Let’s see. Investment income is already taxed at a far lower rate than income gained from working. Inheritance income is barely taxed at all, and dynasty-builders think any tax on money they get from the birth-lottery should be 100% tax-free even though income gotten from other kinds of lotteries and gambling is taxed at the same rate as sweat-of-your-brow work income. Here in Florida we have a fringe bunch advocating the removal of all property taxes even though this state already has no income tax, a reasonable (but not broadly-applied) sales tax, and hardly any other form of tax income — and local governments are already cutting services as property values (and therefore property taxes) fall and their revenues drop even more because of increased homeowner property tax exemptions passed in the January primary election. So fine. We’ve cut taxes like mad. If the tax-cutters are right, that means our economy should be sizzling. But it’s not. So let’s try something different.

The first thing I’d like to do is bring back what we used to call “progressive income taxes” during the time when our economy was growing nicely and workers seemed to do a little better each year. I’m thinking fondly (in some ways) of the period when a radical Democrat named Eisenhower was President.

What!? You say Eisenhower was a Republican??

Are you kidding me?

I mean, we all know Republicans hate to pay taxes. They want to go back to the days when we all took care of ourselves and the government wasn’t expected to provide retirement incomes or any of that socialist stuff, and the federal government didn’t interfere with states’ rights to… well…. to have legal slavery, for example.

That’s right. Today’s Republicans seem to picture themselves sitting on their front porches while old Sammy (he’s been with the family forever) fetches fresh mint juleps all around. Natuarally, those Republicans all treat Sammy and his family as well as anyone can treat The Help, given how high prices have gotten these days.

The fact that Sammy’s children had to drop out of school and go to work shouldn’t concern us. Why, if Sammy and his wife, our cook Beulah, had the kind of gumption we do, they would have set up their own private school for their children the same way we set one up for our children. And they’d have saved their salaries to pay college tuition and for their retirement, instead of wasting the $1200 we pay them — that’s right — a whole $1200 every month, plus we give them a perfectly nice shack to live in for only $400 per month — on nonsense like food and clothes that don’t help the economy near as much as the money we spent on our vacation in Palm Beach last winter.

Why, no one could possibly call us hard-hearted. When Beulah’s mother got sick last year and couldn’t afford treatment, we generously gave $100 to their funeral fund.

Excuse me. I saw a hand in the back of the room.

Hmm? You say that it’s the Democrats who upheld slavery while Republicans were against it? Yes, son, that’s right. And we try to remind the blacks of that every time an election rolls around so that they vote for Republicans instead of for Democrats. But do they listen? Not so you’d notice. They keep saying that times have changed and that now it’s Democrats that look out for them and it’s Republicans who champion the rich and spit on the poor.

Where they get those nasty socialist class warfare ideas from I have no idea. It’s got to be outside agitators and maybe trial lawyers and those Clintons. I swear, any self-respecting American, black or white, ought to realize that the Republican Party is all about freedom, and that the freedom to make your way in the world and triumph against tough odds is what America is all about.

I’m a fine example of that myself. My father hardly left me anything — a little old clothing factory and some land that had nary a crop on it. Now, with my own two hands I’ve built that factory into a world-class distributor of clothing products made in China by people who — you better believe it — appreciate a decent job a bunch more than these spoiled American low-class fools ever did. And the land? I turned it, all by myself, into one of the nicest gated communities this side of Alabama. Sure, I had to get a couple of bills passed in the state legislature to pay for roads and such, but isn’t that the state’s job? To provide smooth roadways for those of us who have enough taste to buy Cadillacs and Ferraris instead of wasting pavement on neighborhoods full of beat-down people who drive beat-up pickup trucks?

It is sad the way this country has gotten. Sure, we had Reagan and then Clinton and then Bush and all those fine Republican patriots in Congress who made sure those of us who contribute to the economy and help build America instead of wasting our time working in convenience stores or marching around and getting all sweaty in the Army got to reap the rewards of our efforts instead of having our money confiscated at gunpoint (’cause that what a tax really is; the government taking away your money and enforcing that taking with guns) and watching our money being wasted on things like education for kids who would rather be out in the street doing drugs and shooting each other anyway.

And still the lazies complain! I swear, if they did as I did and invested their money instead of spending it, they’d stop crying about how life is unfair and would have their own pieces of the American pie.

But still, I don’t know. I’m starting to get a little worried. When my daughter gets home from her drug rehab program in France and takes the reins of the family business — which she prepared for starting at an early age by riding all those show horses I bought her — I am not sure those people down along the dirt roads might not cast envious eyes on her and hurt her in some way if we don’t, you know, maybe buy them off a little, maybe give them some government-paid medical care and protection against those outside companies that come in here and pollute near their trailer homes.

I know, I know, this is sort of socialist thinking, and Rush Limbaugh might not like to hear me saying this, but I am seriously scared. Even as loyal as Sammy and Beulah are, sometimes I think I see something in their eyes that looks a little like hate and contempt. Down at the White Hall Country Club the other night I heard a couple of other old boys saying they’d seen the same thing with some of their factory workers after they cut their hours back because of shifting production to Mexico, and one of our most upright local farmers, who grows sugarcane with his own two hands and gets hardly any help from the 200 shiftless migrant farmworkers to whom he gives pretty damn good money — up to $10 for every hour they’re supposed to be working — was saying the tires on his Hummer was slashed right in his own driveway. And this is from one of the most self-reliant men you’ll ever meet, who only gets a few million in government subsidies instead of going on welfare like all those single moms out there do the second they start popping babies at the age of 14. This is a man who absolutely fears nothing except Democrats in office, a man who had the courage to stand up to his draft board instead of shuffling off to Vietnam like some piece of white trash.

So what can I do? Guess I better start getting in good with some of those Democrats even though I hate them. Yes, it’s socialism to have “stimulus packages” and to spend money on roads and sewers and schools even if we dress them up by calling them “infrastructure” instead of by their regular names, but if I don’t knuckle under and pay some taxes, and let the government even take away some of my daughter Andrea’s inheritance, I am worried that she and her children might get slaughtered in their sleep one night.

Yes, I know it’s all outside agitators causing the trouble. The thing is, they are everywhere these days. They got some black guy running for President, even, and sane old sensible Mitt Romney gave up. The times they are changing. It will not be easy for me to change my ways. There’s just really no other choice. I heard my Dad cry all the time back in the Eisenhower days about how more of his money went to the government as income tax than he got to keep in his own pocket, but when I look back I think we lived pretty good even so.

Back when we paid a lot of taxes I went to the same school as most of the other kids — at least the other white kids — around here, and after school we all played sports together, even some of the black kids, and the black kids had some sense of pride and hope that their lives would get better with civil rights and that kept them going in school one way or another. Now I see the looks in the eyes of people who aren’t really my neighbors anymore since I live behind gates in a mansion instead of in a plain but nice house among the regular people, and I don’t like what I see.

Is it possible that I — and a lot of people like me — let greed take over? Is it possible that we should pay just as much tax on our income, no matter how we get it, as the mechanics at my brother Phil’s Hyundai dealership pay? Maybe, just maybe, if we did that, and we (I mean me and Phil and the other people around here who own all the land and businesses) paid our workers a little bit more and confined ourselves to only making 20 or 30 times as much as they do, some of the hate would stop.

It would be nice to face the people who live near us with a clear conscience; not to have to only know people just llke us; to be able to go out and have a beer in that little blues club down on the highway — yes, it’s mostly blacks but there are white people go there too — and just plain live happy among other people who are living happy, too.

We’ll see. We cut hell out of taxes, and I’m richer than my Dad ever dreamed of being, but I think I will try to see if maybe it’s better to be a little less rich and have a nicer life in a county that’s not full of glum faces as the working people get laid off and seem to have no hope except maybe lottery tickets or maybe they come up with an excuse to sue someone like me or Dr. Kutemsky and get some big award from a jury full of people who are like them, not like me or the Doc.

I don’t know if I’m ready for a black president. McCain is about as close to liberal as I can handle. He’d kind of be a change, but not a huge one. Locally, we have some decent younger black folks who came back here after going to school up North, and it seems they’re allying themselves with the sons and daughters of some of the whites I grew up with who wouldn’t have let a black man (except they used the N-word) anywhere their children if they’d known about them talking together. Maybe I’ll meet some of them and see what they plan to do if they get elected. The funny thing is, the leading black one running for Congress, Theo Wester, I run him off when he tried to sneak out with my daughter Andrea, and I said some damn nasty things at the time that he may want some apology for, but after some of the white boys Andrea took up with after Theo, and the way he went North and did so good in college and then in law school, I think I just might owe him that apology. He’s turned into a pretty fine man, I think. Handled some contract law for Phil, who says Theo is now just about the best business lawyer around here and hopes he doesn’t go off to Congress because he wants to give all his dealership’s lawyer business to him, but if he does go to Congress he’d be a damn fine guy to have there representing us. “All of us,” Phil said. “Not just some. I can’t sell no cars if no one has money to buy them, you know.”

Phil has a point. I might be at the top of the income pile around here, and Phil might be most of the way up the slope, but it’s easy to fall off if you’re not careful. And if the whole country goes down, being on top as we slide under the water means we just drown a little later than the others. But we still drown.

I’m not quite ready to be a Democrat. But y’know, I’m willing to listen to them. The way we’ve been going in this country, and in this state and even in the county, it just isn’t right. We need to make some changes, and I’m willing to do my share to make things right, along with you and everyone else.

Thank you for coming out to hear me — and our county’s own candidate for Congress, Theo Wester, even though he is a Democrat — tonight at this forum. I’m going to sit down now. And Theo, after this is over I’d be proud if you’d join me for a drink so I can say a couple of things to you I should have said long ago.

You pick the place. I’m buying.

(applause)

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 9:08 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.