Joe Six-pack will have to pay a lot more to get his buzz on if Assemblyman Jim Beall has his way.

The San Jose Democrat on Thursday proposed raising the beer tax by $1.80 per six-pack, or 30 cents per can or bottle. The current tax is 2 cents per can. Thats an increase of about 1,500 percent.

Beall said the tax would generate $2 billion a year to fund health care services, crime prevention and programs to prevent underage drinking and addiction.

“The people who use alcohol should pay for part of the cost to society, just like weve accepted that concept with tobacco,” Beall said.

[emphasis added]

Another sin tax, to be used to pay for more social[ist] programs. These are the people to vote out of office, folks.

The full article is here: Higher state tax on beer? - San Jose Mercury News

I’m paraphrasing, but that’s basically what he said at a closed-door fundraiser speech to political fat cats in California:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothings replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And its not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Observations:

1. 25 years is a long time to be out of work. Classify this as an exaggeration in the extreme.
2. All red-blooded Americans cling to guns. Guns keep us free. Guns founded this country. Stereotyping small-town America as “clinging to guns” is simply ignorant. (This also clearly shows Barack’s anti-gun bias.)
3. For someone who defended his pastor’s racist, bigoted statements so vehemently, Barack sure is being hypocritical of those who are strong in their faith. Or is it just because these people don’t believe the same way you do, Barack?
4. So Barack, you’re calling all small-town Americans racist bigots? 
5. Since this was at a closed-door fundraiser, where reporters weren’t allowed to be, this is quite telling about who Obama really is, and what he really thinks about the American public, not just what he says in front of the cameras and microphones.

It sounds like Barack is the one who is bitter and frustrated by those who are different from him.

Barack, we’re bitter because of people like you. Not because of the color of your skin, but because of your elitist attitude and your socialist lies.

We’re bitter because you want to take our guns.

We’re bitter because your policies — and the policies of other like-minded politicians from both parties – have ruined this country by thinking that you know better than the common American what’s good for us.

We’re bitter because you — and politicians like you — have created a situation where gas prices are near $3.50 a gallon, because you won’t let us drill for our own oil, won’t let us build new refineries, mandate 30 different blends, and then tax the very fuel of our economy.

We’re bitter because you — and politicians like you from both parties – have artificially divided this country.

We’re bitter because you — and politicians like you from both parties – have taken our liberties.

We’re bitter because you — and politicians like you from both parties – have betrayed our trust.

We’re bitter because you — and politicians like you from both parties – have enacted policies to “fix” problems that don’t exist in the first place, then introduce new policies to “fix” the problems you yourselves have created.

We’re bitter because you — and politicians like you from both parties – have perpetuated the racial divide for your own political gains.

We’re bitter because you — and politicians like you from both parties – are bad-mouthing America and Americans.

And we’re sick of it. All of it. And we’re sick of you. All of you.

You can’t have a moment of silence in public school anymore because someone is offended. People are pushing to have the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance stopped because it has “God” in it. Christmas trees are removed, Christmas pageants are renamed “holiday pageants”, and every shred of Christianity is being removed, bit by bit, by those who scream “separation of church and state!”

Yet in Minneapolis at Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school, children are being taught Islam and the Koran on the public taxpayers dime, and no one questions it or says a word.

Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.

Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the days schedule included a “school assembly” in the gym after lunch.

Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform “their ritual washing.”

Afterward, Getz said, “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day,” was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man “was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered.”

“The prayer I saw was not voluntary,” Getz said. “The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred.”

[...]

[...] TIZA has in effect extended the school day — buses leave only after Islamic Studies is over.

[emphasis added]

Where are the “separation of church and state” people now? Their silence — in the name of “tolerance” — is deafening.

If Muslims are able to use taxpayer money to fund their school, then Christians, Jews, and Hindus should be allowed to as well. 

Read the full article here: Wall of silence broken at states Muslim public school

Then use the Mailbox to call, fax, and write your legislators. Either religion in public, taxpayer-funded schools is permitted for all faiths, or no faiths, no exceptions. Remember: they’re getting federal education dollars, so this is an issue for all of us to get involved in.