MediaMyopic

I must preface this post by crediting a friend of mine, Scott Hagerman, as the brainchild. He offered to write the rant himself but, like most liberals, lacked the follow through. Hagerman’s absolutely right when he says he smells a rat with Washington’s $160 billion stimulus package poised for approval in the Senate, after sailing through the House. I appreciate the $500-600 ‘tax rebate’ the plan provides me but I don’t appreciate politicians passing this under the guise of ailing a weak economy. It’s a pre-election bribe championed by none other than President Bush. Speaking at a New York real estate event earlier this week, Peter Linneman, chief economist at NAI Global, called the stimulus package political propaganda. “The tax rebates are laughable. First of all, they don’t even go to the people who pay taxes,” he continued. And he’s partially right – many of these rebates may fall in the hands of senior citizens and the unemployed, which I don’t have a problem with but renders the ‘tax rebate’ title inaccurate. Thank you Capitol Hill for contributing to my vacation fund but it’s not enough to buy my vote. In the words of Linneman: “I’m not a Democrat, I’m not a Republican. I observe both parties as the scum that they are.”