The mishandling of taxpayer funds, as evidenced by the failures of government responded to by ever-expanding regulations, laws and new government agencies, is beginning to draw the attention and ire of the electorate. In spite of outrageously high tax rates, government failures in preventive intelligence, the rampant pardoning of safely-incarcerated terrorist felons, the non-enforcement of our immigration laws, and the obvious weakening of our military might and its unconstitutional deployment as an international police force, all have contributed greatly to our shocking vulnerability on September 11th.
The Enron debacle confirmed that $1.73 billion of taxpayer money was transferred to private sector Enron, which depended heavily upon revenues expected, for the most part, by the favorable legislation from politicians who were recipients of Enron political donations. It would seem that the money trail went from the taxpayers, to the U.S. Treasury, to government agencies such as the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp., to Enron executives, and back again to our government, to some extent, for the personal use and advantage of America’s politicians!
The continuing frustration on the part of America’s citizens is growing! There are reports of angry property owners in several counties of Illinois where outrageous increases in property taxes are now causing citizens to engage lawyers and to assemble in over-capacity meeting places to challenge and protest the injustices of these outrageous claims against the private property of Americans.
In Tennessee, Al Gore’s home state, which he failed to carry in his infamous presidential bid, Republican Governor Don Sundquist is in the process of convening secret meetings with the state legislature in order to ram through an income tax the people don’t want. He cites a “budget crisis” that needs to be addressed.
So what’s the problem? All he and the legislature needs to do is legislate spending out of existence! What’s required is that spending be reversed in the manner legislated, described by accounting theory as “LIFO;” namely, last in first out!
Take the last brainless spending scam legislated into existence, and throw it out first. Then go to the next to last, and so on. When enough worse-than-useless spending has been eliminated in this “LIFO” manner to cause taxation to equal spending, success will be achieved! There will be no need to continue an unjust political patronage spoils system funded by an unjust Marxist income tax!
In the surreal political world created by the liberal media in New Jersey, the struggle between Democrats and Republicans throws up a smoke and mirror scenario to conceal budgetary largesse now coming home to roost in an economy devoid of the supply-side fiscal advantages so bemoaned by the very liberals who caused the current crisis. A proposed New Jersey State budget that originated at $22.9 billion has now ballooned to $23.4 billion, while expected tax revenues, chiefly dependent upon the income and sales tax, have dropped to $20.4 billion, leaving a $3 billion budget gap.
New Jersey got into this fix because of the spending under the Christie Whitman administration, a liberal Republican, who failed to cut spending and acquired revenues by floating bonds instead of doing the unthinkable; namely, raising taxes. It is still astonishing, that New Jersey survived until 1976 without an income tax, but now can’t do anything without it. The largest spending item is of course education, and looking at the achievement of all students in America, throwing more and still more money at the education bureaucracies across the land hasn’t helped at all. In fact, it can be proven to have had just the opposite effect!
In one small New Jersey town, a capital improvement plan amounting to $46.9 million will be put before the voters again on March 12th. It was first aired as a town referendum at $38.9 million in December 1998, and resoundingly defeated by voters. The education bureaucrats, both elected as well as appointed, tacked on an additional whopping $8 million, justifying this by offering that $13.3 million will be a “gift” from the State of New Jersey! But as has already been pointed out, the State is having serious fiscal problems also.
Accentuating all these across-the-board governmental budgetary problems, the promises of the IRS, DOJ, and Congressman Roscoe Bartlett are now being reneged upon in terms of responding to the We the People Foundation’s request for a redress of grievances concerning the legality of the current federal income tax. And as the income tax punishes successful earnings, the property tax progressively abolishes the right to private property!