Category: George W. Bush

Small business owner: Cutting taxes for the rich doesn’t create jobs

Posted by dcrim – December 3, 2010

Lew Prince, a managing partner of Vintage Vinyl, an independent music store in St. Louis, says the theory that more tax cuts for the rich will create jobs at small businesses — a huge rallying cry for the rich and those who represent the rich — is “ridiculous.”

When tax-cut lobbyists tell you that small business owners will use the money saved from lower tax rates to hire someone, they’ve got it backward. Either they’ve never run a small business, or they’re trying to mislead you. … So, if Congress wants to help my company — and other small businesses — create jobs, it should support tax and economic policies that boost broad-based consumer income and spending.

Prince points to a Wall Street Journal report that showed the administration of President George W. Bush had the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records in 1939. The Bush administration, with all of its tax cuts, created just 1.1 million jobs net, while the Clinton administration created 22.7 million.

Election results present perfect timing for release of new Bush book

Posted by dcrim – November 8, 2010

Former President George W. Bush is ending nearly two years of silence with a series of high-profile interviews to promote his new book, “Decision Points,” which is due out today.

Bush chose not to write a traditional birth-to-Oval-Office autobiography, but instead selected 14 major decisions, or clusters of decisions, that shaped his life and presidency, such as the moment he quit drinking and his handling of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Among the revelations that have leaked out so far: He contemplated removing Vice President Dick Cheney from the ticket in 2004 and replacing him with Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., but decided not to. He elaborates on his most embarrassing moments before he quit drinking, recounting the time he drunkenly asked a woman at a dinner party what sex after age 50 is like. He also believes John McCain could have used his help during the 2008 presidential election.

Writes the New York Times:

Most Americans still do not view him favorably and a good portion still revile him for invading Iraq, waterboarding terror suspects and presiding over the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. He is still a punchline, to many a failed president, the source of today’s economic and foreign policy troubles. And yet, with Mr. Obama increasingly unpopular and “Miss Me Yet?” T-shirts for sale at Washington’s Union Station a short walk from the Capitol, some polls suggest a slight softening of views. Mr. Obama’s blame-Bush strategy did not stop voters last week from returning Republicans to power in the House and handing them more seats in the Senate.

The Times calls the book part spin, part mea culpa, part family scrapbook, part self-conscious effort to (re)shape his political legacy in this review.