[agrandis]

I suspect that old Poohbah gets testy and emotional when people suggest putting Leviathan on a crash diet because he's one of the many today feeding at its teats. Maybe the testiness just means he has a conscience. That's a good thing.

[Poohbah]

I suspect that old Poohbah gets testy and emotional when people suggest putting Leviathan on a crash diet because he's one of the many today feeding at its teats.

Wrong answer.

I've seen what happens when ideologues claim to know all and see all. They ignore those nasty second-order effects--and the dead people thus entailed--as merely the necessary sacrifices to bring about their utopia.

We have a Constitution. If you think you can actually get 70 million taxpayers to stop paying taxes, then you can shut off the income tax without doing so, using the mechanisms of the Constitution. But that's a little too much like hard work, so a lot of "conservatives" shy away from it.

Bottom line: we didn't get this way overnight. It will take a lot of hard work to get back to something more suited to American ideals and basic sense. The very system that kept us from getting to where we are in a few years is what keeps it from moving back with that rapidity.

The income tax is, sadly, constitutional. It is a foolishly stupid way to raise the necessary revenues to run a government. However, foolishness and stupidity in governmental affairs are not unconstitutional. Preventing our government from being that stupid and foolish is up to the citizenry.

Maybe the testiness just means he has a conscience.

It's a refusal to suffer fools gladly--more properly, a refusal to suffer fools at all.

[Badray]

"Maybe the testiness just means he has a conscience."

LOL I love your optimism.