the blame on the elephants since an almost perfect deal was rejected.

Sadly, neither animal understands the average American’s attitude toward “being and getting rich.” Pearl Buck, writing in The Good Earth in 1937, came up with a wisdom which transcends nations and people. In her great book about China’s peasants, she said:

“It is good to be rich
but it is bad to get too rich.”

Donkeys do not understand the first part of the phrase. Americans and people the world over have nothing against getting rich so long as there is equal opportunity. That’s why the donkeys’ “inequality arguments” do not resonate with the public.

Elephants, on the other hand, do not understand the second part of the wisdom. Americans support the rich only so long as they believe that the rich are financially contributing to the nation’s needs. That means that the average American believes that the rich should – and can afford to – pay higher taxes to help bail out the nation.

By refusing to increase taxes on rich people and even richer corporations, elephants are catering to the growing belief the rich are now too powerful and too non-caring to do their share.

While most people are suffering, corporations are sitting on gigantic mountains of cash. General Electric will pay no taxes this year. The oil companies are given shameful tax breaks while producing record profits. Ethanol subsidies drive up the price of food, causing starvation in Asia’s poor countries. Rich corporate farmers trade in their million-dollar combines every year while the average joe is forced to keeps his car over seven years.

Wall Streeters have convoluted the tax laws so that some zillionaires are taxed at the low capital gains rate instead of at the proper (and higher) income tax rate.

More and more, people are beginning to believe “it is bad to be too rich” because the rich seem to control the government’s spending and taxing policies.

The elephants are now on the wrong side of the “tax increase” argument. The whole herd seems to believe that “you can’t be too rich.”

If the elephants hurt America, they will find out very quickly they will be perceived as a lackey of the “too rich.” In two years, the donkeys could retake the House.

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