If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, there is no way it can be an eagle.
This is the way I feel about many politicians. They do not tell the truth. They think that we are not aware of what they are actually saying. Abe Lincoln once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
A case in point. Most people agree that approximately 40% of the people in the US do not pay any income tax. However, one of the candidates of the two major parties says that 95% of the people in the US will receive a “tax refund” if he is elected President.
I may have missed something in my study of economics and business in college but there is NO WAY a tax refund can be given to a person who did not pay any taxes. The payment might be called welfare, a government give away or even that catchword of many–a redistribution of wealth, but it is not a Tax Refund.
i wish that those who seek elected office at all levels would tell us what they believe and what their plans are in plain simple terms and not try to change a duck into an eagle.
Lincoln was right that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but it sure appears to me that the percentage of those who can be fooled all the time is growing. This concern that I have is that more of our citizens are either uninformed or don’t care. They may wake up one day expecting to soar like an eagle and realize that they have to be a duck–calm and serene on the top of the water but paddling like hell beneath the water to escape the predators that are constantly after them.
Pookie
10-19-08
October 20, 2008 at 12:13 am
Most of people in this country pay more tax than income taxes. Forty-five states have at least a statewide sales tax. Some of those states that don’t have a statewide tax have a local sales tax. While there may be a small portion of people who don’t get subject to any kind of sales tax, to say that 40 percent of the people can’t receive a tax refund ignores the other tax burdens they face.
October 22, 2008 at 3:26 am
Point well taken. However, I thought the Earned Income Tax Credit originally enacted in 1975 was suppose to cover the payroll taxes. Sales taxes paid to local and state government were deductible off of your federal income tax until 1986 (I think that was the year) and also have been deductible for the past two or three years.
Pookie