Category Archives: Taxation

BACKWARD Zuckerberg : We Subsidize His DREAMERS

IMMIGRATION, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property, Taxation, Technology

There is a very good reason Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg can promise the world to “young undocumented immigrants,” or “Dreamers,” pretend that by lobbying to let them stay in the USA, he is tapping into endless possibilities; make like they’re God’s gift to the American high-tech industry (when they’re not), and generally carry on like a filthy rich d-ck: the objects of his affection—young, illegal immigrants—are subsidized by the American taxpayer.

Legalization of low-skilled or no-skilled migrants (such as Zuckerberg’s “Dreamers”) amounts to a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to big business via big government.

As Hans-Hermann Hoppe has written, “”[E]mployers under democratic Welfare State conditions are permitted by state law to externalize their employment costs on others” and will “tend to import increasingly low-skilled and low value-productive immigrants, regardless of their effect on all-around communal property values.”

Here, the rightful owners of public property (taxpayers) do not get to vet the newcomers—the state and big business do. Yet when faced with such economic fascism (government-business collusion), open-border libertarians exalt business’ every move.

“His tentative grasp of property leads the leftist libertarian to forget that public property is property funded by taxpayers through expropriated taxes. It belongs to taxpayers. Yet at least a million additional immigrants a year are allowed the free use of these taxpayer-supported amenities. Every new arrival avails himself of public works such as roads, hospitals, parks, libraries, schools and welfare.
In the absence of a state, or in the presence of a limited government where almost all land is privately owned, migration would be a very restricted affair. It would depend on the graces of private property owners. A newcomer may be invited over by a propertied person, who would shoulder the costs. If he wishes to venture beyond the invited sphere, the newcomer would seek consent from the private property owners with whom he wishes to interface. The more the status of property approaches the libertarian ideal, the less free migration would be.” (From “LOVE-IN AT THE BORDERS”)

The No-Good Obama Has Altered American Medicine For Good

Barack Obama, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism, Taxation, Welfare

Dr. Ramin Oskoui spoke extremely knowledgeably, on the Laura Ingraham Show, about the precise connection between curtailed medical care and ObamaCare. These are a few of the many ways in which the creep-in-chief’s signature legislation will degrade American medicine:

* Cancer: The concept of personalized medical care and the use of specific, state-of-the-art drugs that work with the individual’s genetic make-up—these will diminish considerably. ObamaCare puts access to “crucial medical progress at great risk.”

* PET scans, for example, will be limited to three in a lifetime, although cancer patients often have that many during initial diagnosis.

ObamaCare aims to control costs, explained Dr. Oskoui. For cancer patients this is achieved by blocking the patient’s ability to seek out specialized doctors. Because insurance provides cannot adjust premiums and benefits, the only thing they can do to control costs is to limit access and care—they must limit the network of providers with which they contract.

Bundle payments: doctors get lump sums of money to care for patients with particular conditions. This coerces them to cut down on the use of costlier, newer drugs and tests. It also pits what the doctor earns for caring for these patients against his payment, reducing his incentives to offer the best of remedies if these are more costly.

After all, doctors in private practice are small businessmen. They cannot provide a service for less than it costs them to provide.

Even if ObamaCare collapses under its own weight, warns Dr. Oskoui, it has “already changed the medical landscape.” Many specialists have migrated to the hospital system because, as “favored providers,” hospital-based medics are allowed to bill more than they would when working for themselves.

Both the host and this intelligent cardiac surgeon have concluded that ObamaCare is not about the practice of medicine, but about wealth distribution.

It is a tax bill.

“The entire medical landscape,” observed Ms. Ingraham, “has shifted to help the few who didn’t want healthcare or couldn’t afford it. (A point made back in 2009 in “Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured.”)

Dr. Oskoui: ObamaCare has transferred financial risk to the providers of healthcare and away from Big Pharma, the insurers, those receiving healthcare. The latter, and the electronic health-records manufacturers, profit.

Again: it’s a wealth-transfer program; an entitlement program.

Ex Post Facto Law’s The Norm … In A Banana Republic

Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Government, Justice, Law, Natural Law, Taxation, The State

The federal and state governments operate increasingly on an unconstitutional, ex post facto basis. What does this mean? It means that despite the U.S. Constitution, Article 1 Section 9, in particular—it states that “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed”—actions are often criminalized after they are committed.

In any case, it is unconstitutional to criminalize actions that were legal when committed.

It’s what banana republics do.

But since the US Constitution is a dead-letter law, victims of the state have no way of foreseeing or controlling how vague law will be bent and charges changed in the course of seeking a desired prosecutorial outcome.

What prompts this post today, in particular (you can be sure that every day US prosecutors proceed on dodgy, ex post facto legal grounds)?

The California Franchise Tax Board, the state’s version of the IRS, “[has] determined that a tax break claimed over the past few years by 2,500 entrepreneurs and stockholders of California-based small businesses is no longer valid and sent out notices of payment.”

“How would you feel if you made a decision, which was made four years ago, (and) you absolutely knew was legally correct and four years later a governing body came in and said, ‘no, it’s not correct, now you owe us a bunch more money. And we’re going to charge you interest on money you didn’t even know you owed’,” Brian Overstreet told Fox News from his office north of San Francisco.

Read more.

The Latest Escapade Of IRS Dominatrix Lois Lerner

Ethics, Fascism, Government, Morality, Taxation, The State

This news item is not easy to come by on Google. It concerns IRS dominatrix “Lois Lerner’s statements in late 2010.” These demonstrate that the Internal Revenue Service was being leaned on to “do something to stop the flow of money from corporations to political campaigns.”

Lerner revealed this while speaking “to a small group at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy.” (What amazes me is the network of contacts and speaking engagements these bureaucrats carve out for themselves while on the job. Corruption and conflict of interest is standard operating procedure with government. It doesn’t rate a mention in the article. Journalists and the public think it perfectly proper for public officials to grease the skids for future opportunities while in office.)

Via John Sexton @ Breitbart.com:

Newly uncovered video shows Lois Lerner discussing the political pressure that swirled around the IRS in 2010. Lerner says “everyone” was “screaming at” the IRS to stop the flood of money pouring into the 2010 elections through 501(c)(4) groups as a result of Citizens United.

Lerner spoke to a small group at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy on October 19, 2010, just two weeks before the wave election that brought the Tea Party and Republicans significant gains in Congress. During her appearance Lerner was asked about the flow of money from corporations to 501(c)(4) groups. “Everyone is up in arms because they don’t like it” Lerner replied, adding “Federal Election Commission can’t do anything about it; they want the IRS to fix the problem.”

Lerner goes on to outline the fact that 501(c)(4) organizations have the right to do “an ad that says vote for Joe Blow” so long as their primary activity is social welfare. However Lerner again emphasizes the political pressure the IRS was under at the time saying, “So everybody is screaming at us right now ‘Fix it now before the election. Can’t you see how much these people are spending?'” Lerner concludes by saying she won’t know if organizations have gone too far in campaigning until she looks at their “990s next year.”

Contrary to Lerner’s statement, everyone did not object to the Citizens United decision. The pushback was clearly partisan with the most high profile opponent being President Obama himself. Days after the decision, Obama used his weekly radio address to attack the ruling saying it would “open the floodgates” to special interest advertising in elections.

MORE.