Bend Over

I was going to avoid writing anything of a vaguely political nature today on account of being bored utterly shitless by all the talk about primaries. Since I can't vote over here the question of which useless candidate I'd vote for is not one that exercises my mind, but it does seem that the distinctions are fairly slim. There are Democrats who will take all your money in taxes and give it to all the special interests who paid for their campaign, like the scum-sucking trial lawyers, and Republicans who will promise not to raise your taxes and then take all your money in taxes and give it to the people who bankrolled their campaign, such as pharmaceutical companies. It's a bit like choosing how you want to be fucked - the process may vary but the end result is the same.

I mention this because I'm freshly returned from Belgium, a country that is renowned for its high taxes and extensive social programs. While sitting at dinner with colleagues from over there it became clear that they were doing very well under the Belgian system. Sure, they paid high taxes but they then received free college education for their children and free healthcare. (By this I mean decent healthcare, not the socialized excuse for a health system in the UK, where you go into hospital for a minor operation and come out in a box, having succumbed to some lethal bacteria.) They drove company cars with the fuel all paid for, lived in nice houses and ate in wonderful restaurants. They all received about six or seven weeks of paid vacation a year and spent it in pleasant locations drinking good wine. On top of this, their chocolate tastes like sex in a wrapper and they have a selection of beers and cheeses that put to shame the yellow piss water and orange fatty blocks that pass for such substances in St.Louis.

So if we all voted for higher taxes surely we could have the vacations, healthcare, education and other benefits typical in Belgium, right? Bollocks we could. Anyone with a half ounce of brain should realize by now that the more money we hand to Congress in the form of taxes the more stupid ways thay will find of wasting it. They'll build bridges to places nobody goes and museums of things nobody cares about. They'll set up commissions, working groups, think tanks and committees stuffed with all the wankers who worked on their election campaigns, and all the money that's left over will be handed out in the form of kickbacks to all the donors who funded said campaigns. In effect your taxes go to pay off the debts they incurred getting themselves elected, and then keeping themselves elected. This is why it doesn't make any sense to vote for more taxes in order to fund better social programs, not even if you're one of the people who don't pay taxes to begin with.

On driving home from a restaurant, in a nice part of one Belgian town, I happened to notice a lot of the windows in the street (a prosperous residential street in many parts) were surrounded by pink neon lights. The kind of pink neon that can only mean one thing - that sex, in one form or another, is for sale. There were women in windows who were (un)dressed to leave no doubt that this was a place that you could, for a small fee, expect to leave your DNA. Which just goes to show that in this enlightened European society getting fucked is a simple matter of choice. Back home, from what little I've seen of the US political system at work, we may not get the vacations, healthcare or higher education but Congress will ensure that we get fucked whether we like it or not. And anyone who believes any different probably shouldn't be allowed to vote...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison