Americans Deserve the IRS

By Walter E. Williams

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Individually, Americans do not deserve to be subservient to such a fear-mongering, intimidating and powerful agency as the Internal Revenue Service; but collectively, we do. Let's look at it.

Since the 1791 ratification of our Constitution, until well into the 1920s, federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product never exceeded 5 percent, except during war. Today federal spending is 25 percent of our GDP. State and local government spending is about 15 percent of the GDP. That means government spends more than 40 cents of each dollar we earn. If we add government's regulatory burden, which is simply a disguised form of taxation, the government take is more than 50 percent of what we produce.

In order to squeeze out of us half of what we produce, a government tax collection agency must be ruthless and able to put the fear of God into its citizens. The IRS has mastered that task. Congress has given it powers that would be deemed criminal if used by others. For example, the Constitution's Fifth Amendment protects Americans against self-incrimination and being forced to bear witness against oneself. That's precisely what one does when he is compelled to sign his income tax form. However, a Fifth Amendment argument can't be used as a defense in a court of law. The IRS will counter that you voluntarily provided the information on your tax return.

If you're in debt to Bank of America, Wells Fargo or any other private creditor, in order for it to garnish your wages as a means of collecting debt, it must first get a court order. By contrast, the IRS can garnish your wages without having to get a court order first. If your employer doesn't obey the IRS and send it a portion of your wages, he will be held accountable for what you owe. At the minimum, some IRS collection procedures violate one of the basic tenets of the rule of law -- namely, the law of the land applies equally to individuals (and other private entities) and the government (and its officials and agents).

Our Founding Fathers feared the emergence of an agency such as the IRS and its potential for abuse. That's why they gave us Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which reads: "No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken."

A capitation is a tax placed directly on an individual. That's what an income tax is. The founders feared the abuse and the government power inherent in a direct tax. In Section 8 of Article 1, they added, "But all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." These protections the founders gave us were undone by the Progressive era's 16th Amendment, which 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."

If federal spending were only 5 percent of our GDP ($750 billion) -- instead of 25 percent ($3.8 trillion) -- there would be no need for today's oppressive and complicated tax system. You might ask, "How could we be a great nation without all the government spending?" When our Constitution was ratified in 1791, we were a weak and poor nation. One hundred forty years later, with federal spending a mere pittance of what it is today, we became the world's richest and most powerful nation. No small part of this miracle was limited and nonintrusive government.

The bottom line is that members of Congress need such a ruthless tax collection agency as the IRS because of the charge we Americans have given them. We want what the IRS does -- namely, to take the earnings of one American so Congress can create a benefit for some other American. Don't get angry with IRS agents. They are just following orders. 

http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/walter-e-williams/americans-deserve-irs

The Dollar – and the USA – is Toast

Exclusive: Lord Monckton sees China prepping for final collapse of America

by Lord Monckton Email | Archive

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, high priest of climate skepticism, advised Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, wrote leaders for the Yorkshire Post, was editor of the Catholic paper The Universe, managing editor of the Telegraph Sunday Magazine, assistant editor of Today, and consulting editor of the Evening Standard. He invented the million-selling "Eternity Puzzles," "Sudoku X" and a promising treatment for infections. See the Science & Public Policy Institute.

Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years. The Republicans could have stopped him. They didn’t.

How did the nihilistic left succeed in destroying America? Simple. They learned just a little of the capitalism they hate, and they drove your nation into outright bankruptcy.

And here is what the GOP has to say about it: just about nothing.

The once-mighty United States is now the most indebted nation on Earth. In round numbers, here are just some of the vital statistics as the patient dies:

National debt: $17 trillion, or $50,000 per man, woman and child, or $150,000 per taxpayer. Annual federal deficit: $1 trillion. Medicare/Medicaid/Obama”care”: $1 trillion a year. Social Security: another $1 trillion a year. Defense: two-thirds of a trillion. Unemployment handouts: $2 billion per working day. Debt interest: $1 billion per working day. Federal pensions, ditto.

Now for the big numbers. Your government’s Social Security liability is as big as the national debt: $17 trillion. Its prescription drug liability is $22 trillion. Then there’s the Medicare liability of $86 trillion. Total unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government are $125 trillion.

Net assets for each U.S. citizen are $300,000. The net liability of the U.S. government, shared among its citizens, amounts to almost four times that: $1.1 million a head. And the government’s debt is growing at $1 million every 45 seconds. To cover its annual deficit, it is printing $1 trillion a year of currency that is not backed by any asset whatsoever.

Here is what will happen next. When the crash comes, don’t say you weren’t given fair and clear warning.

First, the dollar will cease – no, make that “is already ceasing” – to be the world’s reserve currency. China, as I have been warning you she would, has realized the dollar is finished. So she is quietly making startling progress with bilateral and multilateral deals to replace the dollar with the yuan as the world’s currency of choice.

Sterling, once the world’s reserve currency, went precisely the same way in 1967 under orders from Moscow, which then largely controlled the governing Socialist Labor party in Britain.

After the Second World War, the Socialist/Communist governments of Attlee and Wilson bankrupted Britain with health-care and welfare programs and nationalization of industries. Inflation rose to 27 percent.

Obama’s copycat policies are different in only one respect. Moscow is no longer calling the shots. International totalitarianism no longer needs direction. Its cruel, hate-filled, destructive mission now advances on autopilot.

Watch some of the straws in the wind. China and Korea have come to a little-noticed agreement that international trade between them will no longer be denominated in U.S. dollars, but in yuan, or Won.

Behind the closed mahogany doors of the world’s finance houses, elaborate and secret preparations are being made for the upheaval and international financial collapse that will follow the deliberate printing-out and consequent implosion of the dollar.

Your GOP representatives should be, but are not, asking the administration to reveal to them the ever-tougher terms on which the Chinese continue – with ever-greater reluctance –to lend money to keep their communist ally in the White House afloat.

Do not believe China cannot afford to let her biggest creditor fail. She can, she will, and she is making careful preparations to do just that.

If you thought the crash of 2008 was bad, think again. The crash that is coming –I cannot put a date on it, but it is not far away now – will be orders of magnitude worse.

So, what should you do to protect yourself and your family? First, get rid of every dollar you have. Dollars are now all but worthless. When the crash comes, they will have no value at all.

In hard times, most financial instruments – currencies, stocks, bonds – are not worth the paper they are printed on. Get rid of them now. Buy silver coins. They will quintuple in price once the crash sets in, and they are small enough to be fungible when the dollar dies.

Buy land, some of it well-wooded, some of it arable, some of it grassland. You will need the timber to power your steam tractor. Gasoline will be a costly rarity. And make sure you can defend yourselves. Starving mobs are no respecters of persons. Do what the Mormons do: Get three months’ supply of imperishable foodstuffs and hide them in the basement.

Absurd though this advice may now seem, there is a real danger that the crash will sudden. If so – perhaps for several months, and even for years – the fabric of civilization, including the food-supply chain, will fail.

It is not my custom to write in millenarian or apocalyptic terms. But the very best that can be said for your current administration is that it simply has no idea what damage it is doing. It is printing money in the vain hope of buying itself time. Yet every fake dollar that comes off the printing-presses makes the problem worse and the solution harder.

At worst, what is now happening to your nation may be deliberate. In that event, your current “president” will go down as history’s greatest villain. In any event, he will go down as history’s greatest incompetent.

Do not believe none of this can happen. Psychiatrists study what they call “normalcy bias.” People expect that everything will carry on and that America is too big to fail. She is not. She has failed. You will pay a heavy price for her failure, unless you act now to defend yourselves against what your government, with the culpable, silent acquiescence of the GOP, is doing to destroy your nation.

Finally, pray. 

Just a Coincidence?

“According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.

The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:

Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30

In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.”

The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America.”

Here’s the full story…

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking  

Two rogue agents in Cleveland? 

No. It is a rogue president and his Chicago thugocracy creating a third world Banana Republic right here in America. 

American Thinker

 

May 25, 2013

The New Barbarians

By Gary Horne

Recent abuses of power are a reminder that the barbarians are still with us, using the power of progressive government to punish anyone who dares oppose them. Barbarians have no regard for others and depend on plunder for their existence, as they have throughout history, taking from the productive by force.

J. Bronowski described the barbarian Genghis Khan in The Ascent of Man:

From AD 1200 to 1300 they made almost the last attempt to establish the supremacy of the robber who produces nothing and who, in his feckless way, comes to take from the peasant (who has nowhere to flee) the surplus that agriculture accumulates.

Modern plunderers realize they don't need Genghis Khan's horsemen, and can use the power of the state in place of the sword. Known by various names, the left, liberals, socialists, communists, progressives, et al., these new plunderers are able to corrupt the civilized rule of law, enlisting government as plunderer-in-chief. The most aggressive American plunderer is the radicalized Democratic Party, whose hold on power depends on distributing the loot. This, of course, requires the use of force. There is no box to check on the tax return, "I agree to contribute to the Plunderer's Fund."

The victim of plunder is not free, as Mark Levin remarks in Liberty and Tyranny:

In the civil society, private property and liberty and inseparable. The individual's right to live freely and safely and pursue happiness includes the right to acquire and possess property, which represents the fruits of his own intellectual and/or physical labor. As the individual's time on earth is finite, so, too, is his labor. The illegitimate denial or diminution of his private property enslaves him to another and denies him his liberty.

The American who has worked hard and earned his own surplus is no better off than the peasant confronted by a Mongol raid. At least the Mongols were honest. They came to plunder. They probably didn't tell the peasant, "We are just collecting your fair share." The new plunderers claim to be the champions of "the unfortunate" or "the poor," for who would dare to be against the unfortunate? Wealth redistribution by plunder is not compassion, and it is not charity. Charity is voluntary. Plunder is forbidden by all the major religions. The moral standard is not "Thou shalt steal for others," but "Thou shalt not steal."

Yet the left claims to hold the moral high ground. The peasant who desires to keep his surplus is called "selfish," while the plunderers are called "compassionate." The moral commandment of the left is "Extort thy neighbor." Government operating under this commandment abandons the rule of law, pits one citizen against another, and destroys the civil society.

In prehistoric times, the man with the biggest club won (and got the girl!). The barbarians continued the "biggest club society," wielding their swords against the helpless peasant. As societies became more civilized, plunder was more difficult. The Founders of the United States of America wrote the Constitution to protect the individual and his property against use of force. They abhorred the redistribution of wealth (plunder).

James Madison said:

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort.... This being the end of government, that alone is not a just government, ....nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.

And John Adams:

Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.

For 130 years, Americans were protected by their Constitution against plunder, until the 16th Amendment opened the door. The Progressives rushed in while the courts eventually left us defenseless. The resulting tax system allows government social engineering that would otherwise be prohibited, such as providing cover for the implementation of the unconstitutional ObamaCare. Those in power can reward friends (corruption) and persecute political opponents (tyranny). Abuses by the IRS are not so much about misuse of power, but that a government organization with such power exists.

Unfortunately, Americans have gone along with this for a hundred years now. Today, to object to the power to plunder is to be vilified as some kind of unenlightened radical. The immoral concept that someone else has a "right" to the fruits of my labor, in essence turning me into a slave, has become entrenched into American life like a leech which cannot be burned off.

Unlike my parents' generation, many feel no shame in accepting the plundered loot, as if they somehow deserve it. They vote for it, some even lie to receive it. They are blind to tyranny as long as the check comes. They would be insulted to be called thieves. But if not thieves, how would one describe beneficiaries of extorted money?

Genghis Khan (after leaving his sword at the door) could give a speech to the Democratic Convention to rousing applause. After all, wasn't it "unfair" his people didn't have as much as the peasant they raided? Since they are the "unfortunates," don't they have a "right" to free health care, free legal advice, free food, and even free condoms? Should you not want to give it to them, the IRS will make you an offer you cannot refuse. The power to plunder has no place in a free society. The new barbarians have legislative titles, work in government agencies, and wear judicial robes. But underneath is the sword of Genghis Khan.

An old "country boy," Gary Horne is one of them "small government radicals," and the founder of BarberShopValues.com. 

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/05/the_new_barbarians.html at May 25, 2013 - 11:17:08 AM CDT         

 

DHS Circulates MEMO

 “Bank Accounts and Safe Deposit Boxes may be seized without a warrant."

Posted on March 31, 2013 by @notalemming

http://yourdaddy.net/2013/03/31/dhs-circulates-memo-bank-accounts-and-safe-deposit-boxes-may-be-seized-without-a-warrant/

The Boston Bombers Hated America but Loved Being on the Dole

"The Boston Marathon bombers hated America, but they loved the American dole. The suspects in the scheme to murder and maim innocent men, women and children were living off the generosity of the American taxpayers they hated. The Boston Herald reports that the 'brains' of the operation, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was on the Massachusetts dole with his wife, Katherine, and their 3-year-old daughter, Zahara.

The parents of the Tsarnaev brothers received welfare and the accused brother, Dzhokhar, received benefits when he was a child. Taxpayer generosity to the Tsarnaev family did not end there. The city of Cambridge awarded Dzhokhar a $2,500 scholarship toward his education at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. ... Taxpayers are even paying for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's lawyer.

Congress turns now to immigration reform, and the Tsarnaev case raises important issues about the high price of certain public policies under consideration. ... [Republican Sen. Jeff] Sessions observes that the Department of Homeland Security has been ignoring a 100-year-old law that requires that the government consider, before admitting an immigrant, the likelihood that he will become a 'public charge,' who will eventually be permanently dependent on public welfare.

Less than 1 percent of visa applications were denied on these grounds in 2011, despite a growing number of undocumented residents who live on food stamps and other welfare programs. The Tsarnaev brothers were granted political asylum because they were Muslims from Chechnya. ... The immigration debate gives Congress a chance to re-evaluate the wisdom of sacrificing Americans for political correctness by sending invitations to prospective citizens in parts of the world where nearly everybody hates America and all it stands for.

This phenomenon illustrates the need for vigilance, to make sure immigrants will become productive, prosperous Americans. Sadly, it seems the primary motivation of the president and his party on immigration reform is to create 11 million new Democratic voters with an amnesty, and hang the cost." --The Washington Times

The Media Double Standard