Why, As A Liberal, I Hate Paying Taxes.
Who likes paying taxes? I write as committed liberal social democrat and Obama supporter. I care about humanity, and I have devoted my writing and volunteering life to advocating on behalf of the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalized and all peripheral peoples—wherever I find them. But who likes paying into a ponzi scheme—which is what our tax system is all about? May Bernard Madoff rest in peace when he finally dies in prison. I mean, really. And let us not beguile ourselves into thinking our tax conundrums are the exclusive shenanigans of liberals or conservatives. Both are guilty of the moral and political infelicities associated with a system that is in need of radical reform.
Do we truly believe our tax dollars that fund rogue nations that are our allies for a few years and then our enemies eight years later, and then our friends again for a few months promote a worthy cause? Do we believe that funding arms sales to individuals who fight our enemies and then sponsor our destruction years later (a.k.a The Taliban) is a case in point of tax dollars spent wisely? Countries that promote gender apartheid and cut the clitorises out of innocent, helpless young girls get tons of tax dollars from our coffers, but because they are strategically positioned on the map of the world they are our allies today. Do we really believe that funding, not developing countries, but regressing countries with thugs and dictators for leaders who siphon off 99.9% of that aid to Swiss bank accounts is helping any of us live better lives, or those of the miserable unemployables living in those states of nature to achieve parity with their compatriots? I recently got a sizeable raise as part of my promotion to full professor a few weeks ago. Guess what? The government took fifty percent of it.
Do you think (under either a liberal or conservative administration) that it will really fund K-12 education to which I am passionately devoted? You think it will give well-needed funds to public schools on the south side of Chicago that are often closed because asbestos is still found in those buildings? Uh-huh! Let the poor, black kids who are regularly kept out of physically dangerous buildings housings their schools tell the story of where their parents’ tax dollars will go.
I’ll tell you where fifty percent of my raise perhaps went. To pilot Air Force one as President Obama, his family and entourage jetted off to Chicago a few weeks ago to attend the wedding of Laura Jarrett, daughter of that incompetent, Senior White House Presidential advisor, Valerie Jarrett. It will finance our troops that still occupy military bases in civilized countries whose very own militaries will eventually outsize ours as we slash our defense funds and compromise the safety of this country only to finance a trip by our President to one of the most pernicious countries in the world, a country whose Wahhabi faith promotes gender apartheid, forbids women to vote, drive, and enjoy equality with men, and is the birth place to most of the world’s radical Islamic terrorists—and to believe that the President actually bowed like some obsequious Babbitt before some member of a so-called Royal family.
Let me stop here. Big Brothers, on the right and the left, are watching. That’s also where your taxes go. Not rightly, as it should, to exclusively monitoring terrorist cells at home and abroad, but to see who you’re talking to on Facebook. Next time someone asks you why you love paying taxes tell them, among other things, that you do not care to engage in a discussion about failed ponzi schemes, euphemisms for distortion and legalized theft, an excuse to invoke class warfare, and above all, a crass method of penalizing and demonizing the successful for being successful.
