Bump, Stall and Dip

In the season opener of a favorite television series the other night, an attractive young female character jostled against another of the regular characters on a crowded airplane. She gave the poor guy an apologetic smile and flirted with him briefly, with her left hand on his chest and her right hand in his jacket pocket. Distraction (See Red Herring) is the best friend of magicians of course, but also of pickpockets. Stall with the left hand and dip into the mark's pocket with the right.

The same thing had happened, a little less obviously, on another season premiere show just a few hours earlier. Unfortunately, it was the most real of reality shows, President Obama's State of the Union Address. There stood the President proposing, among other things, an initiative to build more nuclear power plants to generate clean, reliable energy for America's homes and businesses, flirting outrageously with moderate voters and beating the time of the drill-here-drill-now crowd. The President is an attractive figure, and he throws a good party. But the next day, in the budget he presented to Congress, buried several hundred pages deep was a clause that eliminates all funding for the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository, the only place in the U.S. to legally store nuclear waste. In other words, regardless of the proposals of the previous night, there ain't gonna be any nuclear power development. No waste facility means no new plants. The left hand giveth and the right hand taketh away. The stall came from the Presidential podium, and the dip in the back pages of the budget.

Question: Would any self-respecting pickpocket lift your wallet and leave the money clip behind? Answer: The President certainly didn't. For the last year and a half, first-time home buying has been encouraged and subsidized by an $8000 federal income tax credit. A payoff like this goes way past flirting, but I'm not sure we want to take the metaphor that far. It's enough to recognize that while the nation's attention regarding housing has been focused on the tax credit, the Administration has proposed to eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction for a large class of not-very-rich taxpayers. The tax credit is the stall, and the budget proposes a dip into a previously inviolable pocket.

The cool thing about this technique is that it is so reliable. It works almost every time it's tried, but the stall has to be varied to keep it fresh. The President's evocative emotional appeals for our compassion toward our Haitian brothers and sisters hit just the right chord. Americans have proven in every instance to be among the world's most generous people. The Administration even went so far as to set up links to organizations which handle charitable donations on the official White House web site, to demonstrate that they were right there working with us. But did you know that the President's proposed budget eliminates the income tax deduction for charitable contributions? Once again, our attention is drawn to one hand, while the other goes deep into our pockets.

For generations the American government has subsidized charitable giving by allowing taxpayers to claim a deduction for a certain percentage of their gifts. It was essentially a joint investment by the government and the people in the work of a recognized charity, with the taxpayer deciding who should receive the gift. But under the Obama plan, the rules change. You will still be free to give, of course, but only out of your own pocket without any tax benefit. There won't be any deduction from the tax bill, and the huge gifts previously made by large corporations, the gifts that keep most non-profits alive, will simple go away. You will, however, continue to make "donations," and big ones, because the government itself will take on the responsibility of supporting charities directly, with public money but without public controls. The consequence, of course, will be that the government will suddenly have complete control over which charities are funded and which are not. Under those circumstances, which health care reform plan do you think the American Heart Association will publicly support, the President's or some rival proposal? Will the Boy Scouts, who collect and donate a million tons of food for the poor every year, and who have provided billions of hours of public service over their 100 year history, enjoy the same level of funding as, say, Planned Parenthood? Yeah, that's likely. Government will fund the organizations that agree with the Administration, period, and your influence on the society in which you live will be that much more limited. This trick is more like the magician who looks you squarely in the eye while he removes your underwear! Watch the one hand, and he'll get you with the other.

When we saw our favorite female character bump up against the man on the airplane, I said to my wife, "She picked his pocket." She asked, "Did you see it?" Well no, I didn't see it, but we've seen her do this type of thing before, and we know the character well enough to expect it. On the other hand, who would suspect the President of the United..Um, wait. Isn't the "not suspecting" part just what he's counting on?