You might be a Democrat if...

What they don't tell you is that if you tax churches,
you tax church members an extra 1 million
dollars every 7 minutes and 30 seconds beyond
the taxes they already pay. And the church member
has to pay the extra tax, just for believing in something
that progressives don't (God in case you missed that).

THE CRY HAS NOW GONE UP: CHURCHES SHOULD BE TAXED!

So, dear friends, are you saying the government should take 30 to 40% of my tithe and offerings so the government can take over the charitable things that my church does and somehow that's going to work out a lot better for us all?  Not to mention that the government will also use that tax money they take from my tithes and offerings to blow up things, to pay useless bureaucrats exhorbitant salaries to sit in cubicles generating paperwork for each other and interfering with small business, to build roads to nowhere and to imprison people in large numbers.

So you're okay with the church being able to afford 30% fewer pastors and teachers, 30% fewer missions, mission doctors and mission workers, 30% fewer schools and 30% fewer hospitals for the church? 

And that's if the tax rate stays that low. Anyone realize what the tax rate has been under previous Democrat administrations.  Would you believe 70%?  How about 90%.  The tax rate has got that high under the Dems. Is there anybody you believe should give back 90% of what he or she earns by their own efforts?  Does anyone really think that taking that much away from people who create jobs is a good idea?

If you do, you might be a Democrat.

In the interest of equal time, here's ten reason why churches should be taxed.  My favorite is this one:

To exempt churches from taxation unfairly restricts the ability of other social elements that deserve to progress, and thereby goes against what the government was built to do in the first place.

There's an argument that presumes churches don't deserve to progress. He earlier says "Churches don't exist primarily to provide for the citizen; the government does." Anybody else see where we're going. In the typical satanic (yeah I went there) propoganda ploy you lead with an assumption that is false, but which you say is true and then, hoping they'll take your word for it that the first thing is true, you go on to tell the untruth you want them to swallow. In this case, the untruth is that we should give all our money to someone who will take care of us; in fact that someone else gives us our rights and benefits, rather than that we ourselves earn those rights and benefits.  I'd maintain that government exists, not to grant us rights and benefits, but to protect citizens from eternal busybodies who want to always be telling others what to do and restricting our rights and privileges. The whole point of the revolution that created the United States was that we didn't want other people to be meddling in our business all the time.

This ain't how Robin Hood worked.
He actually took from the tax collectors
and gave the money back to the taxpayers.
Obama Hood? Not so much....

The great fallacy in the reasoning that not taxing churches is stealing from taxpayers is that there is an underlying assumption that the government owns all the money and gives it back to us in order to take care of us. It follows under this line of reasoning that, if the government can't take it from churches, then they can't give it to "taxpayers" so that's somehow cheating "taxpayers". If you missed the subtle little problem here, they are calling us tax PAYERS and yet casting the argument as though we were tax "getters". In other words they assume we all agree that government works like this. They TAKE money from you the taxpayer (since the government owned all your money anyway) and leave you a little to muddle by on. Then, the government decides what to do with the money they took from you and they may (or may not) give you some of it back if the government approves of whatever you are doing.  I wrote government grants for more than 20 years. They're very picky about who they give money back to and if they don't like what you are doing, they won't give you any.

Now under the "churches ought to be taxed" scheme, if you are a Christian, for instance, and you give 10-20% of your income to the church and the government TAKES that money through taxation, then you are being effectively charged an indirect luxury tax for the privilege of giving money to your church! You were already taxed once on all the money you kept. Then, you would be taxed on the money you give for God's work also. Now atheists or non-churchy progressives get to keep that 10-20% of their income to use to buy themselves beer and skittles. So, if we're arguing about fairness, I think it's danged unfair that Bob the Progressive gets to not only keep more of his income for his own self-gratification, but that I also have to pay a tax on whatever I do not keep for myself, but give to help my church do its charitable works, thus saving the government money that Bob thinks it needs to spend on said charitable works.

In the real world, Bob the Progressive should not get to tell me whether or not what I freely give to my church is worthwhile or not. He doesn't get to say whether or not my religion is useless and should be taxed. Bob the Progressive is proposing a sort of a luxury tax for people being religious and he's obviously doing it because he doesn't approve of religion and taxing churches he hopes will punish them and decrease their power. King George III would have like to shut up a few American pastors too as I recall.

The right to the free exercise of religion is enshrined in the Constitution. You don't get to meddle with it just so you can save on your own taxes or get yourself some more government goodies. It doesn't work that way.

Check out the 10 reasons churches should be taxed, but only if you've taken your blood pressure meds this morning. It's a rare, honest peek inside the plans of the progressive left for religion in America.  How many false assumptions can you count?

© 2015 by Tom King

Are These Obama Sycophants Serious?

Got this (above) posted on my Facebook wall this morning. I just had to wonder whether the guy was serious or just wanted to make me blow up and waste the rest of the morning arguing with him and his cronies.

It's odd. They are trying so hard to revive Obama's rep and its ludicrous.  I mean, Obama owned the House and Senate his first term and the Democrats had owned the senate and house for two years BEFORE he became president so they were able to do a lot of prep work (like crashing the economy) before he got there. They arranged a Nobel Prize for him less than a month after he became president and he hadn't even done any serious damage to the United States yet.  And with the padded head start they gave him, this man is still blaming Bush for everything. He piled up trillions in debt in just his first term. He managed in just 4 years to out spend all 46 previous presidents put together. 

Yeah, if it weren't for those pesky Republicans obstructing him at every term, we might have a national form of socialist government by now and what a joy that would be. Imagine if he could have "done more"?!!

Okay, let's imagine if president Obama could have successfully nationalized the economy and given us real state socialism  Except, let's take an example from history where a nationalized state socialims was tried out.The leader of that nation also claimed he had a "better" version of Marxiswm all figured out far better than the Communist kind. He and his followers assured everyone that this new brand of kinder, gentler socialism would "work this time" because, unlike previous disastrous attempts at Marxist socialism, this time they had the "right leaders". The Leader (that's what they called him - "the leader") complained that a certain group was "obstructing his reforms at every turn" (probably early Republicans I bet) and with the assent of the people, he did manage to quietly remove those obstructionists rather effectively - some six million of them.

He loved nature and children, enacted rigorous gun control laws for the safety of the people. Only the authorities, he argued, needed to bear arms. Without guns in the hands of the proletariat, civil unrest was abruptly ended and peace reined.

He rammed through strict environmental laws to save the forests because nature was good "for the people." Then the leader's ministers built huge estates on the lands confiscated by the government so they could protect those beautiful natural vistas from encroachment by "the people", because nature must be protected for the good of everyone, it was argued. 

Churches, priests and pastors - were stripped of their protected status if they criticized what was going on.  The Leader arrested thousands and executed many hundreds who opposed his policies - including world reknown theologians and churchmen.

This great visionary leader wanted the government to control all those evil corporations that were exploiting the people. He got that too and proceeded to enact policies which turned those industries into slave labor camps and eventually reduced those industries to rubble.

Remarkably (if you believe the newspapers), everybody just loved him and wanted him elected to a third term.... Remember this lovable guy?

"The Leader"  (you might remember him as "der Fuerher" -
the man with the better brand of Marxism!)

Have these "Occupy" people never sat in a history class in their lives?


© 2015 by Tom King

Dr. Ben Carson is No Politician

That's why I like him...

Somebody called me "ignorant" today for supporting Ben Carson for president. He also called Carson "dumb as a brick" about politics.  To me that's a big plus for the retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon. I don't think the gentleman's concern over the "ignorance level" of Carson supporters is the problem with our nations leadership these days.

I think it's arrogance on the part of those, who believe that a leader must be a "good" politician, to dismiss honest men like Carson as somehow unfit to lead our nation.  Being a good politician isn't what makes a good leader and folk like the know-it-all Jeb Bush supporter that called me ignorant is mistaken in his belief that leadership is or even should be the sole responsibility of the politician - one trained in the art of manipulation, lying and subterfuge. Career politicians are a curse on our nation. Senators are the finest politicians on the planet and they turn out to be some of the lousiest chief executives of all time.

It would be far better, I believe, that our nation should be led by intelligent men with good character than to be "controlled" by slippery politicians - habitually corrupt characters who use "ignorant voters" to accumulate power for themselves. Note that those who criticize Dr. Carson, usually confine their criticism to vague accusations and put-downs that make them sound like one of those so-called "elite" members of society. You know, the ones who believe it is their destiny to rule over the ignorant masses. Well, I got news dudes and dudettes. The founding of America ended the rule of the hereditary nobility - in this part of the new world at least. The progressive movement is little more than an attempt to recreate, under the rubrik of social Darwinism, a genetically favored "nobility", made up of politicians, Harvard, Yale and Columbia graduates and the scions of wealthy families.

Why can't a brilliant brain surgeon who grew up poor in Detroit and who educated himself to become perhaps the world's foremost neurosurgeon, figure out how to do the right thing as president of the United States? So what if he's not very good at political manipulation? I say that's a good thing. Politics is not brain surgery. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone in the oval office, who is smart enough to actually DO brain surgery, though?  I suspect the man should be able to figure out how to run the country successfully given the level of intelligence required to reach the pinnacle of scientific achievement he has attained. 

Why should we need a politician-president? Arguably, the most talented politician to occupy the oval office in the past century was Lyndon Johnson and look what a mess he made of things. He was brilliant at getting things done legislatively. Trouble was, what he wanted done, was terrible for the country. He lost a war his predecessor started and started a war that all of his successors have been steadily losing for the past 47 years! And by all accounts he was a man of low characters.

Great politicians are the very jackasses that got us all into this mess in the first place. Maybe if someone like Dr. Carson were elected, he'd bring in a few other honest men and women on his coattails. Wouldn't that be a breath of fresh air in the halls of Congress, even if it's only the last hurrah of American exceptionalism just before we disappear into the gray quagmire envisioned by the progressive socialists? When progressives fantasize about a manageable proletariat where everybody is "happy and safe" and "equal" (by which they mean "the same"), it is always created by legislative fiat and a vast governmental system arises so that we members of the proletariat may be properly managed by our betters. Oddly enough, certain privileges are inevitably reserved for the motely collection of elite hard-working talented politicians who assume the mantle of "Dear Leadership" - for our own good of course.

© 2015 by Tom King