Page 23 - Fruits from a Poisonous Tree

Mel Stamper 7

method of human conquest: slow political coups d’etat over one sector of the
economy and society after another. Government subsidies have become a
major factor in squeezing out unsubsidized developers, unsubsidized schools,
unsubsidized theater producers, and unsubsidized farmers. The money is
extorted out of the lifeblood of the citizen by rapacious and unlawful taxes
while the subsidies slowly smother his freedom. A government powerful
enough to give you everything is powerful enough to take everything away.
Former President Clinton set aside 1.7 million acres of Utah to be
protected by the federal government. That sounds warm and fuzzy until you
understand that the land federalized was the nation’s largest reserve of soft
coal. The electric utilities must now buy their coal for electrical generation
from Indonesia – soft coal owned by the Lipo group, the same organization
that donated millions to Clinton’s election campaign.
Beggaring the taxpayer has become the main achievement of the welfare
state. The federal tax system is turning individuals into sharecroppers of
their own lives. The private economy has become an agent of the federal
government. At least fifty percent of the total productive resources of our
nation are now being organized through the political market in the form
of taxes. In that very important sense, we are more than half socialist. The
average American now works over half of each year simply to pay the cost of
government tax and regulation.
High taxes have created a moral inversion in the relationship between
the citizen and the state. Before the income tax, the government existed to
serve the people at least in some vague nominal sense; now the people exist to
provide financial grain for the state’s mill. Federal court decisions have often
bent over backward to stress that citizens’ rights are nearly null and void in
conflicts with the Internal Revenue Service. IRS seizures of private property
have increased by six hundred percent since 1980 and now hit over three
million Americans each year.
Not only do we have more laws and regulations than ever before, but the
laws themselves are becoming less clear, consistent, or coherent. An example is
the tax code. In 1913, a debate was held on the Senate floor regarding the first
income tax act under the 16th Amendment. Senator Elihu Root commented
about the complexity of that first law. His comment was humorous then; it
is hilarious now:
“I guess you will have to go to jail. If that is the result of not understanding
the Income Tax Law, I shall meet you there. We shall have a merry, merry
time, for all of our friends will be there. It will be an intellectual center, for no
one understands the Income Tax Law except persons who have not sufficient
intelligence to understand the questions that arise under it.”