Yet again, I am mystified at why the Atlanta Journal-Constitution continues to wonder why their circulation is in a downward spiral. Maybe they should look (again) at what their resident moron columnist, Cynthia Tucker, has announced. Today she blogs that we simple people should be praising President Obama for the $800,000,000,000 “stimulus” that was passed last year because (gasp) it contained the largest amount of tax cuts since Hammurabi! And, don’t cha know, he’s such a good dude he just skipped telling us about it because he thought it better that way for us (the aforementioned feeble minded denizens of Georgia and elsewhere).

The Obama administration made the decision not to advertise the tax cuts, though — believing that consumers were more likely to spend the money if they didn’t really notice they had it. The administration includes several economists who study consumer psychology, and they didn’t want consumers to use the tax cuts to pay bills or add to the savings account. The administration wanted them to spend it for groceries or gas or clothing or whatever. So they simply reduced the amount of money that the government withholds for taxes. That resulted in paychecks just slightly larger.

‘Just slightly larger,’ mind you. Well, thanks! Except it isn’t so. And I’ve got the charts and graphs just after the jump.

Behold this charming graph and the meat and potatoes therein:

Democrats say tax cuts represent one-third of the overall stimulus package, not a huge difference from Obama’s original goal of 40 percent. But congressional budget analysts count nearly $100 billion of these measures as spending because they are credits going to people who don’t pay taxes. The CBO adjustment reduces the tax-cut portion of the package to 22 percent.

That’s right, almost one-third of the alleged tax-cuts were going to people who didn’t pay any taxes to begin with. I call that government welfare. And that means that only 82.1 billion dollars is actually going to tax cuts. And, of course, that was not all at once but doled out over 2-3 years as the second chart here clearly demonstrates.

Further, what Tucker also fails to grasp is that changing the withholding levels without changing the actual tax rate is disingenuous, to say the least, as it does not change the total amount due based on income at any time. Shell game, anyone? And does Tucker think increasing the debt by $3,000,000,000 in two years is a good thing, I wonder?

And this fatuous nonsense about Dear Leader keeping mum about these tax cuts? Please. Cynthia Tucker must have a short memory not to recall this:

“Never before in our history has a tax cut taken effect faster or gone to so many hardworking Americans,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Radio and internet address, Tucker. Hardly keeping it a secret, was he now?