Keeping up with the Obama Administration’s efforts to bloat the government ranks as rapidly as three and one half more years will allow them to, has become a formidable task. Its lack of common sense has never been surprising, however, the absurdity of its intent sometimes rises well beyond what must surely be any barely functioning intellectual comprehension.
From the pen of geographically challenged Napolitano comes the following statement to the House of Representatives homeland security committee, explaining that fresh sources of revenues are needed to feed her fast growing empire. No need to make this up, or exaggerate, so here from her Homeland Security website is the following text:
“Processing the more than 350 million travelers annually provides nearly $150 billion in economic stimulus, yet the fees that support these operations have not been adjusted in many cases for more than a decade. As the complexity of our operations continues to expand, the gap between fee collections and the operations they support is growing, and the number of workforce hours fees support decreases each year.”
Let’s ignore the fact that the country just to the North of the 49th parallel represents America’s biggest trading partner (for Napolitano’s education, that country is Canada). Let’s also ignore the fact that fees (taxes) are already levied to finance inspections of commercial and agricultural goods crossing the border.
Instead, let’s consider the mindset capable of delivering the above statement.
Holding forth with the foremost culmination of its reasoning, the Obama Administration first stands on the positive economic statistic of $150 billion which travellers bring to America. It then advances the persuasion in full ideological mode with an incomprehensible submission that this extremely successful activity should be taxed. Obama and Napolitano cannot help themselves. In stereotypically socialist fashion, they request that Congress tax those who visit the United States to spend their cash. Evidently anyone who has cash to spend should be penalized because he or she must have too much of it and any such surplus is an ideal target for taxation.
Thousands of businesses who depend, even thrive, on foreign visitors, would feel the pain inflicted by the imposition of such measures. In an environment long suffering from the weight of a stagnating economy, and businesses anxious about their prospects for remaining afloat, which part of the statist mind is it that believes that building barriers to foreign buyers and to their cash is an intelligent and creative concept?
Visitors from Mexico may not come into the U.S. to spend to the same degree that Canadians do, so the impact from the South may not be as painful as the impact on crossings over the Northern border. Millions of Canadians purchase goods in the United States each and every day, escaping their own onerous taxation system and their inflated costs of goods, from cheese, to cars, to gasoline, to TVs. Most of those Canadians are ‘day’ visitors. If anything, this Administration should open the 49th parallel further to ease the movement of goods between the two countries. Instead, it claims that it will create new jobs with this fresh tax – thousands of them, so don’t worry if your business goes under, just get in line for a government job. The Obama job creation machine is coming to a border community near you.
Perhaps Obama and Napolitano might forego a holiday to take a day trip to Buffalo and simply ask a few businesses for an opinion. They might then catapult across the continent for a visit to any business in Bellingham, Washington, to seek first hand feedback on these brilliant measures being concocted in their political eco chamber.
The MSM doesn’t seem to much care about these non-subtle tax-and-spend moves from this Administration, but the Governors of all border states should be campaigning on the White House lawn on behalf of their constituents. Increased taxation is no way to stimulate an economy – any part of any economy. Just ask the border towns.
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.