Publicola

Carl F. Worden is not happy about how Fox News treated the Kuglin case. If you've not scrolled down the page in the last day or two you can find a previous post on the Kuglin case here.

From Mr. Worden's article:

"Instead of reasonably discussing the rule of law and the particulars involved in the case, Hannity railed and tried to shame Kuglin for getting away with not paying taxes all the rest of us Americans have to pay. It was well beyond deliberate, and his antagonistic comments lacked any form of relevance to the actual case.

There was no question Fox had been tapped to prejudice any potential juror who might serve in a civil prosecution the IRS may bring against Kuglin in the future. I am beyond certain that was their intent. As a result, I have completely lost all respect for Fox News, and they will never regain it again. Bill O’Reilly and his gang are government brown-nosed chumps.

It will be interesting to see what the IRS does now. They lost their criminal case against Kuglin in a huge way. In order to get a criminal conviction, they had to prove Kuglin intended to violate the law."

Now some years ago I read Irwin Schiff's book The Federal Mafia: How it Illegally Imposes & Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes. That was of course before a Nevada judge banned said book.
All in all Mr. Schiff seemed like a fairly intelligent person. I didn't agree with every theory he had, but I understand the logic he used most of the time to arrive at those theories. He did however make a few very good points & raised some very important questions. Unfortunately the judge that presided over the case did not entertain those questions or theories. In fact if you want to read an account of a judge who should look for honest work, pick up Mr. Schiff's book. Granted, it's told from Mr. Schiff's perspective, but if the accounts of the judge's conduct are true then you'll put it down a lot more distrustful of our legal system than you were when you picked it up.

I have cuaght the occassional news story on Mr. Schiff or other 'tax protestors' as the media likes to call them. The common thread to all these news stories has been a reporter with a slight scowl stating part of a 'tax protestors' arguments then putting on a smug grin as he/she says the IRS has addressed these issues & that they're frivilous. They never offer any more detail than that.

That seems to be what Fox has done in the Kuglin case, according to Mr. Worden. They didn't bother to get into the real issues & instead were content with assurring everyone they have to pay their income taxes. No serious treatment of the questions that the IRS has yet to answer. Instead the magic word 'frivilous' is spoken. I believe 'frivilous' by their definition would mean 'so far beyond question there's no need to explain further'.

That is disappointing. I expected better from a news channel that built itself up on a reputation of fairness.

Now how, you may ask, do I feel about the progressive income tax system we have? I look at it this way:

Imagine that I came to your neighborhood & told you I wanted to take 10% of your net income per week as collateral against a percentage of your net yearly income that would be tallied later at which point either I would give back a small percentage of what I took or you'd pay some lump some on top of what I took. I would tell you that this money would be used for community projects, like common protection & pension plans. I wouldn't mention, but you'd know that your money would also go towards causes that you may be in direct oppossition to. I'd tell you that to make sure you're not 'cheating' us we'd be able to look at your bank accounts, credit cards & even come in your house & look at your private records. I would then inform you that if you didn't pay I would come back with my boys & our machine guns (which you cannot easily possess) & we'd take you to our place & lock you up for a number of years & still take the money I said you owe us even if we had to sell all your property for pennies on the dollar to do it.

Now how would you feel about me? As long as a certain percent of the money went to things you liked, or you got a small percent of your weekly donation back at the end of the year, would that make me any less a common thief running a protection racket?

So is it any different that the common thieves are agents of government, or the protection racket was put in place by people we elected to represent us? Or more accurately by people our granparents & great granparents elected to represent them.

There's a much better way of doing things. Go visit Fairtax.org. They have a plan to eliminate the progressive income tax with a national sales tax. I'm not happy about the rate as i always felt the best thing we can do to Congress is cut their allowance, but it's a much better less intrusive system than the one we have now.

With a national sales tax replacing the progressive income tax, we could for th emost part eliminate the IRS. The government wouldn't have a justification for snooping in our financial records. We wouldn't have to spend x amount of time filing paperwork for the government. We wouldn't have x percent of our paychecks 'withheld' every week. We wouldn't have to deal with the dreaded 'audit'. Since employers wouldn't have to pay half our 'withholding' then either wages could increase slightly or an employer could invest in the business & possibly create more jobs. The average person wouldn't be in danger of prosecution if they make a simple math error on a federal form, nor would they face jail time if they misunderstood an overly complex & confusing section of federal law. & we'd finally be back in compliance with the Constitution's original limitations of federal taxing power.

But then again that would mean a sizable chunk of federal power would be lost, so opposition to this idea will be stiff to say the least.

here's another question to ponder: If we payed the income tax in one lump sum & wrote the check out a week before elections, do you think we'd have anyone in office who champinoned the progressive tax system? It's no coincidence that we're hit up every week & that any remaining balance is due almost 6 months before an election.

So go over to Fairtax.org , read what they have to say & if you agree then let your Senator & Representative know how you feel.


& please let me know if any of the lawyer bloggers post on this. I am mildly suprised that no one at the Volokh Conspiracy or Instapundit have blogged about the Kuglin decision yet.