...a cut in the corporate income tax rate, from 35 percent to 25 percent, a proposal to allow businesses to write off the cost of new equipment and technology from their taxes, a ban on Internet and new cellphone taxes, and a permanent tax credit for research and development.

That's a good start. He should also cut environmental regulations so the oil companies can develop innovative new ways to find oil. This will bring down the price of oil and the oil companies will pass the savings on to the consumer, bringing a quick end to the recession.

I like to hope that history will remember poor John McCain as a sad example of what a man will do to be president. He's a classic example of Gore Vidal's comment in Burr that "it is a truism of American politics that no man who can win an election deserves to." Whether this is true of all candidates, it's awfully true of McCain.

tbroz is right -- if only the poor oil companies had some money, they could innovate and lower prices! tbroz, you've humiliated us all again.

"But at least someone is noticing the two-face act this time around"

Yeah, that will last.

Borrow trillions more from China, put the country deeper and deeper in debt -- that's Maverick!

Every news item reporting on McCainomics should be set up with a video clip of him saying "don't know much about economics" And conclude with "John McCain - just as smart as W when it comes to economic policy."

Remember way back when, last millenium or so, when the Council of Economic Advisors was relevant?

If anyone thinks that cutting corporate taxes will guarentee those savings are passed on to the consumer I've got a Volcano south of Seattle to sell you too...

"The pandering he's doing is so plain and so odious that I suspect he's having a hard time making it sound like he really believes this stuff"

Dunno. How is it pandering if he's offering sops to the rich? He's ostensibly already got their vote. I'd say his pandering was the gas tax holiday - for all the truckers, small businessmen, and working families. You know, real Americans.

This kind of nutty thinking is why I decided to become a blogger myself. If I get around to posting about this, perhaps I'll go into more detail. For now, ugh. I'm too tired from my walk.

The best way to answer this hatred for tax cutting is to point out that if you cut taxes, we grow our economy.

Happens every time, sir! The quickest way to kill growth is to raise taxes. The safest bet for staying in a recession? Raise taxes! I wish the Democrat politicans would admit that their own "stimulus package" that is coming this spring is really nothing more than a sham. You will have to pay that back, sir! It should be yours to spend free and clear, but no! They took that away from you. It's like they have a carrot, and you're a very hungry horse, and you've been pulling the plough all day, and zing! The Democrats took your carrot and left you in the barn soaking wet, tired, and with nothing to eat but an old shoe.

McCain does not go far enough--taxes for everybody need to be cut immediately! If we want to restart this economy, fine--use targeted tax cuts! I don't care! Just cut them immediately!

I am incensed about this. Yesterday, I wrote a check for $97,546.34 to Uncle Sam. I wrote it, I signed it, I gave it to my accountant Sheldon, and I felt a pain in my chest and arms so strong I had to sit down for an hour. I'm okay, thanks for asking, but it was a kick in the pants, let me tell you.

"The pandering he's doing is so plain and so odious that I suspect he's having a hard time making it sound like he really believes this stuff"

If it doesn't fly, he'll just blame it on some intern, just like his plagiarized "family" recipes.

He does on his website add more idiocy, viz., increasing the estate exemption to 10 million, decreasing its rate to 15%, and (ugh) requiring a 3/5th vote to approve tax increase, because, my friends, majority rule is just not good enough, I'm sure he'd say.

The best way to answer this hatred for tax cutting is to point out that if you cut taxes, we grow our economy.

If you cut taxes the sun comes up, too.

Here's a clue: the economy grows. Just as it did following Clinton's tax increase in 1993. In fact, it grew more during Clinton's tenure than it has under Bush.

It's easier to get blood from a turnip than to get a platitude out of the middle class mind.

Poor Normie. If there's any justice in the world, it'll go from your pocket right into some Iraqi minister's off-shore account. Waaah!

It's easier to get blood from a turnip than to get a platitude out of the middle class mind.

Excuse me, but that's an insult. I've never been called "Middle Class" in my entire life. I am an investment banker, a venture capitalist, a graduate of Princeton and a well-to-do retiree. I am NOT "Middle Class" in any sense of the word, sir.

Normie has his own blog? Excellent! It sounds like a wonderful hobby for him to take up while he's under house arrest.

None of you are allowed to visit my blog. My daughter posts there. You have to stay on your own blogs or stay here. That link was for Kevin Dumbo only.

If I get around to explaining why cutting taxes is a good thing in the next week or so, I want him to read what I write and correct his errors.

Yesterday, I wrote a check for $97,546.34 to Uncle Sam. I wrote it, I signed it, I gave it to my accountant Sheldon, and I felt a pain in my chest and arms so strong I had to sit down for an hour.

Oh yeah, well I wrote a check for $123,456,789.00, but I forgot to sign it. Then the IRS sent a helicopter after me. Eventually I signed, but I was so upset I had to have my household staff fan me with $1,000 bills until I fell asleep.

Of course I had the peasants burn the bills afterward (germs!)

"None of you are allowed to visit my blog." - Norman

But Normie, I've been to your blog and even left you a comment about how wonderful it is. Why can't I visit? Uh?

Actually Normie I was wondering where you have been. I guess you have been sweating it out with your taxes. Poor baby, I feel for you.

Speaking of MacCain's tax cuts. I have decided that I would like to get me my own household panderer. Anybody have an idea where I can buy one? Target, Walmart, or do I have to go upscale to Nordstrom's?

McCain's ridiculous gas tax proposal would provide the average driver with a whopping $28 while risking 310,000 jobs, increasing traffic congestion, and exacerbating highway and bridge maintenance problems.

(Figures from AASHTO and ARTBA press releases.)

Oh yeah, well I wrote a check for $123,456,789.00, but I forgot to sign it. Then the IRS sent a helicopter after me. Eventually I signed, but I was so upset I had to have my household staff fan me with $1,000 bills until I fell asleep.

It's hard to keep the help in line, isn't it? Thankfully, Sheldon works pretty hard, and I've been able to keep him around for almost a decade. He's the first accountant to keep me from being audited--five years and counting! Knock wood!

Excuse me, but that's an insult.

Well, hush my mouth and slap me silly.

I am an investment banker, a venture capitalist, a graduate of Princeton and a well-to-do retiree. I am NOT "Middle Class" in any sense of the word, sir.

Somewhere, don't you think you should have learned the history of what the phrase means? The class is rather vast. And apparently getting vaster.

Once again I must whole-heartedly agree with Norman.

I've never been called "Middle Class" in my entire life.

If one does not work for a living and one has money one is upper class, pure and simple. Doctors, Lawyers, Surgeons, and all the rest of the (ugh) workers are at most upper middle class.

If one's W2 shows (ugh) wages one is NOT upper class.

Norman, please excuse these hoi polloi. They are simply parroting the useful lies our politicians make to excuse more tax cuts for the upper class.

"I am ... a graduate of Princeton"

Sideshow Bob: You wanted to be Krusty's sidekick since you were five. What about the buffoon lessons, the four years at clown college.
Cecil Terwilliger: I'll thank you not to refer to Princeton that way.

ack!!! why do you (Kevin) join the media ass-kissers who say that because McCain panders so shamelessly that it reflects well on him???? This causes the media types not to question his positions further, or to ask why he is often reversing himself (taxes, torture, now on budget deficits) when he rolls out yet another smiling pander.

Liberals (Kristof, Drum) have to stop excusing McCain for his flip-flops just because he flatters the media by inviting them onto the bus, or b-b-qing ribs for them.

Okay, I'm ready for the straight talk. If we're going to get back to that rock solid Republican principle of financial responsibility, like McCain says he wants to do, then McCain needs to tell us about the spending cuts that will offset the tax cuts.

Otherwise, we're just continuing to add to the national debt, right? And that's not very responsible, is it? We're in hock up to our armpits to the Chinese, and certainly a responsible Republican wouldn't put us in up to our eyeballs. So, seriously John, tell us what you're going to cut, and be specific. I'm supremely confident that McCain has the courage to put forth the politically unpopular but financially necessary spending cuts required to balance the budget.

I think everyone, including the current GOP nominee for President, has at least tacitly acknowledged that cutting taxes, increasing spending, and adding $3,000,000,000,000 to the national debt, as Bush has done, is not proper financial stewardship. So far, McCain's economic proposals sound remarkably similar and I hope he can 'splain how this is all going to work out.

adding $3,000,000,000,000 to the national debt, as Bush has done, is not proper financial stewardship.

Oh, bah!

Kudlow thinks you're an idiot, sir:

First point: The U.S. has spent roughly $750 billion for the five-year war. Sure, that’s a lot of money. But run the numbers and the total cost works out to a miniscule 1 percent of the $63 trillion GDP over that time period. It’s miniscule.

What, we should have spent the money sending someone's idiot kid to Rutgers so same idiot kid could get a law degree and then not be able to find a job, so he could then spend each and every day making a flibberty-jibbited chattering little jackass out of himself on my dime?

I know--we should have spent the money buying a new Cadillac Escallade for someone's sob sister Grandmother because she drove her own into a tree because she dropped her copy of Chicken Soup For the Soul on audio compact disc?

No, no, no--we should have spent that money building a massive pot farm in the Imperial Valley of California so that America's liberal elite could wake and bake every morning and listen to jam bands while snowboarding on fake snow paid for with my tax dollars. Shred it, jackson! Shred it radically!

No thank you sir, no thank you.

And McCain's proposed "middle-class tax cut" — a full repeal of the alternative minimum tax — stretched the definition of middle class. Of the 4 million taxpayers paying the AMT, 93 percent earn between $200,000 and $1 million.

Constituent service.

The only thing missing was the usual sad song about some mythical Midwest striver who had to sell the family farm to pay his "death taxes."

Hey! I resemble that remark!

Just kidding (of course).

Wouldn't it be amazing if someday all these people who vote (R) woke up and realized how much the Republicans deceive (and even spit in the face of) the normal, average American?

There is still hope if McCain is elected. William Henry Harrison died after serving only 39 days, and he was only 68! I'm waiting to see McCain's vice presidential pick first, however, before committing.

"Yesterday, I wrote a check for $97,546.34 to Uncle Sam"

Norman, I think you're full of shit. I don't believe your accountant is working with pennies rather than with whole numbers of dollars.

The only thing missing was the usual sad song about some mythical Midwest striver who had to sell the family farm to pay his "death taxes."

Maybe the constituency is supposed to be ranting, straightjacketed guys in insane asylums who only think this is what happened to their farms?

Norman wrote:
Yesterday, I wrote a check for $97,546.34 to Uncle Sam. I wrote it, I signed it,

It's your own fault.. you have too many interest-bearing accounts. Put your money into capital goods, then you get the 15% capital gains tax.

tbrosz wrote:
He should also cut environmental regulations so the oil companies can develop innovative new ways to find oil

Wrong. Basic lesson in economics: There was no incentive for oil companies to develop new ways to find oil when oil was so cheap. Now that oil is expensive and profitable, you'd better believe that now all the oil companies will be looking for ways to look for more black gold.

It's your own fault.. you have too many interest-bearing accounts. Put your money into capital goods, then you get the 15% capital gains tax.

Shows what you know, which is NOTHING! I don't have any accounts.

I have property, investments, assets and I had to start cashing in my IRAs. I have two jet skis, a home in New Hampshire that my ex-wife is now going to sell out from under me at a loss and I have a warehouse full of office furniture that is fourteen years old. I have property in India, if you can believe it, on which lives a step-mother and twenty of her relatives. I have some property in Idaho as well--but that's on the hush hush.

Hey--wait a minute! I'll start going to you for advice and ignoring Sheldon, the man who's kept my rich little fanny out of trouble for these past five years. That's what I'll do, sir.

Oh, bloody hell. What's going on with the hypertext markup language these days? Did someone do an upgrade and forget to cc me?

Frankly, I think there's something for the Biblical prognosticators to look at in all of this. "McCain" means "son of Cain." In the Bible, Cain killed Abel, his brother, and was also the world's first murderer. So for the Biblical types, there's something to ponder- why would God give us this clue to ponder-- "son of the murderer," and a fraticide, to boot.

It's like as if God was saying "McCain wants to kill his own brother" to the American people.

Great to see you back, Norman! I hope that check didn't strain your bank account. Your generosity is greatly appreciated by those of us at our end of the middle class.

On the FAA instructions to the airlines to fix their planes: I'd be interested to hear your view on how the "market model" could have solved this pesky problem instead of the heavy-handed jack-booted thugs from Washington?

One more thing, Norman: I assume you have your own jet planes to go with your jet skis? I hope they're well-maintained so the FAA will keep the respectful distance you deserve :-)

So good to have you back! Your enlightened and unselfish opinions on current affairs are such a refreshing antidote to the relentless realism on this blog. Now I can put down my copy of Alice in Wonderland in favor of your wisdom.

Well it looks like McCain's proposed economic plan is working, already! Look, the DOW is up 258 points.

Or maybe it's because the Pope is visiting.

Someone got some entrails I could read?

Weenie: Someone got some entrails I could read?

No, the entire media corps is gutless.

Norman Rogers is either a parody, or a parody of themselves, but here goes anyway:

Kudlow thinks you're an idiot, sir:

First point: The U.S. has spent roughly $750 billion for the five-year war. Sure, that’s a lot of money. But run the numbers and the total cost works out to a miniscule 1 percent of the $63 trillion GDP over that time period. It’s miniscule.

The feeling is mutual, to Kudlow and you as well. Why the non sequitor of a comparison to the cost of the Iraq war? Any jackass can take a number and compare it over a random period of time to another random number and come up with 1%. Yes, 1%!!!

Lookit here, I can do the same but opposite and come up with big numbers. Total outstanding debt, 1/21/2001: $5,727,776,738,304.64. Total outstanding debt, 4/15/2008: $9,409,067,124,575.77. Treasury Direct

So, you can thank the Bush administration for putting us an additional $3,681,290,386,271.13 in the red. That's a 60.8% increase over 7 years, and 60.8% is 60.8 times bigger than Kudlow's piddly 1%.

Or you could think of it this way: If a lucky ducky such as yourself were to pay off single handedly just Bush's contribution to the national debt it would take you about 37 million years. Of course, that's assuming you're not really a part-time pizza delivery driver living in your mom's basement, in which case it would take significantly longer.

It's a wonder the poor oil companies manage to survive what with their record profits each quarter and their tax subsidies and all. Poor babies.