08 February 2008

Games We Shouldn't Play

So all of a sudden, Aníbal "The Jellyfish" Acevedo, purported governor of Our Island, calls for the reduction of the sales tax from 7% to 2.5%.

Allow Me to point out that's been said before by another "J": here.

According to The Jellyfish, the sales tax has failed, has, in fact, been a disaster, and he wants the damn thing rolled back to "stimulate the economy." Like an overpalped prostate, Our economy doesn't need stimulation: It needs to be fixed. But leave it to The Jellyfish to play politics to impose the sales tax and play politics to have it removed.

Political ploy One: Against history, research and common sense, The Jellyfish proposes a sales tax to help cover deficits he keeps incurring. Regardless of whether the deficits were largely caused by The Freakin' Fools of the legislature (they were) or by cost over-runs left behind by previous incumbent Sila "Quitter" Calderón (ditto), it is the spineless wonder's responsibility to find solutions and the basic one here was stop spending.

By almost every basic objective study, Our government's budget is so laden with fat that just reading it qualifies as a health risk. At a time when Jellyfish and Fools were playing footsie and causing the government to shut down, were they doing it to "stimulate the economy?" Hell no. They were playing politics. And the 7% sales tax was Aníbal's 7-up-his-sleeve.

1) He knew he could get it approved despite the legislature being against his every move. Greed is SOOOOOO predictable.

2) It would give the appearance of forward progress by pushing expenses from the central government to the municipal level, the mask of decentralization covering incompetence.

3) And when the sales tax failed--when--he would have an out: The Fools did it! And so he claimed in his recent "cut the sales tax" speech.


Political ploy Two: Time drags by and Our economy sinks into the crapper. The numbers were evident from the start, and as they got worse, We stopped hearing about them. Jellyfish sees his potential gubernatorial opponents duking it out in what promises to be a bloody political primary.

Let Me foreshadow by reminding you of this.

Center stage, The Fools swamphouse, national TV...drop the 7-up-his-sleeve again. And make Pedro Stupid Rosselló look good in time for a primary push.

1) Stupid had vehemently argued (through his monkey-puppets) for a 4% tax, and even bandied about a 2.5% "solution."

2) Stupid is running behind in the polls, for although he isn't actually "running" (Stupid is as Stupid does), he is the other candidate in a two horse's-ass race, so polls are taken. 

3) And as discussed before, if Stupid wins, Jellyfish is practically a lead-pipe cinch to win his second useless term simply because Stupid coalesces the "anti-candidate" fence-sitters known as independientes (not to be confused with the less-impactful independentistas.)


So where do We stand on this spineless sales tax stupidity? Acephalic "experts" most likely rehired by amoral Fools are now wailing that eliminating the sales tax would be a disaster. A previous description by Yours Truly made it clear that having a sales tax was never a good idea. Eliminating it, or reducing it to 2-3%, would help jump-start rampant consumerism, the alleged basis for Our economy.

But if We want to truly solve Our economic malaise, We need to break new ground 
by breaking way from the self-serving restrictions the U.S. of part of A. keeps us under. Until We do that, until We take control of Our own productivity and profits, We will be merely playing silly, spineless, stupid games, like children pretending to be adults.


And I, for one, am definitely not amused by this.


The Jenius Has Spoken.

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