okay, now can we all agree that he's a loon?
New Hampshire's convicted tax evaders Ed and Elaine Brown have gained a new supporter: presidential hopeful Ron Paul.yet another "dee dee dee!" moment...
In an interview with RogueGovernment.com, the Texas congressman compares the Browns to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior. He says the Browns are suffering like those leaders.
The Browns are holed up in their Plainfield (New Hampshire) home and have threatened violence against federal officials if marshals come to arrest them. They were convicted of an elaborate scheme to hide millions of dollars in income. Their protest has become a rallying cry for anti-tax activists and militia members.
11 comments:
no. he has to bite a baby's head off on live television first.
What's loony about resisting confiscation of your property? Most libertarians (like myself) pay taxes simply to avoid having the goon squad show up at your door with rifles and jackboots. But I applaud them for taking the ideological resistance into a more dangerous phase, and I wish them luck.
I mean, do you pay taxes because you WANT to? No. Wouldn't it be better to help others by contributing voluntarily to their needs? And is the government, at any level, actually a good steward of cash and people? The Feds at least are good at only one thing: taking your money and bombing brown people with it.
Yeah, real noble.
i hate paying taxes too, but i do it because it's the law.
in fact, i have written my congressman and made rational arguments as to why i - and similarly situated recent grad school graduates saddled with six figures in loans - am being taxed too much and why the income ceiling for allowing taxpayers to take the student loan interest deduction is too low. i prefer to protest within the boundaries of the law.
anyway, comparing a couple of people who have threatened violence should the feds approach to people like gandhi and mlk jr. whose trademark was non-violent protest is loony and just plain intellectually dishonest.
What's loony about resisting confiscation of your property? Most libertarians (like myself) pay taxes simply to avoid having the goon squad show up at your door with rifles and jackboots.
you have the right to vote. i don't see any problem with taxation as long as the government that levies the taxes is a representative one. you benefit from the government's presence: its military protects you, you drive on the interstate highway system that it built, you can buy cheap, mass-produced goods because the stability that government law enforcement provides, and if you're ripped off by a private party, you have legal recourse to seek redress through the government's court system.
government is a necessity.
I mean, do you pay taxes because you WANT to?
no. i pay them because i like the services and protections it provides for me and others.
Wouldn't it be better to help others by contributing voluntarily to their needs?
it would be better, but most people won't. that aside, this is a great, big floppy red herring. taxes are not charity. government services are not charity. the government manages services and builds things that are not worth it for one individual or one private enterprise to provide or build -- public education, the military, the courts, the highway system, and our social insurance system.
i look forward to the day when it also guarantees universal health access.
And is the government, at any level, actually a good steward of cash and people?
yes, it is. Before social security, the elderly were the poorest segment of the population, being unable to work due to infirmity. after social security came into being, they had one of the lowest rates of poverty.
SS was designed to solve a real problem and it worked beautifully. another thing it also did was relieve younger wage earners of the prospect of being the sole support and caretakers for aging parents which cuts into their ability to have and raise children or even pursue a full-time career.
i went to public school in a dirt poor coal mining community until the 7th grade. in that school system, provided for by the government, i got an education that my parents could not have paid for or given me themselves, and i graduated from an ivy league university. i also qualified for Head Start when i was young and learned to read before i started kindergarten the next year.
knee-jerk 'the gubmint can't do nothing right!' statements make it extremely difficult to take you seriously because it is glaringly obvious that this statement is a steaming pile of horse hockey.
there is always the option of moving to monaco and retaining u.s. citizenship. monaco is a tax haven for non-citizens.
otherwise, shut up and pay up. it's the law. and if you don't like it, petition the government by legal means, like lobbying, voting, commencing civil actions. even non-violent civil disobedience is fine. but threatening violence against the government is terrorism, plain and simple.
How was our country born? Laws were broken. The Founders were sure as heck heroes--there's nothing immoral about resisting an unjust law.
The Browns are literally putting their lives on the line to stand up against tyranny. The rest of us are funding a total cluster**** of awful foreign policy and corporate welfare.
The idea that we're each represented, as individuals, in a country with 300 million people is ridiculous. Lobbyists make the laws in this country!
The essence of Ron Paul's platform is to return power to the states--so that as individuals, we have a better shot at getting policy which meets our demands. The concentration of power in one place (Washington) is outright dangerous.
It just makes sense to have decisions about our lives made as close to home as possible--not by some distant bureaucracy.
Aside from defense, there isn't much that the federal government currently provides, which couldn't be handled on the state level.
If you're looking for something like universal healthcare, why not go for a state-level program? Your best shot for this is under a Ron Paul-type federal government. More dollars will remain in your state to fund the program, and to enact it, you'll have less inertia to overcome (statewide vs the entire country).
Think about it... :)
How was our country born? Laws were broken.
the problem was taxation without representation. now we have representation. and we each have a voice.
debate it all you want, but the libertarian utopia is unrealistic. i have libertarian tendencies, but at the end of the day, i concede that i have to live in reality.
the problem with fighting for a libertarian utopia is that there is no such thing as a utopia. societies cannot be planned, and an ideology will never be accepted by everyone.
so lobby the lobbyists. make your voices heard. if you can help goad the government into being more efficient, i'll be there right alongside you.
but this "all or nothing" extremism is what turns me away from the libertarian party.
I don't see anything unrealistic or "utopian" about handling welfare, healthcare, etc at a state level. I think decentralization would be very good for these types of things--we'd get a spectrum of solutions across the states, which would serve as a nice policy labratory. We'll have to agree to disagree.
but this "all or nothing" extremism is what turns me away from the libertarian party.
Understood. But certainly you aren't referring to my comment. :)
I just find it interesting that when the Republican led Congress cut funding to various non-profits on the basis that it would be better to "let the community lead the charge and pay for it through charitable, tax deductible contributions," very few were left standing in the end because people did not give. Many valuable services were lost.
That couple is plain loony - this argument has been made over and over again by tax dodgers. Amendment XVI
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
And, hey, that was enacted even before women had the right to vote. It's nothing new.
i would like to say, however, that watching how congress since 2000 has repeatedly taken taxpayers' money to the toilet and pressed the "flush!" button like say... the war in iraq and useless programs like the marriage initiative while simultaneously taking time to debate things like the federal marriage amendment would make anyone consider joining the libertarian party. i think i chalk the flirtation up to the federal government being especially crappy in recent times.
it's only uphill from here! (please let it be better...)
and i still stand for the proposition that comparing people who are threatening to engage in a violent conflict to people like gandhi and mlk, who preached non-violent protest is simply ridiculous.
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