GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Taking your money at gunpoint

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You pay taxes because the government forces you to. The only differences between taxation and robbery are:

  1. The government makes it legal (when they do it).
  2. The government has more window-dressing or layers of deception. For example, they’ll say that you pay taxes voluntarily. (Which is deception, because they will jail you and/or your banker if you don’t pay; and shoot you if you resist jail.)

In Seminole County, FL, they just got a little more honest. Seminole County tax collector will allow employees to carry guns.

Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg told the Orlando Sentinel that according to Florida law, he and his employees are considered “revenue officers” and are exempt from the state’s ban on the open carrying of firearms while performing their duties…

He said 15 to 20 employees will be allowed to carry firearms. Greenberg said no one will be forced to carry a weapon, adding that he “can’t imagine that they wouldn’t want to.”

The citizens, by contrast, can’t carry guns. So now the tax collectors are armed, and the citizens aren’t. (Whereas before, they met on slightly more equal terms and had to bring the police in for any physical disputes.) Roman empire, here we come!

Trump’s tax plan

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Yesterday, President Trump outlined his tax plan. Key features:

  • Slightly lower personal income tax rates. (Top rate from near-40% to 35%.)
  • Eliminating almost all income tax deductions, except mortgage interest and charitable contributions. (No more deduction for your State or property taxes, among other things.) Increase in the “standard deduction”.
  • Much lower corporate income tax rates. (Top rate from 35%, one of the world’s highest, to 15%.)
  • A one-time tax on overseas business profits. (That haven’t been repatriated to the U.S. Apple has a lot.)
  • A “territorial system” where future profits that corporations earn abroad, are not taxed.
  • Repealing a bunch of taxes and complications, most notably the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and the estate tax.

Of course, Congress still has to chew on it.

Taking Trump’s proposals by themselves, I have little objection. Rates should be lower. High income taxes are a form of slavery. Corporate income taxes are stupid because they are an indirect, distorted sales tax (that is, a tax paid ultimately by consumers). Estate taxes destroy many small businesses (forcing families to liquidate the business in order to pay the 50% tax or whatever).

Nonetheless, I can’t praise this plan. Because it will reduce revenues at first, without being matched by spending cuts. Our budget will come no closer to balance.

President Obama already doubled the U.S. national debt in his 8 years, from roughly $10 trillion to roughly $20 trillion, for an average real annual deficit around $1.25 trillion. Is Trump going to beat Obama’s record? I sure hope not.

This is an important point. The true level of taxation is the government’s spending level. All spending must be paid for, one way or another. There are 3 possibilities.

  1. Overt taxes.
  2. Borrowing. This is a covert tax, a tax on the future (when either the debt must be repudiated, or more and more government revenues must be diverted to servicing it).
  3. Money-printing. Another hidden tax, this time on the real value (the purchasing power) of everyone’s wages and savings. Also known as “inflation”.

So really, it isn’t a tax cut unless it’s a spending cut also. Trump wants to cut the overt taxes. So, what? Without spending cuts, it’s only a corresponding increase in the hidden taxes: borrowing and/or money-printing.

And what happens when we add (say) a Trump infrastructure spending package and a Syria or North Korea war on top of that? More of the hidden taxes: borrowing and/or money-printing.

Tax Day homily

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Although this story focuses on California’s abuses, it shows how government gets its revenue in general: arbitrarily and with the power and willingness to ruin people’s lives.

In 1970, a young Southern California electrical engineer and inventor named Gilbert Hyatt filed a patent application for an innovative microprocessor chip…

Twenty years later…the U.S. patent office awarded Hyatt the patent…a multimillion-dollar windfall. He moved to Las Vegas, where he said he was a full-time resident before he received the earnings.

California’s Franchise Tax Board (FTB)…decided to seek $7.4 million in back taxes, claiming that he was still a resident of California when the money came in. That sounds like a simple enough dispute that could quickly be resolved, but what followed has been an ordeal that has consumed a good bit of Hyatt’s adult life.

…[for] a sum that now tops $55 million as interest and penalties have accrued…The tax authorities have been pursuing him through its administrative process. Tired of the endless investigations, Hyatt filed suit in Nevada court in 1998. California officials said they weren’t subject to an out-of-state tort lawsuit. California lost that argument in the Nevada Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court and the high court decision sent the case back to a Nevada district court, which awarded Hyatt nearly $400 million in damages after finding that the California authorities abused their power and invaded his privacy. That case is on appeal.

Hyatt believes that California officials are purposefully delaying. “Specifically, because of the 20 year delay Hyatt can no longer obtain a fair and full adjudication of whether he owes state taxes to California,” according to his lawsuit. “During this time, material witnesses have passed away, memories of witnesses have faded, and documents relevant and important to Hyatt are no longer available.” The board keeps assessing penalties…He suspects the tax board is waiting for him to die so that it can go after his estate.

Under California law, the Franchise Tax Board has the “presumption of correctness,” meaning that the onus always is on Hyatt to disprove what the tax officials say. And, he argues, they keep changing their stories and their allegations, thus resulting in more years of legal expenses and disputes…

To sum up – When dealing with the tax man in America today, you have:

  • No “innocent until proven guilty”.
  • No real “right to a speedy trial”.
  • Kafka-esque complexity and situations rigged for you to lose.

To anyone who wants to claim that our tax system is “voluntary”, or that government somehow isn’t a gun, or that taxation somehow isn’t a use of force on people (many conscientious tax-objectors are given long jail sentences): You’re just lying.

Classic Harry Reid on taxes

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Via Zero Hedge. Squirming under the Socratic questioning of interviewer Jan Helfeld, Sen. Reid argues here that because the U.S. tax system is cumbersome (having people self-report, having deductions, often using civil penalties rather than criminal, etc.), it’s somehow “voluntary”; that is, somehow not based on the government taking your money under a threat of force:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6q0slMhDw8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

This guy pays his taxes right

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He pays in legal tender, the government’s own money. He makes clear what a significant (even ridiculous) amount they’re taking from his home and family. He accurately states that it is not voluntary; the government coerces his payment by threatening to seize his home. He identifies the moral issue: “Our money is our property, and we have a right to it.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPRGblJTPRE[/youtube]

Via The Blaze and of course, YouTube.

Leading Democrats teach the opposite of the Constitution

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Speaking to students at Ohio State University on May 5, President Obama said:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham, with which we can’t be trusted.

Obama said, in effect: Disregard people who worry about tyranny. We can have government do the things that they warn against, without it being tyranny, because we are such wonderful people – so well-intentioned – that it isn’t tyranny, when we do it.

Get it? So, when Obama has his administration lie to Americans so he can win re-election, or when he takes an increasing share of people’s incomes, or requires people to engage in private commerce that he happens to want (Obamacare mandate), or eliminates their rightful choices in the free market, or uses the IRS to obstruct his opponents and violate their privacy, or uses the Justice Department to snoop on reporters, or uses the EPA to extort fees from opponents (that progressive groups don’t have to pay – hat tip V the K), it’s not tyranny. Because it’s Obama doing it, and by his account, he can be trusted.

But the Framers of the constitution thought otherwise. They believed in checks and balances. They *were* those people who “warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.” They founded America, by “gumming up the works.”

Perhaps Obama doesn’t know that the Framers set up the United States as a republic under a limited government, precisely because they knew that all governments tend to degenerate into tyranny. Or perhaps Obama is unaware of his own party’s President Andrew Jackson, who said that “eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty.”

Obama implies that people who warn us of tyranny are distrustful nihilists. Our only choice, Obama implies, is between continuing the crony-social-fascist gargoyle of a government that he now leads – and harmful anarchy. A typical Obama false choice (flowing from a typical Obama straw man), I’m pretty sure it has the Framers rolling in their graves.

So much for Obama. But there’s more! Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee recently said: [Read more…]