Posts Tagged ‘Fiscal Humor’

Those Taxing Tariffs (Limerick)

Wednesday, June 5th, 2019

Headline: “Trump’s tariffs might amount to the biggest U.S. tax hike since the 1980s”

And now my two-verse limerick:

A tariff is really a tax
That Trump’s hitting us with to the max,
Just to make his base think
Trump the “tough guy” won’t blink.
Dear voters, please give him the ax.

Donald counts on his fans not to know
That tariffs are taxes, and so
He keeps raising those taxes.
Here’s hoping the ax is
About to deliver its blow.

Limerick Ode To Paul Ryan

Wednesday, December 19th, 2018

Headline: “Paul Ryan sure wishes we could have fixed the deficit he helped explode

Good riddance, Paul Ryan. Buh-bye,
To a craven and faux-wonkish guy.
“Budget hawk?” What a joke!
You’re a tax-cutting bloke,
And your life’s a big deficit lie!

Dow Doldrums (Limerick)

Monday, April 2nd, 2018

“The market keeps dropping!” we sob.
And there’s no reassurance from Schwab.
We feel robbed and depressed
And impossibly stressed.
Here’s my message to Donald: Great job!

Greed Trumps All (Limerick)

Saturday, December 16th, 2017

Headline: “Donald Trump And GOP Leaders Could Be Enriched By Last Minute Tax Break Inserted Into Final Bill”

Corker’s tax “reform” “yes”-vote’s a blow!
So why did he switch it from “no?”
Mega real estate owners
(Like Corker) got boners
From a tax break that’s worth mega dough.

The Great Tax “Reform” Con (Limerick)

Saturday, December 16th, 2017

The tax “reform” process was stealthy,
And its impact’s acutely unhealthy.
The damage is clear;
We’ll lose ALL we hold dear,
As the rich become even more wealthy.

Remember Deficit Hawks? (Limericks)

Thursday, September 28th, 2017

Dear Republican Deficit Hawks:
We’re awaiting your screams and your squawks.
Never mind my verse preface; it’s
Clear only deficits
Grown under Dems are a pox.

Trump’s Con Man Budget (Limerick)

Thursday, May 25th, 2017

A TWO trillion dollar mistake?
Really more, cuz the “growth gain” is fake.
But such cons are expected
When crooks are elected.
Please don’t tell me you STILL like that snake.

Having It Both Ways (Limerick)

Monday, December 29th, 2014

Having It Both Ways (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Claim “Obama’s economy’s” sick?
Then take credit for upswings? How slick!
But my dear GOPers,
It doesn’t take seers
To know that you really must pick.

Medicare Mishigas (Limerick)

Monday, December 10th, 2012

In the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, Republicans are irrationally demanding a hike in the Medicare eligibility age — what Nancy Pelosi refers to as “a trophy that the Republicans want.”

As Ezra Klein explains, this would not save money or help solve the health care cost problem, and it would hurt lots of people. Unfortunately, Republicans seem to favor symbolism over substance, and raising the Medicare eligibility age would be “a signal that they won something big on entitlements.”

Medicare Mishigas (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

GOPers want change that ain’t sage:
Raise the Medicare-el’gible age.
This does harm — won’t address
The health care cost mess:
It’s the fruit of entitlements-rage.

Open Limerick To The Mainstream Media

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

Dear Members Of The Media:

When a Republican refuses to consider any tax rate hike whatsoever … even for millionaires and billionaires … that’s an extremist position. So it would be nice if you’d stop acting as if the few Republicans claiming sudden independence from Grover Norquist’s tax pledge are moderates, when they’re still refusing to consider any rate hikes.

To put it another way, a slight compromise in one’s extremism is still extremism:

The way the whole “fiscal cliff” thing (itself a contrivance based on the Republican view that expiration of the Bush tax cuts and imposition of defense spending cuts would be an apocalyptic development) is being discussed in the MSM is a depressing vindication of the huge strategic advantages of partisan extremism. If you are crazy enough for a while, then agreeing to be slightly less crazy looks statesmanlike.

Open Limerick To The Mainstream Media
By Madeleine Begun Kane

The press is again just a dupe
In the make-believe compromise loop:
A mere marginal move
By extremists can’t prove
That they’re aught but a lunatic group.

Michigan’s Fetal Shenanigans (Limerick)

Friday, November 23rd, 2012

This Republican behavior is so crazy, I almost couldn’t write a limerick about it.

Republican lawmakers in Michigan, a state which eliminated tax credits for children last year, have proposed a tax credit for unborn foetuses of 12 weeks gestation…

Critics said the proposal was “absurd” and described it as a backdoor way of trying to pass “personhood” legislation which would give rights to an embryo and crack down on abortion.

The irony-impaired Rep. Jud Gilbert, R-Algonac said:

“You’re recognizing the fact that people have additional expenses, another person to take care of.”

Michigan’s Fetal Shenanigans (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

A Republican law now forbids
Tax credits for Michigan kids,
But those same pols want credits
For fetuses. Bet it’s
A product of brains on the skids.

Dear Red State Would-Be Secessionists: Buh-Bye! (Limerick)

Wednesday, November 14th, 2012

Shush! Please don’t tell all those Red State would-be secessionists what a great deal they have right now. And how much better off financially we Blue Staters would be, if the sore loser Red Staters successfully seceded.

… a large number of patriotic Americans, mostly from states won by Mitt Romney last week, have petitioned the White House to let them secede. They should be careful about what they wish for. It would be excellent financial news for those of us left behind if Obama were to grant a number of the rebel states their wish “to withdraw from the United States and create [their] own NEW government” (the petitions emphasize “new” by capitalizing it).

Red states receive, on average, far more from the federal government in expenditures than they pay in taxes. The balance is the opposite in blue states. The secession petitions, therefore, give the opportunity to create what would be, in a fiscal sense, a far more perfect union.

Dear Red State Would-Be Secessionists: Buh-Bye! (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Greedy Red States who want to secede
Are “takers” and foolish indeed.
From the Fed they get more
Than they send — they’ll be poor
If they leave, and the Blues will be freed.

Limerick Ode To Mitt “Job Creator” Romney

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

So let me get this straight: Mitt Romney has disavowed his singular accomplishment as Massachusetts governor (universal health care). And for the most part, he’s resting his claim to the presidency on his Bain-related expertise and accomplishments. He even asserts (without any proof) to have been a big “job creator” there. And yet Romney has the audacity to declare his Bain years off-limits to examination and critique by Obama and other Democrats.

As Ezra Klein points out:

Romney’s national platform … calls for doing less for the victims of the global economy. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would guarantee that workers would get health insurance even if they lost their jobs in, say, a private-equity led restructuring. He wants to pay for large tax cuts and more defense spending by cutting funds for Medicaid, for food stamps, for worker retraining, and for housing subsidies. He wants to cut Social Security benefits. He has no detailed plans to improve the continuing education system, or worker retraining programs, such that displaced machinists have a better chance to find a new job.

That’s why the ads in which laid-off steelworkers say Romney just doesn’t care about people like them are so effective. As head of Bain, it was Romney’s job not to care about them. But as a presidential candidate, it’s his job to show that he does care about them. So far, he hasn’t.

Limerick Ode To Mitt “Job Creator” Romney
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Romney brags of his Bain expertise—
Says it’s earned him the White Houses’s keys.
Yet he’s sore, slams the door,
Says how dare we explore
What exactly he did for those fees.

Dear Mitt, you can’t have it both ways.
Your record’s reviewed in this phase:
When you proudly proclaim
You know biz, it’s fair game
To appraise your Bain management ways.

Limerick Ode To Newt Lunacy

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

I’ve finally figured out how Newt plans to populate the moon: He’ll catapult the poor onto the moon via trampolines.

Yes, I know that sounds crazy. But I can’t think of any other explanation for this nutty Newt quote:

I really believe that we should care about the very poor, unlike Governor Romney. But I believe we should care very differently from Barack Obama….What the poor need is a trampoline so they can spring up, so I am for replacing the safety net with a trampoline.

Limerick Ode To Newt Lunacy
By Madeleine Begun Kane

The safety net’s bad, prattles Newt,
Suggesting we give it the boot.
From his odd bag of tricks,
Newt throws this in the mix:
Trampolines — out-of-poverty route.

Limerick Ode To The GOP’s War On The IRS

Friday, January 13th, 2012

Crooks and Liars calls our attention to the huge cost of the GOP’s war on the IRS.

Now, the annual report to Congress from the National Taxpayer Advocate shows, “IRS is not adequately funded to serve taxpayers or collect revenue.”

C & L quotes the AP:

The Internal Revenue Service can’t keep up with surging tax cheating and isn’t sufficiently collecting revenue or helping confused taxpayers because Congress isn’t giving it enough money to do its job, a government watchdog said Wednesday…

Congress cut the IRS budget to $11.8 billion this year. That is $300 million less than last year and $1.5 billion below the request by President Barack Obama, who argued that boosting the agency’s spending would fatten tax collections and provide better service to taxpayers.

Limerick Ode To The GOP’s War On The IRS
By Madeleine Begun Kane

The GOP’s often applauded
For IRS cuts, even lauded.
But those savings ain’t real:
The records reveal
A big loss, when you slash those who audit.

Limerick Ode To Romney’s “Robin Hood In Reverse” Tax Plan

Saturday, January 7th, 2012

If you’re middle class or poor, and think you’ll fare better under Romney, this independent analysis of Mitt Romney’s proposed tax plan from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center should surely change your mind.

But if you don’t have time to read the story, this limerick should give you the gist:

Limerick Ode To Romney’s “Robin Hood In Reverse” Tax Plan
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Want the rich to get richer? Vote Mitt.
Want a deficit increase? Mitt’s it.
Want things to get worse
For the middle class purse?
Then vote Romney — his tax plan is shit.

Limerick Ode To The Not-So-Super Committee

Monday, November 21st, 2011

The blame game is going strong with the customary false equivalencies.

Limerick Ode To The Not-So-Super Committee
By Madeleine Begun Kane

The Super Committee’s derailed,
And now we are being regaled
With tales blaming Dems
Sold as “media gems.”
It’s “balanced” reporting that’s failed.

The So-Called Liberal Media Strikes Again

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

Steve Benen points us to yet another example of the media blaming the wrong political party. According to the Washington Post, the Democrats, in resisting Republican precedent-changing demands for FEMA disaster relief offsets, was starting a “fight over a side issue:”

But Democrats decided to pick a fight over a side issue: an insistence by the GOP to pay for more disaster relief funding by cutting a popular auto-industry loan program. Republicans refused to back down.

So let me get this straight: Republicans try to change the rules, thereby holding disaster victims hostage … and it’s the Democrats’ fault?

This calls for two poems: a limerick and a tanka:

Dear Washington Post, you are wrong
With your Democrats started it song.
Disaster relief
Is the cause of this beef.
Give those offset demands a loud gong.

*****

Republican pols
Demand FEMA fund offsets—
Hold victims hostage,
While “liberal media”
Blames Dems for starting the fight.

*****

Limerick Ode To Standard & Poor’s Chutzpah

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Paul Krugman does a great job pointing out S&P’s chutzpah in downgrading U.S. debt:

America’s large budget deficit is, after all, primarily the result of the economic slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis. And S.& P., along with its sister rating agencies, played a major role in causing that crisis, by giving AAA ratings to mortgage-backed assets that have since turned into toxic waste.

Nor did the bad judgment stop there. Notoriously, S.& P. gave Lehman Brothers, whose collapse triggered a global panic, an A rating right up to the month of its demise. And how did the rating agency react after this A-rated firm went bankrupt? By issuing a report denying that it had done anything wrong.

Limerick Ode To Standard & Poor’s Chutzpah
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Dear Standard & Poor’s, I’m impressed
Cuz you ought to be under arrest.
You caused the recession
With junk bond aggression.
Now you’re pounding your downgrading chest?

Paul Ryan, Educator???

Saturday, July 16th, 2011

The debt ceiling absolutely, positively must be raised to avoid a fiscal meltdown, and the Republican leadership knows it. But they’re saddled with a bunch of ignorant, “Tea Party” Congress-critters whose votes they desperately need.

Ironically, the job of educating them about debt ceiling realities has fallen to Paul Ryan, the Prince of Budget Misinformation.

Here’s what I’m wondering: The “Tea Party” nuts bought Paul Ryan’s lies. Will they believe him when he speaks the truth?

Paul Ryan, Educator???
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Though the GOP leadership’s tryin’
To get Tea Party votes, they ain’t buyin’,
Cuz they’re itchin’ to spike
Any debt ceiling hike.
Now the burden to school them’s on Ryan.