Lying (esp. when you're the President) and Taxing Kids' College Funds: These Things are Seriously Un-Fertile

There are things going on that are seriously un-fertile that I wish people would start paying attention to: public lying and taxing kids with college funds.

Here's an example of both:

In 1999, Bush said: "If elected president, I will oppose and veto any increase in individual or corporate marginal income tax rates or individual or corporate income tax hikes"

With the signing of this week's 69-billion-dollar tax bill, which of course funnels most of it to the extremely buttloaded rich (see the excellent article in the Christian Science Monitor, "Why the Rich Get Most Tax Goodies"), there WAS a new tax levied: a tax on teens with college savings funds, which triples their current tax rate.

So...instead of the gougey oil companies, the Enrons, the people who spend half a mil on their kids' birthday parties, Bush has to go after the real evil types--the teens with college savings funds.

AND lie about it! The White House happily announced that the passage of the tax bill "reduced taxes on all people who pay income taxes." When caught in the lie, they amended it to "virtually all people." No sorry, not even an oops! Why can't Bush even give us his famous smirk and say, "Aw shucks, you caught me!" just once? It would be soooo satisfying.

I don't get it: when I was little, I had the bejeezus scared out of me by church and parents about what would happen to me if , honesty is the best policy, etc.

And to add insult to injury, the single tax hike is on kids' college funds! I can't think of anything that deserves more of a tax incentive (well, maybe solar energy panels). I remember carving time out of my ridiculous day in order to fill out eight hundred forms in order to set up a college savings account for my son when he was but a wee toddler. Then when he became sick, not even three months later, the first thing the Medicaid people told me to do, was "lose the college fund." Of all the life threatening things going on with my son, they worried the most about the thousand bucks I'd squirreled away for HIS FUTURE, I guess the big bucks I was making in untaxed interest.

Well, I did get rid of it (FYI: the accumulated interest was 99 cents). I suppose I could have lied and said I did and not do it, but that's not how I was raised...

You can read about it in the New York Times (obscured in the middle, p. 25, but at least they published it): http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/washington/21tax.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

And if you don't want to give up your privates, you can use the Fertilitybitch's account:

Username Greenfertility
Password: Greenfertility
Secret word: soylent green

tags technorati : Bush income taxes corporate