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Opinion
Jan. 27, 2008
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VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: You want higher taxes? For this government?

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ
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A reader writes in:

"In response to a recent editorial, entitled 'Higher gasoline taxes?' that stated that because 'family paychecks barely cover basics, the money [needed to repair our country's crumbing infrastructure should come from] somewhere else.' What could this 'somewhere else' be? ... Is the Review-Journal advocating higher Federal income taxes, or a new national sales tax, or new toll road like user fees to pay for this? Also, how would higher withholding or sales taxes or higher user fees put more money in the pocket of the U.S. consumer? However defined, 'somewhere else' is just cost shifting."

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    • Aside from noting the inappropriate capitalization of the word "Federal," above, the way one might capitalize the word "God," does anyone else notice a whole category of places omitted, where the central government could quickly and easily "get the money"?

    In an admittedly very incomplete list, how about closing down the federal Department of Education -- ending all federal subsidies and interventions in schooling, overnight?

    We were a much more literate, independent, and productive nation 140 years ago, before government got massively involved in schooling.

    How about shutting down the federal Department of Energy, with all its misdirection of agricultural resources and corporate welfare for agribusiness ethanol producers?

    (It would be cheaper to import the stuff from Brazil, a simple procedure now essentially banned. It would be even better to drill America's offshore and Alaskan oil, relaxing Luddite "environmental laws" against siting new refineries and coal-fired generating plants. While I have nothing against nuclear plants, once we repeal the federal statutes limiting the liability of private operators for accidents and waste disposal, only private insurers will determine whether nukes are a dead letter.)

    How about shutting down the Agriculture Department, ending all its ongoing efforts to fight the agricultural depression of 1920 by barring the sale of undersized peaches? How about shutting down the actuarially bankrupt Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security Ponzi schemes, allowing us to save and invest for our own retirements -- money we can leave to our kids and spouses -- meantime restoring a far less expensive free market in medicine with no government oversight except courts to prosecute malice, negligence and fraud?

    Yes, "far less expensive." Is a rich variety of affordable food a) easier to get or b) harder to get, now that Moscow has replaced "state stores" with free-market groceries?

    Such wealth-transfer schemes, cynically and fraudulently disguised as "insurance policies" and "pension annuities," were never authorized in the Constitution -- anyone who has ever voted to support them is a thief and a traitor, either a cynic or a fool.

    How about repealing the Endangered Species Act, which has done more harm than good by leaving land owners who'd rather live in peace with our furry friends no option but to "Shoot, shovel, and shut up"?

    How about withdrawing U.S. military forces from Iraq and 136 other nations with whom we are officially at peace, overseas? How about ending the multi-billion-dollar Drug War and mothballing half our federal prisons by properly declaring all federal regulation of drugs and medicines retroactively unconstitutional and releasing all Drug War prisoners tomorrow? (Just leave a few cells for the IRS agents.)

    No federal agent should be authorized to carry weapons and serve as a "policeman" inside our borders. That's a local responsibility. When the McLennan County sheriff wanted to find out if the Branch Davidians had any illegal weapons in their church near Waco, he visited alone, knocked on the door and asked to look. They let him. He found no machine guns. When the federal government wanted to find out, they invited TV crews along to make an exciting action movie to show congressmen debating a renewal of their "SWAT" funds, storming the place with a hundred black-clad storm troopers, murdering a nursing mother in her bed with assault weapon fire from hovering helicopters, shooting the pet dog and her puppies before they even got to the front door, guns ablaze.

    When that didn't work out real well, the FBI and the Delta Force knocked down the escape staircases with tanks, incapacitated the women and children and set the place afire with their incendiary tear gas and ferret rounds, holding the fire engines miles away while the church burned to the ground, killing everyone in a very unpleasant inferno including babies too young to be christened.

    (Yes, a few tried to escape. From the grainy, long-range videotape, it appears our G-men shot them. Those G-men never found any machine guns, either. But they all got awards and promotions.)

    How about shutting down the BATFE and the FBI (with the possible exception of the unarmed fingerprint lab), the very existence of which is an insult against our Second and 14th Amendment rights to defend ourselves against tyranny?

    Do all that -- for starters -- and not only would we have plenty of loot to repair our highway bridges, we could do it at the same time we eliminate the federal income tax entirely, barring IRS agents from any further federal employment and canceling all their pensions. If any of them object, prosecute them in front of judges not on the federal payroll and randomly selected juries -- randomly selected juries -- for operating in knowing violation of their own regulations and for knowingly violating our constitutional right against self-incrimination for the past 95 years. (Last time you signed a tax return, did you notice any Miranda warning?)

    Yet the only way our letter-writer can think of for the federal government to "find more money" to repair its interstate highway network -- justified for federal funding under the massive fib that these were and are "defense highways" (whereas a real "defense highway grid" would bypass urban chokepoints, instead of running right through them) -- is to raise taxes?

    How pathetic. What kind of Dumb Pills are Americans taking?

    Oh, wait. To answer that we'd have to go back to writing about the mandatory government youth propaganda camps foisted off on us by the likes of John Dewey and Horace Mann, wouldn't we?

    Maybe next week.

    Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of "Send in the Waco Killers." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.



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    George Rusling wrote on February 23, 2008 09:32 PM: To be precise, the federal constitution is a contract between the States and the organization they created, no matter how many times "The People" are referred to in it's text. We The People had no say in it's writing, no say in it's adoption and no say in any Amendment to it. We still don't. It's perfectly obvious such an agreement cannot legally bind us as individuals in any way, so it cannot apply to us.

    We The People can demand at any time, that our "State" (which we did create) withdraw from this confederation which fails to serve our purpose. That bit of wisdom doesn't take a law degree, just a little common sense.

    In contract law (said constitution being a contract) when any party fails to abide by the contract, said contract is broken as it pertains to them and of no further effect, at their discretion and convenience. Our federal government has failed to secure and defend our national borders, so in this most basic tenet it has failed to fulfill it's obligation to the several States (not to The People of those States) making the contract which created it null and void. Any State can invoke this failure and withdraw from the contract which our federal government has failed to perform on.

    Let everyone understand, the federal constitution APPLIES TO the federal government, not to The People of any State and not even to that State itself. This document which created the federal government grants it no authority at all to interpret that document, merely to act in accordance with it's mandates and, as clearly pointed out by the 10th Amendment, leave all other matters to the States and/or The People...


    igspot wrote on February 05, 2008 08:08 AM: The "democracy" we have become is not the "republic" which made us successful. So be it, and so shall it lead to our demise. It's the little things the "sheeple" don't notice. It's the ever-growing never-ending intrusion, taxation, regulation, and general overall involvement (easily documented) into our daily lives that no one seems to notice.

    I guess I'm just a oddball, but when I get into my car, hear my mandated seat belt buzzer going off, buckle the belt so avoid "clickit or ticket", strap my kid into his mandated and approved child seat, drive to the gas station and pay 40cents a gallon for tax, come home to find a warning I watered my lawn the wrong day, get my IRS "time to pay again or we will ruin your life and you know it" tax forms, I for one, DO NOTICE.


    Bill Smith wrote on January 30, 2008 04:04 AM: Statism is a religion. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's currently the most prevalent -- and without a doubt the most powerful -- religion on the planet today.


    Bill Smith wrote on January 30, 2008 04:03 AM: Unfortunately, most think this thing called the constitution grants us rights. We had those rights when we drew our first breath.

    Another great book to read is called: "Hologram of Liberty" by Boston T. Party. You may have read his "Gun Bible".

    (I didn't sign that damn thing anyway so it does not apply to me. They have to force me at gun point to "follow" it.)


    Paolo wrote on January 29, 2008 07:11 PM: The Constitution, as Bill Smith says, was created at an illegal convention that far exceeded its authority. The Constitution itself was written to satisfy state-worshipping tyrants while mollifying proto-libertarians. Probably by design, the Constitution was written with just enough "wiggle room" to allow the state-worshipping tyrants to eventually take over.

    I stand by my original proposition. I never "voted" to ratify the Constitution. I never signed a document saying I would support it or the tyranny that issues from it. Therefore, in logic and in morality, I should be free to "opt out" of the Constitution and the illegal, immoral monster it gave birth to. I have the right to pay no taxes, and accept no benefits, from the Federal monster who is consuming us all.


    Bill Smith wrote on January 29, 2008 04:00 PM: I think things very well Mr. Tannim, but then again I don't bow down and worship a piece of parchment or the state in general for that matter. Here is just a few articles backed up with facts that prove my statement:


    http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/stromberg11.html
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance120.html
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory21.html


    Fafner wrote on January 29, 2008 02:39 PM: "Sure we were more agrarian 140 years ago, but is that necessarily a bad thing???"

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau would undoubtedly agree with you. I have no opinion on the matter.


    Tannim wrote on January 29, 2008 12:11 PM: Sorry, but claiming the Constitution is illegal is BS. "Amending" the Articles can (and did) include replacing them--100% amended. It was authorized by the Confederation Congress. It was secret to prevent public opinion from screwing things up. Bill Smith is not thinking things out very well, outside of his disdain for Hamilton.

    That said, the terms "Public Use", "General Welfare", "Interstate Commerce" have all been warped beyond their original meanings, to the detriment of We The People. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments have been totally ignored, the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh obliterated, and the First and Second are under regular attack. Sure the Constitution has its flaws, but so did the Articles.

    Paolo is correct, the ultimate is a federal opt-out, especially Socialism Insecurity, Medicrap, and Medicfade. I'd be at the head of the line, or at least in the middle of the riot that would result from the rush to be at the head of the line...

    Thanks, Vin.

    Now, one last detail. Sure we were more agrarian 140 years ago, but is that necessarily a bad thing??? Now more than ever the lack of being agrarian is going to kick us in the collective behinds very shortly. I am looking forward to GTFO of the urban insanity and back to the rurals where I can breathe, grow, and actually live with peace and quiet and space and civility, instead of the stress, compaction, pollution, congestion, and general rudeness. Plus the self-sufficient agrarian ones tend to do better in bad econmic times.


    Bill Smith wrote on January 29, 2008 04:18 AM: When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. -Ben Franklin


    Paolo wrote on January 28, 2008 05:48 PM: I agree with Bill Smith and others. The Articles of Confederation were far superior to the Constitution, and the Constitutional Convention was in fact illegal.

    Having said that, I still think the Constitution would be a flawed but passable "rule book" for the country if people didn't read into whatever they wanted to. There is no way, for example, that any sane person can read the "general welfare" phrase, in context, and take it mean Congress can do anything under the sun. There is no way any sane person can read the phrase "regulate interstate commerce" and take it to mean you can do anything you want so long as you can find a penumbra that seems to justify an act as falling under "interstate commerce."

    Having said that, I think the ultimate moral code regarding government is that any individual should have the freedom to "opt out"--that is, to take no handouts from the government, and to pay no taxes to the government. This would be even better than the Articles of Confederation.


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