Tax the Rich

The Great Tax Illusion

One of the most successful illusions ever sold to the American public is the idea that the rich pay taxes. They don’t—not in the way working people do, and not in proportion to what they take out of the system.

Even Mitt Romney, no socialist firebrand, recently let the truth slip. In a candid moment reported in The New York Times, Romney acknowledged what everyone inside the club already knows: the wealthy use perfectly legal schemes—carried interest, offshore shelters, trust loopholes, asset borrowing, stepped-up basis—to avoid paying meaningful taxes. They don’t earn income; they own assets. And assets, in America, are sacred.

This isn’t new. What’s new is how naked the system has become.

We are not drifting toward feudalism—we are returning to it.

In a modern feudal economy, wealth doesn’t come from work. It comes from ownership. The lords own the land (now stocks, real estate, data, and platforms), and the peasants rent their lives back one paycheck at a time. Most Americans today are serfs in all but name: one medical emergency from ruin, one layoff from homelessness, drowning in debt while being told the stock market is “doing great.”

And presiding over this mess is Donald Trump, the head circus clown, whose job is not to govern but to distract. While wealth concentrates upward at a pace unseen since the Gilded Age, Trump keeps his followers buzzing with lies, conspiracies, and culture-war nonsense. MAGA doesn’t question power—it worships it. The anger that should be aimed upward is redirected sideways and downward, toward immigrants, teachers, librarians, journalists, and anyone without money or influence.

This is how oligarchy survives.

Romney warns that the world is on the edge of a cliff. He’s right, though he stops short of naming the obvious cause: extreme wealth concentration paired with political capture. When billionaires don’t pay taxes, democracy collapses into a pay-to-play charade. Roads crumble, schools decay, healthcare becomes a luxury, and the public is told there’s “no money”—while fortunes grow untouched.

The solution is not complicated. It can be stated in three words:

Tax the rich.

Not slogans. Not symbolic gestures. Real taxes on real wealth. Close the loopholes. End the fantasy that borrowed-against wealth isn’t income. Restore progressive taxation that once built the American middle class instead of hollowing it out.

And let’s be clear about one thing: you are not rich.

If you think you are because you own a house, have a retirement account, or make six figures, you’ve swallowed the illusion whole. Unless you control hundreds of millions—assets that generate power, not paychecks—you are not in the club. You are one illness, one market crash, one bad year away from joining the ranks of the peasants.

The sooner Americans stop defending people who loot the system, the sooner we can stop the slide back into feudalism. The illusion is cracking. The question is whether we wake up in time—or keep applauding the circus as the tent collapses.

Young people don't have time to pay attention

I went to the doctor today and had a conversation with the nurse about building a pool in Payson. She seemed unaware of what the Three Stooges are doing in regard to a pool. The Stooges want to put duct tape on the old pool and call it good. It is a poor decision to just to serve the old goats who are opposed to paying any new tax. The goats want to save the money for the casino. Payson is being run by and for the Tea Party crowd because nobody else pays attention. We have Trump on a national level because normal people failed to act. The same is happing in Payson. The Stooges have brought the town to a standstill to protect the Tea Party goats from a small tax.  Wake up young people. Your children will never enjoy a pool if the goats have their way. 

The Payson Tea Party

What Is a Group, Really?

A group is defined by what its members share. So what binds the Tea Party crowd together?

In Payson, the answer is uncomfortably clear. They share a fondness for political lies, paranoid rumors, and the comfort of a very small world where complex problems always have simple villains. Our town is burdened with a Tea Party faction that yearns for a mythic past—white dominance, gun-slinging bravado, and cowboy-hat masculinity that mistakes bluster for strength.

Tea Party women seem unbothered by crude men who treat them as second-class citizens, as long as those men shout the right slogans. Trump is adored precisely because he mirrors the Tea Party mindset: nothing is ever his fault. Every failure has an external enemy. Biden caused it. Immigrants caused it. Democrats caused it. Someone—anyone—but them.

Grievance is the Tea Party’s organizing principle. Their followers are convinced they’ve been wronged, that they are victims of forces beyond their control. They are assured, repeatedly, that their disappointments have nothing to do with poor choices, incuriosity, or a lifelong avoidance of reading, education, and intellectual honesty.

A Tea Party meeting resembles a revival tent for resentment. It is part church, part therapy circle—though not one aimed at healing. Like an AA meeting run backward, it doesn’t confront addiction; it feeds it. The addiction is to Fox News, to fear, to slogans masquerading as ideas, and to stories so short on facts they fit neatly into a headline crawl.

In the end, the Tea Party doesn’t offer solutions. It offers absolution—permission to stop thinking, stop learning, and stop taking responsibility. For some, that’s an irresistible comfort. For Payson, it’s a continuing curse.

Stooge Circus

Welcome to the Stooge Circus: A Case Study in Payson-Style Hypocrisy

Last night, Payson residents were treated to a full-scale performance of what can only be called The Stooge Circus—a town hall meeting starring Council Members Steve Otto, Jim Ferris, and Charlie Bell. These three political contortionists have perfected the art of promising one thing, doing the opposite, and acting as though no one will notice.

For years, they rallied the Tea Party crowd with two battle cries:

1. “The town should vote on major spending!”

2. “The 1% sales tax is an outrage and must be repealed!”

Now that they’re in power?
Both principles have vanished like cotton candy in a rainstorm.

Take the swimming-pool fiasco. Payson once had a real opportunity to build a modern aquatic facility that would have served families, seniors, and youth for decades. That dream is gone—sabotaged by obstructionists who campaigned on outrage but govern with duct tape.

Jim Ferris, the loudest opponent of the new pool, now proposes to “save” the crumbling Taylor Pool with pocket change and aluminum-can economics. Instead of a long-term community investment, they want to patch, glue, caulk, and pretend it’s progress—all without giving the voters a say, despite promising voter involvement in every major project.

And the sales tax?
These same officials who demanded a public vote to impose it now insist on keeping it—quietly, conveniently, and without a peep about voter approval. What was once tyranny when someone else did it is now “responsible governance” when they do it.

This isn’t leadership.
It’s performance art.
And the theme is hypocrisy on parade.

The Three Stooges of Payson have managed to turn civic inconsistency into a governing philosophy. If there were awards for political contradiction, they’d sweep the ceremony. But the people of Payson deserve honesty, transparency, and real planning—not circus acts, not duct-tape solutions, and not elected officials who forget every promise the moment they sit behind the dais.

Payson deserves better than this show. The question now is:
How long will citizens tolerate a government run on slogans during elections and shortcuts during governance?

---

Dead, but not dead for a good cause, or attend your own funeral

The Donut Tontine: A Fundraiser Where Everyone Dies (But Nobody Actually Dies)

Let’s be honest—raising money is hard. Bake sales flop. Raffles annoy people. And no one wants to hear the words “fundraising committee.” So Kadizzle reached deep into the dark, dusty basement of financial history and dragged out a strange old creature called a tontine.

Don’t worry. No one is actually harmed in this version. Mostly.

---

What in the Heck Is a Tontine?

A tontine was an old-school retirement plan from way back before Social Security, 401(k)s, or even common sense. Here’s how it worked:

• A group of people all put in the same amount of money.

• That money gets invested.

• Everyone splits the yearly interest.

• When one person dies, their share of the interest gets divided among whoever’s left.

• As people drop off, the survivors make more money.

• The very last person alive gets everything.

Yes—this worked great financially and terribly morally. Unfortunately, it turned out that when money increases with each death, people start dying a little faster than nature intended. Who could have predicted that? Because of the “light murder problem,” tontines were outlawed.

So naturally, Kadizzle thought: We can fix this.

---

The Donuts with Democrats Tontine (No Assassins Allowed)

Here’s the safe, modern, non-murdery version.

• We recruit 26 brave donut patriots.

• Each person throws in $100.

• That creates a $2,600 Donut War Chest.

• The money sits in an interest-earning account.

• The interest helps pay for donuts, coffee, and the emotional support required after consuming that many pastries.

Instead of real death, we use something even more powerful:

Artificial Death (Also Known as “You’re Dead, But Please Pass the Sugar”)

• Every member’s name goes into a jar.

• At each meeting, one name is drawn.

• That person is now officially “Dead to the Tontine.”

• They stop receiving future interest shares.

• But they do not stop showing up, because this is not a cult. Probably.

---

The Funeral (With the Corpse in the Audience)

At the next Donuts meeting:

• The previously “dead” person shows up very much alive.

• A formal funeral is held.

• Someone delivers a eulogy listing:

  • Their good deeds

  • Their bad political opinions

  • And at least one mildly embarrassing personal fact

• The “deceased” sits silently and listens to their own life summary like a ghost at their own wake.

This continues for about two years, one death per meeting.

---

The Final Survivor (May God Have Mercy)

Eventually, only one symbolic survivor remains. This person:

• Becomes the Last Donut Standing

• Is crowned Keeper of the Financial Flame

• Does not get assassinated, poisoned, or shoved down a stairwell

• Does not get the money either—because this is a fundraiser, not a crime documentary

Meanwhile, Donuts with Democrats keeps the original fund and uses the interest for donuts and operations the entire time.

And here’s the beautiful part:

• Everyone gets some money back from interest during the process

• So the real cost to each person is less than $100

• Everyone gets donuts

• Everyone gets coffee

• Everyone gets publicly eulogized while still alive

This is what economists call a win-win with frosting.

---

Example Numbers (Because Even a Donut Cult Needs Math)

• 26 people × $100 = $2,600 total fund

• If the account earns 5% per year:

  • $2,600 × 5% = $130 per year

• Over two years:

  • About $260 in total interest

• That interest:

  • Offsets what each person originally paid

  • Helps buy donuts and supplies

• Donuts with Democrats still keeps:

  • The full $2,600

  • Plus the interest earned along the way

---

Act like nothings wrong

Act Like Nothing’s Wrong

The country is melting under a Trump-style dictatorship, and yet millions of Americans—especially within the GOP and the Tea Party—continue to behave as if everything is perfectly normal. Rights vanish. Institutions crumble. Corruption parades itself in daylight. And still, they smile, wave flags, shout slogans, and insist that nothing is wrong.

How do they do it?

The evidence is everywhere, in plain sight. Court rulings ignored. Inspectors general fired. Prosecutors attacked. Journalists vilified. Judges threatened. Elections undermined. Enemies praised. Allies discarded. The rule of law turned into a joke, the Constitution reduced to a prop. Lies now pile up like snowdrifts—layer upon layer, burying facts, burying accountability, burying truth itself.

And yet the faithful remain serene. They chant. They cheer. They deflect. They deny. They gaslight their neighbors and themselves. The corruption becomes “strength.” The cruelty becomes “toughness.” The criminality becomes “smart business.” The collapse becomes “freedom.”

This behavior is not new to human history. It is a familiar psychological defense: when the truth becomes too terrifying to face, people retreat into denial. They normalize the abnormal. They excuse the inexcusable. They learn how to act like nothing is wrong to preserve their identity, their tribe, and their sense of safety.

A song captures this mindset with uncomfortable precision. Its characters are thieves, addicts, and enablers—people surrounded by disaster who survive not by confronting reality, but by performing denial. Each character faces a crisis so obvious it should shatter their world, yet they choose the same solution: pretend everything is fine.

The corporate thief is caught red-handed after twenty years of betrayal and responds not with accountability, but with lawyers and denial.
The alcoholic drinks himself into isolation, abandoned by everyone, yet convinces himself that the bottle is enough.
The mother watches her daughter disappear into addiction and sex work, yet chooses silence over truth.

Each tragedy ends the same way:
Act like nothing’s wrong.

That is exactly what we are seeing today on a national scale.

When corruption is exposed, they don’t demand justice—they attack the investigator.
When lies are proven false, they don’t correct them—they repeat them louder.
When violence erupts, they don’t grieve—they justify.
When democracy is threatened, they don’t defend it—they mock it.

Fear runs the engine. Fear of outsiders. Fear of losing status. Fear of being wrong. Fear of the world changing without their permission. Rather than confront that fear honestly, it is easier to deny reality, wrap oneself in slogans, and accuse anyone who tells the truth of being the enemy.

But denial has consequences.

You can “act like nothing’s wrong” only for so long before collapse becomes unavoidable. Societies that abandon truth cannot govern themselves. Nations that excuse open criminality eventually become ruled by it. Movements that worship power over principle finally consume their own followers.

The tragedy is not only what authoritarian leaders do. The deeper tragedy is how many ordinary people help them do it—simply by looking away, closing their ears, and pretending that everything is fine.

History shows us where this road leads. It never ends in stability. It never ends in peace. It ends in reckoning.

And reckoning does not care how long we pretended.

---

A new low for the Trump dictatorship

 The lying and deceit of the Trump gang remind me of the Three Stooges destroying our town of Payson. Killing people just for fun takes us back to Roman times. The local Stooges killed the hope for a new swimming pool, and Trump showed us how to kill people cling to a sinking boat. What kind of America do we live in. Ride around town and see people living in ramshackle homes while the rich put gold bricks on Trump's desk to buy favors. Wow, have we ever sunk this low? Now the Trump mafia wants to take health care and more from the poor to provide the rich with even more. What have we come to?