Voting Reform: A Progressive Voting Scheme | Eastern North Carolina Now

    This article follows the one I previously wrote, entitled "Who is Really Disenfranchised?" In that article I talked about the incessant claims of "disenfranchisement" of minority voters when no such disenfranchisement exists nor any intent to do so. I argued that those Americans who are really "disenfranchised" today in this country are the taxpayers. These are the Americans who really have a "fairness" and "equality" argument. These are the ones whose interests are not being fairly or equally protected by a government that is required to do so. These are the Americans that government wishes to exploit and the ones that fellow Americans want to take advantage of.

    In this article, I will offer a remedy to safeguard their legitimate constitutional rights.

    Claims of "disenfranchisement" of minority voters lack merit and are based on a hypothetical negative impact that common sense, neutral, and necessary voter laws may possibly have upon minorities. It is another attempt to find racial intent where none exists. Voter ID laws require a voter to present an ID in order to vote (with suitable provisions should a person not have one), yet Democrats and civil rights groups fight such laws with great energy. Common sense Americans want protective laws to ensure the integrity of the voting system, so that we have "one person, one vote" and every vote counts equally. The laws are reasonably related to the problem of voter dilution where a person's legitimate vote is diluted by those cast fraudulently. No one should lost the full force of their vote because Mickey Mouse casts a vote or because dead people are voting. Most people don't see any undue burden on a person to show an ID to vote. People can barely get by in today's world without one. For example, a person needs to show an ID to get a driver's license, open a bank account, buy alcohol, buy cigarettes, apply for welfare, apply for food stamps, sign up for healthcare, cash a check, write a check, purchase a firearm, make a significant credit card purchase, rent an apartment, be admitted to a hospital, enter certain federal buildings, and get a marriage license. Yet having to produce one to vote once every couple of years is somehow a problem. They claim it's 'racist.' This is assuming that minorities don't feel they need to get any ID at all in their lives, even though every single American needs an ID to conduct some kind of business or in general to simply prove that he is who he says he is. This is a speculative argument and one that most people don't buy. Yet the tax laws that require working Americans at a certain income level to turn over a chunk of their earned income to the government are an outright disenfranchisement of property. There is no speculation. This is the government determining that some Americans must work about 4 months of the year - from January until April, sometimes May - for the government and there is nothing they can do about it. They must work, as indentured servants, to pay Uncle Sam. The risks are criminal penalties and incarceration.

    The liberal media doesn't talk about this "disenfranchisement" because their party is of the belief that they have a RIGHT to take whatever money they need from Americans who are condemned to be taxpayers. Everyone talks about the 14th Amendment and the "Equal Protection" clause, but no one talks about the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery and indentured servitude). The "disenfranchised" have no meaningful advocates. They are soon to be "minority" upon which the majority will soon completely oppress. It is their lot in life to support a government that rarely gives them anything in return, other than roads, public parks, and decaying public schools. It is their lot in life to support others who they have nothing in common with and in fact, are ones they have little respect for. It is their lot in life to support government programs that stand for everything that they abhor - programs that dumb down society, remove personal responsibility, lead to increasing levels of crime and decay, result in moral depravity, and yes, highlight racial differences by establishing different sets of rules for different groups - all in the name of "equal opportunity." It is their lot in life to finance the destruction of the United States by taking us from the once-proud "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" to "Land of the Depraved and Home of the Enslaved."

    Actually, the liberal media does talk about those 'disenfranchised' Americans. It wants them to pay more. As the number of persons paying federal income tax to support a rapidly growing US population decreases, the amount of money needed will increase. Democrats won't require their voters to pay (because once an "entitlement" is given, it is very hard to take it away), so they will look for ways to soak more out of those who are working and earning enough. "Enough' is the key term. Those men and women working hard to support their families, who have put the time and energy into their education and have sacrificed to develop a career, and who are trying to realize the "dream" that they so diligently sacrificed for, have no say in what is "enough." What is "enough" for them and their family has no relevance. The fact that they might want to have more children (which would require them to buy a larger house and put more and more money aside for college educations) means nothing to the government. The fact that they might have $100,000 in school loan debt which they want to pay off as fast as possible means nothing. Doing the right thing, investing in education, buying and improving property, and raising responsible children means nothing to the government.

    "Class Warfare" is the new term for "Equality." The poor can only improve their lot by making the richer less well-off. That sounds fair, doesn't it? In whose eyes? For which party? In some cultures, it is unheard of to look at the finances and the "stuff" that other people have. In fact, that was the mindset of our earlier (legal) immigrants. That was the attitude of my parents and grandparents. That was the mindset of our Founders. They wisely protected all those opportunities for individuals to attain the same station in life. We aren't supposed to covet the things that others have.

    "Three years after the 'Hope and Change' president took office, Hope turns out to mean high taxes and lots of regulations, and Change consists of celebrating the government's takeover of General Motors.. The Great Uniter is all about class warfare... It's one thing to beat up on the big banks that caused the financial crisis; it's another to hammer any family that earns a combined income of $250,000 a year as "millionaires," pretending they didn't work for their success and thus ought to pay the government more hard-earned money." (Charles Gasparino).

    Barack Obama based his entire State of the Union address around envy, pointing to tax disparity as proof. As Gasparino says: "The tax code is indeed a glaringly obvious problem. It pits every constituency against the rest, and Leftists are especially adept at exploiting that to wage class warfare." Obama's tired rhetoric continues to be that the rich don't pay their "fair share." In his State of the Union address, he stated: "If you make $100,000 - 250,000 a year, like 98% of American families do, then your taxes shouldn't go up." Where did he get that data? If that were indeed the case, we wouldn't need entitlements and there would be no class warfare, right? Obama continued: "You're the ones struggling with rising costs and stagnant wages. You're the ones who need relief." What he neglected to mention is that it is his administration's own policies that are causing such struggles. In other words, he wants the wealthy to do more to support his failing government policies. He wants the wealthy to relieve his corrupt policies of blame.

    The money that goes to the federal government is a combination of income tax and payroll taxes. Those who want the rich to pay more attack the amounts they pay in capital gains and estate taxes. They pay too little, they cry. Obama mislead the American people by alleging that Warren Buffett pays as much in income tax as his secretary. He provided a new sound-bite for the class-warriors when he said: "You can call this class warfare all you like, but asking a billionaire to pay as much as his secretary is simply common sense." First of all, Buffett's secretary, whom Obama deceptively tried to pass off as being in the same category as the typical office secretary that many of our mothers were, is believed to earn between $200,000 and $500,000 per year. I have a PhD, 2 Masters, and assorted other degrees and I will never see that kind of salary in my life. Second of all, the amount each person pays is automatically progressive according to that person's income. A billionaire who pays 30% in taxes clearly pays tons more in taxes than a secretary who pays 30% on $200,000. It's just simple math. Buffett says that the rich have lobbyists to try to lower the estate and capital gains taxes and that's why they should be vilified and that's why the middle and poor class are right in hating them, but he misses the point. Everyone paying taxes is paying at least a "fair share," even if they are all paying the same percentage and sometimes even if they are paying even a little less. What "services" does a man get back from the government when he pays $9 million in taxes, for example [30% of $30 million in taxable income]. The bottom line is that everyone paying taxes receives the same benefits from the government. Well, that isn't exactly true, right? Those who don't work and those earning below the poverty limit certainly receive a whole lot more services and benefits.

    Mitt Romney has released his tax records and is being criticized as having paid "too little in income tax." Certainly he is a wealthy man; he earned more than $20 million in taxable income in each of the last two years for which he released returns. But he paid exactly what he was required under the law. Because his income was entirely from short-term capital gains (the money earned on the profit realized on the sale of a non-inventory asset that was purchased at a lower price), his tax rate was around 15%. Unnoticed and therefore not taken into consideration by those criticizing him, however, is that most of that money was taxed already at the corporate rate of 35% before it was ever paid to him. So the government certainly got its money. While Democrats criticize Romney's unfairly low burden and point to this as the very reason to attack the rich, when John Kerry paid only 13% in 2004, they remained noticeably silent. Americans have to get over the mindset that just because a man is wealthy, he must have become so because he screwed over poorer people and therefore it's OK to hate him, envy him, and take his money. We could easily say the reverse.. Poorer people tend to stay in their socioeconomic class and not move upward because they're screwing over richer people.

    The sad thing is that Americans are so out of touch with their founding documents and have become so ignorant with respect to the values on which our country was founded that they aren't posing the most fundamental question of all: "Why should the government even have the right to tax so many aspects of an individual's property?" The layers of taxation is incredible. The government is charged with securing an individual's "life, liberty, and property," and should always be looking for ways to allow Americans to keep what is theirs under natural law and not for more and more ways to "convert" the people's money to its own uses. Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, is bothered by the fact that most people only seem to care about the fairness of the tax system as it relates to how much taxes rich people are paying. He explains: "When a government that has overspent for years turns to tax increases instead of spending cuts simply for the sake of "fairness," it weakens free enterprise, lowers opportunity and impoverishes us in many ways."

    According to Obama and his supporters, there are Americans who aren't paying "their fair share." But the facts and figures simply don't back him up. The top 1% of Americans pay 38% of the federal income tax burden. The top 5% of Americans pay 60% of the federal income tax burden. The top 10% of Americans pay at least 70% of the federal income tax burden. The middle class pays 15.1% of the federal income tax burden. And half of Americans don't pay any federal income taxes at all and contribute essentially nothing to the funding of our government. In fact, a good chunk of that last category actually "makes money" under our current tax system. It is, after all, a wealth redistribution scheme. And that, by definition, is forcing some people to work to support others, which is unfair and unconstitutional. But perhaps Obama was referring to the capital gains tax not being high enough. The short-term capital gains tax is already 33% - the highest since 1978. (Long-term is 15%, which was a result of the 2003 Bush tax cuts, and then extended by Congress through 2012).

    How dare US politicians exploit and intensify class warfare. It was class warfare - the hatred for the rich - which led to the 16th Amendment and then the vast expansion of government. Why single out the rich? Why not look at ordinary tax cheats? According to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, more than 450,000 active and retired federal employees failed to file tax returns in 2005. Those taxes totaled over $3 million. Timothy Geithner, Obama's Treasury Secretary, failed to pay his taxes, and so did Rep. Charles Rengel. There are many others. Former IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti testified back in 2002 that there is a "tax gap," which is the amount of tax owed that will never be collected. In 2002, that amount was a whopping $30 billion. Recently, the IRS reported that 36 of Obama's executive office staff owe some $833,970 in back taxes, and thousands of federal employees owe back taxes totaling $3.4 billion. Why aren't tax cheats the subject of the president's economic recovery policy? Isn't this what we are talking about - or should be talking about - when we refer to those "not paying their fair share." Why is it always the rich who are to blame when there isn't enough money for government to spend recklessly?

    Note the hypocrisy of our President. On Dec. 5, 2008, Obama's transition team told Finance Committee staff that Geithner had not paid social security or self-employment taxes on income received from the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2004. In 2005, the IRS audited Geithner for tax years 2003 and 2004, and he was ordered to pay back taxes and interest -- but no penalties!! Imagine that. Even after a pattern of willingly and intentionally not paying taxes for 4 years, he was not required to pay any penalties, which would have totaled $16,732. But wait a minute, the IRS only looked at 2003-2004. Geithner was not compelled to pay taxes for 2001 and 2002. [The statute of limitations had expired, and the IRS did not have the authority to enforce any policies in these years.] The Senate Finance Committee characterized those errors as "honest mistakes." Does this sound reasonable or does it sound like political cronyism? In all fairness (cough, cough), when Obama was getting ready to nominate him to the Treasury position, Geithner was "pressured" to voluntarily pay those taxes, but all he paid was $25, 970 as a total for both years.

    Tim Geithner repeatedly failed to adhere to tax law, from 2001 through 2004. He is a bona fide serial tax cheat. If it weren't for an IRS audit, he would never have paid any taxes. He was hoping to take advantage of the statute of limitations and cheat the system. Only when the opportunity to become Treasury Secretary presented itself did Geithner pay his back-taxes from the former two years. Learning of his pattern of cheating, President Obama chose to ignore them and nominated him to the post anyway - with the Senate's consent, of course.

    And what about charitable giving? In 2011 alone, Mitt Romney gave more than 19% of his income to various charities, including the Mormon Church. He donated more in charitable giving than in federal taxes, although the latter wasn't a donation but rather a legal obligation, under penalty of fines and jail time (that's only because he's not a Democrat). The Obamas, on the other hand, gave just 1% of their income to charity between 2000 and 2004, but increased it to 5% by 2007. Joe Biden gave $369 (you read that correctly) the year before becoming vice president, and just $5,350 in 2010. "A reasonable conclusion is that because "liberals" are so miserly with their money, they think the only way to "spread the wealth" around is through forced taxation." (The Patriot Post).

    Indeed, Obama has a monopoly on hypocrisy. It oozes from his lips every time he speaks. But the majority of Americans are too brainwashed or ignorant to know this to be true. Near the end of his State of the Union address, he said: "No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together. We're great because we have each other's backs." What he really was too cowardly to say was this: "The rich must do more to have the backs of the poor." (Wow, that rhymes).

    Not one time in any of his speeches has he addressed how the "lifestyle freeloaders" help benefit anyone other than themselves? What should they be required to be disposed of in order to serve the nation? The taxpayers are disposed of their earnings (property) and their precious time (working 3-4 months to pay Uncle Sam). The conversations coming from our President and his party have to stop being one way. Cutting entitlement and other government programs will cut the need for increasing tax revenue and perhaps even do something magical, like force people to take education seriously (have you spent any time in the public school system lately and seen which students aren't putting any effort in because they already know where their paychecks will be coming from?), force people to develop skills and become ambitious, curb teen pregnancy, prevent so many women from having babies when they aren't married, and lower the out-of-control birthrate of those who can't raise their children properly and make sure they go to school and excel. People will finally start doing the responsible thing, such as applying themselves in school, taking care of their health, taking care of their communities (because they have to work to pay for upkeep and repair, to protect their investments), and having only as many children as they can reasonably support and raise. But these common-sense ideas are never discussed by a Democrat. Why not? Imagine the great benefit to society if these things could happen. So many problems would be solved. In fact, their knee-jerk response to such talk is to cry "racism" - even though color has nothing to do with this discussion. But they will find a way to make it about color... they always do. And even if they claim that that such a solution would "disenfranchise" people of color, the next question should be "why?" Then they should do some further objective analysis. Because, as Obama said in his State of the Union address... we all must make this country together - not just one group or another.
2012 presidential Candidate, and former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich
    Newt Gingrich recently said: "What allows one group of people to believe they have the right to determine what's best for the lives of others and the right to take what they need for that agenda? We have gone the full spectra in the rights of man with respect to government: We replaced the divine right of Kings with the divine right of the individual to the divine right self-righteous groups."

    Members of society must accept that individual effort determines income, and that all have a right to enjoy the fruits of their effort. Equality is in the opportunity, not the status. Equality of wealth will ultimately make every man poor and sluggish and equality of social condition will ultimately lead to complete social decay.

    Background:

    Earlier I stated that the government has an obligation to protect the rights of citizens equally. After all, it expressly says so under the 14th Amendment. This amendment, after all, has not only been used to give rights to every group under the sun but it has also been used to give spirit to the Court's broad powers as judicial activists. Schools were not only desegregated (legislative segregation was ended under Brown), but they were judicially mandated to use bussing and other artificial means to mix the races and reach acceptable "quotas" in school districts, even if it meant using extensive plans to move students around. Surely, the "Equal Protection" clause must extend to the most basic of fundamental rights.... the right to property. After all, men and women convert the fruits of their mind and their creativity (intellectual property), the benefits of their personality, ethics, etc (good will, which is also an intellectual property), and the fruits of their labor into compensation. Salaries and other investments are converted "property."