You Really Can't Make This Stuff Up

So if the people who paid the taxes were the only ones allowed to vote, we'd have landslide victories, but you're allowing people to vote. This explains everything! People with conflicts of interest shouldn't be allowed to vote. If you collect welfare, you have no right to vote. The day you get off welfare, you get your voting rights back. The reality is, why you are allowed to have this conflict of interest that you vote for the politician who wants to keep your welfare checks coming and your food stamps and your aid to dependent children and your free health care and your Medicaid, your Medicare and your Social Security and everything else?

Oh dear.  I laughed so hard, I think I pulled something. Seriously.  

Those are the words of Wayne Allyn Root, Trump supporter and author of the book you see at right. As a public service, I'm including the link where you can purchase it (hard copy or ebook) for the same low price of $24.99. And, I can assure you, I neither want nor receive a single red cent from any purchases. 

I don't even know where to start with this one.  Well, that's not true.  Let's start with Social Security.  Do we really want to call that a welfare program?  After all, we pay for that via a payroll tax. You know. sort of like a savings account that we partially fund, and our employers fund the rest.  

In  July 2016, more than 57,000,000 people were receiving Social Security, not including those who receive only SSI or both SSI and Social Security. More than 42,000,000 of these folks are over 65.  I'd hazard a guess here that a majority of those folks are white folks, given that the white employment rate has historically been better than the employment rate for people of color; I'd also hazard a guess that a good portion of them were middle-class people before they began collecting.  

According to the Pew Research Center,  as of April 2016, there were some 69,700,000 Baby Boomers (age 52 - 7o) of voting age and another 28,000,000 Silent/Greatest Generation (ages 71 and up) of voting age. Has the Angry White Male done the math here? 

Root was the 2008 Libertarian vice presidential candidate. Back then, and today as well, Libertarians wanted the income tax abolished. So, let's move on then, and look at tax welfare and how that might limit the ability of Angry White Males to vote. 

Raise your hand if you have one or more children. Keeping your hands up, how many of you have taken a deduction on your taxes for those children?  Now, still by a show of hands, how many of you consider your bouncing baby deduction to be a form of tax welfare?  Are there any hands still up? 

My guess there is that better than 99% of parents claimed their available deduction for all of their eligible kids, and that an equal number does not think they took a 'welfare' payment, any more than they consider a daycare deduction to be a welfare payment. 

What about all of these deductions, just some of those listed in the 2015 IRS instructions for filling out your 1040? 

• Charitable donations? 
• Mortgage interest? Expenses on a rental property? 
• Contributions to a Health Savings Account, or health care costs?
• Home office? 
• Travel for business? 
• Student Loan Interest deduction, tuition and fees deduction, education credits? 
• Educator expenses? 
• Moving expenses? 
• Parking reimbursement? 
• Alimony? 
• How about the Domestic Production Activities deduction, for putting up a building in the US, or helping design one?
• Or how about business owners filing personal taxes instead of corporate taxes?

I could keep going here, but the point should be clear by now.

Our entire tax code is a giant welfare system, and there are huge benefits for the Angry White Male, if for no other reason than white men make more money on average than most other demographic cohorts, and frankly, can afford to pay someone to find them all of these welfare handouts. For reference, according to the IRS, for tax year 2013, 69% of taxpayers took the standard deductions, and more than 29% claimed itemized deductions. That's a boatload of people who shouldn't be allowed to vote, right?

Farm subsidies, for farming and for not farming (because of course we pay for both), and food price supports?  Yeah, that's welfare too, so they can't vote. And let's not forget all that corporate welfare -- even though companies don't actually vote (because of course, they're not people as we all know), there's huge benefit going to people from that, too.

Listen, Angry White Males, we are all getting some form of welfare from the government; most of us get something not only from the federal government, but also from our state governments, and even localities, in many cases. If everyone who took a penny in government benefits was not allowed to vote, there wouldn't be a single person in line come election day. 

The blurb for Root's current book opens with the statement below. I have added more than a little emphasis. 

The mainstream media and ultra-liberal Democrats can't understand why white voters, especially white men, are so angry. Wayne Allyn Root is an angry white male, and he knows why.  This is his story, his testimony, and a look at what's happening to an entire group of good people: law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working, middle-class people. They're being targeted, silenced, intimidated, persecuted - virtually wiped off the planet - in order to make guilty, politically correct white liberals feel better about themselves. 

It's open season on white males!!!

If they're intimidated by all of their targeted benefits, so be it, the poor things. If they're so fearful of getting wiped off the planet, maybe they should grab hold of their jockstraps or bootstraps or jackboots or strap on a life jacket or something, and come back to reality. 

Because if they really want to get rid of welfare, they need to get the hell out of the Trump column and get to know the Libertarians, Root's former party -- for they are the only ones who truly want to end welfare for everyone.