Rumsfeld shops bull in China
By Tom Blackburn
Palm Beach Post Columnist
Monday, October 24, 2005
The gap between what our leaders in Washington do and what a rational person would hope for keeps growing. Last week, the secretary of defense took it upon himself to tell China how to behave while this country got, and ignored, yet more shocks to its health-care system.
Donald Rumsfeld is lucky the Chinese were too polite to say, "Go home, little man, and fix your country so it can repay the money we loaned you to build your vast arsenal." China says it spends $30 billion for defense. Mr. Rumsfeld thinks it's more like $90 billion, and he doesn't like it. But he thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, too. The United States spends more than $430 billion on defense. The difference is that China spends its own money.
While the defense secretary played Mr. Buttinski, a panel chosen by President Bush previewed plans to simplify taxes. Its final plan may become Mr. Bush's big domestic issue next year, like Social Security this year. Ah, tax simplification. It summons up the blood, doesn't it? We haven't had any of that since 1986. Remember how much simpler taxes became then?
Everybody talks about simplifying taxes, but no one ever succeeds at it. The reason is plain, even to slow learners like me: The ways people get money and its equivalents are too many and too varied. The tax code is a fat, stupefying collection of rules, but the rules of accounting are almost as fat and just as stupefying. The latter only tell you whether you've made a profit or a loss; the tax code has to tell you what to do about it.
While our leaders busied themselves with China and taxes, Americans were losing health care left and right.
snip
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2005/10/24/a14a_blackburncol_1024.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
