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.