Myriam Marquez, The Miami Herald

February 28, 2009

Myriam Marquez
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: “Don’t Blame Honest Poor for others’ Greed” – Whether the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone it’s pretty much going to be the same for the pitcher, right? A somewhat different take on how we all came to be in this revolting situation.

Ms. Marquez,

I’ll start with an easy one.

Every time Detroit built an”energy-saving vehicle” the American car buying public stayed away in droves. The American car buyers wanted SUVs. All the modern American Liberals from car producing states got them counted as trucks to get around the CAFÉ standards. The same scoundrels then kept caribou rutting areas in Alaska and about 1/3rd of the Gulf of Mexico away American drillers. Chavez, the towel heads in Iran, and, soon, Castro will always sell us the crude oil we need. Sometimes it sounds like a conspiracy, doesn’t it?

Let’s stipulate – perhaps not in full throated treacley Kumbaya mode – that honest Everyman, trudging down the rocky path that he has no choice but to stay on as he tries to get a leg over on life and having a rock, a large rock, fall on him shall not be blamed for being the catcher on the shot put team.

Since you make the distinction of a class called “Honest Poor” I rather imagine there will be a ring with many “Dishonest Poor” souls Gorilla Glued to it awaiting Dante’s final disposition. Their only plus is that they will always be higher in the Inferno than any employees of Halliburton or stockholders of WAL*MART.

In your achingly formulaic Jeremiad about evil you specifically mention who shouldn’t be blamed. Ellen Seidman, who ran the Office of Thrift Supervision from 1997 to 2001, is, as you say, one of those who can cast stones. Further, she says that any attempt to blame any part of the mortgage dustup on the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 is “chutzpah”.

Ms. Seidman, whose term in the waning days of the Clinton Administration could be compared to playing the piano in a busy cat house, knows not of what she speaks.

And, alas, neither do you.





It’s not “chutzpah”. It is “emmis” that the 1977 law started the ball down the chute.

Modern American Liberals are unaware that ideas have consequences and that legislation has unintended consequences. That’s how the Davis-Bacon Act of 1936 became the most anti-Black law passed on the Federal level in the 20th century. Like the Community Reinvestment Act made everybody feel good Davis Bacon did the same. When legislators substitute feelings for thought chaos follows. Witness the boobs in DC marching off the cliff whenever the minimum wage is mentioned.

If people will live better because the entry level wage is increased by $1.25 would not Logic dictate that the minimum wage be $28.50? That would allow simultaneous conspicuous consumption of veal and stone crab and the ultimate in hedonism, farting through silk.

You are entitled to your own opinion but as that old neo-Con, Senator Moynihan said, “you are not entitled to your own facts”.

“Clinton delivered a $300 billion surplus to Bush, and the
economy – except for a short dot.com bust in 2000 – was
rockin’. During the Eisenhower years, this country’s boom
years, this country’s boom years that created a huge
middle class, the marginal rate was 91 percent.”

#1 – The Federal budget process, not having any provisions for capital items, can neither be in surplus nor can it be in deficit. Ask your accountant.
#2 – Federal budgets say that aircraft carriers and “midnight basketball” are to be treated the same. That is an offense to good husbandry. If you disagree with this stop reading.
#3 – If, and thank God for the subjunctive, Clinton produced a “$300 billion surplus” why didn’t the national debt go down? It is a matter of public record that the total debt of the United States never went down by a penny in the years that the budget was supposedly in surplus. You can look it up.
#4 – Are you saying that the higher the marginal rate the better off the country will be? If so your Logic and History dictate that that our marginal tax rates should be 105%.
#5 – Senator Kennedy ran for the Presidency promising two things. He would close the “missile gap” with Russia that Eisenhower had allowed. The thought that the man who led 10,000,000 troops in combat, the man who caused Hitler to eat his gun 48 weeks after D-Day, would allow his country to slip into mortal peril is absurd. The other promise was to get the country “moving again”. His weapon of choice in that fight was tax cuts. You can look that up too.






I wouldn’t hold #5 against the country.

We all enlisted in the War on Poverty, America’s longest war; we all blinked when Jimmy Carter fought rabbits and the American people; now we want to see if we can tax our way to prosperity.

Proof positive that God does bless America.










PS – There is good news, however. If “Curley” Biden isn’t the dumbest man in public life there sure ain’t a long list in front of him. He continues the tradition of “dumber than a box of hammers” Democratic Vice Presidents. Vice President Alpha Gump has an 8 year head start on him. “Curley”, named after the smartest of the Stooges, has a lot of ground to cover. Those two couldn’t find their respective asses using all of their hands.