[Vision2020] Cold Pizza from Herm Cain

[Jay Borden]

I frankly don't have the numbers and haven't done much reading or
research to know whether 9-9-9 is good or bad, so I have to "punt" on
specifics.

But I do find it interesting in an era where the folks screaming
"transparency" and "fair" as the solution to the nation's woes suddenly
recoil in horror when a tax plan emerges that is perhaps the MOST
transparent and fair we have seen in recent generations.

If folks were truly interested in "fair" and "transparency", then I
would expect the counter arguments to be more along the lines of "9-9-9
won't work, but 11-11-11 will" (or something to that effect).


Jay


-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com
[mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com] On Behalf Of lfalen
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 9:58 AM
To: Art Deco; Vision 2020
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Cold Pizza from Herm Cain

I do not like the 9-9-9 program either, but I do not see how it can be
called regressive. The rich buy more and therefore would pay more taxes.
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: "Art Deco" deco at moscow.com
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:43:44 -0700
To: "Vision 2020" Vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Cold Pizza from Herm Cain

> 
> October 13, 2011, 8:30 pm 
> Cold Pizza from Herm Cain
> By TIMOTHY EGAN
> 
> Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.
> 
> Tags:
> G.O.P., herman cain, taxes
> 
> 
> 
> By almost any measure - social, political, economic, logical - Herman
Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan is nuts, nuts, nuts. Go ahead and jack up the
price of nearly everything that moves in the United States with a 9
percent national sales tax on all new purchases and services. Talk about
instant branding: every time you buy something, you'll be hit with the
Herm Cain tax at the checkout line.
> 
> And this is just the start. The nearly 50 million filers whose main
federal tax is now a payroll deduction and not an income tax would see
their overall bill from the government increase by nearly 100 percent.
This conclusion comes from the economists and fact-checkers who have
actually looked at the napkin sketch of a plan Cain got from some
accountant friend of his in Cleveland.
> 
> In essence, Cain is proposing the largest shift in tax burden from the
wealthy to the poor and middle class in the nation's history. Oh, and he
apparently would scrap the two great government programs that keep
millions clinging to fragile middle-class status - Social Security and
Medicare - because he wants to eliminate the payroll taxes that now pay
for those insurers of dignity.
> 
> We are forced to seriously consider this bizarro-world,
reverse-Robin-Hood scheme, one that would junk the entire federal tax
code for a 9 percent flat rate on corporate earnings, personal income
and retail sales, because of the astonishing news that Republicans have
elevated Cain to the top of their field in three polls released over the
last 48 hours.
> 
> Related 
>   a.. Room for Debate: What's So Bad About a Flat Tax? 
> 
> Not to worry: fruit flies on a bad apple have a longer life than does
a front-runner among Republican presidential candidates. Cain's reign
will be short because his central plan is pure craziness, even for
Republicans.
> 
> Let's say you buy a new car or a week's worth of groceries, or pay
$2,000 for your kid's dental work. Cain would add 9 percent to the price
of those transactions - on top of the 9 percent in sales taxes people
already pay in some states, like Washington, where I live. And if you're
lower middle class, there would be no income tax offset - but an
increase!
> 
> That's the Cain platform: raise the price of everything in the worse
economic crisis since the Great Depression.
> 
> So how did Cain float to the top, at least for a week? He's a
motivational speaker, and a good one. He's glib, optimistic, likeable,
and has a great personal story. But he has zero governing experience.
And his business forte was running a national food chain, Godfather's,
when they made truly awful-tasting pizzas. (I'm giving them the benefit
of the doubt on their post-Cain pizzas.)
> 
> Cain tops the polls because almost three-quarters of Republican
primary voters cannot come around to their likely nominee, Mitt Romney.
And the rest of the field lose voters every time they open their mouths.
> 
> In Tuesday's debate, Newt Gingrich showed why he is a prevaricator
with preternatural talent, finding new and creative ways to revive old
and discredited lies. He trotted out the 2009 "lie of the year" winner
by Politifact.com - that death panels would decide who gets to live
under the new health care law.
> 
> He also called for jailing the congressional architects of a new law
to curb the kind of uncontrolled manipulations by bankers and Wall
Street traders that brought down the global economy. You heard that
right: he doesn't want the people who dreamed up all those explosive
credit default swaps and derivative trades to go to jail; he wants to
incarcerate the reformers.
> 
> Cain's ideas are actually worse: he would give Wall Street speculators
more money. Under his plan, a billionaire now paying only 15 percent
federal taxes on investment income - a lower rate, as Warren Buffett
notes, than his secretary pays - would get a 40 percent reduction.
> 
> Last month's frontrunner, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, offered up fresh
material for the all-hat-no-cattle label he seems determined to wear. To
his prior proclamations that evolution is "a theory that's out there,"
and global warming is a hoax, this dream candidate of Rush Limbaugh put
the American Revolution in the 16th century. Amazing, the things Thomas
Jefferson could do in his 235th year.
> 
> Oh, but there were some critics of Cain-o-nomics. Michele Bachmann
noted that the 9-9-9 design, turned upside down, was a Satanic 6-6-6.
> 
> The power of his plan, Cain replies to all criticism, is its
simplicity. "I can explain it in a minute!" he says. But someone who has
taken more than a minute with 9-9-9 - Bruce Bartlett, the former
economic adviser to Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush - has called
it "insane." Read his examination in his Times blog here.
> 
> Cain is unelectable, and his plan is toxic. This gets Republicans back
to the one person they cannot yet get their arms around: Willard Mitt
Romney, an unflappable technocrat with a Harvard M.B.A. who passed a
bold socialist health care plan that is a model for the nation, and once
professed that he would be stronger on gay rights than Teddy Kennedy.
Bring on the general election.
> 
> ____________________________________
> Wayne A. Fox
> wayne.a.fox at gmail.com
> 
> 

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