Once again, I feel the oppressive foot of government upon my throat. I've been storming around the house for a week now grumbling about the government that we've all succumbed to. Where's the outrage?
Once upon a time, there was a little country that was founded by people who were tired of a far away government meddling in the fabric of their lives. They were outraged. When the Tea Act of 1773 was passed by the British Parliament, it actually had the effect of lowering tea prices in the colonies. However, just the suspicion that the Crown was messing with their freedom was enough to set off the Boston Tea Party.
Think about that for a moment. Government interference with the lives of people to help them angered the patriots of the colonies.
Let's look at the "help" our government has been offering us more recently:
Obama and company are seeking a 835 billion dollar spending package to "help" the economy. Who's going to pay for that? Me. And why do I have to pay money to people and companies who FAILED to be proper stewards of what they had in the first place?! I'll tell you what, you let me keep my "contribution" to the stimulus package and let me stimulate my own family. Let me invest that money in the company my wife is attempting to get started. Let the fools who brought about their own demise bail themselves out.
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one...." --James Madison
Where's the outrage?!
Gov. Duvall Patrick is currently seeking a $.26 gas tax. A GAS TAX?? The economy is crumbling beneath us and he wants to increase the cost of our primary energy source by twenty-six cents a gallon? If a foreign power tried to do this to us, we'd consider it an act of war. I guess that must make his move an act of treason.
Where's the outrage?!
Last evening, my tax preparer had to file additional paperwork in order to prove to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that I have health insurance. Hello? How is governing a state in any way, shape, or form related to whether or not I have health insurance? If I decide not to have health insurance or cannot afford it, where does the state get off fining me for my choice. "Free country" my ass.
Where's the outrage?!
In order to declare my newborn son as a legal dependent, he has to have a Social Security number. I can't file my taxes until I get one for him. Pardon me? What does my son's retirement have to do with the money I am owed by the Federal government? Why are we standing by and allowing our Social Security numbers to be used as a personal identification number. When was the government granted the authority to brand us all with a number? What angers me more than anything is that the majority of people who read this will wonder what is wrong with me and why I'm not keeping my mouth shut and doing as the government tells me.
If someone knocked on your door in 1788 and told you that you had to provide proof that your children existed so the government could assign a number to them and keep tabs on them for their entire life, you'd load your musket and shoot them in the face. Why is it different today?!
Where is the outrage!?
7 comments:
As to the tea issue? They were mad, because many of our "Founding Fathers" were involved in activities they didn't want the Brits messing with. For instance, John Hancock was a big time smuggler on the North Shore. One of the things he smuggled, was tea. He didn't want to be "inspected", and have to pay bribes to move his product(s). He also didn't want to have to pay "fees" to the Harbormaster, you got it, another British appointee, as was the governor. A very lucrative position, I might add.
The $.26 is ADDITION to the current 25.5 cents that we already pay for gas. They are also considering adding an RFID chip to your inspection sticker, and tracking your milage, and taxing you by the number of miles you drive. Look it up. It's in the Herald.
If you want to spend a bunch of money, and stimulate the economy, why not fund every Charity in America at 120% of it's 2008 operating level? Then, I wouldn't have to contribute to any charity. That would save me money. They wouldn't have TOO much money to waste, and oversight would be on a local level. The charities would have to waste their time and money fund-raising. I wouldn't get telemarketers calling me during dinner. And charities are alot better at getting things done, than the government is. Can you imagine, what they could do, if the Salvation Army was fully funded? No more ringing those damn bells at Christmas!
Whatever happened to the idea that they just didn't want taxation without representation? We have representation. We just don't like what they represent. lol
readonae: The act of reading a book while eating a Dijon mustard sandwich.
I'm surprised you didn't rail against having to pay someone to sort out the taxes you have to pay.
Personally, I feel a gas tax to pay for the Big Dig is fine. It's cause and effect. You want better roads, you pay for them thought a tax on the gas that gets your vehicle on that road. Seems like a direct cause and effect to me. I cant undo the Big Dig, but I benefit from it every time I go through Boston. I hear people say it hasn't changed things, but I know for me it has. Was it worth it? Hey I wanted the Boston Bypass, but I didn't get it.
And after paying the oil profiteers this summer almost $4.00 a gallon, for pure profit, I would rather pay the state the money to get them out of the hole and therefor improve this state that I live in. Although I was thinking more along the lines of like 7 to 10 cents a gallon to be honest.
As for your son's SS number, since the government is giving you the deduction on your taxes, it seems reasonable that they want proof that this deduction is indeed real, and the only way to do that is in essence to register him. Otherwise you could claim a lot more deductions and no one would ever be the wiser. So either don't take the deduction, or don't' complain. You should not put money ahead of your principles.
As for the health insurance, it's a social experiment. We have advanced too far in technology so that we can now do too much to save lives and it simply is too expensive. Time to go back to just letting people die. Simple as that. That will bring the cost of health care and nursing home care way down. Tough love if you will. I know my dad's bill for his recent hospital stay was 50 some odd thousand. He has never even put that much into the system in his whole life. How can that work? It cant. Cut people off. No more cancer treatments, PET scans, whatever. Broken bones and stitches and antibiotics. That's it.
Where is the money coming from? Good freaking question. China is tapped out. I think we need to go back to selling war bonds. What do you think? It worked before.
So, when are you setting up your new bank?
I'm surprised you didn't rail against having to pay someone to sort out the taxes you have to pay.
Personally, I feel a gas tax to pay for the Big Dig is fine. It's cause and effect. You want better roads, you pay for them thought a tax on the gas that gets your vehicle on that road. Seems like a direct cause and effect to me. I cant undo the Big Dig, but I benefit from it every time I go through Boston. I hear people say it hasn't changed things, but I know for me it has. Was it worth it? Hey I wanted the Boston Bypass, but I didn't get it.
And after paying the oil profiteers this summer almost $4.00 a gallon, for pure profit, I would rather pay the state the money to get them out of the hole and therefor improve this state that I live in. Although I was thinking more along the lines of like 7 to 10 cents a gallon to be honest.
--I have to somewhat agree. It does seem that the amount being charged is a little over the top, especially after the article that I read just the other day about Taxachussetts forcing businesses in other states to charge a MA sales tax on people who live in Massachusetts. Dirty stuff, there. Overall, the taxation in MA seems to be a bit over the top.
As for your son's SS number, since the government is giving you the deduction on your taxes, it seems reasonable that they want proof that this deduction is indeed real, and the only way to do that is in essence to register him. Otherwise you could claim a lot more deductions and no one would ever be the wiser. So either don't take the deduction, or don't' complain. You should not put money ahead of your principles.
--What about a birth certificate? What about an affidavit from the state department of health? The Social Security number is not supposed to be a national ID and is being abused as such. The last time that I registered for a membership at a Blockbuster video, they insisted that I give them my SSN. I refused and it turned into a lengthy discussion about the things that they can and can't ask me for, as far as personal information goes. It's the same thing everywhere. We've been programmed and conditioned for SO long to be comfortable with just spouting out the SSN that we don't think about who we're giving it to, or even what the number is FOR. There are other, better means of proving our identity, and the insistence that Master Upham's child have such a number for his taxes is preposterous.
As for the health insurance, it's a social experiment. We have advanced too far in technology so that we can now do too much to save lives and it simply is too expensive. Time to go back to just letting people die. Simple as that. That will bring the cost of health care and nursing home care way down. Tough love if you will. I know my dad's bill for his recent hospital stay was 50 some odd thousand. He has never even put that much into the system in his whole life. How can that work? It cant. Cut people off. No more cancer treatments, PET scans, whatever. Broken bones and stitches and antibiotics. That's it.
--It's not that the technology is THAT expensive. The hospital buys a $100,000 machine that consumes the same electricity of a refrigerator. They do 200 procedures over the lifetime of the machine for $5,000 each, and the machine has paid for itself. The actual medical care is cheap. The problem is that there's another bubble out there that people AREN'T TALKING ABOUT. There is a very serious medical bubble out there. Prices are incredibly overblown and getting higher. Salaries, insurance costs, association fees, and so on and so forth are adding all of this empty, pointless cost to something as simple and as critical as saving and caring for human life.
Where is the money coming from? Good freaking question. China is tapped out. I think we need to go back to selling war bonds. What do you think? It worked before.
So, when are you setting up your new bank?
--The money is coming from the same place it's always come from: Thin. Air. The fractional reserve system has seen to it for decades that we are wage slaves. The Fed is NOT a government institution. It's a private bank that controls the US economy. The Fed lends the US money--at interest. As soon as they give us $10, we owe them $11. Where does that extra $1 come from? Well, we have to borrow it. That's okay, though, because once the money goes to the bankers, the money just starts pouring from thin air! Really! For every dollar in a bank, they can re-loan that dollar nine more times. Every one of THOSE dollars get re-loaned nine times, and so on.
Simply put: The money isn't there. There are hours and hours of videos and websites and pages of reading that I can offer that will illustrate and explain all of these data points and projects. Just let me know if you want to take the time.
"The Social Security number is not supposed to be a national ID and is being abused as such...
We've been programmed and conditioned for SO long to be comfortable with just spouting out the SSN that we don't think about who we're giving it to, or even what the number is FOR."
This is exactly my point. If the government said, "Hey we want to assign you all a number," we'd reject it -- and have done so in recent memory. However, if they can slowly condition us to accepting the use of our SSNs for this purpose, well, it's a bit like boiling a frog by turning the temperature up real slowly.
The fact is, because we've moved incrementally over a long period of time, no one has noticed how much our freedom and our privacy has been abridged. Now, if someone points it out, they (me) are considered as being ridiculous or out of step. Sad. Very sad.
That, I think is the part that burns me the most. It's not that it's happened. It's that it's happened in such a way as to make MY PEOPLE now know that they are the ones in the corral, on their way to the slaughterhouse. SO MANY critical, central ideas that made our country unique are now forgotten or disdained.
America is, or was, the last refuge of freedom on Earth, where a person could be born and live or die, succeed or fail on their own steam. Where an individual was of value. We're losing it. :(
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