Seems like just last spring faux economist Arthur Laffer was telling Tennessee’s House-Senate Fiscal Review Committee that Fred Smith was going to pack up his Memphis-based Federal Express in a gigantic purple and white box and head for someplace without an inheritance tax:
“I spent about two hours with Fred Smith three days ago up in Memphis, and he said he’s gettin’ out of this state if it doesn’t happen.And now we don’t want to lose FedEx. Fred Smith’s a couple of classes behind me at Yale and he’s a good friend.”
Ah, the memories. Smith told Laffer to shut his yap, he wasn’t leaving Tennessee because of taxes or for any other reason — indeed, he said he’s not going anywhere. Laffer just made it all up.
And I daresay Laffer and Smith are no longer BFF’s, Yale ties notwithstanding, after this:
In a CNN interview, Smith described the idea that raising the rates on the top 2 percent of income earners would kill jobs as “mythology.”
Smith goes on to say that the majority of jobs created in the U.S. come from capital investment in equipment and software, not small business.
I had no idea Smith was such a Socialist/Commie/hippie. Smith isn’t the only member of the corporate class telling the Tea Party wackos to hit the road: CEOs from AT&T, Northrop Grumman, Goldman Sachs and more have handed the GOP a steaming cup of STFU. As Joe Conason observes:
Remarkably, the Tea Party Republicans have now alienated their party’s most important constituency — the upper echelon of the business community. It is a profound irony that the issue raising friction between these politicians and their erstwhile backers is a fanatical partisan determination to defend the tax benefits enjoyed by those same wealthy executives.
I’m just curious, who’s left in the Tea Party besides the local tricorn hat suplier, Victoria Jackson, Ted Nugent and some wackos following Michele Bachmann around?
Posted to my Book Of Faces…
Tommy
Pushing imaginary “Like” button on above.
I don’t mind posting what is in plain view. This is a classic case of how poor terminology distorts reality and makes legitimate discussion / debate impossible.
The clear and plain implication of “small business” is a mom and pop company. You hear that and wonder how raising on the top 2% could affect “small business.” But by using the govt language of “Small Business” as essentially being privately owned, you can distort the numbers and come up with how small business creates the highest percentage of new jobs, etc.
But “small business” still tugs at the heartstrings. So saying that letting taxes go back to pre-Bush years will affect small business both pulls at the heartstrings of the mom and pops who you’ve seen struggling to survive and obscures that the small businesses that would be affected are what we would call giants.
In essence, we take what would occur in giant elephants and then apply it to how those effects would effect fleas that won’t even be subject to those effects.
For one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes on the topic, see the cartoon at the bottom of http://wordminer.us/?p=34 .
For that matter, don’t know about this apparent blog, but the entire gist is along these lines. Starting off with echoing C S Lewis that if you don’t know how to explain something in a way clearly understandable to a child, then you still don’t know it youself.
Does this mean I’m going to be able to restore my Gadsen flag to the flagpole without fear? I hope so because it has been locked away for 4 years now waiting to return with honor to my flag rotation.
Nothing against the Culpeper Minute Men or First Navy Jack flags, but having the bright yellow coiled snake back snapping in the wind will make me happy.
As for the TEA Partiers? Adios M-f’ers!
RP
Good cartoon, MapleStreet.
the clinton years sucks so.
galt will be alone on his island.
Just my opinion, but I’ve always thought the Teawads were the culture-war conservatives anyway. The rebranding was a convenient way to rid themselves of the Bush stench and re-assume the role of fiscal disciplinarians (which is all horseshit, but with a lazy and shallow news media, it’s fairly easily done).
I’m surprised the corporate wing of the party hasn’t already bolted, given that they must know Tea Party “policy” would be an unmitigated disaster…and that the Democratic Party isn’t exactly storming the Winter Palace and exiling the Tsar. Again, just my opinion, but it seems like the rightward shift has been so extreme that the standard Democratic positions are virtually indistinguishable from Rockefeller Republicanism…even down to the unfortunate and frustrating decision by DOJ to not leave Washington and Colorado alone re: marijuana. Sigh.