I know Scott Burns writing, 6/9, (and I have nothing to learn from him) and I know leftist pap when I see it, even when I smell it - apparently you don't. And I continue to maintain that I can get a grasp on even the obvious: tax cuts are not "paid for." This is little more than a standard leftist fable used in defense of the indefensible. Do you "pay" for taking money out of your own piggy bank? Do you pay for, say, a DVD, after you have decided you don't want it? Suppose you decide NOT to remove money from your piggy bank so that you CAN purchase an Izod shirt with it? Does the piggy bank die? Roll over and play dead? Scream at you for taking money? Experience a draw-down in its balance?
I learned long ago - when I was one - that lefties can spin any situation they like to make it seem like any thing they like. Think "JW doubletalk and flummery." It's the same process. When the JWs do it you understand what they're doing with the facts, how come you don't recognize it when leftists play likewise fast and loose with the truth?
francois
P.S. If Burns were the infallible genius you describe, he'd be getting rich as Croesus in the stock market, not piddling around demonstrating his genius in a Texas news rag. And, 6/9, you have no idea how I "fancy" myself. Are you now a mind-reader too?
Edited to reply to Bendrr - Your figures are essentially correct. The bottom 50% of wage earners pay about 4% of taxes, the top 50% pays 96%, the top 5% pays 36% of all taxes. Yet even given the manner in which the democrat party has skewed the tax table, they scream that every tax cut is a "gift to the rich." Unfortunately, the audience to whom the democrats are speaking is so damned ignorant they don't realize what's going on. People who ARE informed and who DO know what's going on are usually in that top, hated, "rich" upper 50%, so they can be ignored.
Here is the democrat plan (or should I say the neo-Marxist plan): Saddle a minority of taxpayers with ALL THE TAXES. Make that minority as small as possible. Make the other citizens who are NOT paying any taxes dependant on the politicians and on government in general, responsible for meeting their needs in terms of health care, income, child day care, food, transportation, etc. In short, make the vast majority of people aware that the democrat party is vital to their own self-interest.
Now you have a small minority of people paying all the taxes, so small a minority that in fact their votes DO NOT COUNT. If every one of the tax paying people were to vote as a block for any but a democrat, it would not make one particle of difference. If you're a democrat, it's a sweet plan. Who would ever vote for anyone else, when that anyone else might raise YOUR taxes instead of just taxing the rich? Your grasp on power is guaranteed. You are invincible in the voting booth. You are free to do anything politically you like. You are not required to answer to any responsible party, other than the voters in your district which are made up of people who depend on you for the substance of their life, and a few of the hated rich whose opinions you are now free to ignore, since they only make up a single-digit percentage of all people casting votes. Sweet, ain't it? And you really think the hated rich are going to take that kind of screwing? The democrat party thinks so. You like the sound of this? You're not horrified regarding the implications for your own freedoms as guaranteed by the constitution? Then keep on voting democrat. And kiss your freedoms good bye as soon as the neo-Marxists take over. But you don't care, do you? Cause now the hated rich are paying your bills. How ignorant. How blind. Didn't 70 years of the most repressive government ever known on this planet in the Marxist Soviet Union teach ANY lessons?
Remember John Galt.