Radio days volume 12

Subtitled, “The Rant”.

I hope you who listened had as much fun as I did participating. A lot of this I thought of last night, in fact I believe the last thing I did before I headed to bed was write down the question I opened with. For those of you who didn’t listen, this is the question I asked:

Why do we implicitly trust the government with our money?

As a society we seem to be ecstatic when we get a large tax refund, when in truth all that meant was that we lent the federal and/or state government all that money interest-free. I managed to accomplish this dubious feat this year. I’m sure I won’t do that next year to the same extent because somehow I think we’re going to be paying for that $600 or $1200 stimulus check most of us are getting. Like I noted during the conservation, how much of this money do you think will be going simply to bail out the creditors of those who get the “extra” money? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just suspend backup withholding like I suggested? It would have saved millions simply in writing and sending out checks. Of course, the federal government can’t do without, just like those in Congress who want to take the nickel a gallon or so the oil company makes as profit because gas prices are too high without thinking one second about dropping the gasoline tax that’s closing in on 50 cents a gallon, even temporarily.

And then we have our illustrious state of Maryland which seems to be hellbent on driving out every viable business that once called it home, with the next blow to be the computer services sales tax. Even in the bid to repeal the tax before it’s enacted those in the General Assembly they proposed not to do without the money but instead jack up income taxes on those they deem wealthy enough to spare the cash. Me, I call them the producers and entrepreneurs who actually make the state and country work by creating jobs. I don’t think of them as the state’s automatic teller machine.

You would think that out of a $30 billion or so budget they could cut 2% from the state side, by my math that’s the $300 million shortfall. People don’t realize about half of the state budget comes courtesy of the federal government. Another point I made was about this money we send to those inside the Beltway only to see that cash returned to the state – it seems to me the sole purpose of that exercise is to keep some bureaucrat in a job. The same goes for the state of Maryland paying the counties. Something about that escapes me, and I think I’m a pretty logical guy most of the time.

Anyway, if you didn’t have a chance to listen to Bill and I, I e-mailed him afterward just to see if there was an .mp3 file available. Of all the times I’ve been on, I think this was the best. Maybe it was indeed a grand slam, although when I got back to work Keith thought it was more like just a solid double. I’ll still take the runs batted in though.

Crossposted under a different title on Red Maryland.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

2 thoughts on “Radio days volume 12”

  1. I don’t know…considering you have 15 repeat visits from your IP address I can’t be doing too bad from you either!

    Thanks for reading.

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