Enough
‘Puter read this New York Times editorial regarding the Minnesota state government shut down and finally lost his ever-loving mind. ‘Puter will quote liberally and at length.
Like Republicans in Washington, they have the delusion that they can balance the budget entirely from cuts.
The governor proposed more than $2 billion in cuts but refused to slash billions more from education, health care and public safety programs. The Legislature also wanted new abortion restrictions and a voter ID law that Mr. Dayton had already vetoed. When he said no, lawmakers allowed the fiscal year to end without a budget, and state government officially shut on July 1.
More than 40 state agencies have closed, including the state parks over the July Fourth holiday. Courts and public safety agencies are operating, but essential services for the poor, like food pantries and child care subsidies, have evaporated. Many parents say they may have to quit their jobs if state-subsidized child care does not resume quickly. The shutdown will cost the state money, since many of the 22,000 laid-off workers will receive unemployment benefits and health insurance, while the treasury is unable to collect on tax audits, lottery tickets and park fees.
As painful as the closure may become, the governor is right not to yield to the extremist ideology the Republicans are pursuing in St. Paul, Washington and across the country. President Obama has done so twice and faces an emboldened opposition willing to create chaos in the credit markets rather than agree to modest revenue increases from the richest people. On Tuesday, he urged everyone to leave ultimatums at the door in this week’s talks, but the Republican Party has shown no willingness to do so.
Their antitax radicalism, maintained at any cost, is doing enormous damage at all levels. It is preventing Wilmington, N.C., from buying a new fire truck, preventing the most vulnerable in dozens of states from receiving subsistence benefits, and may soon engulf the economy if the standoff in Washington does not end. In Minnesota, there is now a chance to draw a line and say, no further.
And there it is. Elites of the liberal and conservative varieties, along with just about everyone living inside the Beltway, just do not get it. Let ‘Puter put it simply.
This is not about sticking it to the poor. This is about standing up for the unsung makers in the country.
You may recognize us as the people who get up and go to work each day, no matter how bad the job sucks, because it’s our duty, and we’re happy to have a job. We’re the folks who go to services each week to pray for the less fortunate, and for the salvation of our immortal souls. We’re the folks serve on volunteer boards, and give countless millions to charity. We’re the folks who teach our kids right and wrong. We pay our bills on time, every time, because it’s the right thing to do. We help our neighbors when they fall on hard times, without asking anything in return.
We are sick and tired of working long and hard, whether laying brick or writing briefs, and sending a significant and ever-rising chunk of our pay to Washington and our state capitals where it is squandered.
We are sick of overweening government bureaucrats who think they know how to live our lives better than we do. We can’t have 100 watt light bulbs because they use too much electricity. We can’t have trans-fats because you’ve decided they are bad for us. We can’t have a toilet that will efficiently dispose of a normal-sized crap because too many people moved to California and sucked all the water out of the ground. We can’t be trusted to use fireworks or firearms responsibly. We have to buy health insurance, because you’ve decided it’s for our own good. Garbage. You can’t even run your own lives, I’ll be damned if you’ll run mine.
We are sick of being told by elites what to think and how to think it. We are racist or backwards if we disagree with elites. We are not morons. Many of us are well educated, and darn near all of us possess common sense, the least common of all gifts. Your Ivy League degree means crap to us when your policies have bankrupted our country. Try eating that sheepskin when you find you can’t get a job in the real world.
We are truly enraged by the lifestyles others are living on our dime, be they poor who refuse to work or congressmen who do likewise. We are told that we must subsidize these folks. It is our duty. Yet there is no duty from our wards back to us. No duty to learn a skill. No duty to find a job. No duty to behave responsibly. No duty not to get carelessly and needlessly knocked up, locking another innocent into a lifetime of poverty. No duty to abide by basic human societal norms. It’s all taking and no giving. This, as Sen. Moynihan sagely noted, is a recipe for societal disintegration, and that’s what we’re seeing right now.
So screw the made-up “rights” of the takers (corporations and individuals) to a portion of our paychecks. What have you done for us lately? Sky high inner-city crime and birth rates? High and climbing food costs because we’ve turned our corn into ethanol to line your pockets? And yet we’re the ones who have to give more. Bah.
To quote Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men, from his monologue ‘Puter is certain was intended to be humorous and anachronistic by the liberal Hollywood wordsmiths who inked it,
We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it.
That’s about it. We are honorable people. We believe in helping the poor and less fortunate. But we also believe in earning your keep, and in keeping what we earn. We produce and give and fund the government, yet we get nothing back but disdain and scorn. We are not your ATM. We are not your indentured servants. You no talent ass clowns work for us, and don’t you forget it. We are sorry you elites are uncomfortable being asked what your value-add is. It must be discomfiting to realize you add little if anything of value to our society. Forgive us for not caring what someone who has never had to make payroll or lay off employees thinks about small business and the economy.
What of use have any of the liberal elites given our country, except backbreaking taxes and hamstringing regulation? Self-professed elites produce nothing of value, and are paid and treated as if they developed the polio vaccine. The world of ideas is nice, but the folks that are cleaning your toilets, treating your sewage, and keeping the power on are the heroes. Yet you despise them. You treat them as morons for asking why we should pay more for a broken government and its dependents.
Listen, elites. Your dreams of a big government Utopia have failed. There’s simply not enough money to do everything you want. Hell, there’s not enough money to do what you’ve already enacted. The sooner you come to grips with that, the sooner we will be able to have a functioning society again.
You want fair share, NYT? Get back to me when everyone pays taxes. Get back to me when you can’t get Medicaid in New York making $66,000 per year for a family of four. Get back to me when state workers aren’t getting guaranteed gold plated pensions, guaranteed for life at age 55 (or less if you’re a cop or fireman). Get back to me when unemployment is under 7%. Get back to me when I’m not paying $8,000 per year in property taxes on a house assessed at $197,000. Get back to me when one — just one — of your economic policies actually improves something. Get back to me when you find a way to balance the budget on current revenues.
Until that time, fund your G-d damned big society welfare state your own damned selves, sit down, and shut the [heck] up.
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming. ‘Puter will take his meds and calm down in his happy corner.
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.