Let me get this straight. People that enter our country illegally are complaining about not being represented in the upcoming national census. Some Latino leaders want illegal immigrants to boycott the national survey, claiming that being counted — but not represented — isn’t fair.
ARE YOU FRIGGIN’ KIDDING ME?
You are not supposed to be here in the first place. Your mere existince in America makes you a criminal. If entering America to get a better life is not a crime, then I want a refund for the speeding tickets I’ve paid. After all, I was just rushing to work to get a better life.
“It doesn’t make any sense, in some way it is immoral that we are counting 12 million undocumented immigrants who have no benefit at all financially speaking,” said Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders.
Rivera, whose conservative group of evangelicals is behind the boycott, admitted that telling undocumented immigrants not to participate in the Census is a radical step. But he said it is the only way to make a political point to push immigration reform.
“We are getting nothing at all. … Why not fix this issue, have legalization for every undocumented immigrant, no more undocumented people in this country, and everybody can be counted and everybody will have a fair share,” he said.
This stuff drives me insane. It is “immoral” to ignore not-citizens in a statistical counting of our citizens, but it is not immoral to illegally enter a country? And how dare you claim that you are “getting nothing at all” when in fact you are getting employment, education and health care for free! In fact, the “fair share” that illegal immigrants are consuming every day in America is part of the reason local economies are in the toilet.
The audacity of these statements is a testament to the surreal view of life illegal immigrants and their supporters have.
Thanks to the visual imagery of Josh Dyess at WallStats.com I am happy to help educate the masses. Josh has a creative eye and can help you get a better understanding of complex (and not so complex) stuff via pictures. Check out his site when you have a moment. [update: Josh tells me he didn't create these images, he got it from a friend, who got it from a friend, etc. So, I don't know who actually created them. But still visit Josh's site, its pretty cool.]
So, how big is a trillion?
I talk to so many people that are politically apathetic or uninformed. Their opinions are the ones captured by sound bites, Letterman jokes and Saturday Night Live skits. Theirs are the votes that gave us President Obama. People make mistakes, but you cannot get too upset over mistakes caused by ignorance. Willful defiance is a different story though; there’s not much we can do to change those minds. My focus has been and will continue to be the education of the casual voter, the moderate, the soccer mom and over-worked, politically apathetic dad.
Last week we learned that just one section of the proposed Obama health care plan will cost $1 trillion over the next ten years. A different section will cost $1.6 trillion. Trillion. Sadly, the masses are becoming desensitized to the word. How much is a trillion exactly? One trillion is a million million. It is twelve zeros.
To help put this in perspective, the sum total of every product created, item sold and service performed in the US in 2006 totaled just over thirteen trillion dollars. Every business, every paperboy, every mechanic, doctor, bartender, computer programmer, teacher, athlete. Every local bar, street corner bakery, seamstress, doughnut shop, as well as every US-based big oil, big pharma, big retailer, et al… every penny that they generated in that year totaled $13,000,000,000,000. That’s thirteen million millions of dollars.
In that same year the IRS collected just over one trillion dollars in tax revenue from almost 136 million tax returns. (source: IRS) If you look at the evil “top 5%” that Barack-O loves to soak and complain about, this group generated more than 60% of that revenue while earning only 36% of the revenue in the US that year.
“So what. Why should I care?” Here’s why.
The projected defecit for 2009 is $1.85T. It will have to be restated because it is based on optimistic numbers, including a peak of 8% unemployment. We are way past that now and there is no sign of the trend slowing.
- The Top 1% of earners in 2006 contributed $408B to the IRS in 2006 (source).
- The hated Top 5% contributed $615B.
- The Top 25% contributed a total of $883B.
Folks, we are still a trillion short. Where will the rest come from? It will come from me and you. Do you think your income is too low to be snatched up by the Obama administration?
- The average salary of Americans in the Top 5% is $153,542.
- The average salary in the Top 25% of tax payers is $64,702.
Do you make more than $64,702? Hell, do you make less? This is your wake-up call. The government can’t pay the current deficit, never mind the massive debt that Obama has requested and is generating. This will hit your pocket, sooner than later. The math is plain for everyone to see, you just need to be willing to accept the reality of our situation and stand up for what is right.
Get over your hate or frustration with George Bush. He is no longer in office. Obama is the one driving us off the cliff, and the only thing we can do is let our representatives know that we do NOT want any more debt. TARP, Healthcare, Stimulus, auto bailouts and the like. Tell your representatives and senators that you have had enough!
