But surely he knows what observers of the market have been saying for many, many months now: that the problem with the market is that too much money is "sitting on the sidelines." That's the phrase they use to describe those people with investable cash who are not investing it.

How can giving these people more money to keep on the sidelines create jobs, restore the economy, pay for the war, etc., etc.?

I think it can't. Maybe that's why there's so much congressional buzz about another proposal to reduce the top tax rate on dividends and on capital gains from stock sales to 15 percent. That proposal, by Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), would cost the Treasury less than the Bush plan and, perhaps as important, seem less blatantly calculated to help the rich. Hmm, maybe a tax cut isn't such a bad idea if a little of it comes my way.

As my accountant will tell you, I'm no big fan of taxes. I try to pay as little as I can get away with, and I grumble about that. Show me how I can get away with significantly less and I'm listening.

But I don't imagine that my finding a new way to save on taxes is doing anything for my country. The thousand bucks I might save isn't going to create a job or tempt me into investing in any sector that already has me gun-shy.

For me, the issue is simple. America has bills to pay, and taxes are the wherewithal for paying them. I look askance at people who tell me we can reduce the wherewithal and miraculously end up with more money to pay our bills.

I get the same feeling I get when some hack smears paint (or excrement) on a canvas and tries to make me believe it is great art, when some joker plays the piano with boxing gloves (or throws odds and ends into its works) and wants me to call it music, or when some wiseguy utters a string of incomprehensible sounds and insists that I accept it as poetry.

I don't like it when people try to flimflam me -- whether they do it by appealing to my greed or because they think I'm stupid.

This tax cut thing is flimflam. Won't anybody stand up and say so?