If you do not read every single post on
From the Trenches, well shame on you. Go read them now. Mick has posted off and on about a guy named Larry Paquette that has become his poster child for the I-got-mine-so-fuck-you conservative types.
Here is Mr. Paquettes original editorial from the Boston Globe:
Why should I apologize for making lots of money?
By Larry Paquette, 1/13/2003
I AM A MEMBER of a small, elite group widely vilified by the press and in letters to the editor. I am an easy target.
My sin is that I am in the financial top 10 percent of the country - those making $100,000 or more - the 35 percent tax bracket, a member of the so-called rich. So it is much easier to paint a picture of me with black heart and ice in my veins, cake crumbs all about, as I grow fat on the backs of the downtrodden.
However, I feel no need to defend my position. Over the years I have worked hard and earned every dollar of the obscene wealth I am accused of hoarding.
What is different about my life and how I came to be here compared with those liberals so willing and anxious to separate me from my compensation?
I worked two jobs to put myself through college. While many my age were off to sporting events or dating or cooling off at swim parties on muggy August nights, I was working in a sweltering factory, assembling bicycles until 2 in the morning. I can't say for sure where the bleeding hearts were then, but they were not standing next to me night after night, sweating over that endless assembly line.
I look back over the years of struggle and sacrifice and can't count the number of birthday parties, special events, and family gatherings missed because I had to work or finish a special project. I can't begin to tally the number of empty nights or lonely weekends when, instead of spending time with family and friends, I was on a business trip halfway around the world.
There is no loneliness like being in a strange country for months, struggling with an unfamiliar language while losing contact with those closest to you.
I wonder at how the mind-set of the country has changed, how the work ethic has been corrupted. When I was growing up, the only rule was that success and achievements resulted from, and were directly related to, hard work. You got back in proportion to the effort you put forth. That's the way it has worked for me.
How have we changed, then, to an ethic of redistributing the wealth from those who are economically productive to those who refuse to be?
Few will acknowledge it, but the message is clear. Reading between the lines of editorials and letters in the newspapers, I can almost hear the chant, ''You have it, I want it, and you owe me.''
I believe in extending a helping hand whenever possible, but I don't believe in lifelong support for those capable but unmotivated.
I look at my bimonthly check stub and occasionally can't help but question myself as to why I am working so hard, when federal and local taxes and deductions for Social Security and Medicare devour 50 percent of my earnings. Is it worth the 50-hour weeks, the personal responsibility, the stress?
The irrefutable fact is that money withheld and spent on welfare by a confiscatory and inefficient government does not create new jobs. Jobs are created from the dividends and investments made by myself and those far wealthier than me. They result from money put at risk, with a chance for an equitable return commensurate with the risk.
New companies, new ventures, new products and new jobs are a direct result of investment exposure. That is the heart of capitalism.
I make no apologies for my financial position. I have worked very hard, earned every dollar and hope to continue earning long into the future. Can the same be said for those standing at the intersection of Hard Work and Success, looking for a handout?
Larry Paquette is a sourcing manager for a manufacturing company in Fresno, Calif.
This story ran on page A11 of the Boston Globe on 1/13/2003.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
Please check out Mick's responses to this. We here would also like to add our condolences to the much maligned Mr. Paquette (from charlie):
An open letter to Mr. Paquette:
No, sir, you are not a villain--I don't know who you are or what your ideas
are but if anyone has made you feel bad about making a little money that is
really too bad. Mr. Paquette please do not regret your decision to pursue a
high salaried career. I realize that you suffer. This career has asked so
much of you. It has dragged you to strange countries (presumably on
airlines subsidized and repeatedly bailed out by tax dollars) where you've
had to communicate via email (a function of the internet whose research and
development was paid for by tax dollars).
Do not judge Paquette. This traveling is an enormous sacrifice he is making
and all that he is asking for is that his income not be taxed, and that the
media stop besmirching his character. And can we really blame him? Imagine
his disappointment when after years of college and working in a bicycle
factory (good luck finding a bicycle factory in America today) along side
other conservatives (because liberals don't work in bicycle factories?) he
had to travel in order to make the kind of salary he desired. What's more,
some people wanted to tax him (didn't they know he travelled? Hasn't the
man suffered enough?). Now of course none of these taxes were of the sort
that allowed him any of the opportunities he had taken advantage of in his
life, these were the sort of taxes that went to lazy people content to spend
their August evenings at swim parties doing their crack cocaine purchased
from food stamps. Oh what Paquette would have given to attend just one of
those swanky shindigs, but the bicycles were not going build themselves!
And what kept Paquette going on those hot August nights? What kindled the
fire inside his red blooded American heart? The idea that one day, if he
worked hard and stayed away from swim parties, he could have a job that paid
him an enormous sum of money with no obligation to contribute a damn thing
to society except an honest day's work.
Alas, that was a just dream Paquette. The innocence has long since died.
Paquette grew up fast. He did what the company asked him to, he flew to far
off strange places where the people walked on their hands and spoke in
frenzied gibberish. He stayed in their foreign, upscale hotels, and ate
their exotic attempts at steak. He drank their imported scotch and screwed
their mid-range whores. And did it make him happy ?(well, happier than the
he was at the bicycle factory)--ok for a while it did. But it got old, and
one thing remained true to the end...Paquette had to pay taxes. Oh how this
burned Paquette. It burned and burned there was only one salve to soothe
this burning, it was the salve that had soothed him since he was just a
child whose mother bribed him to be quiet on long car trips with candy (he
was, after all, traveling) and that salve is known as self pitying and
complaining. He spread his self pity and complaints far and wide but it
didn't help. There were still taxes and people who believed that taxes
could help give opportunities to people whose circumstances allowed them
fewer than most. There were still people who wanted to give some of what
they had plenty of so that others could have just enough. I tell you, there
is no salve for such an irritant. Paquette I stand with you against this
great injustice. You, sir are not a villain, no sir. You sir, are a
hero--an example to us all. God be with you on your harrowing stays at the
Hyatt. God be with you sir in your consultations with your accountant. You
are a hero. You are my hero. You are...PAQUETTE THE MIGHTY!!!!
Feel better?
