taxes

Chris Knight's avatar

There is both jubilation and lamentation abounding tonight following Congress’s approval of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”.  Personally, I have some mixed feelings about it.  I’m not going to let the shrill hysteria coming from some quarters persuade me that it’s an entirely bad thing though.

I think the thing I’ve heard most from those opposing the budget is that it’s going to starve “millions” of people.  And that it’s going to deprive many others of necessary medication.

Well, let’s see what someone who has in times past been on government assistance for food, and medicine, and has worked in the public sector as a mental health professional, has to say about the “One Big Beautiful Bill”.  You ready for this?  Because you may not be expecting what I’m about to speak about it.

Okay, here we go…

The public food assistance is horribly abused.  A lot of people ...

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A short while ago the members of the United States Senate voted 70 to 24 to pass the “Marketplace Fairness Act”: AKA “Internet sales taxes”.

The Senate has approved collecting taxes on goods sold on the Internet.  We’ll examine that in just a sec.

(“Marketplace Fairness Act”?  God, I hate how these people try to govern by emotion instead of intelligence…)

Anyone who voted for this bill should be removed from office at the earliest possible legal opportunity.  For one thing, it is insanity for government to be levying more taxes upon us at a time when you and I and most other Americans are being obligated to tighten our belts.  How much more do our supposed “representatives” believe we can take?

But what is most on my mind tonight is how this bill is a flagrant violation of the Constitution of the United States.

According to Article One, ...

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One of the classic signs of imminent collapse of a culture is the brazen decadence that its leaders and elites start to exhibit.  Nero and Commodus magnified lavishness to scales unprecedented even as the Roman Empire was rotting from the inside and slowly collapsing.  The nigh-invincible Babylonians were in a drunken stupor of self-edification until Cyrus invaded and Alexander after him.  Louis XVI wasn’t a “bad” man per se but he was too busy partying and having fun while being horribly negligent about the affairs of the French people… and then he lost his head as bad as anyone could.

There are too many other examples that could be cited from the tale of years.  And you would think that we might have learned something from six millenia’s worth of them…

But here was the scene last night at the White House.  In spite of the “sequester” that is halting ...

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This past weekend was spent semi-unplugged.  Heck I didn’t know that Miami had beaten UNC for the ACC Basketball Tournament title until late last night!  Since all that mess was happening in Greensboro I drove a hunnerd miles the opposite direction on 220 to do ballroom dancing and general geek-ery with my girlfriend.

But even so, I have been following the mess in Cyprus, where the government is poisoned to confiscate 10% of everyone’s bank accounts in an attempt to get bailed out of the monetary mess of its own manufacture.  So much commentary could be made of this: the failure of socialism, the complete failure of the Eurozone as anything remotely a feasible concept, the failure of policies that can only lead to hyper-inflation, the failure to rein-in the “banksters” (i.e. those who see banking as not a sacred trust but an exploitable resource), the failure to hold those ...

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Today officially marks one century of extortion at the point of a gun by the Internal Revenue Service!

It was on this day, February 3rd 1913, that the 16th Amendment was allegedly ratified (there exists substantial evidence that the amendment was not passed per due process by enough states, that and then-Secretary of State Philander Knox’s declaration that the amendment was “in effect”).

The 16th reads…

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

We do not need the income tax and never have. This country did fine for more than a century with tariffs. And it would do just as fine now… or better.

It is far past time that the American citizens call the income tax for what it is: a shackle holding us down. Just ...

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Late last night this blog joined numerous other outlets in reporting that the Obama Administration was set to impose a 15-cent tax on all freshly cut Christmas trees. You can read that initial post for more information, including some stuff I came across during a bit o’ investigatin’ (I’m still curious as to who the heck the people behind “Christmas Tree Promotion Now” are…)

Looks like Obama and gang got the message: the tax is being put on hold. But not without some snide commentary from the White House…

White House spokesman Matt Lehrich told ABC News that despite some media coverage, “I can tell you unequivocally that the Obama Administration is not taxing Christmas trees. What’s being talked about here is an industry group deciding to impose fees on itself to fund a promotional campaign, similar to how the dairy producers have created the ‘Got Milk?’ campaign.”

Nonetheless,

...
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This is not satire and it’s not from The Onion. I already checked and it’s true…

President Barack Obama’s administration is trying to impose a 15-cent “Christmas Tree tax” on all freshly-cut trees intended for Yuletide celebration. Fifteen cents on the sale of every tree to… get this now… “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States.”

Okay, two things that already stick out in this blogger’s mind: that this is a tax without any representation or due process, regardless of what the administration is arguing. Indeed, within the text of the “order” issued by the Department of Agriculture it is found that “…the assessment provided for in this type of program is not a tax nor does it yield revenue for the Federal government. These producer and importers funds raised by producers and importers are for the benefit of producers ...

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And this is supposed to create new jobs… HOW?!?!?

Read about the insane proposed new taxes here.

And in his speech Obama invoked the words “fair share” to justify the increased taxes on those who make more than a million dollars every year.

Y’know, I’m a far cry from being among the most wealthy people in the country. I’m just a guy whose trying to hack it as best he can. I take a few odd jobs here and there, do some writing and videography. I don’t have a “regular job” like most people would consider it (though there is an occuptation which keeps me employed almost 24 hours a day). Believe me when I say this: that I would like nothing more than to be making more money. Not just for myself but to provide for a family when the Lord, if He’s willing, lets me have that....

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It’s all really quite simple.

Eliminate the personal income tax.

Slash corporate taxes.

Implement the national retail sales tax.

Give corporate tax cuts for each time a company hires a certain number of employees domestically (to encourage the trend away from outsourcing).

Impose higher trade tariffs.

No more “most favored nation” trade status for anyone.

Eliminate a lot of burdensome regulation that stifles businesses.

Cut government spending!

Do those things, and just watch the United States heal itself financially. Get back our AAA rating from Standard & Poor’s? Heck, we’d be the first country ever to get quadruple-A rating!...

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It’s fiscal criminal insanity: more than $440,000 to study Vietnamese male prostitutes. How about roughly a million dollars spent to compose poetry for zoos? Then there is more than a hundred grand used to construct a “critter crossing” for salamanders in Vermont. The University of California at Irvine received a grant of $3 million to study the online video game World of Warcraft. And over $600,000 was given to another California university to digitize Grateful Dead concert tickets and T-shirts.

Those are just some of the examples of horrid waste – funded by our tax dollars – by the federal government documented by The Economic Collapse blog. Also on the list of 20 craziest things that the United States government directs expenditure from the public treasury for: studying flatulence from dairy cows and the renovation of a pizzeria’s store front to give it a ...

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