Walter: It's Insanity - NO - It's Socialism!

Josey1

Walter: It's Insanity - NO - It's Socialism!
By Paul Walter - NewsWithViews.com

Government wants access to your property in the worst way. They're accomplishing this through your local elected officials. City Councils and County Commissioners are manipulated and coerced into implementing insane and intrusive federal and state mandates. Some of them are decent people and don't realize they are enslaving and betraying themselves and their constituents because they're ignorant of the mandate's true intent.

But the public servants who do know what they're doing use fear, coercion, lies and anything else that works to implement their agendas. "It's for the children." "It's for the elderly." And of course "It's for your own good and safety" we're told.

Recently "The Asheville Tribune" in N.C. ran a story, titled: "Local Governments can inspect inside your private home" without a search warrant and the property owner must comply, or else. Please take the time to read this story thoroughly to see what we are all up against.

The purpose of this intrusion is to find additional ways to fill their coffers at the expense of breaking property owners financially through finding many petty property code/maintenance violations. The fine for a violation is $50 per day until the violation is fixed. The elderly on fixed incomes could be fined out of their homes. While on your property they check the outside and can cite you for numerous violations you never, ever dreamt of in your scariest nightmares. Fence repairs, cracked glass, tall grass, and ripped awnings are a few simple ones. Their list is endless. The benefactors are the courts and attorneys who will charge, fine and litigate the violators that refuse or can't afford to comply. Those who comply do so at the risk of depleting their savings. We're told it's for maintenance code violations. If you believe that, I'll sell you prime real estate on planet Zimo. It's only a matter of time before your county will unconstitutionally violate your privacy. Is the Grants Pass, Oregon City Council going to implement this insane, intrusive law? You bet! Just as fast as they can.

As always, logic and reason are used to fool the people in order to accomplish their unconstitutional, diabolical schemes. All at the taxpayer's expense. In other words we pay for our own enslavement. Most politically correct pastors I've talked to support this intrusion. They believe and preach that we must obey government authority and, if one has nothing to hide then he/she has nothing to worry about. Oh, really? Things can be planted on your property then confiscated and used as evidence to jail you. It happens every day. A good example is the recent NY Post story of how cops (New York's Finest) got caught planting a gun in a suspect's car, then seized it.

History teaches us that once they get their foot inside your door, it's only a matter of time before the whole body follows. The prime motivation for this intrusion is not safety or appearance, it's the money and power, pure and simple, all being done at your local level. Once they succeed in trashing all of your constitutionally protected property rights, morals, individualism, and the family, Bingo! It's Socialism, baby. The sad part is we allow it by not standing up to them.

Tom DeWeese wrote in his recent article titled "In the Dark in Loudoun" that in Loudoun County, VA., a bunch of activists are pushing for a bill to curb 'Light Pollution'. Just imagine; they want to tell you how bright your bulb can be or how many Christmas lights you can have on, around your home, at Christmas time.

Be forewarned. The next things on the radical activist's agenda, after the gun and cigarette manufacturers, are the liquor, snack, alternate health care products and fast food industry. This of course will create huge unemployment, as those industries will have to lay off or shut down due the enormous cost of litigation. Recently BBC ran a story (Fat Americans Sue Fast Food Giants) about a bunch of fat people that are suing fast food giants, blaming them for their obesity. Did the fast food restaurants force them to shove the food into their mouths? Of course not. In other words, it's not their fault for being fat; it's the restaurant's sandwich's fault.

America is becoming a no fault society. It's not my fault. Well, if it's not my fault, then whose fault is it? It's the guns, it's the genes, it's the greasy hamburgers, you name it. So called 'experts' tell us there is no such thing as right or wrong, only conditioned responses like animals. I do not believe 'experts' who insinuates that I was made in the image of any animal who has no conscience. I'm a human being made in the image of God, with a conscience that knows the difference between right and wrong. How about you? Are you an animal or human resource for them?

(c) 2002 Paul Walter - All Rights Reserved

Paul Walter was born in socialist Yugoslavia in 1945. He and his family emigrated to America in 1959. He served 3 years in the U.S. Armed Forces and became a U.S. citizen in 1963. Owner of Walter Publishing & Research, he republished a 100 year old book titled The Coming Battle, the true history of our national debt. The book is currently in its 5th printing.
http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=3453



"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

Income Tax Withholding Called 'Triumph of Big Government'
By Christine Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
August 02, 2002

(CNSNews.com) - Americans are now in their 60th year of having income taxes withheld from their paychecks. And the National Taxpayers Union, no friend of the Internal Revenue Service, is condemning the law for having created a "bloated" welfare state that lacks accountability and punishes taxpayers.

"This withholding revolution represents the ultimate triumph of big government at the expense of the taxpayer," said Mark Schmidt, an activist with the National Taxpayers Union (NTU), who is urging Congress to change the way in which the government collects tax revenue.

"Thanks in no small part to this tax administration tool, the income tax has become a mass tax, the welfare state has become bloated, taxpayer rights have suffered, and the government has become less accountable for the burdens it imposes on society," said Schmidt.

Income tax withholding, which took effect in 1943, was part of Congress' effort to raise more money during World War II. Department store executive Beardsley Ruml suggested the idea of withholding after having discovered that his Macy's customers preferred to pay their bills over time in installments, even if the accrued interest increased their total bill. To sweeten the deal for taxpayers, Ruml threw in tax amnesty for the previous year.

At the time, liberal economist John Maynard Keynes and conservative economist Milton Friedman both supported the idea of withholding. But Friedman grew to regret it, and the practice has always stuck in the craw of some taxpayers and proponents of limited government.

Withholding is insidious, according to Schmidt, because people object less to incremental tax increases and, over time, have become accustomed to having hundreds of dollars taken out of each paycheck. The median two-earner American family paid $22,500 in income taxes in 1998, according to Heritage Foundation president Ed Fuelner, who believes that amount would cause taxpayers great anger were it not for withholding.

At the very least, Schmidt argues, Americans should receive interest on over-withheld taxes as a credit on W-2 forms. Schmidt calculates that deliberate over-withholding (whereby people get "refund" checks after filing their income tax statements every April), deprives the average worker of more than $100 in interest income annually.

More ambitious reforms could mean a repeal of withholding in favor of a monthly tax payment system, as proposed by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.). Or the income tax code could be scrapped in favor of a flat tax, as House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) has proposed, or a national sales tax.

But any serious challenge to the entrenched withholding system would likely mean a big fight with groups who rely on the current system for their paychecks or policy goals.

Robert S. McIntyre, director of the liberal Citizens for Tax Justice, would be one such adversary.

"We need to collect the taxes. If they aren't withheld, a lot of people will cheat," said McIntyre. "That's what happens on the kinds of income that aren't withheld these days-small business profits and partnerships, [and] capital gains.

"Withholding makes it so that people can pay their taxes a little bit at a time, and it doesn't bother them as much," said McIntyre. "And even if it does bother them, they still pay them."

While some people might feel that tax withholding is unfair, McIntyre insists justice for taxpayers would be impossible without the current system. "The just thing is that the honest people don't get ripped off by those that aren't so honest," he said.

"We like law enforcement so that everyone doesn't shoplift. Taxes are like that. You can't count on everybody doing it voluntarily. We tried that in the Articles of Confederation, and it didn't last long. The states made voluntary contributions to the federal government" in theory but not in practice, McIntyre said.

The elimination of withholding would force the government to hire more federal law enforcers to deal with tax delinquents and government itself wouldn't be able to count on enough money coming in to pay for its many programs, said McIntyre.

"The Bush administration has lots of things it would like the government to do," he said. "They understand that eventually they have to be paid for. If you take a big whack out of the tax system for no apparent reason other than to cheer up some dishonest people, well then what do you do? Borrow the money?"

In the late 1940s, a Connecticut cable-grip maker named Vivien Kellems became so incensed about withholding that, for a time, she refused to do it for her 100 or so company employees. Years later, the Adolph Coors family launched its own short-lived resistance to withholding.

But tax withholding had already been debated for decades when it was signed into law in 1943.

The courts struck down efforts by Congress early in the 20th century to create a withholding system. Then in the 1916, in its Brushaber v. United States case, the Supreme Court ruled that withholding was a legitimate exercise of congressional power consistent with the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Despite the Supreme Court's blessing, another withholding provision became so unpopular that Congress repealed it in 1917, only to change its mind again in 1943.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200208\NAT20020802a.html


"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

Voter initiatives die at the Statehouse door in Massachusetts, the cradle of liberty


By JUSTIN POPE
The Associated Press
8/1/02 2:26 PM


BOSTON (AP) -- More than 200 years after citizens dumped tea in the harbor and took up arms in defense of liberty, the cry of tyranny is being raised again in Boston -- this time against the people's elected representatives.

The state Legislature devoted much of the session that ended Wednesday to trying to quash citizen initiatives, prompting the newspapers to caricature the House speaker as an autocrat with a scepter and crown.

Lawmakers in the cradle of democracy ignored voter mandates to roll back the income tax, balked at funding a Clean Elections law, and refused to vote on whether to put a measure banning gay marriage on the 2004 ballot, even though supporters had collected 130,000 voter signatures.

Massachusetts voters can pass ballot initiatives, but only the Legislature can put up the money needed to carry them out.

To many, voter initiatives are a foolish way to make laws, and some legislators consider it their duty to serve as a check on the passions of the people.

"While we have a responsibility to the voters who voted for the referenda, we also have a responsibility to the voters who want a good education system and good roads and want government to run," said Rep. Dan Bosley, a Democrat from North Adams. "Do we do the popular thing, or do we do what we think is right based on the knowledge that we have, which may indeed be a little more sophisticated than what the general public has?"

This year, more than any other in recent memory, legislators trusted their own judgment, saying a $600 million revenue shortfall made voter-approved initiatives like tax cuts impossible. The budget passed by lawmakers could cut health insurance for 50,000 unemployed and homeless people.

But critics say the Legislature went overboard, taking advantage of a weak governor and undermining a citizen initiative process adopted in 1918 to check the power of a Legislature once dominated by a tight circle of Yankee elites.

"They've become so much out of touch with real people, and they despise us so much and the process that lets us interfere," said Barbara Anderson, whose group Citizens for Limited Taxation campaigned for a ballot measure to roll back the income tax in stages from 5.95 percent to 5 percent.

Voters approved the measure in 2000, but the Legislature essentially refused to put the final cut into effect this year and froze the rate at 5.3 percent.

The most controversial standoff came over the Clean Elections law, passed by voters in 1998, that makes taxpayer money available to candidates who agree to limits on their spending and fund-raising. The Legislature refused to release the necessary money.

Lawmakers claimed that the law diverted money from worthier causes and that taxpayers should not have to help candidates they do not like. Clean election supporters countered by saying incumbents are just afraid of competition.

The dispute provoked a constitutional crisis -- and much ridicule -- when the state's highest court ordered Statehouse office furniture, vehicles and land auctioned off to pay for the law. The Legislature eventually agreed to fund it for a year.

Then the Legislature refused to put the gay marriage ban on the ballot.

Few thought the measure would pass. But "whether one agrees with these propositions or not, if people go out and get the signatures, it seems to me they ought to be entitled to a vote," said former Gov. Michael Dukakis, now a politics professor at Northeastern University.

Dukakis recalled a different era, when legislators actually trimmed their own ranks at the voters' behest, cutting the Legislature from 240 members to 160 in 1979.

"That was not an easy vote, if you're looking at one's colleagues and one-third of them aren't going to be there," he said.

Such a thing seems unimaginable today. There are various theories about what has changed.

There are now veto-proof Democratic majorities in both houses, opposed only by Republican acting Gov. Jane Swift. The state is in a budget crisis. And there is also House Speaker Thomas Finneran, who led the charge to derail Clean Elections. He has been drawn on editorial pages as a monarch and has been accused by some of ruling the House with an iron fist.

The Boston Democrat did not return calls seeking comment.

Massachusetts is one of the few Eastern states to have ballot initiatives; the others are mostly out West.

Pamela Wilmot, acting director of the group Common Cause, acknowledged voter initiatives do not always produce good laws. But she said: "It's their government, their right to make mistakes."

http://www.masslive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?g0470_BC_MA--MassachusettsLegi&&news&newsflash-massachusetts

Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved.


"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878