Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 4

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 4, part 2

The All-City Publicity Committee (ACPC) and their summer jam plan "gave teachers a golden opportunity to turn their publicity for tax collection into an all-pervasive operation." A dream come true, all-pervasiveness! Every government school's fondest wish. Mary Leitch (what an unfortunate but oh-so-appropriate name), the chair of the committee (can we call her a commissar?) pledged 10,000 teachers to volunteer as special collectors. To show what a special lady she was, here's what she said about collecting taxes: "It's a selling job—this collection of taxes. You must make it easy for the customer to buy. You must break down the sales resistance, and there is resistance to paying taxes. There is a mental complex that we must look for." How convenient that the victim can become the customer at the convenience of the state.

So an army of unimind slave trainers was slated to go house to house and convince families to hand over the dough by studying the "mental complex" and breaking down resistance. I've never been to a re-education camp (not including my government school years), but that sounds ominously similar to what might happen at one. This is proof that teachers are underpaid!

Hilariously, the attempt to buoy up a massive parasitic bureaucracy was stifled by bureaucracy—"Swearing in the teachers to serve as deputy collectors presented difficulties because of the prohibitive expense of bonding requirements." In addition, there was a threat of "racketeers posing as teachers to collect money for themselves." (That would be horrible. It's much better for racketeers to pose as tax collectors to collect money for the state beast. As always, don't steal—the government hates competition.) Due to this unfortunate turn of events, it was decided that the teachers would still visit homes to break the will of the tax dodgers, but wouldn't actually collect the money. They would escort the broken mental complex to an official and authorized collector. Somehow that seems even more insidious.

Alas, the whole despicable plan was sunk due to Ms Leitch's lust for power. She was "adamant that teachers be authorized to collect money." Although it would be interesting—but not extremely difficult—to dissect and examine the reasoning behind such a demand, there is no need. The Leitch said it herself. "We want to capitalize on sociological effects of asking for taxes. If we are not deputies our work will be futile." Not only did she want control of the minds of all children, she also wanted teachers to become gendarmes.

And thus we see that government schools are inevitably and inextricably linked to state power, so much so that there is no visible link—they are the same body. One in purpose, you might say. Like the court system, it can't be reasonably expected that there would ever be a significant opinion or practice from the government school system that would result in the promotion of individualist ideas or behavior. Some people refer to this as "socialization," as in "It's important for kids to go to school to become socialized." Indeed, but important for who? Or is it whom? I didn't pay attention in school.

But the teachers could not be discouraged from their righteous cause. A mass meeting of teachers was held in July "to consider what steps to take against those taxpayers who ignored appeals to civic pride and patriotism." Interesting that they thought it was their right to decide what to do about it, but not surprising, since they had already fancied themselves as an elite constabulary. "Among other demands, the gathering endorsed prosecution of tax strikers for criminal conspiracy." Again, the government and all it's tentacles obviously hate competition. Hayden Bell, State's Attorney for Cook County, supported the teachers in their demands because an organized strike is "always immoral, always criminal, as it brings loss and suffering to public workers, and tends directly to the embarrassment and overthrow of government." Nothing is worse than something that exposes the uselessness of government, eh Hayden? Without the complex and criminal apparatus of government you might actually have to work for a living, and that would be a terrible tragedy. Once again, irony is displayed in full view, but goes unperceived by the glorious instructors of youth. Tax strikers are a criminal conspiracy because they conspired to avoid monetary deprivation by an even larger criminal conspiracy which has the resources to extract the property of others by force*. I see. Turns out might does make right.

Next, tools of the state claim the throne of God.

*A more thorough examination of this idea can be found here.

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 4

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 4, part 1

For the past eight years we've heard about "tax cuts for the rich" and other such nonsense. That aspersion has been around for much longer though. Available records of ARET membership show that the tax protesters were, for the most part, far from the stereotypical real estate tycoons just trying to keep more of the people's money. Many of the members were businessmen (The Rich!), but "were mostly small shopkeepers and other petty proprietors." "Skilled blue-collar workers constituted the biggest single group of members." Does that sound like a revolt against The Righteous Workers of the Proletariat? Sounds like the actual proletariat to me. Will Grigg is succinct in his summation of the process: "Each of us invests a portion of our most perishable possession – time – to earn money. Thus every forcible imposition on our earnings, through direct taxation, or its more subtle surrogate, inflation, represents an increment of life stolen by the state." People were trying to survive in a harsh economic climate (one created by government intervention), only to be villified by government for daring to make the attempt without the munificent hand and gracious help of the variety of government appartuses supplied at public (tax victim) expense.

As is always the case when a group challenges the power of government, Cook County and Chicago fought back harder than ever. Anton Cermak—the mayor of Chicago and thereby King of Cook County—"made clear his readiness to go to almost any lengths to destroy ARET." Amusingly, when they actually had to get down and do something about ARET, "he and the rest of the city administration betrayed their buffudlement." Amusing, but when are elected officials anything other than befuddled? Just as with the threats to close schools, another campaign of scare tactics was launched. The All-City Publicity Committee (committees are so Soviet) went as far as to commission a song with the catchy title Be Fair to Chicago's Boys and Girls! Pay Your Taxes Now. Sounds like a number one summer jam to me. The goal, of course, was to bamboozle, hoodwink, and guilt the people in such a way that "the various opposed interests will not dare to attack further that foundation of all democracy—free and full education for the child." The committee apparently forgot "compulsory" in their description of the foundation of Soviet-style mind-bending.*

Next, teachers become storm troopers.

*See Article 26 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, (a document full of double speak if there ever was one), and item number 10 on the Communist Manifesto's list of requirements.

Holdover

Until I get it together, read a great essay by one person whose bad list I would not want to be on—the inimitable William Grigg.

Still on pause

I'm close to finishing Taxpayers in Revolt. For those of you on pins and needles waiting (I guess that's just me), I'll try to get some done tomorrow. For now, enjoy this lovely image.