The "Magic" of Tax Cuts

I just finished watching a PBS debate for the second congressional district. Each candidate had their moments, but Jim had a lot more of them.

One of my favorites was when John Swallow said, in answer to a question about how are we going to pay for all these tax cuts, "I believe in the magic of tax cuts." And talked about the bogus supply-side theory that if you lower taxes you somehow increase revenue. Jim Matheson responded by pointing out that Reagan, who believed in this theory (and Bush but didn't say it of course) actually exploded the countries debt and it didn't help revenues. Jim said it really must be magic, because you are in make believe land. He said if you really believe lowering taxes will raise revenues, why don't we just get rid of taxes all together and make infinate revenues. Swallow retorted that that was ridiculous and that he never advocated that. But on some level, that is what supply-sider arguments ulitmately end.

Every chance Swallow got to mention John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Dick Gephardt, Mike Leavitt, and George Bush he did. Basically, his argument was because I am Republican and Matheson is a Democrat, I can better serve the district than he can. Why would the GOP listen to Bush's Butt-boy? I can see why the Democrats in congress would do all they could to help out Jim because they are worried he is going to lose all the time and they need him to get a majority.

Remember my post about all the GOP tactics to suppress the vote? Here's another example, found in Wisconsin by some GOTV folks for the Sierra Club (as shown on Kos):



It really is sad that they are afriad of black voters so much that they have to do this. It just makes them look racist. If they really wanted to do better with voters, the GOP should make efforts to reach out to blacks on issues of faith, gun violence, crime, education in urban schools etc. They tried with NCLB and Bush's faith based iniatives, but the former is underfunded and pissing off people in rich and poor schools, and the latter never made it through congress for want of effort on Bush's part. On the crime issue, they cut funding for the COPS program. The GOP is too beholdant to the NRA to do anything serious about gun crimes, like creating a registry of balistic fingerprints, so the police will know who's gun did the shooting, and won't harrass lawful gun owners who have the same type of gun. I think that protects the second amendment and helps our police do their job. We have databases of human fingerprints, why not a database of a gun's fingerprint on a bullet?