REMEMBER: These Are The TWO Things That Drive Every Political Leader
Way back in 1933 the government had a critical choice to make, whether to tax consumption or income. You know which one they chose, and it’s become a statistical nightmare with loopholes and exemptions all over the place.
The IRS is probably as powerful an agency as this country has and has been demonstrated, answers to no one. No one is punished. No one gets fired. No one gets jailed…but, let an ordinary citizen forget something on his or her taxes and they will hound you to death…literally.
Which would you rather have…a tax program, with no exemptions, that is easily read because it’s only one hundred thirty-five pages (THE FAIR TAX) or the present IRS rules and regulations which are over sixty THOUSAND pages and have so many loopholes and exemptions it looks like Swiss cheese? Even the people that work at the IRS don’t fully understand everything in the manual…and anyone that says they do is a liar.
Recently, and for the next few months, the media will be showing and telling all about the various candidates. What puzzles me is that during the campaigns, they are all about savaging one another, with the possible exception of Dr. Ben Carson. He seems to maintain a genteel veneer about himself, and while that may be good in the campaigning, it might not be so good if he becomes the nominee or even the President.
Now then, once having been selected as the nominee for their particular party, and having been dishing out the mud on their opponents, how does the person then pick a vice president to run on the ticket? Something illogical about that, it seems, but then there’s a lot that is illogical about politics.
Greed plays a huge part in politics, and anyone that tells you differently is either a liar or stupid…or both. Did you ever try washing one hand without using the other? That’s the way Washington politics works, one hand washes the other, and translating that it means that you vote for my unnecessary program and I’ll vote for yours. Our government has grown so large and cumbersome that there are agencies and departments duplicating and sometimes triplicating the efforts of another department or agency…with the result that nothing worthwhile gets done without a lot of time passing. Someone once said that Congress is a lot like an elephant giving birth…it generally takes about two years, there’s a lot of grunting, pushing, and shoving and eventually something pops out. That something may not even remotely resemble the original bill, because of all the added riders attached to it. Why can’t Congress have stand-alone bills?
“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”…that from Mohandas K. Mahatma Gandhi. Ghandi was one of the great people of the 20th Century, epitomizing the power of non-violence and logic. Very few people before or since have shown me the same sort of wisdom because their love of power overwhelms everything else, and when that love of power spreads to their disciples it usually wreaks havoc on the rest of the planet. There are many such lovers of power, perhaps starting with Attila the Hun, all the way through to the present. Each of these power-seeking people left devastation in their wake, not caring about anything except to get to the next town, or country.
It has been said “Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own.”, that from Beth Revis, author of Across The Universe. It would seem that power can be a good thing, or a bad thing, and there are very few instances in which it has been a good thing, believe me.
One of the few instances, I believe, in which power has been good is in looking back at the old world British Empire. It was scattered throughout the world and the saying was that the sun never set on the British Empire. Wherever the British Empire was, for better or for worse, they brought lasting elements to the country. Among those elements would be the law, the language and patriotism. India and Pakistan would probably not be as advanced as they are, had it not been for Britain. Canada and Australia would be wilder than they are now, and great sections of those countries would probably never have been settled were it not for the Brits. If you travel to any of the former British Empire countries you can be reasonably assured that you will find someone that speaks English, albeit with an accent native to that country.
America, as far as I know, has never been a country that conquers and keeps. We bested Spain, Cuba, England, Germany, Japan, Italy and probably others as well, but we never kept them as spoils of war. In fact, we’ve been most generous with them, with the exception of Cuba, and helped them get back on their feet and become not just prosperous, but real economic competitors. Any other country that does that? None that I know of.
Larry Usoff, US Navy Retired; amafrog@att.net; http://larryusoffusn.blogspot.com/
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