WAR ON TAX CORRUPTION

Nothing so upholds the law as punishment of persons whose rank is as great as their crimes.

Cardinal Richlieu

Why don't we citizens get smart, sell our sleazy politicians and begin gouging these gov't and business grafters? Our politicians are stealing us blind. We watch them laughing their brains out as they swill champaign and fly around the world with their cronies, on permanent vacation, spending our money. We see these politicians taking numerous fat bribes from hordes of "lobbyists" who chase them with envelopes filled with untraceable cash. Our lap-dog media occasionally shows us how these fine elected ones stay in office by sneaking billions in pork projects into law. Most of us have seen these outrageous acts of flagrant corruption for so many decades that we no longer feel the urge to wretch when we hear these grinning goofballs explain, "I took the money, but I didn't do anything for it!" (As if theft was a virtue!) We all know that they sell laws every day. We assist these politicians in their corruption every time we pretend to believe in their clever lies. Changing the word "bribery" to "campaign contribution" does not change the deed or the result. Americans are now so well educated and informed that these sleazy semantic games don't even fool many fools. So, why do we continue to let them hammer us so unmercifully and laugh in our faces as they do so? Several reasons: they've got us distracted with trying to earn the living that the politicians have continually taken away from us with their never-ending greed. (NO one seems to remember, and history books do not teach, the fact that, 40 years ago, only ONE man could support a family of four BETTER than Mom and Dad BOTH working do now!) Another reason is that the politician/corporation/media alliance has us BULLSHITTED into thinking that we can't change anything. Fact is, we CAN fix this, but first YOU have to get angry enough to make a commitment to do this. The perfect exercise for this is to speed-read any book on how politicians rape us by Jim Hightower. Like he says, "The smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest skyscraper". Like Ross Perot, said when he told us about the sucking sound of our jobs flowing overseas,

"Good plans are laying around everywhere" and, "we can either make computer chips or potato chips; it's our choice!"

Too bad that, in 1992, we chose potato chips. We see today exactly how bad a choice that was. It is not too late to change our minds. Also, a good plan that is just laying around is on my netsite, www.jamesbauhaus.org. under "Electronic Voting: the Ferrari of Citizen Empowerment".

That essay shows how to force accountability on our politicians and bureaucrats. Another essay that leads up to the plan I'm proposing now is "Legalize Bribery" This is an update of that plan.

When we citizens finally get angry enough to fix gov't, THIS is what we do: we use our constitutional right of People's Initiative Petition to BYPASS the politicians' roadblocks and legislate a 95$ tax on all the money flowing into politicians' pockets to buy favoritism. This includes money that is cunningly laundered through the numerous state and federal republican and democratic party headquarters. This includes all the money called "campaign contributions" too, since it also is for the specific purpose of buying political power. In short, our politicians are all for sale to the highest bidder, same as before, except now, under this plan, WE are the ones doing the selling. The super-rich can buy all the politicians they can afford. The corporations can continue to spend millions buying the privilege that they desire. It is just going to cost them a whole lot more, and we citizens are going to take most of it for ourselves.

On top of the millions we make selling our politicians, there will be the billions we'll make by taxing the pork that they sneak into the 13 appropriations bills every year. Since some of these projects are actually worthwhile, we should tax them at a much lower rate. Each one is calculated at about double the actual cost, and plenty of extra money is included for kickbacks, gratuities and "honoraria", etc. This means that, though this is all our own money, it can still stand a surtax of 30$. This tax will serve to bring all the pork to the surface where everyone can see it. No longer will citizens let these last-second, secret insertions get passed into law without thorough inspection. This inspection will function as quality control. Those that can't stand the light of day will swiftly cease to be offered. The pork that can stand some scrutiny might still get implemented, but it sure WILL get taxed, implemented or not.

More corruption that we can tax is related to the white-collar, real estate/broker/financial/bank crime that caused the so-called "housing collapse". This is where a bunch of corporate criminals put their heads together and pulled off a system-wide robbery-by-contract. It worked beautifully because there are no gov't agencies who will police it, no lawyers who will prosecute it, and no judges who will rack juries to punish it. We've seen them all rush to perform multiple investigations of these types of crimes, and we've seen these expensive, time-consuming investigations all fritter away to nothing: no blame, no consequence, no punishment, only reports that no one reads and recommendations that no one implements. So it is up to us to do what politicians refuse to do.

Still more revenue billions await us when we put our Peoples Tax on the number one export of America, the sale of WEAPONS. We feed that bottomless, ravenous, money-hog, the pentagon, about half a trillion dollars every year! Its thefts are so outrageous that, years ago, it "lost" a trillion dollars of our money! (See, "Legalize Bribery!") One politician - scam on this is to sell weapons as foreign "aid". Our politicians give away at least $15 billion per year in "aid". Much of this "aid", such as the $4 billion to Israel every year, gets turned into weapons soon as no one is looking. Our politicians paid for research and development of these weapons systems with OUR money! The technology, patents, everything, belongs to US! We need to tax the HELL out of our glorious mass-murder machine for our own benefit and to slow its destruction and nation-robbery ordered by our politicians.

ANOTHER big vat of corruption is that which skulks around every state and county court house. Did you know that all the illegal drug profits and their societal costs combined make only the smallest wart on the ass of what our politicians steal from us? And almost NONE of them get caught because they are all law school chums and court house cronies- See for yourself! Check the Who's Who! Who is going to nail judge Rumblossom Flopjowl when he gets caught selling courthouse favors and influence to the developer's corporation? Is prosecutor Cokesnort going to charge him with malfeasance in office? NO! And even if he did, what other judge would hear the case? It's not just the whole courthouse that's in cahoots together, it's the entire lawyer PROFESSION that's in bed together! To combat this magnitude of judicial incest, we need to appoint CITIZEN prosecutors who are not creepily tainted by cop culture or bar association sodomy. The cops and courtcrats are just too cozy to let them pretend to hold each other up to any ethical standards: we watch them let each other walk away scot free every time! This is why they are all running amok! The are immune to real punishment! And they know it!

Obviously only citizen prosecutors can be trusted to try the elites who run the courthouse and its prosecution/conviction machinery. Soon as we make this into law, Citizen Prosecutors are going to scare a lot of ethical behavior and honesty into the courtcrats where before they had only snobbery and arrogance- A crew of volunteer citizen-cops with video cameras and radar guns can begin by tracking these elites as they tear out of their luxury parking garages in their BMWs, Benzes and Audis after a hard "days'" "work" at the courthouse at 3PM. These elite scofflaws can begin by paying huge, Europeanstyle, pro-rated-by-wealth traffic fines for their zeal to get to the exclusive country club first. Like Cardinal Richlieu pointed out the LAST time the elites got their due, "Nothing so upholds the law as punishment of persons whose rank is as great as their crimes-" But their crimes are much greater than merely causing traffic smashups in their wakes. Selling favoritism hurts the many for the benefit of the rich. There should be a hefty tax on this, and the fines should no longer go into the police slush fund or the courthouse coffers. No. This money needs a special place where no elite hands can reclaim it.

Where do we put these billions? We create for them a Peoples' Bank, our Peoples' Bank will be like any other corporation, sucking up vast revenues off all levels of gov't crime, making fat profits off loans, fees, interest, penalties and services, and manufacturing our own money by issuing stock- Peoples' Bank investments will be in things that people need, such as education for the smart and ambitious. We'll invest in electronic shackles so we can work our prisoner-slaves. They will form our construction division where we use their cheap labor to make cheap housing for people who our gov't has cheated out of a living wage- Our Peoples' Bank will grow into our Peoples' Multinational Conglomerate, and a portion of our profits will go to subsidize drugs and health care for our seniors, quality of life for our children, relief for disaster victims, and any other investments in HUMAN capital we can make that the gov/biz alliance WON'T: All we need to do is get angry enough to DO it: