Taxation With Representation

"The power to tax is the power to destroy." - Daniel Webster, McCulloch v. Maryland 1819

               King George III thought it was a good idea, too.
           The French and Indian War had left him short on money and the British Empire was deeply in debt. Hard pressed to pay for the troops stationed in North America, he and his advisors found the perfect solution.
           Tax the colonies and let them pay for it! After all, it’s always better when you're using other people's money, especially if those people are "your subjects.” And if you can teach them a lesson at the same time, all the better.
           The taxes followed – on paper, paint, lead glass, tea, sugar -- commodities the colonists were only allowed to buy from Great Britain. -- On all printed materials -- legal documents, magazines, newspapers to be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp.
           And the Townshend Act topped it off by generating revenue for the Crown while also punishing the colonists to show them who was boss.
           New York’s Assembly powers were suspended for failure to comply with the 1765 Quartering Act, but more importantly, part and parcel of the Act were writs of assistance (general search warrants) that gave customs officials broad powers to search houses and businesses for smuggled goods.
          The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend, designed the Act to raise revenue, keep control of the colonies, but tellingly, to establish the precedent that the British Parliament had the right to tax the colonies.
          Precedents have that power.
          The colonials responded. They petitioned, explained and pled for relief from these excesses. But George didn’t listen because he didn’t care. They were just his "subjects” after all, a faceless, cheap source of income for his projects.
           Eventually it all fell apart and the colonists began the process of severing ties. They took to the streets -- the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre -- and finally, inevitably, a full blown revolutionary war.
           The "why” was explained in the Declaration of Independence.
           "In every stage of these Oppressions,” the document states, "we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
            "A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which might define a Tyrant, is unfit to be a ruler of a free people.”
            Americans don’t like being taxed without being represented. Come to think of it, Americans don’t much like being taxed while being represented for that matter. They take being a "free people” seriously.
             In addition, Americans don’t much like being lied to.
            Take Obamacare for instance. Obama stumped for election on no tax increases for the middle class and later on specifically said the Affordable Health Care Law was not a tax. In 2009, in fact, he told George Stephanopoulos exactly that.
            "For us to say you have to take responsibility and get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase…Nobody considers that a tax increase.”
            Nobody except the Supreme Court.
            The decision was one that would have sent John Grisham to his legal pad to scratch out a sequel to "The Pelican Brief.” All of a sudden the American middle class found itself knee deep in taxes, just like the days before representation.
            They discovered that their financial and personal "homes” could be intruded upon by a bevy of thousands of new IRS agents who have "writs of assistance” to turn every aspect of their lives inside out and upside down, to levy penalties or uncover details that will merit penalties, just like the days before representation.
            Speculation and mind-reading became the only way to read the Supreme Court decision. But at last private businessmen had certainty as to what the future held for them from an administration that they knew was anti-business and so did the rest of Americans. It was nothing good.
            The law contains more than 20 new or higher taxes on the American people, some timed out so they don’t take effect until Obama thinks he will take office once again after November 2012.
             It imposes the highest taxes ever imposed on the American people, 65 percent of whom didn’t want the bill at all, at a time of a jobless and wageless recovery, with real unemployment at a 15 percent level and has made the largest manpower expansion at the IRS necessary to enforce the law since withholding taxes were introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.
             "Stealth” taxes which will kick in on January 1, 2013 will include those that will raise the cost of healthcare to us ordinary folks, taxes on medical device manufacturers, increased Medicare taxing on those with incomes of $200,000, increased Medicare taxes on capital gains and on and on.
            Who could have known? I guess not President Obama. Even though he’s given a boat load of speeches, he never told us that. Or maybe he didn’t read the law and didn’t know? That’s probably why he continues to insist he would not and is not burdening the middle class with increased taxes.
            In the final analysis, maybe Justice Roberts was right. Maybe it is not the job of the Supreme Court to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.
           And maybe Justice Taney was right in the Dred Scott decision when the Court concluded that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. Perhaps it really was a good try at settling the issue of slavery.
           For that matter, maybe none of our elected and chosen representatives owe us anything, just like the colonies were owed nothing from jolly old England.
           Attorney General Eric Holder doesn’t owe us the courtesy of responding to a Congressional Committee's request for documents. President Obama doesn’t owe us the duty of respect for the separation of powers. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the Justice Department don’t owe us or any of our "colonies” compliance with immigration laws or protection from lawsuits aimed at them from the government.
          Because as it turns out, during this administration, it has been decided by fiat and flat out arrogant defiance that they don’t have to do their jobs, at least not the ones they were hired to do.
          But here’s the thing. They do owe allegiance to upholding the Constitution. They swore to that. We already did the revolution and severing ties thing to underscore our point. And then we drafted the Constitution we have and really like, even though Justice Ginsburg says she personally would not recommend it to Egypt.
          Justice Taney may have been thinking ahead, or capitulating to political pressure, just like Justice Roberts, we’ll never know, but after his ruling there came the Civil War.
          King George III may have had a lot on his mind with the sun never setting on the British Empire and all that going on, but after his tyrannical treatment of the colonies, there came the Revolutionary War.
          Maybe someone, somewhere in the government thinks we the people have changed. Maybe they think they can misrepresent, not represent and lie to us and we’ll roll over and play dead?
          Nope. On this Fourth of July, 2012, Americans are as passionate as ever, as adamant as ever in our determination that we will not tolerate tyrants. That’s what elections are for.
          Hold the line, America.