Friday, August 06, 2004

You've Won a Luxury SUV!

Well, you have if you're self-employed, drive the vehicle 50% of the time for work (who doesn't?!) and spend less than 100,000 grand (!) on anything qualifying as a truck over 6000 pounds.

Like me, you've probably heard of the "Hummer Tax Break," but I didn't know all the details.This is just wrong on so many levels that it's surreal that it's even going on. Now, apparently driving your vehicle 50% of the time doesn't technically include your daily drive to and from work, but that hasn't stopped all kinds of people from taking advantage of this sweet deal. (Check out the comments in Kevin's post to see how many of his commenters have actually done it!)

Ironically, as Kevin Drum points out, many California cities ban trucks over 6000 pounds in weight from some residential streets--an effort to preserve the streets and reduce costs for repair. So that Hummer Arnie's driving around may just be illegal at his address. I dunno.

Anyway, our hard-earned tax money is paying for free luxury SUVs for self-employed folks (doctors, lawyers, etc). Nice!

But give that money to the poor? No, we can't have that. They have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

I'd rather give a hundred thousand poor kids a free (and high quality!) college education than a hundred thousand laywers and doctors a free BMW X5.

Wouldn't educating all those kids help stimulate the economy, too, Mr. Bush?

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