And the Whisper Joins the Song

Two remarkable events happened during this presidential cycle that went underreported by big media but produced huge splashes on the internet. The first was the song sung by John McCain answering a question about the Middle East. The other was the whisper, probably coming from a hidden wire worn by Romney during a debate.

Yesterday, the Song "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" was officially endorsed by the Whisper "He raised taxes, I am not gonna."

"This is a man capable of leading our country at a dangerous hour," said Mitt the Whisper about John the Song. "Senator McCain understands the war we are in, the necessity of victory, and the consequences of surrender."

I am not going to argue that we are not in a war, but in an occupation; not in a military but in a police action; that we have already killed so many people, destroyed so many buildings, and killed or otherwise replaced so many government officials of Iraq that it would satisfy the definition of victory for any of the bloodthirsty tyrants from across the entire world military history. These are not my points.

At the last debate, Ron Paul actually told Romney and McCain that there is no difference between them, and that they have no money to continue the war anyway.

Money? During the debates, Ron Paul was essentially making the argument that the income tax brings in about one trillion dollars, which is about the amount we waste in maintaining our empire not only in Iraq, but also in Korea, Japan, and dozens of other countries, so by pulling out we could easily abolish the income tax.

The Republican candidates still talk about smaller government and smaller taxes. Their stance is similar to the Democrats' stance on the war: they talk about stopping it, somehow, but they do nothing. The Democrats' stance on the income tax is also similar to the Republicans' stance on the occupation: increase it.

Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee talked about actually abolishing the IRS. Paul has his record to back it up, though Huckabee does not, but at least he talks about it. The rest of the Republican Party just uses slogans to hypnotize the masses: "smaller government, less taxes" like the mantra "four legs good, two legs bad" from Animal Farm. I doubt that anybody seriously believes that any remaining presidential candidate will do anything to abolish income tax or to even reduce taxes.

The term "tax cut" itself has even been accepted in our society to mean a government action which results in some people getting their taxes reduced. Hello Maymin's lemma: After any zero-sum redistribution, some people will end up with more money than they had at the beginning. In other words, the redistribution, the opposite of the tax cut, is nowadays called a tax cut.

I know, I know, nobody thinks that the income tax is that bad. Fifty percent of wage earners don't pay any income tax. And the rest of the voters who are not wage earners don't pay income tax by definition, so income tax payers are an insignificant minority. The greedy, the wealthy. Who cares about them or about the income tax?

I wrote a novel exploring how much the government can tax before the people object. You can read the book free online here.

You think I am overreacting? Just remember: when whispers join songs, they are soon followed by war marches, patriotic chants, and funeral hymns.

Editor's note. I read and reviewed the book, here. rob kall