Nein, Nein, Nein! (Credit for that German version — No, No, No! — of Herman Cain's ridiculous tax proposal "9-9-9" goes to Jay Leno, from a monolog some weeks ago.)
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Herman Cain, the poor, deluded black man who seems actually to think that the Republican Party is not fundamentally, viciously racist, has tried to make an impression upon potential voters with his 9-9-9 tax plan. Unfortunately for him, analysis of his proposal — which we need not discuss in detail, since it hasn't the chance of a snowball in Hell — by economists and media shows that it would produce HIGHER taxes for 84% of people and hit the lower and middle economic classes hard while lowering taxes on the super-rich.
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In states that have a sales tax, the Federal sales tax that vile fool proposes would be added to the state (and local) sales tax, so that in a place like NJ, which has a 7% sales tax, a 9% Federal tax would mean that everything people buy, including food and clothing, would carry at least a 9% tax, and for most items apart from food, a 16% sales tax. In NYC, which has an 8.875% sales tax, an additional 9% would produce a crushing tax of 17.875% on every single purchase of anything but food, and a 9% Federal tax on food. Insane.
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Will purchases of stock, gold, and other commodities on stock and mercantile exchanges be taxed at 9%? Nobody seems to know. If so, wouldn't that be a drag on investment? If not, the rich would get a windfall in the form of exclusion of those purchases that no one else gets.
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So the 9-9-9 plan is not ever going to be adopted, even by other candidates or public officials once Herman Cain is roundly trounced in primary elections, if he does not drop out of the 'race' before then.
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I'm really tired of hearing people talk about people like Cain as tho they are real candidates who have some chance, however remote, of being nominated by today's Republican Party. There is NO chance of that happening. Even if the things he says made sense — which they do not — the mere fact that he is black as the ace of spades precludes him from being taken seriously by the Republican 'base' (an apt term). The Tea Party that arose in outrage when a relatively lite-skinned black man was elected President of the United States and which has come to dominate the Republican Party, is profoundly, hysterically anti-black. That "take my country back" rhetoric we heard early on in the rise of the Tea Party plainly meant "from that black man in the White House". There is no way in hell that the Tea Party is going to vote for a black man, of any political persuasion. So let's stop pretending they will and, thus, that Herman Cain could become the Republican nominee for President.
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I had the same feeling about people who talked up Rudolph Giuliani as not just one of many candidates but even, when he announced in 2008, as the 'frontrunner'. Nonsense. Rudy Giuliani is a moderate Republican from the Liberal Northeast, indeed, the very center of Northeastern Liberalism, New York City. There was absolutely no chance that the base of the Republican Party, which HATES the entire Northeast but especially New York City, were going to make Rudy Giuliani, who marched in Gay Pride Parades in Manhattan, their candidate for President. Impossible. Could not happen. And in fact the obvious did happen: Rudy was driven out of the race in very short order.
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Giuliani was a realist, and saw the handwriting on the wall, so dropped out fairly soon. Herman Cain may not be that realistic, and has nothing better to do with his time, so may stay around as long as his relatively tiny campaign fund lasts. While other Republicans are raising tens of millions of dollars, and more, Cain has been able to raise only $3M in the entire length of his campaign to date. That's not enuf to, shall we say, 'raise Cain' to viability. But "Cain" is an appropriate name for someone whose politics are literally deadly to his black "brothers" in poverty. As it is, we know that some 45,000 Americans, of all races, die for lack of health insurance each year; poor blacks are disproportionately represented in that number; and Cain's policies would reduce even more black people to abysmal and hopeless poverty. Cain has also taken to blaming the unemployed for their own unemployment, as caused even the heartless Ron Paul to reproach him for blaming the victim.
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Another factor working against Cain is that in this age of television, only relatively pretty people get far in high office, but Cain is HIDEOUS. Black people cannot see him as an attractive member of their race, and white people who find the entire black race less than appealing are esp. inclined to see Herman Cain as hideous. He looks like something used to scare children at Halloween and in stories that warn misbehaving children that the "boogieman will get you if you don't watch out". Liberal Democrats might charitably try to overlook Cain's physical hideousness, but Conservative Republicans have no such inclination to rise above their lookism, and they esp. see no need to bend over backwards to avoid any racist revulsion. Perhaps physical appearance should not make a difference in voter preferences, but it assuredly does. Try to name a major elected officeholder at the Federal level who is outrite ugly. I can't think of any. Barney Frank comes as close as I can think of, to being outrite ugly, but he is a Democrat from the Liberal Northeast. Mitt Romney, by contrast, is of movie-star handsomeness.
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So can we all please stop talking of Herman Cain as tho he could conceivably win the Republican nomination for President? Absent some miracle from (nonexistent) God, he cannot.
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Seeing Cain defeated is not enuf, however. The vicious attitudes and insane tax plan he is promoting must also be decisively renounced by the Republican Party, in order that Congress not be bothered by such lunacy for even 2 seconds.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,479 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:13 PM