Tea Party Critique

I'd like to draw your attention to the sign at the top of this picture, in between the two arrows.  I'd like to suggest the answer is, must be, no.  No, no no no and no.  No, you can't, and no, there's no rational argument that you can.  The only time you can get away with not paying taxes is by leaving the country.  Because simply by living in a community protected by a police department means you benefit from tax dollars.  What would Tea Party-ers say to Americans who would refuse to pay taxes in protest of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars?  This just cannot be done.  See Stranger than Fiction: You get audited, and you will lose.

Taxes pay for:
Police, Fire Fighters, Military, Medicare/Medicaid, Public Schools, Street Signs, Coast Guard, Road Maintenence, Welfare, Social Security, Public Campaign, Finance, NOAA (which tracks the weather), Customs, FBI, CIA, Courtrooms, Prisons, Garbage Collection, Nuclear Weapon Upkeep/Security, Foreign Aid, Disaster Relief, Snow Removal, NASA, Water Treatment, The Post Office and my God the list goes on!

I can't see anything there to actually disagree with.  Nonetheless, by living in America, one benefits greatly from tax dollars.  Simply by having a police force, crime is lowered.  Or rather, without a police force, crime will rise.  The CIA prevented various terrorist attacks.  You can argue the methods were unnecessary, you can argue the methods spurred more attacks, but you can't argue that some attacks were prevented.  I'm trying to think of something paid for by taxes worth disagreeing about and can't think of anything whatsoever.

I personally cannot understand the distaste towards taxes people have.  Taxes provide an incredible number of services, and those usually help in times of crisis.  You don't need to pay the police to pursue a thief, because you already have.  And the police don't serve rich people more than poor people, the money all comes from the same place (though tax-funded services tend to be better in richer districts than in poorer districts).  So in response to the picture on the left, yes, the federal government is definately dependent on your taxes.  And you are dependent on their services.  Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) suggested a $300 tax break for all Americans, and this idea was rightfully shot down.  Better use $300 X (# of Americans) for a large and substantial investment, than to give it back.  The public investment could help people.  All the $300 would do would make people feel better and they would deposit the money in their bank account, or pay back a loan (or interest on a loan).  None of that stimulates the economy at all.

The final issue is taxation and representation.  The idea of representation is this: you can only tax me if I give my consent.  Well, sort of.  Well, kind of.  Well, not really at all.  History lesson:

Under British Constitutional law (yes, they had a constitution), all taxes had to be voted on by Parliament.  Parliament was made up of representatives voted in by the citizens of certain provinces to represent them.  And so the people's representatives voted for taxes.  Except the colonists had no representatives.

This is utterly not true in America.  We have elections every 2 years, which given the amount of time needed for campaigns is about as often as is practical.  You can disagree with an elected official, and you can even disagree with the elected official you voted for, but to say you aren't represented is just foolish.  If you really no one is representing your views, vote in elections and lobby congresspeople.  It might help to make sure you have a bloc of people who will also vote for your representative,  but you can't say your suffering "taxation without representation."  To claim that you either must be a liar or not understand how representative democracy works.  Or you live in Washington DC, which does actually have taxation without representation. Hence the license plate.

James Thomas must be disbarred!