Fareed Zakaria The Washington Post

August 2, 2010

Fareed Zakaria
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20010

RE: So smart you’re dumb. I guess that’s why the Washington Post hired you. Some comments on your article about raising taxes.

Mr. Zakaria,

I could say that there is no record anywhere or anytime of a country taxing itself to prosperity.

I could say that Keynes, an economist more quoted than read, will spin in his grave like a Whirling Dervish once he finds out that elite ohmadahns want to raise taxes in a recession. Worse still, they want to do it in his name.

I could say that anytime a government has cut marginal personal tax rates – The reign of the 5 Emperors, America 1921, Germany 1947, America 1962, Hong Kong 1965, America 1982, America 2002, all the countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain 1989 to today – the economy has grown, the people have prospered, and freedom has expanded geometrically.

I could say that cutting spending means that taking less money from its people means that people - the Horror, the Horror – can choose what to do with their own money.

I could say all of the above but I won’t.

The reason is simple.

You are so God Damn smart you are dumb beyond mere words.

You are on track for a Pulitzer Prize.

Before that happens I have a prize for you.

You are hereby named

HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK

It is an honor not given lightly. You get it the old fashioned way. You have to earn it.

You have. Wear your laurels proudly.





Kevin Smith



PS – “Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1992 and ushered in a period of extraordinarily robust growth” is Guinness Book of Records wrong as to fact and conclusion. Clinton couldn’t have raised taxes in 1992 because he wasn’t President. The “period of extraordinarily robust growth” began with the seating of a Republican Congress in 1995. An empirical case can be made for it being the continuation of the “extraordinarily robust growth” that began with Reagan’s tax cuts in 1982. [No mention of Reagan can be made without giving proper credit to his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. Easily the worst President of the 20th century, a man who was nasty but not tough, a CEO couldn’t find sand at the beach, his one great accomplishment was that he made it easy for the great Reagan to succeed him. While you were busy becoming so smart that you could become Homerically dumb you probably didn’t have time for any Logic courses. Your reading assignment, you twit, – that means look it up – is to deconstruct “Correlation is not Causation”.]