Still paying

Let me ask you a few questions:
- Do you live in the United States of America?
- Do you have a landline phone?
- Do you have a cell phone?

If you answered "Yes" to at least two of these questions, I bet you weren't aware that you were paying for the Spanish-American War.

What is that you say? I'm paying for the Spanish-American War? How can that be? It ended it 1898, 107 years ago. Well let me just tell you, you are still paying for that war!

In 1898, President McKinley imposed the Federal Excise Tax law, or more commonly called "Tax on Talk." This tax was to be a temporary "luxury tax" on the very wealthy. But wait, I'm not wealthy, how can they tax me still?

Prez McKinley enacted a 3% excise tax on the use of a telephone. 107 years ago, the only people that owned telephones were wealthy people (you or I would have never owned a telephone back then) so everyone told old McKinley - yeah go ahead and screw the rich people, charge them 3% to use those new fangled telephones that let you talk to the devil, go ahead do it.

Well, he did that.....the only problem......the excise tax was never repealed so to this day you are paying a 3% excise tax on every phone line that you own.....doesn't seem like much but, on average about $1.50 a month.

But think about it this way:
- $1.50 a month
- times 12 months = $18.00
- Let's say that 50% of the US Population owns a phone that's about 147,500
- That's $2,655,000 extra that we're paying to finance a war that ended 107 years ago.

I very rarely advocate doing things but if you have a chance go on over to the MyWireless.Org website and let your Senators and Representatives to SUPPORT S.132 and HR.1898 to repeal the Tax on Talk.

Whew - I'm done, it takes a lot out of you being up here on this soapbox, who's next?