…like I was saying
But, back to the downfall of the country.
The veto-proof, filibuster-proof, 60 vote majority in the Senate. That is what the leadership is shooting for, and not for your benefit, this is where the fan and shit will meet. This has happened a few times in our history. During Roosevelt’s administration, that brought on the new deal [from which we have not yet recovered], immediately after Kennedy was assassinated, which brought us the Great Society [from which we will probably never recover], and finally during the abortive Jimmy Carter administration [that fades from memory all too slowly].
The filibuster and the veto both serve as checks to power, they necessitate debate on issues that bear a closer look. Without them, the majority leader of the senate could spread the national cheeks and shove whatever that day’s thought was, and it would become law, without a stop on the way to consider all the angles
On the subject of taxation, there is a doozie in the offing, a real humdinger! It is called the Global Poverty Initiative. It is written somewhere that the US is in a position in the world that we should pay 0.7% of our Gross Domestic Product to the UN to eradicate poverty all over the world. We are in no such position, and never will be. Even if we had the most spectacular resurgence of manufacturing of products that the world wants, out of stuff we have a lot of, say, AOL free offer disks, full employment, and enormous profits being taxed fairly and the coffers being full, our government would still have no business handing over part of what this country produces, BEFORE TAXES, to a conglomeration of grifters, and dictators from all over the world whose main product is hot air and bluster about how the United States is the enemy, and that it smells like sulphur after our president appears. No. I think we are in a much better position to administer a paper cut between the ring finger and pinkie of each member, walk them to the waters edge to find their own way home, and then open a skating rink on 1st Ave, with a frozen yogurt place. I would totally go there all the time.
I won’t dare talk about the Global Poverty Initiative, though. Why, that would make me look like Alex Jones crossed with Chicken Little. No one would ever suggest that we pay out vast sums of money, to people that hate us, and that would never come to a vote of the people or their elected representatives. Wait, though. That IS one of the very few powers of the president. It is by his fiat that treaties are signed, all other branches to be subject to them without recourse. Anyway, you should probably just look it up yourself, but don’t do it from work, and for crap’s sake, don’t forget to wear your tin-foil hat.
The UN has never done anything right. I will say that and let it rest. There are many fine agencies that address world poverty, and each of them more effective and efficient at what they offer than the chiseling, fat cats at the UN, and if we got them out of our country, we would collectively have more money to contribute to The Peace Corps, Children’s International, and Catholic Charities.
Just look at what people, individuals in this country do for the people in need in the rest of the world. Individual Americans contributed $300 billion , and more this year, that is more than the next 15 countries combined, and a lot more than the pittance, $30 billion that our government doled out. I like those numbers, and I think that if you took away 30 billion dollars from the government, the total would stay the same, fewer strings would be attached, the greater good would be served, and crops would grow taller and more plentiful.
That is a tax attributed to the people themselves, it is directed in exactly the way they see fit, and it highlights the fact that there need not be a gun-toting jack booter lording over you to make sure that the needs of people in the world are met. People in the US will abide, and mostly we have as little to do with our government as possible.
Especially where taxes are concerned. I don’t know anyone who thinks taxes as currently structured are fair, aside from those who do not pay taxes, and their opinion in this matter is not relevant. Taxes are disproportionate. Gas tax, for instance, your state tax plus 18.5 cents federally, the government gets its take for doing NOTHING, and that is before any oil company gets its 8 cents per gallon for exploring, extracting, and refining, each encompassing considerable risk.
If you are poor, you should be pissed about the gas tax, and how it affects you. As a function of your income, you pay an enormous part daily to this tax versus those who make more than you, work less, and drive better cars. It is unfair that the government be vested in seeing that one group pays more than another.
There is another group that needs help. They are burdened 40% of taxes, even though they represent only 1% of the population, and they employ most of the rest of us. They cannot pay more; a collapse is eminent if you try. The companies they start are publicly traded, and are part of the retirement packages of damn near every school teacher, policeman, and fireman in this country.
Once you raise the Capital Gains Tax, not only do investors take it in the shorts, but the companies that have even a prayer of making a dollar will be subject to it as well, and the people who buy the products of these companies, will feel the pinch, and let’s not forget the people who work for them. Ask yourself; who is really pushing manufacturing overseas? The money grubbing CEOs or the government who makes it continually more difficult for the choice to stay to be made.
Ford Motor Company, I would speculate, will be the next to reach the tipping point. For instance. They are on the edge now. They employ 245,000 workers all of them union. They pay union wages, and give union benefits until death, and compete in a climate unfriendly to the products that they make. They are a relic of a time when unions made sense, and that the Ford model was the way a company made profit. Holders of Ford stock in their retirement portfolio will want to see continued dividends from this bulwark of American industry, and there is no reason that they should expect otherwise. Wait, though. In closed door meetings for several years now, with the full knowledge of both parties the union has tightened its grip, and management eyeballs escape to other countries friendlier to manufacturing, ensuring the destruction of the cow they are all trying to milk.
When the last bit of dust is expelled from that tottering bovine, don’t wait around to hear about the good sense, peaceful solutions proposed by both sides at meetings in the public square, you can expect there to be streets full of angry people with lots of time on their hands roaming the streets wielding ax-handles, beating the crap out of stuff that has nothing to do with nothing, and unnoticed overhead float golden parachutes, safely landing management types a safe distance from the fray.
Way to go, greedy union dipshits! Another American producer fucked, another proletariat constituency stripped bare, left for dead, and you bitches do nothing but get fatter.
Does that strike your heart-string and resonate as fair? Is that the way it should be? It sounds about right to me. If you lie down with unions, you wake up smelling like Michael Moore’s ass crack. If you make a product that people will not buy for the price you are asking, then you shouldn’t expect the market to bear your existence anymore.
Fair is playing by rules that everyone acknowledges, and a system to change them when conditions dictate, playing against other teams that have the same constraints. Sure, there are tax rules, that everyone acknowledges, but it is still not fair, because one side has a gun pointed at you, and if you don’t do for them, then the will use the full force of the state to take from you.
There is a number that is fair. A number that I will pay, and no more, one that reflects that it is due to the greatness of this country that allows me to make any money at all, much less succeed as I have. I will pay the price of admission, but I will not be bled dry just because I chose to try, for the benefit of someone who does not.
I am not alone. Smart, sensible people, hard working, leaders. They and I will continue to make more money for our marketable labors, but they and I will not pay more taxes. They and I will hide and finagle our money so that it disappears to the dupes of the IRS, and every other agency for the bloated, impotent government.
Raise taxes, revenue goes down. It is the American Way. Smart people make more money, smart people want to keep their money, and smart people will do so at no one’s peril, but those who run, or are dependent on the government.
Is this unexpected? No, it is not. It is survival. It is freedom, and the very reason we live in a free society. Freedom is not to take away the chance to fail, but to take away barriers to success.
Am I lucky? Fortunate? Am I winner at life’s lottery? No. I am nothing more than what I do. I am good at stuff. I started a business marketing the stuff I do to people who might need that stuff done. Nothing more or less than that. Because I am doing stuff does not hinder anyone else from doing what they want. I don’t feel like I should be punished because I want to do what freedom dictates
I said this in 1994, and it is truer today than it was even then:
‘My freedom ends exactly where I let someone else tell me that I cannot harm myself in increasingly grotesque and painful ways.’
That is what freedom is. That ability, to make decisions for yourself on what is important to you, based on what you have learned, to fall on your face, get up and do it again.
