We all know the legend of Robin Hood. According to the story related to us when we were children, he “stole from the rich and gave to the poor.” Actually, that is not what he did. He stole from the government, the tax collectors for King John (what gives it away is the “King” part) and gave the money back to the taxpayers, that is, the people from whom the tax collectors took the money. Robin Hood was not a socialist, he was a tax protestor.
Dennis Moore, the legend whose story is told by the Monty Python players, is the story of the real evil of government. Monty Python always had the best political humor. Who can forget the parody of worthless government bureaucracies as portrayed by Ministry of Silly Walks? But Dennis Moore is often forgotten. Dennis Moore, we are told, began to steal from the rich to give to the poor, but he never stopped stealing from his original targets. Soon the rich from whom Dennis Moore stole were poor, and so, according to Monty Python, Dennis Moore then stole from the poor and gave to the rich (“stupid b*tch” as Monty Python tells us).
That is the evil of government. Taxes are a form of “legalized” theft. Legal only because the government authorizes them. They are collected without the taxpayers consent, which, if anybody but the government did it, would be called theft. And, we are told, the government wants to take the money from the rich, and give it to the poor. Maybe it started out that way, but these days, the government takes the money, through a variety of different means, from the everyday working people, much like the peasants in the Robin Hood legend and gives it mainly to the rich, that is, themselves and their political supporters.
Take a look at the salaries of many of the upper echelon of government at all levels. In most levels of government, the top earners are paid in the mid to upper six figure range. Look at county executives, city managers, school superintendents, water district managers, fire district managers, other special district managers, and upper echelon state and federal employees. The amount of money they are paid is obscene. Most are paid more than President and the Governor, and all are paid more than their immediate bosses, that is, members of Congress, state legislators, county supervisors, city councils, school board, and the other government boards. I’m not even including government union bosses, who extract our tax dollars that are paid to rank and file government employees through union dues, and then pay themselves more than the employees from who they extract these involuntary union dues. Government and union bosses are paid by taxes taken mostly from people who earn less than $100,000 and these bosses are then paid more than $100,000. The government literally steals from the poor and gives to the rich (“stupid b*tch”).
That is the evil of government. It is difficult to catalogue the various ways they take the money from the productive, whether it is through income taxes, property taxes, water fees, gas taxes, business license and occupational license fees, utility taxes, sales taxes, and the list goes on and on. People who work hard for a living, and barely make a living wage, are forced to pay these exorbitant extractions from their paychecks, to pay for the opulent lifestyles of the wealthy government employees.
In so many cases, these leeches oversee government agencies whose value to people is equal to the Ministry of Silly Walks, yet if anyone tries to bring them into line by reducing their salaries, make them productive, or (gasp) eliminate the agency, or the executive’s position, the public is pummeled with their wailing and gnashing of teeth, delivered to the public through the media propaganda machine. We are watching it happen right now in DC, as Donald Trump tries to trim the size and scope of the federal government. If you believe the media propaganda, the world is coming to an end because Trump want to eliminate USAID or the Department of Education (which has overseen the collapse of the American education system). The propaganda is delivered to us daily by a media obviously in the pocket of the rich, big government operatives.
The government is Dennis Moore. Stupid B*tch.