Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller has been hopping up and down about a rumor that the discredited outfit ACORN will be involved in collecting Nevada data for the 2010 Census. <\/p>\n
The rumor is false and could hamper Nevada\u2019s efforts to count all its residents, which in turn could cost the state millions in federal funding, Mr. Miller worries. <\/p>\n
How? <\/p>\n
\u201cThe deliberate dissemination of this misinformation … could cause some people to not respond to the census, thereby costing Nevadans tens of millions of dollars in federal funding,\u201d Miller said. <\/p>\n
For those plagued with short scandal attention span, several regional offices of ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — proved willing last year to help an undercover couple claiming to be interested in arranging federal mortgage assistance to set up a bordello full of illegal alien prostitutes. It\u2019s not clear whether the deal also called for all the illegal alien prostitutes to register as Democratic voters, but it\u2019s not much of a stretch, given ACORN\u2019s Obama-saturated history. <\/p>\n
What I find most interesting here, though, is the \u201ccosting Nevadans tens of millions of dollars in federal funding\u201d part. <\/p>\n
The Census was never intended to serve as a road map for distributing federal largesse, because there\u2019s not supposed to be any federal largesse. <\/p>\n
Yes, there are some legitimate federal functions that can end up dispersing federal excise receipts back within the several states — building and maintaining post roads, for instance. <\/p>\n
But those funds aren\u2019t distributed per capita, and were never intended to be — any more than federal dockyards and naval bases are assigned per capita, which would lead to such absurdities as Colorado and Illinois getting far more such facilities than Connecticut and New Hampshire. <\/p>\n
The Census is intended to determine representation in Congress, and the amount each state will be billed — and instructed to collect among its citizens, per capita — should the federal government find itself in debt and in need of \u201cdirect taxes.\u201d <\/p>\n
An interesting subject for research would be whether the states actually collected those funds — on the several occasions when this provision was used, such as to pay off the debt run up in the process of conquering the South in the early 1860s — by assessing each RESIDENT, each TAXPAYER, or each VOTER. <\/p>\n
If the practice was or would be to assess the tax against only voters, shouldn\u2019t those who register to vote be warned they could eventually get a bill for their share of the national debt? <\/p>\n
But the main point is that far too much of our wealth is already siphoned away to Washington, and then doled back to us in dribs and drabs — with plenty of strings attached. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou want you federal highway money? Well, hang on just a second, there, missy, till we check and see if you\u2019ve enacted all the seat belt and drunk driving and speed limit and \u2018photo ID\u2019 laws just the way we want them. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now you also want your federal kickbacks to help fund your youth propaganda camps? Whoa, baby; let\u2019s check to make sure you\u2019ve set things up just the way the educrat unions want them, to guarantee your camps are as expensive, ineffective, and dumbed-down as required.\u201d <\/p>\n
Enough Nevadans are sick and tired of this doling back of federal kickbacks as a means of controlling our behavior that it\u2019s Secretary of State Miller who could easily end up convincing folks to boycott the census, if they come to believe that doing so could have the effect of lessening the incursions here of the federal government, which currently claims to own and control 88 percent of Nevada\u2019s land area (though, curiously, the federals can show no deed or bill of sale demonstrating those lands were \u201cpurchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be,\u201d as required in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution.) <\/p>\n
Unlike me, let me hasten to add. The enumeration of persons in these United States is a legitimate function of the central government. Yes, technically census workers are federal officials, but most have taken this misguided step only as a temporary measure and under considerable financial duress, given the mess Washington has made of our once-free economy. <\/p>\n
They will surely be forgiven the onerous punishment which lies in store for any persons who earned the BULK of their lifetime pay as federal tax collectors. <\/p>\n
So cooperate, please. Tell them how many people live in your domicile — and nothing else, since that\u2019s all they\u2019re authorized to ask. <\/p>\n
If your home holds only two adults, for instance, and if you both pay out more than half your earnings in the form of taxes (income withholding tax doubled to include the \u201cemployer\u2019s share,\u201d which your employer counts as an employee cost and thus could otherwise pay to you; property tax; sales tax; capital gains tax; Social Security tax; Medicare tax; extra road tax collected under the guise of \u201cspeeding tickets\u201d for travelling at the prevailing speed of the traffic … and don\u2019t forget they\u2019ll seize at least 45 percent of whatever\u2019s left when you die) then your proper legal answer would be \u201cSix fifths of a person lives here. Yep, that\u2019s what I said, write it down — 1-point-2 persons.\u201d <\/p>\n
For the Constitution is quite clear. The number of persons is to be determined by \u201cadding to the whole Number of free Persons … and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.\u201d <\/p>\n
After 1866, it became the custom to assume all persons were \u201cfree Persons,\u201d and the habit of counting anyone as \u201cthree fifths of a person\u201d fell into disuse. <\/p>\n
But that was long before the invention of the income tax and — even more insidious — the \u201cpayroll withholding tax.\u201d (Jeffrey Hummel even wrote a book about the “Great Emancipator,” who invented the income tax — properly thrown out as unconstitutional — called “Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men.”) <\/p>\n
Half a person\u2019s gross income is more than the sharecroppers had to pay their former massa, in the bad old days of Jim Crow in the Deep South, more than a century ago. <\/p>\n
Who can say with a straight face that anyone who finds half his substance now extracted by the government — under threat of fine, property seizure, and imprisonment — remains a \u201cfree Person\u201d? <\/p>\n
What\u2019s that? We\u2019re \u201cfree to vote against the taxes\u201d? Wow. Which button was I supposed to push at the last election to repeal the income tax? I ALWAYS vote for candidates who swear they\u2019re not going to raise our taxes. How\u2019s that been working out for you? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller has been hopping up and down about a rumor that the discredited outfit ACORN will be involved in collecting Nevada data for the 2010 Census. The rumor is false and could hamper Nevada\u2019s efforts to count all its residents, which in turn could cost the state millions in federal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-6T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}