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Why is today Tax Day?

Today is “Tax Day,” if such a thing could or should be celebrated or even noted among civilized peoples.

It is like marking “Oppressive and Scary Invasive Big Government Day” on your calendar.

Historically, tax collection involved brute force, some raping and pillaging to convey a sense of inevitability. A ‘heavy hand’ at best, done by the most powerful at the expense of the least powerful.

Historically, poor peasants hid what they could from tax collectors, who treated the poor working people and small landholders as a host body on which to parasitize, slowly sucking out the life force. Like a  vampire, concentrating vast wealth collected from a large number of people into the hands of a very small number of people.

Historically the extracted wealth was concentrated in the hands of nobles, monarchs, empires.

In more modern times Socialists stole private wealth by revolution or through bureaucratic means, and repurposed it in the name of “income redistribution.” But somehow socialism always involves keeping the Socialists in complete power, too. Over the peasants, once again. Cuba, Soviet Russia, China, and now Venezuela…all totalitarian, authoritarian, unfair, failed. And Socialist.

By its very nature, humans in centralized authority always crave more money, because money translates into soldiers with weapons and thus, more power, more control over other people.

Centralized government always craves more money, even in a democracy or republic, because money translates into more bureaucratic and enforcement power. People in centralized government get to make decisions for everyone else. It’s an ego trip. Rarely does all that bureaucracy actually become tangible services to the actual taxpayers at the ground level, where people live their daily lives.

Consider America.

America was originally created as a confederation of autonomous states, obligated to one another through the concept of ‘full faith and credit’, where the licenses and official bureaucracies of each state would be accepted by all the others. As equals, though different from one another, slightly unified through a weak central government. If you didn’t like the way one state ran things, you could move to another state. Rarely did you, the citizen, encounter the central government.

When the issue of slave states and free states arose in 1794, the states nearly went to war against one another, and finally did so in 1860.

Today a lot of urban Americans are unabashedly rethinking a great deal of what it means to live in America. Even things that have been settled since the nation’s founding, like basic freedoms. In much of their thinking, states are no longer autonomous, but are rather vassals to or withered appendages of the  central government in Washington, DC. Citizens are no longer free to make their own decisions, and smarter, better-educated technocrats with the best of intentions will make those decisions for them.

Some of this urban rethinking of what it means to be an American is pretty radical stuff, and all of it involves a much stronger centralized government. The kind of centralized government that can quickly and authoritatively reach deep into the personal lives of all citizens, and threaten them with severe punishment for not following the new rules which the urbanites envision.

For example, these largely urban Americans now openly want to criminalize the otherwise peaceful ownership of basic firearms (AR15s, and semiauto shotguns and rifles), and clamp very tight controls on the ownership of all the other firearms they would allow (bolt, pump, lever actions, even single shots). They look at the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and simply scoff. They themselves do not want to own or use these damned guns, so why would anyone else?

Turn them in, or else!

Another largely urban idea is the notion of human-caused global climate change (begun as the former global cooling, then global warming, now global climate change). It is premised on the otherwise very real fact that humans have previously and continue even now to seriously degrade the natural environment that sustains us.

But a bunch of urbanites and false academics want to criminalize and severely punish the non-belief in human-caused climate change, a well-deserved rejection of heavily politicized climate change “science.” Despite the fact that these urbanites have a greater and less sustainable impact on the natural environment than rural landowners.

That all these crushing new rules and laws are not directly connected to crime reduction or pollution reduction is an indication of how radical these ideas are, how radical the urbanites have become. There is no direct link between one thing and the other, no cause-and-effect result, but they want it nonetheless.

These proposed laws and rules are about bureaucratic control, that is all. No pretenses are made at amending the Constitution to achieve these changes.

Rather, these changes to constitutional rights would simply be done by legislative power grab or even worse, by executive fiat, which the Obama administration began experimenting with.

Their best argument is that “times change and we all need to change with it,” i.e. certain guns do not fit these modern times and therefore must go away.  But the time-honored established process for legitimately implementing that change is not suggested by the advocates of change.

Historically, huge swings in American law and custom were mostly associated with major improvements in lifestyle. For example, the 13th (ratified 1865), 14th (1868), and 15th (1870) Amendments were all about freeing and then protecting the African slaves.

After the 15th Amendment, for another 43 years America did not ratify another constitutional amendment, probably because the changes in rights and then law resulting from those three big amendments took a long time to digest politically and culturally.

Four long decades later, in 1913, the 16th Amendment was ratified, giving the US Congress the “power to lay and collect taxes on incomes…” This was a huge change in American politics and culture, as it concentrated tremendous authority, power, and wealth in the hands of a relative few in the nation’s capital.

Today this is known as the Income Tax, and it concentrates tremendous power into the hands of the few, funding everything the central government does, and much more, including returning to some states and foreign allies parts of that collected money. Or funding heavily politicized “research” into “gun crime” and “climate change.”

So here we are 105 years later after the 16th Amendment was ratified, and after such a long time Americans can really legitimately now ask themselves if this way of funding the central government is effective, fair, or consistent with a constitutional republic that puts the freedom, liberty, and happiness of its We The People citizens first and foremost.

In the context of prior constitutional change, 105 years between amendments is a long time, and one could easily argue that America is now overdue for a revisitation to the income tax. Or at least a hearty debate about it.

A flat rate tax is the fairest, most efficient. Why don’t we do it that way?

Plenty of evidence now that the 16th Amendment’s income tax is inefficient and unfair, and worse, that it results in an invasive, un-American GOTCHA! government culture where unaccountable bureaucrats are back to terrorizing the peasants with all kinds of sudden searches, house tossing, life-and-liberty-threatening activity with the power of official coercive force behind them. The IRS was turned into a weapon against conservative groups with which the Obama administration disagreed.

We are back to Medieval times with this kind of official behavior, and it is really not the kind of government that America was founded on or meant to be. Quite the opposite.

You could argue pretty effectively that the Income Tax has not been good for American citizens, and that the 16th Amendment (or the IRS) concentrated too much power in the hands of too few unaccountable central government employees.

The complete failure of the 18th Amendment (ratified 1919, repealed 1933), known as “Prohibition,” which was a complete ban on alcohol, reminds us that America went through a previous round of control-freak exploration around the same time as the 16th Amendment. Very similar to what is being proposed now by today’s modern Prohibitionists, this time against guns and personal freedom. Their “war on drugs,” “war on poverty,” and a zillion other do-gooder laws haven’t worked to eliminate or even reduce crime, so why not go back to holding up the old law-abiding people for better results?

After all, people control is the real goal, as it always has been since time immemorial.

It stands to reason that American citizens would now revisit Tax Day and the 16th Amendment altogether. Consider them for abolishment or replacement, because on the other hand we have a pile of urban Americans demanding that about fifty million fellow citizens be turned into criminals overnight by virtue of simply exercising their Constitutional rights with firearms or freedom of conscience.

I mean, if something so basic and fundamental as personal freedom is being questioned and slated for abolishment, then heck, let’s really open up the process to include subjects and government activity long, long overdue for review, like tax collection. One should naturally follow the other.

A Severance Tax, now?

Talk about an addiction to spending other people’s money.

Yesterday in southeast PA, far away from the communities where this issue is most important and the citizens might not be so welcoming, Governor Tom Wolf staked out his position on creating a new 5% “severance tax” on natural gas from the Marcellus shale feature.

Right now, natural gas is selling at historic low prices, especially here in Pennsylvania.  The financial incentive to drill more or spend more money to get more gas is very low, and drill rigs have been disappearing from across the region for a year.

The Saudis began dumping oil months ago, in an effort to punish competing oil producers Iran and Russia, with the secondary effect of dropping gasoline prices so low that the natural gas industry got hit from that side, too.

So now is not only a bad time for the gas industry, it is also a time of greatly diminished returns on investment and on royalties received.  Scalping 5% off the top of that is punishing to everyone, including gas consumers, who will see their rates increase proportionally.

Here’s the biggest problem with a severance tax: Pennsylvania already has a 3% impact fee on Marcellus gas, and a Corporate Net Income Tax of 9.99% (let’s call it ten percent, OK?).  Most of the other gas and oil producing states have no such additional taxes; their severance taxes are the one and only tax their oil and gas producers pay, not the multiple high taxes and fees drillers in PA pay.

Pennsylvania government is therefore already reaping much higher revenue from the gas industry than other gas producing states.  That means that the companies doing business here are already burdened much more than elsewhere.

So adding a severance tax now, at this economically bad time, without commensurately lowering other taxes, or the existing Impact Fee, makes no sense.  Unless the people promoting this have an infantile view of how America and business work.

And that right there is the problem.  Way too many advocates for tax-and-spend policies like an additional severance tax have a Marxist view of business; essentially, to them, business exists to pour money into liberal schemes.

And speaking of spending, who believes that spending more and more and more taxpayer dollars on public schools, public teachers unions, and public teachers’ pensions, actually equates with better education?

So many studies disprove that (see the Mercatus Center), but it is a liberal mantra that taxpayers must spend ever more of their money to support public unions that support political liberals.  And both parents of students and taxpayers alike now correctly see that system for what it is – simple, legalized political graft to fund one political party.

Public schools are mostly a disaster, yet teacher’s unions and their political buddies continue to pound on the table for more and more money.  Homeowners are essentially now renting their houses from the teacher’s unions, and proposed laws like Act 76 seek to fix that unfair situation by removing the vampire fangs from homeowners and letting the larger society pay for its expenditure.

Going door-to-door for political races year after year, property tax has been the number one issue I have encountered among elderly homeowners.  So many of them can no longer afford to pay the taxes on their houses, that they must sell them and move, despite a lifetime of investing in them.  This is patently un-American and unfair.

So Tom Wolf is moving in exactly the opposite direction we need on this subject, and instead of trying to fix the tax situation, he seeks to make it worse.  To be fair, Wolf campaigned on raising taxes.  He just needs to remember that he did not get elected by voters who want higher taxes, they wanted to fire former governor Tom Corbett.

 

Invasive plants, your new job

Invasive plants like Tree of Heaven (ailanthus, a tree with orange seed pods that just seem to pop up around your property), Asian bittersweet (little vines that quickly become Tarzan-big vines), mile-a-minute, Japanese honeysuckle, Russian olive, barberry, multiflora rose, parasitic ornamental grape vines, and so on, are all becoming a huge problem in our forests.

Each of these plants displaces and suppresses native, helpful plants.

Out west, there are entire regions where it is actually illegal to have invasive weeds on your property.  If the county conservation staff find those weeds on your land, you can be fined a lot of money.  Why would property rights-driven Westerners embrace a law like that?  Wouldn’t they pooh-pooh plants?

Because invasive weeds carry a substantial financial cost, people who make their living off the land have a healthy abhorrence of these bad plants.  They are so quick to take over the landscape, and provide few to no benefits to people or animals.

Pennsylvania’s native forests are an important source of wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water, scenic beauty, recreation, and income.  Yet, our forests are becoming increasingly overrun by non-native invasive plants and trees.  Ailanthus is especially egregious.  It got its start and continues to spread from public roadsides, where PennDot and the PA Turnpike Commission have failed to control it.  The impact of ailanthus on our forests is becoming a real cost consideration.

It is time to have a public policy and a public agency work more seriously on the challenge posed by invasive weeds.

Curious things afoot in our American republic

Some time ago, actually not too long by the measure of human history, Communists, Capitalists, and Fascists fought each other in the streets of Weimar Germany.

Each fought for what they believed in. What the Fascists and the Communists believed in was equal amounts of totalitarian evil, served up slightly differently. Only the capitalists had a track record, and it was a successful one that had led Germany to a place of such prominence and financial success that human nature and poor judgment had then sought to use those riches for imperial gain and human subjugation.

Weimar Germany was bad for every German. What naturally followed on its heels – Nazi Germany’s National Socialism – was bad for the entire world.

Capitalism creates such great wealth, across such a large number of people, that like bees to honey, the evil inclination of human nature is drawn to it with bad intentions.

Politicians of all stripes cannot keep their hands off of the private money created through capitalism. Whether it’s high taxes to fund government grants to preferred political allies, or outright confiscation/ theft and wealth redistribution, politicians always seek to appropriate capitalist success for their own careers and their own ends.

Yesterday I had the unfortunate experience of watching New York City’s new mayor, Bill deBlasio, get sworn in. De Blasio is a kook, a radical whose communist views are well known. No one can predict for certain what will befall the Big Apple after one term of his management, but it probably won’t be pleasant to watch from Pennsylvania (he is first-off aiming to end the handsome cab business, where tourists get pulled around in horse-drawn carriages in Central Park). And my New York friends will probably suffer significant losses to their home values, businesses, and other investments they have made in the area. Wealth would naturally flee de Blasio’s presence.

One cannot help but be intrigued by the similarity between Weimar Germany’s otherwise unremarkable circumstances, and those America is sliding into today: High unemployment, sliding currency value, inflation, and increasingly hot friction wherever mutually exclusive political interests collide.

Human history repeats itself so often that it’s both kind of silly to even suggest that America will become another Weimar Germany, and it is also silly to blow it off and pretend it isn’t happening.

De Blasio has his sights set on other people’s private wealth, and he is likely to lose a great number of wealthy people from NYC as a result. What is more worrisome is the friction that will arise and ripple out as he presses forward and is met with the natural resistance reasonable people expect to greet thievery.

“Income inequality” is his byword, and it’s just another way of saying he’s going to steal from the makers and give to lazy takers, using the coercive power of government force and threat of loss of liberty for dissenters. Other politicians are watching de Blasio, and they have already signaled their inclinations to follow his lead in their local venues.

It is difficult to imagine a more explosive arrangement or set of circumstances. Once again, one is reminded of either the 19-teens and 1920s, or even the 1850s in America. Such incompatible political philosophies are afoot, banging into one another, and one must win, and one must lose.

I hope de Blasio loses. I hope. To think otherwise is to be against the very American republic that first created the wealth he is now after.

What a Fall Day for Middle America

What a Fall day to remember.

Flag football with Son and his team, including a Kids vs. Parents game that the parents lost, to the kids’ supreme pleasure.

Bought and then replaced the battery in my daughter’s car.

Split the last of the oak and stacked most of it.

Gathered the loose oak bark and piled it around the magnolia tree, where Viv wants good bark mulch.

Viv clipped long grass around the stone wall out front and put away lots of lawn stuff that’s been around for a few weeks, with Nina’s help, including piles and piles of brown oak leaves.

This is the typical, pleasant life of Middle Americans all over the country on a beautiful Fall day. It’s a way of life that most Americans take for granted. It’s a way of life fully in Obama’s cross hairs, as he seeks an America where “everyone gets their fair share.” That forced redistribution of wealth is now and will continue to end the Middle American lifestyle.

How pleasing it is to see both Gallup and Rasmussen polls showing Romney pulling ahead of Obama nationally and in the swing states. Obama is claiming just seven states now, and that’s not many. This election is looking like it might be a blow-out, as Middle Americans realize just how much everything they take for granted is under assault and at risk with the Obama administration.