Posted 2:40 PM by steve

I'm sure others will jump all over Paul Begala for his calling today 'Patriots Day', the day the masses get to show how patriotic they are by paying taxes...

I'll simply point out most of the taxes people pay have long ago been paid - the money withheld from our paychecks throughout the year and the estimated taxes other taxpayers are obligated to make during the course of the year. My guess is that relatively few people cough up big checks today. So just like the military and firemen and police officers who show their patriotism year round, so too do us mere taxpayers show our patriotism year round - every two weeks on Friday.

And I'll point out that the people he is criticizing - the tax partygoers - aren't complaining about government expenditures for the likes of medical care for wounded veterans and for research into finding a cure for cancer that he holds out as great examples of what tax money ought to go for. They're protesting - and he knows it - the far larger amounts of money being spent on bank and automaker bailouts and lobbyist-obtained tax breaks and the 10,000 earmarks and so on. They're protesting giving 'tax breaks' to people who didn't pay income taxes in the first place. They're protesting bailing out people who bought houses they couldn't afford. They're protesting sending billions of dollars of taxpayer money to foreign banks.

And I'll point out that people like Begala who call for raising taxes never do their patriotic duty by sending in a dollar more in taxes than they're obligated to pay. If he truly thinks patriotism is measured by the amount of money one pays in taxes, why isn't he showing how patriotic he is by sending in more money than he has to? Because he is a phony.