Category Archives: Taxation

‘Are We Rome?’ Was A Question Asked and Answered Long Ago

Ancient History, Government, Iraq, libertarianism, Military, Taxation, The State, War

To the hackneyed question, ‘Are We Rome?’, John Stossel replies, “Not yet.” He is completely wrong, just as he was wrong to dismiss the “National Security Administration tracking patterns in our emails and phone calls,” to quote.

Mr. Stossel takes comfort in the fact that “we don’t kill people for sport. When we go to war, misguided or not, we don’t conquer or plunder. And when we win, we usually leave.” (July 18, 2013)

Who is he kidding? The US hunts down and kills very many innocents abroad by drone. It’s a bit of a sport—so much so that decadent New Rome has even established a “new medal that honors drone pilots and computer experts” for their long-distance killing prowess.

Courtesy of Uncle Sam, war-time slaughter has just been industrialized, streamlined, made more efficient in our times.

Compare the demographic and economic indices of countries the US has invaded—for their own good, of course, but without their consent—before and after the “merciful” intervention. You’ll get a better idea of the carnage than John Stossel allows.

Libya is no longer. Ditto Iraq. Afghanistan is not doing much better since Rome set up camp there.

Read “Casualties of the Iraq War.”

Read “Civilian casualties in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present).”

Read “Deaths caused by Coalition forces” in Libya.

Again, contrary to the Stossel assertion, the latter-day Rome has mechanized the warfare-state’s killing and has refined its propaganda wing to an art—so fine an art that John Stossel has bought it hook, line, and sinker.

No-one attempting to tackle the ‘Are We Rome?’ question should be allowed to get away with failing to mention Cullen Murphy’s book by that name. This is a question that was asked and answered already. Superbly.

A 2010 column I wrote highlighted “the unflattering parallels between the imperial rule of ancient Rome and that of modern America,” as illustrated in Murphy’s book, “Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome.”

The federal payroll in Washington Murphy pegs at 360,000 (BO: Before Obama), calling this estimate a “convenient deceit,” as an “even larger number of people in the Washington area — about 400,000 — work for private companies that are doing government work.” Add to the above a quarter million people who live in the vicinity and feed off the government directly or indirectly; the lawyers and lobbyist, the wonks and accountants, the reporters and caterers and limousine drivers and panegyrists, and all the aides and associates whose job it is to functions as someone else’s brain.”
Don’t forget that the D.C. hood is home to your favorite oh-so gritty media personalities, who gather inside or near the Bubble to reap “the benefits of being at the center of the Imperium.” Back to their role model, Rome:
The biggest component of [Rome’s] prodigious intake was something called the annona, an in-kind tax levied by Rome on everyplace else, and collected in the form of grain, which was used to provide free bread for most of Rome’s inhabitants. … Eventually, the annona was expanded beyond grain to include olive oil and wine. If you think of the annona as tax revenue, which it was, then the revenue not only accomplished its stated purpose of feeding the city; it also supported large swaths of private-sector activity, from shipping to baking to crime. Some of this activity was encouraged with tax breaks and grants of citizenship. There was great wealth to be had off government contracts. … the annona remained [the Empire’s] essential lifeline, preserved at all costs.
“All life in Washington today derives ultimately from the capitals’ own version of Rome’s annona — the continuous infusion not of grain and olive oil but of tax revenue and borrowed money. Instead of ships and barges there are banks, 10,000 of them designated for this purpose, which funnel the nations’ tax payments to the city. This ‘never-ending flow of revenue creates a broad level of affluence that has no real counterpart anywhere in America.” Says Murphy: “Washington simply doesn’t look like the rest of America.” But its residents “fail to view this as bizarre.”

IRS Probe Gets Closer To Proctologist-In-Chief

Barack Obama, Government, Taxation

Why would Washington saddle a regional IRS office—“rogue agents” in Cincinnati—with the blame for IRS infractions against conservative non-profit outfits, if our overlords who art in DC were not feeling the heat?

Via WND:

WASHINGTON — The investigation into the IRS practice of targeting conservative groups moved one step closer to the White House today in testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

Career IRS official Carter Hull, a self-described 501(c)4 expert with 48 years experience with the tax agency, testified the IRS chief counsel’s office in Washington demanded information on the 2010 election activity of tea party groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Hull testified that instead of carrying out his recommendations to approve or deny tax-exempt status to conservative groups, Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division, ordered tea party applications to go through a multi-level review that included her senior adviser and the office of the IRS chief counsel, a political appointee.

William Wilkins, one of two Obama administration political appointees at the IRS, leads the IRS chief counsel.

Scapegoating Cincinnati

Also testifying was Elisabeth Hofacre, an IRS official in the Cincinnati office who was assigned to review as many as 60 tea party applications and who coordinated her work with Hull.
She said the review process and extra scrutiny given the conservative groups was so unusual and she was so frustrated by what she saw as micromanagement, she asked for a transfer in July 2010, which was approved in October.
When Issa asked Hofacre how she felt when IRS officials began blaming the scrutiny on conservative groups on “rogue agents” in Cincinnati, she said she was deeply offended.
She said it hit her like a “nuclear strike.”
Fireworks were provided by Rep. Jason Chavetz, R-Utah, who was visibly upset over the treatment of Hofacre.
He expressed outrage that the White House Press secretary would blame the IRS targeting of conservatives on two agents in Cincinnati and that former acting IRS director Steve Miller would blame two rogue agents.
Chavetz said the most powerful people in Washington were blaming one of the people sitting at the table in front of him, referring to Hofacre.
He said that makes him believe Washington is involved.

MORE.

To be clear: I am quite pleased to see all IRS agents fry. But not at the cost of letting the White House off the hook.

IRS? Demolish That Den Of Iniquity

Constitution, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Liberty, Morality, Private Property, Taxation, The State

“IRS? Demolish That Den Of Iniquity” is the current column, now on WND:

“House Republicans are waging a symbolic and futile battle to slash the Internal Revenue Service’s budget by $3 billion. Republicans, according to reports, want the tax-collectors to pay for ‘unfairly scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.’

As usual, the GOP finesses the matter, as does the press.

The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson understated the IRS’s abuse of ‘police power’ as a mere ‘intrusion’; an ideological targeting by federal investigation of a political movement. To its credit, the Post’s Editorial Board stepped it up, conceding, at the time of the scandal that, “Any unequal application of the law based on ideological viewpoint is unpardonable—toxic to the legitimacy of the government’s vast law-enforcement authority.”

More to the point—and likely with White-House imprimatur—the IRS persecuted American patriots for promoting the constitutional principles upon which America was founded, but which are no longer a lodestar for the country’s government. These groups were hounded for their principles—and for asking to keep more of what is rightfully theirs in the service of these values.

How perverse is that?

And how perverse is the sight of the same IRS bureaucrats getting their freak-on (as in groove-on) at your expense?

Watch this YouTube clip of a representative cross-section, no doubt, of the IRS workforce at a “training conference.” Look at these off-putting officials having a jolly good time on your dime. Chins and butts wiggling obscenely all over the show; these people belong in a Federico Fellini film.

You could not fan away the smell in that hall if you tried. …

… These repulsive IRS agents, stomping about with abandon in carnival-like conferences and getaways: Do they represent you? Do they reflect your habits, manners, demeanor, priorities or worldview?

…We are trapped in the deforming, deadly clutches of institutionalized freaks, the remedy to which is…”

The complete column is “IRS? Demolish That Den Of Iniquity.” Read it on WND.

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Delusions Of Democracy

Classical Liberalism, Democracy, Elections, Middle East, South-Africa, States' Rights, Taxation

We now have some idea of the strength of Egyptian discontent, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal: “22 million …—a large number considering Egypt’s estimated population of 93 million people.” The numbers are derived not from a poll, but from revelations about a “signature-gathering campaign called ‘Tamarod’ or ‘Rebel.'”

Needless to say, this does not constitute good data about public opinion in Egypt—which only a few months back trended toward the Muslim Brotherhood—although the size of the petition and the corresponding demonstrations give an idea of the groundswell across the country.

Some Westerners worry about lack of power-changing political mechanisms in such backward places as Egypt. The worrywarts are deluding themselves that the stagnant politics of the Euro, Anglo-American hemispheres and their protectorates provide these mechanisms.

Delusions of democracy …

When “Vlaamse Blok” (Flamish block), Belgium’s largest party, became too much of a threat to the powers that be in that country, the Belgium Supreme Court declared Belgium’s largest party (“Vlaamse Blok”) a “criminal organization” and ordered its dissolution.”

Lawmaker Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, has been similarly assailed in The Netherlands, except that he and The Demos stand up to and outfox The Establishment that wishes to bring them into compliance.

An entire book was written about what mobocracy has wrought on the minority of South Africa, now that a dominant-party state has been blessed as free and democratic by the West.

A point made in said book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot, is that South Africa’s authentically liberal party in all its permutations has always been more classical liberal than left-liberal. Thus the Democratic Alliance’s Helen Zille is never as contemptible as a left-liberal American Democrat. We won’t insult the woman! I’d sum-up Zille with these words: She tries her best with the few powers she has retained. These powers have been subsumed in the national government, which will always and forever be a social-democratic black affair that represents the needs of tax consumers.

Ultimately, there is not much Zille can do for the whites (and colored) who vote for her, and who pay the lion’s share of the country’s taxes. There is near no devolution of powers to South Africa’s provinces. “The province’s powers are shared with the national government.” Like in the US. We still whimper about states’ rights but we’ve lost these as well as many of our individual liberties.

The tiny racial minority that constitutes the tax base of South Africa has no representation in a country that votes strictly along racial lines, and in which there is no veto power or meaningful devolution of powers to the provinces in which the assailed minority might prevail politically. The aforementioned book points out that the great Zulu chief Dr. Mangosuthu Buthelezi was one of the good guys of South Africa; the Mandela’s mafia—the ANC—is the bad element. Buthelezi, being a free market man, fought for the devolution of power rather than its concentration in a dominant-party state (the endgame of the ANC and its Anglo-American buddies). He was tarred as the bad guy by the same axis of evil, with the New York Times in the lead.

In any case, we should not look down on the Egyptians from the dizzying heights of our despotic democracies. Can we in the US dethrone our emperor du jour? Not really. Not with any meaningful consequences. Impeachment mechanisms don’t work, and neither do “democratic” elections, because the Democratic and Republican parties have each operated as counterweights in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one entity to the other. As my fellow libertarian Vox Day once observed, no sooner do the Republicans come to power, than they move to the left. When they get their turn, Democrats shuffle to the right. At some point, the zombie John McCain reaches across the aisle and the creeps converge.

“Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn almost got it right when he said, ‘Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.’ Correction: All that can be achieved with only 51 percent of the vote, making the slogan ‘freedom begins at the ballot box’ a very cruel hoax indeed.

At least the Egyptians have stumbled upon an effective way to make their sons of 60 dogs (an Egyptian expression for politicians) tremble in their palaces. Game. Set. Match, Egyptian people.