RSSMcGehee has a great post on the Minuteman and Sovereignty
He does a great job of showing the problems with Mexico, and it does come down to the issue of disrespecting our borders on a institutional basis.
Our Tax System described by a former IRS Commissioner
Stolen Borrowed from Nealz Nuze ( Neal Boortz). Read it and weep.
In honor of Tax Day, April 15th.
“Congress went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion.
The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds.
The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men.
The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die.
As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.
The income tax is bad because it is oppressive to all and discriminates particularly against those people who prove themselves most adept at keeping the wheels of business turning and creating maximum employment and a high standard of living for their fellow men.
I believe that a better way to raise revenue not only can be found but must be found because I am convinced that the present system is leading us right back to the very tyranny from which those, who established this land of freedom, risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to forever free themselves…”
T. Coleman Andrews. Andrews Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service for three years, from 1953 until 1955.
In honor of Tax Day, April 15th.
Nice patience Gary
Kudos to Gary Sheffield for his patience last night. He could have touched off the Baseball version of the NBA brawl in Detroit last year. The Red Sox – Yankee rivalry is storied, but I am wondering if the fans in the two cities have the self control to keep things from getting very ugly down the road.
Oh, and that security guard also gets a gold star and deserves a huge raise.
UPDATE: Michelle has a great post on the topic. Some good links too.
F#$% the Small Business
Mathew Yglesias is a left of center Harvard educated blogger. Young and idealistic, and well written. But boy is he wrong today. He thinks that if you build a business and you die, then the beneficiaries should be liable for a 50 percent tax on the estate. He most elegantly states the headline that I wish not to repeat. The alternative that he most elegantly states is to make the beneficiary an indentured servant to the government to pay off the tax over time if they can not raise the capital.
He is sadly mistaken. The small business man typically takes a pittance of a salary, reinvesting the money back into his or her business. They struggle and sacrifice to build the asset. Matthew lives in a world of salaries and expense accounts in the Washington, New York, Boston corridor. I am sure that every restaurant he sits in, every newsstand he buys his papers in, and every shop he walks in is there just to be a convenience to him. But to the person who owns these establishments, that is their life, and they are taking a huge risk of time and capital to make it a success. But his selfishness is blind to these little people.
I have a friend who owns a little meat market, with a convenience store and gas station. We were talking yesterday as he was working his typical 12 hour day, on how to grow the business and get the capital to improve the store to the level that a national chain will partner with him. He is frustrated. He is tired. But he is dedicated.
We talked about how to earn enough now to pay the bills, as he is building an asset. That is the goal of small business people, to grow the business to be an asset. Make the world a better place, and create something for the family.
But Mathew does not plan to go down that road. He would rather see that money in the hands of the government as opposed to achievers. He most plainly says, F#$@ the Small Businessman. Well, Mathew, Screw You buddy.
Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.
UPDATE: Bill Hobbs has a very good post on this topic. His answer is much more refined than mine, but Bill is much more refined than I am.
The New Pope
Michael Novak has a great post over at The Corner on the selection process. He is thinking that Cardinal Ratzinger has the lead.
RATZINGER GAINING [Michael Novak]
Now that the Italian press is reporting that Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, a hero of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and perhaps the closest intellectual associate of Pope John Paul II during the past 25 years, has already received the support of 40, maybe 50 cardinals, out of the 77 votes needed to be elected the next Pope, it is time for the American media to begin searching into the mind and heart of one so close to JPII. The Pope and Ratzinger, his closest cardinal friend, met for long discussion at least once a week, and often twice a week. Their theological and philosophical commitments to ideas like the primacy of love (glimpsed by the newborn child in the eyes of its mother, and felt in her touch, from the first moments of birth) and their bold visions for the future of the church united them, although they also loved to argue. Ratzinger’s theological mind is encyclopedic, sweeping over nearly all of Christian history, and his interests–in bioethics, for instance, and in the analysis of history and culture– draw him into excited engagement with contemporary problems. Recently, he published a short book called Without Roots on problems of nihilism and relativism in contemporary Europe, in dialogue with the President of the Italian Senate, the intelligent and probing Senator Marcello Pera. In the European and Italian context, Ratzinger is strongly pro-American on issues of religious liberty, and rather Tocquevillian in his interpretation of the American experience. He has expressed a certain disdain for efforts three decades ago to wed Catholicism to Marxist economics–he had seen too much of the latter close-up. He has a strong commitment to honest and frank ecumenism, based upon fraternal love but not upon false and mealy-mouthed pretendings of unity, where there is no unity.
It was Ratzinger who presided over the magnificently conducted funeral of John Paul II, the greatest funeral in the whole history of Rome along the axes both of history and of global reach. Many said: He looked every inch the Pope. Most surprising to many were the warmth and poetry of his sermon, evoking Pope John Paul II so realistically that at several points the vast crowds broke out in affectionate applause.
And, actually, my own sources in Rome now suggest that the number of cardinals supporting Ratzinger is closer to 55, leaving him at this early point some 22 short. Some caution should be exercised here, since in Rome counting of this sort is in most cases not actually by head, as is done in Washington by a Senate or House whip. In Rome, estimates are usually made by inference from known connections of cardinals and their close associates. However, some people in Rome (not necessarily with experience in American mayoralty elections) do know how to count votes. Those I know of in this camp are keeping their cards close to their chest. But they do not dispute the published numbers, except to hint that the true number is higher.
Also, if you did not see it, Peggy Noonan had a very interesting column in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. She “created” the internal thinking of a Cardinal at dinner and what that Cardinal may be thinking.
Give her a read, it is on the free side of the Wall Street Journal, and well worth the time.
Hat Tip Mom, Thanks!
