Thread by @TobytheBeagle1

When did I #walkaway ? 1994. The owner of the company I worked for died. The family couldn't afford the 55% death tax and still keep the company, so they sold it to Huge Conglomeration. 1/3 of staff lost their jobs. Good paying jobs.

The owner had spent the previous 20 years barely scraping by and taking HUGE risks to build the company and brand. The last 5-7 years the company was profitable, and in the last 2 years, very profitable. But the profits of the company weren't the only thing with value.

The owner had decided 15 years earlier to move to a new location that he built. State of the art facility. The location was near a trailer park, but there was a rumor that a new shopping mall might be built close by. The mall was built, and a new road was built.

That new road in the next 15 years became the most traveled road in the county, and property values soared.

So, right as he paid off the building, and his company became profitable, he passed away and was hit with the 55% tax.

At this point, I had been a very loyal Democrat.

Before taking this job, I had worked for my state's Democrat Governor in his office. I had worked on Presidential campaigns, US Senate campaigns, and was even the Congressional district campaign coordinator for the Democrat candidate that replaced my boss.

While working in the Governor's office, I saw things that quite frankly disgusted me.
Employees of previous Dem Governor destroying any files that would hurt his further political career.
Members of the press dating members of the administration.

So many cover ups of abuse that I decided that I needed to GTFO, so I found a new job in the private sector at the other end of the state.

I still voted for Democrats, and I still keep in contact with the Democrat candidate that won the race to replace my former boss.

To this day, that is the only Democrat that I would ever support again. He was an honorable man, and a man of his word. All the other Democrats were nothing but fucking snakes.

So, while at the Governor's office, I was able to attend fundraisers. Not your small fundraisers.

No, these were the fundraisers that raised about $250K-500K each. The people at these fundraisers were the folks that could write checks for $50K for a candidate whenever they wanted, and they only did it for the Democrats. Oh, & their last names were the elite names of the state

These were the people that Wall Street works for, and they are all Dems.

You say the Dems are the party of the workers? Nope. Big strike by a union in our state. They hold a day of rallies at the Capital. Everyone in the office bunkers down and doesn't leave.

Everyone but me. I get sent out to hand a statement to the media, not on camera. The strikers were about as nice and pleasant to me as they could be. I stood and talked with them for about an hour and a half and went back to the office. No big deal.

They just wanted to make some noise up there and drink some beer. They did both and went home without incident.

The rest of the staff was afraid because they were men. Not the soyboys you see at rallies today, but men that were hard and strong because they were laborers.

This was the moment that it started to dawn on me, the Democrats are the party of Wall Street and the GOP was the party of Main Street.

Fast forward to my boss' death, and it really sank in. The Estate tax was nothing more than a vehicle to crush small to medium sized business.

Since large companies traded on the stock exchanges didn't have just one owner, the death of an stockholder was no big thing. Enough stock could be liquidated to pay the taxes, and the company still goes on.

But with small/medium businesses, you can't do that.

The only way to pay the taxes is to go into so much debt that you can't afford to pay it back, or sell the company. So, you end up selling, and who can afford to pay for the company? You got it, the large publicly traded companies. All of a sudden, those back office jobs are gone

The reason for the Dem's hatred of small businesses is simple: Campaign donations. You see, those fundraisers mentioned above were attended by those who owned large shares or were executives of those publicly traded companies. They want regulations, and their favorite ones are

those that cost enough to implement that the smaller guys can't afford to implement them. And that's what these donors wanted.

Little did I know 5 years later that the company that I worked for would be screwed by these regulations.

And that is when I #walkedaway