Vin Suprynowicz

I wouldn’t have nominated Jim Gibbons for “Mr. Charisma,” myself. He never seemed to take much joy in being governor of Nevada.

Nor do I adhere to the doctrine that we should speak no ill of the politically departed. Not only were Lincoln and FDR tyrants, they didn’t even offer any attractive short-term inducements in exchange for their yokes of tyranny.

But I find it interesting to see the hatred of retiring Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons by the collectivists is so rabid they can’t resist continuing to assault him even as he rides off into the sunset.

Gibbons is condemned for stubbornly sticking to his “no new taxes” pledge, “regardless of the impact on the needy.”

I’ve seen “the needy.” They’re fat, they have color TVs and cell phones; they wear newer shoes than I do.

And it now appears incoming Gov. Brian Sandoval must expect an endless dirge on the same two-note tune, as the looters already whine he has some nerve, calling on Nevadans in his admittedly cliche-ridden inaugural address to “choose between complacency and courage,” since he himself “lacks the courage to raise taxes.”

This is pathological. If they’re unaware taxmen put people in prison, that people have committed suicide because the taxmen strip them of all their hope along with their property, then their ignorance is willful. This shows the same moral tone-deafness as the culture of southern planters, two centuries past, who could joke that the only problem with slavery was figuring out how to get your darned slaves to work harder.

Today’s answer (“They should have paid!”) echoes the reply of the owner of the hanged slave (“He shouldn’t have run away!”)

It’s tempting to call taxation “theft,” since it surely involves taking the honest earnings of hard workers and careful investors, under threat of force, aided by the thin cloak of rectitude afforded by a uniform and a badge, with the aim of redistributing that wealth to those who have not earned it … with the facilitators keeping enough “vigorish” to set themselves up with a millionaire’s retirement by age 60.

(What’s that? What about those unemployed through no fault of their own? Get rid of all the government interventions in the labor market, including payroll taxes, and jobs would sprout like fungi. Of course, they might not all be government-APPROVED jobs.)

But “theft” still isn’t quite right. Thieves at least don’t claim to have any actual RIGHT to your wealth, which is why they run away.

The taxman, on the other hand, squeezes you for all he can, punishes you further if you haven’t been fully “cooperative” in “voluntarily” revealing all your wealth and earnings, all their sources and resting places, and then — far from running away — smiles and says: “I’ll see you again next year, same time, same place, when I expect to squeeze you for even more.”

They’re slavers, who purport to believe they have a RIGHT to require honest men to work for them for an ever increasing number of months in the year, without compensation.

The reason no tax slaver can answer when asked for the maximum percentage of the rightfully earned wealth of “the rich” they believe they have a right to seize — the maximum punishment they wish to inflict for the crimes of working hard and investing wisely (in order to bail out those who do neither, including of late the millionaire managers of every big bank and brokerage house in the country) is that there IS no “maximum.”

By the time the Roman empire collapsed, all the fields within a day’s ride of the capital lay fallow. No farmer could make enough money farming them to pay the taxes.

Now, again, they will tax not only till it kills us, but till it kills THEM, like the scorpion stinging the frog.

Just as we shake our heads in amazement that our otherwise humane ancestors could have tolerated chattel slavery, so our own descendants will be amazed that their ancestors in the early 21st century could have tolerated tax slavery — the notion that a simple majority vote could empower armed bully boys to seize all the wealth they wanted from anyone targeted as “rich” … oblivious to the fact this must eventually result in a crippled economy, an end to industry and innovation, stagflation, rationing and misery.

Though that objection is merely pragmatic, of course, when the underlying problem is moral.

I believe it was Oliver Wendell Homes who once said “I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.” What a horse’s ass. This is the guy who sent to prison Charles Schenck, secretary of the Socialist party, for printing, distributing, and mailing to prospective military draftees during World War One some 15,000 leaflets that advocated opposition to involuntary military conscription (to fight a European land war in which we had no interest, except to buy Professor Wilson the “place at the treaty table” he so coveted), pamphlets including such devilish advice as “Do not submit to intimidation” and “Assert your rights.”

This was the case in which the “great jurist” and warmonger wrote for the unanimous court that such an abuse of the freedom of speech was equivalent to “falsely shouting fire in a theatre.”

Young children should be taken on fields trips to Arlington National Cemetery to piss on his grave.

Since a judge only pays back some portion of the slave-tax loot which forms his entire sustenance, Judge Holmes never “paid” a dime in taxes, but merely negotiated to have his pay increased by whatever percentage he wanted to remit in order to create the APPEARANCE of “paying taxes.”

Besides, did the old Yankee ever attempt to grow even more civilized by volunteering to pay his neighbors’ taxes? Did he also believe “Slavery is the price the black man pays for having a full belly and a shirt on his back?” I fail to see the difference. Working harder didn’t net the slave any better food or clothing in 1811, just as today’s tax slavers want to grab any “surplus” the taxpayer leaves behind when he dies.

Any governing we need can be funded through voluntary fees and elective excises. To say otherwise is no different from the southern planter saying, “But how would the crops ever be harvested from the fields without the slaves?” no different from the British Navy saying: ”But how could our ships be manned without the press gang?”

Funny, but the fields produce more crops today, and the seas play host to far larger, more numerous and efficient vessels, do they not?

The “benefits” of government are largely illusory. We’re told they license and inspect businesses to make sure no charatan defrauds us, no restaurant poisons us. But try, should you ever suffer restaurant-induced food poisoning, to sue both the municipal government and, personally, the inspector who gave them a passing grade. You will find no such lawsuit is allowed. Government takes the fees, issues the assurances, and then holds itself blameless. It’s all a scam. You’d do better buying your “protection” from the Mob.

The Army and Marines “protect” us by spending billion upon borrowed billion on robot drones to blow up tribesmen in Waziristan? Then why do we still need to waive our Bill of Rights every time we fly to Pittsburgh?

I may not live to see it, but some day freedom fighters will pass from bed to bed in the old-age homes, identifying drooling geezers who once worked as taxslavermen, rousting them out in their pajamas and hanging them from lamp posts.

When that day comes, Americans will declare no penny they earn may ever again be seized from them against their will, no longer will they pay a dime of literally endless rent disguised as “property taxes” to fund the mandatory youth illiteracy camps.

And then, at long last, all America’s slaves will truly be free.