There will be blood

Monday, December 27, 2010. It’s 3 AM and I’m awake, already having survived not one but two rounds of Christmas cheer in order to accommodate family members that had to work over the holidays. I’m not much into the lights, trees, decorations and festive song traditions demanded by most in this country, but it was nice to see and share a meal with all the various family members from my wife’s family and mine, four generations worth in both cases.

Talk inevitably turned to politics and economic matters at some point during our conversations. I try to avoid spending much time on the computer when family is around, but I did check my email and a couple of favorite sites briefly. While at the Agonist, I came across a couple of articles written by cyber-friends concerning additional taxation with which I vehemently disagree. Both my dad and my sons discussed this matter, considering we will probably soon be targets of such legislation.

While I dislike the fact that the rich are getting richer and the middle class disintegrates into the ranks of the poor, I think the medicine of additional taxation is exactly the opposite of what is required for a cure, because this punishes not only those that gain wealth by corrupt means, but also the best and the brightest among us: people that actually earn what they have and provide employment for and see to the needs of many others within their domain of influence. Believe it or not, those people do exist.

Among the arguments of those that favor more draconian taxation schemes is the implied notion that all recipients of family fortunes are undeserving winners of a genetic lottery of sorts, ignoring the possibility of family owned and operated businesses where children grow up not only as inheritors of wealth, but also as participants and creators of family wealth for which they have already been taxed on a yearly basis.

We must not ignore the hidden tax rarely mentioned in this debate, the hidden tax of inflation/currency debasement. If I don’t miss my guess, we might soon all be millionaires and subject to State confiscation of privately owned property and wealth. If I own a thousand acres of land bought for a million dollars and it becomes worth ten million dollars, I still own only a thousand acres of land. The land will produce no more than it ever did; it’s the decrease in the value of money that caused the reported gain in wealth.

Fair points are made about the debts that we as citizens owe this country. Entrepreneurs could not do what they do without the use of shared natural resources, the infrastructure tax money provides, and the myriad benefits we all share from social programs. A reasonable estate tax is to be expected and accepted, but some of the calls I hear go beyond reason, and like I mention above, punish all that have acquired wealth as though guilty of a crime.

An honest look at how most acquire great fortunes in the United States reveals a new form of inheritance, not passed directly from a father to son or daughter, but instead through nepotism of another sort, immune to any kind of taxation. I call it joining the club.

The club might be Yale University’s Skull and Bones Club, of which the two Bushes and John Kerry emerged, or the Harvard School of Law that brought us the likes of Barack Obama. Or then again, closer to home, it might be good old Texas A&M gig ‘em Aggies and their ilk from which the favors flow. Or perhaps it’s that open door to the hallowed Street of Wall and the Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanly, JP Morgan fountain from which you drink, all funded, no less, by tax money confiscated from the real producers of wealth in this country and the greater world at large.

These clubs are increasingly international in nature and if the truth is known, own and operate the governments of the world.

I find it troubling that members of such clubs are beyond immune to taxation—they have become the recipients of tax money instead—even after having foisted great crimes upon this nation. These motherfuckers couldn’t even wait until the money was collected to steal it; instead they designed ways to steal it in advance, bankrupting the whole country in the process.And now they cry for more.

Kiss the ring and enter the hall, young friend. Never want again….

I find it equally troubling that the true princes among us, benevolent, hard working natural born leaders, are left out of the decision making process, marginalized and predated upon by mediocre, small-minded, mean-spirited bureaucrats that move back and forth from government positions to the private sector, enabling their own and punishing the rest, thriving in an incestuous pool of vipers and vermin.

During the savings and loan scandal of the early 80’s a few financial fraudsters went to jail, but now, while financial crimes have grown by orders of magnitude, our “Justice Department” (talk about an oxymoron) can’t be bothered to investigate financial and war crimes (often one and the same), much less to prosecute those that committed these crimes.

Beyond that, our “Justice Department” persecutes those that try to expose these criminals and their crimes. A case in point: the recent persecution of Julian Assange from Wikileaks.

The State has become the enabler of criminal activity. Additional taxation supports a predatory class of parasites, our oppressors, not true public servants.

Put criminals in jail. Allow honest hard working men to prosper.

Excessive, unfair taxation is theft. Stealing, sanctioned by the State. Our Revolutionary War was fought over similar matters, and contrary to popular history, so was the war we call Civil.

Calls for 90% tax rates or even 55% inheritance taxes will not be well received in this country. Never have been, never will be.

A word of warning: I know my own. I suspect that if such tactics are employed, blood will flow over the matter.

Dismiss my words at your own peril. It could be your blood that flows and it could be mine.