Oct 11, 2009

Tax Petition Man

There's an old guy outside my market with a petition. Every time I walk by, he asks me if I want to sign his petition to reduce the sales tax. I decline and think to myself, if you've got one to increase the sales tax, maybe I'l sign that petition, but I have no interest in mixing it up with him. Guys that age get all red and shaky, knock shit over with flailing arms and get heart attacks. So fuck that. I give him the same answer I give the Jehovahs:
"I appreciate what you're doing, but no thanks."

Today, I pulled up and a fashionable young woman with a comically large ass was signing his petition. Once she rolled her SUV out onto the shitty, busted-up streets of Worcester, our metaphor was complete.

Him: "Will you sign this petition to reduce the Mass sales tax?"
Her: "Will that leave more money in my pocket?"
"Sure!"
"So I'll be able to spend more of my money on the fatty, sugary treats that have made me such an unsightly double-wide?"
"Yes!"
"That's great! Now what about shopping for clothes and hair products and treatments that I use to fill my empty stupid life?"
"You'll definitely more money for that stuff, PLUS that stuff will be so much less expensive."
"How much?"
"Well, if your hairdo costs $45, I would guess about 14.037 cents."
"Oh snap, that's great. Now I'll probably have money to buy so much other garbage that I don't have room for it in my house? And so I'll have to think about renting offsite storage space for it all."
"Indubitably."
"Oh wow. This sounds great, my life is going to be so fucking incredible! OK well see ya later, I have to drive home the long way to avoid all the intersections where firemen are begging me to put spare change in their boots, I'm all like whateverrr. I just take these other roads but they're so worn out and full of potholes that it bashes my fashionable SUV apart."
"Yeah, that's because those jerks in government are greedy crooks."

"For reals yo. Toodles."

There are constant calls to cut-cut-cut taxes and concurrently a constant whining and suffering of the public good. What are we doing with all that extra money that we save? Buying plastic crap from China? That's it? That's what we choose for a prize when we trade in our community's well-being?

I drive and walk around this city this summer, on broken roads, looking at immense garage sales full of dogshit bullshit trash, and looking at the empty pools. This city didn't have enough money to open the pools this year. It's not like they didn't have the money to fix them after they were vandalized, or some situation like that. No, they just didn't have the money to bother opening them. Fuck the children in this city. I guess it makes sense: If your parents can't afford a pool, then you don't get to swim. This makes my head all hot and explodey.

Publicly: We don't have enough money to simply activate the equipment that we already own. Privately: We apparently have enough money to buy enough shit to load up our every shelf closet garage shed and cubbyhole.

So I'll say this for the sake of the children: Fuck you and fuck your petition.

4 comments:

Oskie said...

Thanks for the rant.

I too never know what the f people are thinking. If pressed, they’ll shell out four bucks a gallon to Exxon but raise the gas tax and effectively pay that money to themselves? Noooo! It’s just nuts.

EZ Goodnight said...

Thumbs up.

Gabe said...

I guess you can look at it two ways. One way you are absolutely right. The other way is that there is so much corruption in this state it's not funny and ALL of us are complicit by not doing everything we can to stop it which is mostly always being aware of it not forgetting it's going on every time something like this pisses us off and paying as much attention to local politics as we do to national.

I agree though. I would pay a whole bunch of taxes if I was sure they were going to proper shit and not the pockets politicians and friends of politicians and government jobs where people actually get paid to not do anything all day.

Rollbiz said...

In way late, but I loved this so much that I had to say so.