TAXES: Brewing up bad breaks

The headline on (March 15) told how Crapo and Kerry want to give small breweries a tax break. Same day same paper page 4, "State to cut $34 million from Medicaid." OK the tax break is Federal and the Medicaid cut is state so how are they related? Every time the Feds give someone a tax break they have to pay for it by taking money from something else, usually health care or some other program that helps the states. When the states lose this money they have to raise taxes or cut funding to some programs, usually health care or education. So what the headline should have read is "Health care goes down the drain so beer makers can make more profits."

I know the article stated that the brewer in Ponderay would use the $15,000 he would save in taxes to hire more people. First, I doubt it, and second, how many people can you hire with $15,000?

Isn't this the same theory that was used to give the banks our money? You know, here's a bunch of money now create jobs, oh wait no jobs but big bonuses for the top that lost all the money to begin with, the money does not trickle down we all know what does flow down.

Do you suppose our government will ever learn that you can't keep giving the rich and corporations tax breaks and piling more and more of the load on the middle class? Yeah I don't either.

Just to give you some idea what is going to happen with the Medicaid cuts, you know how you feel when you see some apparent homeless person standing in the middle of the sidewalk gesturing and talking to themselves? Well, you can expect the number of these poor souls to at least triple; also you can expect very long waits in the emergency rooms. People without health care will have to wait until their illness is life threatening so they have to be treated and guess who pays for that.

MICHAEL TEAGUE

Coeur d Alene