The statement at the bottom of my income tax instruction reads: "Your projected economic stimulus payment or rebate is $0 because you are ineligible for the rebate or your Federal Adjusted Gross Income exceeds the economic stimulus rebate AGI limits."

Maybe they figured that I would do what millions of Americans plan to do with their "stimulus" check. Maybe they suspected that, like them, I would use it to pay down debt or put it into savings. Whoa! That won't benefit the credit card companies, the check cashing companies, the collection agencies and other parasites who thrive off of our national penchant for compulsive over-consumption. That won't feed Wal-Mart, Wall Street bankers, and wealthy CEOs. Getting out of debt and saving money is downright un-American!

And where is the money coming from to fund this "stimulus package?" There are no new taxes to redistribute the obscene profits of the rich. There are no reductions in so-called faith-based initiative handouts to Bush's favorite right-wing churches. The administration is still building expensive fencing on the Mexican border, still pursuing expensive weapons programs, and still subsidizing big oil and big agriculture. The only savings that Bush has pushed are cuts in social services for the poor and medical treatment for veterans.

So where is the money coming from? It comes from two places: the Federal Reserve is pumping paper money into the banks like newsprint after a hurricane, and the Treasury Department is borrowing money by issuing bonds by the bucketload. This is where it gets sticky. Printing more paper money devalues the already weak dollar. The bonds are not selling in the US because investors are already strapped in the credit crunch, so the Chinese are buying them. Since the Chinese manufacture most of the goods that Americans are supposed to buy with their rebate checks, the federal government is basically paying Americans to buy Chinese goods with Chinese money. The only economy that gets stimulated in this loop is the Chinese economy.

But it gets worse. The Chinese are growing skeptical of American bonds, which are based on a falling dollar. Indications are that they are switching their investments from dollars to gold and Euros which will further devalue the dollar and drive up inflation in the US. So the price of goods will be stimulated instead of the buying power of Americans, rendering the "stimulus package" completely worthless.

The whole thing rips the mask off of the Bush administration's mismanagement of the economy. Corruption, deregulation, no-bid contracts, bailouts for the wealthy, replacing facts with neo-con ideology, and stubborn refusal to listen have all contributed to a disastrous combination of economic recession coupled with rising inflation. Yet while the pundits and policy makers twitter about minor adjustments and incremental steps, they ignore the elephant in the living room--the United States is hemorrhaging $2 billion a day in a worthless, pointless, endless occupation of Iraq.

The administration claims that we must support the troops, but it is war profiteers, not soldiers, who are gobbling up the lion's share of war loot. Take intelligence. Supposedly it was intelligence failures that contributed to the attacks of 9-11. Yet the CIA has admitted that fully 50% of its $40 billion budget for 2005 went to private contractors. The main contractor, CACI, was charged with abuses at Abu Ghraib, and Titan pleaded guilty to three counts of international bribery. Yet both are still on the government payroll. Halliburton, KBR, and Bechtel received huge no-bid contracts for construction in Iraq that is billions over budget and behind schedule or not built at all. Private security guards (we used to call them mercenaries) hired from Aegis and other companies are today a $200 billion dollar a year business. Armed to the teeth, the mercenaries make four times what the average soldier makes and they are completely immune from any rules of engagement, military justice, or accountability.

Other private contractors are also making out like bandits. Custer Battles was found guilty of 37 counts of fraud. The company owner responded: "You asked for trucks and we complied with our contract and it is immaterial whether the trucks were operational." He was fined $10 million but escaped on a technicality. General Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed have also made millions off of military hardware sold to the Army at inflated prices.

The occupation of Iraq is the single biggest cause of the US recession. The solution is not rebate checks. The solution is to get out of Iraq--military and contractors--and put those dollars to work at home. There's plenty to do here. There's a highway bridge that fell down in Minneapolis. There's a viaduct about to fall down in Seattle. There's a whole city of New Orleans that is still struggling to recover from the disaster of Katrina. The American infrastructure--which is the basis of any economic productivity--is crumbling. Our public education system is crumbling, too. Frustrated parents are paying to put their children in private and charter schools just to get them some kind of decent education. Our health care system is out of control. We need a universal health care system that pays for doctors and nurses and not insurance claims adjustors. The best economic stimulus for America is to spend our tax dollars here at home.

It is small comfort that I am not alone in being excluded from getting an economic stimulus check. Lee Raymond isn't getting one, either. The former chairman of ExxonMobil retired recently with a $400 million farewell gift from the other financially bloated executives on his board of directors--at a time when gas prices for you and I were steadily climbing.

Now THAT kind of money could really stimulate me!

--Janice Van Cleve, copyright 2008