The American "Jobs Creation" Act

Here's a shock. Bush's "American Jobs Creation Act," a corporate-welfare scheme by which corporations can repatriate money earned overseas at a lower than ordinary tax rate, isn't actually creating jobs. In fact, the companies taking advantage of this have been cutting jobs as they are reaping its financial benefits. National Semiconductor announced it was cutting 6% of its workforce the same day it announced it was taking advantage of the Jobs Creation Act to repatriate $500 million. NSC seems to have a perverse eagerness to expose the sham nature of this bill; its spokesman is quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that this bill was a tax break and nothing more, and that calling the law the American Jobs Creation Act was "marketing." Nice. Good to see that laws need to be "marketed" to the American people, I guess since they best express their vote by shopping anyway, right? I'm glad the language of law has become commercial. The spokesman's sage advice: "I would not trust the title of any law and what it really says." Too bad American journalists don't abide by this.