Indeed, such protest was probably our finest English import. It has a storied history in America. In the 1870s, carpetbaggers from the North headed South to implement reconstruction policies, including new taxation. Roving gangs of patriotic southerners would taunt the carpetbaggers and in some cases steal their carpetbags and feed them to goats. These gangs were coloquially known as “Carpet Munchers” and some say they turned the tide against Reconstruction.
In the 1850’s, as town governments began to spring up near mining towns in California, they began asking for taxes from the miners. In protest, when the tax collector would walk from house to house, the miners would throw bits of pyrite at them from above. This became known as the “Golden Shower” protest–though obviously it’s a bit of a misnomer because the tax collectors were being showered in fool’s gold.
Of course, the English may have initially gotten the idea from the Irish. Everyone knows of the famous events of Irish lore in which St. Patrick banishes snakes from Ireland. But fewer know of the political subtext underlying the legend. Before Christianity, the druids were fond of keeping snakes as pets. They were often quite bonded, snake and druid, such that the snakes were kept on their person at all times. Shortly after Christianity spread to the isle, the snakes became a way of identifying and persecuting druids. On one spring day, several hundred druids convened at the town square with their pet snakes secreted in their garments. When their numbers were too large to be easily quelled, they suddenly pulled the snakes from their trousers for all to see, proudly displaying their druidic beliefs. “Trouser Snake Pride” was apparently the buzzword of the druids rebellion, though the exact details seem to have been lost to the mists of time.
I think you give them way too much credit–and, like several posters here, if the term’s primary–oh, sorry, “alternately perverted”–use is pointed out to them, they scrunch their noses and say that most loyal, clean, upright Americans wouldn’t know anything about such a nasty practice. :rolleyes:
Yes, that terrible socialistic Medicare and Social Security. Curse those programs that help people afford to get chest X-rays and retire.
That’s not really an achievement, just the marker of an economy that hasn’t gone completely down the tubes. You know that Russia has rich people too, right?
Also, the tax hike that so many people are yammering about? Obama is proposing that the top bracket go from 36% to 39.6%. Oh no, a 3.6% increase. Socialism will destroy us all.
I get that, which is why I’m only a little upset about the deficit. But I also understand when people look at an eye-popping deficit and their eyes pop out. The numbers are big and bad. I hope the numbers will be better in coming years, but prediction is hard - especially about the future.
Today’s Republicans have no idea how marginalized they are. They’re like the newly divorced 40 year old guy who hangs out in pickup bars with a bunch of 20 somethings. He thinks he is hip and cool and doesn’t realize that everyone is laughing at him behind his back.
Well, the LAST time I happened to stumble upon a group of middle-aged conservative men discussing how much they wanted to teabag a young black guy, I… actually, y’know what, I don’t wanna talk about it
And he’s not really raising the rate, he’s just letting Bush’s temporary tax cuts expire, the way they were always meant to expire. I wonder how much tax history these people know. They definitely don’t know what high taxes are, just like they don’t know what high gas prices are (ask anyone in the UK or Europe).
The tax rate under President Eisenhower (Republican, 1953-1961) was 91%.
The tax rate under President Nixon (Republican, 1969-1974) was 71%.
The tax rate under President Ford (Republican, 1974-1977) was 70%.
The tax rate under President Reagan (Republican, 1981-1989) was 50%.
The tax rate under President Obama (Democrat, 2009-???)will be 39%.
(Btw, I said Bush 41 in my OP when I meant to say Nixon, but forgot to go back and change it before posting)
I wonder how many of these loonball “tax protesters” (aka Democrat/Obama/black president protesters) know how high the taxes were under the above Republican presidents. Doubtful. Very doubtful.
The people fretting about “socialism” have no freakin’ clue what socialism really is. To them, anything that aids the poor and disadvantaged is “socialism” and therefore bad.
I seem to remember something about the Democrats having been in control of Congress for something like a fifty year span. Those rates wouldn’t have come about during that time by any chance, would they?
Your suggestion that this is their fault is without merit. The taxes under those presidents were high because they were being reduced from even higher tax rates. It’s more useful to look at the change in the tax rate over a President’s term, unless you’re suggesting that they are to blame for not reducing tax rates fast enough.
I’m saying that these loonballs who worship the ground, say, Reagan, walked on, have no friggin’ clue that President Obama’s tax “hike” (which is really just a return to the way it was) is still actually lower than Reagan’s tax rate.
But even if they knew, it wouldn’t matter. They’re not really protesting the taxes, that’s just a convenient excuse, something to make their protests seem legitimate. I believe they’re really protesting the fact that there’s a Democrat, a black Democrat at that, in the White House.
Yup, Congress was controlled by liberal gay socialist San Francisco Democrats, and every Republican President was powerless to negotiate with them. :rolleyes:
So, basically your argument can be boiled down to, "They can’t argue with Obama’s tax rate! It’s lower than Reagans! And they were probably okay with Reagan, right? I mean, they haven’t said anything about Reagan, who was in office 20 years ago, but I’m sure all of them were of voting age in 1980, right?
You know what? I’ll bet it’s just racism! Spiteful republican racists! There’s no other reason they could argue with Obama! In fact, ANYONE who argues with Obama is a racist!"
The bizarre part is that virtually none of the people protesting earn more than $250,000 a year! They are what I call “Cargo Cult Conservatives” in homage to the Pacific islander Cargo Cults. They apparently believe that by voting as the rich do (even when it is against their own best interests) they will somehow obtain wealth. The majority will benefit from Obama tax policy. It was the same thing with the re-branding of the estate tax as “the death tax”. It didn’t apply to anyone with an estate worth less than $1,000,000. All I can figure is that they thought that if they opposed it, they would somehow accumulate a million to leave to their heirs.
You believe that because you’re predisposed to think of conservatives in an insulting manner. The real reason is because conservatives oppose confiscatory government, unfair taxation, income redistribution, class warfare, and the inevitable slippery slope in which the dividing line for ‘rich’ keeps dropping and the rates they pay keep rising.
It has absolutely nothing to do with thinking that by voting for policies that allegedly (and that’s a big allegedly) benefit the rich, they will become rich themselves. What a ridiculous notion.
