Pony Up: A Contribution & Letter by Joni Lindgren to Gary
Elmen & IRTA
Pony Up: (Verb)
The pony in question, a slang term for a twenty-five pound note in
Britain, is certainly an idiom describing the making of a monetary payment. Other origins include allusions to English
Quarter Day, which was March 25th and the day all debts were to be
settled and paid. While the English still used the term to “stump up,” the
expression “pony up” has taken firm hold in American slang as a cash payment or
down payment(www.phrasefinder.org/uk).
Joni Lindgren has certainly led the way in ponying up. And with good reasons.
"Dear Gary….
Enclosed
you will find a check for $200. for the “legal defense fund”.
Enclosed
is also a summary of all the recent hand-outs that our legislators have
generously given to corporations, gambling casinos and pet projects with our
tax dollars. The last I knew, as a retired Illinois teacher, I was still paying
the same taxes as all other Illinois citizens. The reason I’m sending this
summary to you is for you to pass onto the lawyers because I think part of
their defense should include…
1) why our politicians need to rob
teachers and public workers?…they need to free up their debt obligations to
give to the greedy corporations….so that the corporations can continue to
blackmail legislators into giving them what they want so they don’t move out of
this state! The legislators also need to continue to protect (because the
legislators are being paid off) the wealthy and corporations in Illinois.
2) Not related to the summary, but also a
big part of the defense should be the facts that our legislators haven’t done
one damn thing to raise revenue when they’ve known for years that they needed
lots of money to feed to the corporations. They should have changed the tax
codes so the rich would pay more, and/or passed a bill for a graduated income
tax (which would have taxed the wealthy at a higher rate), and they could have
easily (without a constitutional amendment) have passed a Robin Hood tax on
every trade on the CBOT or CME. That alone would have brought in millions a
year! These are just 3 things they could have done to raise revenue, but NO,
God forbid that they take something from the wealthy and corporations!
3) One last point…. Win or lose….we need a
full-page story in every newspaper about how the legislators were the puppets
of the corporations and wealthy and why the public workers were made the
victims of their schemes… to privatize and to hand over mega money to the
corporations!!
If
this last point isn’t written for everyone to read, the public will continue to
think it will always be someone’s fault (teachers…public workers) that states
have “so-called” economic woes! The public needs to wake up to the fact that
the corporations have done this to us AND to everyone else and will continue to
do this if voters don’t wake up and not let them get away with taking from the
middle/lower classes.
“Of
the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations are cannibalizing
our economy, laws, Constitution…and defining our futures and that of our
children and grandchildren”!
Please
pass this along to the lawyers."
Joni
Lindgren
We need a few
thousand more Joni Lindgren’s.
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