Pay off.

It's an election year and who's back to visit but Pappy Tax Cut? That's right - with the financial markets reeling from imploding mortgage-based securities and record high energy prices, the duopoly of federal office holders has decided to cut some checks and pass them out to us proles. Guess they figure we're pissed off enough to warrant bribery at this point. In any case, a recession during an election year is bad news for either party in a divided government, so you are seeing the kind of "bipartisanship" that in another might be considered a mild form of totalitarianism. Sure, we're blowing billions of dollars a month (to say nothing of lives lost) trying to hold on to our imperial stake in Iraq and perpetuating astounding economic inequality through a tax system heavily skewed in favor of the hyper-rich, but we'll borrow even more money now for a one-shot payoff to the American people in hopes they'll go out and shop and forget about how fucked up everything is.

This is a bit like having a boss that never gives raises but passes out the occasional bonus when he's feeling magnanimous (trust me, I've been there). It doesn't raise your standard of living... or even maintain it in an environment of rising costs. It just buys temporary quiescence and gives the master a good end-of-year write-off. It keeps our mind off the fact that, for many of us, this "job" doesn't include health coverage and that the minimal retirement plan is under threat of being dismantled and sold off, Pinochet-style. Even worse, the money they're sending us is being borrowed from... us. Future us, that is. It's like they're Citibank or someone, offering us an extension on our credit line. Write yourself a check and take a much needed vacation! Pay nothing until next April! Kind of freakish. I suppose perhaps the most remarkable thing about the "stimulus" package, as currently proposed, is the fact that it extends something to low and middle income people at all. Sure, they boned the poor and the unemployed on extended benefits, but for this crew of Halliburton Republicans and Eisenhower Democrats, this plan is practically socialism.

Doing this must gall Bush no end. He's been going around for years repeating the same hackneyed talking points about the U.S. economy, about its "strong fundamentals" and its "resilience", and never was heard a discouraging word. As recently as this week, his drone Condi "Supertanker" Rice was praising our economic strength at Davos. Lord knows, Bush despises having to reverse himself, like the Custer character in Little Big Man. (I wonder if his father and the old man's somewhat embarrassing friend had to shame Dubya into it? Hmmmmm....) Whatever its genesis, this half-measure Keynesianism can be seen as the ownership class's bulwark against much more meaningful adjustments, like restoring some measure of taxation to the extremely rich (i.e. those few who have benefited tremendously from the economic order of the past 25 years), or slapping an excess profits tax on the oil companies, or re-regulating the financial/banking sector, or dismantling the so-called "free trade" investors' rights agreements. Not that any leading candidates from the nominal left are advocating this, but there's always a chance someone will if people get mad enough.

For right now, we'll be expected to subsist on the bone they throw us... and on the cheap spectacle of Bill and Hillary Clinton ripping up what's left of the Democratic party to advance their careers (all they've ever done, really).

luv u,

jp