Politics is Hilarious

So I'm bored at work right now waiting for my padre to show up. I'm here an hour before him. It's weird.

Anyways I was checking out emails on Aol.com and figured I'd look into the todays top news stories. Just read about Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich was pandering him to show his tax records for why despite the fact he makes over a million a year he only pays 15% on taxes. Well as it turns out Romney makes most of his millions -42.5 million from 2010-2011 to be exact- from Capital Gains on Investments. This is like stocks in companies and such. Apparently you only have to pay 15% on taxes from capital gains because they aren't technically "earned income". They're more like a generous bonuses given for your charitable donation of funds to Apple Inc. stock. So you can either work laboriously for less money that gets taxed 35% or you can invest a lot of money in various stocks and sit back enjoying the income without worrying much about the minus-tax outcome.

It's clever and anyone who had enough money to spend on that kind of financial strategy would use it -you'd be kind of an idiot not to. But most people don't have that kind of money. So how did Romney get it? His dad owned a company that was like the one Richard Gere had in the movie Pretty Woman. Basically the company bought other companies, tore them down, and sold off the pieces. And Romney was plugged into the company by hereditary right and therefore accumulated a lot of his wealth from that. 

Now the media and Newt keep asking for Romney to pony up more information about his accounts. In 2010 Romney had to close his Swiss bank account because it was embarrassing and made him look like a sneaky kajillionaire avoiding taxes. He also won't go into further detail about his "investments" in the Cayman islands. His taxes did show however that his wife has given over $7 million to "charity" -namely his Mormon church- making his $6million due in taxes easy to write-off. Romney now says he will not be showing anymore accounts because he doesn't want it to turn into a "you give them and inch they'll demand an arm" kind of a situation. 

Meanwhile Newt is under fire for his dealings with the Freddie Mac housing company. He said he was a hisotrian/consultant for them and earned $1.6 million for that work. Everyone else says he was a lobbyist. He was basically paid money by Freddy Mac so that Newt would tell his Republican friends how wonderful Freddy Mac is. He too says that he will not give out any more information on his financial accounts for the same reason Romney won't, despite Romney's demands for him to show him the money.

These people are funny. They're two rich Republicans trying to make each other look bad for being rich Republicans. Every time one says: "You don't pay enough in taxes" the other shouts: "Well you were paid paid to pander a company to the republican party like a walking commercial salesman". Neither look good at this point. And Obama is just sitting back letting them tear each other down. Wise man.

I think it is stupid that people who are less wealthy "hate" rich people. There's no point to it. Rich people aren't the problem. The system allows people to get rich by maintaining wealth given by being related to or coming into money via connections to large corporations. The system reproduces rich businessmen and maintains them. If you don't like the product, change the system. Unfortunately most Republicans and Democrats who can afford running for president are those rich businessmen or have connections to rich businessmen who then support them so they will maintain the system. Which is why voting is ultimately pointless.

If the mass majority of people want to see a change in the system, they can't rely on the system to change itself. They also can't expect wining in the streets to inspire a difference. You have to beat the system and make it useless. Take power away. The government is suppose to be by the People for the People. If the government has too much power, the people need to take it back.

Here's how:

Tax Write-Offs. The government gets the majority of its money from taxes. The government then spends the allowance we then give it on whatever it chooses -like maintaining wealthy business people's desires. But at any time the people -the 99%ers- can choose to spend their tax money on Write-Offs. Basically the government says: If you spend the percentage of money you would have paid on taxes -35% of your income- on charity and things the government supports then your taxes will count as being paid in full.

So instead of handing your money over to the government, find out how much you owe in taxes and spend it where you would want the government to put it. If it's fixing pot holes, send it to the Pothole Foundation for Better Infrastructure. If you want the money to go to the education system, donate it to the Please Keep Our Kids Edumacated Fund. You can always send it to charities as well, but if you want the government to stop slacking off on specific things that directly impact your community, take back the power and put your money where you ultimately want it to go. It shouldn't be that big of a challenge.

Be the change you want to see in the world.