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View Full Version : Fundamental Tax Reform & Alan Keyes


boxcar
01-25-2002, 08:49 PM
This coming Monday night (01/28) at 10 P.M. ET on MSNBC, Keyes will be discussing the illegitimacy of the current tax system and will propose in its place the Fair Tax (consumption-based), which has solid footing in the Constitution. Methinks this would be an edition to his show worth catching.

Boxcar

boxcar
01-29-2002, 06:00 PM
f you didn't catch last night's edition of Alan Keyes Making Sense, you missed an informative show.

What Keyes primarily wanted to focus upon, in his first installment dealing with America's need for fundamental tax reform, was the driving force behind the current tax system -- the reason for the popularity of the current system with nearly all beltway politicians. Examination from this perspective, evidently, greatly annoyed the final guest debater on the show -- Robert Kuttner, who publishes or contributes to a liberal newsletter, I believe, because he (Kuttner) kept wanting to change the subject to "the current tax system", which, of course was the topic! But Kuttner was very reluctant to be taken down the path Keyes wanted to traverse.

Keyes is in basic agreement with Blackstone, who understood perfectly what the grave consequences would be to this society if the federal government ever took control of the people's resources. To paraphrase Blackstone, he essentially said that whoever controls the people's resources (feel free to substitute the term "money", if you wish), also controls the people's will.

Kuttner balked at this idea, and tried to dismiss this assessment as being a non-issue, since this is a democracy (although it is really a Democratic Republic -- big dif). In one sense, though, Kuttner is right. "We the People" are indirectly responsible for the laws and policies of this nation because we elect our governing officials.

But Keyes countered that the current tax system was really instituted during one of this country's darkest periods -- when corruption ran rampant in D.C. in the early part of the last century (1913 to be exact).

Keyes also argued that the current tax system provides very fertile ground for the spawning of more corruption and evil, as it is in this soil that the dishonest and crooked politicians can grow and cultivate all kinds of social engineering-type schemes designed to further their own political ambitions, and shape society they way they see fit. It's right here that the politicians can make all kinds of promises to those "have nots", and thus literally _buy_ a constitutency with the "haves'" tax dollars. In short the current tax system provides one opportunity after another for the politicians to manipulate the people's collective will. (And if you don't believe this, try running for a federal office sometime on a platform of abolsihing the Social Security System because it's nothing more than an _illegal_ Ponzie Scheme. See how far you'd get.)

Kuttner shot back that the political system works just fine, thank you, and then had the audacious termerity to cite the current Enron fiasco as "proof" of his assertion. He basically said that the income tax system did not spawn any "illegal" activities by Enron.

While Kuttner is probably right in this, nonetheless how many of us here believe for a moment that the tax loopholes, that allowed a corporation like Enron to escape virtually all taxation, are ethical? And who created these tax loopholes? Weren't they written into the tax law by "our" politicians? And how many of us knew about these loopholes before they were written into the tax code? And how many of us would have approved of these "tax escape" mechanisms, if we had known? I think the Enron debacle greatly supports Keyes' contention!

In closing, I would more liken the current tax system to being quicksand than just soil, in which we Americans have become trapped. Our freedom, therefore, has been greatly restricted by the politicians who have created this kind of freedom-killing envrionment which greatly benefits them, but which has done great harm to us as a nation and as people. The crooked politicians (of all stripes, btw) have far more freedom than do the people whom they supposedly represent. A pretty sick state of affairs, if you ask me. And one hell of a good reason to get these crooks in D.C. to pass true, meaningfull, fundamental tax reform that would represent a huge step in taking our government back.

Boxcar