Tax Withholding From A Tyrannical, Bloodthirsty and Toxic System

"The point being made is that the IRS taxes you pay aren't used for government services. It won't hurt you, or the nation, to legally reduce or eliminate your tax liability."

President Kennedy, the Federal Reserve and Executive Order 11110

"The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy."

The $2 Trillion Nightmare

How are you feeling about your government's response to Hurricane Katrina? The fact that the people who should have been there to help your desperate neighbours instead are off killing and being killed in Iraq? Along with all that equipment your taxes bought.

How do you feel about oil prices? The fact that Exxon Mobile Corp, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, reported a 32 % jump in profits during the second quarter of 2005, while the rest of us dug deep into our pockets to fill our tanks. And Royal Dutch Shell, with a 34% rise in profits? Or ConocoPhillips, with a 51% increase. All of these in just 3 months! Wouldn't you like to have a shot at that kind of investment?
 

Of course, the guys who own your bank do. So do the folks you send to Washington. And the ones who own Wal-Mart and K-Mart and Nike and the places where most of us shop. These are the elite members of the corporatocracy, the equivalents of the Kings and Emperors of times past. They are all benefiting from the oil price hikes and – dare I say it! – from the tragedy of Katrina. That storm will serve as another excuse for the oil kings to whine and moan – and profiteer. As will their brethren who receive the lush billion-dollar reconstruction contracts.

Who else is making big bucks off oil – and Katrina? Well, let's not forget the members of the House of Saud and the other families who run the 7 “Persian Gulf Sisters” (Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). And, of course, Osama bin Laden; he receives a great deal of money from these folks. Your gas-guzzler finances Al Qaeda.

Now, please don't misunderstand me. As an economist (remember I once held the title of Chief Economist, even if it was an alias for EHM), I know that oil is still way under-priced – if you factor in the costs of the environmental damage drilling causes to places like Alaska and the Amazon and the toll on our children of CO2 emissions that are threatening to smother us (and undoubtedly are causes of the “once-in-a-hundred years” hurricanes that hit every year now). We should all pay a lot more to fill our tanks, we should drive cars that get at least 70 miles a gallon. However, the additional money should go to offset the problems oil is creating for our progeny. Not to the Bush-Clinton crowd, oil companies, and all their friends at the corporatocracy.

“Ah, wait,” you may be saying. “Perhaps I would not want a shot a that kind of investment. I don't care to be party to the destruction of our planet. I don't want the blood of indigenous people on my hands. Or the ruination of future generations on my conscience.”

If you feel that way, then you must ask yourself whether you want people who do make such investments to control your country, and your destiny. Will you accept as your leaders men, and a few women, who are party to planetary destruction, do have blood on their hands, and the ruination of future generations on their consciences – and who seem entirely comfortable with this? Is it in your best interest – or your children's – to keep these rulers on their thrones? To continue to send them your tax money. To sacrifice your sons and daughters – and those of innocent people around the planet – so they may flit around in private 747s and live in modern-day castles?

The obvious answer is a resounding NO!

It is time, my fellow Americans, to listen to the words of our Founding Fathers. Profiteering without representation must go. The destruction of our world, for the short-term benefit of a new type of royalty, is unacceptable.

Rise up. Insist that we funnel our money to the victims of Katrina, the tsunami, the 24,000 people who die every single day from hunger and hunger-related diseases, and all the others who suffer while a very few of the very rich make themselves richer.

File lawsuits against oil and coal companies and government officials who continue to cover-up the facts behind Global Warming – a toxic poisoning of your children far more deadly than secondary cigarette smoke. 

Together, let's topple the throne of King Corporatocracy.

Katrina + Oil = Profits for Our Kings  

John Perkins, September 7, 2005

“Taxation without representation” is a good working definition of tyranny.  It is one Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence took seriously in 1776.  And it is one we in 2006 must also measure our current political situation against. 

In recent years it has become more and more clear that our “democracy” does not work the way it purportedly does.  The values of most citizens are not reflected in the policies enacted by their representatives – but corporate values are.  The outcomes of our elections are arbitrarily adjudicated, predetermined by gerrymandering, and entrusted to virtually defenseless electronic systems with the flimsiest of oversight.  The values of “liberty and justice for all” embodied in our Constitution, and our foundational respect for the rule of law are flouted by our President – and Congress then “legalizes” his crimes of torture and surveillance retroactively.  Free and responsible disclosure of government actions is hindered in every way – while the government covertly plants propaganda in the news media.  When citizens petition for full investigation of the acts of terror that impelled us into wars of aggression, the government stonewalls any independent inquiry and feeds us an endless pablum of conflicting and impossible “explanations.” 
 

Because of these and other blatant and insidious abuses of power, coupled with a manifest failure to respect or enact the will of the people, there is apparently no longer any viable political means for restraining or reversing these tyrannous encroachments on our fundamental rights and liberties.  Therefore, we must begin to exercise one of the powers reserved to us under the Ninth Amendment and refuse to support the current oligarchic federal regime with our tax dollars.  To this end, payment of all non-entitlement tax money should be withheld until all the following changes take place:      

·      Recountable paper ballots with instant runoff voting in all States

·      Grand jury investigation of 9/11 -- with full subpoena powers and rights of referral to prosecutors for indictment

·      Withdrawal of troops and bases from Afghanistan and Iraq

·      Reversal of the Patriot Act, War Powers Act, and Military Commissions Act

·      Withdraw from the WTO, GATT and all “free trade” treaties that compromise national sovereignty (eg. NAFTA, CAFTA…)

·      Impeachment of Bush, Cheney et.al, followed by their prosecution in the World Court for war crimes

·      Diversion of military budget into debt reduction, alternative energy and social service sectors

·      Convening of a truly representative constitutional convention to consider the following (and other appropriate) amendments introduced by citizens:

             No corporate personhood – limited State charters only (typically 99 years)

             No gerrymandering – non-political district boundaries (eg. watersheds)

             No electronic voting – paper ballots with instant runoff voting, counted by hand

             No privatization or delegation of public powers and functions -- powers of war and of coining               
                 money are inalienable

             No purely speculative markets – all holdings are investments for a year or more

             No membership in secret societies – the oath of office requires forswearing all

                 conflicting allegiances

             No clandestine operations – all foreign policy to be managed through

                 diplomatic channels subject to full disclosure and review

In adopting this non-violent course of resistance to the present regime we must recognize the danger of open reprisals and general economic fallout:  we must therefore undertake to support with all the moral and financial means at our disposal – beginning with tax money held in escrow – all those whose liberties or livelihoods are damaged by acts of governmental retaliation or economic turbulence. 

In addition to being willing and able to support by local interventions those whose entitlements are diminished or eliminated by government reprisals, a viable tax withholding movement must also analyze and anticipate the general economic effects of gradual governmental collapse.  For instance, should the government default on all or part of its enormous foreign debt, the fiat currency of the day will become next to worthless, and will therefore need to be supplanted by locally issued notes of credit that can be used to keep local commerce and industry functioning. 

All in all, tax withholding will not be an effective response to our political dilemma unless it exhibits two key features: 

1.    It must be a truly massive and confident popular movement 

In order to be a self-confident movement, the political reasons for tax withholding must be firmly rooted in widespread ethical and religious values.  For instance, both the ethics of solidarity and of accountability condemn governmental malfeasance and should be used to motivate people to act.  Also, the tyrannous power of greed is condemned not only through the voice of the Jewish prophets,  “Ah, [woe to] you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you…[for]… I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant, and lay low the insolence of tyrants.” [Is 5:8] [Is 13:11], but also by Christianity  “You can not serve God and wealth …[therefore] …do not be conformed to this world …[or] …the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people that produces fruits of the kingdom.” [Mt 6:24] [Ro 12:2] [Mt 21:43]. 

Building a critical mass of people willing to withhold (or delay payment of) taxes should probably be initiated by public discussion of the reasons for action and the options for withholding that are ready to hand, coupled with an on-line survey question taking the form “I am willing to withhold (or delay payment of) x% of my federal taxes if and when y% of taxpayers are ready to do the same.” Standard techniques for confirmation of email addresses could be used to verify the legitimacy of the data collected on-line and prevent duplications.  As results of this survey accumulate and the tallies are posted, it would soon become obvious to all what the critical mass is, and when each threshold figure is actually reached. 

2.    It must be dynamically coordinated through a network of leaders

Coordination is possible without a command structure, given an open flow of information and general agreement on a strategy of graduated response to governmental resistance and reprisals.  Thus, if the first retaliation for a slackening of tax revenues is curtailment of entitlement funding, a graduated response would entail increasing the percentage of tax withheld (or delayed) to match the enlarged proportion in the budget of illegitimate expenditures – that is, those known to be contrary to the express will of the People, such as paying for wars of imperial domination. 

Given the known proclivity of corporate regimes for assassinating charismatic popular leaders – JFK and MLK for example – organizing for tax withholding and mutual support should always be done at the local level only.  Many tax escrow funds will be less vulnerable than one; many local organizations will be more difficult to derail than one national group.  Since most, if not all local groups will be infiltrated with covert operatives, serious members must resolve to keep their focus on the real goals of the movement, and to act in such a way that over time the hearts and minds of even the ‘agents provocateurs’ are in danger of being won over. 

The immediate goals of tax withholding have already been enumerated: the ultimate goal is restoration of a constitutionally based rule of law in the United States of America.  Only when this is done will the principles of justice, freedom and peace flourish here at home and empower us to participate in an emerging global community based on cooperation and sustainability. 

17 November 2006 

The Makings of an Iraqi Holocaust

Keep Them Out Of Ohio

By Mike Ferner

02/17/07 "ICH" -- - The following news brief ran on the Associated Press yesterday:

Strickland Doesn´t Want Overflow Iraqi Refugees

"Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has a message for President Bush: any plan to relocate to the US thousands of refugees uprooted by the Iraq war shouldn't include Ohio.

The administration plans to allow about 7,000 Iraqi refugees to settle in the United States over the next year, a huge expansion at a time of mounting international pressure to help millions who have fled their homes in the nearly four-year-old war.

Strickland -- a Democrat who opposed the war as a US House member -- says Ohioans can't be expected to have open arms for Iraqis displaced by the war. More than 100 Ohioans have been killed since the war began. The governor says he has sympathy for the refugees' plight, but he won't ask Ohioans to accept a greater burden."

It is really all quite mad, isn't it?

That on top of the million or so Iraqis we've killed, and the four million we've maimed, we've also created millions of refugees; that our Maniac-in-Chief now decrees 7,000 refugees is a politically acceptable number we should allow into the U.S. even as he continues the slaughter around the clock; that the governor of a state, having absolutely nothing to do with immigration policy anyway, feels compelled to protect the homeland (or would that be "homestate?") by warning a morbidly unpopular president, "Not in our backyard, pallie!"

Something for people of good conscience to keep in mind: When we finally get our troops out of Iraq, and our bases out of Iraq, and our mercenaries out of Iraq, and our spooks out of Iraq, and Halliburton Corp., and Burger King Corp., and all the rest - when the last U.S. helicopter flies off the roof of the world's largest embassy and the American Empire's sorry, bloody, murderous adventure draws to a close - we owe these people. Big time.

I don't know how many, or actually, why any of them would want to come live in Disneyland. But if some do, we should welcome them and the many lessons they could teach us about maintaining humanity in conditions of pure hell.

For the 99.9% of Iraqis who would rather stay home and rebuild their shattered lives, at the very least we owe them money. Lots of money. Multiple billions of dollars. And not to be administered by our military or our corporations or our mercenaries or our spooks. No, we should have nothing to do with that money except deliver it to Iraq and let them decide what to do with it. I hope they can rebuild the hospitals and the electric and phone systems we bombed, and the water treatment plants we've destroyed, and the economy we've wrecked. But frankly it doesn't matter if they want to insulate their attics with it, or mix it with mud and turn it into building material, or pile it up in the middle of the desert and f.....g burn it all. They can't possibly do any worse with it than we have.

And THAT is just the beginning of the magnitude of the dollar amount we owe Iraq.

What we do for all the pain and suffering and heartache and terror we've created, only God knows. Those things we carry on our conscience to our graves.

And the governor of Ohio wants to be first in line to say, "Keep your tired and maimed. Don't burden us."

What world is this?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17104.htm

"I will put the taxes I owe in an escrow account. I will go to court to challenge the legality of the war. Maybe a courageous judge will rule that the Constitution has been usurped and the government is guilty of what the postwar Nuremberg tribunal defined as a criminal war of aggression. Maybe not. I do not know. But I do know this: I have friends in Tehran, Gaza, Beirut, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Cairo. They will endure far greater suffering and deprivation. I want to be able, once the slaughter is over, to at least earn the right to ask for their forgiveness."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/66414/?page=entire

[We]are rank-and-file, tax-paying citizens who are sick and tired of out-of-control federal spending and deficits. [We] have had it with an arrogant federal government that runs roughshod over both the Constitution and the liberties of the American people. [We] are people who have had enough of the IRS, the BATFE, and a thousand other federal agencies that have "erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." (Declaration of Independence)

http://www.planetization.org/banishusury.htm