Taxes and Liberal Entitlements

I feel sorry for my accountant. Not my tax accountant, nor my tax atty. who is an accountant too. I feel sorry for my in-house accountant, she is a CPA, a vital part of our operation, sorting through the bullshit of agency entitlements; those agencies who write to seek reports and fillings and double checking and other, for state, fed and municipal revenues gone soft.

I was sitting in our board room yesterday, looking out the glass walls that we the folks at Pfoodman built, watching her having a conversation with our CFO. This while drumming up new business with a client. I saw the look, it was one of those that I see on her face when she opens a piece of mail from some official agency, some state and/or federal office requiring information about a tax or a clarification on a tax that we either owe or owed, or will owe. Sometimes we have to send it to outside accounting, for a fee, and maybe to legal, for a fee. Just to determine our exposure.

It is the same look that I have on my face when I sit and write this. With a bit of a shake of the head, pursed lips, a "one of these days" beaten down kind of look. A roll of the eyes, a looking down to the floor, a lowering of the shoulders, a vision of selling tye dye t-shirts out of a vanagon with a beadbeard, private Idaho, cash is king demure.

How did we get here? I honestly think there are a ton of people out there who think it is really OK to have things this way. I assume they either work for the man and believe things are progressing wonderfully with the recovery, or they are just plain stupid, uninformed, and seek the same self indulgent entitlements that the fed does. They are Socialists.

"The Government will work it out", they'll chant. These are the folks who are on the receiving end, some sort of assistance and/or work made available because of government spending or programs. Hey, I am sorry for the way things are, but don't you want to make a difference and try and fix this stuff? It is doable, don't you know this? Don't you want to have a little more control over how your money is spent?---someday---how bout your kids? How is it that we so readily conform to socialism, these early stages, these incremental positioning of things that combine to take our freedoms away? We are paying the government to do this.

You know, I am not even sure that there is a plan to do it, not at all an overall agenda, just an ongoing knee jerk reaction to the evolution of bad decision making, indulgent decision making, from the cronies in office. It is crisis management on top of political influence and posturing gone bad, the way our government is managed, this with an effort on both sides of our political system to keep things the same.

While the fed, those elected officials who play the game so well, go about improving all of our lives by tossing money at infrastructure and programs for the unemployed, the entrepreneurs get a heavy dose of tax review; overview and scrutiny from agencies with declining revenues.

There is and has been a need to amp up the search for funds, the sustainability of the government. Because they spend to increase the condition of the poor by taxing the rich, or much better said, those who are not poor.

Who really thinks our current system is adequate? Who would vote for more taxes, really? Have you ever thought about how we have gotten to the point where we work the first 125 days of the year for the government; the programs that are so important and readily available to us?--(not including health care and energy costs of course). Yes, the first 125 days of the year, the dollars that those days earnings represent, goes to the government to pay for their spending, and, as history proves, eventually more taxes upon our community to (theoretically) repay the dept caused by the spending.

Folks, the dept never goes away, because the current political system keeps things from improving, more gridlock, more influence, more grabbing at entitlements, officials navigating the same game, the same old thing. Remember, the fed and those who work in Washington, they like the game. Under pressure from constituents who have their hand out, those who use large sums of money go to campaigns to gain influence, the passing of laws for more taxes, the fleecing of our country.

I find it funny how some folks think they should use the fed as an agent to take more money from "we the people who provide jobs", we the Business and Entrepreneurial Party of America (BEPA). I made that up...

Here is a letter to the editor of the New York Times...

To the Editor:

In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama with an audacity of hope that he’d change Bush-era policies that had had a devastating economic effect on this country.

There is no economic or ethical reason to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Nor is there any political justification for them.

If President Obama plans to extend Bush tax policies even temporarily, I’ll actively search for another president to represent me in 2012. I didn’t vote for Mr. Obama to give a third term to George W. Bush.

Rich Orloff
New York, Dec. 6, 2010

First, the devastating economic effect on this country was caused by both parties, the system, a plucking of a thread, one at a time from the fabric of our safety net of good decision making, the same government who was supposed to be keeping us safe from risk lending and securities fraud.

Yes Rich, you pretty well sum up the whole thing here. Entitlement usually has its disappointments. Nobody should owe you anything unless you sold them something, a commodity or a service, or an idea for a fee. You should have to work for it, build it, market it, sell it. And if you do this sort of thing, over and over, you will prosper, and you would quickly realize that your efforts are what puts money back in the system, creating more jobs and less need for our government to disappoint you.

Now go and march on something.