This month’s Flying Pigs Award goes to (drumroll please…) angry leftist Bill Maher. Yes, amazingly enough, it appears that Maher is finally getting fed up with pulling more than his fair share of the wagon in the Golden Land of High Taxes. Speaking with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC earlier this week, he sounded almost cogent ~

“You know what? Rich people – I’m sure you’d agree with this – actually do pay the freight in this country.” 😯
 
“I just saw these statistics,” he continued, “I mean, something like 70 percent. And here in California, I just want to say liberals – you could actually lose me. It’s outrageous what we’re paying – over 50 percent. I’m willing to pay my share, but yeah, it’s ridiculous.”

 
And the fun never ends. Sacremento’s latest outrageous move is to actually tax retroactively: California businesses fuming over retroactive $120M tax grab. From Fox News ~

In December, the state’s tax authority determined that a tax break claimed over the past few years by 2,500 entrepreneurs and stockholders of California-based small businesses is no longer valid and sent out notices of payment.
 
“How would you feel if you made a decision, which was made four years ago, (and) you absolutely knew was legally correct and four years later a governing body came in and said, ‘no, it’s not correct, now you owe us a bunch more money. And we’re going to charge you interest on money you didn’t even know you owed’,” Brian Overstreet told Fox News from his office north of San Francisco.

Businesses can’t operate in a climate where the rule of law is increasing ignored – anymore than the rest of society can.
 
Now that Bill Maher gets it, what’s it gonna take for the rest of the productive class in California to wake up?
 

After learning of the death of Venezuelan thuggish dictator President Hugo Chávez, President Obama offered a few empty platitudes ~

“At this challenging time of President Hugo Chávez’s passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.” [Source: Wall Street Journal]

 
 
 
But then really, what does one say upon the demise of a dictator these days? Mustn’t sound too “judgemental.” On the other hand, you’re not quite ready for the sheeple to realize how much you admired his dubious achievements – and how closely you’re emulating his tyrannical behavior…
 
 
 
In Requiem for a Despot: the Death of Hugo Chávez, John A. Huettner at the American Thinker offers some biographical information and discusses Chávez’s autocratic reign. See if anything sounds familiar ~

During his 14 years in power, Chavez made a career out of trashing capitalism and the United States and fomenting unrest and chaos throughout South America. He polarized Venezuela through divisiveness and fear mongering and ascended to power using a brew of boorishness, thuggery, racism and class envy cloaked in nationalistic and socialist rhetoric…
 
Always the kleptocrat, Chavez felched his country’s oil resources and declared open season on its wealthy citizens to fund state food programs, “free” housing, health care and education, and other redistribution schemes which did little to reduce poverty despite the squandering hundreds of millions of dollars to buy the votes of his loyal Chavistas in a series of questionable elections…
 

Throughout his rule, Chavez was apparently able to buy support through welfare programs and giveaways aimed at keeping enough dumbed down, impoverished, dependent voters to assure his reelection. While there is no suggestion yet that Chavez ran death camps or promoted genocide, he had no problem jailing or exiling political opponents, stifling any opposition, and encouraging his followers to intimidate and denounce anybody who disagreed with him.
 
He continually spewed the usual tired utopian socialist bromides about community, equality, and a leaderless society while personally doing little more than seizing land and other property and gifting it to family members, political allies and supporters. While he claimed to preside over a free and democratic nation, he controlled every aspect of government and micro managed every aspect of society.
 
Ultimately, little changed in Venezuela during his rule other than the redistribution of wealth to cronies, gutting of the middle class and perhaps the alleviation of some poverty at the very low ends of the spectrum.

 
Certainly some depressing parallels huh? If our Socialist-in-Chief has his way, we’ll be looking more and more like a banana republic.
 
As Huettner explains, when the productive class and freedom-loving Venezuelans figured out what Chávez’s endgame was, they got out if they could ~

Predictably, as he began running out of businesses to nationalize and other peoples’ money to prodigalize, professionals fled the country, inflation gutted the economy and the homicide rate rose astronomically to one of the world’s highest.

 
We better derail our own little despot soon; there’s nowhere else to go.
 
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Related:
Many of Obama’s Hollywood celebrity friends also felt a special affinity with the South American dictator: Hollywood mourns Hugo Chavez