It seems like it’s getting to be time for this. The problem is that people who pay taxes are too busy working to earn the money on which to pay taxes to have time to go to Washington. Massive marches on Washington are reserved for those with no jobs, or nothing to do, or because they are on the dole of some kind, sometimes aided by federal subsidization of “community organizers” like ACORN.
That’s one of the reasons that big-government programs are a positive-feedback ratchet that are almost impossible to reverse. The programs have their own built-in constituencies, that are funded by the programs to allow them to agitate for more, while the ever-shrinking rest of us who are trying to actually earn a living get stuck with the bill. It can’t go on forever, of course, but it can go on long enough to ruin a nation.
well the stimulus bill is about as expensive
as the Iraq War, so, we managed to ride that out,
i’m sure we can somehow figure this out.
But with a hell of a lot less justification.
Yeah,but most of us are not to busy to call,fax ,or email our congress-critters and let them know that we are displeased with their actions.
All we have to do is work on getting one more person to pay attention and do the same.
Virtual March!
Well, everybody should know where their congressperson resides.
Target them. (If you know what I mean, and I think you do.) That is, if you’re really serious about this, and not just blowing air.
At least the Iraq war freed millions of people. Another $900,000,000,000 in spending is merely going to empower the government and put our children in even more debt.
And it will do far more damage to the economy and our political system.
A taxpayer strike may be more workable than a march, because we can keep working (until we’re jailed, anyway) and just refuse withholding – then refuse to pay up on April 15.
Even if it were only 10 million of us – the jails couldn’t hold us all.
With a quickly diminish set of returns.
(Liberate the Mid-east or buy out Costco of Trojans in Chino, it’s a tough choice)
Try this on for size: on this year’s tax form, instead of filling it out, simply write two names in big block letters:
GEITHNER
RANGEL
and the following: “If Congress can give these guys a pass on their taxes, then you can give me a pass too.”
Shucks, if IRS workers think they’re despised now, they haven’t seen anything yet.
Also, the stimulus bill won’t liberate 25 million people from one of the two or three nastiest dictatorships on the planet.
Quite the opposite, actually, when you think about it.
The “stimulus” bill is nothing more than a quantum leap in political patronage. As Instapundit says, this is a massive redistribution of wealth to the politically connected from those who are not.
I’m already planning on not paying my taxes this year. Of course, the fact I’ve been unemployed for a year has nothing to do with that. 😉
Frankly though, I think every American should march on Washington and seize control of every government agency and throw the bastards out. Even if only 10% of us went, that’d be 30,000,000 people. We could have a bloodless coup and install a new government. By, for and of the people, not by, of and for itself.
The fact that we have jobs should be all the more reason to go to DC. It shows a bit of real cash sacrifice, not just “gimme some free money”. Maybe we can show solidarity by cleaning up the naked filth left by the Obamatrons.
How much garbage do you think a mass rally of conservatives would leave on The Mall?
I personally will take the time off and drive to DC.
The Iraq war was money well spent.
The ‘stimulus’ is corruption worthy of a third-world left-wing banana republic.
If you’re unhappy now, wait until the Bush tax cut expire. Why is no one mentioning that? I went through the Stick-It-To-Me bill and I get nothing from it. I will pay more to fund it but I get nothing in return. Those of you who voted for Democrats in general and Obama in particular should ask older people who voted for Carter when they were young what they think of him now.
To eliminate the positive feedback loop between government failure and spending increases I’m thinking there should be a direct link (or three) between voting and taxes. Putting your money where you mouth is and all that.
Some ideas:
1. Vote on April 15.
2. Necessary voter registration includes a W2 with a positive tax due amount.
Another idea would be linking Legislative compensation to real GDP growth for 10 years following their term in office.
“The problem is that people who pay taxes are too busy working to earn the money on which to pay taxes to have time to go to Washington.”
Don’t worry, with the democrats at the helm, many of us will be out of work soon enough.
MARCH AND STRIKE!
STARVE THE BEAST!
Does anyone remember the bricks mailed to Congresscritters to urge them to fund a security wall on our southern border? That, and a flood of phone calls to the Capitol, seemed to stir most of our “public servants” to action, although their enthusiasm for that project flagged soon enough.
If someone could think of an object that might be sent to DC as a symbol of our common outrage at this spending bill (it might similarly need to inconvenience our representatives as it stacked up visibly in their hallowed halls), maybe more of them would think twice about mortgaging our children’s futures.
March on Washington all you want. The Media.Will.Not.Cover.it.
Unless you’re holding a sign for Rush Limbaugh to be impeached or something anyway.
Seriously, there were half a million people marching on Washington just this past friday (March for Life). See it in the news? I thought not. Blogheads may know what’s going on but Congresspeople get their news from ABC.
“Yeah,but most of us are not to busy to call,fax ,or email our congress-critters and let them know that we are displeased with their actions.”
I had never written to a member of Congress in my entire life before now, but I’ve done it twice this week: Once on Monday night, to show my displeasure that one of my senators voted to confirm Geithner, and again tonight to my representative to thank him for voting against the Pelosi Porkfest.
And I think moving Election Day to April 15 is a *great* idea.
“That’s one of the reasons that big-government programs are a positive-feedback ratchet that are almost impossible to reverse”
Coming from someone who made a nice living working on the space program and other government funded projects, this is very rich.
Rather than march on Washington, sending a dollar check to some designated person or fund would be a better demo.
I’d suggest a “Gingrich for Speaker” fund, but that’s just me.
All politicians should get 6 months in the slammer after leaving office EXCEPT if they can prove at their trial they were not corrupt.
Should encourage them.
Aussie jails would be full of them.
Or go off line in part or in full.
http://tinyurl.com/ckqffx
Coming from someone who made a nice living working on the space program and other government funded projects, this is very rich.
If I supported expanded funding for NASA and those government-funded projects, or had ever expressed regret that they might be eliminated, you might have a point.
But unfortunately, you don’t.
The more money we ship to washington the less money we have to spend. There is a recession for those of us in the private sector. for those in the public sector, happy days are here again. There is so much waste and ineptitude in washington if boggles the mind. Is there some reason we need a federal, state, county and local education, environmental, health, human services apparatus? We are working our collective butts off to feed a goverment whose sole purpose is to tell us how to run our lives.
Actually, a stimulus that included much more funding for NASA and Defense acquisition would add much more to the economy than the social transfers.
Every dollar spent on a social program results in less than a dollar being injected into the economy because of the friction associated with the government process. In addition, the bad habits that social programs foster are actually harmful to productivity and hence business growth.
On the other hand, dollars spent on technological programs like NASA or DOD, despite being subject to the same friction as social programs, are subject to much more business-like “results” testing. They are less ‘bad habit’ forming, and as a result of the in-kind R&D that takes place, can actually result in more than one dollar in productivity injected into the economy for every dollar spent.
(e.g. consider the resumes of some of the top people at SpaceX. To a man (and woman) they cut their space teeth at DOD and NASA-related space contractors.)
I never ever well allow a leftist to claim that the run up to war in Iraq was rushed. The discussion to deal with Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein began when President Clinton signed the resolution calling for regime change in Iraq.
In 2002, Bush finally got tacit permission from Congress to act, but it required providing the UN time to act. And that was done before an election.
Obama has been in office less than 10 days, and he’s ready to blow a trillion dollars, and we have idiots like Jack Lee comparing it to Iraq. The rest of us can only wish Obama spent as much time weighing his decisions as Bush did.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: “If you are on the dole you should lose your right to vote.” Simply because it is a conflict of interest. I’m no lawyer so I’m not sure how to write that up in legalese or if it needs to be a constitutional amendment or not, but it think it should be a law.
The marginal cost of delaying the invasion of Iraq was negligible, and in fact delay would have given us the chance to correct mistaken intelligence. The cost of delaying action to deal with the economy is thousands of jobs per day. A president in Obama’s shoes who took years to decide what to do about the economy would go down in history like another Hoover.
He will anyway.
One other bothersome part of the ‘feedback’ loop is people on unemployment or welfare or receiving any other form of Government assistance and turning around and giving some of that money to Democrats. How much of Obama’s $5 political donations was funded by entitlement programs?
You mean we should have debated it for another fourteen months?
I suppose I can see why some people think the 14-month argument was a “rush to war,” since that’s only half as long as election campaigns last around here anymore.
There was bipartisan support for the War on Iraq. There was bipartisan support against the “Stimulus Plan”.
Obama is not a uniter. He’s a divider.
The cost of delaying action to deal with the economy is thousands of jobs per day.
80% of the bill won’t go into effect until 2010. That is a delay in effect. So roughly $700 billion could have been taken out of the bill, put in another bill, and debated properly. Instead, the concept of a Representative Democracy was pissed on by Pelosi and Obama. 5% of US GDP was just spent with less than 10 days of consideration, and none of it will flow into the economy for 9 months.
Had Obama lived up to the promises he made in the debate, then he would have pushed for his middle class tax cut first. Had $700 billion in tax cut for next year been approved by now, then Americans could adjust their withholdings and start putting more money into the economy by the next pay period.
Jim Says:
“in fact delay would have given us the chance to correct mistaken intelligence.”
Didn’t Saddam himself say that he purposely disseminated false intelligence about his WMD program in order to seem strong in the face of Iran? In poker you can take all of another player’s chips if all they want to do is sit there and ante up all day. Eventually, you have to either shit or get off the pot.
“The cost of delaying action to deal with the economy is thousands of jobs per day.
If you really look at the money that goes to the so called “job creation” projects you will see that in fact it takes several years for any meaningful amount of money to start flowing. The financial analysts that were adamant about a looming downturn back in ’05-’06, when the majority were saying it was just a correction, are now saying that everything will probably stabilize by 2012. By that time the money in this package will just start to get delivered — really won’t be needed by then. If anything this package just as well delay that recovery date and exacerbate the problem. The money that is quickly getting doled out goes to the special pork cases and pet projects — too specialized to be of any wide spread use.
So, in principle Obama’s economic stimulus plan on the surface looks like it will make rainbows, fluffy bunnies, and giant cones of cotton candy. In reality, it amounts to sitting around and not doing anything for several years while thousands of jobs are lost every day.
I don’t think Jim will be able to accept this; however, as the cup of kool-aid in his hand has compounds that block receptors in the brain from making key connections to comprehend these aspects. The Obamaphiles are too busy being mesmerized by Obama’s kind eyes and warm smile. The magic of feeling good about being an American again has them too dumbfounded to accept anything else.
> A president in Obama’s shoes who took years to decide what to do about the economy would go down in history like another Hoover.
Hoover didn’t take “years” to decide anything. He almost immediately introduced the massive intervention programs that FDR continued. Unfortunately, those programs were a bad idea. By introducing them, Hoover made the Great Depression worse. By continuing them, FDR made it long.
FDR kept the depression going with his war on production until he was distracted by WWII.
The myth that Hoover was hands-off comes from an effort to canonize FDR.
The thing to understand is that now that they have control, they will use tax dollars to keep control. Everything else is irrelevant.
Pay Caesar and watch the circus… prepare for the coming storm.
K,
Ragnar’s books don’t get very good reviews from the knowledgable. But JJ Luna’s do. I’d look into those, if that’s the thing you’re looking for.
Regards,
Brock
The Obamas are the Perons, and we will become Argentina.
Gee, there was an opportunity to “march on Washington.” It was called the 2008 Election. That was the time to flood the right candidates with money and support, and speak up loudly against the wrong candidates.
It’s certainly not the case here at TT, but at other sites with a libertarian or at least liberty-oriented philosophy, there was plenty of “cut off my nose to spite my face” attitude on display last year. Plenty of folks said let the Democrats win, THAT will show those weak-kneed Republicans, who will reform, and THEN we’ll get a chance to vote for The Perfect Presidential Candidate.
Whoops. Turns out, when you elect collectivist big-government Democrats, the very first thing they do is take steps to ensure they stay in power, by (for example), blowing a fairly mild economic crisis (8% unemployment, big deal) way out of proportion and using the panic atmosphere to hugely inflate those aspects of government traditionally controlled by Democratic Party influence and patronage.
Well, who’d have imagined that? Politicians cynically clinging to power! Imagine that!
This is why it’s stupendously stupid folly, when faced with a choice between two evils, to choose the greater in the hopes of “sending a message” to the lesser to reform.
A president in Obama’s shoes who took years to decide what to do about the economy would go down in history like another Hoover.
H/T Glenn… Note to Obey: Hoover massively expanded government spending and signed into law a horrible protectionist piece of legislation known as Smoot-Hawley. At the same time, he used the bully pulpit to hector businesses into keeping wages and prices high which only made it harder for a puffed-up economy to go through a painful but transitory adjustment. Given what you just passed and all the anti-China rhetoric coming from the White House, what exactly are you guys planning on doing differently?
Dotar Sojat:
Exactly! I happened to hear “The Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)” today, and the name, “Obita” came to mind.
Erick at Red State recommends mailing Voit playground balls to Mitch McConnell and other hand-across-the-aisle senators.
Maybe when you’ve had a taxpayer march to DC, one or two of you can come over here and advise us about how to organise a march on Westminster.
You think your taxes are too high? Try living in England. Note that I did not say, and did not intend to say, the UK. Two parts of the UK (Wales and Scotland) are being heavily subsidised, to the tune of £1200 per year per person or so, by the taxpayers of England. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are both Scots.
To put this in perspective, it is roughly as if each inhabitant of New York was getting a federal subsidy, paid only by the other 49 states, of roughly $1500/year. (State chosen for population reasons only, btw.)
The point of a march in DC is so that we don’t have to go back to England. We know taxes are high there, that’s why are ancestors left.
Eh, Fletch, such subsidies already exist in the US. For example, Alaskans are subsidized by the rest of the nation to the tune of about $6,000 per person per year, a fact Governor Palin’s enemies used to sneer at her. Iowans are subsidized by about $800 per person per year.
In the case of Alaska, the large subsidy is a result of the fact that quite a lot of people in Alaska are either Federal employees or there because of national needs (e.g. defense, coast guard).
In the case of Iowa, it’s largely agricultural subsidies, and harder to really justify. That might correspond better to your Welsh.
I heard Scotland wanted out of the Grand Union. Maybe you should grant them the divorce?