Taxes on Income or Taxes on Imports

I have been working on my taxes for the past few weeks.  Little at a time.  So much tedious record keeping, scouring through investment documents, adding up receipts, blah blah blah blah blah.  Trying to find anything to reduce my taxes.  I often have to pay more.

The United States didn’t have an income tax until 1913.  Prior to that, taxes on imports paid for almost our entire federal budget.  We also had taxes on whiskey and other hard liquors.

I have long argued that all foreign products coming into our country should be taxed.  Same rate all across the board.  This is not a penalty.  It’s just a means of taxation. 

A country has to decide how it wants to raise the money necessary to run the government.  For most of our nation’s history, that method was to tax products brought into our country.  Instead of taking money directly from the people, a tax on imports is a voluntary tax on those who choose to buy foreign products rather than domestic ones. 

This is criticized today by the term ‘protectionism’, as though somehow, we are supposed to think of that as being a bad thing.  Those who use that term try to shame businesses as being greedy b****** who only want to stifle competition to keep their prices and profits artificially high.  They seem to have forgotten that when you have half a dozen companies making televisions in our country, they are competitors, not colluders. 

You can always make something cheaper somewhere else in the world, so if there is no tax on imports, why not make the stuff somewhere else?  And they do.  Try to find something, anything, made in our country anymore. 

It’s in our country’s best interest to keep the jobs here.  Growing up, we always had access to foreign goods, and they always cost more.  And we didn’t mind paying more for them, because we were getting something unique.  But they were true foreign products, like Swiss chocolate, French wine, or Japanese cars.  Now most of them are American products made somewhere else and then sent back here.

They tell us that free trade is good, because everything is cheaper.  Again, growing up, people were supporting their families quite well on one income.  You could work in a grocery store stocking shelves and be able to support your family.  Now our government has sent millions of jobs overseas, and it wants us to be grateful that we can save a few bucks on things, which is good, because jobs aren’t paying what they used to.  The government ruins our economy and then tries to turn our attention somewhere else.

We used to make everything here.  We had plenty of jobs, and they were good paying jobs.  When we stopped taxing imports, the jobs left the country, and our economy has never been as good. 

We need to bring all the jobs back, and taxing imports is the main way of doing that.  If our government can control its spending, this will reduce the need for income taxes.

punishment beyond the law - a letter to the newspaper

If I am a professional painter, should I be barred from my profession because I physically hurt someone in an obviously one-sided confrontation?  We have laws and police and courts to decide my guilt and punishment.  Should I be deprived of being able to make a living at what I am best qualified to do as well?

Kareem Hunt and Addison Russell are professional athletes.  They both have done things for which they could be criminally charged. 

But the Tribune wants them to be punished beyond what the courts and law determine.  They want them to lose their livelihood.  Apparently, they would rather they flipped burgers than make more money than they do.

Are the NFL and MLB now in the criminal investigation business? 

The Cubs and the Bears aren’t hiring marriage counselors or spiritual advisers.  They are hiring athletes.  If Hunt and Russell have broken laws, we have courts, and they will determine the punishment.  The Tribune wants to punish them for the rest of their lives.

The Answer to the Government Shutdown and Border Wall

All children of illegal immigrants who have entered this country at least one day prior to the announcement of this bill will be granted amnesty with a normal path to citizenship under three conditions:

1)         The amnesty will take place upon completion of securing the border.  How is that determined?  When illegal border crossings have effectively ended.  When there are no more pictures of large groups of people crossing our borders.  Or any other criterion you can agree on.

2)         Any DACA recipient who receives amnesty will count against the total number of immigrants that we allow into the country legally from all other programs, including lottery and family programs.  If a million DACA recipients file for amnesty, they will replace one million other legal immigrants.  However, if there are other legal immigrant applicants with superior qualifications, such as needed skills, proven entrepreneurial ability, or are true refugees, e.g. fleeing persecution, these will be accepted first.  But in all cases, the number of legal immigrants will not be increased above the limit set by Congress. 

3)         DACA recipients can be removed from our country for crimes that endanger or harm other people, or if they are shown to be a burden to our society by an excessive burden on government assistance programs.

Why a census needs to ask about citizenship

So a judge has decided that the United States cannot ask on its census whether a person is a United States citizen or not.

What exactly does this judge believe is the purpose of the census? 

For those of you watching at home, the census is used to determine the number of Representatives in Congress that a state has and, consequently, the number of electors in the electoral college.  In modern times, a state’s population is also a factor in how much money a state might receive from the federal government. 

Ultimately the question is: how much should non-citizens affect the policies and programs of our country?

Too many of our political leaders have forgotten that our government exists for the welfare of the American people.  To put the interests of non-citizens over that of citizens or to use them as a means to pushing a political agenda or getting more money from the federal government is malfeasance of the highest order.  Politicians who do that should be reprimanded and removed from office.

Can a government truly be compassionate?

A Tribune column asked the question: Who has more compassion, Democrats or Republicans?

I think the whole premise is wrong.

Compassion is when someone sees a person in need and they voluntarily help to meet that need.  It is not compassion for someone to see a person in need and then take money from someone else without asking and then giving it to that person in need.  That’s politics in its worst form.

Our politicians keep finding more and more things that people are now entitled to and more and more people who are entitled to them that they are bankrupting our country with their ‘generosity.’

 

Don’t call it compassion.  Call it what it is: pandering.

The Democrats' plan to secure the border

The Democrats say they will talk about border security once the government opens up.  Can’t possibly do that now. 

But then they promised Reagan a wall in 1986. 

Congress hasn’t secured the border in 40 years.  Why would anybody think they are going to do it now?  If I were Trump, I would say: show me your plan. 

Why aren’t they working on their plan right now and presenting it to the American people? 

How’s that saying go?  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

The Biggest Problem with Immigration, and Nobody is Talking About It

It has become hard to discuss immigration in our country today, because if you have any misgivings about anything remotely related to it, everybody thinks it’s about race.  And now that I have noted the elephant in the room, everything I say will be considered to be code for race. 

But I must try.

Very simply, the United States was founded as a unique nation in history.  It was based on an idea.

Over the last several generations, we have added ten of millions of immigrants to our country, but we have not taught them the idea behind our country.  Oh, and we haven’t been teaching our own children either.

So now we have tens of millions of people who vote, run for office, and make laws, who have no idea about the founding principles of our country.

Is that a problem?

It is changing our country as much as if we had been conquered by an enemy nation, but because it has been happening slowly, over generations, even those who see the changes often don’t know how to explain them. 

Our children and all those who have come to our country have different views of what America is all about.  Every generation grows up with a new normal.  And those who come from other countries, we can only guess what they have been taught about our country.

Our country is based on the idea that God gave unalienable rights to human beings.  And, frankly, that is a Christian concept.  Islam does not know of unalienable rights.  And apart from Judaism, no other religion does either. 

The idea that we are a secular nation that views all religions equally is either a lie or a mistake.  And a very costly mistake at that.

Without Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights.  And without unalienable rights, you don’t have America.  It’s as simple as that.

The result of denying the Christian basis of human rights has been the creating of new human rights, but of a very different kind. 

Unalienable rights are things you can do without government permission, interference, or regulation.  Now rights are things that the government is responsible for giving to you. 

This generally requires a massive government and enormous amounts of money.  As our country shifted from a Christian basis to a secular one, government spending has exploded such that our federal government alone is $22 trillion in debt, and there is almost nothing to cut.  People are no longer responsible for the outcomes of their lives; the government is.

Thomas Jefferson, in that same document that talks about unalienable rights (the Declaration of Independence), said that our government exists to secure our unalienable rights; and if it doesn’t, we should alter or abolish it and make a new one. 

And this is exactly the state we are in today as a nation. 

I want my country back. 

How do you do a background check on an illegal immigrant? - a letter sent to the paper

The Democrats think we would all be safer if we had background checks for every person who bought a gun (January 9).

I would like a background check on every person who comes into our country. 

Of course, you can’t do that when you don’t even know who they are. 

Remember the old movies when a criminal was being hunted down and he made a mad dash for the border where he would be safe.  I wonder how many people from Mexico who are being hunted by the law see our border as their safe escape route.

White evangelical Christians and immigration - a letter sent to a newspaper

The Tribune took great delight in printing an opinion piece and a letter from white evangelical Christians who are in favor of immigrants.  Both pieces missed the bigger point, not seeing the forest for the trees.  No Christian would give their children’s college fund to an immigrant as a matter of course. 

Our country has always been generous to immigrants.

 

But for most of our nation’s history, it was individuals giving voluntarily to people in need.  Now we have people who have a right to be taken care of at the public’s expense.  Helping the poor is no longer voluntarily but compulsory as the government keeps looking for more things that people have a right to and keeps bringing in more people who also have a right to these things. 

This is the main reason our government is so deeply in debt and why cutting government spending has become almost impossible. 

When people can get more on welfare in our country than they can get working in their home country, we can’t keep up with the number of people looking to get some

Our country was built by immigrants before we had government-run welfare. and before everybody had a right to government money. 

Oh, and I too am a white evangelical Christian.