From the midweek edition of the Morning Jolt:
The Democrats’ New Cockamamie Idea for Leverage: Mass Tax Evasion!
Over in Time magazine, Mark Weston writes:
The approximately 65 million Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton should pledge that in the future if a Republican wins the presidency with fewer votes than a Democrat for the third time in our era, we won’t pay taxes to the federal government. No taxation without representation!
Is that how it works? If the candidate you don’t like wins the presidency, under the rules set out under the constitution, you don’t have to pay taxes?
He argues that the Constitution itself is unfair and it’s not fair that Republicans won’t help Democrats change it to a national popular vote. He points out that pledging to not pay taxes in the future is perfectly legal. Yes, the real question is when you actually choose to not pay taxes; then the Internal Revenue Service comes knocking at the door.
Here’s how Weston envisions this working:
Third, if a Republican wins the election without winning the popular vote again, we should still pay what we owe in federal taxes—just not to the IRS. Instead, people would compute their federal taxes, file a Form 1040 and write a check to a national escrow account, preferably in a well-established Canadian or British bank that is beyond the reach of the U.S. Justice Department, because whoever opens this account probably will be in violation of U.S. law. In the check’s memo line, people should write, “Funds to be transferred to the IRS as soon as America resumes being a democracy.”
See, fellas, tax evasion has never been recognized by the government as a protected form of free speech or political protest. If that’s the case, maybe the world has had a lot more impassioned political activists than we thought: Al Capone, Wesley Snipes, Martha Stewart, Willie Nelson…
By the way, wasn’t it just a few months ago when we were told that Donald Trump ranked among history’s greatest monsters because he may have not paid taxes he owed? And now Democrats are supposed to do the same thing, en masse?
If members of the party that loves government, wants to expand government, and has seemingly endless faith in government don’t want to pay taxes, why should anyone else?
Since the election, we’ve heard Democrats calling for abolishing the electoral college, the restoration of the filibuster they eliminated, confirmation of Supreme Court justice nominee Merrick Garland in the minutes before the new Senate takes the oath of office, “general resistance” and assassination threats, and now, mass tax evasion.
They insist that because the system has not given them the outcome they wanted, the system is broken and must be blown up and replaced. They steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that they could have any responsibility for this outcome.