9-9-9

Everyone seems to be talking about Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax plan as if it has some chance of ever becoming law, forgetting that (a) Herman Cain is simply never going to be president and (b) even if somehow Mitt Romney and Rick Perry were discovered to both be secretly women having a lesbian affair and Barack Obama admitted to being in love with both of them and dropped out of the race and the Democrats were dumb enough to go with Dennis Kucinich, meaning Herman Cain wins the presidency, the fact of the matter is this 9-9-9 tax plan will simply never be passed by Congress.

In fact, the 9-9-9 plan has less chance of becoming law than the tree frogs have a chance of rising up against their human masters and taking over and instituting their own tax plan. This "tree frog overlord tax plan" has a better chance of becoming law than the 9-9-9 plan. So instead we should be talking about the tree frog plan, but we're not because the media is full of idiots.

So, let's recap--the 9-9-9 plan means replacing the current federal income tax with (a) a flat 9% rate on all individuals, plus (b) a 9% rate on all corporations and (c) a 9% federal sales tax. All deductions except charity would be eliminated. Liberals are already complaining that this would raise taxes on all the low earners who currently don't pay income taxes because they're too poor but I'm certain that an exemption for the tax would be granted for such tax filers and why am I even discussing this stupid plan?

The biggest flaw, I see--and why it'd never see the light of day--is not that this plan would raise taxes on anyone but that the taxes collected under such a plan would be so comically low that our government would have to function a lot less like it does now and a lot more like it did in 1840. Cuts necessary would include reducing our military to a weekend volunteer militia, reducing our police force to one sheriff per county with any deputies he can scrounge up, no more funding for roads, airports, farm subsidies, social security, medicare, and requiring everyone to find a way to home school. Forget food inspection--we'd all just have to do the sniff test. While I agree with the need for serious budget cutting, there's just no way the budget can be cut as deeply and quickly as this 9-9-9 plan would require without sending this country into a chaotic tailspin.

Add to that the sales tax hike, which would basically drive prices up on all goods and likely depress consumer spending, and we have a formula for competing with Zimbabwe for World's National Equivalent of Lindsay Lohan. So why would a seemingly smart man like Herman Cain push this plan?

The answer is obvious--Cain is a salesman, and his entire campaign is geared towards becoming a paid celebrity. He can sell books and get a show on cable, with big money and a national platform, as a result of this presidential run. Sarah Palin sort of showed the way for nonserious candidates. This whole thing deserves the degree of scrutiny that Donald Trump's "campaign" did--that is, very little. All the reporters (or his primary opponents) should be saying to him about the 9-9-9 plan is "okay, we get the joke--can we move on to something else?"