RV Weekly

The news over the past few days is filled with such lunacy that I had to double check to make sure there is not a full moon over North America. There isn’t. In fact, we’re in a new moon phase which might explain the void in thinking that is impacting people in politics and business. Each of the subheads below links to a different story, if you’d care to read them.

Don’t smoke in your RV in California

The news out of California this morning is that the state just passed a ban on smoking in motor vehicles if children are present. I’m hopeful that RVs have been exempted from this further encroachment upon the freedom of Americans, but I don’t know for sure.

What I do know is that I’m smoking mad at politicians who are constantly hammering at the rights of smokers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a smoker and I don’t like hanging around those who do. However, for years, state, local and federal government has hammered away at smokers through stifling taxes and a barrage of laws prohibiting where they can smoke. Excuse me, but if smoking is so harmful to people why doesn’t the government just ban it?

For the answer, just follow the money. Government generates scandalous amounts of money from smokers and tobacco companies.

So, until the 25 percent of Americans who smoke actually stand up and blow it in the faces of politicians, or until politicians actually work up the courage to actually ban the product outright, expect more of the same.  Today, that means if you’re traveling down the highway in California, you can’t smoke in a vehicle – even with your window open.

I certainly hope the looney legislators in California never figure out that campfires produce smoke around children.

Auto workers go on strike

Only in unionized America! Let’s say your company is being hammered by the competition. Your sales plummet and marketshare goes out the window as consumers abandon your company in droves for products that are better built, less expensive and offer more features. If you worked for that company, wouldn’t you likely scratch your head trying to come up with ways to increase buyer confidence and, thus, sales? Apparently, not in Detroit.

In the Motor City, where workers build inadequate vehicles consumers don’t like and won’t buy – and where workers have successfully backed their companies against a financial wall – the response would be to dig yourself into a trench. That’s what union workers basically did at Chrysler and General Motors this week and last. These crybabies who have extorted billions from their firms now want the company’s to guarantee job security.

It’s not like the companies have grown 5.5 percent this year, but cut their workers’ pay anyway because they didn’t hit the 6 percent forecasted growth. No, these are companies in deep trouble. Yet the workers pulled themselves off production lines (as if anyone could tell they were actually working), picked up signs and pouted until the company caved and basically said, “Yes, we’ll guarantee that you can continue building cars consumers don’t like and won’t buy. And, yes, we will continue to pay $18 billion in long-term retiree health care costs we were forced to give you years ago on another occasion when you stopped ‘working.’”

Give me a break. Where’s Ronald Reagan when we need him? Either send in more robots or fire these boneheads, hire people who believe in good old American work ethic, and put the companies back on track to long-term profitability.   

Congressional staffers encouraged to get shots before attending a NASCAR race  

It’s no secret that people elected to and employed by Congress are seriously out of touch with the rest of the country. It’s also no secret that these elitists loathe working class people who pay big bucks to sit in the sun and watch others burn barrels of fossil fuels in high-speed racing events. But this story out of Washington defies all logic.

The House Homeland Security Committee planned a fact-finding trip about public health preparedness at mass gatherings and decided to conduct the research at two of the nation’s most heavily attended sporting events, NASCAR’s Bank of America 500 event this weekend and the UAW-Ford 500 last weekend.

Staff who organized the trips advised the NASCAR-bound aides to get a range of vaccines before attending — hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza.

In other words, Congress thinks its as dangerous for people to visit NASCAR events as it is to visit some backward country in South America (or central Detroit).

Too bad we can’t inoculate Congressional staffers — and their bosses — with an extra-potent dose of common sense.

Democrats propose a $1,000,000,000,000 tax increase

We are in such desperate need of common sense in Washington, an entire 50-mile area around the capital city should be cordoned off and nobody allowed to enter until he or she can prove successful completion of sixth grade economics.

As it stands now, nearly 23 million Americans will be hammered with extra taxes next year thanks to the brilliancy of the Alternative Minimum Tax. The ATM was proposed by Congress many years ago after a few wealthy individuals proved they could scam the system and avoid paying taxes all together. But today, thanks to lazy and stubborn elected officials, the ATM ceilings haven’t been changed and middle class Americans get to pay the tax. In fact, if reforms aren’t passed by the end of the year, one out of six working people will be tapped in April for ATM taxes.

So, in a classic Congressional smoke-and-mirrors game, Democrats have proposed eliminating the ATM tax that generates $800 billion in revenue with one that will generate $1 trillion. According to Politico.com,

Robin Hoods expect (Dem. Senator Charles) Rangel to swap the AMT for a new tax targeted exclusively at the highest-income payers. One often-mentioned idea, proposed by Leonard Burman, director of the Urban Institute’s Tax Policy Center, would impose a 4 percent surcharge on unmarried taxpayers making more than $100,000 a year and couples making more than $200,000. 

Yeah, let’s punish unmarried people! And we’ll certainly want to punish anyone with income high enough to afford a recreation vehicle.

Seriously, as of this nanosecond, the federal government estimates there are 303,099,171 people living in America. The Department of Labor estimates there are 146,300,000 people employed in America (not including congressional staffers). That means 48.3 percent of America is actually employed in a job that produces something to generate income. The rest are children, retirees or autoworkers. According to the Tax Foundation, 121 million Americans will pay absolutely no federal tax this year — and that doesn’t include children.

So, when Congress proposes a $1 trillion tax, it will fall on about 150 million people to pay for it. That means, for this one new tax alone, the average share per taxpaying America (not all Americans are taxpayers) will be roughly $6,667 per person.

When you think about it, our federal government spends $2.6 trillion per year. If every single man, woman and child paid his “fair share,” it would come out to $8,472.47 per person. The average family of four would need to pay $33,889.90 in federal taxes alone. Remember that the next time you hear some yahoo complaining that “the rich” should pay their “fair share.”

Just like unionized auto workers will certainly bring about the demise of the America auto industry, unionized federal employees and their accomplices in Congress will bring about the demise of the American taxpayer.

It’s looney tunes, folks!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Previous Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.