Corporatism

To paraphrase David Cross, the president doesn't care about you, or you, or your mommy, or your daddy, or your town or your street. But we already knew a second Bush administration would be a miserable failure, didn't we? This, via Atrios.

Instead the administration plans to push major amendments that would shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation, expand tax breaks for business investment and take other steps intended to simplify the system and encourage economic growth, according to several people who are advising the White House or are familiar with the deliberations. The changes are meant to be revenue-neutral. To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said.

Atrios is justifiably horrified by the proposed abolition of the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance. I guess Bush & company's solution to the fact that 45 million Americans have no health insurance is to increase that number dramatically. As a New Yorker, what I'm equally horrified about is the proposed abolition of the personal deduction for state and local taxes. New Yorkers pay 72% more in taxes than the national average. A lot of us depend on that federal deduction to help ease the pain of those local taxes. Now Bush wants them repealed. What a bunch of scumbags. And all of this is to help whom, exactly? Corporations?