WHY?

Why did/do Communist countries seal their border to keep their own people in? If Communism is as great as the Liberals in the West claim, why are communists ready to kill their own people, to prevent them from leaving? Mexico and other non-Communist poor countries assist their unemployed or criminal citizens in leaving, to remove the economic burden of those people from the govt. operating budgets, and I can understand that, it makes sense, but how do you explain the tendency of Liberals/Leftists/Socialists/Communist/Democrats to force others to accept their beliefs and/or policies, even if they themselves don't actually practice what they preach? If their ways are so good, and so effective, shouldn't they simply embrace them, knowing that others will come to see how right they were, and in turn embrace them willingly? Taxes, public schools, union shops, public medicine, "clean/green energy", redistribution of wealth, you name it, they want the govt. to impose them all on the population, but they themselves don't just lead by example. Joe Blow's auto body shop can be shut down, or regulated out of profitability, in the name of "clean air", but Hollywood, whose product requires countless amounts of energy/pollution to deliver is overlooked. Why? Is it because Hollywood largely embraces the Left? I can't modify the exhaust on my Harley, but Gore, Bono and Oprah can dump tons of carbon and decibels into the atmosphere, and that's all cool with Sacramento and DC? WTF?

Death & Taxes

Tonight, I paid a guy to come to the house and prepare my returns, and everything went as expected. I knew I was going to owe some money to both the fed and the state, so it wasn't a big deal, and I'm not particularly annoyed about having to write the check. Hey, I earned some money, and it takes money to run the government, so I'm OK with pitching in. What does bother me, however, is the amount of time and money that Americans are forced to waste in order to comply with our tax system, and the fact that our tax system is used not only as a means of collecting the money needed to pay for services and benefits, but as a tool with which politicians and bureaucrats try to engineer our society and economy. If taxes are part of our lives as citizens, then every citizen should pay, and no person should pay more than another, relatively speaking, simply because some politician or bureaucrat thinks they should. That's why I believe in a national sales tax, as a replacement to the present system, not in addition to the present system. The point of our existence as humans or citizens is NOT to pay taxes. Paying taxes is not a moral act, it is a contract between people and a government for services. That's it, and if you look at it otherwise, or accept that the government has as right to your money, you have resigned your society to tyranny in the end. If taxes are collected on EVERYTHING that is sold, with the exception of food, medicine, health insurance, and a few other life necessities, and we exempt no one, it will tie the income of the govt to the prosperity and confidence of the people, and it will take one more method of abuse of power from that govt., both being desirable results. If a person saves their money, they will accumulate wealth. If they spend it, they won't. Think of how much simpler life would be. If there were no income or corporate taxes, there would be no loopholes to benefit certain groups. The poor, who actually get more from govt. than they contribute, would pay their fair share, based on the prices of things they can afford, and the rich would contribute an equal percentage, although a greater amount, based on the expensive things they purchase. Accountants would only be needed by businesses to keep management honest to owners/shareholders, etc., and to pay the taxes they collected from sales. If everything a company bought was taxed, and there were no deductions, for the purpose of the tax system, life would be better for everybody. As things stand now, entrepreneurs, inventors, business owners, and all the people who create the wealth of nations spend far too much energy and thought about taxes. Imagine how much more vibrant our economy would be, if those people focused 100% of that economic energy on doing and making things. Consider, too, the unifying effect that such a system would have, by taking away class warfare from the politicians. The poor envy the rich, and the rich resent the poor, and why is that? Who does it serve? 'Not the rich, and not the poor. As I send-off the check to Washington, DC, I don't resent the poor person who doesn't pay any taxes, because he has no money, and I don't resent the rich person who doesn't pay any taxes, because he has a good accountant. Me, I resent the people in Washington, DC, who have divided, conquered and enslaved us all to their will, and to the tax system that it created, for it's own benefit, not ours.

APRIL TERROR

As the deadline for filing tax returns draws near, I have been thinking about just how un-American our present tax system is. Countless millions of man hours and countless billions of dollars are wasted by Americans every year, complying with it, and having our society and economy manipulated by it, and every year we, the American people, take it, and act like there's nothing we can do about it. Bullshit!, I say. Why should some a-hole bureaucrat have access to your private affairs and/or personal information, and why should some politician of even lower character be allowed to try and engineer society according to his personal beliefs? Why should one American be forced to give-over a greater percentage of their day's labor, or reward on their risk, than another? Equally, why should one class of people, rich or poor, be given loopholes or exemptions that allow them to escape paying the same rate as others, simply because they are a favored class? If my enterprise isn't on the pet list of some politico, it is OK for it to fail, but if I can afford to slip money into their campaign, it's "in the national interest" for tax dollars to bail me out? The American people have suffered long and greatly at the hands of Washington DC and the corrupt and incompetent men and women who dwell there, and it's high time we started putting things right. One way to win back our freedom would be to end the income tax, and replace it with a national sales tax that is fixed, requiring a vote by the PEOPLE if the rate is to be raised. Relying on the goodness of elected officials has proven a disaster, and the American people need remove the temptation to injure us for their own gains.