1 reason to like Thomas Friedman
Oct. 11th, 2008 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unusualmusic_lj_archiveWhat? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Now by all means spend our money wisely: no military adventuring in countries that haven't attacked us, for instance. Actually pave our fucking roads and fix our schools and pay down on the national debt, to continue. But don't tell me that corporations and rich people can get handout after fucking handout from the American gov't and then repay us by parking their money into offshore accounts. Hello, roads and laws and enforcement of contracts, and police and tax-breaks galore and subsidies and the list goes on and fucking on! Hell YES, we all benefit. SO FUCKING WELL PAY YOUR TAXES.
It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.
Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”
Now by all means spend our money wisely: no military adventuring in countries that haven't attacked us, for instance. Actually pave our fucking roads and fix our schools and pay down on the national debt, to continue. But don't tell me that corporations and rich people can get handout after fucking handout from the American gov't and then repay us by parking their money into offshore accounts. Hello, roads and laws and enforcement of contracts, and police and tax-breaks galore and subsidies and the list goes on and fucking on! Hell YES, we all benefit. SO FUCKING WELL PAY YOUR TAXES.
