The Weekly Screed (#533)

“Hey, sweetheart, can you spare your Uncle Sam a dime?”
by David Benjamin

BROOKLYN — The Tea Party Republicans who’ve taken over the budget
process in Washington — as well as Trenton, Madison, Indianapolis and
Columbus — need a refresher course in Willie Sutton.

Asked why he robbed banks, Willie said: “That’s where the money is.”

At times, Republicans obey Sutton’s Law religiously. When they’re
running for office, they don’t go, for example, to the local Planned
Parenthood clinic and ask pregnant 14-year-old girls to underwrite $2
million in TV attack ads against Democrats. They go where the money
is: Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers, the insurance, pharmaceutical,
oil, coal, gas and chemical lobbies. They tap the Chamber of Commerce.
They ask their friends in Saudi Arabia. And just like Willie Sutton,
they hit up the banks — Citigroup, Bank of America, Amex, Visa, J.P.
Morgan, Goldman Sachs.

But give these shmucks an actual government to run, and they suddenly
seem to think that the secret to deficit reduction is Sutton’s
Paradox: “Go where the poverty is.”

Head Start. Pell grants. Cancer screening. Home heating. Disabled
veterans. Unemployed nurse’s aids. Shake down the riffraff, take away
their milk money, pile all that chump change together and pretty soon
you’ll get the economy humming. At least, this is what bohunks like
John Boehner and Rand Paul seem to think.

Me? I still think Willie was a better economist.

Actually, I don’t think this is the year for deficit cuts at all. But
even in that area I have a few ideas neither the Tea Party nor
kick-me-hard Barack have mentioned.

First of all — and not just because its name sounds like something
dreamed up by Joe Goebbels and Leni Reifenstahl during a lost weekend
in Baden Baden — the Dept. of Homeland Security (DeHoSe) was never a
good idea. It has aged badly.

By now, 9/11 is history. Not only haven’t we caught Osama bin Laden,
we know for sure that DeHoSe isn’t up to the job. At the least, by
breaking up this misbegotten Cabinet travesty, we can torch one costly
layer of administrative deadwood. As we do, we’ll probably uncover
several redundant or pointless bureaus that can be summarily erased
from existence, never to rubberstamp a requisition again. Best of all,
by killing DeHoSe, we reduce, by thousands, the number of Keystone
G-men channeling Jack Bauer, entrapping one another, and rifling Aunt
Milly’s luggage in their relentless quest for diabolical
Islamofascists wielding explosive Nikes and squirting anthrax shampoo.

Next, legalize marijuana.

We all know that, ten, twenty, thirty years from now, weed’s gonna be
legal. But we need money right now! So, legalize now — and give the
cannabis concession to Big Tobacco, because those guys really know how
to sell this stuff. (Think of menthol maryjane!) Make dope-dealers buy
licenses and limit sales to adults (with big, lucrative fines for
violations). Collect cannabis taxes by the joint, ounce, pound, kilo
and bale. Collect more taxes on rolling paper, roach clips, pipes,
bongs, Che Guevara t-shirts! Encourage domestic hemp farming by
hitting imported weed with a fat tariff.

And open the prisons. We’re spending $29,000 a year for every doper,
Deadhead and dealer we’ve put behind bars. The U.S. has the largest
jail population on earth because we lock people up for getting stoned.
Everybody must get out! On what we save just from freeing drug
offenders, we could spend billions on rehab resorts, drug treatment,
halfway houses, parole officers, etc. — and still decimate the
deficit.

Not to mention the income from the Grass Tax!

OK, next. Anybody with a memory (or, if they’ve seen “The Sting”)
knows about what used to be called the “numbers racket.” It was an
elegantly simple lottery, run by the Mob, in which people placed
penny-ante bets on a three-number combination. Each bet was a pittance
but the daily handle was enough to keep your neighborhood hoods flush
with Cadillacs, silk suits, diamond stick-pins and nights at the Stork
Club.

“Playing the numbers” died when states decided to climb off their
moral high-horse and grab a piece of the action, with state lotteries
and Indian casinos. Proceeds from all this sin were supposed to do
good — fund education, create surpluses and cut taxes.

So, where’d all the money go? The odds are supposed to favor the
house, but somehow every state in the country came up craps. Now,
they’re all hip-deep in IOU’s.

I’m not saying we should give up and close down the games. Just take
them away from politicians. Put in a few calls — to the Crips, the
Latin Kings, the last vestiges of the Gotti family, the estate of
Bugsy Siegel, whoever — and offer them dibs on state gambling. Put the
contract out for bids, hire the Mob that makes the best offer, and
then look the other way ‘til the end of the year and it’s time to
split the pot.

OK, one other idea.

The Government Accounting Office recently reminded us that half the
corporations in America pay no taxes at all. Zero. Bupkes.
Exxon-Mobil, for example, in 2009, made $42.5 billion in profit, paid
nothing on that and got a $1.1 billion refund from the IRS. Also not
paying — not a cent — in recent years: Boeing, Bank of America,
General Electric, Wells Fargo, Citigroup… I could go on, but my gorge
is rising.

The President’s deficit commission talks about simplifying the tax
code and eliminating loopholes, so that some of these dodged taxes —
amounting to more than $100 billion a year — can be recovered.

Fuggedaboutit. As fast as tax laws can be revised, Big Business’s tax
lawyers will devise new scams for stiffing the waiter. They always
have. The solution is to not even try taxing corporate income, or
profits or assets or anything else even remotely financial.

Instead, make the tax lawyers a tax liability. For every dollar billed
to, say, Google, by its tax lawyers, the IRS would then bill Google
$2. Or maybe $3. Better yet: $20. The more tax lawyers a company
hires, the more taxes it pays. And down goes the deficit!

Eventually, some company might figure it out. Finally, it might fire
the damn lawyers, fill out its 1040 like everybody else — and pay its
fair share.

Just kidding.

In the meantime, we’re still in the hole. Maybe there’s a 14-year-old
pregnant girl out there who’ll lend Uncle Sam a couple bucks ‘til the
first of the month?