But the lusts of government for our money are infinite. Taxing the rich wasn't enough to pay for World War I, Social Security, World War II, the Cold War, Medicare, Medicaid, the Global War on Terror (GWOT), Obamacare, food stamps, Section 8 housing, the federal takeover of education, farm subsidies, etc. So the income tax quickly was extended to almost everybody with a heartbeat who went to work.

The Social Security/FICA/Payroll tax really is an income tax. So is Medicare. So will be the Obamacare tax. These programs are sold as being “insurance” policies. Except the money is not stored somewhere. It's not invested in securities or stocks, as with a life insurance policy you might take out with a private company. There's no vault where your money is kept until you need it. It's all spent on current recipients and government functionaries.

For a while, a Social Security “surplus” piled up, as the Baby Boomers paid into the system more than was taken out by their retired parents. But that “surplus” never was invested; it all was spent on current programs. Nothing was saved. Now, the Boomers themselves are retiring. Their birth rate was less than half that of their parents, meaning there aren't enough replacements-slaves to keep the system solvent. So the “surplus” is gone, contributing to the massive federal deficits.

Revenue Act

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute put up a good piece on the income tax:

[O]n this day in 1913, one of America’s worst Presidents, Woodrow Wilson, signed into law the Revenue Act of 1913, which imposed the income tax.

The law signed that day by President Wilson, to be fair, wasn’t that awful. The top tax rate was only 7 percent, the tax form was only 2 pages, and the entire tax code was only 400 pages. And a big chunk of the revenue actually was used to lower the tax burden on international trade (the basic tariff rate dropped form 40 percent to 25 percent).

But just as tiny acorns become large oak trees, small taxes become big taxes and simple tax codes become complex monstrosities. And that’s exactly what happened in the United States.

We now have a top tax rate of 39.6 percent, and it’s actually much higher than that when you include the impact of other taxes, as well as the pervasive double taxation of saving and investment.

And the relatively simply tax law of 1913 has metastasized into 74,000 pages of Byzantine complexity.

Not to mention that the tax code has become one of the main sources of political corruption in Washington, impoverishing us while enriching the politicians, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and interest groups. Or the oppressive and dishonest IRS.

However, even though I take second place to nobody in my disdain for the income tax, the worst thing about that law is not the tax rates, the double taxation, or the complexity. The worst thing is that the income tax enabled the modern welfare state.

Before the income tax, politicians had no way to finance big government. Their only significant pre-1913 sources of revenue were tariffs and excise taxes, and they couldn’t raise those tax rates too high because of Laffer Curve effects (something that modern-day politicians sometimes still discover).

Once the income tax was adopted, though, it became a lot easier to finance subsidies, handouts, and redistribution. As you can see from the chart, the federal government used to be very small during peacetime.

But as the decades have passed, the Leviathan state in Washington has grown. And in the absence of genuine entitlement reform, it’s just a matter of time before the United States morphs into a bankrupt European-style welfare state.

And as government becomes bigger and bigger, diverting more and more resources from the productive sector of the economy, we can expect more stagnation and misery.

That’s why October 3 is an awful day in American history. All the bad results described above were made possible by the income tax.

Editor’s note: This first appeared on UnionWatch.org.

May 7, 2012

By Larry Sand

Last month, the drone-like National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel gave a talk at the annual gathering of the Nebraska State Education Association. The California Teachers Association is an affiliate of the NEA.

Van Roekel unleashed the same tired old class warfare hogwash that teacher union leaders have been yammering about for years. The latest version of this old whine stresses closing corporate tax loopholes. As I wrote earlier, the NEA claims the U.S. can recoup $1.5 trillion in taxes if those greedy corporate types would just pay their “fair share.” Van Roekel conveniently omits the fact that NEA took in $400 million in 2010-2011, mostly in dues forcibly taken from its members, and didn’t pay one red cent in taxes.

Van Roekel then reprised another union mantra — claiming that NEA must pursue “social justice.” He said,

“You can’t have an organization with our core values and not care about social justice.”

“You can’t have a democracy and not care about social justice, whether it’s discrimination based on race or religion or sexual orientation, discrimination is discrimination and it’s wrong. And we as an organization have to stand up and say that.”

The subject of social justice — its history and damage that it has caused — could fill volumes. But here is an abridged version:

Social justice (SJ) is based on the concepts of human rights and egalitarianism, and involves fostering economic equality through progressive taxation along with income and property redistribution. Around since the late 19th Century, this philosophy made its foray into education in the early part of the 20th Century when John Dewey, a progressive, and his socialist partner, George Counts, challenged teachers to replace the development of each student’s individual talents with a focus on social justice.

The bedrocks of American culture and our economy — capitalism, individualism and competition — were frowned upon, to be replaced with distributive egalitarianism, collectivism and statism. Also paramount to the SJ movement was the socialization of children. Historically, schools had partnered with parents in reinforcing the values of the family. But over time, progressive educators came to assume a disproportionate role.

National philosophy

The progressive philosophy soon became part of the national zeitgeist with even President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, getting into the act. He said in a speech in 1914, “I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.” (Bold added.)

The effect of the SJ movement on education cannot be exaggerated. The changes were not dramatic at first, but over the years, SJ picked up steam. By the 1960s, SJ had become mainstream, especially in our nation’s colleges. University professors who spouted this poison did much damage, as many college students of that period became the tenured radicals who still infest our schools of higher education — most notably in the social science and education departments. And therefore today, our future teachers sit at the feet of ed school professors who teach them more about how to indoctrinate students than to prepare them for the more traditional “participation in public life as well as success in private life.”

As a result, in our elementary schools, instead of learning basic skills and the real history of the country, students are all too often taught nonsense like anti-racist math and that America is evil and can be saved only by a litany of progressive “isms” — environmentalism, feminism, socialism, etc. Several months ago, I reviewed Kyle Olson’s excellent book, “Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism,” which documents how public schools today are being used to turn children away from the ideals that have made this country extraordinary.

Political activism

By the time American students finish their K-12 indoctrination, they are primed for the big finale – the university. The seeds that were planted in the elementary schools come to a hideous bloom in college. Last month, the non-partisan California Association of Scholars came out with a scathing report, “A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California.” In his review of it, Peter Berkowitz wrote,

“The analysis begins from a nonpolitical fact: Numerous studies of both the UC system and of higher education nationwide demonstrate that students who graduate from college are increasingly ignorant of history and literature. They are unfamiliar with the principles of American constitutional government. And they are bereft of the skills necessary to comprehend serious books and effectively marshal evidence and argument in written work.”

Excluding from the curriculum those ideas that depart from the progressive agenda implicitly teaches students that conservative ideas are contemptible and unworthy of discussion. This exclusion, the California report points out, also harms progressives for the reason John Stuart Mill elaborated in his famous 1859 essay, “On Liberty”: “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”

Unfortunately, while many Americans do not ascribe to SJ tenets, too many of us are ignorant of its agenda or have become apathetic to its dangers. In 2009, admitted terrorist Bill “Mad Bomber” Ayers co-edited the “Handbook of Social Justice in Education,” a 792 page “Hate America First” manifesto which brazenly instructs teachers how to spread the collectivist dream to America’s children. As many of us emit a collective yawn, the poisoning of young minds continues unimpeded.

Is it any wonder that the “Occupy” movement is saturated with young people who, beyond a few clichés, cannot articulate what exactly it is that they are demonstrating against? They just know that some people have more money than other people and that’s just not fair. The regnant attitude is, “If you’re rich and I’m not, you owe me.”  If Dennis Van Roekel and his ideological comrades have their way, the dumbing down and radicalizing of American youth will ultimately destroy the very foundation of this society. But hey — everyone will be equal, all right — equally miserable.

About the author: Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network — a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

MARCH 27, 2012

By MICHAEL WARNKEN

I have been casually watching the events in San Francisco involving Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and the county Board of Supervisors. The sheriff recently plead guilty to misdemeanor domestic violence in an incident involving his wife on New Years Eve.

This very public incident has lead the mayor and city counsel to invoke a rarely used clause in San Francisco’s charter, enacted in 1995 by the voters, to suspend the Sheriff from his position. The Code in the City Charter is enacted as Section 15.105 (e) and allows government agents to be removed for misconduct in official positions.:

“Official misconduct means any wrongful behavior by a public officer in relation to the duties of his or her office, willful in its character, including any failure, refusal or neglect of an officer to perform any duty enjoined on him or her by law, or conduct that falls below the standard of decency, good faith and right action impliedly required of all public officers and including any violation of a specific conflict of interest or governmental ethics law. When any City law provides that a violation of the law constitutes or is deemed official misconduct, the conduct is covered by this definition and may subject the person to discipline and/or removal from office.”

What caught my attention over this is not so much the incident itself or the actions of the Sheriff leading up to it.  It is the fact that this is happening at all.  Most citizens are at least aware of the theory that America’’s system of government works with checks and balances. That theory is a wonderful one, except that in this day and age, it almost never happens.

This is an instance in which it seems to be happening.

On a daily basis, on CalWatchDog.com and other publications that I follow, I read about rampant misconduct in government. I also get information from friends dealing with various problems of corruption. They are trying (often in vain) to do something to set things right. Most of these issues are never dealt with, or dealt with in a cursory manner at best. Generally those who have been caught pilfering the community treasury, or just simply breaking their public trust, end up bowing out. After the news on that issue becomes stale, they move on to the next place and start anew. There is very little redress for those seeking it.

I have spent a tremendous amount time researching this area of the law as it angers me as well. It is disappointing that issues such as basic oversight and systematic accountability have become so arcane. I enjoy an opportunity such as this to dust off my knowledge in this area, since I am certain it is no longer taught in high school civics, much less is acted upon in real life.

Taxation With Representation

Our American founders revolted against the system England had put in place, which enacted taxes upon us without our having any say in the matter. After the Revolution, “The Deal” that we ended up with was that we would pay taxes so long as we had the ability to elect the representatives who voted on those taxes. Once we elected our representatives, even after we paid our taxes, they had to hear the petitions for redress that we sent to those elected.

Redress of grievances is the key part of the petition process with the representation deal. We have representatives so that we can petition them when we are harmed in some way, particularly when it involves the expenditures of public monies. Without this, we aren’t any better off than we were  when England governed us.

One legal scholar, Sai Prakash, summed up the removal process with great simplicity. Prakash is a Law Professor who used to clerk for a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and I consider his thoughts on the matter proper. He noted that all civil officers in government, regardless of their branch, hold their offices with the tenure of “good behavior”, and in the event that their actions came into question, we merely needed to hold a hearing into those actions. The process of investigating government employees should be done by the most proximate legislative entities. For most, that would be a City Council, a County Board of Supervisors or the California Legislature, depending on the actor in question.

Legislative Body

The legislative body was important in the political process because it had the duty of inquiry. Woodrow Wilson spoke of it as the main duty of a legislative body. He said:

“It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. . . and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and the disposition of the administrative agents of the government.””

And if a representative government failed to do this, then:

“. . .  the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served; . . . The argument is not only that discussed and interrogated administration is the only pure and efficient administration, but, more than that, that the only really self-governing people is that people which discusses and interrogates its administration.””

Petition

In Prakash’s theory (for which he had many examples that indeed played out in American and English history), a party harmed by a state actor needed only to present a petition listing the harms that actor had caused them. The legislative body would then set a hearing and the evidence would need to be examined. The actor who was accused of the misconduct had the right to due process and a fair trial. He had the right to see evidence and the persons making the claim against him. However, the legislative body had the right to hold a trial, and if they found that the actor had breached the tenure of good behavior, that person could then be removed from office.

This process can be applied to anyone holding any office of trust, whether collecting a paycheck from government or not. It also can be used even if there is no provision for it in the local charter and may not be used only if there is a specific constitutional limitation against it or a specific process that must be used. In some instances, such a process may be open to judicial review as the current instance looks to be headed.

This is more or less what is happening in San Francisco. The local charter gives the citizens a process to look into the actions of one of the government agents (the sheriff) and the mayor has initiated the process. To be sure, it is an uncomfortable process, and it can easily amount to public embarrassment and even the loss of a highly visible and cherished office.

However, that is the system of checks and balances that our founders set up for us. And if, from time to time, we do not use this system, then we are simply left cataloging the abuses we endure and are forced to pay for. I can only hope that this sparks more such actions against more public officials!