Final Word from Friday, July 1, 2011
The Liberal Institute and Patria Finance have each calculated that Tax Freedom Daycomes in about mid-June. It's when Czechs stop feeding the beast at the finance ministryand start keeping what they earn. Unless of course Miroslav Kalousek imposesa new tax before the year's up. Maybe it's also time to start announcing Crisis FreedomDay. It's the day of the year that separates the total number of days of politicalcrisis from those of political peace. It unfortunately can't be calculated until the endof the year, because politicians never declare in advance how much public bickering,backstabbing and huffing & puffing they plan to engage in. Nor do the media revealtheir schedule for going public with all the leaked information they're fed. We'll leavethe exact calculation to someone else, but we have a hunch that Czechs will celebrateCrisis Freedom Day and the Velvet Revolution on about the same day this year.
Glossary of difficult words
to feed the beast - to give a large, immovable, powerful system whatever it wants, because no one has the ability or ambition to change anything about it;
to bicker - to argue about petty and trivial matters;
to backstab - to engage in criticizing someone in a treacherous way while pretending friendship;
to huff and puff - to complain noisily about something but to be unable to do anything about it;
hunch - a feeling or guess based on intuition rather than known facts;
anniversary of the Velvet Revolution - Nov. 17.