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Tax Hating Twittering Terrorists by Tex Norman ( 135 )
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Tax Hating Twittering Terrorists

by Tex Norman(135) Red Star


A Luddite is someone who is incompetent when using new technology, which qualifies me as a Luddite leaning dude. I share this because you need to know, up front, that I don’t Twitter, I don’t get Twitter, and I have only a vague understanding of the act of Twittering. Nevertheless, right here in Oklahoma , we had a terrorist leaning Twitter crime.

You remember the Tea Bag Tempest of April 15 th 2009 do you not? Here's what happened at the Oklahoma Tea Bag Party. Daniel Knight Hayden, a potential terrorist Tweetered some hate Tweets to his fellow Okie Tea Baggers. Mr. Hayden made menacing comments on his Twitter account under the user name CitizenQuasar. Hayden the twit wrote that he was planning a war with the local government and police. Hayden said he was even willing to die for the cause.

“The WAR wWIL start on the stepes of the Oklahoma State Capitol. I will cast the first sotne. In the meantime, I await the police,” stated Hayden on Twitter. “START THE KILLING NOW !”

Hayden also mentioned that if police interfere with his cause, then he would “cut their heads off … and throw them on the State Capitol steps.”

Let’s all assume that Mr. Hayden is a few bricks shy of a load, a member of the Lunatic Fringe, with a blind hatred for all taxes, a hate fanatic, or at least a hate fan, and while he is clearly more technically savvy than me since he at least knows how to Twitter, calling him stupid is an insult to stupid people.

For those of you not Okie Familiar, let me remind you that Oklahoma City was the site of the Oklahoma City Bombing. The Oklahoma City Bombing is the sight of the largest HOME instigated terrorist attack. Timothy McVeigh, another hate fanatic, parked a Ryder Truck outside the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995 . Inside that truck McVeigh had assembled a fertilizer bomb (ammonium nitrate nitromethane, and diesel fuel), packed in several 55 gal. steel drums weighing in excess of 6,200 pounds, and when he set off his bomb he blew into atoms one third of the the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building, 168 people were dead, and the bomb left an crater where the truck had been, a crater that measured 30 feet wide and 8 feet deep. Costs from this bombing totaled at least $652 million, but what we should remember is that the Murrah building contained a children’s day care. The effects of the blast were equivalent to over 5,000 pounds of TNT , the sound of the blast was heard and felt up to 55 miles away and the shaking of the earth by this homegrown bomb measured 3.0 on the Richter scale (a scale designed to measure earthquakes. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings in a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars around the site, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. Oh yeah, broken glass alone accounted for 5% of the total number of deaths. Almost everyone from here had someone they knew personally affected by this bombing.

One of my friends had a grown daughter working several blocks from the bomb site, as a receptionist. She looked up at a bank of glass in the lobby of the building where she worked, 30 or 40 feet from the reception desk, just as the bomb’s impact hit her site, and her face was filled with slivers of glass. In the hospital the doctors opted NOT to dig out the glass because, as the body healed, it was hoped that the healing wounds would push out the slivers and reduce the scaring.

I share all this to remind everyone that Oklahoma is not the place to be farting around with massacre talk. We take that talk seriously here.

Hayden, this tax hating loony sent terrorist massacre Tweets out for a Tea Bag Party in Oklahoma City . He was arrested. In the investigation that has followed we learned that Hayden also has a MySpace account where he associates with a group called the Oath Keepers. The Oath Keepers is an anti-government organization where they claim that they are the defenders of the U.S. Constitution.

So the motive behind this cheerleader of mass murder and terrorist acts was tax hatred and some misguided defense of the Constitution. Here is my question: are taxes so high and our liberties in so much jeopardy that it makes terrorist acts, if not necessary, at least understandable?

Oklahoma 's tax burden is only 1% higher than Mississippi . Oklahoma ranks as the 2nd lowest state in tax liability to the capital-intensive manufacturer among all the states. Of course, this doesn’t matter to tax hating loonies. Any tax is too much tax.

I don’t get this. My parents and my mother in law hate taxes but don’t want anyone messing with Social Security or their Medicare. The old cliché that you can’t have your cake and eat it too, fits well here. You can’t have the government services you like and still live tax free. There are billions of examples that show that you can’t do something and not do it at the same time. Here is an exercise for all tax haters: stop and make a list of all the tax financed benefits you use on a daily basis, or at least tax financed benefits you want to be there just in case you need them (like the Interstate highways, roads, city water and sewer, the police and fire departments, etc.) Make that list and consider what you are getting for your tax dollars. Don’t get distracted by tax abuse, or tax waste. Waste of our tax dollars is upsetting to all of us, both the tax haters and tax supporters. Taxation needs regulation, and that regulation itself is there because of tax dollars.

I believe, or hope, that if we can see the benefits bought by our taxes, we will reduce the number of tax hate terrorists willing to kill babies and innocent strangers to defend a selfish, stupid position.


Article submitted Sunday, May 17, 2009 & read 1425 times.

Leave Your Comments:


» left by Vince Robertson(51) (295 days 20 hours ago.)
Reader Rating: 5 out of 5
Interesting Tex. I wonder why I haven't seen this story reported by the media?
 
I hear the message of these dumb twits over and over again, but their message can be explained simply by saying that it is classic have's-vs-have-not's. People with money don't want to pay their fare share into the system which allowed them to get where they are. People with health insurance don't want to change the system so everyone has health insurance.
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» left by Anonymous (295 days 14 hours ago.)

Thanks Vince:  I saw a little article about 2 inches of copy and then Googled the Hate Tweeter's name and found several more articles that fleshed out the story for me. 

You are right about people with insurance not caring about those who don't, but I don't see that trend as going on forever.  The economy is being eaten from within by rising health care costs.  All of us will be in a better position to take entrepreneurial risks if they aren’t stuck with a job they hate just because of the benefits.  Big Business would actually be doing themselves a favor if there was single payer national health insurance.  With national health insurance there will be political motivation to slow the rising cost of insuarnace.  Obviously we are doing something wrong when health care costs twice in much in the US than it does in some European Countries that have had National Health Insurance for a long time.  The answer has to be in stream lining the system, avoiding medical procedures that are done for CYA and no other reason, and controlling costs.

 


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» left by Danny Davids (294 days 16 hours ago.)
Reader Rating: 4 out of 5
In this particular case, Tex, I would say that the tax-hating "terrorist" label might be appropriate. Mr. Hayden's comments about killing people would qualify. My concern is that now anyone who has a problem with the amount of taxes he/she pays is considered a "hater" and a potential "terrorist". This is simply not true, and many (myself included) take offense at the hard work we put in every day to pay our taxes only to watch the funds be frittered away on ridiculous and unnecessary expenditures. 
 
 
As for your comment on not getting distracted by tax abuse or tax waste, I can only say that if I have to be accountable for my personal budget and expenses, I don't see why the government should be any different. If I waste my paycheck on partying and lavish expenditures and don't pay my bills, I have to either get another job or cut back in my expenses--or lose what I own. The government can't get another job and they simply refuse to cut back. Problem is they don't have to pay for their ignorance and stupidity; we do
 
In any event, Tex, you've brought up good points for debate. Thanks for sharing the information.
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» left by Anonymous (293 days 22 hours ago.)

Danny:  if I understand what you are saying, we can't argue because we are on the same side.  Or at least partly on the same side.

You say you are accountable for your own budget and control your expnses and you want the government to do the same.  Me too.

I am not concerned with people are groups that want transparant, accountable, expense controlled government. 

Iam concerned about people who want no taxation at all, who want no government.  The radical libertarians and ultra Republicans who hate all taxation. 

If I live in a condo I MUST comply with the condo rules.

If two people play chess the game only works if both agree to follow the same rules.

If you live in the US you need to pay your share to support the needs of the US.  IF you are upset with how tax dollars are spent, or see abuse, or waste and want to correct that, then do so.  I want it corrected too.

On the news yesterday I heard a story about a 7 year old ADHD kid who had a tantrum in school and the school resource officer handcuffed him.  The handcuffs were so tight it broke the skin on this special education child's wrists.  Now some would say the handcuffs were abused.  Does that mean that now no cops should be allowed to carry handcuffs?  No.  Handcuffs  can be abused, but that just means we have to step in and set up rules, regulations, some system for transparancy and oversight and insist that when handcuffs are used they are used properly.  The same goes for tax dollars.  When I say not to be distracted by waste and abuse I am NOT saying we should ignore the waste or abuse.  I am not saying the waste and abuse don't matter.  I want the waste to stop.  I want the abuse to stop.  But I don't want the fact that wast and abuse happens to be the reason for tossing out all taxation.  That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.


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