tax and spend?

Many years ago, when I first went to work in Los Angeles at UCLA, I needed to find someone to do my taxes. I asked some colleagues and was given the name of John (not his real name) and told that he did most everyone’s taxes there at the Institute. John also would make appointments to see you in your office. So I duly made an appointment with John who came to my office at the appointed time. I was enthralled, and somewhat surprised when John turned out to be a large black man dressed in modish clothes with his shirt open to his waist displaying two or three heavy gold chains. He also had a very large diamond ring. I thought to myself, as I often did in those days, “only in L.A.” John’s first question was, “How do you feel about paying your taxes?” I interpreted this to mean that how he did my taxes might have something to do with how I felt about paying them. In fairness to John I must admit he turned out to be a perfectly conscientious and honest tax preparer, at least within his bounds of being a lawyer as well as an accountant. I was very pleased with him for many years.

This encounter did, however, cause me to think about paying taxes. I told John I didn’t mind payi8ng taxes, in principle, but I objected strongly to how they were being spent, which was then, as it is now, mostly to fund wars and kill people. Obviously you have to pay taxes if you wish to have highways, police and firemen, public amenities and such, as well as national security. I thought then, as I do now, that national security was grossly overfunded, and did not require fighting wars on foreign shores for reasons that were questionable at best. This waste of taxpayer dollars under the Bush/Cheney administration has now reached the point of absolute obscenity, although there is a slight twist to the procedure. Thanks to the festered mind of Dick the Slimy, who observed that “Reagan proved that deficits didn’t matter,” the Bush/Cheney bunch lowered the taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations and changed the policy from “tax and spend,” to “borrow and waste.” And waste they have done on a scale so massive as to bankrupt our country. This way they did not have to use taxpayer money or raise taxes to spend for their idiocy, they could just borrow and borrow instead. Ultimately, of course, the taxpayers will get stuck with having to repay this debt, but what do Bush/Cheney care, they’ve got theirs, and their friends’ as well, and will be gone when our children and their children (and perhaps even their children) will have to fork over all this wasted money. Clever bastards, aren’t they? Not satisfied with how many billions upon billions they already ripped off, they got away with a final 700 plus billion dollar going-away present. Notice you never hear them complain about tax dollars that go to the military/industrial/political complex they have created, it’s always the “entitlements” that are to blame for our financial problems, useless (in their view) things like Social Security, Medicare, and so on.

Thus I hope that when you hear any of these thugs accuse Democrats of being tax and spend liberals, I hope you will remind them of their own policy of borrow and waste. Having run up our national debt now to over 10 trillion dollars they still want to keep their tax breaks for the obscenely wealthy and corporations that have made profits so huge as to be unprecedented. The money these greedy criminals already have has no purpose any more other than making more money through the usurious credit card industry they have promoted. Don’t be fooled by their claim that this wealth “trickles down” and benefits the rest of us. Any “trickling down” that occurs in the form of manufacturing jobs, or productive endeavors is occurring more and more on foreign shores where labor is cheaper and tax breaks are plentiful. Even Ponzi would be awed by the audacity of these bandits.

LKBIQ:
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone
John Maynard Keynes

TILT:
Australian researchers have learned that bees can count, but only up to 4. Dumb bees!