bizarreville

…You people with jobs need to pay more of your Fair Share of taxes.  I’m tired of arguing with you, and really tired of you and your Tea Party buddies whining about paying more tax.  “Pay up, Shut up” is gonna be my new slogan.  Pay up, shut up.  You don’t seem to grasp that we have a recession going on.  No, no, you don’t.  And most of you in this room have jobs.  Am I right?  Well, you job-people need to help the non-job and the sub-job portions of our population.  You need to step up to your responsibilities to pay…yes, sometimes paying out the fabled ying yang…to get this debt under control.

You, over there.  You with the salmon-colored polo shirt.  You have a job, right?  Right.  And how much do you figure you pay in taxes, percentage-wise?  Forty-two percent…is that what you said?  42 lousy percent.  That means you’re taking way over half of your wages home with you every paycheck.  I’m guessing your blowing it on food, beer, a fancy shmancy house in the burbs, polos shirts for every person in your family…Nike shoes, right?  Not Bilford Athletic Econo-shoes…no, sir.  Nike.  Are you expecting the rest of the country to get by with Bilfords?  Is it fair that your kids can wear Nikes, but the bum’s kid out there on the street gets stuck with Bilfords?  Is that the kind of country we want to be…one with an ever-widening shoe gap?  Is it??

Pay up, shut up.  Fork over a few more measly dollars so that no one has to wear Bilfords unless they choose to.  Let’s erase that stigma from our society.

You know, you may find yourself needing help some day.  That’s right.  None of us are immune from the so-called green weenie, the axeman, the Chain-saw Al, the Neutron Jack, the pink slip.  I’ll bet a lot of you don’t have 2 cents in a savings account, living paycheck to paycheck, bar tab to bar tab.  You may well find yourself destitute and looking for someone to sponge off of one day.  That’s when you’ll see it all from the other side.  That’s when you’ll be saying Pay up, Shut up along with me.  You…you in the back row, nodding…yeah, you know what I mean.  Pay up, shut up doesn’t sound so bad, does it?  Exactly.  Why wait for it to happen?  Join us now, see the future.  Your future.  Let’s all say it together…Pay up, shut up, pay up, shut up, Pay Up, Shut Up, PAY UP, SHUT UP…that’s right…PAY UP, SHUT UP…now we’re talking.

My friends, trust me when I say that you will all feel better by just paying a little more.  You will have an enormous wave of self-satisfaction sweep over you as you realize your taxes are helping so many people live a better life.  You’ll take great joy as you see a raggety old bum shuffle into a Starbucks for a free cup of latte, perhaps for the first time ever.  You’ll get a tingle when you see an obese lady able to buy a grocery cart load of National brand potato chips with her food stamps.  You’ll have a sense of satisfaction watching 10 government-subsidized workers filling a pothole on Main Street, knowing that each will be bringing home a paycheck to momma.  And it’s all because you Paid Up and Shut up.  Join us.

Good night, friends.

Disclaimer:  All stories in Bizarreville are fiction, including town hall secret tapings.

At his recent budget balance press conference, the President suggested that billionaires need to have more skin in the game, and pucker up for higher taxes. This comment prompted a group of investigative reporters to seek out and survey some billionaires to get their reaction. The reporter consortium published their findings in yesterday’s edition of the Bizarreville Daily Moon.

The results were surprising. One hundred billionaires were found, mostly playing bad golf at exclusive country clubs, pounding martinis at swanky clubs, or sunning their wrinkles on various-sized yachts. When asked how they felt about a 3 or 4 percent tax bump, the general response was: “Huh? Beats the s#!$ out of me. Why don’t you go ask my Accountant. He’s that flunky over there mixing me a cocktail at the bar. Ask him to whip you up one of these peach mojitos. Have him splash a little moonshine in it, then hold onto the rail.”

The report concluded that clearly the issue of raising taxes on all 100 billionaires by 3, 4, maybe 5 percent would have very little negative pushback from the affected parties…most of whom would instruct their Accountants to go find some new tax shelter anyway, and start earning their keep. It suggests that it should be relatively simple for the Congress and President to come to quick consensus on this Easy Button tax adder.

But members of the More Tax Now & Forever advocacy group point out that this is not enough, not nearly enough, to cover the important spending needs of our time. They point out that there are still people here living below the poverty line, some with only one flatscreen TV, many who are forced to continue to use cumbersome, old-fashioned non-Smart cell phones. They point out that many Bridges to Nowhere are starting to crumble, let alone the Bridges to New Nowheres that were promised, but never built. They further point out that the proposed Unemployment Retirement program, which would provide important retirement benefits to people who have been dutifully collecting unemployment checks for up to 20 years, has still not been passed. They suggest that there are so many studies that could be done–investigating the mating habits of cockroaches, weed propogation in western deserts, and the kinetics of a slinky as it flops down stairs. But none of this important work can be done without bold new taxes. They plead that it is time to decide what kind of nation we want to be.

But as the tax debate continues, it seems apparent that billionaires will be asked to contribute more of their fair share. One billionaire CEO responded, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll just tell my Board to give me a raise to compensate for it.”

Disclaimer: all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even ones you would swear are true.

The President has had his whole staff dreaming up creative ways to raise taxes to pay for the myriad of new entitlement programs and chip away at the trillion-plus annual budget deficit.  He reportedly would like to find a way to do it so that the public ends up applauding him, rather than excoriating him, for yet another tax.  But how to raise a tax that would have any amount of public support?  One senior flunkie had an idea, and the President quickly embraced it.

The President will announce the new tax which will go into effect on April 1:  the Credit Card Solicitation and Junk Mail Reconciliation Act.  The new provision will place a $1.00 tax on every snail-mailed credit card offer, and the tax would have to be paid by the credit card companies by the 15th of every month.  Every “Low APR, no annual fee for the first year, reward point bonuses” Visa, Master Card, AmEx or any other mailed solicitation will be subject to the new Buck Junk tax.

As expected, the measure has received broad initial backing from citizens, the US Postal Service, and not surprisingly the garbage collector industry.  “We been busting our humps for the last 10 years with heavier and heavier loads per household,” said Mick McFunknose, president of the Collectors Union Local 69.  “Our back strain and knee strain injury rate has doubled during that period.  And it’s because of all that junk mail!  It has forced us to early-retire Collectors at 55, because they can’t physically handle the larger and larger containment units.  These are guys who would like to work the cans for another 5 to 7 years, but just can’t pull the load.  This new law could bring old Collectors out of retirement, and back on their cans.”

Industry analysts estimate the average citizen receives 100 credit card solicitations per year, which would generate about $30 billion in new revenues.  There would also be savings in the costs of waste disposal, hauling, and landfill tipping fees that would save additional money.

But the new law would go beyond credit cards, and extend the Buck Junk tax to all junk mail, including vacation promotions, real estate offers, college donation solicitations, garbagey coupon packs, club solicitations, time-share opportunities, frequent flyer promos, and most anything that gets immediately tossed.  Experts say this could generate another $40 to 50 billion in tax revenues.

One additional provision is to allow TeleMarketers to call potential customers, overturning the call-blocking laws that many states have instituted.  This had been a thorn in the side of the TeleMarketing industry for several years, and its overturn would be a great victory for them.  The only negative conceivably objectionable in the new law would be that they will have to pay 10 dollars to each person they call, each time they call, and another one dollar to the Federal government as a Buck Junk tax.  Administration officials see this as a small price to pay for reaching millions of new customers.

Even the Tea Party leadership has come out in favor of this one.   “In general, we are solidly against any/all new taxes levied on our over-taxed citizenry,” a Tea Party spokesman said.  “But, in this particular case, let’s tax the hell out of those friggin bastards.”

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the ones that would be so nice if they were true.