Letter to Michelle Singletary

January 20, 2008

Michelle Singletary

The Washington Post

1150 15^th Street, NW

Washington, DC 20072

RE – How About A President Who Wants To Fix Debt? – What a marvelous idea! As outlined by you in this morning’s Miami Herald.

Ms. Singletary,

It was a dark and stormy morning when I got to your column. It was the first time I had read anything by you. I wasn’t half way through when I decided to resuscitate my comatose, indeed moribund, series of columns called “Cellos and Colonoscopies” – There is a Connection. Since I am neither a musician nor a proctologist you may well ask

what I am talking about.

Easy.

You know as much about debt and taxes as I know about fugues and polyps. One is “good” while the other is “bad”. Why can’t I have a national audience to hector on the relative common denominators of both? I tell you that life is so unfair.

I don’t know what your educational background is. I don’t know whether or not you have any real life business experience. Things like meeting a payroll, dealing with customers, and dancing with the bureaucrats tend to sharpen “the edge of husbandry”. As to your school time – if any – I know that you skipped a lot of History classes, slept through the Economics list, and shunned any classes on Economic History as if they were radioactive.

“It all sounds good, but history has shown that tax cuts

don’t cut it as the major driver of economic stimulus.”

The Miami Herald

Today

You

Logically, the next obvious question is “What does”? It will be left dangling.

What “History” [Clio is my favorite Muse. I always capitalize it] have you been reading?

Beginning with an aggressive supply side tax policy in 5^th century Athens, continuing with the 5 Emperors [vide Gibbon], looking at the abatement of the Corn Laws, there is a palpable pattern that shows whenever the government takes “less” the people prosper. The corollary of that is that the government winds up getting “more”.

In the 20^th century it is abundantly clear that tax cuts worked in America. They worked in 1921. They worked in 1961. They worked in 1981.

I’ll add an addendum. They worked in 2001.

Your first assignment is to look it up.

“And we know that trying to pump up the economy by boosting

business has often resulted in the rich getting richer.”

The Miami Herald

Today

You

Logically the obvious question of “Who cares”? will be left dangling.

Are you saying that if the rich get richer the poor get poorer?

Are you saying that we shouldn’t have rich people?

Are you saying that if we make the rich people poorer we will make the poor people richer?

Are you saying that there is a big pie, a pie that mysteriously fills itself up with “riches”, that you want to be divided more fairly?

Just what the Hell are you saying?

Then I got to the good part of your column. It was your conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton about “debt”.

I think you both agree that debt is bad. It gets really bad if the borrower can’t meet his obligations. You’ll be surprised to know that lenders –A- lend money because they want to make money and –B- they want their money back...

You and Senator Clinton – and where did she find the time to do all that she did in the glorious 1990s? – have a two edged solution.

#1 – Better “debt” education from a public education system that is suffering from terminal artery hardening is a bit of a stretch. We know it can’t teach readin’ & ‘riting. Why do we think it can teach ‘rithmetic? Even if it could it sure can’t teach it retroactively.

#2 – A “community support fund of $5,000,000,000 to assist hard-hit communities and troubled owners”. [That’s B as in Billion] How about a special tax on really, really rich people that will only help really, really poor people?

Am I the only one who thinks this is Alice in Wonderland going through, again and again, a revolving door before she goes into the mirror on her way to Wonderland? That White Rabbit is a dangerous critter.

You say…

“With the right counseling, individuals can avoid foreclosure, eliminate

their debts and improve their credit worthiness. With good financial counseling,

marriages can be saved. Help the individual, you boost the economy.”

The Miami Herald

Today

You

“Barking mad”, can’t find your ass using both hands, window licker on the short yellow school bus, dumber than a box of hammers dumb would be the usual way I would label the above. Not today. My “grassy knoll” antennae are up and quivering. There is a plot afoot.

Should Mrs. Clinton get back to the White House this fall she is going to make Dr. Phil the head of the IRS. The watch word of the Clinton domestic policy will be “afternoon television”. We know she used to talk to Eleanor Roosevelt when she was First Lady. Oprah’s Senator Salama Bahama indiscretion will be forgiven. She’ll be the Secretary of Self Esteem. Every American will get a Cadillac Escalade as soon as its steam driven model is ready. In the back seat there will be a HDTV the size of an average Olympic high jump. Camelot will look like Darfur. By Labor Day we’ll all be farting through silk, the silk being available because of the altruistic commitment of environmentally sensitive worms.

Madness. Lunacy.

“I asked Mrs. Clinton: Is there such a thing as good debt?”

She answered by reaching rhetorical heights not seen since her namesake, Sir Edmund Hillary, climbed Mt. Everest [I know, I know. She was born 4 years before he climbed it. Don’t be so picky.] “My parents were very frugal. Me father did not believe in debt. …if you are in debt you basically undermine your ability to chart your own future.” Too bad her brother didn’t take that advice. If he had he wouldn’t owe $200,000 in child support and alimony.

Perhaps you can ask her why the Federal debt never went down by a single penny during her time in the White House. Not a single penny. Never once. Ever.

You say “…there isn’t any good debt.”

Pray tell, how is “a single mom, a woman of color, with a child in need of a good Ritalin program” supposed to get her son some Nikes and herself a car? How about a house for this hard working lady?

You say that debt has become too “dangerous a trap for too many people. It’s important that whoever is our next president be highly sensitive to that fact.”

“Sensitive”?

If your teeth are “sensitive” you give up ice cream.

If a poor person cannot access the capital markets how is she helped?

Loans are always paid. Most times the borrower pays them. If we follow your ideas the lender will pay them. He won’t pay them the second time because he won’t make them.

Maybe somebody should be “sensitive” to that.

Kevin Smith

P.S. – Pop Quiz. Who said “A national debt can be a national blessing”?

P.S.* – Just below your column there was a news item that said the Washington Post, your employer, increased its dividend from $2.05 a share to $2.15. Is that what you mean by the “rich getting richer”? The D.C. homeless shelter, the one made famous by Russ Snider, is right across the street from the United States Tax Court. Will more people be going there – the homeless shelter, not the Tax Court - because of your employer’s action? If so, will you resign? If not, why not?

P.S.# - Were you ever hired by a poor person?