Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Latest Lefty Sobriquet --- The "Free Lunch Crowd"

Came across a new blog today (well, new for me) written by a Charlottesville Democrat. In it, he attacked an old friend of mine --- Grover Norquist, to be specific --- as a member of "the free-lunch crowd."
Now, it's not the first time I've heard this disparaging term. In fact, it seems ever more popular among Repubmocrats who can't get enough of our tax dollars. And quite frankly, I resent it. The implication seems to be that I'm demanding a "free lunch" from the government, so-called "services" which I don't want to pay for. While that would be an economically sound position to take --- it is economically rational to reduce individual expenses to the greatest extent possible --- it is certainly not my position. Nor, do I suspect, is it the position of those who are standing up against the greedy hands of the local, state, and federal goverments, which are all laying claim to an ever greater portion of our national income.
But it's not a free lunch that I'm after. Indeed, I'm certain that most anti-tax Conservatives feel much more like a goose whose being fattened up so that his liver can be made into pate, i.e., force-fed, than someone bellying up to the cafeteria buffet for a free lunch. But let us consider the various taxes paid by the Youngs, to the state and local governments, and exactly what I'm really getting for them:
As to gas taxes, for example, I'm paying for two cars, which I drive on overly-congested roads. Why are they congested? It's not because I've haven't paid for the lunch, since I pay gas taxes. I'm sitting on congested roads because my lunch was sent to Southside Virginia, Roanoke, and the Richmond areas. My lunch is sitting in the middle of the Coalfields Expressway.
And what about property taxes? They've gone up 50-60% in recent years, but I'm not getting any more services. My fire station was built years ago. Montclair has its own security. I buy books and use the Internet; I don't go to the publicly-funded library. My children go to private school, but I'm still paying for that lunch for someone else's child, as well as my own.
And what about state taxes? Well, nothing from the general fund goes into roads at all, let alone Northern Virginia roads. So once again, my lunch went elsewhere.
So please, Lefties, spare us the sanctimony of insulting us as the "free-lunch crowd." In fact, it is your constituency --- i.e., those whose votes you are trying to buy --- who actually constitute the "free-lunch crowd," since you are trying to buy votes with money earned from the productive class, as opposed to the bigger government/leech class.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Anybody who runs for office promising to a) increase services and b) cut taxes is a free-luncher, and there's no way around it.

Anonymous said...

daggone james! you right! them dems is socialists and they want to convert us all to homosexuality!

James Young said...

Funny, I don't remember saying either that I was running for office promising more so-called services or that dems "want to convert us all to homosexuality." 'Course, I would never have said that "them dems is," either.

Ricky Joe (or Billy Bob, or whatever) is using the typical Leftie tactic of misrepresenting and misquoting a Conservative. Conservatives should call such individuals out and call that tactic what it is: a lie.