And you know what I got for my fucking trouble? A endless amount of nonsense about the Unitary Executive Theory and the righteousness of George W. Bush. Most of those people would describe themselves as Tea Partiers today, and not readily admitting to knowing who Bush even was, let alone ever having supported him so throatily.
Then there's the Citizens United decision, which I've always had a mighty bug up my ass about.
I'm on the record as having said that political activity should get no preferential treatment under the tax code, from deducting lobbying costs right on down to deducting political contributions from your taxes. Shit, I don't even support the charitable deductions for charities that actually accomplish something other than shitty commercials.
If you're interested in knowing why, I'll tell you.
The more deductions you allow in the tax code, the higher the rates have to be to generate the revenue the government needs to operate. And if you want a government with the capability of both providing accessable health care to everyone and being prepared to bomb everyone from Jakarta to Winnipeg, we're talking about a fair bit of revenue.
Advocates of a flat tax have never been able to answer that basic fact. The more you deduct for yourself, the more everyone pays in higher rates. And this is what made the Ryan-Romney tax proposals last year such a bad fucking joke to anyone with a basic grasp of arithmetic.
My personal hero, Velociman, has one of the most misguided things I've ever seen up here.
A Redress of GrievancesThere are any number of factual errors in those paragraphs, not least of which is that the Tea Party isn't almost wholly constituted by mutants.
That was, and is, the crime of the Tea Party groups. They are loose, and unaffiliated. When anyone attempts to wrest control of the Tea Parties at any level above the community they are whipsawed, and lashed.
That was the fearful thing. That is what keeps Obama awake at night. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of assembly and the right to redress grievances not as a sop of government, but as a natural right of man. From God, if you will. The Tea Parties were actually fomenting during the Bush bailout leading up to the 2008 election. They have never been specifically anti-Obama. Merely anti-spending. And yet they have been targeted and reviled as mutants, and racists.
Firstly, nothing calling itself the "Party Party" existed before Rick Santelli's retarded rant of February 2009, and that addressed relief to underwater homeowners under the thumb of the cocksucker banks, who themselves were just bailed out. And that Santelli said this from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade went almost completed unnoticed by everyone that isn't me.
Second, it's almost impossible to know if Tea Party groups are "loose, and unaffiliated" in light of Citizens United, which restricted disclosure of their donor base.
Thirdly, this isn't about a redress of grievances or even the First Amendment.
Let me repeat that. This isn't about a redress of grievances or even the First Amendment. The Obama administration never shut down the right of Tea Party groups to speak and, if they tried, they did a godawful job of it, since I couldn't escape those mutants last year.
It's actually about administrative tax law.
The Tea Parties weren't asserting a right, they were seeking a favour from the government in the form of non-profit tax status. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of the right to tax-exempt status for anyone but Indians in the Constitution. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either ignorant of lying.
My ultimate problem with these shithead Republicans is that they want other taxpayers to subsidize the cost of their bitching about how taxes are so high. Their right to free speech isn't inhibited as much their ability to get other people to pay for it is, so fuck them.
Now, do I think that that the administration specifically targeted conservative groups through the IRS? Sure I do.
Is that "Watergate," like so many idiots suggest it is? No, it is not.
President Nixon specifically targeted individuals for IRS harassment, just as Johnson and Kennedy did before him. The difference is that they weren't organized groups seeking deductions in a post-Citizens United world, which begs such scrutiny. Nixon went after individual members of groups, journalists and sundry political enemies, which is a clear abuse of power and something no one has accused Obama of.
Then there's the recent NSA scandal, to which I ask ...... What did you think was going to happen?
Most of you will remember that I went apeshit when I first heard about the Bush NSA program that was implemented in secret, without congressional authorization, after 9/11. I went on about it for years, actually.
But the people who were fine with it then - and in some cases demanded the prosecution of journalists that reported on it - are out of their tiny pinheads about it now. Of course, these are almost universally the same twats that want a secret war in Syria, so go figure.
However there are a couple of important distinctions.
First, Obama sought a FISA warrant for the records, which Bush never did, and Republicans insisted that he didn't have to under Unitary Executive Theory, the Authorization to Use Military Force Resolution of 2001 and the "Because ....Lincoln!" argument that they deploy whenever it fucking suits them.
Second, the GOP voted to change the law to to allow for exactly what Obama is doing today. Something I would advocate impeaching Obama for, Republicans legitimized way back when.
And that goes back to the tax case. Do you want to pay higher tax rates just because shiityy people with dishonest thinking don't wantto pay any at all?
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