Everything Can Be Blamed On Bush
Yes, if you're Slate, you can say with a straight face that the Alternate Minimum Tax is a secret Republican plot against Democrats.
Note the unstated presumptions:
a) No evidence in the article that the tax actually hits Democrats more than Republicans. It might, but some data would be nice.
b) No evidence that Republicans are blocking bills put forward by Democrats to get rid of AIM.
c) No evidence that if Republicans put such a bill forward, the 'secret tax on Democrats' would be killed with Democratic support.
This is really silly to be run as a leader article.
Comments
As the article points out, the reason the AMT arguably hits more Dems is that it tends to hit people who pay a lot of state and local taxes. It seems to me then, that the Democrats could reduce the AMT hit on their constituents by reducing the state tax burdens in those states. NY has the highest state and local tax burden in the country. Lower it enough, and fewer of us will pay the AMT.
Yeah. Like that will happen. And sadly, NY Republicans are about 98% as bad as NY Democrats when it comes to raising taxes.
mroyigkPosted by: MG2 | April 15, 2004 12:14 PM
But MG2, that's the point: it arguably hits more Democrats only if we assume a lot of things. In order to get from there to "Bush's secret tax on Democrats," we have to assume that there are more Democrat subject to the tax--i.e. not that the states are "blue", but that more people subject to the tax are--and this is a tenuous presumption in the article.
Before one is going to ascribe negative intentions to Bush, one ought to at least make sure the facts match up.
Posted by: Anthony | April 15, 2004 01:46 PM