Taxation and our Democratic Republic: Choose Your Poison

1. Taxation and Parliamentary Representation in the British Colony of North America

At one time in the long past, or the "before-time" of our current dystopia if you will, we, the United States of America, was not a nation as we recognize them today. We were, simply put, a business endeavor of two or three English stock interests that sought to become successful commodity importation distributors - the Virginia Company of London, the Plymouth Company, and their arch-nemesis, the Dutch East India Company.

This period of exploration and colonialism is often referred to as the start of the British Empire to historians, and the beginning of European Imperialism over people of color (i.e. Native Americans and Africans) by Marxist identitarian deconstructionists. But for most current Americans, feelings about the British or identitarian politics aside, this pre-history of the United States, is viewed singularly as the "Genesis story" of our nation.

Every school child that has grown up, or is growing up in America is taught about the two competing colonial settlements at the start of it all - Jamestown, Virginia and Plymouth, Massachusetts. We learn about the rough militaristic Virginians carving out shares of land from the Native tribes they fought, and we also learn about the strangely-attired religious dissenters in Plymouth, well, eating turkey and cranberry sauce on the Thanksgiving holiday. 

Somehow, most of us jump fairly quickly from those two outposts and ignore the intervening period, which we just call "British".

We all know that those two little fort-towns didn't stay that way for very long, and successive wave after wave of other British people, and Scottish, and Scots-Irish, and Welsh, Irish, Germans, Poles, Dutch, French, Spanish Jews, more Africans, and even a smattering of early Italian immigrants, made their way to these shores in the century-and-a-half that followed.

The settlements grew from two small towns to thirteen colonies, ports and cities, which stretched from the tip of Maine in the north to the southern border where Spanish Florida started. 

It seems, and seemed, that everything was bound to stay that way, until 1765, when a group of upstarts called the "Sons of Liberty" announced their existence. They were a secret society that sprung up in chapters throughout the colonies, with a specifically strong presence in urban shipping ports such as Boston and New York City. Their call to creation was the "Stamp Act", which was a British parliamentary bill that taxed Americans in the colonies directly. The purpose of the bill was to accrue money to pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years War, called the French and Indian War to us. The result was the Sons of Liberty's call to arms, "No Taxation Without Representation!".

The group soon disbanded in the wake of the Stamp Acts repeal, but other taxes followed, and the Sons merged into the general dissent movement that would become the separatist movement that led to the American Revolution, the Continental Army and Congress, and eventually, the declaration of the United States of America as a separate entity free from British ownership, laws, and taxation.

2. Federalism, Republicanism, and Taxation in the Post-Revolutionary United States

However, while the revolution was based in the classical liberal values of the enlightenment, there was nevertheless no consensus when it came to the means of how the government should be run and how the state should or would tax citizens, and for what. One party, the Jeffersonian Republicans, previously called the Democratic-Republicans, and later related to the Whig Party, and today's Republican party, vied for strong local state rule, no taxation, and freedom of religion, thought, etc. The other party were the Federalists, under Adams and Hamilton, who became known as the Democrat party by the 1830's, and who fought for a strong central government, and the indebtedness of states to the federal government to insure that the states not fight one another or the Federal government. By this they created the national debt, which enabled the United States to borrow money from European nations such as England, France, and Holland, which we used to build America's infrastructure through the nineteenth century. In case you never connected the dots and just loved the musical "Hamilton", it was because of this conflict between the parties that Hamilton was eventually shot in a duel in 1804 by Aaron Burr, Jefferson's Vice-President, known as an avid opponent to the fascistic tendencies that Hamilton oft displayed throughout his career.

As the first Secretary of the Treasury, appointed by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton imposed the first of America's taxes on goods, such as whiskey, and in essence, his taxes were no different than those imposed on the colonies by the British Parliament before the revolution. Regardless, the nation prospered, and taxes on specific goods and import tariffs paid for the growth of the country. As a largely agrarian society, states' rights were largely overshadowed by general cooperation between local governments and thus the Federal apparatus grew. Don't get me wrong, at this point in time it was entirely necessary, the US government needed to exist, and to be strong. We couldn't just be isolationist farmers, for that surely would end with the British waltzing back in, as they attempted unsuccessfully in the War of 1812. 

After the second war with Britain, America grew prodigiously, and industrialization took root, often more in the north than south. in the 1830's the Democrats had their turn in office with a rabble-rousing populist named Andrew Jackson, a hero of the War of 1812. As a president I have very mixed feelings about Jackson, and his military campaigns against the Native American population are among the worst of any president, and should be condemned, but he is in one way a great hero to those who are repelled by taxation, for he attacked the banking system, and made great headway in halting their progress. Amid four assassination attempts, Jackson removed federal deposits from the national bank, and he even paid off the deficit. It was the first time we had been debt free since the Constitution had been ratified, and it was to be the last time. 

3. Taxation and the Federal Reserve Banking System in the Twentieth Century

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and further growth of industry, the late nineteenth century paved the way for the expansion of the state and banks. The new industries had created a new type of entrepreneur, one who was adept at establishing a monopoly, manipulating the stock market, and understood how to take their millions, and make them into billions. Robber barons like J.P. Morgan and the like, aided the "powers that be" to get back on track with Hamilton's original vision of America as a debt machine. In league with big industry, the Fed grew into a big corrupt business, and that business needed more control. It probably didn't hurt that the alliance between those forces also controlled industrial manufacturing as we mechanized. Long before President Dwight Eisenhower condemned the Military-Industrial Complex, it was already flexing its tentacles before World War One.

On February 3, 1913 racist-globalist president Woodrow Wilson sold us out to the banks and enacted the treasonous concept of income tax. On December 23rd of the same year the Federal Reserve Act was activated and created the Federal Reserve Banking System. Merry Christmas.

Most people accepted the notion of income tax and welcomed the system as a means to abate bank runs and the like, which had occurred as recently as in the Panic of 1907. Surely this was the fix. Well, it seemed to do the trick, at least until the start of the Great Depression. To his credit president Franklin D. Roosevelt eventually pulled us out of that crater, with the help of a boat load of Socialized policies, and a new war to stimulate industry.  

After World War Two, the United States experienced its greatest increase of wealth ever, and thus, the banks were ready for their next move. They needed us to abandon the gold standard. Without gold to back up paper money, they could just print more money to pay off debts. Hell, if it devalued the currency, they could just print more.

President John F. Kennedy issued the final last stand in a valiant attempt to reverse the "fiatization" of the USD with executive order 10001 in 1963, shortly before his assassination. Did I imply those events were related? Or did you just infer them to be so? Who knows? Seems like a pattern though.

A few years later in 1971, President Richard Nixon finally capitulated to the finance wizards of the day, and took us off the gold standard, nearly two-thirds of the way through the 20th century. We had long since been a nation of farmers and had long been industrialized. Why now, you may ask?

4. The Big Picture - The Global Economy, Globalism, and International Banking

Under Nixon's predecessor, bag-of-crap Lyndon Johnson, a policy was developed called "The Great Society". This was a code for the implementation of a number of Socialized entitlement policies that were designed to "fix" inequality in America. Surely, there were still poor people, and the horrible bane known as Capitalism had been crushing them. We had to do something, right? To not would be immoral, or so thought the Democrats. 

Johnson came up with a web of entanglements that would keep specific groups voting Democrat for the foreseeable future. Make a group indebted, or better yet, dependent, and they will stay true. It's essentially the same strategy as Alexander Hamilton suggested, but now, the Democrats could keep African-Americans in the Ghetto, while professing they were helping them, and still have African-Americans vote 90% Democrat. How benevolent the liberals were/are! They would raise taxes on the middle class and rich, and give it to the poor THEY CREATED. Blacks were doing very well in the first half of the twentieth century, and were rapidly entering the middle class. As Johnson was quoted: "Give me this (the money to do it), and I have the niggers voting Democrat for the next hundred years". Wow! Just wow!, but boy was he right! Ironically, ideologues on the left still don't acknowledge that their party is the party of racism. From fighting FOR slavery in the Civil War, to authoring the Jim Crow Laws of during Reconstruction, to the overt racism of Woodrow Wilson through Johnson and the Anti-Desegregation movement of the late 1960's, they have disabled the African-American community, with money taken from our collective income taxation.

The altruistic entitlements the left seems to adore so much have created the debt and dependency that has allowed the size and power of the Federal government to expand, as well as the might of the federal reserve, which is a private bank that holds the purse strings of policy. But they are the party of big government, leading to the ultimate big government - one world government.

The "Fed", has sought from the beginning to evolve us from a low-tax, low-debt entrepreneurial republic to a high-tax, indebted, obedient consumer culture, because they do not think about Americans per say, but rather the delicate ecosystem of global "free trade" and economic trade blocks such as the European Union.

Interestingly one foreign president did try to get his nation back on the gold standard in the 1980's and 1990's. Iraqi Ba'thist Socialist Secularist dictator Saddam Hussein, engaged the dual cardinal sin against the international banks by introducing the "gold dirham" at the same time as suggesting that gasoline be traded in Euros rather than USD.

As a result, the banks, and our Saudi oil business partners said jump, and we asked "how high?", and invaded. Those responsible for the invasion got to rebuild Iraq while lining their pockets, only to get to do it again ten years later. A great bonus, plus the instability they created and permitted a radical Sunni insurgency to coalesce into the entity known as ISIL and global terror increased. But, I always assumed that was part of the plan as well, in order to keep the war on terror eternal and keep Halliburton happy. Sigh.

5. The Solution - Income Tax is Treason

Don't get me wrong, I am not 100% against all taxation, just income and estate taxes, and I have always propounded an alternative to income and estate taxes - a flat nationwide sales tax at 10%, which would reflect actual consumer purchasing is, for me, the answer.

High but competitive tariffs and a lower Corporate tax rate are essential for the sound functioning of fair international trade and small businesses. A few new laws could also force that as well, and keep corporate money on shore rather than abroad.

As far as tactics go, I'm not quite sure how to go about either removing income taxation or on how to tame the Fed. The recently passed tax break bill is a good start though, with a middle class tax break and lower Corporate tax rate.

It insures no taxes for those making under 12k a year,  and minimal under 24k. Excuse me if I'm wrong but at that income level those people are considered "the poor", aren't they? Oh, champions of the under class.

It's estimated that the reform part of the bill will lower middle class tax burden by about 2k. True, hyper growth will only leave us with a hangover later, but, if we are going to spend, we should invest in fixing infrastructure and the like, so the at least when and if the economy does dip to the negative again, that won't be such a pressing issue. Sure, giving people more money will just stimulate consumer purchasing in the short run, and while I'm as suspect of trickle down as the next guy, I can't imagine that a competitive corporate tax rate wouldn't make at least some manufacturers employ here instead of abroad.

Suddenly, liberals are coming out of the woodwork worried about the deficit. Which begs the question, why didn't we hear so much about those concerns when Obama raised the debt ceiling, over and over and over again? I guess my only response is that if they really like paying higher taxes I'm pretty sure that the IRS will cash their checks. In fact, I would be hard pressed to find any government on earth, ever, that has "refused" money. In fact, almost no one on a personal level does either, unless a string is attached.

Obviously, whether in the new bill, general Republican entitlement cuts, or my anti-income tax stance, we will always need SOME federal programs and infrastructure, such as the national military, highway system, social security, medicare, and certain government agencies. But at least with my 10% sales tax proposal that money would then come from commerce, rather than a redistribution of wealth, which is Marxist-thinking.

Some have suggested cutting the military and going back to each state having local militias. It took a long time for state militias to essentially evolve into "the national guard", and I don't think we could ever go back. Even so, I do not fear a second Civil War between any states in the US. However, as Jefferson said, we need to bear arms to insure the government is beholding to us, and not the other way round. But if the Civil War taught us anything, it's that some controlled Federalism is not necessarily at odds with Republican values. Hey, after all, Lincoln was a Republican.

Till next time.