I used to date this Republican girl, Katherine. You can say a lot of nice things about Katherine. You can say, for instance, that she has never literally stabbed anyone in the back. But you cannot say that Katherine feels a great deal of compassion for the poor. Once, when I challenged her assertion that all poor people are genetically lazy, she revised that generalization: "I guess some of them are just dumb."

Katherine is the only Republican I have ever known--well, at least in the Biblical sense--so up until recently, I assumed that all Republicans were just like her: cold, apathetic to the struggles of the working poor, and prone to dumping liberal, young writers for hirsute financial analysts
named McLean.

But then President Bush showed up this week at the Economic Club of Chicago, which is basically, from what I understand, a group of people who sit around lighting thousand-dollar cigars with fifty-dollar bills, and made an announcement that knocked the angora socks off Chicago's financial elite. President Bush wants to cut taxes for the middle class! He wants to extend unemployment benefits!

Oh, and he also wants to eliminate taxes on stock dividends, which will only benefit people who are rich enough to invest in the stock market above and beyond their retirement accounts. In short, the middle class gets richer and the rich get richer.

Everybody wins! -- well, except probably the poor, who always seem to find a way to lose.
Now I realize that the Republican Party is nothing like my ex-girlfriend Katherine. It's much more like me: passionate, idealistic, and utterly irresponsible. The problems with financially sound economic stimulus packages are that A. they are boring and B. they do not promise to give people free money. President Bush's new plan to give the bulk of tax cuts to the wealthy avoids both pitfalls, and I'm sure it will stimulate the economy. But as a new convert to his domestic vision, I wonder why we can't stimulate it more.

Like, for instance, is there any way we can improve the economy by destroying the environment? Could we sell North Avenue beach to Wal-Mart, maybe? If it will help the economy, I'm sure our President will get right on it.

After all, President Bush's indisputable financial genius, as proven by his immense success at being a failed oil tycoon, has already led him discover the injustice of taxing corporate profits twice--once when they are reported as corporate income, and then again when the remaining profits are distributed to shareholders as dividends. But why do we tax corporate profits at all? If America really wants to foster the entrepreneurial spirit, we've got to reward successful corporations and individuals by freeing them of all tax burdens. Then we'll tax the living daylights out of people who aren't financially successful, thus terrorizing the American people into wealth.

"But wait," you say. "What if I don't measure success by the amount of money I earn?'
Well, I think President Bush has made it pretty darn clear that that's just un-American. You, my friend, should move to Canada.