Mr. Schock I did have a few questions
because tea partiers view the world through ideology. Ideology is useless to debt and deficit. In one respect it is simple and does not require abstract academics, mathematics, or econometric models. The accounting of debt and deficit is simple calculation. I will answer one sophistry claim always put forward by tax cut cultists. John F Kennedy cut tax rates and an expansion occurred. The Revenue Act of 1964 passed after Kennedy's assassination and signed into law by Lyndon Johnson was a stimulus act. The tax rate on incomes over 400,000 of 91% was cut to 70% along with many other Keynesian stimulus measures. (explanatory note) If the Bush Tax cuts expire we are raising rates 3% to rates all below 40% with special exemptions and deductions still in tact. It wasn't burdensome in the surplus creating years of Clinton administration and wouldn't be now.
GOP strategists have spent decades crafting ways to exploit family values, but they seem to have ignored the simple values I learned from my family and the surrounding farm community. Farmers live with risk, but slow practical choices must be made. Perseverance, reinvestment, frugality over a lifetime, eventually produce asset accumulation, wealth. Our politicians have long ago forgotten values held as though they were commandments by my ancestors. First when some one is hiring you, you work hard, careful to treat the job like it was your own business. When selling you helped a customer make a good choice, not the most profitable choice. If your community was to make progress, everyone shared in the efforts. You meant what you said, because everyone would know what you said, and how you acted afterwards. I grew up among real conservatives, not these shysters of today's GOP. Dems that support these tax cuts are not Blue Dogs, but yellow dogs. Yellow Dogs afraid of doing the right thing for fear of right wing media attacks. Some Blue Dogs are willing to sell out working people because, they are in the pockets of the wealthy. Last night someone emailed me this nostalgia piece for farmers. A Paul Harvey story with a farm scenes slide show. Once Andy Rooney who was in World War II said calling every soldier a hero bothered him, he had known soldiers some were heros others were not. I have known farmers some are like the Paul Harvey image, but others are not.
On the 8th Day God made a Farmer
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