Send in the clowns

I almost don’t vote. Like the little old lady in New Hampshire once said, “It only encourages them.� I don’t usually do politics, but sometimes it all just gets to be too much.

 The expression, “Send in the clowns,â€� is an old circus maxim. This is what they do when a disaster happens during the show. It is supposed to distract the crowd while they cart off the broken trapeze artist. It might behoove our legislators to adopt this practice.

Congress seems unable to actually do anything effective about health-care reform. Like Ross Perot once said, “They get talking about a thing confused with actually doing it.� Besides, it is your party against my party. Send in the clowns.

Congress is unable to complete all of its work before the end of the session, but who here would like a pay raise? They have time to do that. Send in the clowns.

Is Social Security really in trouble or is this all a lot of Chicken Little “The Sky is Falling� rhetoric? Who cares? No rush. Tabled. The legislators aren’t a part of this system. Send in the clowns.

Our banks and automotive industry have demonstrated what happens when greed runs rampant and self-interest at the executive level supercedes all. Let’s give them taxpayer money. Don’t have enough? No problem, just take it from a part of the budget we haven’t spent yet and then raise taxes to replace it. They can, they’re the government.

After all, they can always get more where that came from. It’s not like it’s real money, it’s taxes. They’ll  worry about how to pay for it later or borrow more money from China. They are our friends …  for now. Send in the clowns.

My goodness. Americans are chafing at paying that temporary tax that was levied to finance the war — World War II, that is. Seems they really believed that once the politicians got their hands on a source of money that they could increase at will, they would actually end the income tax.

One state, to remain unnamed, used to brag that they didn’t have an income tax, collecting all their needed revenues from sales and licensing taxes, instead. Much fairer as this only impacted people who had disposable income to buy luxury items, like transportation for work.

The key word here is “instead.� One day the residents woke up to find that the state had changed its mind. Seems they needed to do the income tax thing after all. The last I heard they quietly forgot to eliminate or reduce the sales and licensing taxes. Send in the clowns.

Oh, but wait. Like it says in the Judy Collins’ song — they’re already here.

Bill Abrams resides in and watches politicians “clown around� from Pine Plains.