Melissa Etheridge – Tax Protestor?

Melissa Etheridge inadvertently stumbled over a good point recently.  After Prop 8 passed in California, she fired off an angry blog post in which she threatened to withhold her state income taxes because the vote didn’t go her way.  She backed off that threat in a later interview featured on the November 17^th edition of Access Hollywood, but she did mention how bizarre it seemed that her right to marry the person of her choice had been put to majority vote.  In this Ms. Etheridge and I agree.  In fact, it’s almost as if she had read my last piece. 

But I can’t help laughing at the irony.  Melissa Etheridge is a proud “progressive” who has been outspoken in her support for the likes of Dennis Kucinich and Al Gore.  So normally she’s all for putting things to a vote – like voting for new and creative ways to waste your money on some ill-conceived socialist plan.  On any other issue, if you were the one who disagreed with the outcome of a vote and threatened to withhold your tax money because of a fundamental disagreement with the way in which it would be spent, I’m sure she’d be the first to condemn you for acting childishly and selfishly. 

Now that she’s on the losing side, however, Ms. Etheridge is slowly coming to grips with the fact that direct democracy is a double-edged sword.  Do you think this will be enough to get her to reconsider her lifelong worship of big government?  Neither do I.

Pavlov’s Hog

The pigs are already lining up to the trough.  City officials in Dallas are already jockeying for position to make sure that they find ways to get their grubby mitts on some of that “free money” the Feds are talking about throwing around in the next stimulus package.  They’re like Pavlov’s hog - bureaucrats have become so accustomed to appropriating taxpayer dollars that now all it takes is a rumor of a stimulus package to get them salivating.  But don’t worry – Dallas wouldn’t dream of tapping into the existing $700 billion bailout plan like they’re doing in Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta.  Dallas wants a completely new bailout plan to tap into.  Soo-ee! 

Buy American – Or Else!

American consumers have stated in no uncertain terms that they do not wish to support the Big Three auto manufacturers.  They’ve done this by not buying cars made by Ford, GM, or Chrysler.  Since the Big Three have been unable to persuade consumers to support them voluntarily in the free market, they’re now begging Congress to force the consumers to support them in the form of a taxpayer-financed below-market rate loan.  The plan is stalled for the moment, but there’s little doubt that some type of bailout will eventually go through now that the federal government has decided that throwing good money after bad is the new national pastime.