September | 2021 | Grumpa Joe's Place

Defund the IRS

Posted on 29/09/2021 by Grumpa Joe

I keep hearing the spin about the over three trillion dollars bill that will not cost us a cent. Perhaps it is the Democrat version of new math, but what it means to me is that we the people will be taxed beyond our wildest dreams. Oh yes, we will hear the spin masters claim that they will only tax the rich and we the people will not be affected. I did the math about ten years ago when this same type of talk was going on, and the answer is there are not enough rich people to tax that much. In fact my math told me that even if we take all the money away from the rich there will not be enough to feed voracious appetite of our government. This new bill will swallow the rich as though they were a drop of water. One question I ask is why does the bill need money for the IRS when it is not going to cost us a cent? The IRS is currently collecting record amounts of revenue with the meager staff of 93,000. I’d say that if they were as good as Amazon we would need less then a third of the people they currently employ. Modern technology is certainly capable of making the IRS more efficient than it is.

Another scary part of this trillion dollar beauty is the part about giving the IRS the responsibility to look into our private bank accounts to make certain that we the people don’t fall into the rich territory. They portend to see all of our statement charges of $600 or more. I contend that that amount is getting into our wallets for sure. Recently I almost had a stroke at the checkout counter of my local grocery store when the bill came in at $350. Sure we bought many items that were big dollar items and we were restocking our pantry but that was inflation striking me in the heart, and that was before we had officially recognized that inflation is happening. Now that prices are skyrocketing I fear going shopping for anything. I am considering buying a new smart TV which will no doubt cost me over $600 dollars. As inflation continues to rise, how much sense does it make to report grocery bills that exceed $600? Somehow reporting that to the IRS doesn’t make sense to me except they want to know just how much I spend so they can then squeeze me harder.

The bill started as an effort to fix our aging infrastructure, like roads and bridges. It was my contention back during the Obama years that he could have replaced every bridge and road in America with the shovel ready stimulus package he lobbied for and got. It has been several years since then and I haven’t seen any bridges being replaced in my solid blue state. The infrastructure portion of the bill is less than a trillion dollars, the remainder is pure graft. I can rationalize infrastructure as an investment in the country which would benefit our economy, but the remainder smacks of under the counter pay-off money for politicians to squander.

Here is my recommendation: Instead of supporting the increasing murder rates across the country by defunding the police, I opt that we defund the IRS instead. The money we save can come back into our empty pockets to spend on things we want and not on the things our politicians think we need. Never has any Alderman, State Representative, Congressman, Senator or local Village trustee ever asked me what I needed or desired. Yet, each year they continue to raise the taxes to pay for what? Nobody ever looks at the city ledger to determine how they can reduce the budget, but they always spend any surplus and ask for more.

While I’m at it I also recommend we defund Education. Why do we continue to pay for poor performance in inner city schools, and for teaching the communist way? At the rate America is going we won’t need any college educated kids to be picking up our trash or cutting our lawns. So why do we continue to pay colleges for professors that spread socialism to making our problems worse?

This post is way too long and I am rambling wildly about how bad things are when I should be cooking my supper. The idea of eating supper is more appealing than getting all fired up about the sorry state of our union. I can do something about supper, but I can’t do anything about the union.

Filed under: Aging, Conservative, Government | Tagged: government spending, Infrastructure, IRS, Omni-bus Bill | Leave a comment »

210928-Senior Wisdom

Posted on 28/09/2021 by Grumpa Joe

TWELVE COMMANDMENTS FOR SENIORS….

#1 – Talk to yourself. There are times you need expert advice.

#2 – “In Style” are the clothes that still fit.

#3 – You don’t need anger management. You need people to stop making you mad.

#4 – Your people skills are just fine. It’s your tolerance for idiots that needs work.

#5 – The biggest lie you tell yourself is, “I don’t need to write that down. I’ll remember it.”

#6 – “On time” is when you get there.

#7 – Even duct tape can’t fix stupid, but it sure does muffle the sound.

#8 – It would be wonderful if we could put ourselves in the dryer for 10 minutes, then come out wrinkle-free and three sizes smaller!

#9 – Lately, you’ve noticed people your age are so much older than you.

#10 – Growing old should have taken longer.

#11 – Aging has slowed you down, but it hasn’t shut you up.

#12 – You still haven’t learned to act your age and hope you never will..

Bonus: “One for the road” means a stop in the bathroom before you leave the house.

Filed under: Aging, family | Tagged: Common Sense, Wisdom | Leave a comment »

Contradictions

Posted on 28/09/2021 by Grumpa Joe

Critical things to think about in 2021.
I never dreamed that I would have to face the prospect of not living in the United States of America, at least not the one I have known all my life. I have never wished to live anywhere else. This is my home, and I was privileged to be born here. But today I woke up and as I had my morning coffee, I realized that everything is changing for the worse. No matter how I vote, no matter what I say, no matter how much I pray, something evil has invaded our nation, and our lives are never going to be the same. I have been confused by the hostility of family and friends. I look at people I have known all my life–so hate-filled that they agree with opinions they would never express as their own. I think that I may well have entered the Twilight Zone. We have become a nation that has lost its collective mind! And I don’t see positive change anywhere on the Horizon. The statements I listed below are wildly insane as expressed in some cases, but whether your Democrat or Republican you must admit that many of them are indisputably true.

You can’t justify this in any application of truth or logic:

• If a guy pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him.

• Somehow it’s un-American for the census to count how many Americans are in America.

• Russians influencing our elections are bad, but illegals voting in our elections are good.

• It was cool for Joe Biden to “blackmail” the President of Ukraine.

• Twenty is too young to drink a beer, but eighteen is old enough to vote.

• People who have never owned slaves should pay slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves.

• People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their degrees.

• Immigrants with tuberculosis and polio are welcome, but you’d better be able to prove your dog is vaccinated.

• Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the US must go through a rigorous vetting process, but any illiterate gang member or terrorist who jumps the southern fence is welcome.

• $5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care is not.

• If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college for free.

• If you cheat in an election nothing happens to you, but if you point out the mathematical errors of that election you are a conspiracy theorist & disdained.

• People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President.

• We see other countries going Socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan for us.

• Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.

• Criminals are caught-and-released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it’s a violation of their rights.

• And pointing out all this hypocrisy somehow makes us “racists”?!

Nothing makes sense anymore – no values, no morals, and no civility. People are dying of a Chinese virus, but it’s racist to refer to it as Chinese even though it began in China. We are clearly living in an upside-down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good, where killing murderers is wrong but killing unborn babies is okay   !

Wake up America, the great unsinkable ship Titanic America has hit an iceberg, it’s taking on water, and is sinking fast. We Americans are drowning.  Speak up while you still have breath and a voice for soon you will have neither if you don’t!

Filed under: Aging, Conservative, family | Tagged: Contradictions, Nonsense | 2 Comments »

Our Liberty is Vanishing Exponentially

Posted on 23/09/2021 by Grumpa Joe

Surprise, surprise, this morning I started on my daily walk and about ten minutes out a very sharp and mysterious pain began in my right leg. It felt like I pulled a muscle or tendon. It took me twenty minutes to return. Old age is not something for the weak. I massaged the muscle and applied some Salonpas to get some relief. It didn’t really work. Then it occurred to me that this is probably a blood clot and I’m in for a new life. I applied an ice pack and sat down to read the news. The news didn’t make me feel any better. It merely re-enforced my belief that I should be living as a hermit in the deep woods far away from people. Ever since I quit writing rants about politics my life has been much better, but now this pain is making me think again.

I keep thinking that maybe I should move to one of the countries that people are leaving to get into the USA. The population is dwindling in those countries and there should be some real estate available now that the owners are headed here. The problem is that I like it here, and in fact I like my life here. Another country, no matter how civilized or developed it is would probably not suite me since I am too old to change and accept a new culture of what ever country I decide to escape to. My friends often ask me why I stay in Illinois, specifically, so close to Chicago. I don’t have a good answer except all my friends are here, but even my family is split about the country. So, it doesn’t really matter where I live.

I prefer a warm climate to a cold one so I’d probably head to Arizona and not Alaska. Except that Arizona is a hot bed for border crossers, and I am partial to the color green. In order to live in Arizona one must love the color brown. As the United States populates, the frontiers are becoming more sparse. I remember my first cross country trip in 1962 when the space between towns seemed endless and the towns were just that, towns, more like tiny villages. The same trip today is much different in that the towns are often cities and the space between them is populated with suburbia. Only the miles remain the same. Shopping centers are found in every population center and the names of the stores are all the same giving them all the look of home. With all the similarities across the country why would anyone want to leave the comfort of their native town. TAXES are one reason for leaving. At my age and with my bank account, and inflation raising prices beyond affordability I am looking for ways to stretch my dollars. I am one who abhors paying government money for things I can do for myself and better too. With so many towns across the country they all want the same life style. They all want fire protection, police protection, great roads, street signs, street lights, garbage pick up, clean water libraries, schools, internet, and malls with stores. In order to get all that the tiny governments raise taxes to pay for them. Then what happens is the government keeps hiring more people to work on these goodies. Little towns soon have a police force with thirty cops and full time fire department. The neighboring town buys an armored vehicle for thier police force so all their neighbors want one too. Schools all have to have air conditioning and gymnasiums, football fields, and buses. Many towns remain small in population but their budgets climb and keep climbing as the population keeps getting their pockets picked. The village government which ran out of a small three bedroom house now needs to be expanded and before we know it there is a Taj Ma Village Hall built to house the Mayor’s office.

As the population of the small town grows our liberties begin to vanish. For instance, I want to put a picket fence around my yard, but I can’t without a building permit. I want to raise chickens but can’t because there is an ordnance against it. I want to rent my house through AIrBNB but can’t because there is a new ordnance against it. I want to put a sign in my front yard advertising my home based business but learn that I can’t because there is a ten page ordnance against signs of any kind. My men’s club wants to hold a raffle to raise money for a cause, but I need to get a raffle permit and buy a bond to insure the winner will get the prize. The Church Ladies Club wants to hold a regular bingo game to raise money for the missions, and they are required to get a permit to operate a gambling parlor. Worse yet the Ladies have to pay a percentage of the take on their bingo game. The list of freedoms lost is seemingly endless and we are losing more and more freedom exponentially. The problem is these freedoms are seemingly tiny, and don’t really matter, but they add up and sneak into our lives making life more and more regulated. What happened to the days when we could do all these things freely and without concern that the local police will come and shut us down. Now I understand why reality TV programs that revolve around people who live off the grid in remote areas are so popular.