The World According to Oatney

The great Democrat lie

When State Representative Stacey Campfield first proposed that the State of Tennessee enact a tax on offline pornographic items (a luxury), some folks on the left hollered that the State should "leave my stash alone." Under Campfield's proposal, the State wouldn't harm your stash, it would tax it. No one is forcing you to buy pornography, if you do it under your own power, that is entirely your choice-a choice you have the right to make, but one that you don't have to make. Debbie Does Dallas is not a necessity.

When I go to one of the package stores in Morristown and buy a bottle of my favorite whisky, the State taxes that purchase on double levels and, if it is one of Tennessee's two major legal whisky distilleries, triple, counting the feds (A tax on the bonded whisky paid to the feds, a State tax the liquor store owner must pay, then the extra tax of the consumer). I do not have a problem with it. Taxes on alcohol, like the taxes on tobacco or the proposed porn tax, are purely voluntary. If you don't want to pay the tax, you really do not need to buy the taxed material.

There are two things, however, that every Tennessean must do: They must eat to live, and they must earn a living to eat with. These things are not voluntary at all, they are necessary for life itself. I am opposed to implementing a State income tax because it taxes a person's living and is always graduated and progressive. On paper, that sounds great to the well-meaning liberal who wants to "soak the rich," but what it really does is to prevent the person of modest means from moving up the economic ladder-the graduated income tax wreaks havoc on the middle class, and because of payroll withholding, many do not even realize it. Those who go from lesser means to greater are penalized for success. This flatly discourages succeeding.

As the late Al Smith once said (Democrats listen up, he was one of you), "any proposal either to 'soak the rich' or 'soak the poor' is not in the spirit of America." In Tennessee, there are those who would like to do both, and there are those content with the current approach, which does the latter in an equally sinister way.

Governor Phil Bredesen says he is unwilling to do away with the grocery tax, a move that would save a working family in Tennessee $153 a year (at least), because he wants to "focus on more important areas." Numerous tax swaps have been proposed to replace much of the lost revenue, but Bredesen is amenable to none of them.

Let us be straight here, these Democratic politicians at both the State and federal level who either want to tax us at an already oppressive rate or raise taxes on necessities even higher, how many of these people are hurt by the taxes they implement on the rest of us? They go home at night to their multi-room house in their fancy rich subdivision and they can afford to pay taxes through the roof, they enjoy the great wealth that they pretend to abhor. All they are, of course, are hypocrits who use class envy as an excuse to tax success, or "the future" (which they will subsequently squander) as an excuse to tax the struggling. Meanwhile, they themselves pay the taxes they inflict on us without a thought-they aren't hurting, so surely the rest of us are not, either.

It is the Great Liberal Lie.

These people say they look out for the working man, all the while they tax him for the food he eats, at the federal level they tax the living he earns, and they tax it with wreckless abandon should he (or she) begin to do a little better for him or herself. Pretending to be concerned with the future, these elitists proceed to find new ways to penalize growth and hurt those just trying to make it in life, all while pretending to be doing this in the name of the so-called less fortunate.

Governor Bredesen tells us that we are 48th in the nation in tax revenue so we do not need anymore tax relief. Governor, why don't you tell that to the working family who is above the below and below the upper and trying to make something of their life? The only reason we are 48th in taxation is because (thankfully) certain people in this State who would like to tax your living on top of what the federal swine do haven't figured out how to sell that to the sensible people of this State. If they ever do, the only thing the State of Tennessee would not tax is the air you breathe.

Taxes on smokes are voluntary, taxes on porn are voluntary, taxes on liquor are voluntary, taxes on casinos are voluntary. The need to eat is not.

Our pompous, snobbish, elitist Governor who speaks out of his nose would like to tell working Tennesseans that in the name of education he will tax their supper tonight. He rejects tax swaps because he apparently thinks Tennesseans are too dumb to understand the difference between voluntary and involuntary taxation.

We's sorry Guvnah, we just po' mountain fokes suh.

Don't believe the lie anymore-it is a dirty deception based on a filthy pervasive elitism. Such elitists exist in both parties, it is true (Corker, Frist, et al.) but my experience has been that the Democrat elitists are by far the worst-their "concern" least among us is so phony and soft you could cut it with a butter knife. And Bredesen-his only concern is for his own legacy-the rest of us be damned.

Labels: Tennessee politics

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 10:00 AM