Taxes

I recently read this post by Rhymes With Right. The gist is that some anti-war people (hanguponwar.org) are refusing to pay an excise tax on their phone bills because it supports the military. Some phone companies are letting them do it and no one is being punished for tax evasion.

That's absurd. The thing that gets me is that a lot of the anti-war crowd is pretty well entwined with the political left. Those are the people who want government to give money to poor people. Or put another way, they want to force people into giving to charity.

What this looks like to me is that these people want to pick and choose what they fund. Well, I'm all for that.

I want to pick my charities and not be forced to give money to an oversized bureaucracy that does little except keep people dependent on it. I want to withhold money from various pork projects. I want to stop funding abortions. I want our garbage men to pick garbage off the curb instead of having fancy golf carts to drive down driveways. I want to keep my social security money. I want to withhold my funds from universities that use race as a factor in deciding who gets accepted. I don't want to pay for people who are in this country illegally to get drivers licenses. I want my governments to give back any money it has left over. They can get new money next year and if the people don't make as much, the government shouldn't have as much then either.

But if I try to withhold my tax money for any of those reasons, I'll be thrown in prison and my life is ruined. I guess the hanguponwar people are doing this for the "right" reason.

As a parting thought, remember that every time you vote for a levy or a tax increase, you are telling your neighbors, "I want you to pay for this or go to jail".

mwz