Remember, dear, it's 'I' before 'E' except after 'C'Well, I've decided to start my own little 'Tea Party' here in New Jersey.
Because while the right-wing radicals dress up like Paul Revere and argue that the 'real' America (that great expanse between the east and west coast) are paying more than their fair share to support bloated government; the facts don't quite add up.
'Infromed' is apparently a Latin word meaning 'passionately ignorant'If you look into it, it seems the opposite is the case.
Take New Jersey, for example. We're the highest-taxed state in the union; but we pay more than $1.50 in federal tax for every buck that's spent in our own state.
Where does the rest of that money vanish to? The vast spending sinkhole that is the Midwest.
As you might have guessed from this gentleman's sign, a 'stimulas' is a type of kosher sandwichThe middle states - the ones that house the 'true patriots' if you listen to the Tea Partiers - are actually making off like bandits when it comes to federal taxation. It's all very well them complaining that they pay too much in tax; but considering all the benefits they enjoy for that taxation, they don't pay nearly enough!
A case in point? Take Montana, where the federal government invests $1.75 of taxpayer's money for every buck Montanans actually shell out. Essentially, they're getting almost double their value; so perhaps the Tea Partiers should quit their whining (or cough up more.)
This gentleman is 'phoning a friend'; one who hopefully has access to a Miriam-WebsterAlternatively, why don't we folks on the east and west coasts start creating our own tea parties? Hell, we've got the ammunition. New Jersey's filled to the gills with wiseguys, goodfellas, guidos and gangsters (I married an Italian girl - I'm biased) and none of them should be willing to cough out dough they don't owe.
Imagine if New Jersey stopped subsidizing the so-called 'real America?' We could solve Chris Christie's budget crisis overnight (his waistline crisis might take a little longer.) Alternatively, we could cut taxation by 33% (and still be in the same deficit sinkhole we're stuck in right now)
...but have a bit more pocket money to enjoy it with.
I think Middle America should start paying what they really owe in taxes. Maybe then, the Tea Partiers would have something real to complain about; and maybe then I'd start worrying that they had a point.
21 comments:
First of all, I'll point out that A cbs-new york times poll found out that tea partiers are better educated than the public as a whole.
The tea parties appear to be a genuine grassroots movement where people hand-make signs. Some people even cosplay at the protests! This might be strange to see, after eight years of rented protesters holding aloft signs pre-printed by the group that hired them --- but that's what you get from time to time, especially if you go out looking for the occasional spelling mistake.
I'm not sure why you think that it's illegitimate for people to protests higher taxes just because they might disproportionally benefit from those taxes. Indeed, I'd think it far more principled to stand up for a cause even when it's not in your own interest.
That being said, it's not like the Tea Parties are a Midwestern movement. Take a look at this interactive map, which shows the location of Tea Party events over time. Set the mode to cumulative, and drag the slider all the way to the right. You'll see that most of the rallies take place on the coasts.
But hey, if you're a fan of higher taxes, there's a simple solution. You can just send a check to:
Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Credit Accounting Branch
3700 East-West Highway, Room 622D
Hyattsville, MD 20782
I'd just ask that you leave the rest of us out of it.
A number in my family are in the lower-end of pay and we might could (that's a legitimate phrase for Southerners so, please, no wisecracks on my lack of education) benefit from all the money the upper-income people pay. But I think that's unfair to you. Like I said the other day, I don't think YOU should work hard, pay taxes so I can go to school free or buy my groceries free or have more babies free. (Actually I have no children, but I'm being facetious -- I had to look that up so I wouldn't be displayed as a poor-spelling commenter.)
:)
Susanne - I was worried I'd look like a complete hypocrite by including at least one typo in here - I normally do! That's why I avoided words like facit... facet... fasis... Whatever that one you used was. ;-)
Tom - In all honesty, I do see a huge flaw in my whining. While the west and east coast pay more taxes for the middle states, it's probably because they supply us with the majority of our food, for a start, and contain the expensive infrastructure to get stuff from one state to the other.
Like I said the other day, I don't think YOU should work hard, pay taxes so I can go to school free or buy my groceries free or have more babies free.
I am exceptionally happy to work hard and pay taxes so that those poorer than me can have education, food and the children.
Government programs that try to redistribute wealth do not create a "dependent" society, but an "interdependent" one.
Tax money that goes to public education and food stamps helps prevent crime, because without these government programs people would either starve or turn to criminal activity to support themselves.
The free market cannot provide all people in society with their needs, and it rewards not the hard working but the lucky and the connected.
Governments have known since at least the mid-late 19th century that the free market does not and cannot support everyone in the population. 19th century charity organisations and religious leaders lobbied governments to provide people with what they need.
This was not "socialism", nor was it "communism". It was simply a commitment to people and an understanding that the welfare system can work, especially if it is geared towards rewarding people who are either genuinely unable to help themselves, or towards encouraging people to be self-supporting.
OSO, I'm sorry but you will never convince me that government supporting women to stay unmarried and breed babies who run around and form gangs is doing my country much good. It does create a dependent society and smart black men have recognized this about their own people. It's like people here are rewarded for being promiscuous. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think you deserve to live off the taxpayers' tab simply because you figured out how to breed again and again and again.
'm sorry but you will never convince me that government supporting women to stay unmarried and breed babies who run around and form gangs is doing my country much good. It does create a dependent society and smart black men have recognized this about their own people.
But of course the irony is that it doesn't actually happen. You've swallowed the right wing propaganda.
There's no huge gangs and women living off welfare to breed babies in Europe or Australia or other places where they provide this sort of welfare.
I didn't swallow anyone's propaganda. I live in the South. I can see it with my own eyes.
Shazzzzzaaaaam! Dadgummit Rolun, I think u air on to sumpin hyar!
I'm late to this party, and I see that a couple of my points have already been mad.
I was gonna get all snarky about how us "Red State" folks would gladly separate from the "Blue States," and keep our oil, cattle, natural gas, cotton, huge military infrastructure (that kinda explains North Dakota), The Mississippi River, the busiest ports in the US, and yada yada yada...
And, then we'd trade y'all the necessities of life for movies, and junk like that. But I will not. The truth is that we are ALL dependent one upon the other for our national success.
Roland, if you want to make sport of Tea Party types that misspell words on their signs...Well, don't send mini-militant to a public school in Joysey! Have you seen what they produce? To be fair, it's not just New Jersey...it's our entire system that rewards (or at least doesn't punish) failure...and it's nationwide.
OSO...you don't live here. Just to be as gentlemanly as I can possibly be...unless you can eyeball (see what I just did there?) the results of 50 years of handouts, then puhleeze don't pontificate.
You're just wrong. Susanne lives daily, observing welfare Mommas with 7 kids buying junk food & high priced beef with food stamps...with not a sign of a Daddy anywhere! And, it's not just because she lives in the US South. It is the same all across this nation.
It's the same in New Jersey as it is in San Diego, or Seattle, or Chicago, or Detroit, etc.
Ya' know OSO, I like to read your comments. I really do. But, the fact is that you don't live here. You don't really know. So...
Gud post Rolun! It dun gived me lots and lots to think up on.
Sheesh...
Susanne,
This is what I want you to do. I want you to go up to these gangs of black folk and ask them "How much welfare are you getting?". I want you to go up to the black women and ask them "Did you have a baby because the government paid you?".
Experience can sometimes - oftentimes - be coloured by preconceptions.
What is your actual experience of black folk? Is it through relating to them, talking to them, befriending them? Or is it you sitting in your car looking at them and hoping they won't carjack you?
OSO...you don't live here. Just to be as gentlemanly as I can possibly be...unless you can eyeball (see what I just did there?) the results of 50 years of handouts, then puhleeze don't pontificate.
What makes the US so incredibly different to the rest of the world that makes any form of objective comparison and analysis incorrect?
I've already stated that most European countries have a generous welfare system while the US doesn't. Yet Europe doesn't have these roving gangs of violent people reproducing all over the place that you claim such welfare creates.
Have you thought of the possibility that it is the lack of such a welfare system that has caused these problems?
Gangs imply crime and violence. Increases in welfare gives people a living wage and helps to reduce crime.
High fertility rates are common amongst women with low educational levels. More education has led to women making better reproductive choices. Increases in Public Education have helped reduce birth rates amongst poorer women.
If you make the poor poorer and make the poor more ignorant, the result is gangs and lots of babies.
"Or is it you sitting in your car looking at them and hoping they won't carjack you?"
:-D That made me giggle. :-D Most black folks I know and meet in stores are rather nice, actually! :)
My brother's best friend growing up was a black child living in our neighborhood. Butter is considered "refrigerator friends" to my family and he spent nights at our house and my brother went to family reunions with Butter. Now Butter is just returning from Gaeta, Italy where he's been the last couple of years with the US Navy. Where did he stop even before going to his parents' house? MY parents' house! On Monday afternoon.
My best friend at the local community college was a black man in my Criminal Justice classes. We sat and talked at nearly every break, hung out together in the computer lab and even when I saw his sister at a gym in recent years she remembered me as "that girl Jerry had a crush on back in college." We talked about many issues, were very open and honest with each other.
I asked him point blank about good black neighborhoods in the area and he sadly admitted he didn't know of ANY -- only the ones mixed with other races were decent. And he was from one of those black neighborhoods. In fact he'd been a gang member and only credited an experience with God changing him.
So, I don't have tons of black friends, no. But I like most of the black folks I've met. They were some of the most fun friends in college!
Maybe I was wrong to mention a race in my earlier comment, but with 70-some percent of black children being born into families of unmarried couples and hearing black women talk about the sorry black men .... it does color my view.
I do have reasons for what I say and I'm trying not to spout off some white-supremacy, right-wing propaganda stuff. I like people of all races. Truly I believe God makes beautiful people throughout the world.
hi OSO! As normal, love you comments.
Just wanted to say about this:
"Yet Europe doesn't have these roving gangs of violent people reproducing all over the place that you claim such welfare creates."
Arguably, that kind of stuff does happen in Britain. In Portsmouth, an old navy town hit hard by the loss of jobs, there are lots of teenage girls having kids as a 'career' - because they get a house and decent income out of it.
As for the gangs - look at the suburbs of Paris - although arguably that's an immigration issue, not a welfare one.
OSO, let me give you a bit of information. I really don't know why I'm wasting my time. But, I really like your comments...and feel some sense of duty to educate foreigners that seem to know HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS OF THE US.
Let's start here.
Now, let's go here!
OSO, you really have no idea of what day to day life in the US is like. You have no concept of the social interaction of the races here. You really don't.
It's not your fault. You are just half a globe away from the reality on the ground here. You can read anything you want to. You can choose to believe what you want from either side of the debates.
But the truth is, you are simply ignorant of the day to day comings and goings of real Americans. It doesn't make you a bad person, or a stupid human being.
So...crap...why did I waste the time?
Ya' got me, OSO!
Here's one of my favorite authors on the subject of the state of blacks in the US. And this man is black and he grew up in the projects of Philadelphia. He's a Libertarian in case that matters to anyone.
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/07/liberalviews.htm
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/09/PoliticsAndBlacks.htm
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/09/BlackEducation.htm
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/08/GettingBeyondRace.htm
Susanne,
I never felt your comments indicated any sort of racism on your behalf, which is why I sort of steered clear of it.
But, I really like your comments...and feel some sense of duty to educate foreigners that seem to know HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS OF THE US.
Andy, I feel for you, I really do. I mean, when confronted by things such as facts or evidence, it's only natural to move the attack from the issue at hand to the person involved.
You're like "Wow. I really can't handle all these great things OSO is saying. So I'll just have to attack the guy himself".
If I followed your logic, namely "You cant know becuz you not in Amurica", then I suppose all those other Americans who agree with me on such issues aren't really Amurcans either.
Besides, all I am doing is what America is very good at: telling the world what they should be doing. You guys have been doing that since 1776. A lot of what you have to say is useful. A lot of what non-Americans say is useful too, which is why I persist in trying to discuss issues with you.
OSO, I appreciate the fact that you "feel for me."
Really, I do. If you lived here, you would probably "feel for" us taxpayers even more. I knew I was wasting my time. Thanks for confirming it, OSO.
Roland,
Europe has its problems too, but they are one or two magnitudes less than the problems in the US.
I mean, check out the recent Paris riots. How many people died during those riots? I think the total number was 1. Yet to hear right wing Americans go on about it, it was as if the Muslims were taking over Europe by force. If a similar riot occurred in the US the death toll would be in the dozens.
And as for immigrants reproducing - the first generation of migrants reproduce at the same level as the nation they come from. The second generation - those born of migrants - have a birth rate closer to the rate of the society around them. By the third generation the birth rate is pretty much the same, and these third generation migrants identify themselves with the country they are in rather than their country of origin.
Eg: My Grandparents came to Australia from the UK. They saw themselves as British. My parents, as second generation migrants, saw themselves as Australian but with a big attachment to the UK. me as a third generation migrant have no particular attachment to the UK and I see myself as an Aussie through and through.
Check out the Know Nothings of the 19th century. They were American "patriots" who aggressively opposed immigration, especially from Ireland, since the Irish had lots of kids and their progeny would take over America and turn it Catholic. Modern day anti-immigrant people have a lot of similarities with this movement.
If you lived here, you would probably "feel for" us taxpayers even more.
Not really, since you guys pay less tax than I do because we pay lots more taxes to support the welfare system that helps prevent gangs and crime and violence and stuff like that.
You have convinced me, OSO. I'm a convert.
I'm pretty sure that if we paid WAY more taxes we would not have gangs and violence and stuff.
And you are "spot on" about how Europe is doin' just peachy!
I'm dadgummed sure that they are just overwhelmingly glad that them is all filled up with folks that practize thu relijun of peese.
I'm not attacking you personally, OSO. If it seemed so, please accept my apology. I am just trying to tell you on a human to human basis that you don't live here. Statistics that can be gleaned from web articles NEVER show all of the variables that feed those stats.
Okay, I'm wasting my time. Ya' got me again, OSO...
Yes, the US has probably been telling the rest of the world how to do it since 1776. Unfortunately, most of the world has not listened, and now our own nation does not. Limit the control of government...put decisions in the hands of the people. (Again, I know I'm wasting my keyboard here)
You are probably quizzing the wrong person here though. Why not ask Roland if he has been to grocery stores in Newark, or Elizabeth, NJ? Has he seen the squalor that was once a fine and decent place to raise a family?
Has he watched as his hard-earned tax dollars are spent by welfare queens with dozens of kids in tow...all the while dodging bullets on the way home?
I'll bet he has. (Well, maybe not...but I'll challenge him to do it)
And, I'd bet that if you lived here, you'd be just as disgusted as I am. More taxes to fund indolence will lead to more indolence. That's what we've got here OSO.
Come visit. I'll buy you a beer, and introduce you to some real Americans...all races...all classes...all pissed off!
Bah! Europe is a freaking mess with welfare fraud and crime. Lets not say otherwise, that is foolish.
I am part of the 47% who pay no taxes... TOTALLY unacceptable. There is no reason that a person at my income level should be tax free. None! Yet I am. I am a supporter and 'member' of the Tea Party.
We can benefit from wreck-less policies and still seem them as wreck-less.
I feel for my four children and my pocket book 20 years from now. We are going to have to pay for the multi-trillion dollar administration at some point.
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