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Forum Newbie
Group: Administrators
Last Login: 8/14/2007 2:51:08 PM
Posts: 2,
Post ID: 74273
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4/12/2009 12:00:00 AM
Let's discuss 'Tea and taxes -- hold the tea -- at Goshen protest'.
There was no tea, no harbor and no unruly mob, but the crowd that converged on the Elkhart County Courthouse lawn Saturday morning said they were like the revolutionaries at the Boston Tea Party, protesting what they regard as excessive taxation and wasteful government spending.
-from
the Truth
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Master Contributor
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 12/27/2008 7:22:57 AM
Posts: 652,
Post ID: 74274
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| Interesting.Politicians never miss a beat do they?
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Guru-in-Training
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 9/1/2007 4:23:08 AM
Posts: 903,
Post ID: 74290
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| And they never get the message....
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Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 4/12/2009 8:52:07 AM
Posts: 1,
Post ID: 74298
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Why the Tea Parties?
The Tea Party Movement is about National Fiscal Policy – in short federal taxes and spending. Taxes are intended to be the means for the government to finance its constitutionally mandated responsibilities – the common defense, the roads and the necessary government functions spelled out explicitly our Constitution. Government monies are to be deliberated openly and used frugally, not decided in secret and not voted without debate, as we have seen recently, nor are they to be spent lavishly or for frivolities and political payback. The best government is the least government.
Some taxes are explicit – we all know of the IRS, and the taxes at the gas pump. Other taxes are hidden – federal borrowing (accepting money from foreign governments in exchange for bonds) and currency devaluation (printing money, which causes runaway inflation). Other taxes are in the form of over-regulation - such as the prohibition on oil drilling which, until it expired last fall, drove our gas prices to astronomical levels and damaged our local industry. These hidden taxes reduce our personal wealth as surely as the IRS does, but in less visible ways. Such taxes are impoverishing our citizenry.
A strongly progressive, or graduated, tax will remove the profit incentive from our industry, handicap our companies as they compete in international markets and destroy our economy. Those successful companies and the intense and productive people who have created this country will simply stop trying, or move out of the country if they have no incentive to remain productive. As we have seen, the result will be closed factories and idle workers.
The bailout of unsuccessful, foolish, misguided, over-regulated and profligate companies (be they banks, auto makers or mortgage holders) teaches irresponsibility and removes the need for caution in fiscal decisions. By rewarding (or even mandating) irresponsible behavior, we promote such behavior. The losers must be allowed to lose.
If taxation is perceived as unfair, wholesale cheating will be the result (witness the recent confirmation hearings of high officials to see how far this has already progressed). We need fair taxation. You cannot make the poor rich by making everybody poor.
Federal revenues are not meant to be tools for social engineering, rewarding one group or class at the expense of others (spreading the wealth around), nor are they campaign contributions to assist reelection of incumbents (so called pork). And fiscal responsibility mandates monies be dispersed in proportion to our current revenues. We cannot personally spend above our income. Neither should our government. Such spending is unsustainable and has repeatedly led to anarchy. The borrower is the servant of the lender.
Recently we have utterly lost sight of these simple truths. We are spending excessively for pet projects we do not need and heaping up debt that we, our children and even our grandchildren cannot hope to repay. The consequent downward economic spiral has begun and is accelerating. These trends, if not reversed, and reversed soon, will destroy both our economy and that of rest of this interdependant world.
The purpose of the Tea Party movement is to highlight these problems and ask our elected (and appointed) officials for prompt redress of these grievances, and the restoration of a viable fiscal policy.
Bob
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Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 8/2/2007 7:08:48 AM
Posts: 3,590,
Post ID: 74306
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Bob are you smiling? Are you the envy of your neighbors? I just couldn't help it. Well those are all nice sentiments but that governement that you described does not exist. Actually it never has and, after the borrowing of the last eight years, it never will. The current round of spending, though you don't approve, keeps jobs. Yes these companies are mishandled and have been greedy but, when you have government officials, who have given them the green light to behave badly, by taking all restrictions of the damaging side of their business practices, for a quick buck, that's what you get. I do not believe that a graduated tax structure has any effect on business and how it performs. You may have some examples and I would like to see those examples. Business, as in corporations, and individuals pay completely different taxes. So, what taxes are standing in the way of corporate expansion? What tax is keeping investors from investing in growth? What tax is not allowing a global economy to flourish? And, what tax has lead to this economic down turn? More over, what tax structure would you suggest to get the economy moving again? What type of tax structure would improve the corporations ability to reinvest, research and develop or just hire people? I always enjoy the look back to the days of George Washington and what that group may have envisioned for this country. I don't have any reason to believe that they could have imagined a global economy, a world bank collapse, the size of this country's population the extent of the roads and bridges, that we would be more than 13 states. Somehow we have to come to grips with where we are not where we should have been or might have been, we are right here right now in the middle of a downturn. Don't look back, there's nothing to see back there. We need some leadership, I think we all agree about that. But, we need leaders with vision not a weak heart, ready to turn back to a make believe time.
"I think I have wasted an hour of your time and I apologize for that". Glen Beck
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Master Contributor
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 12/27/2008 7:22:57 AM
Posts: 652,
Post ID: 74336
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| Indeed.We must move forward,but our ship has a broken rudder.Time is running out to get us back on course.
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Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 8/2/2007 7:08:48 AM
Posts: 3,590,
Post ID: 74339
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tired, is the question what course to take? How can you tell if you are going the wrong way when you don't know where you are going and you can't imagine how you got here? Looking back to some mythical group of people will not move you forward or help make solid decisions.
"I think I have wasted an hour of your time and I apologize for that". Glen Beck
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Master Contributor
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 12/27/2008 7:22:57 AM
Posts: 652,
Post ID: 74343
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| The thing about the past is we look back on it for lessons learned.Then we apply it when we see it again.So perhaps looking back into the past may show us something that we need to apply in a forward direction.
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Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 8/2/2007 7:08:48 AM
Posts: 3,590,
Post ID: 74345
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The past lessons that I've learned concern the Easter Bunny. These old guys are just as relavent. There is no way to tell what this country will look like in 233years and there was no way to know what we would be facing, as a nation, 233years ago. These old slave owning, hemp growing and smoking tobacco farmers who could not imagine what might be over the Appalachian Mountains, let alone what could happen in the future, may have left some good ideas but they didn't leave a road map. Hamilton sure didn't have an image of the Federal Reserve Bank, FDIC, Fanny Mae or a bank bail out.
"I think I have wasted an hour of your time and I apologize for that". Glen Beck
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Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 3/20/2009 7:36:51 PM
Posts: 7,
Post ID: 74346
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| Give me a break. I want to see the rich taxed silly and bring them down to the real world of the former middle class and be humbled. Wealthy Corporate terrorist that reign down their policys of greed and desrtuction, rape the worker and then end up moving their company overseas anyway like they always have. Companies like Steinway musical and their CEO Dana Messina who presently have a similar plan of destruction in mind but found a little extra resistance in the form of a 3 year strike and over $25,000,000 in extra still occuring strike related cost. These desperate republican looser just can't accept that Barack Obama is their president and is calling the shots now. They can have as many " TEA PARTIES" as they want but the rest of us suggest they maybe put something a little stronger in their TEA while they are making a fool out on themselves.
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