WUI (Writing under the influence)

Driving home from work on one of the last sunny days this year... (BTW, it's not the lens; it's the windshield I have to clean. Yeah, I'm driving with my both hands off the wheel.)


How so called progressives started wealth-spreading.

Given that poorer citizens always outnumber the rich, political philosophers have long worried that government based on majority rule could lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. "If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city," warns Aristotle.

The founders of the United States were deep students of politics and history, and they shared Aristotle's worry. Up through their time, history had shown all known democracies to be "incompatible with personal security or the rights of property." James Madison and others therefore made it a "first object of government" to protect personal property from unjust confiscation. Numerous provisions were included in the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect the property rights of citizens.

Given that one of the causes of the American Revolution was a tax, the founders understood very well that taxation could become a way for one group to prey on another. So while the Constitution empowered the federal government to levy taxes, it limited this power mostly to indirect taxes like tariffs, duties, and excise taxes. For much of American history the federal government subsisted solely on those fees.

The Constitution did grant the federal government the power to levy "direct" taxes on a "per head" basis, but required that all money raised this way must be given to the states according to their population. The aim here was to preserve a decentralized federal system of rule, and to make it "difficult to place a direct tax on capital, the most destructive tax in terms of economic growth and economic initiative," according to Professor Edward Erler.

Until the Civil War, the idea of a tax on individual incomes would have seemed preposterous to most Americans. Only as an emergency wartime measure did Congress adopt an income tax in the 1860s, and the measure was allowed to lapse with little fanfare in 1872. Estimates vary regarding the percentage of citizens affected by the income tax of this era, but none places it at more than 10 percent.

The modern income tax begins with the Progressive era in American politics. In an influential 1889 article entitled "The Owners of the United States," crusading attorney Thomas Shearman argued that the lion's share of the country's wealth was in a limited number of hands. If an income tax was not adopted, he warned, within 30 years "the United States of America will be substantially owned" by 50,000 people.

While the economy struggles, our governor reveals "climate change" agenda. Its only purpose is to eliminate as many real jobs as possible in order to enslave as many people as possible so they vote democrat against their own interests.

In the meantime, in parts of the world where the economy still grows and jobs are scarce, Poland and Italy oppose EU's global warming agreement. No wonder IBM prefers to invest in Poland (in Gdansk, of all cities, so if Obama ruins America completely I may actually go back; how ironic!)

Is this why the Big 0 endorsed Smith?

Some people in my area still have their priorities straight.