Happy Tax Day – “The Way It Is”
Deborah Venable
04/17/06
I
hope you hear the music playing as you are reading this. It is one of my all-time favorites, so I
included it in this page to entertain my readers. Consider it the “spoon full of sugar to help the medicine go
down.” I hope everyone had a happy
Easter weekend and is done with all the scrambling to comply with the yearly mandate
known as income tax filing.
As I listen to more and more grumbling about this administration, witness the more and more desperate attempts to topple the popularity and effectiveness of this president and his administration, and shake my head at the recklessness of the campaign to undo the security of this country by rendering them impotent, I feel as if the country is being set up for a much bigger fall than even the opponents realize. Remember those “tax cuts” folks? You know, the ones that Bush campaigned on and followed through with soon after his first election? Well, I have heard vague whisperings throughout the media that Bush may have a big problem getting those tax cuts made permanent, due to his total bungling blah, blah, blah. What else is new? Look back at the most notable presidents in the last several decades and tell me when ANY tax cut was EVER permanent.
“It is clear, therefore, that we are strengthening our security as well as our economy by our recent record increases in national income and output--by surging ahead of most of Western Europe in the rate of business expansion and the margin of corporate profits, by maintaining a more stable level of prices than almost any of our overseas competitors, and by cutting personal and corporate income taxes by some $ I I billion, as I have proposed, to assure this Nation of the longest and strongest expansion in our peacetime economic history.”
Anybody
want to take a guess at who would make the above statement? Sounds like something G.W. would say at one
of his “get out there and lift up those sagging polls” speeches, doesn’t
it? Well, that quote comes from a
speech that JFK was preparing to give at the Trade Mart in Dallas, November 22,
1963. Yes, Virginia, He, too believed
in “tax cuts.”
Then
there was this truism delivered by Ronald Reagan in his famous Farewell
Address:
“Common
sense told us that when you put a big tax on something, the people will produce
less of it. So, we cut the people's tax rates, and the people produced more
than ever before. The economy bloomed like a plant that had been cut back and
could now grow quicker and stronger. Our economic program brought about the
longest peacetime expansion in our history:”
I
think we all know what happened in between the administrations of Kennedy and
Reagan – let’s be kind and call it, “the opposite of tax cuts.”
Then
along comes George W. bush – after his dad’s “read my lips” lie and Clinton’s
fiscal fiascos:
“We will reform Social Security and Medicare, sparing our children from struggles we have the power to prevent. And we will reduce taxes, to recover the momentum of our economy and reward the effort and enterprise of working Americans.”
That
quote was from G. W’s first inaugural address.
Okay, so once again “tax cuts” were employed, albeit on a temporary
basis, and the economy responded just as it always has. So why wouldn’t these tax cuts be secured
for all times since their track record is so good?
Nobody
cares about history, folks! Anyway, tax
cuts are a joke – I’ve said so before.
Tax cuts are the carrot that politicians hold way out in front to get
the rabbit to run from the pack of dogs so they can have the grand sport of
chasing down the rabbit in the Big Hunt!
Number one, the rabbit would run anyway because rabbits aren’t THAT
stupid. Number two, if the rabbit ever
stopped to eat the damned carrot, (assuming he could catch it) the dogs would
get him sooner rather than later.
Number three, just how much money do you think it costs the hunters to
provide the measly carrot to the doomed rabbit in the first place?
We
don’t need no stinkin’ tax cut, folks!
What we really need is honesty in government. What we really need is abolishment of the immoral income and
corporate tax system – abolishment of the IRS altogether. It should be painfully obvious to anyone
that the present tax system is far too flawed to “fix” with any number or any
amount of tax cuts.
Ever
wonder why it doesn’t seem to matter what the tax rate is, it’s never enough
for some, and no matter how much “in debt” government (local, federal, or
state) is, it never goes belly up? The
answer to the first part is not earth shattering – government trough feeders
are greedy – but the second answer may be somewhat disconcerting. Our governments may be morally bankrupt, but
their balance sheets will always serve as more than ample collateral for their
debt, and their income will always be more than ample to pay it – as long as
Americas keep working and earning and spending. Right now we are being taxed on both ends of these activities -
earning and spending – but if we can just motivate the politicians enough to
abolish the IRS, taxation would only occur through our voluntary acts of
spending.
Since I first researched and published my comments on the Fair Tax, many more folks have jumped on that bandwagon. I’m beginning to think maybe – just maybe it will eventually pass. Now, let me say that this proposal is not perfect. I believe there are many flaws with it, but I also believe that without those flaws it wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of ever passing. With them, we can live with it a whole lot easier than we can continue to survive the present tax system through the IRS – tax cuts or not. The flaws are built in specifically to give it a chance. Logic tells me that this proposal would, in turn, give Americans a fighting chance to better control governments’ goings on. Go here to take another look at the Fair Tax proposal and see what you think.
While
you are at it, go here and read about the
real financial solvency of our governments.
I
know this is covering old ground for some of you, but I was feeling a little
melancholy on this beautiful spring day.