Paying Your Taxes used to be Patriotic
April 16, 2012

 
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Something is very wrong here.It’s Tax Day, America! Listening to Republicans today, you’d be forgiven for thinking that making ANYONE pay taxes… especially wealthy people… was borderline Communism. “You can’t tax ‘the job creators’!” we’re told. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Republican candidate George W Bush was telling everyone across the country that the fact the government was running a surplus and paying off its Debt for the first time in 50 years was proof that people were being taxed too much and therefore deserved a “tax cut”. Then when the economy started to tank, the “solution” yet again was to cut taxes. Tax cuts are the GOP’s answer in both good times and in bad. One has to wonder if they think ANYONE should EVER pay taxes? But it wasn’t always this way. Paying taxes… ESPECIALLY IN TIMES OF WAR… was not only considered necessary, but PATRIOTIC.

As Rachel Maddow has pointed out in her best selling book “Drift”, most people in this country don’t even realize we are a nation at war, and have been so for almost a decade. Yet, actually expecting people to PAY for that war has become UN-patriotic in the eyes of most Republicans. “Taxing the job creators makes the economy weaker“, and anyone that wants to weaken America is a Communist/Marxist/Socialist/Nazi.

During World War II, Hollywood was enlisted to remind people that “paying your taxes was your patriotic duty”. At the behest of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, famous composer Irving Berlin was asked to write a patriotic song reminding everyone of the importance of paying their taxes and how that money was helping to pay to fight the war that was securing their freedom. The song… sung by The Singing Cowboy Gene Autry“I Paid My Income Tax Today” includes the line: “See those bombers in the sky? Rockefeller helped to build ’em, so did I.”

A little song & dance routine to Irving Berlin’s “I Paid My Income Tax Today!”

Disney was brought in to explain how paying your taxes in a time of war was the patriotic thing to do:

Donald Duck explains the importance of paying your Income Taxes

As has been pointed out lately, GOP patron saint Ronald Reagan was saying THE EXACT SAME THING AS PRESIDENT OBAMA TODAY about the illogic of the extremely wealthy paying less in taxes than the Middle-Class:

Reagan: “No Loopholes For Millionaires”

…and on what has come to be known as “The Buffet Rule”:

Reagan tells a crowd about a letter he received from a wealthy man that wrote to tell him he pays less in taxes than his secretary, offering to come to DC and testify “why that is wrong”:

The Buffet Rule – Ronald Reagan

You see Republicans, on this tax day, it is important to remember that asking wealthy people to pay their taxes to help support the country that made their success possible was not only NOT considered a burden, but the PATRIOTIC thing to do!


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April 16, 2012 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Money, Politics, Taxes

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