By The Cranky Housewife -
It's rather an interesting philosophical impasse that we're experiencing if you think about it. I'm kind of hoping that the Democrats keep hammering away at their most recent Mother Jones class warfare gotcha story because it may actually serve the nation well to have an open discussion about the growing problem of dependency in this country.
Here we have Mitt Romney in a video talking about 47% of the population not wanting tax cuts because they find themselves financially dependent on government in one way or another.
He laments that a large portion of Americans won't even consider the idea of not voting for Barack Obama because Obama gives or at least makes a show of "giving" (because you can't give what never belonged to you) money that was confiscated from the taxpayers and then redistributed in the name of the US Government. In turn, those recipients remain emotionally disconnected from the true patrons of these social programs and the mounting debt that the taxpayers face.
Worse still, the beneficiaries can see no advantage in reducing the tax burden for the remaining 53% who actually do pay into the system… all those recipients can see is a direct line from the bureaucracy of the US Treasury Department to their personal bank accounts without recognizing the millions upon millions of dotted lines that go from the taxpayers' bank accounts to the Treasury and only then to their bank accounts.
If you are a Democrat then you well know that all those millions of dotted lines must never be attached to the names and faces of the individual people who actually fork over that "free" money. The only incarnation for them comes in the form of greedy millionaires who can be ostracized for all the money that they still have in spite of the Left's best efforts.
And because of Romney's little Government in Action tutorial, the Democrats are complaining about his honesty. His candor was shocking, distasteful, repugnant. I mean, how detached from reality do you have to be to label that speech as repugnant? Or unacceptable? Or anything but long overdue from our elected representatives.
Per the Dems, only speaking the truth is a problem in this situation. It's certainly not the fact that half of all adult Americans are excused from the grownup responsibility of sharing in the support and preservation of our republic. How bizarre. Shared responsibility was what the income tax was supposed to ensure, was it not? Yet the infantile behavior of running up an enormous tab and then skipping out on the check so that someone else has to pay…and the facilitation of that behavior by Democrats? That's not to be considered because that would be rude.
To hear the Left tell tale of it, it's all Romney's fault. Actually pointing out the number of people who have not only abandoned their civic responsibility, but have increased everyone else's burden by drawing on the national treasury like it's their own personal annuity and then complaining because the account is in a deficit? That's the shocker.
You see, and this is just from a non-recipient's perspective, the only inaccuracy present in Mitt Romney's statement relates to the number of people who are dependent on government. That number - 47% merely represents the adults who pay no income taxes at all. This fails to account for the other various beneficiaries of legislative generosity who do pay income tax but wallow in the afterglow of governmental patronage.
The Chicago Teachers Union…could this be a more perfect or timely example of the gimme attitude exhibited by the public sector employees which emotionally tries the good Samaritan living within the hearts of most taxpaying Americans. Go ahead. Tell me. Does the CTU want taxes lowered? They don't? Well, why not? I mean, they pay income taxes so you'd think they wouldn't mind paying a little less. Do you suppose they are primarily concerned with the homeless? The underprivileged? Or (heaven forbid it) national security, which is the one thing that the government is constitutionally responsible for preserving.
No. They're anxious over a 16% increase in their wages, which will be handed out by their governmental Santa Claus using taxpayer dollars. They stand on the steps of City Hall in their Che tee shirts holding up their mass produced strike signs while pretending to be part of the 99%. They complain about Penny Prizker of all people (who has done so much to reinforce this social justice deviancy through her support of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party that the teachers ought to be wearing tee shirts of her instead of Che…but I digress) all while siphoning off an average teacher's salary of $75,000 of taxpayer's money…and for those of you who graduated from CPS, that means that a good many teachers are making more than $75,000. Thank you.
Man-oh-man and that doesn't even take into account the fabulous benefits packages – bennies which include pensions that Santa will somehow magically fund because teachers sure as heck won't be contributing any of their own salaries to make the system solvent. That's their money. They earned it. (See how their witty repartee on shared sacrifice simply melts away when we start talking about their own personal wealth) So you – you the taxpayer will take even more money out of your own paycheck, divert money that might have gone into your own retirement, or might have fed your own children or paid down your own debt or offset your own medical bills. That's the money with which the teachers welcome generosity. If only those greedy taxpayers would just pay a little more. It's for the children after all. It's just that those children are over the age of 18 and are teaching in the state-funded schools at $75,000 a year.
And that's just a thin cross section of the many, many, many layers of public sector employees built one upon the other who don't want taxes to be lowered for the good of the children. It's a wonder that there's any privately held wealth left in this country at all, what with all those recipients waiting for Santa to show up for their next contract negotiation but never considering that the role of Santa is being played by their next door neighbors.
That is close enough to the point that Mitt Romney was making. As I said before, it's a shamefully long overdue discussion from those who claim to represent the whole of the American people – not just the voters who can choreograph their temper tantrums with the purpose of preventing the non-recipients from getting home from their jobs.
