One letter that I will not be signing. Continue reading
Yesterday afternoon I received a fax from Congressman Sessions and the National Republican Congressional Committee. The text was in a font that made it look hand-written. All the letters were in upper-case, but the ones that I have rendered in lower-case were about 60 percent as large as the others.
As a business owner, I’d like to include your name in our Open letter to President Obama in response to his lack of understanding of how jobs are created.
Please review the attached and call my assistant at 1-855-596-6875. Thanks.
I pass over without mentioning the peculiar punctuation and spacing as well as the fact that the very first clause is dangling. Here was the letter that he wanted me to “sign” by calling his “assistant.”
If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen…”
Have you ever started a business? Have you ever personally met payroll? Have you ever gone without so you could pay employees? Have you ever managed cash flow? Have you ever managed cash flow? Have you ever had to comply with government over regulation?
NO!
Therefore, we the undersigned Business leaders, along with the Republican Leadership, are supporting an alternative solution: Make the tax cuts permanent for EVERYONE!
Economic revival will begin where it always does‐‐with entrepeneurs and America’s small businesses.
Sincerely,
I was disappointed that the letter only included only two exclamation marks and a smattering of capital letters. You cannot expect the POTUS to read a letter with fewer than five exclamation marks.
My favorite word in the letter is “Therefore,” which is, in logic, used to separate the conclusion from the major premise and the minor premise. For example: Giacomo is a cat; all cats are mammals; therefore, Giacomo is a mammal. In this case, however, the major premise consists of six rhetorical questions, and the minor premise is one word: “NO!” Not only is this a non sequitur in that the conclusion does not flow from the premises, the premises themselves are not even statements of fact!
My second-favorite word is “solution,” which is used without any mention of a problem. Perhaps the person who wrote the letter (Rep. Sessions?) thought that it was self-evident that the problem is that rich people hate to pay taxes.
I also found it peculiar that in the quote from the president a dash was used with spaces on either side, but in the last sentence two hyphens were used with no spaces. I can only assume that the quote was cut and pasted from an author who understood the rules of punctuation.
It really grinds my grits when people claim that small businesses will be hurt by taxes on the wealthy. I have run a small business for thirty years, and I have done quite well for myself. Never in all of that time have I come close to making $250,000 per year, and I do not know any small businessmen who earn that much.
Furthermore, even if I was in that lofty tax bracket, I would never base a hiring decision upon my own tax situation. The two are not even vaguely related Are the Republicans arguing that people who make over a quarter of a million bucks a year might have to “go without” in order to make payroll? Go without what, a second yacht?
The tax that really hurts small businesses is the one tax that the Republicans love — the payroll tax. Every small business (except ones that dodge taxes by calling their income “carried interest” or some such) must pay a whopping 6.2 percent of salary in addition to the 6.2 percent paid by the employee. However, guess what: those people who make $250,000 or more pay less than 3 percent because the tax is capped at $110,100. The “holiday” reduced the rate to 4.2 percent, which put considerable cash into the coffers of small businesses as well as the pockets of everyone except the rich.
Can someone explain to me why it is a mortal sin to end the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy, but ending the payroll tax holiday is everyone’s sworn duty?
So, here is what I faxed back to Congressman Sessions:
Michael Wavada