275. Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better

Based on some emails I’ve received over the weekend, more than a few of my Democratic friends and all of my Republican friends are well to the right of me on the issue of new taxes, just as I know they are on immigration, and based on what a few of them said, maybe even the separation of church and state. The emails abovementioned all complained about my several entries recently calling for a rise in taxes, a rise to offset the thirty years of lowering them here and exempting folks from them there, although none of my correspondents mentioned the thirty year thing. A few mentioned that some of the slack in lower taxes which has led to social cuts have effectively been taken up by religious concerns, which then led to an exchange between us of whether or not those religious concerns were also on the government dole, taking monies for so-called faith-based initiatives, something I oppose. One even ventured to call me a Socialist. I responded to that one that a review of my political affiliation in the Secretary of State’s office would reveal that I am a Democrat. Deeper review in the Jefferson County Clerk’s Office would reveal that I’ve been a Democrat since I first registered to vote when I was 17 years old and I have not changed from that initial affiliation. But, I digress.

To make sure I got the message, a state legislator I was with last night at a social function, also complained to me about taxes being too high, explaining that he could not move to the neighborhood he desired because he couldn’t afford the property taxes. I just shrugged and took another sip of my sasparilla. And from there I went home and re-read the former Eric Blair’s little novella, Animal Farm, to reassure myself that while Socialism may be utopian and perhaps unattainable [Snowball], too many times other forms of government, whether Republics or Democracies on the one hand [Pilkington], and dictators and totalitarians on the other [Napoleon], are too often willing to play at being nice with each other for financial gain while simultaneously each offering to the other their own Ace of Spades, as if a deck of 52 cards would have more than one. And then I went to sleep with the intention of dreaming about Sugarcandy Mountain.

Unrelated, the Kroger Full Employment Support Group, aka the local television meteorologists, are calling for 2 to 4, or 4 to 6, or 6 to 12 inches of the white stuff sometime tonight and tomorrow here along the Left Bank of the Ohio River near Milepost 606.

Thanks be to God.