I Ain’t Paying for That!by
Tom Chartier Have you ever bought a new gizmo at the store only to find that once you got it out of the box the dang thing was defective? Of course you have. Quality control and mass production are contradictions. So what do you do? Obviously, you take the damned whatcha-ma-call-it back to the store where you bought it and complain. Unless the store manager is a complete scum-sucking bottom feeder, he will apologize and will offer to replace it with one that works or he will refund your money. It’s only right. Okee dokee. I have a super-sized Black Angus Beef to register to the tune of $75 million. As a taxpayer, I know I’ve been gypped! I want my money back! Yes even though marooned on this island, outside of the twelve-mile limit, I am required to pay United States Federal Income Tax to belong to the Freer Than Thou Club. The issue here is the $75 million Baghdad Police College. It’s a piece of (language unsuitable for family reading). And I am not speaking figuratively. Let’s just say it resembles something that fell out of the caboose of a Texas Longhorn Bull. It stinks to high heaven and you sure as heck don’t want to step in it! When considering this thing, the name Karl Rove comes to mind. Designed and constructed by the Parsons Corp., of Pasadena, Ca. and by the U.S. Army – "We've Had A Catastrophic Failure" – Corps of Engineers, the shining, new Baghdad Police College has been so sloppily built that raw sewage is pouring out of all the upper floors into the lower ones! It’s literally a (vernacular unacceptable) hole! The College boasts a room nick-named “the rain forest.” While Baghdad is located on the banks of the Tigris River, somehow “rain forest” doesn’t jive with a desert locale. And this cesspool is where Iraqi police cadets are supposed to live and study? Well now, that would give them cause to hate us! Inside the Baghdad Police Academy, the free flowing mystery fluids are so prevalent that the building’s entire structural integrity is crumbling. Said one engineer, "They may have to demolish everything they built." This ain’t right! I’m not going to pay for this! I demand to have my money returned immediately! Oh sure, tell me it’s the architect’s fault! Or it’s the sub-contractor’s errors. Frankly, I don’t care who is at fault. The average American taxpayer can’t hold accountable his own elected representatives let alone some plumbers in Baghdad! I ain’t paying!! I’ve had enough of these U.S. government-perpetrated scams! I want my money back: no checks, just hard cash. Send over a flunky from the Treasury Department with cash in a briefcase. Come to think of it… I’m none too pleased with anything my tax dollars support. How about the other things for which the IRS forces us to pay? Am I ever going to get to swim in the pool at that swank new US Embassy in Baghdad? Hell no! Replete with "recreation building: Gym, exercise room, swimming pool, locker rooms, the American Club, commissary, food court, barber and beauty shop," the new Embassy sounds like a duplicate of the facilities struggling American families have lavished on the White House and the US Congress. And then there’s Our Eternal President’s junkets. Makes you wonder what Bush’s trip to India cost. I’m not too sure I’m willing to fork over my money for sixteen dogs to stay in a five-star hotel because they are "officers" in the US Army! Come on! They’re just dogs! We know that the US has lost the war in Iraq, so who’s going to end up with that $592 million dollar Embassy? We can kiss that money good-bye. In the end, it’s just going to become another deluxe palace for a new Iraqi King, Emir, Supreme Leader, dictator or whatever he decides to call himself. To be perfectly honest… I’m not too keen on paying $330 billion and rising, for a lot of dead bodies either. Bush’s wars are sheer waste. I am not getting my dollar’s worth out of Rummy’s radical Islamic fundamentalist training ground. You know, I’m starting to suspect Washington DC is full of shysters and crooks! Cripes! We’ve been swindled and sold a gas tank full of snake oil! How can we afford all this waste? We’re drowning in credit card bills, mortgage, car, and college payments. Then there’s health insurance costs and the medical bills insurance refuses to pay and… Hey, I never voted to approve $330,149,538,226, and counting, to spend on Bush’s war! I bet a lot of Mainland Americans feel the same way. It’s taxation without representation… without anything really. Just like that! I’d go down to the harbor and deep-six a crate load of tea, if I could afford the tea that is. Unfortunately, no amount of hollering is going to get me my refund. That Baghdad Police Academy is going to be flushed right down the toilet where it belongs. And it’s all at our expense. But hey, it’s keeping us safe! Actually, who am I kidding? I don’t want to blame everything on the Parsons Corp. or the US Army Corps of Engineers or the Iraqi sub-contractors. Let’s just simplify things. You guys in Congress and the White House who approved this waste of our money… Your services will no longer be required… You’re fired.
October 2, 2006 Tom Chartier [send him mail] played lead guitar in legendary Los Angeles punk band The Rotters for 26 years until their final appearance in January of 2004. He has lived in Tokyo and Los Angeles. Currently he resides somewhere in the Caribbean. Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com |
Elizabeth
Gyllensvard edited and contributed to this article.