Roses and Moccasins
Krayton Kerns
8.20.08
There is an old adage about walking in someone’s moccasins before criticizing them. This summer I accidently walked in the moccasins of a tax-and-spend liberal, but just for one night. I discovered it when I awakened Saturday morning and noticed the foot sticking out from under my covers was wearing someone else’s moccasin. Here is my story:
July 25th Laurel hosted the “Rock the Block” street dance. As my trophy wife and I pulled into a parking space near the dance I confessed that my funds were a little short. “Do you have any money?” I inquired. (I wasn’t completely broke, I was merely assessing our combined, disposable-cash position; it’s a liberal accounting trick I learned from my brother-in-law.)
My wife opened her wallet and she was loaded. “Here” she said as she handed me a wad of ones and fives. “You carry the money so I don’t have to lug around my purse.”
I stuffed the bills in my money clip and my kids and grandkids poured out of the pickups and onto the sidewalk. We rambled down the street and I swapped my wife’s hard earned dollars for hot dogs, shrimp-k-bobs, root beer and Coronas.
Throughout the evening we wandered through the crowd and visited with old friends over the roar of the band. Before long a small group of my buddies had circled into a conversation while our wives chatted a few feet away. Suddenly a cute young lady packing a bucket of long stem roses appeared before our man-group.
“Would you like to buy a rose,” the young petal peddler inquired? “They’re five dollars each.”
The other husbands froze as my lightning quick right hand shot to my money clip. “You bet, I’ll take one,” I said as I peeled another five out of my dwindling supply. (It is so easy to be generous when you are spending other people’s money.) I bought the rose, trotted over and proudly handed it to my trophy wife.
She smiled and whispered “thank you.” So I spun around and headed back to my group.
We celebrated for a couple more hours before my money clip was finally empty so my family piled back in the pickups and we drove home.
It was dawn of the next morning as I studied my foot, when the thought struck me that the night before I had spent money exactly like a big government tax-and-spend liberal. Over and over I compared my Rock-the-Block festivities to what the progressives had done to the budget surplus in the 60th Montana legislative session.
In ’07 the Department of Revenue collected $1.2 billion dollars more from the taxpayer than the ’05 legislature could imagine spending…I took about $50 dollars from my wife’s purse. The liberals spent $1.1 billion of that money expanding government programs…I spent $45 on hot dogs, beer and shrimp-k-bobs. The progressives spent the remaining $0.1 billion dollars in the form of a $400 selective property tax rebate as a token of appreciation…I gave my wife a $5 dollar rose for the same reason. (I felt cheap when I did it. Do progressives feel cheap when they return your own money, and then expect to be thanked for the gesture?)
I laid in bed trapped in my real-life nightmare, when I thought ahead to the upcoming ’09 legislative session. The state’s general fund shows a June 30th surplus of $400 million dollars. (That’s four times higher than the $100 million dollar ’07 targeted property tax rebate.) Next winter the tax-and-spend progressives will bombard the capitol with creative ways to spend that $400 million. Conservatives will vote to return the money to the taxpayers, but there are only about 18 of us in the House and 9 in the Senate. Whether that $400 million is spent or returned will be determined by Montana voters in who they send to Helena. Vote wisely.
