Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has announced he will challenge former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk for the right to run against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in the June recall elections.
Mr. Barrett says he will put an end to the “civil war” that Governor Walker started in this state. That’s funny stuff. There is indeed a civil war being waged, but it is not confined to the state of Wisconsin, and it did not begin when Governor Walker was sworn in. He was sworn in after one of its battles was won; he is one of victory’s spoils.
Our second civil war is national, state, and local – it is the struggle between the taxpayers and the tax-eaters; it is the state and its wards versus the people who create the wealth and pay the bills. It may look like the usual Democrat/Republican scrum to those who can’t see beyond; but those brands merely attached themselves to the side they hope will prevail.
Most taxpayers struggle to pay for food, mortgages, health care, automobiles, energy, college tuition, and taxes for their own families. Few of us have the means to buy those things for someone else’s families, too; even fewer of us have any real desire to do so, except in cases of extreme hardship. Hardship is in the eye of the beholder.
A recent report from Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction says that 42% of Wisconsin children now receive some form of school lunch subsidy – a number which has grown steadily for eight years. While the purpose of the report was to demand more funding for education, it only convinced me we should do away with school lunch.
When families with incomes nearly double the poverty line will not feed their own children, that is not a poverty problem, it is a priority problem. A half century of government lunches in government schools has turned a few hungry kids who can’t learn into a lot of fat kids who won’t. That is only progress to a Progressive.
And it’s not just school lunch subsidies. 47% of Americans pay no income tax. Over 50% of Americans receive government-funded health care. Government-guaranteed student loans have more then doubled in the last decade. We have provided mortgage subsidies, car-buying subsidies, train subsidies, energy subsidies, training subsidies, and a list of corporate subsidies a mile long.
We have hit the wall. A shrinking base of taxpayers has had enough of doing the heavy lifting for an increasingly ungrateful segment of society obsessed with taking an even bigger share of our incomes in order to obtain through state confiscation the things they refuse to purchase for themselves.
That is not a hateful thing to say; it is merely an observation that anyone can make for themselves any day of the week. If a kid with the latest fashions and hottest sneakers listening to his iPod while gaming over the internet doesn’t have a sandwich, the guilt trip should not be laid at some other working family because they didn’t pay enough tax.
And don’t think for a minute that all tax-eaters are poor people or kids; most beneficiaries of government wealth transfers are the already wealthy. As economist Robert Reich has pointed out, the beneficiaries of President Obama’s “recovery” are the very 1% he claims to be fighting against. Meet the new boss…
So please, Mr. Barrett, tell us how you propose to end this civil war?
Will you tell the tax-eaters they must live within their means and pay their fair share? Or will you tell the taxpayers to be grateful you have left us with any of what we earned? A war ends when one side wins and the other side surrenders – which America do you think is ready to throw in the towel because you have decided it’s time?
I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet; this is a nation worth saving. I don’t agree with Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan for the country or Governor Walker’s budget plan for Wisconsin – neither goes nearly far enough – but I do commend them both for having the courage to stand firm and have it out now with those who would rather just keep governing stupid until the day of reckoning is too awful to face.
The President’s tax-the-rich plan will raise only 15% of the amount needed to close the deficit projected over the next decade. We will still have to double the tax on all other taxpayers just to fund the government we have now, to say nothing of any new programs, additional benefits, or increasing the number of kids on school lunch subsidies. Not-your-plan is not a plan.
This is not about Mayor Barrett, or Governor Walker, or President Obama. This is about you. This is about your liberty, your family, your prosperity, your future. Our civil war needs to be won – not with bullets and blood, but with ballots and blogs. And it needs to be fought now, while we can still talk with each other, not later, when desperation moves people to violence.
No one ever thought they would be killing each other in Greece, either. That’s where we are headed if we do not stop pretending that the same socialism that failed everywhere else in the world will somehow work here. It hasn’t, and it won’t.
“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D. Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!
Mr. Barrett says he will put an end to the “civil war” that Governor Walker started in this state. That’s funny stuff. There is indeed a civil war being waged, but it is not confined to the state of Wisconsin, and it did not begin when Governor Walker was sworn in. He was sworn in after one of its battles was won; he is one of victory’s spoils.
Our second civil war is national, state, and local – it is the struggle between the taxpayers and the tax-eaters; it is the state and its wards versus the people who create the wealth and pay the bills. It may look like the usual Democrat/Republican scrum to those who can’t see beyond; but those brands merely attached themselves to the side they hope will prevail.
Most taxpayers struggle to pay for food, mortgages, health care, automobiles, energy, college tuition, and taxes for their own families. Few of us have the means to buy those things for someone else’s families, too; even fewer of us have any real desire to do so, except in cases of extreme hardship. Hardship is in the eye of the beholder.
A recent report from Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction says that 42% of Wisconsin children now receive some form of school lunch subsidy – a number which has grown steadily for eight years. While the purpose of the report was to demand more funding for education, it only convinced me we should do away with school lunch.
When families with incomes nearly double the poverty line will not feed their own children, that is not a poverty problem, it is a priority problem. A half century of government lunches in government schools has turned a few hungry kids who can’t learn into a lot of fat kids who won’t. That is only progress to a Progressive.
And it’s not just school lunch subsidies. 47% of Americans pay no income tax. Over 50% of Americans receive government-funded health care. Government-guaranteed student loans have more then doubled in the last decade. We have provided mortgage subsidies, car-buying subsidies, train subsidies, energy subsidies, training subsidies, and a list of corporate subsidies a mile long.
We have hit the wall. A shrinking base of taxpayers has had enough of doing the heavy lifting for an increasingly ungrateful segment of society obsessed with taking an even bigger share of our incomes in order to obtain through state confiscation the things they refuse to purchase for themselves.
That is not a hateful thing to say; it is merely an observation that anyone can make for themselves any day of the week. If a kid with the latest fashions and hottest sneakers listening to his iPod while gaming over the internet doesn’t have a sandwich, the guilt trip should not be laid at some other working family because they didn’t pay enough tax.
And don’t think for a minute that all tax-eaters are poor people or kids; most beneficiaries of government wealth transfers are the already wealthy. As economist Robert Reich has pointed out, the beneficiaries of President Obama’s “recovery” are the very 1% he claims to be fighting against. Meet the new boss…
So please, Mr. Barrett, tell us how you propose to end this civil war?
Will you tell the tax-eaters they must live within their means and pay their fair share? Or will you tell the taxpayers to be grateful you have left us with any of what we earned? A war ends when one side wins and the other side surrenders – which America do you think is ready to throw in the towel because you have decided it’s time?
I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet; this is a nation worth saving. I don’t agree with Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan for the country or Governor Walker’s budget plan for Wisconsin – neither goes nearly far enough – but I do commend them both for having the courage to stand firm and have it out now with those who would rather just keep governing stupid until the day of reckoning is too awful to face.
The President’s tax-the-rich plan will raise only 15% of the amount needed to close the deficit projected over the next decade. We will still have to double the tax on all other taxpayers just to fund the government we have now, to say nothing of any new programs, additional benefits, or increasing the number of kids on school lunch subsidies. Not-your-plan is not a plan.
This is not about Mayor Barrett, or Governor Walker, or President Obama. This is about you. This is about your liberty, your family, your prosperity, your future. Our civil war needs to be won – not with bullets and blood, but with ballots and blogs. And it needs to be fought now, while we can still talk with each other, not later, when desperation moves people to violence.
No one ever thought they would be killing each other in Greece, either. That’s where we are headed if we do not stop pretending that the same socialism that failed everywhere else in the world will somehow work here. It hasn’t, and it won’t.
“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D. Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!
