Breaking Down The 9-9-9 Plan (or Breaking what's Broken)

Herman Cain, contender for the Republican nomination for president, (and frequent victim of my verbal beatings as of late, not that I care) has been touting the boldness of his "9-9-9" tax plan. Frequently, Cain has stated that our economy is "on life support" and more or less pushing an "any port in the storm" outlook. This, as if to say everyone else in the GOP sucks, while he merely sucks the least and trying to garner a sense of desperation from the Republican base as if they were drunk college kids and he was the fat chick at the end of the bar; the final solution.

Desperation is a stinky cologne.

Backpedaling from recent news coverage of his "pro-choice" (or was it pro-life?) statements on abortion with less skill than a JV quarterback, Cain has also made a feeble attempt to "tweak" the finer points of the original 9-9-9 plan in mid-step. The plan to revise the U.S. tax code to allow a nine percent tax on sales, income and business turned out to be mathematically unfavorable to families making less than $50,000 a year. By "mathematically unfavorable" I mean to say you won't break even unless you're reading this from a yacht and drinking cognac in your nautical themed silk ascot. But for those of us whose idea of dinner consists of store brand kielbasa, a side of grits and a puddin' cup for dessert, it really isn't fair. You know, when lunch is a cup of noodles with a hot dog sitting in the noodles to get warm so you can keep the energy bill down? Yeah, that kind of shit.

Don't get me started on eating cereal with a fork to save the milk or the joys of fried bologna.

High-falootin, pizza mongering fuck status aside, I've mentioned how this doesn't qualify Cain to change any aspect of an already flawed tax code before. I won't beat the dead horse of irony over the average price of a large, one topping pizza coming in at around $9.99. But a recent article in the Washington Post had this to say illustrating the tweaking of his plan:

"Under Cain’s plan, the federal government would designate for exemption from the 9-9-9 plan special areas with high unemployment and poverty. In these areas, businesses could deduct their entire payroll from their income subject that would normally be subject to the business tax. People who live or work in these zones would also get tax benefits, although Cain did not detail them."

Yep, somebody's definitely "tweaking" here. Isn't this the same man who has taken such a hard line on the impoverished? Cain is basically giving big business a break once again and perpetuating the vicious cycle of "if you ain't got no money, take ya' broke ass home" which is really difficult to do when said home has been foreclosed.

As I've said numerous times in the past, "'trickle down' economics, don't." Just because a fella out in the Village leaves a large refrigerator box outside his house and a homeless individual makes it their shelter, doesn't mean anything has trickled down to the less privileged; it just doesn't work like that!

Leave your interesting or related questions in the comment section below, and as always, "Question Everything."