Hightower Lowdown
"Loyalty to country, always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it." -- Mark Twain
In This Issue
What the media won't tell you about globaloney
December's Lowdown
The many REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL after Election Day 2008
After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.
[read more]
Stay in the Loop
Sign up for email alerts, from breaking news to weekly commentary:
Recent Lowdowns
Subscriber Features
Manage your account by logging in. Don't have an account? Get the Lowdown in the mail every month -- for the unbelievable, ridiculous, low, low price of $15 per year! Save a tree and read it online for just $10 per year!
Dig Deeper
Find more content in these topics: Corporate greed
On The Road
No upcoming appearances at this time; check back soon!
[All events] | [Book Jim]
Search
The General Store
Visit Hightower's General Store, to buy high-power Hightower books and other goodies like that.
Home | Contact | RSS | Privacy policy | Copyright Public Intelligence, Inc., all rights reserved 2003-2007
The rebate-and-switch scam
President Bush almost had to put his arm in a sling after patting himself on the back so much over the rebate checks that he and Congress directed the IRS to send out this summer to millions of American homes.
He flew around the country at our expense to hand out blown-up mock $300 checks to people, like he was on the Prize Patrol for Publishers Clearing House.
When the actual checks were mailed, the Treasury was short of cash due to the economic downturn we're experiencing under Bush, so George had to borrow $28 billion from the Social Security trust fund to pay for his shameless political ploy.
The biggest surprise for many Americans will be their discovery that Bush's $300 checks amount to a case of "rebate and switch." The checks we're now getting from the IRS are not a rebate on taxes we've paid, but an advance on any refund we expect to get from the IRS after we file our tax returns next April.
Let's say you're due a refund of $300 next year. Instead, you'll get zero. And if it happens that you're not getting a refund next year, you'll have to pay back that $300 to Smiling George!
Bush's "rebates" are a bookkeeping gimmick. Despite the hoopla, he didn't lower anyone's tax rates for this year, so we still owe the same amount, including the $300 he's "advancing" us this summer.