On the BorderLine » Taxes

The Great Lie of the Nanny State

Citizen Joe — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:37:51 +0000

What Interests Does a Candidate Represent?

Henry Patrick — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:55:29 +0000

In a discussion with an acquaintance the other day, she touched on the topic of politics and the importance of the Massachusetts race for US Senate. Granted it is interesting how a special election in the heart of Democrat country could see a Republican win and thus kill any attempts to pass a socialized medicine healthcare bill. Her comments illustrated a problem facing taxpayers in the state of Wisconsin. People will spend hours talking about national politics and vote in droves for the election of federal offices, but nary will a whisper be heard about local candidates.

Local spring elections barely draw enough voters to the polling place that would fill up a good size movie theater. Yet county, city and school district taxes are a sizeable chunk of a persons over all tax burdens. I recently attended a gathering of nearly 50 people at a private residence to hear a Congressional candidate speak. Imagine how many would show up to listen to a person running for school board or city council; maybe a handful.

Even though most yawn at the mention of local elections, an organization exists that is willing to put its money and manpower into candidates for local offices. Despite the economic hardships faced by many, local governments and school districts across Wisconsin have increased the tax burden over the last year. In the area where I live, both the county and the school district raised their portion of the property tax by nearly 9%.

Such actions have left many questioning the mindset of local elected officials. How can they vote to increase taxes in time like this and offer raises to government employees while at the same individuals are losing their jobs or their homes; why government does not suffer the same fate of the recession?

The answer may be found in the contents of an envelope going out to each of the candidates for the county board. The letter came from the offices of AFSCME, the government workers union. The opening sentence should send alarm bells to taxpayers about the true nature of local elections.

Dear Candidate for St. Croix Supervisor,

The AFSCME PEOPLE committee of the 3rd CD is considering endorsements for the Spring election of the ST. Croix County Board of Supervisors.

The committee decides locally who the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees will support in the upcoming election

The letter then invites the candidate to be part of an interview process beginning with an enclosed questionnaire.

As part of the candidate interview process, we have enclosed an AFSCME questionnaire.

The second page of the letter deals with personal information including email, phone numbers, and details of the candidates campaign treasury (where they can mail the checks).

On the next couple of pages the union asks eleven support/oppose questions. No surprise the first handful of inquiries dealt with opinions on collective bargaining and living wages. The next set dealt with the idea of privatization, Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), and increasing the tax burden on wealthy individuals and businesses. One curious question dealt with the time of board meetings. Currently St. Croix County Board meetings are held during the day time when many taxpayers are at work, and therefore, find it difficult to exercise their Constitutional right to address grievances toward government. It is highly doubtful that government union employees are concerned that those who pay their wages and benefits are shut out of the process.

I find this letter from AFSCME and others like it very disturbing on several fronts (WEAC sends out similar invitations to school board candidates). The founding principles of the republic established a hierarchy of power. The Creator endowed the individual with rights. Government was a creation of the people, and thus subservient to the citizenry. In layman terms, the people are the true employers of government workers.

The very strong implication of the peoples representative having to interview with government employees flips the hierarchy and the foundations of the country on its head. By submitting to an interview with the government union, a politician puts the government on equal or superior footing with its creator. Liberty cannot exist under such a system.

Secondly through the circle of taxation, government union campaigns are funded by the taxpayers. A good portion of the taxes collected goes toward the wages and benefits of government workers. The government unions like AFSCME and WEAC take a cut out of the paychecks to fill their coffers, which in turn are used in part for political activity that includes candidate support. Naturally, only those candidates that agree with the union position will receive financial aid and an army of volunteers. Remember, we are talking about local elections. In essence, taxpayers are being forced to contribute to their own demise.

Candidates running on the rights of taxpayers and contrary to the positions of government workers find themselves out gunned from the very start. Circling back to the question of how local boards can raise taxes and increase the pay of government workers during these economic times the answer seems rather obvious. Local officials much like their brethren occupying higher offices increasingly hold allegiance to government unions.

Often you hear people say they do not know much about a person running for school board or city government; or that the issues are mundane and not worth the gas to vote. But it is becoming apparent that the most important question in local elections is whose interests will be represented; the taxpayer or the government.

The next time you think local elections are not worth the bother look at your property tax bill and remember that government unions do not consider voting a waste of time or money.

The only question you need to ask a local candidate is whether they will protect your right to private property including income; or are they the bagman for government unions?

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Lieutenant Dan — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:23:18 +0000

Hudsonite’s on America’s Funniest Video TV Show

Mary Eggebraaten and Dan Tjornehoj where both featured on a video shown on America’s Funniest Home Videos (also known as AFV) Sunday night on ABC television.

Click the title to read the story.

Glen Beck on the history of Progressives

Lieutenant Dan — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:15:00 +0000

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Absolutely Anonymous — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:46:45 +0000

One of the provisions of the new health care insurance legislation that has me privately chuckling is the insertion of language to deal with the financing gap, supposedly closing it by relying on the “Cadillac tax.” This new tax is a 40% assessment on insurance plans with premiums of more than $8,500 for singles and $23,000 for families.

Surely, given the Lexus-styled, taxpayer funded, union demanded, cradle to grave idiotic health plan poured onto the already overpaid and under-worked government hacks masquerading as teachers in Hudson that this tax will hit hard.

Then again, all you suckers in the Hudson School District who blindly support the asinine government school monopoly deserve what you will obviously get: a nice bump in your property taxes to pay the 40% assessment.

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Tea Party Bomb – Support Rand Paul

Lieutenant Dan — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:10:20 +0000

Well I just found out that the National Republican Senatorial Committee has formed a joint fundraising committee to support Rand’s Paul’s opponent. Rand Paul is running for Senate in the state of Kentucky. The party bosses are desperate to keep Rand out of the Senate because they know he will fight against the big government, high taxes and out of control spending that they helped create. Rand can win, but he needs your help.

Tomorrow, December 16th, the grassroots are holding a Money Bomb for Rand. This date is of course the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party and the day we made history together by raising $6 million in one day. Please visit www.RandPaul2010.com and consider contributing whatever you are able. Every single contribution will help.

The time to stand up for liberty in NOW!

Click the image above to donate.

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Dr. John Lewis – Charlotte Tea Party

bildanielson — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:18:29 +0000

I suspect there will be more posts regarding Tea Parties, but having personally met Dr. Lewis recently (in Fort Collins, Co at a Young Aristotle Competition) I can personally attest to this man’s incredible intellect for, grasp, and knowledge of history (bio here)…

Transcript of video 1 below, h/t to capmag..

But to do this right, we need to understand what it means. So I want to think back for a moment to what happened over 200 years ago, at the time of the original Boston Tea Party.

The Founders of this nation brought forth a radical idea. It was truly radical, practiced nowhere before this time.

This idea was the Rights of Man. The Founders saw each of us as endowed with certain inalienable rights, rights that may not be separated from our nature as autonomous beings.

These inalienable rights are:

The Right to Life–the right to live your own life, to choose your own goals, and to preserve your own independent existence.

The Right to Liberty, which is the right to act to achieve your goals, without coercion by other men.

The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness, to act to achieve your own success, your own prosperity, and your own happiness, for your own sake.

And the Right to Propertythe right to gain, keep, and enjoy, the material products of your efforts.

Unless Im mistaken I dont see anything here about a right to happiness. I see a right to the pursuit of happiness: the right to take the actions needed to attain ones own happiness. Nor do I see any rights to things at allno rights to food, clothing, healthcare or diapers. There is only a right to act to achieve those things. This is called freedom.

These rights to actthe rights to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happinessare founded on a certain view of man. Each of us is an individual, autonomous, moral being, with the right to choose his own values and capable of directing his own life.

Look at the person next to you, and look in the mirrordo you see the individual sovereign human being, existing for his own sake, with the right to live, to love, and to act?

This ideathe Founders idea of the individual Rights of Manled to a radical view of government. Government was not to be inherited by the force of an entrenched aristocracy as in Europe, imposed by the divine right of kings through generations of oppression, or enforced by the force of a club.

Government in America was to be designed and instituted by thinking men, for a single purpose: to protect and defend the Rights of Man.

This is what the American Declaration of Independence says: To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. Thinking men, armed with the idea of rights, created a government limited to the protection of individual rights.

For centuries in Europe, the relationship between the people and the government had been that of serf to master: everyone was a servant of the ruling elite. In America, this was turned upside down: government became the servant of the individual. The very reason for a government–and its purpose–is to secure our inalienable, individual rights.

The results in America speak for themselves: the greatest most prosperous nation the world has ever seen. I here quote the writer Ayn Rand (and if you want to understand what is happening today, read her novel Atlas Shrugged). Ayn Rand, speaking to the graduating class at West Point, said that the United States was the first and only moral nation in the history of man, the first nation founded on a moral principle, the Rights of Man, and with a moral purpose, to secure these rights for all men.

This principle of rights is so strong that over years the Americans were able to correct the original shortcomings that the Founders could not overcome. Slavery and the denial of womens suffrage both fell when the principle of rights was properly applied to all men. To correct the original errors did not require the Americans to overthrow the principle, but rather to strengthen and to deepen it, to apply it to everyone, and to renew their commitment to it.

And that is what we must do today.

Because something very bad has happened in America over the last century. A cancer has implanted itself in the land of the free. A cancer has grown in our government and in our society. The cancer is the idea that government is no longer to be the defender of our rights, but rather the grantor of wishes.

Over the past century the idea took hold that governments purpose was not to secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but rather to satisfy our needs, whims and wants. That idea has been implanted in our schools, our media, and our government.

Do you wish for a better house? Theres a government housing agency to give it to you, with taxes extorted from those who buy their own house. Do you wish for health care? There is a government agency who will extort it from others and give it to you. Do you need food? There is a welfare agency to grab the wealth needed to give you food stamps.

And who will provide these handouts? The government, many people say, the all-powerful being that looms over us and grants our wishes. But who is to provide the goods that government hands out? Every person who works and produces, and whose property, gained by the sweat of his efforts, is taken from him by force.

The government has, once again, become a ruling aristocracy, set up as our masters, disposing of our lives.

This cancer has now grown to the point where this ruling elite controls a budget of over four thousand billion dollars a yearmore money than can be conceived by the human mind. The government had to grow this bigand it will continue to grow until it destroys this nationbecause it is acting according to the idea that it is morally right to take the wealth from those who produce it, and to give it to those who want it.

At the root of this idea is a view of man that is totally at odds with the vision of the Founders: the modern vision of man as a whining dependent, who begs for the needs of life from an all-powerful governing aristocracy. This ruling elite claims the moral right to distribute the wealth of those who earn it to those who wish for it.

If we are going to challenge this monstrosity, if we are going to expunge this cancer, then this is what we must reject. We need to regain the vision of ourselves held by the American Founders. We need to stand up, and assert ourselves as autonomous moral beings, with the right to our own life, liberty and the pursuit of our own happiness. We need to reject the claim that we are weak and dependent beggars, and to assert our own competence to run our own lives.

It is going to take as great a commitment to destroy this cancer as it took to build it. Were going to have to be strong, were going to have to be independent in our thinking, and we are going to have to reject handouts when they are offered to us. And were going to have to speak out.

At its heart, the economic and political crisis is a deeper problema moral problem. The cause of the crisis today is the worship of need, and the view of man as too stupid to act for his own sake, and worthy of being milked of all his values, to provide for others. This is what we must reject.

Do you think that this is a conspiracy to seize your wealth? It is far worse than that. As Ayn Rand wrote, It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.

This is an attempt to seize your life, to destroy your sense of self as an independent human being, and to replace it with a being with no self-esteem and no capacity for individual actiona being doomed to beg for sustenance from an all-powerful ruling elite.

This ruling elite, looking down on us right now, cannot understand gatherings such as these, in which free people gather to defend liberty. They think that this must be orchestrated by a vast conspiracy, because they cannot understand how autonomous human beings might gather by their own choice, to affirm their commitment to liberty.

Our so-called leaders think this because they dont see autonomous moral beings at all. They see only serfs, sniveling and whining, begging their masters for the scraps needed to survive, acting as a collective mob rather than as thinking individuals.

Look at yourselves again. Do you see in your face, and in the face of the person next to you, the slave of a group, with no moral status, no rights and no liberties, who is bound from birth to serve? Or do you see an autonomous being with the right to live for his own sake?

Will you knuckle under and become a helpless dependent? Or will you stand tall, and defend your right to your own life, your own liberty, your pursuit of your own individual happiness, and your own property?

It is time to stand up, to say no to the creed of dependence, to assert ourselves, to assert our own moral status, to defend our right to our own lives and property, and to make our voices heard.

Thank you very much.

John David Lewis

Carnac on Lunatic Lefties

Luke — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:25:22 +0000

.. apoplectic

What do the lunatic lefties become when a few citizens voice their opposition to an oppressive federal government? These same lefties have no problem when urine bombs are launched at convention goers during the Republican convention, but go bonkers when conservatives hold peaceful rallies across the country. Just goes to show the absolute hypocrisy of the left.

Hudson Tea Party set for April 15th

Curt Weese — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:26:21 +0000

Kudos to my neighbors Stan & Mary Wekkin for organizing a Tea Party rally in North Hudson next Wednesday. The rally is set to take place at Mudds & Sudds from 4-6 p.m.

“This is our opportunity to remind the government that they work for us; we pay their salaries.” said Stan Wekkin

“Many of us have learned the hard way that debt catches up to you. When will our elected officials understand that?” asked Mary Wekkin

All area residents are invited to participate. The Wekkins have stated that this is a non-partisan event and if you are inclined to bring a sign please respect their wishes and make the sign non-partisan reflecting your feelings about taxes, spending and debt.

Future Tea Party rallies are being scheduled for Independence Day, Labor Day and Election Day.

Mr. Jefferson

Chris — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:32:45 +0000

Gov. Doyle Seeks to Triple Background Check Fee!

Citizen Joe — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:01:42 +0000

Please Contact Your Legislators Immediately!

In a disturbing move aimed at making gun ownership even more difficult and costly in the Badger State, Governor Jim Doyles (D) budget bill would raise the background check fee on handguns from $8 to $30. Governor Doyle is insisting that gun owners pay over three times more for a background check before they can exercise their Second Amendment rights.

Please respectfully urge your state legislators to oppose Governor Doyles unfair and unjust gun tax. Your State Senator can be reached by phone at (608) 266-2517. You can reach your State Representative at (608) 266-1501. To identify your legislators and to find more contact information, please click here.

We also encourage you to attend hearings on the budget by the Joint Finance Committee and express your opposition to any increase in the background check fee. There are two hearings scheduled for this week and three more scheduled for next week:

Wednesday, March 25 (10am to 4pm)
State Fair Park
Tommy G. Thompson Youth Center
Banquet Room #2
640 S. 84th Street
West Allis, WI 53214

Friday, March 27 (10am to 4pm)
University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire
Haas Fine Arts Center
Gantner Concert Hall
121 Water Street
Eau Claire, WI 54703

Monday, March 30 (10am to 4pm)
J.I. Case High School
Theater
7345 Washington Ave
Racine, WI 53406

Wednesday, April 1 (10am to 4pm)
Lawrence University
Stansbury Theater (Music Drama Center)
420 E. College Ave
Appleton, WI 54911

Friday, April 3 (10am to 4pm)
Amundson Community Center
Cambridge Municipal Building
200 Spring Street
Cambridge, WI 5352

Tax Protesting

Chris — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:26:04 +0000

2008 Worst Waste of the Year

Chris — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 12:37:14 +0000

Senator Tom Coburn has a list of this years most outrageous federal spending.

As part of my commitment to oversee how federal agencies in Washington, D.C. spend your money, I am releasing a series of oversight reports on federal spending. My hope is that this effort will assist federal agencies and those of us in Congress overseeing their budgets to rein in wasteful spending and to demand measurable results before asking taxpayers to send more of their money to the federal government.

I also hope federal agencies and congressional committees alike will welcome these oversight reports and join the effort to identify additional areas of waste, mismanagement, fraud, and abuse. If we work together, we can find better ways to prioritize our nations limited financial resources.

With billions of taxpayer dollars spent on low-priority and questionable projects, 2008 was a banner year for wasteful Washington spending. In a time when the government is spending huge sums to address a struggling economy, Congress needs to ensure efficient use of our own resources before turning to taxpayers and asking for more. No one who pays taxes likes to see the government waste resources. I believe the American taxpayer deserves better.

As President Lincoln said, we are a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and to uphold that principle, we need your help. As part of an ongoing effort to shine light on the federal government, I encourage anyone with examples of government waste, mismanagement, fraud, or abuse to share those with me.

Senator Tom Coburn
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services
and International Security
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

PDF Link Here

Early Indoctrination

Chris — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:45:16 +0000

(CNSNews.com) Children as young as three years old should be in public pre-school programs, according to Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nations largest teachers union.

The AFT would love to see children from age three on attending these programs, Weingarten told CNSNews.com last week during a teleconference about preschool curricula. The research is completely conclusive of the issue that our brains develop faster between birth and five years old than they do pretty much at any other time.

Well we saw this coming a mile away. On top of having to train and license these new ~~babysitters~~ teachers we get to increase spending 8-10% higher. And our new social~~ist~~ class will get the ~~government~~ taxpayers to pay the tab and our children can learn about ~~religion~~ environmentalism, ~~democracy~~ socialism, and sex education at a much younger age.

See Teachers Union Chief Pushes Preschool for Three-Year-Olds

Government and Games

Chris — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:10:53 +0000

New Hampshire charged the federal government $67,000 for upgrades to a mobile command van that is in storage. Upgrades included a $5,800 television, a $1,200 satellite television antenna, and a $16,000 satellite television subscription that includes the Game Show Network and the Travel Channel.

A state official yesterday defended $67,000 worth of upgrades to a mobile command van built for sobriety checkpoints, saying that a $5,800 television, a $17,000 heat-seeking camera and a $16,000 satellite television contract were all valid additions.

See Police van carries $16,000 TV contract

On the BorderLine » Taxes

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