I'm writing this in early 2010, as the 'Tea Party' movement has married itself to the Houston-based group of corporate executives who run the marketing campaign for an 11-year-old Trojan horse that they call the 'FairTax'.
Its proper name is the FairyTax, because it describes the fulfillment of our corrupt Congress’ favorite lust – a national sales tax.
Its purpose is to shake taxpayers off the trail of Tax Honesty, which has pulled suckers out of the "fair share" line by the millions; there were an estimated 67 million non-filers in 2005; as of 2010, the number is surely much higher. Of course, crooks don't like people leaving the "fair share" line. So they cooked up a fairy tale to make weary taxpayers pray for the coming of the Tax Fairy. She can chase away the mean old IRS, and it will be morning in America!
Socialist politicians have launched national sales tax trial balloons almost every year for decades; but Americans were never buying it. But today, with the most socialist Congress in generations, the Fairy may just be ready for prime time. Alas, it's amazing to see the 'Tea Party' movement buying the Trojan horse without performing the least due diligence.
The fact is that four generations of government-schooling has produced two widespread results: an inability to think logically or to do simple economic analysis, and a lack of desire to weigh politician’s programs using traditional moral principle.
To open the FairyTax Trojan horse up for inspection, I suggest this Mises Institute article by Laurence Vance as a starting point; written in 2005. Vance wrote this later monograph for the Mises Institute, debunking the 'Fair Tax' PR book written by atheist commentator Neil Boortz, agains proving that the corrupt Congress' revenue-neutral Plan B is still a Trojan horse.
Today’s average taxpayer, if he even considers Tax Honesty, does so for selfish or economic reasons. Having lived large on the last of the moral capital built up by our forefathers, he's now beginning to see what’s found at the end of that road: the end of liberty for his children and grandchildren.
In the spirit of America’s founders, Tax Honesty is all about accepting the truth of fallen human nature. Or to put it in today’s vernacular, Tax Honesty is about not being stuck on stupid.
Let me draw an analogy to the American who remains in the “fair share” line every April 15th; complaining all year long about preposterous, unconstitutional federal programs, agencies, and its $3,900,000,000,000 annual DC pork-fest -- while giving it the first bite out of his paychecks.
Imagine that you gave your 16-year-old son an unlimited bank account, a wallet full of no-limit credit cards, and a new Ferrari. Do you think it's reasonable to expect that he will become industrious and a paragon of virtue?
Imagine that you gave a sherriff’s deputy the duty to handle a daily stream of bags of evidence – say $2 million in small bills – every day for ten years; you never, ever checked on him. Would you expect all the money to be accounted for, a decade hence?
Sure. Why not, right? So let’s reform Congress with a revenue-neutral ($3.9 trillion/year) FairyTax. Think...come on, think!
If 74% of present federal revenues are being spent on ILLEGAL departments, bureaus, agencies, powers, programs, offices, etc...(that is, they are illegal if we still believe that the U.S. Constitution should be obeyed) -- should We The People continue to allow Congress to skim the payroll accounts of this country? Does any "revenue-neutral" plan of taxation make sense? We need to reduce federal revenues to 25% of current levels, as hard as that is to believe; that way, Congress will only have the funds to pay for LAWFUL powers granted to it by us -- by We The People -- as stipulated in the Constitution.
This is 4th grade economics, ethics, and civics. Yet, it is apparently unknown to the average FairyTax proponent who calls himself a conservative patriot.
After a full century of counterfeiting described in this monograph, Ron Paul and others are now suggesting that Congress audit the banking crime cartel using the brand 'Federal Reserve' on its counterfeit bills. But why audit a crime cartel?
Nor has the IRS ever been audited; imagine that. The taxpayers who ‘donate’ almost three trillion dollars annually to IRS, and who are swindled out of tens of trillions per year through counterfeiting, have never seen an accounting of the Fed crime cartel or of IRS. Yet, taxpayers complain about having to fork over one-third of everything they earn. Seemingly stuck on stupid, they pray for a Tax Fairy? How senseless.
It's good to want extortionists off the backs of productive Americans. It's good to get rid of all the IRS paperwork. But 67 million non-filers already did away with the pressure and hassle of filing forms and reporting to domestic terrorists. For us, April 15th is already just another day on the calendar. Who needs the Tax Fairy?
We law-abiding Nontaxpayers did our research, and then we took a stand. Now we stand up to racketeers and scoundrels, as our forefathers once did. This is the price of citizenship in our republic.
Tax Honesty is not primarily about being entitled to what you earn; that consideration pales in comparison to winning America’s REAL War on Terror: the ongoing destruction of the greatest free society in history. Our domestic enemy is funded by citizens who remain ignorant and passive because they're terrorised of their employees.
Because Tax Honesty is growing apace, every fresh crop of politicians on the national scene has to push the fairy tales afresh, with help from the Houston-based scammers at the FairTax corporate offices. Demagogues and thieves have a field day with ignorant people who won't read; who are terrorised enough to pay up...and then whine all year long about big government.
Their biggest national media mouthpiece is Neil Boortz, an atheist talk radio host. Being an avowed atheist attests to his beliefs about truth and falsehood. Now (early 2010) the FairTax group have hired Michael Reagan, son of the prominent former president, to trade on his father's popularity to sell America down the river for this pig-in-a-poke Tax Fairy.
Shameless scammers are using an old tactic: the FairTax plays good cop while the present IRS scam plays the bad cop. Beleaguered taxpayers do swan dives from the frying pan into the fire, cheering all the way down.
In truth, if the sales tax Trojan horse ever gets into America's camp, there is no upper limit to the tax rate. The citizen will be powerless to change things, and won’t go back to the present scheme. America would join Europe in history's socialist ash heap.
But the FairyTax is even worse than that.
Rather than rid us of the IRS as proponents claim, a national sales tax would transform every business, no matter how small, into a front-line tax-collector with harsher reporting requirements and tougher sanctions than they face today from IRS al Qaeda.
But the FairyTax is even worse that that.
The FairyTax will invite corruption and black-market activity as it does wherever national sales taxes are in effect. Oppressive government will go on steroids because the FairyTax is a “revenue neutral” plan, which means that the tax rate at the beginning is set high enough to produce an equal ocean of cash to that which Washington now inhales: $3.9 trillion a year, which is three thousand billion dollars more than is required to fund all federal powers enumerated in the Constitution.
Tax reform? Oh, sure there’s a Tax Fairy, Virginia. (And your son loves those credit cards and the Ferrari, so get back to work; the bills are piling up!)
Any revenue neutral tax scheme is a pit of temptation for millions of Americans who lack the brains, diligence, pride, or Christian principle to perform productive work. Instead, they sit in a government job, or they contract with government, or they own a piece of government through the back door. Socialism breeds and attracts lazy people.
Of course this isn’t new; there will always be sleazy politicians and lazy, corrupt bureaucrats. There’s no end of bottom-dwelling lawyers who see the law as just a trap to be sprung for a cut of the action. There’s nothing new about the accountant who cooks your books for a fee. And no, we’ll never be free of pulpiteers that tickle your religious ear for a tax-exempt ‘offering’ in return. But America was never such a breeding ground for such species.
Most Americans used to work hard for a living. We wanted no handouts. We credited God for what we had, and never asked anything from government except to leave us alone. But now, even the most reform-oriented among us, in the Tea Party movement, are buying the fairy dust. They argue about who should pay for the TRILLIONS in recent fraud and government extortion...as they pay for it themselves with every paycheck?
They pray for the Tax Fairy to come and make it all better. When asked to explain why any Nontaxpayer should support the FairyTax, they can't answer. More importantly, they have no clue that a national sales tax will do nothing to clean up this dump.
But emptying the trough will.
[The sitemeter traffic counter below is correct; this is a new mirror site from my old Tax Honesty Primer site at www.americanglasnost.blogspot.com which has thousands of hits but when blogspot switched to blogger under Google management, I switched to this new look.]