I put 3 posts on the same day.

But seriously, you know what the discussion is in France during a political campaign for office.

"Au lieu de toujours taxer le travail, il faut taxer le capital, déclare le candidat écologiste. Je dis ça sans haine, je ne suis pas dans la lutte des classes, mais je préfère taxer les machines plutôt que les hommes."

"TOUT PROFIT DOIT ÊTRE TAXÉ"

"Tout profit, quel qu'il soit, doit être taxé, estime encore M. Hulot. Il faut répartir convenablement l'effort, car aujourd'hui, plus vous gagnez d'argent, moins vous participez à la solidarité."

Translation:

"Instead of taxing work, it is necessary to tax capital," stated the green party candidate. "I am not hateful, I am not for the leveling of the classes, but I prefer to tax machines rather than people." (Aside: isn't that an awesome line)

"All profits ought to be taxed."

"All profits, wherever they come from , ought to be taxed," Mr. Hulot says again. " It is necessary to divide appropriately the effort, because today, the more money you earn, the less you participate in the community and purpose of the nation."

Article 1
Section 8

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

[SOURCE: Government Archive site]

Some folks that I know and have met somehow believe that there is no constitutional authority to collect taxes. This mythology has you believe that the IRS is illegal and unconstitutional, and that there is no constitutional basis for the income tax.

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;:

How obvious is this? How Congress collects taxes is really up to Congress, but this matter had never been in doubt. Taxes on wages really began during the civil war.

The reason the 16th amendment occurred, was due to the intransigence of the Supreme Court majority which decided that the source of income to be taxed mattered in a famous court case called the Pollack case, which came in response to a 1894 Tariff act that imposed a 2% tax on incomes over $100,000 in today's dollars. The supreme court majority declared taxes on property and investments were different than taxes on wages, so the 2% tax only applied to wages.

Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented:

When, therefore, this court adjudges, as it does now adjudge, that Congress cannot impose a duty or tax upon personal property, or upon income arising either from rents of real estate or from personal property, including invested personal property, bonds, stocks, and investments of all kinds, except by apportioning the sum to be so raised among the States according to population, it practically decides that, without an amendment of the Constitution — two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-fourths of the States concurring — such property and incomes can never be made to contribute to the support of the national government.

And that was the reason why even the Republican President William Howard Taft supported the 16th amendment and set the process of securing the amendment's passage across the nation -- probably the legacy Taft left for the nation.

The debate was never about Congress's ability to collect taxes or tax wages. The debate was who would pay for "the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States."

Notice that there are three parts to what government pays for. !) Debts , 2) Common Defence , and 3) General Welfare of the United States.

A lot of rabid libertarians see the government itself as something that is unconstitutional, or that spending on "social" programs is not in the constitution. What part of "General Welfare of the United States" do these folks not understand?

What the "general welfare" means in specific terms can be debated, but at the very least, the phrase means something that benefits in some way the entire community.

No, the only real beneficiaries of Pain Caucus policies (aside from the Chinese government) are the rentiers: bankers and wealthy individuals with lots of bonds in their portfolios.

And that explains why creditor interests bulk so large in policy; not only is this the class that makes big campaign contributions, it’s the class that has personal access to policy makers — many of whom go to work for these people when they exit government through the revolving door. The process of influence doesn’t have to involve raw corruption (although that happens, too). All it requires is the tendency to assume that what’s good for the people you hang out with, the people who seem so impressive in meetings — hey, they’re rich, they’re smart, and they have great tailors — must be good for the economy as a whole.

But the reality is just the opposite: creditor-friendly policies are crippling the economy. This is a negative-sum game, in which the attempt to protect the rentiers from any losses is inflicting much larger losses on everyone else. And the only way to get a real recovery is to stop playing that game.

The creation of wealth inequality is unhealthy. Its the very fear of creating a long-term aristocracy that the forefathers spoke of in their debates.

We are close to following the example of France over the course of the 1700's when the yeomancy and the cottage industries and the city industries and shop-keepers gradually felt the squeeze of the empire and the withdrawal of the wealthy from the responsibility of paying for the costs of maintaining a functional empire. Of course it is a bit more complicated, because the Aristocracy in France in some places did exist since the middle ages, but in fact by the mid 1700's a lot of the members of the Aristocracy were appointed or were out-right purchased by up and coming business people(the word "nouveau-riche" stems from this time) so that they could get the "privaleges" of being a member of the aristocracy -- less to no taxes being one of the perks. The old line Aristocracy dissolved into slow bankrupcy and sold off the state to anyone who paid. Public officials were appointed and usually incompetent as well as corrupt. And the church was worse. The church had its own laws and privaleges and got separate taxes, while also usually being dominated by the very local wealthy who purchased aristocratic rights. Man it got seriously fucked up.

Eventually the problems became so huge and obvious that a cry arose to renew the ancient Parlement and elect legislators to solve the problems. This was 1787. The costs of the "American Adventure" (as it was called in the contemporary lingo) caused the 2nd bankrupcy of the crown. Two famines occured in two years in a row and the price of bread skyrocketed. The "storming of the Bastile" occurred after the Parlement was elected when the people feared the aristocracy was on the way to banish the Parlement. France took to the streets. Farmers grabbed their pitchforks. Literally the entire country shook to the fucking core.

I wonder all the time how symmetrical is our own situation to France in the 1700's.

I don't know what to think of this comment by "sisco66" but I find it somewhat different then what I myself would think, and is at least worthy of a read.

12/14/2010 08:38:30 PM EST

posted by sisco66

Capital gains tax cuts work in both directions. When the tax cuts are first put in place there is always a lot of selling and large dividend distributions in the first couple of years. After that it’s just insider looting. Allowing those tax cuts to expire will have the same effect injecting nearly 2 trillion dollars into the US economy without having to borrow it from the Chinese.

Wealth is money extracted from the economy. The economy is a collection of individuals performing services and producing goods that add value and wealth to the system as a whole. This includes education, harvesting of natural resources, asset protection, and the infrastructure within which these values are transported.

Estates are the summation of wealth that was extracted from the system by an individual. When that wealth is extracted in the time of massive deficits and neglect of the system as a whole, the system should reclaim that wealth.

The Federal Reserve has a “dual mandate”. The mandate requires that the Fed maintain 100% employment and price stability. Does it make any sense that fed can handout 3.3 trillion in backdoor bank subsidies; allow brokerage houses like Goldman Sachs to have direct access to untold trillions from the Fed discount window while allowing 100’s of billions to be paid out in bonuses but it can’t muster 20 billion to extend unemployment?

Insanity is borrowing 900 billion for tax cuts in order to secure 18 billion for unemployment.

I digitally sent this message (under 2500 words) to the White House. The White House tells me it cares about the comments of the people.

I'm not so sure.

You make a horrific "deal" giving the republicans all they want when you control both houses of congress, and sell it as "bipartisanship"? You say "tax cuts to the rich" haven't worked, yet you sell this "deal" because you wanna get more money in the economy? You call the "cuts in Social Security" a tax holiday, without even getting a compromise to raise the top income cap?

What have you fought for in 2 years? You caved in on Insurance exchanges, on the public option, on enforcing the law against Wall Street, on Guantanamo, on lobbyists, on even DADT? When have you actually gotten anything in these deals in return?

You cave in on everything, and then pompously call your justified critics "unrealistic". Do you realize how weak you look? How do you compromise with people who can't compromise and are busy undermining you every single day?

And you now actually expect this "message" that you "will fight" in 2 years because ... because what ... because you need another excuse to cave in... again.

Real leaders fight every day. Real leaders actually get something when they compromise. Real leaders communicate with the people instead of reading something crafted as a public relations spin.

Go back and understand the history of great democratic leaders, because you look more like a manipulated tool of the elite every day. Hide behind your words and call me unrealistic or whiny or whatever, but you look like a weak hypocrite because of what you do, and you think putting together a "message" will conceal it to the people. The people aren't fools.

Do you even hear yourself speak during the 2008 campaign? What will you say in 2012 when the Republicans roll over you and beat you over the head with this phony bi-partisanship. And then what? What happens to hope then, Mr. President?

I love this song.

Ten times later ... I still love the song. Hope you do too :-)

Because he speaks my own mind. Everything in this 4 minute video rant. That's because its the truth, and Cenk sees it too.

Sorry for my absence from the blogosphere. I could make plenty of excuses, so I won't. It's a personal blog anyway. I'm not the type of fool who actually thinks anything he says is revolutionary and worthy of typing out on a keyboard so that 30 people might read it before reading something else. Writing in general is mainly a good exercise of mental conditioning and development of understanding and knowledge. Just like you have to walk 2 miles a day and do stretching exercises to stay fit, you have to read and write to keep your mind fresh and vibrant.

I suppose I haven't felt so fresh and vibrant lately. Perhaps I've had to learn some different truths than those I've had to learn in the past, except now the truths are more heartbreaking. It's not a negative or a positive notion. It just is. Let it roll off you like rain, and wait for the sun, so you can dry out and feel whole again.

Damn the patsy Democrats. The whole system is so corrupt that the Democrats are paid to be patsies, to lose to the Republicans so the elite can continue this fiction called a two party system, that way the people won't see who are their real masters.

That makes this the fourth year in a row. This year was much less challenging than last year. I was in first place in the 3rd week of April and stayed in First place all year long. My pitching staff nearly fell apart in the second half after phenom Strasberg went down (I picked him up) but after picking up Daniel Hudson, Gio Gonzales, Brett Myers, and Brian Matusz, I was able to stop the free-fall while holding on to Tim Lincecum and Ubaldo. It also helps when you are able to roster 5 great closers, which I was fortunate to do, and none of them went down with injuries this year, thank god, otherwise it would have been a tighter race in the last month.

Once again it is proven that you shouldn't pick up speedsters before the 10th round, and you should only pick 3 or 4 pitchers (2 starters, 2 closers) in your first 11 picks. There will always be 10 pitchers who surprise or out-perform their expected stats in any given year, and there is another 10 pitchers who can have a 2 month span of quality that you can use.