Welcome to the Slaughterhouse!: Obamacare!

"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." George Washington
Welcome to the Slaughterhouse, America!!

By Nicholas Meyeres 

Thomas Sowell recently said, "It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow now think that we can afford to pay for those same doctors, hospitals, and medication as well as a government bureaucracy to administer it all." Consider that for just one moment if you support federally-enforced government healthcare.

 In fact, once we are finished high fiving each other like we all just won the lottery; we need to deliberate over a few very important points about what Obamacare really means to each and every one of us. Thanks to the Supreme Court of the United States of America the government now has complete authority to tax, not based on income, but on behavior, the entire American people- and not just the top 1%. To put that into a more liberal context: that means that if you are openly pro-abortion because you believe it is your body, therefore your choice, you can’t in good conscience also support a government-mandated healthcare that forces you to give up that same liberty of self-ownership when considering your own private healthcare, right? 

But more than that, it is integral to realize that Obamacare is now considered a tax on every American citizen. We need to fully understand what this means. Simply put, it is now unlawful for you NOT to buy federally-run health insurance, and if you do not the government will use the Internal Revenue Services to forcibly take away your refund, increase your fees, add penalties or even see that you serve jail time.

But that’s okay, at least healthcare is “free” now!

I am frankly beside myself at how some people who claim they can’t pay for insurance today will suddenly have the resources tomorrow after 21 tax increases take place resulting from a health care law costing more than $675 billion over the next 10 years, according to the House Ways and Means Committee. In fact, of those increases, 12 tax hikes would affect families earning less than $250,000 per year. Isn’t this is a clear violation of the president’s own personal pledge to avoid tax hikes on low and middle-income taxpayers? Bottom line: this could well turn out to be the single largest tax in American history.

Are we still high fiving now?

Truth be told, we don’t have to wait to see all of this come to pass. Obamacare has already caused up to 20 million Americans to lose their health-insurance policies today. And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the health-care-reform law will destroy over 800,000 jobs in the future. On top of that, an analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation from November 2009 shows that in 2016, three-quarters of the tax imposed by the individual mandate will fall on those making less than $120,000 of income for a family of four or $59,000 for an individual. Families of four making $72,000 or less and individuals making $35,400 or less will bear nearly half of the mandate tax.

We simply can’t let something this wrong stand. After all, just because a couple of clearly uninformed folks on the Supreme Court declare something to be “constitutional” does not necessarily make it so. It is as Senator Rand Paul said shortly after the ruling, “While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right.”

Lest we forget there’s no doubt this law will also have appalling consequences for younger generations. It will force our youth to purchase health insurance just as they are getting on their feet and begin paying down their college debts, or face major taxation. Truth be told, this is a major win for big, “money-grubbing” insurance companies only, not for the poor and downtrodden. I hope that sits well with supporters of Obamacare.

As a result, I frankly don’t know how a government who forces its people into heavy taxation is truly a compassionate one. I believe that lending a hand to the impoverished is the right thing to do as an individual. However, having our government force us to assist those same people in need is nothing short of “self-righteous bullying” as Penn Jillette put it. To further paraphrase the same quote I posted last time from that great mountain of a man- Sure, people the country over need to be fed, sheltered and even medicated, and if we are decent Americans we will do our humanly best to help everyone we possibly can, but we get no moral credit by forcing others to follow suit, especially at the barrel of a proverbial gun.

Welcome to the Slaughterhouse!: Property Taxes!

"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." George Washington
Welcome to the Slaughterhouse, America!!

By Nicholas Meyeres 

North Dakota is considering a measure that abolishes property taxes entirely as of this week. Good for you, North Dakota! I never understood property taxation anyway. It comes off as unconstitutional on just about every level to me, and is really nothing short of a tyrannical feudal system for all intents and purposes. 

 

Well, okay, we obviously don’t live under a feudal regime, however property taxation seems to presuppose a type of feudal hierarchy no matter how you slice it anyway. Sure, if it were a true feudal regime it would be a more distributive state-run system, and we obviously do not live in one of those, but because of exactly that this renders property taxes even more patently absurd to my mind. 

The bottom line is this: I loathe the very idea property taxes. In fact, the more I consider it, I probably abhor the idea even more than mere income or sales taxes. There is simply something much more sinister about them than meets the eye. After all, income tax, no matter how intrusive and redundant they seem, intimates that only a certain percentage of one's income is owed to the government for the “maintenance of public goods”. Property taxation, however, says something vastly more insidious. 

Property taxes by definition, regardless of its use or where it’s directed, is a claim by the state of COMPLETE ownership of your land. And if you are found to be in default of paying property tax at all, the state can then seize that property even if you have already bought and paid for that land in full. 

What you really have is a system where we pay a fee to a type of tyrannical landlord while we, the lowly voters, are permitted to live on that land only if we pay them to do so. Hmmmmmm…. maybe it is more like a feudal system than even I care to believe! 

Either way, make no mistake about it, if the state can confiscate your already paid-for property when you become tax delinquent, then you truly do not own that land in the first place. The state does. How every property owner in America cannot be up in arms because of this is beyond me. 

Not to mention, property taxes seem unconstitutional because it does not allow us to live in a truly free land where we are secure in the liberty to own said personal property. I am no constitutional scholar, but I do realize that the government is treading on hallowed ground both figuratively and perhaps even literally, if they are allowed to infringe on our property rights as designated by the United States Constitution. 

The Fifth Amendment says in part that we are not to be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. Yet, how many of us have at least heard instances where American citizens have lost their property, home or land because they have failed to pay property taxes? It occurs throughout the entire country on a near daily basis. This seems not only immoral and unethical in my mind, but nothing shy of criminal and in violation of one’s own civil rights. 

 
Consider this: nearly every sale of property occurs without any due process at all. That is to say, there has been no court hearing, no judgment, nor adjudication of facts and no consideration given for the actual laws regarding any taxation in the first place. But doesn’t the Fifth Amendment say that we are not to “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”? 

This simply shouldn’t be allowed to stand, and North Dakota is right to consider abolishing this tax altogether. Still, having said all of that I do realize that cutting property taxes will not only be difficult there (let alone in virtually every other state), but almost impossible because it is the dominant tax assessed by cities, counties and school districts. But, for that very reason, we should endeavor to eliminate this tax let alone any and every other department and agency that have outlived their usefulness, and create a smaller, fiscally less demanding government that will permit its citizens to function more freely in a market more conducive to growth and prosperity. 

On a more personal level, if a good chunk of my property taxes go to the local school district I live in, why should I have to pay when I have no children who attend unless I choose to pay? For that matter, why should I have to support any public paid-for entity through my taxes in which I may not agree? Abortion funding, the military industrial complex, the death penalty, public school systems, and so on. The list could be endless in regard to what we as American individuals consider morally repugnant. 

Yet, at its core, Penn Jillette put it best in regard to that very thing, “People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered, and if we’re compassionate we’ll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.”