How many "stimulus" bills does it take...

Q: How many "stimulus" bills does it take for a light bulb to go up over people heads to understand that they're being screwed?

Like the proverbial "lightbulb" jokes, the people that brought us market deregulation and globalization are now in the process of screwing us again with another economic stimulus bill.

Already Americans have seemed to have forgotten that Congress already passed two major stimulus bills last year. One $170 billion dollar Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 in February, which Bush called a "booster shot" for the American economy, and one just three months ago another called the Assets Relief Program (TARP), which was sold to Americans under threats of Armageddon (and martial law) to the tune of $800 billion. Americans were led to believe that both these bills were supposed to prop up our economy and get people to work. Instead they were used to pay off the the bad debts of irresponsible investors and the institutional banks who played fast and loose with money.

So, why do so many of my liberal friends feel that Obama's new "stimulus" plan is going to be any different? I remind them that Obama's financial advisors are the very people who were the principle cheerleaders for the same deregulation and privatization schemes espoused by the Chicago boys, and, like Henry Paulson, will be the beneficiaries of the public largesse should this new "stimulus" packages get passed.

Here Naomi Klein on Democracy Now explains Obama's economic team's market philosophy:

"... Larry Summers was the last Treasury Secretary under Clinton. And he, along with Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, were really the key architects of the policies of deregulation that created the crisis that we are living now. And those key policies, as you know, are the killing of Glass-Steagall that allowed a series of very large bank mergers that created these institutions that are too big and too intermingled to fail, we’re told again and again; the deliberate decision to keep the derivatives out of the reach of financial regulators—that was also a Summers decision; and also allowing the banks to carry these extraordinary levels of debt, thirty-three-to-one in the case of Bear Stearns.

Now, you know, in my book, I—in The Shock Doctrine, I start a chapter with a quote from Larry Summers. The context in which he said this, it was 1992, and it was when he was making World Bank economic policy as it related to Russia in the midst of a financial crisis. What he said, and this is why I quoted him, because it really shows the extent to which he is truly an ideologue, truly a follower of the very ideology—not just a follower, but a propagator of the very ideology that Obama ran his campaign against." (See Naomi Klein, Robert Kuttner and Michael Hudson Dissect Obama’s New Economic Team & Stimulus Plan.)

So, with Obama less than a month in office and his free market/privatization ideologues advising him, the U.S. taxpayer is once again being hit up for another massive "stimulus" package that is being sold, once again with blatant threats: Obama has warned us of a "national catastrophe" if congress doesn't pass this bill.

But, is there really a "national catastrophe" headed our way? if you listen to Dr. Michael Hudson, President of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, this is all hype:

"...panic the people. Make them think there is an emergency. There is no emergency at all... It's just in the last five years that the richest 1 percent of the American population have increased their weatlth from 37 percent to 57 percent. They don't want it to go back to normal. They like to keep on increasing it... This is a once in a century rip-off." You can only do this kind of this kind of thing under emergency conditions, usually with the kind of bloodshed that you saw when Pinochet introduced free markets at gunpoint in Chile." (See this video below)

So, according to Hudson, there is no real emergency in the financial sector to justify these bailouts, but there are "emergency conditions" in this country that are being used to precipitate the pillaging -- ones that can lead to martial law.

If you think Hudson is prone to hyperbole, it would wise to take stock of all the drills that are happening around this country to prepare for such civil unrest. Just recently it was reported that four San Francisco Bay Area Coast Guard helicopters will be carrying M240 machine guns. (See Coast Guard adds machine guns to helicopters, SF Examiner, 2/3/09), and, late last year, Operation Urban Shield, was touted as "largest Homeland Security drill in the country." (See Urban Shield 2008: Plan, prepare, and train).

It was also announced last year that the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade "Combat" Team will have a new mandate: homeland patrols to help with "civil unrest" and "crowd control." (See U.S. Troops In Homeland “Crowd Control” Patrols From October 1st).

Maybe the elite know exactly what is going to happen after they loot the country and jump ship to fill those vacate Dubai apartments. Their house of cards is tumbling and if they can get "theirs" and get out of the country before martial law is declared, who cares? Leave it to the military guys to sort out the disaster in their wake.

Tax Resistance - The Moral and Legal Defense

Our country, founded on the principles of liberty and independence, is no longer our country, but instead has been hijacked by a group of con men who play politicians, bankers and businessmen who trample over our civil liberties and sell our independence to the highest bidder, both foreign or domestic.

Today, corporations, not the people, write our laws and leave the needs of the nation to waste while money is spent for bombs and bullets and concentration camps. During the Bush years, the elections were stolen wantonly and openly and the mainstream media helped facilitate the fraud. During those years, Americans have seen their retirements funds stolen, the nation's treasure pillaged, their jobs outsourced, their infrustructure dismantled, and their country plunged into a never-ending war crafted by Machiavellian-Neocon minds controlling the White House.

Today, under the Obama administration, it looks like Americans will get no respite as the people controlling Obama have more piracy in mind and have gone at it in earnest with never ending taxpayer bailouts of financial institutions and banks. Congress, beholden to these same interests, have shirked their duties to represent the people and have colluded with the hijackers by passing unconstitutional laws like the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, the John Warren Defense Appropriation Act, and countless others laws that will further erode our liberties and freedoms.

Isn't tax resistance the least we could do in light of all these injustices? When do we start expressing outrage (as well as freedom and bravery) by stopping the blood money spigot which is financing this rogue state? Just when do we decide to pull the plug on this illegal war that we were lied into and that has already killed over a million people? Just when do we stop paying our legislators who are actively working to destroy the U.S. Constitution? Just when do we stop funneling our tax dollars to be used to build concentration camps here in the United States for our own enslavement? Just when do we stop aiding and abetting torture?

At what point do we say enough is enough!?

These are the moral arguments to not pay federal taxes, but, for those of you who are worried that you are breaking the law by not paying the feds, rest assured that the very law itself says that you have no legal obligation to pay if you know that these taxes will be spent in the commission of a crime.

For instance, if you know that the government is breaking domestic and international law, and we have ample proof that they are, see: "Summary of International and U.S. Law Prohibiting Torture and Other Ill-treatment of Persons in Custody"; "US War Crimes During the Gulf War," by Francis Boyle ; "A Chronology of US War Crimes & Torture, 1975-2005" it is incumbent upon you to resist these crimes by refusing to finance them because, according to U.S. law, if you don't, you will be considered criminal liability and subject to prosecution.

According to our legal system when a person kills someone in the process of committing a crime, his accomplice (who wasn't directly involved in the killing) would be just as guilty as his partner who pulled the trigger. It doesn't matter that the accomplice didn't actually do the killing or that he might have objected to the use of such violence, to the U.S. legal system he is just as liable for murder as his partner and would be charged with 1st or 2nd degree murder.

Here is the definition of an "accomplice" in the legal dictionary:

"One who knowingly, voluntarily, and with common intent unites with the principal offender in the commission of a crime. One who is in some way concerned or associated in commission of crime; partaker of guilt; one who aids or assists, or is an Accessory. One who is guilty of complicity in crime charged, either by being present and aiding or abetting in it, or having advised and encouraged it, though absent from place when it was committed, though mere presence, Acquiescence, or silence, in the absence of a duty to act, is not enough, no matter how reprehensible it may be, to constitute one an accomplice. One is liable as an accomplice to the crime of another if he or she gave assistance or encouragement or failed to perform a legal duty to prevent it with the intent thereby to promote or facilitate commission of the crime."

-- The Legal Dictionary

I don't think it gets anymore explicit than that. The law is unambiguous: If you knowingly give assistance, or encouragement, or failed to perform a legal duty to prevent the commission of a crime, you are liable as an accomplice to that crime. So, when we send Federal taxes off to the state, and and we know the money will be used on an illegal war, and to pay torturers, and to destroy our Constitution, we are breaking the law and can be held accountable.

Once again, the law is unambiguous, you would be breaking the law by being an accomplice to a crime by paying your federal taxes.

Now, many tax resisters are using various constituional arguments to not pay taxes. Some use the excuse that the 16th Amendment was never ratified, therefore, it is null and void; others say that tax laws only stipulate paying taxes made on certain profits, but not on income derived from labor. There may be some validity to these arguments, but I believe that we need to take a moral stance similar to what Henry David Thoreau would have advocated in "Civil Disobedience." It's one thing to say that taxes are wrong because it wasn't codified, or was misused in a legal document, and another to say that taxes are wrong because they are being used to commit morally reprehensible and illegal acts.

The added bonus to this moral/legal argument is that it is unimpeachable in its logic: One doesn't have to be a tax law/Constitution scholar to argue the "accomplice to a crime" defense.

Please obey the law and refuse to be an accomplice to a crime. Stop paying your federal taxes.

Also see: National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee and WAR TAX RESISTANCE GROWS and www.warresisters.org (click on the pie chart to see how much of you tax dollar goes to war. War Tax Resisters league estimates 80%)