November 19, 2017

Fabiola Santiago

The Miami Herald

RE: Either “water is wet and stones are hard”, and I am sure you know who said that, or they aren’t. Read carefully. I will type slowly.

Sra Santiago,  

In my quest to point out the errors of your economic ways, a quest grounded in agape and caritas, in Christian charity if you will, I may have overlooked some double-helixed truths, things that “deplorables” have learned the hard way but have learned. Alas, when it comes to modern American Liberals, they have long reveled in the denial of Edmund Burke’s maxim that says “Experience is the only school where some people may learn”. 

Modern American Liberal economic thought is based on a blind obedience to au courant shibboleths, non-sequiturs, and tautologies. The premise that the best and quickest way to make the poor rich is by making the rich poor is stuff and nonsense. Progressive pinheads, in particular ink-stained scroyles such as you, can and do frequently get lost on a ladder. 

Let me, in the words of the immortal Ricky Ricardo, “splain” some things to you.

#1 – Realistically, the ideal minimum wage is zero. My lowest hourly wage was $1.05, a job from which I was fired 3 weeks after I was hired. I was paid $1.65 an hour to mop bathrooms. I learned that there is a good way and a dumb way to mop. I also learned an important lesson: to wit; I did not want to mop johns anymore. The point is why settle for $15.00 an hour? Why not $38.50 an hour? Of course, that would include full benefits, a 401k, and lunch on the Boss. That sounds kosher to me. What do you think?

#2 – Double the deduction for SALT – state and local taxes – and increase the interest deduction on all mortgages to 150% of the amount paid. We “pay” for this – and pray tell why must tax cuts be “paid” for? – by raising the maximum tax rate to 112.50%. Is there a household in America, with the exception of the West side of Manhattan and Malibu, where if a financial crisis occurs, the first thing, the instinctive thing, the correct thing, is to cut expenses? [Watch what will be in the Christmas stockings of up to 50,000 GE employees this year.] The obvious choices in the Swamp in D.C. are the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. In 1978 Johnny couldn’t read. 40 years later he still can’t read. He is now joined by Jose, Fatima, and Keisha. Yet the Wangs and the Chans both survive and prosper. I don’t know how that happens. Do you? Fire the whole lot of them. Take whatever money is left and distribute it pro rata through the states. The Department, in its 40 years of being wet-nursed at taxpayers’ expense, has yet to produce a ton of coal, a barrel of oil, or a single kilowatt of electricity. A second Trump term will guarantee that the USA, even now a major exporter of hydrocarbons, will be the dominant producer of same for decades to come. This came about because of unheard of drilling techniques and fracking, much of which the DOE opposed. Fire their sad-sacked sorry asses and give the America energy vouchers for the gross amount saved. They can be spent on anything to do with energy or they can be sold to 3^rd parties. Let the people choose. Wasn’t there a song that said “Everything’s Free in America”? Didn’t the Department of Agriculture give away cheese”?

#3 – How do you give a tax cut to someone with no taxable income?

#4 – Start with Herald. Try to find a CFO [Full disclosure. I was once one, and of a public company.] who does not come to work drunk. Ask them what they think of 10 year projections. Stand back as they laugh their asses off. Modern American Liberals believe them as if they were Holy Writ. Let me back that up a bit. Holy Writ is optional to mALs what with the 10 commandments being subjective or situational. Didn’t the Democrats boo God at their convention? Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, that’s why Biscayne Boulevard and Broward Boulevard might soon be under water?

#5 – If Clinton “balanced” the budget why didn’t the national debt not go down by a single penny? Look it up.

#6 – Why are tax cuts bad if they are done by Trump but good if done by Kennedy?

#7 – Show me someplace, anywhere, anytime, anywhere a society taxed itself to prosperity? I’ll exclude Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and North Korea.

#8 – Czarist Russia was a net exporter of durum wheat until 1917. Russia again  exported wheat in 1993. Might there be a pattern here? If Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas did not exist there may not have been a need for the great Reagan. Possibly there would not have been a Cold War because the Russkies would have all starved to death. Agree? Disagree?

#9 – Why do all mALs suffer from “non-malodorus fecal matter syndrome”? Send a SASE if you are confused.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – Knowing of your abhorrence of “divisiveness” in American politics, do you think the Virginia TV ad showing a red neck “deplorable” trying to run down some Dreamer children in a pick-up truck festooned with a Confederate flag and Gillespie stickers was “divisive” or inclusive”? Also, Senator Schumer signed a money mailer saying that Republican tax cuts were Nazi-like. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the newly discovered 10^th  circle of Hell for those favoring “divisiveness” and 10 being the Utopian-like world of perpetual veganism and countless loops of “Imagine”, “Happy Days Are Hera Again”, and perpetual nocturnal emissions – non gender specific - caused by a phantasmagoric tableau of all the Kennedys and Eleanor Roosevelt taking a warm shower and swapping body fluids, what number would you assign to that letter?