Tax Day

First of all, I am happy to see a tradition that has been carried on by the Libertarian Party activists for thirty-three years has finally caught on. The "Tea Parties" that are being organized across the nation today, are proof that people are finally waking up to the fact that We The People have been under an Elitist yoke since the beginning of the twentieth century. It is time for us to take our government back. What follows here is my personal protest message:

Dear Mr President and Congress:

Yes, you can put me in a box, but I would rather you didn't. I do not fit into a box. I have my own wants and needs, and I do not believe what is good for me is good for everybody else, nor do I believe that what is right for everybody else is necessarily right for me.

Yes, you can make the people dependent on the government, but I would rather you didn't. A government can only do so much for its people before it becomes a tyranny.

Yes, you can "help" the poor, but I would rather you didn't. I make less than $10,000 a year, so I may be considered one of the "poor" you are trying to "help." So far, to help me, you have imposed an excise tax that has bullied me into giving up one of the few comforts I had left. I realize that smoking tobacco is not good for me, but it should be my decision to quit, not the government's. Hot dogs aren't good for me either, nor is sugar, margarine, or coffee, but it is my choice as to how much of that I consume, or stop consuming, not the government's.

Yes, I receive food stamps, and I am grateful for that, in my time of need, but I feel I have earned that after paying taxes for nearly forty years. However, the most effective way of helping the "poor" is through local charitable organizations, and you are trying to take that away by eliminating tax deductions for charitable gifts.
Since you try to justify government sponsored population reduction with the explanation "The fewer of them (the poor) there are, the less money it will cost us in the long run," I do not feel the government is looking out for my best interests.

Yes, you can limit available jobs by requiring outrageous wages, but I would rather you didn't. Your "economic recovery package" to the states requires that contractors to your infrastructure projects pay a minimum wage of union scale reduces the number of jobs you could have created by 1/3. Your stimulus package does not create more jobs, it creates fewer jobs.

Yes, you can impose a government "of the government, by the government, and of the government," but I would rather you didn't. A government that does not trust the people can not be trusted. A government that imposes it's idea of what is right for all is a government that tries to control every aspect of our individual lives. No government that governs for the sake of governing is a friend of the people.

Yes, you can give our money to dictators who will use it to build more prisons to silence its dissidents, but I would rather you didn't. That practice has been proven, time after time, to create enemies from the people who are being oppressed.

Yes, you can try to silence me, but I will not be silenced. You have spoken your piece, and I will speak mine. The First Amendment gives me that right.

Yes, you can, but so can We The People.

The Job Nazis Strike Again

The people who are against Wal-Mart are not for the working class. They are elitists who don't care if you have or need a job. All you have to do is ask any organizer of an anti-Wal-Mart movement in any municipality, and he or she would tell you that "it is better not to have a job at all than to work at Wal-Mart." Part of what they are saying is on behalf of the labor unions, but much of what they are saying is that if you don't have a six-figure income, you're not welcome in, for example, Chalene, Washington.
"Chalene is a beautiful city...you don't want to mess it up by putting a Wal-Mart there," a spokesman for stopwalmart.org recently said on Fox News' Your World With Neil Cavuto.
Note that this spokesperson isn't from Chalene--the people of Chalene want the Wal-Mart. The building has been built, the shelves have been stocked, and the employees, two-hundred of them, have been hired. The argument that Wal-Mart takes away other jobs is moot in Chalene, because the apple industry there is failing, and not as many people are being hired to work for the apple growers. The people who were hired by Wal-Mart needed those jobs.
But the Stop Wal-Mart people, whether they represent the unions, the International Communist Party, Target, Kreske, or their own agenda, succeeded in halting the opening of the store through a court order, claiming that the building permit was never legally issued. They don't want those people to have jobs. They use catch phrases such as "globalization," "worker abuse," and "unfair wages," in their argument against Wal-Mart.
But the people who work for Wal-Mart don't feel abused, or poorly paid. They want the job, and they work at the job. In order to be oppressed, you have to feel oppressed. The average wage for the Wal-Mart employee is eleven dollars an hour, about the same as the starting wage for a union retailer such as Safeway or City Market, which, after union dues comes out to about nine dollars an hour--the same as the starting wage for the Wal-Mart employee. Union workers somehow don't feel oppressed either.
Wal-Mart doesn't sell automobiles, which come from the type of manufacturing jobs the anti-Wal-Mart people claim Wal-Mart is putting out of business, or sending oversees. Workers in the United States do not get the twenty five dollars an hour making toys, clothing, or electronic equipment. However, the workers who are "victims of globalization" in other countries find themselves making far above the average wages in their respective countries in jobs which manufacture merchandise for Wal-Mart. Even without Wal-Mart, manufacturing plant employees in the United States would still average about ten dollars an hour. Nobody is taking away their jobs.
If it wasn't Wal-Mart, it would be Target, Circuit City, or Best Buy. The anti-Wal-Mart folks don't care who they attack, as long as it is Capitalist. They are largely people who don't really care about the worker, rather they are people seeking power, who feel as though they are doing something important for themselves, to get their name in the news, and to receive large sums of money from competitors, unions, and politicians.
These people could be compared to the dictators of the world--Qadafi, Saddam, Mubarak, Chavez, Jong Il,and the like. If you don't do things their way you don't get to do it at all. The dictator wants the people to meet the approval of the dictator, as opposed to a free society in which the government has to meet the approval of the people. Likewise, according to the unions, if you don't contribute part of your pay to the six and seven figure incomes of the national level union leaders and representatives, you don't deserve to work.