Marshall, Jesus, and Obama on Taxes

          In 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy, because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”  Almost 200 years later these words still resonate.

          Destructive taxation is nothing new.  In Jesus’ day, Roman taxes on the people of Palestine were so oppressive, they caused repeated Jewish uprisings.  The subject of taxation comes up again and again in the Gospels.  Jesus did not advocate rebellion (“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s…”), but when his following grew, it caught the attention of the Romans.  Not willing to see this popular movement grow into a revolt, they killed him.

          Jesus was a man of peace, but he understood very well the consequences of confiscatory taxation.  The line “Give us this day our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer is a direct reference to the consequence of excessive taxation.  A farmer who was no longer able to pay his taxes lost his farm and therefore his ability to make daily bread for his family.  The many poor who had been driven from their homes by the Romans knew exactly what Jesus was talking about.

          In this Land of Plenty are we approaching the limit beyond which we can no longer bear taxation?  The Romans taxed their subjects to fund their military exploits.  One might argue that we do the same in this country, but a marked decrease in defense spending advocated by this administration defuses that argument.  Rather, the purpose of increased taxation in the United States is the funding of out-of-control spending programs it cannot afford.  ObamaCare, with its vast array of subsidies and mandates, plus a projected trillion dollars added to the federal deficit in the next decade, is the latest and most egregious example of this policy.  At the heart of it is a socialist ideology that equates justice with the redistribution of wealth, but is in fact a means to increase government control over an increasingly dependent populace.     

          Elections are the constitutionally prescribed means of reversing the tax and spend policies of Progressives in the Senate and the White House.  Conservatives see the elections in November as their best chance to regain the Senate.  But we will still have to contend with Obama and his extra-constitutional executive powers and his regulatory juggernaut for another three years.

          Can we wait that long?  Americans have not revolted against tyrannical government in over 200 years.  But history has a way of repeating itself.  Before we declared our independence from Britain in 1776, we had the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party in 1773.  Before the presidential elections of 2016 we have a rancher backed by gun-toting supporters facing down federal agents over grazing rights in Nevada.  The King of England sent troops to occupy Boston.  Will the monarch in Washington send the military to suppress the new freedom fighters in Nevada?

Athletes and Students

          In Vermont, the highest paid public employee is the hockey coach.  In 26 other states, the highest paid is the football coach.  In baseball, two major league teams have four players pulling in over $20 million each for 2014; the Los Angeles Dodgers alone have a payroll of $235,295,000; Alex Rodriguez in his last full season (2012) made $32 million, an average of $253,968 per hit.  By comparison, Kobe Bryant in that year earned $28 million or $37,940 per basket, and Payton Manning at $20 million cashed in $600,000 per touchdown.

          To state the obvious, there is a lot of money to be made in sports.  But the mega bucks go only to the top tier.  For every college coach making a million dollars, there are a hundred who toil for peanuts.  For every baseball millionaire there are hundreds hoping to make it out of the minor leagues while riding buses and living on meager meal allowances.  There are legions of kids honing their skills on playground basketball courts who will never achieve their dream of being among NBA players who average $5.15 million a year.

          There is nothing wrong with dreaming of making it big.  Sports is one way, but I would argue that chances of reaching millionaire status are not much better than the odds of winning a state lottery.  In fact, sports stars account for only a tiny portion of the famous 1% at the top of the earnings heap. 

          The value of sports, for me, lies in ways not measured by dollar signs.  As a young man I played them all: baseball, football, basketball, hockey, even tennis.  Because I was short, slow, and not very strong, I discovered early on that I had no future as an athlete.   But that didn’t prevent me from learning the value of competition, teamwork, and sportsmanship.  And because I seldom found myself on the winning side, I also learned to appreciate the value of success and the opportunity to achieve it. 

          In many ways the sports arena is like the classroom.  Like in sports, not everyone can rise to the top of the class; few earn PHDs.  But unlike sports, where the pyramid is very narrow at the top, the classroom can provide every student the knowledge and skills that will open up opportunities in any number of fields.  Every kid with a proper education can become good at something and enjoy a measure of success in life. 

          Sadly, we have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, too many young people these days spurn education.  Having disdained the opportunity of acquiring knowledge and skills, they leave school with no hope for the future, no aspirations for success, and no chance of ever becoming a productive member of society.  In this Land of Opportunity, there is no greater tragedy.

A bunch of Shameless Liars

               The mendacity of this administration and its sycophants in Congress knows no bounds, nor does its hypocrisy.  And both are motivated by politics.

               Take just one small example.  On April 4^th President Obama issued another of his famous executive orders to “make sure” (a favorite expression of his that masquerades as leadership) that women get paid the same as men when working in comparable jobs.  The announcement did not mention that women working in the White House have been getting paid up to 18% less than men for years.  There may be legitimate reasons for this disparity, but they apply equally to the working population at large.  Actually, there was no need for Obama’s executive order, since pay discrimination based on sex was outlawed by the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that he signed into law in 2009.  So why the need for the executive order?  Politics, pure and simple: the Democrats need to shore up their base for the upcoming elections, and anything that may sway women voters is good politics.

               Earlier this month we got a much bigger example of political mendacity when we heard from Mike Morrell, a key witness in the Benghazi affair.   We now know that Mr. Morrell, who was the acting director of the CIA at the time of the Benghazi murders, is the one who changed the talking points that Susan Rice used to blame the Benghazi attacks on a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islamic video.  He also excised from the talking points the mention of al Qaida’s involvement at a time when President Obama was taking credit for al Qaida’s downfall.  It is now clear that Morrell, who knew the truth about the assault, crafted his bald-faced lies to protect the president who was facing re-election. 

               Curiously, it just so happens that when Morrell left the CIA, he went to work for Beacon Global Strategies, a think tank supporting Hillary Clinton. The former Secretary of State, we all remember, accepted responsibility for the lack of security at our Benghazi compound and also lied publicly and to the families of the deceased about the nature of the attacks.   But, according to her, “What difference does it make?”

               Mendacity and hypocrisy, not to mention cynicism, obfuscation, and imperial arrogance, have been the hallmark of this administration. These people are congenitally incapable of shame.