My Facebook Thoughts

Monday, April 20, 2009

Hold The Water, I'll Have The Swill

Last week I was on vacation. My family took a few day trips around the great Midwest. Springfield, Indianapolis, Brookfield Zoo and walking around our village. Despite crappy weather, the week was great.

Springfield was great. The Abraham Lincoln Library & Museum should be a must stop for any fan of "Honest Abe". My 5.5 year old enjoyed it. How many presidential libraries can get a thumbs up from a Kindergartner?

Indianapolis was enjoyable as well. They have a great Children's Museum which we had visited when my son was almost a year old. He loved it then and he loved it now. If your kids are into dinosaurs try to visit this museum.

We also saw the Tax Day Tea Party of Indianapolis. Or as I like to call it, Republican Sore Losers Protesting On April 15th. The protests were focused on the huge government spending during the world's worst economic situation in 80 years. I just wonder where these people were when Bush was dropping a billion dollars a day in Iraq looking for the Tooth Fairy?

But, I digress.

My week ended with the discovery that my village has been serving up toxic water for 20 years. Before Saturday my village was famous for being the village that rebated property taxes. Our life long mayor, Chester Stranczek, was famous for running this village like a business. Low village costs meant low taxes. Low taxes meant extra village money would be given back to us residents. It was true and for the last 18 years I've gotten a nice check. But, all goods things must come to an end, right? Our mayor kept the water rates low by filling 20% of our water tower from a well. The well water was basically free. The pump is located directly below the water tower. Unfortunately, it's also directly across a small creek from a dry cleaners. The dry cleaners dumped cancer causing chemicals into the ground which eventually tainted the well. The village knew in 1986 the well was tainted. They agreed to only use the tainted well in emergencies. Allegedly, keeping our water rates low was an emergency because the well was used often since 1986.



I would like to recruit those "Tax Day Tea Party" protesters to come to my village and protest a government knowingly poisoning it's residents. This is the kind of thing that should be protested.

In one week I went from Honest Abe to Cheapo Chet.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps you should bottle the unpure stuff and offer it to the tea bag people so they can experience the wonders of "less government interference." No need for warnings as we know how much they detest government regulations.

bill a said...

my family and i stopped for lunch in indianapolis on the way to cinncinati a few years ago. we had some very good thai food there.

i am going to springfield in may with my son's seventh grade class. i am really looking forward to it.

on the tea parties, here is an excerpt from an article by Andy Ostroy, dated 4/17/09, that i thought did a good job of summing up the tea parties. us average joe's need to recognize what we are up against.

Andy Ostroy.

Tea Parties: GOP Once Again Manipulating the Average Joe

During the eight miserable, ineffective and wasteful years of the Bush administration, Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove, the president's chief political advisor, deftly crafted a successful strategy of turning the "little guy" on himself. That being, to divert and distract these Average Joes away from the real issues that effect them--unemployment, wages, health care, education--and instead drive them to the polls through hot-button issues including abortion, gay-marriage and life-support (Terri Schiavo). For a long while, it worked. The little guy consistently voted against his own self-interests.

But the little guy's not completely stupid, and the inevitable backlash began with the 2006 midterm elections where Democrats won a small Congressional majority, and kicked into high gear last November, with Barack Obama's presidential victory and the Democratic landslide in the House and Senate. Dejected, the GOP crawled away a broken, dysfunctional family. A tarnished brand. But as this year's tax season rolled around, conservatives issued a rallying cry in the form of "tea parties," those ill-founded, embarrassing, scantly attended protests that were held Wednesday across the nation. Though touted by organizers (most likely GOP funded and supported) as being attended by "Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Independents," judging from the crowds and the signs they waved, it was pretty clear this was a decidedly anti-Obama movement. And that's the insane part.

What the demonstrators are protesting is what they believe to be higher taxes and wasteful government spending, in particular the $787-billion stimulus plan and the $3-trillion bailouts of banks, Wall Street and the auto industry. But the not-so-comic irony here is that the Obama administration has yet to impose one single tax increase on anyone. To the contrary, it's giving income tax cuts to 95% of Americans, and gives additional tax cuts and credits for small businesses, tuition payers and home buyers. The only individuals that could be hit with an actual tax increase are those whose annual incomes exceed $250,000. An increase, mind you, that's still a full 10 points less than the rates during the Reagan presidency. But I didn't see any seemingly rich dudes in NY, Chicago, DC and elsewhere parking their Benz's and raising any protest signs at these rallies. The crowds, though small, were filled with the same types who've been used and abused before: low and middle-income taxpayers who ironically stand to gain the most from Obama's tax policies. And once again, they've somehow been manipulated by the GOP through lies, misinformation and perhaps even racial bias.

here is the link to the complete article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-ostroy/tea-parties-gop-once-agai_b_187750.html

Mark Ploch said...

The signs that stood out to me and reiterated that the "Tea Parties" had a racial undertow,

"Don't Tax Me Bro"

Bill, great article and it points out how too many people just spew out what FOX and Rush tell them.

The Indy "Tea Party" was large, but so is Indiana's unemployment rate.

Honest Abe said...

Once again you demonstrate your inability to see things as they are. Those people who attended those "tea parties" come from all walks of life and are not all Republican's. I bet there were quite a few Dems and Independent's in attendance.

They are protesting the reckless ways of an everincreasing bloated government who is saddling the American people with a debt that may never get repaid.

You always talk about the world you hope to leave your son (which is an admirable trait). Have you ever thought that maybe those idiots in Washington running things may be destroying his future?

At least the folks at the "tea parties" weren't smashing windows and burning cars like those left wing losers have done during their "protests" in the past.

Tara said...

Glad you had a great vacation, and sorry you had to see the idiot movement in motion.

As for the water, wow. That is beyond scary. I do hope someone will hang for it and you all SHOULD be covered for the medical expenses and preventive testing you should all be getting as a result of it. We all know that wont happen....

Scott Plocharczyk said...

Honest Abe sounds like one of the sore losers.
I agree that there are probably too many taxes but where would we be without them? You just can't turnover the whole tax system overnight.

Tara if you were a judge I'd be wetting my pants if I was on trial. LOL

PeaKay40 said...

Way to go Bill......Why not send
your blog to the newspapers.
Everyone wants to have a bundle of
perks with no taxes and the rich want to get richer at the expense of the middle class guys paying all the taxes. We don't get the loop holes and write offs that the rich get. Same old same old. The rich get richer and poor get poorer.
We've never been in such a mess before and NOBODY knows what will or will not work but we can't keep doing business as usual.
God Bless America

bill said...

the idea of secession appeals to me more and more?

we remain a house divided.

lets divide the country, north/south?, east/west?

they can do it their way and we can do it ours.

any takers?

CFandl said...

No one is saying abolish taxes. People are just fed up with paying more than they should and watching the money go to waste.

I am sure that every person who posts here lives on a budget that is within their means. Why shouldn't the government (Fed, State and Local) do as well?

Nothing right wing about that.

bill said...

"You know the day destroys the night; Night divides the day"

two countries, divide it up, everybody picks one?

bill said...

"I found an island in your arms. Country in your eyes. Arms that chain us. Eyes that lie. Break on through to the other side ..."

i can start today?

Anonymous said...

"The soft parade has now begun...listen to the engines hum...people out to have some fun...cobras on my left leopards on my right."

bill said...

Some call it heavenly in it's brilliance. Others, mean and rueful of the Western dream. I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft...

...They are saying, "Forget the night. Live with us in forests of azure. Out here on the perimeter there are no stars...

Listen to this, and I'll tell you 'bout the heartache...The meager food for souls forgot...Wandering the Western dream. Tell you 'bout the maiden with wrought iron soul

Mark Ploch said...

Is this a poetry slam now?

Tara said...

Scott- I think people who knowingly poisoned people should hang. Bet he was drinking bottled water in his house. It's sick. The justice system in this country makes me sick. Potheads and dumb non violent kids do more time than child molesters. Meanwhile public figures make a mockery of the law and are free to walk around and go all over TV and radio.... I am an eye for an eye kind of person.

Ernest T. Bass said...

I like eggs.