I wouldn\u2019t have nominated Jim Gibbons for \u201cMr. Charisma,\u201d myself. He never seemed to take much joy in being governor of Nevada. <\/p>\n
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\u2019t even offer any attractive short-term inducements in exchange for their yokes of tyranny. <\/p>\n
But I find it interesting to see the hatred of retiring Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons by the collectivists is so rabid they can\u2019t resist continuing to assault him even as he rides off into the sunset. <\/p>\n
Gibbons is condemned for stubbornly sticking to his \u201cno new taxes\u201d pledge, \u201cregardless of the impact on the needy.\u201d <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen \u201cthe needy.\u201d They\u2019re fat, they have color TVs and cell phones; they wear newer shoes than I do. <\/p>\n
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 \u201cchoose between complacency and courage,\u201d since he himself \u201clacks the courage to raise taxes.\u201d <\/p>\n
This is pathological. If they\u2019re 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. <\/p>\n
Today\u2019s answer (\u201cThey should have paid!\u201d) echoes the reply of the owner of the hanged slave (\u201cHe shouldn\u2019t have run away!\u201d) <\/p>\n
It\u2019s tempting to call taxation \u201ctheft,\u201d 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 \u201cvigorish\u201d to set themselves up with a millionaire\u2019s retirement by age 60. <\/p>\n
(What\u2019s 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.) <\/p>\n
But \u201ctheft\u201d still isn\u2019t quite right. Thieves at least don\u2019t claim to have any actual RIGHT to your wealth, which is why they run away. <\/p>\n
The taxman, on the other hand, squeezes you for all he can, punishes you further if you haven\u2019t been fully \u201ccooperative\u201d in \u201cvoluntarily\u201d revealing all your wealth and earnings, all their sources and resting places, and then — far from running away — smiles and says: \u201cI\u2019ll see you again next year, same time, same place, when I expect to squeeze you for even more.\u201d <\/p>\n
They\u2019re 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. <\/p>\n
The reason no tax slaver can answer when asked for the maximum percentage of the rightfully earned wealth of \u201cthe rich\u201d 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 \u201cmaximum.\u201d <\/p>\n
By the time the Roman empire collapsed, all the fields within a day\u2019s ride of the capital lay fallow. No farmer could make enough money farming them to pay the taxes. <\/p>\n
Now, again, they will tax not only till it kills us, but till it kills THEM, like the scorpion stinging the frog. <\/p>\n
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 \u201crich\u201d … oblivious to the fact this must eventually result in a crippled economy, an end to industry and innovation, stagflation, rationing and misery. <\/p>\n
Though that objection is merely pragmatic, of course, when the underlying problem is moral. <\/p>\n
I believe it was Oliver Wendell Homes who once said \u201cI like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.\u201d What a horse\u2019s 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 \u201cplace at the treaty table\u201d he so coveted), pamphlets including such devilish advice as \u201cDo not submit to intimidation\u201d and \u201cAssert your rights.\u201d <\/p>\n
This was the case in which the \u201cgreat jurist\u201d and warmonger wrote for the unanimous court that such an abuse of the freedom of speech was equivalent to \u201cfalsely shouting fire in a theatre.\u201d <\/p>\n
Young children should be taken on fields trips to Arlington National Cemetery to piss on his grave. <\/p>\n
Since a judge only pays back some portion of the slave-tax loot which forms his entire sustenance, Judge Holmes never \u201cpaid\u201d 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 \u201cpaying taxes.\u201d <\/p>\n
Besides, did the old Yankee ever attempt to grow even more civilized by volunteering to pay his neighbors\u2019 taxes? Did he also believe \u201cSlavery is the price the black man pays for having a full belly and a shirt on his back?\u201d I fail to see the difference. Working harder didn\u2019t net the slave any better food or clothing in 1811, just as today\u2019s tax slavers want to grab any \u201csurplus\u201d the taxpayer leaves behind when he dies. <\/p>\n
Any governing we need can be funded through voluntary fees and elective excises. To say otherwise is no different from the southern planter saying, \u201cBut how would the crops ever be harvested from the fields without the slaves?\u201d no different from the British Navy saying: \u201dBut how could our ships be manned without the press gang?\u201d <\/p>\n
Funny, but the fields produce more crops today, and the seas play host to far larger, more numerous and efficient vessels, do they not? <\/p>\n
The \u201cbenefits\u201d of government are largely illusory. We\u2019re 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\u2019s all a scam. You\u2019d do better buying your \u201cprotection\u201d from the Mob. <\/p>\n
The Army and Marines \u201cprotect\u201d 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? <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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 \u201cproperty taxes\u201d to fund the mandatory youth illiteracy camps. <\/p>\n
And then, at long last, all America\u2019s slaves will truly be free. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wouldn\u2019t have nominated Jim Gibbons for \u201cMr. Charisma,\u201d 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\u2019t even offer any attractive short-term inducements in […]<\/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":[25,34,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-nevada","category-taxation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-ax","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","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=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}