Taxes for Two

We paid our taxes. Paid our dues. We're as good Americans as we can be. Yippee! We paid a lot, even more than anticipated and that was an ouch. We have to pay quarterly and a slip up in that amount made for a much larger tax bill than we had planned on. But, we're not going ballistic over it. In the end, we're the ones responsible for the errors. We sign the returns. Upset? Yes. In general; intellectually we know that we pay a lot less than citizens in other countries. But then again, it's not about how much we pay but what value is received for our money. And that's where we stop being intellectual and become angry. Where do we direct our anger and how? Well, it's certainly not by joining up with the buffoons that make up the so called 'Tea Party'. I'm just guessing, but I like to think that there are some bright people who joined the Tea Party because it was a good vehicle for their anger. I'm afraid it no longer is and I would bet that the smart folks have all gone by now. The Tea Party is no longer a 'grass roots' movement, if it ever was one, and I suspect that it was carefully orchestrated from the very beginning. Most of these peoples you see on television, with their signs and costumes, have been duped. Hoodwinked.

Whenever the Tea Party gathers, we see and hear a lot about States' Rights and a shrinking of the Federal government. Reduce taxes or pay none at all. And it's when I hear that stuff that I feel like putting a dunce cap on these jokers and making them stand in the corner. Forever. For instance, I was reading about the disaster in Rhode Island; flooding everywhere. And the President declared it a Disaster, which opens up all sorts of federal aid to those who have been damaged by the flooding. That's a good thing because the state is already close to bankruptcy and would be hard pressed to help their own citizens. Now in the Tea Party Perfect World, those citizens, those victims…would remain victims. Better that than allowing a 'Socialist' government to help them. And since no one was paying taxes in that Perfect World, there was never going to be any help for them anyway. The police and fireman, except for the volunteers, would all be gone. The guys that used to be in charge of pumps and rowboats would have moved on to other kinds of work; work that paid.

The Rhode Island disaster becomes worse. Since tax revenues have been down for quite awhile and because the citizens of Rhode Island don't like paying taxes, the infrastructure was already damaged long before the flooding began. 57% of the bridges in the state are structurally deficient and heavy trucks are not allowed to use them. There is a $400 million dollar hole in next year's budget. Sewage treatment plants were damaged by the flood waters. Unemployment at 12.7% is the nation's third highest. Yikes!

What would have happened if the corporations had been paying their fair share of taxes in Rhode Island? And the citizens? The population of the state was 1,050,788 in 2008. Let's say everyone scratched together an extra ten bucks each year and had the state use it for repairs. $10,507,880. That's additional money to use on top of what was already budgeted. And then the corporations would have to pay their fair share. Which is bound to be a whole lot more than they are paying now.

I could go on and on with this scenario, but why? The Tea Party, with its numbers now made up of fanatics, aren't interested in logic. Talking about it just wastes my time and theirs.