FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SAVE US FROM THE UNSPEAKABLE NIGHTMARE OF BUDGET SURPLUSES AND PROSPERITY!

Rudy Giuliani utters the wrong scare words:

BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Mayor Giuliani is labeling Senator Clinton's plan to reverse President Bush's tax cuts "an astounding, staggering tax increase" that would turn back the clock and damage America's economy....

"This would be an astounding, staggering tax increase," Mr. Giuliani told reporters yesterday after a visit to a restaurant on the edge of California's Silicon Valley. "She wants to go back to the 1990s.... It would hurt our economy. It would hurt this area dramatically. That kind of tax increase would see a decline in your venture capital. It would see a decline in your ability to focus on new technology."

The 1990s? Er, wasn't that when everyone with a pulse over the age of 13 was a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, or the recipient of a Valley VC's money? Is it even humanly possible to have had more high-tech entrepreneurial capitalism than we had in the 1990s?

The linked article makes that point:

In Silicon Valley, Mr. Giuliani's mantra that Mrs. Clinton would return America to the 1990s might not produce the horrified reaction he seemed to be seeking. That era was the heyday for many high technology firms, at least until the Internet bubble burst in 2000.

Yup.

But Giuliani's a narcissist. To me, "the 1990s" means "the decade when I was mayor, and the world consisted of the forces of darkness and evil ... and, single-handedly vanquishing them, me. Me! Me! Me!"

****

(D. Sidhe has a somewhat different take on the economy of the '90s.)