Cops and Teachers? THEY Don't Pay Taxes!

[paft.livejournal.com]

Wisconsin State Assemblyman Robin Vos lets us all know what he thinks of those taxpaying Wisconsin citizens who work in the public sector:

The reality is they haven’t had to pay for these things, they’re upset about doing it now, and the taxpayers are the ones who definitely understand this because they get it, they’ve been doing this in the private sector for years, it’s time we had the same thing happen in the public sector…The fact that my Democratic colleagues want to go back to the taxpayer and have them pay higher taxes because someone shouldn’t pay 12% towards their healthcare….We are standing with the taxpayers all across Wisconsin. It’s amazing the outpouring of support that we’ve been getting from the people outside the Capitol Square, the people who are in the reality of the world, not the place that we’re sitting.

Howard Dean does a very good job of refuting Kudlow and Vos’ fiction that the demonstrations are all about the cuts in benefits and not about the elimination of collective bargaining. The capper to this exchange, however, comes near the end of the segment, when a sign appears just over Vos’ shoulder on the right. Not the kind of thing Kudlow could choreograph.

It beautifully highlights the idiocy of Vos' fiction that the demonstrators are, in some fundamental way, less American than other Americans. Does he really think cops and teachers don't pay taxes, or “live in the reality of the world?”

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes
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Comments

[paft.livejournal.com]

jc: You just blew by the fact that I was defending the existence of unions

Which, as you just made plain, does not mean you defend the existence of worker safety, minimum wage, and child labor laws.

jc: My answer to those are going to be necessarily complex, time consuming, and probably off-topic, because short, curt, yes-or-no answers will be easily demagogued.

In other words, the answer is probably "no," to at least one of these, but you don't look forward to having to defend such a stance, which would involve an awful lot of verbal and logical gymnastics.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

I don't look forward to having to defend it to you, in a sub-thread, going tit-for-tat for the next 12 hours and degenerating into a pointless stream of herculean nit-picking in which the original point gets lost and buried right next to the things I'd rather be doing today.

That's why I said that if I take on these issues at all, it would be better done in an OP, where I can lay out every aspect of what I'm thinking, instead of having to reference sub-thread-three, sentence two of a long buried and hard to track down response.

Kindly take this as an invitation for a rain-check and proceed to other threads for now.

Kthxbye.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Can I bookmark this comment?

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Sure, if you think you'll need it :)

[paft.livejournal.com]

Uh, no, jc, I'm sorry, but if you make a comment that interests me enough to ask you about it -- I'm going to ask you about it.

Deal with it.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

You are entitled to ask, and I am entitled to take a rain-check. As far as I'm concerned, this is dealing with it. You may not like the way I've dealt with it, but I have not ignored you.

I'll take my time, and come up with a proper OP on the matter, form a complete argument, and then you are welcome to address all of it at once. I have a life, or at least, I try to, in real life.

It's better than trying to fit a complete argument into a never-ending string of responses, each trying to address one small part of an issue, and never getting a look at the whole picture.