Thanks to Cowtown Pattie for this link that got me all riled up.
It’s back to this. In the late sixties I did a quick real estate survey of downtown Madison, Wisconsin and in addition to all the land tied up by governmental and educational institutions, an appalling amount of the best locations and the fanciest architecture was in the hands of religion. The most valuable land was – and remains – off the tax rolls. Now huge evangelical republican shrines are being built across the country and generally they too are separated from this community obligation by the very laws they’re trying to neutralize when they meddle in civil marriage concerns, sexual health issues, scientific advances in medicine, and the public school curriculum. I say give them a shot at banning all the books they want. Let them bring it to a vote, book by book. But if they’re flushing their turds down my sewer and drinking my municipal water and increasing traffic on the public streets every Sunday when their flag decaled and magnetic ribboned SUVs caravan to their tax sheltered places of worship, then let them pay the taxes and be governed by the same rules that the rest of us follow.
In god’s name, can’t we tax and regulate the poor benighted ignoramuses before they swallow up the country like some plague of locusts? Roughly one third of Americans are stupid enough or twisted enough or suffered enough abuse that they believe that evangelical crap. Why should two thirds of us have to suffer under their oppressive nonsense? Tax them. Let them render a little unto Caesar for a change. The freeloaders have been sucking our communities dry long enough.
Good one, Frank!
I did have a side chuckle (moan?) when a
friend pointed this out:
“Of course, The New York Times is fairly laughable when they talk about other people’s loopholes, having themselves utilized the “public use” part of eminent domain law recently to get prime city real estate practically given to them at city expense. (I wonder if that means that bloggers, who in a way publish newspapers, can now become real estate barons. Somehow I don’t think so.) Still, this doesn’t invalidate their points.”
Thanks for the link!
Yeah, good one. All those stupid people who disagree with you.
They’re all stupid. I know that because internet lefties keep telling me how much smarter they are than all those “ignoramouses”, so it must be true.
YES!!!
RW, I know. It’s awful. What Frank is getting goes even deeper than taxing people who disagree with him. He’s indulging in inflammatory hate speech. It’s not as though the SUV religionists support killing real Americans, after all, or torturing them. They just want to be happy and think happy thoughts. Sometimes that involves killing a very few people here and there, some of them in other countries, and torturing them too, but it’s a perfectly respectable point of view. Shame on him for calling them ignoramuses! They’ve thought it out and arrived at a rational opinion.
But getting back to Frank, he’s effectively tampering with the fabric of space and time themselves, and undermining the Constitution. I happen to be a strict constructionist in these matters. Frank knows this. I can only assume his post was meant to get my goat.