Quickly now, who wrote this:

According to AP, congressional leaders have reached a deal on those economic stimulus checks. And rather than being geared towards helping the economy, they’re apparently geared towards redistributing wealth (that would be our wealth) to the poor. What a surprise. Folks in the middle (i.e, those who are not rich or poor) are screwed by the Democrats (and Republicans) yet again.

Okay, I know I kind of gave it away with my clever title and all, but damn. What kind of entitled, ignorant, overreacting shit is that? Try to keep in mind, he’s burning down the house over a $300 to $600 check. In order to miss out on it, you have to gross $300 every working day**.

Here’s some more from John A.:

That means that if you make $75,000 or more a year, no check for you. Forget that fact that you live in NYC or DC or San Francisco, where prices from property to food are outrageous. No, forget that. Some guy living in a mansion in Topeka making $74,999 a year will get his little gift from the US Treasury and you, living in NYC making $75,001 out of a 300 sq ft studio apartment will get nothing. How about my friend who bought an entire house in Baltimore for $275,000 when that would get you a very small studio in DC.

I’m not saying I’d love to commute from Baltimore to DC, but you can fucking do it. Or from Arlington. Or Brentwood. Or Capitol Hill, if you’re willing to lower yourself to a rowhouse. And I’m definitely not one to micromanage the sacrifices people make in their personal economics, but I’ll happily refrain from shedding a tear over someone who’s going to get upset over the difficulty of affording life in Midtown rather than Jackson Heights, or Noe Valley rather than…well, he may have a point about San Francisco, actually.

That’s because far too often the Democrats don’t give a damn about anybody who isn’t a minority or starving to death (both valid causes to be sure, but are they the ONLY causes out there?).

Look, I don’t care if you live in a co-op made of gold brick smack dab in the geographical center of Highrent Island , there is no circumstance under which an American making $75,000 a year is worthy of the bullshit sentence above. Don’t get me wrong, people at all salary levels can struggle - bankruptcy bill, anyone? Universal health care? - but for fuck’s sake, John. “Both valid causes to be sure”? Don’t break your arm throwing that bone, okay?

The thing is, maybe there’s a discussion to be had.

And don’t think this is only about a stupid $300. It’s about health care. It’s about education. It’s about every single issue you care about. The powers that be simply aren’t in this to help people in the middle. The Republicans want to help the big pharmaceuticals and the big business hospitals, while the Democrats want to help uninsured poor people and kids. And while all of that’s nice, what are the rest of us supposed to do when our premiums hit $2000 a month and, God forbid, something catastrophic hits us?

And you know what? He might be right, but it’s really hard to tell, what with his being covered with the remains of the people he disemboweled on the way to the point. The Democrats definitely don’t give a shit about the middle class, but $600 seems like an awfully strange rock on which to make that point. As one of his commenters mentioned, you have to draw the line somewhere, and nearly 350% of the national median income*** seems like a passable place for it.

Plus, I’m not sure John “Treo” Aravosis has a shit-ton of personal economic credibility.

———————

** Assuming a five day work week, etc. etc.
*** Household income, based on the $150,000 two-person income limit for the proposed tax rebate.

No, you can’t have your tuppence back! What are you, some kind of Bolshevik?

Mr. Dawes, Jr.: In 1773, an official of this bank, unwisely loaned a large sum of money to finance a shipment of tea to the American colonies. Do you know what happened?

Mr. Banks: Yes, sir. Yes, I think I do. Uh, uh, as the ship lay in Boston harbor, uh, a party of the colonists dressed as Red Indians, uh, boarded the vessel, behaved very rudely, and, and threw all the tea overboard. This made the tea unsuitable for drinking, even for Americans.

Mr. Dawes, Jr.: Precisely. The loan was defaulted. Panic ensued within these walls. There was a run on the bank!

Mr. Dawes, Sr.: From that time to this, sir, there has not been a run on this bank until today!

And again:

The move came after three days of long queues at branches up and down the country as customers withdrew more than £2bn of their money - about 8% of Northern Rock’s total deposits.

There were still queues of about 70 people at a Northern Rock branch in Golders Green and about 50 in Kingston-upon-Thames on Tuesday morning, with some anxious savers still not placated by the government’s reassurances that their savings were totally secure.

And what is the British government doing to ensure that there isn’t a banking collapse?

Desperate to restore faith in British banks, Chancellor Alistair Darling pledged the Bank of England would guarantee all existing deposits…

Mr Darling suggested that the government would underwrite the savings of any other bank that came to the Bank of England for help to promote “a stable banking system” in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday.

But even as the groundswell of panic eased, there were growing question marks over the government’s handling of the situation and how long they had known about Northern Rock’s troubles before they took action.

Former Conservative Chancellor Ken Clarke told the BBC: “I did not expect to see the government ever having to reassure worried savers with money guaranteed by the tax payer.

“The response should have been clearer and quicker. It shouldn’t require queues of pensioners down the High Street before the chancellor says something.”

It’s a bit startling for an American to consider life without the FDIC, although one suspects certain small-government types are sitting in a back room plotting that very thing. Ironic, then, that the great big-government devil FDR himself initially opposed the FDIC because he worried it would be used to protect inept and embezzling bankers.

Mr. Dawes, Jr.: Uh, Father, these are Banks’s children. They want to open an account.

Mr. Dawes, Sr.: Oh, they do, do they, boy? Excellent. Excellent. We can al-always use, al-always use more money to, to put to work for the bank, can’t we, boy?

So, you have tuppence? May I be permitted to see it?

Michael: No. I want it to feed the birds!

Mr. Dawes, Sr.: Fiddlesticks, boy! Feed the birds and what have you got? Fat birds!

Embezzling bankers, you say?

Bankrupt American Home Mortgage is attempting to seize as much as $27 million that former employees set aside from paychecks for retirement, according to an attorney representing them.

Who would have thought that a large corporation which was routinely stealing money from its customers in the form of bait-and-switch loans, undisclosed fees, and non-disclosure might also try to steal from its employees?

Mr. Dawes, Sr.: You can purchase first and second trust deeds. Think of the foreclosures! Bonds, chattels, dividends, shares. Bankruptcies. Debtor sales. Opportunities. All manner of private enterprise. Shipyards. The mercantile. Collieries. Tanneries. Corporations. Amalgamations. Banks!

Michael: Gimme back my money!

Thanks to Amp for tracking down the screencap.

You haven’t lived until you’ve been stuck in a traffic jam on the lower deck of the Fremont Bridge…during a windstorm

The sign of being a mature person is the ability to hear about tragedies and not immediately consider how it affects one’s own life.

Hey, did you know there are twelve publicly-accessible bridges in the city of Portland?

My thoughts are with the families, and also with my evening drive home over the Sellwood Bridge. The one on which the weight limit was recently lowered from 34 tons to 10 tons due to the discovery of cracks in the approaches. That’s why it’s so…fun to read the responses to Harry Reid’s declaration that we should probably consider investing in infrastructure nationwide.

Harry sure likes to spend our money, he doesn’t even need an investigation…

This nation spends more on welfare than it does the Constitutionally mandated military. (Auguste’s note: !!!)

But it’s always a hoot to see the implications that it’s all HIS fault and not Clinton for the previous 8 years. The bigger problem is relying on the Government to bail us out of this one. DOT is a slush fund for the idiots in Congress and the White House. Just another way to tax us to death and spend OUR money on a few pet projects. DOT is not required, mandated or even mentioned in the Constitution. Tell me why , again, we are continuing down this road…

The answer, obviously, is that various neighborhood associations need to start paying for building and repairs of the roads and bridges within their borders. They could do so by means of a sinking fund which involves assessing the value of the various homes in their neighborhoods, figuring the appropriate percentage of value required to maintain infrastructure as well as provide for emergencies, then send a yearly (or maybe quarterly) bill to each homeowner who would be required to pay or face having their homes repossessed. The local association would be responsible to administrate the money, hire inspectors and engineers, and generally provide for the welfare of the users of the infrastructure.

But at least it wouldn’t be taxes.

Click to enlarge

One thing I would certainly NOT expect is that anyone would go here[PDF], using the above as a template (or not), and stick that fucker in the mail. I certainly would be shocked if anyone were to alert all their friends and loved ones to behave similarly.

The BBC:

Bush pushes for budget restraint

US President George W Bush has said his forthcoming budget plans will seek to curb domestic spending.

“Cutting the deficit during a time of war requires us to restrain spending in other areas,” Mr Bush said in his weekly radio address…

He said his plans for the next fiscal year would show that his aim of erasing the deficit by 2012 could be achieved without giving up tax cuts…

Mr Bush said the budget for the year starting in October 2007 would underline the need to tighten spending on domestic programmes - including on education, energy and health…

Meanwhile military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan would increase.

“Unless we act, we will saddle our children and grandchildren with tens of thousands of unfunded obligations,” Mr Bush said.

You reckon?

Apparently it’s drown-it-in-a-bathtub time already.

I think it’s fairly well accepted in the environmental community that, while it’s certainly important to ask individuals to cut down on pollution by driving less in higher mileage cars and recycling their newspapers, that will only ever be a drop in the bucket compared to the gains that can be had if industrial polluters make sacrifices. The politics of scale.

There’s a parallel here. “Unless we act…” We certainly must act. But where is it written that the only sacrifices a budget must ever make is in domestic spending? It’s as though Bush’s hands are tied. “Well, I can’t rescind the tax cuts, and I can’t lower military spending, so what am I gonna do? You keep asking me to balance the budget! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”

(more…)

When will our endless suffering cease?

Michael Medved didn’t get the memo from the Republicans. You know, the one that states, “Hey, our actual policy ideas are going to be wildly unpopular, so your job as a pundit is to deceive, mislead, distract and obfuscate.” But even if he missed the memo, you’d think he’d get the idea from the lies to get us into Iraq, the attempt to turn Social Security into a cash giveaway to the very rich by calling the plan “personal accounts”, and relabeling the estate tax the “death tax”, which implies that, for instance, all the soliders and poverty-stricken New Orleans residents that have wrongly died on BushCo’s watch have to pay taxes when they die or something. Medved here actually tries to make the argument to middle class readers that we should carry the bulk of the tax burden and spare the poor, suffering rich. Conservatives are so nostalgic for the 1950s, except for the 90%+ marginal tax rates the wealthy paid back then. In fact, that’s basically the dance they do—they make people long for a time when a male high school graduate could support a wife and a passel of kids by himself, and claim that what people are missing is the sexual repression, the racism, the sexism, and the conformity. Odds are they miss the prosperity.

But we shouldn’t want prosperity, according to Medved, because it’s kind of wicked to want that.

The political calculation in this pitch is diabolically clever, of course. Nearly all Americans consider themselves “middle class,� no matter how much or how little they make, so her support for reduced taxes for “middle class families� sounds wonderful. Meanwhile, less than 2% of tax returns show income in excess of $500,000 a year so the Speaker is, in effect, inviting 98% of the public to improve their status at the expense of a tiny minority that’s already widely resented because of its “excessive� success.

Is it me, or does this paragraph not make a lick of sense? He sort of implies that it’s foolish of people to consider themselves in the middle class majority that Pelosi is invoking, and then admits that we’re in a majority of 98%. Is it not a majority until it hits 99%? If that’s how wingnuts do the math, no wonder they think “abstinence-only” is a realistic philosophy to push when 95% of Americans have had premarital sex. 95% is hardly a majority, I guess.

Anyway, the very idea that the great unwashed peasantry is exploiting the millionaires is almost more laughable than risible. How dare we want them to pay their fair share of taxes when they merely decide whether we’ll have a job, whether we’ll be able to survive on our wages, whether we’ll get health insurance, etc. How dare we ask them to contribute their fair share in this one area when they get to decide how much of a life we have outside of work, and how many hours they’ll allow us to enjoy it?

Realizing that “pity Paris Hilton and Tucker Carlson” isn’t necessarily going to work to dredge up our sympathies, Medved does indulge in some straight up lying.

1) Tax hikes hurt the economy. Pelosi proposes to take money out of the hands of people whose investment and entrepreneurship create jobs, and to place it into the hands of government, which creates only job-stifling bureaucracies.

This argument only works if you assume that people who work for the government are volunteers or something, instead of paycheck-drawing employees. That, or you don’t think that government employees are human beings. If you think the latter, then I highly suggest you offer that opinion to the next police officer who pulls you over.

Perhaps the assholes who defend killing soliders needlessly by pointing out that our military is all-volunteer literally think that the solider are volunteers. Maybe they should show up at funerals for fallen soliders and yell at the people burying them, “Get a real job, bureaucrats!”

(more…)

Yesterday morning I listened to “The Young Turks” for a few depressing but enlightening minutes. On the program, they were discussing the expansive UN study that demonstrated the income disparities around the world. What particularly blew them away was the news that if you have $500,000 in assets, you are in the richest 1% of the world. They couldn’t believe that was all it took. And I couldn’t believe that they couldn’t believe that, in global terms, having half a million is assets makes a person unbelievably rich. Hell, if I had half a million in assets, I’d feel like a pig at the trough. But what was so disturbing is that liberal talk show hosts, who should be up on these issues, were so damn surprised at how much the wealthy of the world hoarde the world’s assets. (More on the world situation from Echidne, since the rest of this post is mostly about the internal U.S. situation, since the larger situation is way outside anything I have the chops to address in a post._

Not that I’m blaming them. Income disparity is a topic that’s fallen somewhat off the radar for both liberals and conservatives, and has for a long time now. Sure, pundits on the right bitch and moan about “class warfare”, their perverse twisting of a term that describes the relentless attempts by capitalist fat cats to slash labor costs into a term that implies that even the hint that the rich should give back to the society that gives them so much is “war”, but the truth of that matter is that the discussion of actually addressing income disparity, even in the United States where we have a good deal of control, has become taboo. Liberals agitate, with restraint, for minor fixes to relieve the woes of those on the bottom with minimum wage raises, health care reform suggestions, and other minor fixes to relieve poverty. But rarely do I see anyone point out some obvious historical facts, such as the fact that in 1950s, this country had marginal tax rates of 91%, but now it’s at 35%. These things are so rarely discussed that it’s no wonder that even liberals don’t know how successful a job conservatives have done since the 60s of growing the gap between the rich and the poor.

It’s this blanket of silence of the issue that is the background to Neil Cavuto acting like Paul Krugman farted in his face when Krugman came on Fox News to discuss his article in the Rolling Stone about how the super-rich are destroying America. (Via.) Actually, Cavuto, when presented with the facts that his news channel does so much to distract and hide people from, just accused Krugman of lying to him.

CAVUTO: Here’s what I’m saying that you’re doing: You are lying to people. That’s what I think that you’re doing.

KRUGMAN: I haven’t heard a lie yet. But, look, if that’s the way you want to do it, I mean, fair and balanced, go all the way. Look, c’mon, the fact of the matter is–

CAVUTO: No, no, you don’t have to be snide. You have to be factual.

KRUGMAN: You’re being snide.

CAVUTO: No, no, you’re mentioning good data. You’re saying there’s a growing divide between the haves and have nots. Others have argued that very effectively and very eloquently, just like you. All I’m saying is that the math that applied now, can’t you apply it in other periods, when there have been Democratic presidents who’ve had the same dislocations? You’re saying that it’s somehow dramatically worse now than it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago?

KRUGMAN: Yeah, actually, it is dramatically worse now than it was 10 years, 20 years ago. All of the measures of inequalities have just gone off the charts. It didn’t start with Bush — and I actually say that if anybody, you know, buy Rolling Stone, read the article — it actually starts even before Reagan, so this is not just Bush. The point of the matter is that, when, in these last five years, as it’s becomes clear that this is a really growing problem, that most people are not sharing in the economy’s growth, the policies of Bush have been at every point to push that inequality further.

Think Progress included a chart to demonstrate how accurate Krugman’s assertions are.

Compare that to the tax rate and you see exactly why the Republican yappers have such a bug up their butt about taxes. In fact, the correlation between marginal tax rates and income parity is such that, if you’re kind of simplistic, it’s tempting to wonder if the government isn’t just taxing the very rich and handing it out. In fact, it’s that misunderstanding that Cavuto and his crew are trying to bolster.

I just started Don’t Think, Smile! at the recommendation of Chris Clarke and Michael Bérubé, and in the first essay right off the bat, Ellen Willis discusses just this blanket of silence.* A lot of socialists point out that the New Deal was really a way for the capitalist structure to preserve itself from any kind of socialist insurgency that might have resulted from the Great Depression, and this is true, but Willis takes it a step further and reminds the audience that the megagrowth of the middle class and prosperity for ordinary Americans in the 50s and 60s was a continuation of this. As she puts it, the tumult of the recent decades was such that the capitalist class had to buy your everyday American’s loyalty to the system and they way they did this was to levy enormous taxes and spread the wealth around, which worked like a charm. But it’s not just that Americans buy into the system that allows conservatives to keep growing the income gap without much of a peep of protest. It’s also a historical forgetfulness. The anti-tax ideologues that work for George Bush and run the right wing punditry are generally a generation or more removed from the nightmares that were caused by unchecked capitalism in the first half of the 20th century. In a weird way, I feel them, because it all does seem impossible from a distance. But I dread the price that people will be paying if historical lessons go stubbornly unlearned.

*The entire essay is actually more about another elephant in the room that I leave basically unaddressed in this post, which is the fact that all these national politics are probably moot, anyway, because the world is actually being run now by transnational corporations. The war in Iraq is a good example of how Willis’ predictions are coming true—the American military has been basically commandeered by corporate interests to dismantle a nation-state that was getting in the way of certain assets that they’d like to have control over.

Dr. Kent “Dr. Dino” Hovind, Florida fundie who is the head of the Creation Science Evangelism ministry, faces a maximum of 288 years in prison for refusing to pay employee-related taxes at his Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, among other crimes, including falsifying bankruptcy documents, filing a false and frivolous lawsuit and complaints against the IRS, destroying records, and threatening to harm IRS investigators.

Hovind claimed that he didn’t have to pay taxes (citing paying them violated his religious beliefs), and that he was being persecuted for being a creationist (see my earlier post).

His wife Jo is also going to do hard time. (Pensacola News):

Pensacola evangelist and tax protester Kent Hovind winked at his wife and gave her a reassuring smile as he was led away to jail. Jo Hovind clutched the necktie he had been wearing. She kept her eyes on her husband until he was out of sight.

A 12-person jury deliberated for 2½ hours on Thursday before finding the couple guilty of all counts in their tax-fraud case. Kent Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, was found guilty of 58 counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes. He faces a maximum of 288 years in prison.

…Kent Hovind, whose life’s mission is to debunk evolution, says he and his employees are workers of God and therefore exempt from paying taxes. He pays his employees in cash and does not withhold their taxes or pay his share as an employer.

“There’s a difference between wrong and committing a crime,” Richey said in his closing argument. “You can do all the wrong things you want and still not commit a crime.”

From Ezra, I see that Al Gore is beginning to include proposals to remake the tax structure to get rid of payroll taxes and replace the revenue with a carbon tax. In the comments section, Nicholas Beaudrot estimates that in order to keep revenues the same this way while eliminating all Social Insurance taxes (for most of us, that’s Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment), the tax would come out to $1.20 a gallon of gas. And that’s to replace both employee and employer contributions. From Gore’s speech:

For the last fourteen years, I have advocated the elimination of all payroll taxes — including those for social security and unemployment compensation — and the replacement of that revenue in the form of pollution taxes — principally on CO2. The overall level of taxation would remain exactly the same. It would be, in other words, a revenue neutral tax swap. But, instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees, it would discourage business from producing more pollution.

I whipped out the calculator and realized at minimum I’d save $400 a month under this plan. So I’m for it. Okay, I kid (sort of). There’s a lot more reasons to do it than just personally saving me money. One is that it would make the tax structure more fair, moving some burden off middle class people and onto industry. There’s no cutoff on this tax where you only have to pay it on the first $90,000 you make a year.

But clearly the reason to do it is that this would have a real life effect on people’s consumption habits, because you can reduce your tax load by driving less . Most people aren’t going to make less money so they can pay less payroll taxes, of course, because then they just have less money overall. But taking that bike to work or getting a more fuel efficient vehicle to reduce your tax burden is within the reach of a lot of people. Industry would be forced to seek out ways to reduce pollution, too.

Really,the only downside I can see is that it would increase inflation, at least temporarily, but the across the board raise for working people would mitigate that significantly. The best part is that conservatives arguments against it are probably going to be weak, because this plays right into their asinine theory that taxes discourage activity in all circumstances, even when the activity is still beneficial on the whole—this, after all is their argument against an income tax, which supposedly discourages people from making more even though they still end up netting more. If you can convince yourself that people will actually be less wealthy out of a pouty need to deprive the government, then you can probably grasp that people will actually dial down a behavior when the expense of it outstrips the gain for them.

Looks like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree—batshit crazy “Christian libertarian” Vox Day’s (real name: Theodore Beale) father is running from the law. Unfortunately, it’s not for cool reasons that could conceivably be worked into a shitty sci-fi novel. His dad is one of those conspiracy theory relishing tax evaders. (Via.)

Employees of Comtrol, a small computer products company in Maple Grove, had an unusual meeting in the firm’s cafeteria Tuesday.

The CEO and company founder, Robert B. Beale, 63, was on the lam, an arrest warrant issued for his failure to appear in federal court for his trial Monday. On Tuesday, his son Bradford Beale, a company vice president, apologized to employees for what happened.

Over roughly seven years, Robert Beale has waged a legal war with the Internal Revenue Service and Minnesota Revenue Department, filing rambling explanations in court, citing God, the Constitution and obscure legal decisions. He even published a full-page ad in a newspaper to make his case.

Read the whole thing. Beale appears to be deeply involved in his illusion that he’s above paying taxes, and like a lot of anti-tax nutcases, he seems to forever be concocting schemes to wrangle his way out of it. Naturally, he’s got some silly philosophical horseshit reason he thinks that taxation is persecution.

Beale’s court filings are filled with erudite assertions. “Political societies with sovereign rulers and foreign customs,” he wrote in one document, “have the tendency to become potent engines attempting to subjugate the masses under the illusion of superior authority.”

For all his supposed erudition, though, Beale is unwilling to face certain aspects of reality, such as breaking the law often results in having to deal with law enforcement.

“Robert Beale is a good man,” Bradford Beale, 35, said of his father.

“His philosophy on particular issues with taxes has taken him and his family … a little farther down the road than he would like to be,” Bradford Beale said. “He didn’t envision that this was going to be the conclusion of tax protesting.”

That’s the sort of idiotic self-assurance I often wish I had. How else did he think tax evasion would end? With a letter extolling his virtue from the President?

The level of entitlement that wingnut tax evaders have convinced themselves that they have is something to behold. For instance, while they’re pretty much all white, they often seek to lay claim to the right to call themselves and Indian tribe in order to escape taxes. Despite claims that they don’t recognize the sovereign nature of the government, they’re perfectly willing to file lawsuit after lawsuit to procrastinate paying their taxes. Beale is another level entirely of this kind of hypocritical tax evader pretending he’s got some philosophical objection to taxation—he’s been a Republican delegate and gives money to political institutions, all of which implies that he very well does recognize that the government has authority. He just wants to cherry pick whether or not he’s going to pay attention to the parts he doesn’t like, such as the parts where he’s obliged to help fund it.

For the record, it’s not unusual for these sort of tax evaders to be racist, sexist dickwads like the Beales. Across the board, the one thing they tend to believe is that they’re better than the rest of us and shouldn’t be required to lower themselves to behaving like the rabble.

Anyone ever notice that the less someone has to work for his money, the more likely he is to turn into a rabid anti-tax libertarian?

“I’ve taken a vow of poverty, which any minister can do…And everything I have here, everything I’ve ever earned in my life, has gone straight into God’s work. So we’re not breaking any laws. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

– Florida fundie Dr. Kent “Dr. Dino,” Hovind of Creation Science Evangelism ministry

I don’t think I have a violin tiny enough for this fundamentalist blowhard. (AgapePress):

A Florida evangelist recently arrested on tax-evasion charges claims he’s been targeted by the Internal Revenue Service because he’s a creationist.

Last week a grand jury indicted Dr. Kent Hovind on 58 federal charges, including falsifying bankruptcy documents, filing a false and frivolous lawsuit and complaints against the IRS, destroying records, and threatening to harm IRS investigators. Twelve of the charges are for failing to pay employee-related taxes. The grand jury alleges Hovind failed to pay nearly half-a-million dollars in federal income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes on his employees at his Creation Science Evangelism ministry in Pensacola.

Hovind, who is known as “Dr. Dino,” says even though the 30 people who work for him are paid in cash, he is not a tax protestor and is not violating any laws. “Nobody’s an employee, and they all know that when they come. They come, they work,” Hovind offers as an explanation. “The laborer is worthy of his hire — we try to take the purely scriptural approach. We do the best we can with helping people with their family needs. There are no employees here.”

Hovind claims his ministry does not have to “render unto Caesar” because it is not working for the government.

According to Wikipedia, Hovind is an American Young Earth Creationist (YEC) who is offering $250K to anyone who can prove evolution “is the only possible way” that the universe and life arose. He also believes that “UFOs are apparitions of Satan.”

Hovind’s creationism theme park called Dinosaur Adventure Land (featuring exhibits that teach dinosaurs roamed the Earth just a few thousand years ago) ran aground back in April when Hovind refused to get the necessary permits, saying he didn’t have to because permits and paying fees violated his religious beliefs. (Pensacola Journal):

The judge also fined two church leaders $500 each per day for every day the building is used or occupied. If church officials continue to refuse to comply with local ordinances, the judge may decide that the building can be razed, Allen’s ruling said.

County commissioners showed no sympathy to members of the Creation Science Evangelism ministry who spoke out Thursday night at a commission meeting about the county’s actions.

“Scripture also says ‘Render unto Caesar what Caesar demands.’ And right now, Caesar demands a building permit,” County Commission Chairman Mike Whitehead said. A building permit and inspection by county authorities is vital to ensuring the theme park is safe for the thousands of people who reportedly visit the park and museum every year, Whitehead said.

…”This is pure religious persecution,” said Glen Stoll, who works closely with Hovind on legal issues.

While it’s an unqualified good that conservative naivete with respect to economics is being discussed, I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding concerning the conservative ardor for low taxes.  I think Yglesias basically gets it right.

Sebastian Mallaby wonders why conservatives don’t seem to care that cutting taxes doesn’t raise revenue. Jon Chait wonders why conservative don’t seem to care that cutting taxes doesn’t restrain spending. John McIntyre at Real Clear Politics (recommended by John Podhoretz) explains that “Mallaby can quote all the economists and studies he wants to justify his attack on the economic wisdom of lower tax rates,” his plan is to ignore that and instead “just look at what happens in the real world.” He proceeds to offer no empirical data whatsoever from the real world, just a lot of empty rhetoric much of it irrelevant to the issue at hand.

The truth, though, is that conservatives don’t care about this stuff because, obviously, the aim of conservative tax policy isn’t to cut spending or to increase revenue. It’s to increase the after-tax income of very wealthy people. And it does a bang-up job of doing that. A conservative who dedicated lots of time and energy to exploring whether or not the nominal rationales offered for GOP tax policy would not be serving his career well.

I know conservatives that would try to quibble with the statement that the rationale for cutting taxes is to “increase the after-tax income of very wealthy people.”  But that’s foolishness.  Their goal is to indeed to increase the after-tax income of wealthy people, whether that’s because they think those very wealthy people deserve to enjoy that income, because people deserve to enjoy what they earn, or so they say.  Or else they take a utilitarian view in obeisance to pareto efficiency.  But it’s indisputable that they’re goal is increase the after-tax income of wealthy people.  How taxes affect either government revenues or government spending are secondary concerns.

My idea is worse! No, my idea is worse!

So, we have the option of destroying our tax system by placing a horribly regressive tax on incomes that would completely fail to fund government, or the option of destroying our tax system by placing a slightly less regressive (but much more onerous) tax on goods and services that would completely fail to fund government.

It’s like choosing whether I want to wear contacts dipped in Clorox…or Drano!

Listen: just because I said that Marx would love the estate tax and that Marxists would hate its repeal doesn’t mean that I’m calling you a Marxist for supporting the estate tax. Marxist.

This is why I loved the Fair Tax book so very, very much: the entire thing is argument by inference.