Who Pays? The Truth About the American Tax System

There have been several recent articles discussing the American tax structure, and frankly they are all foreboding. According to a recent Tax Policy Center study, about 67 million Americans paid no federal income taxes last year. Excluding children, that’s about 40% of the entire US population who pay no taxes at all. In other words, only 60% of us support the entire massive federal infrastructure.

So who doesn’t pay?

Voter ID – Balancing Competing Evils?

Although there is little doubt that some voter fraud occurs in American elections, there is very little evidence that the fraud is substantial or that it actually influences election results. Very few elections are decided by small margins. In order to alter an otherwise honest result, the fraud would have to be very substantial – involving many people – and not isolated instances where some felon shows up to vote when he should not have done so. It is very likely that major fraud is going to be detected because with many people, leaks are a virtual certainty. There is also no proof that requiring voters to show IDs will eliminate voter fraud. Does anyone believe that minors who show up in bars with photo IDs of their 21-year-old friends are never served alcohol?

Why Can't There Be Campaign Finance Reform?

I can’t remember the last time I spoke with anyone who actually likes our current system of campaign financing. Truthfully, the only people who actually support allowing virtually unlimited money to flow into election campaigns are the special interest groups. They have large amounts of money to spend and want to spend it for the sole purpose of influencing legislation that is favorable to their cause -- in other words, people who want the right to legally bribe elected officials. Bribery truly is the correct word here. While the money goes to the campaign’s bank account and not the candidate’s personal bank account, that’s a difference without significance; the candidate needs both accounts flush with money to save his job.

So, if the majority of Americans want to end legalized bribery of elected officials, why doesn’t it happen? Why does virtually every law that is passed to correct this enormous problem get ruled unconstitutional? Believe it or not, the answer our Supreme Court gives us is that these financial contributions are protected by the First Amendment right of free speech. The notion is that if the public does not have the right to spend money to speak their peace, their right to do so is abridged.

But is the right to spend money to speak the same thing as the right to speak?

WikiLeaks Founder Attacks the United States

One of the “top stories” in the newspaper these days is that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been granted asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, and has commenced his efforts to end the United States’ “war on whistleblowers.” He argues that the American soldier who released top-secret information to him is “a hero.” I guess that makes WikiLeaks a “double hero” for publishing to the world information that it also knew was top secret. Assange suggested that this was a freedom of the press issue and that “journalists [will] fall silent under fear of prosecution.” His own fear of prosecution, he conveniently overlooks, is for sexually assaulting two women in Sweden, and it is Sweden, not the United States, who seeks to extradite him.

Why is such tripe even newsworthy? A sex offender who defends himself on the basis that he is being discriminated against for publishing top-secret information! Am I missing something here?

Tobacco Lawyers Sue the Food Companies

Great news for the millions of victims of the food industry—the tobacco lawyers are now on your side. All the hapless people who have been eating Cheerios to keep their cholesterol in check in spite of their daily 5,000-calorie diets of super-sized double bacon cheeseburgers, french fries, and chocolate shakes now finally have a friend, a knight in shining armor to save them from themselves.

The NY Times reported on Sunday that since pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars from the tobacco companies, lawyers have been desperately searching for their next payday. So all those companies that claim their products are “natural,” “healthy,” or “organic” better take heed that if one molecule of some ingredient in their products is considered unhealthy by these lawyers or their highly paid experts, they are going to be hauled into court. They will have to defend themselves from some class-action lawsuit that will cost millions of dollars to defend and accomplish absolutely nothing—other than to make a few exceedingly rich lawyers even richer.

Does anyone really believe that a jury of 6, 8, or 12 people (depending on the jurisdiction) is able to decide what is best for the American consumer?