[Today’s run: Watson Road\u00a0 3.5 miles]<\/p>\n
Eric Cantor is one of the higher-ups on the Republican side in the US House.\u00a0 I saw this little news blurb about him:<\/p>\n
[In response to the President\u2019s] remarks that he would not accept a deal \u201cin which I am allowed to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don\u2019t need,\u201d the majority leader joked that Obama \u201ccan write a check anytime he wants.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That got me wondering if there is a website where a person, burdened with too much money, can contribute to lowering the debt.\u00a0 Sure enough there is.\u00a0 They take payments on the internet at http:\/\/pay.gov\u00a0 (search for\u00a0 “Gift to reduce the Public Debt”)\u00a0 And such payments are tax deductible\u00a0 (!) if you itemize… which seems to somewhat defeat the purpose.. but I digress.<\/p>\n
In looking up that website information via Google, I found the text of a letter sent to Patriotic Millionaires\u00a0 (http:\/\/patrioticmillionaires.org\/) by Senator Orin Hatch letting the millionaires know that this service is available.<\/p>\n
You see, the people at patrioticmillionaires.org would like the tax rate increased so that millionaires like themselves have to pay higher taxes.<\/p>\n
So far so good.\u00a0 The really fun part comes when the PMs responded to hatch.\u00a0 They say, “No Thanks.”\u00a0 in so many words.\u00a0 Their complaint is that if they just make contributions it is not big enough to make a dent.\u00a0 They want the rate on ALL millionaires to be increased.<\/p>\n
Frankly, I find their argument to be completely without merit, baseless, void, vain and empty.<\/p>\n
Imagine this:\u00a0 You and I see a car crash.\u00a0 The cars start to burn and we can both see that the people inside need to be removed.\u00a0 But the job is bigger than one person can accomplish.\u00a0 So we both stand there until someone tells us we must help.\u00a0 Of course!\u00a0 otherwise our efforts would be in vain and we will be injured for no reason.\u00a0 We need someone to force us to do this good thing or we stand by and do nothing.\u00a0 (I’m hoping you catch the sarcasm in there.)<\/p>\n
That is the position of the patrioticmillionaires.org operation, so far as I can tell.<\/p>\n
And here’s the kicker:\u00a0 patrioticmillionaires.org website has a button for people to make contributions.\u00a0\u00a0 So!, they don’t want their adherents to make a contribution to offset the debt.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 They want that contribution to come to them so they can work to pass a law so that all people will join together to fight for the common good.\u00a0 Otherwise they will stand by and do nothing.<\/p>\n
Who wouldn’t?<\/p>\n
Ok, no I’m not completely mystified.\u00a0 What patrioticmillionaires.org wants is not to pay down the debt.\u00a0 What they want is for the debt to be paid down.\u00a0 That is a different thing.\u00a0 Their understanding is not of the car wreck analogy, it is more like excess-litter analogy.\u00a0 “Won’t someone pick up all of this trash?\u00a0 It is making our city look messy.”\u00a0 But again, they aren’t willing to actually bend over and pick up anything unless the policeman tells them to.<\/p>\n
These folks are in positions of leadership?<\/p>\n
I’ve changed my mind. Can we take 100% of the millions from the patrioticmillionaires and give them to someone who has a bit of moral rectitude or civic leadership?\u00a0 Please?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Today’s run: Watson Road\u00a0 3.5 miles] Eric Cantor is one of the higher-ups on the Republican side in the US House.\u00a0 I saw this little news blurb about him: [In response to the President\u2019s] remarks that he would not accept a deal \u201cin which I am allowed to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1041"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1048,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}