When the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified 100 years ago, there was no concern that IRS abuses would extend to 501c4 applications for nonprofit status from groups “unfriendly” to the administration in power.  Such MEGO tax code proliferations were never anticipated.  Careful observers of the income tax from the perspective of American ideals and history, such as Frank Chodorov, focused on how income taxation would undermine Americans’ liberty.  As he put it in The Income Tax: Root of all Evil:

The American Revolution…[established] a government based on a new and untried principle, namely, that the government has no power except what the governed have granted it…in 1913, when the government was invested with the power to confiscate private property…this power…put into the hands of the American government a means of liquidating the sovereignty of the citizenry.

While Chodorov’s focus was on how the income tax would undo one of the American Revolution’s central protections of citizen’s property against federal violations, he also saw that enforcement of the income tax would bring evils in its train. And those evils coincide strikingly with the IRS’ targeting of groups whose views are at odds with the current administration.

[T]he Sixteenth Amendment, enacted to increase the government’s revenues, has spawned another police department, another means of forcing the citizen into line.

“The imposition of the [income] tax will…necessitate a swarm of officials with inquisitorial powers…and cannot be fairly imposed¼” -REPRESENTATIVE ROBERT ADAMS, January 26, 1894.

The Internal Revenue Bureau quite sensibly takes the view that every one of us is a potential lawbreaker, as far as the income-tax law is concerned …it must make use of…espionage, deception, and force…

[T]he inevitable consequence…is the use of income taxation to undermine the principles of republican government and to make a mockery of our tradition of freedom.

The Internal Revenue Bureau is a self-operating inquisitorial body. It has the means of harassing, intimidating, and crushing the citizen who falls into its disfavor...Therefore, whenever the Bureau has reason to “get” somebody it has ample means at its disposal.

This is what the late Senator Schall of Minnesota had to say…

“The one glaring governmental agency that constitutes a menace to the citizens is the Income Tax Bureau, which often goes outside the constitutional limitations and frequently harasses citizens by unjust exactions and by the oppressive conduct of its agents…it even dares to attack the citizens… without substantial pretext or cause¼The bureau is inquisitorial… Its forces swarm over the country…Agents, spies and snoopers annoy and plague the citizens…. [it] permits and promotes, if it does not direct, a species of blackmail against the American citizen.”

There have been cases…where citizens who have offended the party in power were suddenly visited by agents of the Bureau and subjected to interrogation and examination. Of course…there is no proof that the citizens’ views prompted these special investigations. It cannot be proved that the purpose was to silence opposition. But the practice is so well known that men of means have scrupulously avoided involvement in movements critical of the Administration, even though privately they are in sympathy with such movements.

if individuals persist in trying to circumvent the political establishment…or if they preach doctrines inimical to the interest of the ruling group, then…freedom of thought must be suppressed.

Despite all the denials, distancing and rhetorical dancing offered by the Obama Administration, it is clear that the IRS employed abusive and intimidating tactics against “Tea Party” and other groups unfriendly to the President’s agenda.  And it is hardly a surprise that the IRS’ power could once again be turned against those who disagree with the executive branch.  But we must remember that such abuses are just one of the evils arising from the income tax and its implementation and enforcement which, in Frank Chodorov’s words “reduced the American citizen to a status of subject.”

(Gary Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University in Malibu.)

If I were trying to grow a state’s economy, I would probably listen to someone who knows how to create jobs and is making decisions on behalf of shareholders, investors and employees. I think the time has come to take seriously all these various surveys that come out and rank California at the bottom or close to the bottom of nearly every category when it comes our business climate.

In its ninth annual survey, Chief Executive magazine polled 736 CEOs – the highest number ever – about the best and worst states in which to do business. The survey asked business leaders to grade states based on the following metrics: taxation and regulation, quality of workforce and living environment. California placed dead last – the same rank it received in 2012 – right behind Illinois and New York. Texas ranked No. 1, followed by Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee.

While legal reform might not be specifically listed as one of the issues in the survey, it was likely on the minds of these 736 CEOs when they responded. The legal climate is as critical to whether a business stays in a state or relocates as anything else, and a single abusive lawsuit can cost a company tremendously.

While California is moving slowly in the right direction on legal reform, a lot more needs to be done. For decades we have heaped more and more laws and regulations on the books that have resulted in more and more lawsuits. Last year nearly 1.1 million civil lawsuits were filed in California.

If California is to ever climb its way back up this CEO list, it is going to have to make big progress on reforming its legal climate.

(Tom Scott is the executive director of California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse. Originally posted on Fox and Hounds.)

Taxpayers for Safer Neighborhoods PAC has joined with Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork (STOP) to announce the first phase of a campaign to end the financially irresponsible diversion of over $250 million in public funds to build a new downtown basketball arena.

Armed with the financial and political resources necessary, the group will be launching a ballot initiative and will begin gathering signatures to bring this issue to the voters.

“Working with Taxpayers for Safer Neighborhoods, we have put together the funds to begin gathering signatures for an initiative which will prevent the public gift of over $250 million in taxpayer dollars to developers and professional sports team owners,” said Julian Camacho, Chairman of Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork (STOP).

“Today, we announcing that we are now moving forward with our campaign which includes getting official approval to gather signatures for putting an initiative on the ballot. This initiative will allow the public to weigh in on the City Council’s decision to divert funding from police, fire, schools and parks to support building a new basketball arena for the owners of the Kings,” added Camacho.

“This comes at a time when the City simply does not have the funds to waste,” Camacho concluded.

This year alone, the City of Sacramento is facing an $8.9 million deficit and just this week, City Manager John Shirey warned the Council that there is an impending fiscal cliff approaching.

STOP has partnered with the Political Action Committee Taxpayers for Safer Neighborhoods to begin campaigning on behalf of this initiative, and have retained the law firm Wewer and Lacy and political consultant Brandon Powers to assist with the campaign.

Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork (STOP) was formed in 2012 by a group of concerned citizens to oppose a public subsidy to build an arena in the Sacramento rail yards. STOP favors financially responsible proposals for an arena to keep the Sacramento Kings in our city, and opposes massive public subsidy without voter approval.

You think it’s easy being a conservative or libertarian in America? Government commonly targets us for audits and other harassment.

My old friend and mentor Russell Kirk, the conservative philosopher who basically jump-started the conservative movement with his 1953 book, “The Conservative Mind,” was audited every year. Yet all he had was some minor business deductions and investments.

Now this:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

“Organizations were singled out because they included the words ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot’ in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

“In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.”

The IRS-Stasi apolgized. Big deal. They’ll just keep up the abuse more on the Q.T.

Conservatives do have themselves to blame somewhat after favoring so much government, especially under the two Bush regimes. (Not Kirk, of course; he always favored less government and opposed Bush I in 1992; Kirk died in 1994.)

Conservatives backed the Bushes in their elections, then backed their expensive wars and socialist welfare programs. They backed No Child Left Behind and the vast Medicare expansion under Bush II. They were foolish to think they always would control government, which always would be wonderful and good in their hands.

Now they’re paying the price as their political opponents give them the IRS third degree.

(John Seiler is the managing editor for CalWatchdog.)

U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum won the first-phase construction contract for California’s high-speed rail.

I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.

If I didn’t witness the insanity and corruption in politics every day, I wouldn’t have believed this.

“The Perini-Zachary-Parsons bid was the lowest received from the five consortia participating in the bidding process, but “low” is a relative term,” the Laer Pearce, author of Crazifornia wrote. ”The firms bid $985,142,530 to build the wildly anticipated first section of high speed rail track that will tie the megopolis of Madera to the global finance center of Fresno. Do the division, and you find that the low bid came in at a mere $35 million per mile.”

“As this fiasco progress, remember that this $35 million per mile represents the best California can do on the section of track the High on Crack Speed Rail Authority selected to go first because it will be the cheapest,” Pearce said.

Read Pearce’s story here. And stop staring dumfounded at the computer screen. Yes, this is true.

(Katy Grimes is a longtime political analyst, writer and journalist, and CalWatchdog’s news reporter. Originally posted on CalWatchdog.)

As the Boston Marathon mercifully recedes into memory, I still struggle to reconcile how a peaceful run through the streets of my former hometown turned into an event with international implications. Could Hollywood have concocted a story like this? Would anyone have believed it? I was running at mile 19 when the race was ended, and I still can’t believe any of it.

My mentor in running, the person who got me into marathoning in general and the Boston in particular, Charlie Monahan, was standing about fifty yards from the first bomb. His Vietnam War reflexes kicked in, and he immediately surmised that there would be a second bomb. He was among those helping the wounded, and he says that the wooden reviewing stands saved countless lives, including, very likely, his own.

I’ve been mentally ping-ponging between the feeling of having been in mortal danger and the realization that I was barely closer to the blast scene than had I been home in Southern California.

For me, after marriage, family, spirituality, and work, the most surprising thing in my adult life has been the fact that I run the Boston Marathon and have done five (okay, not quite five, since I couldn’t finish on Monday) in the last nine years. My license plate reads BOSTN26. I feel very possessive about that race.

On trips last week to San Diego and Los Angeles, I saw flags at half-mast, and it astonished me to realize that my race—the Boston, about which I feel so possessive, was the reason why those flags had been lowered.

On Sunday, London Marathon runners wore black ribbons to memorialize those killed or wounded in Copley Square.

The pity of it is that the perpetrators came to this country as war refugees, received gifts of food from their landlady who knew how poor the family was, enjoyed fine educations, and still were open to influence by jihadist websites. In no other country on the planet would the second suspect have survived the police and the citizenry after his capture. Nor would he receive the same high quality of medical care, in the very same hospital, as some of his victims.

So what do we draw from this whole experience? That life is fleeting and precious. That time guaranteed. That our country and our way of life is worth protecting, just as we protect the civil liberties of those who would destroy us. That we are immensely privileged to live in a free society, where we have the time and the wherewithal to pursue hobbies like marathoning.

That tragedy, on a personal level, often has no explanation.

And that life goes on, and must go on.

On a political level, the question becomes this:  whom does the President wish to protect?  Americans, who must now live with an increasingly muscular Jihadist presence?  Or the fomenters of terror?  Whose side is he on?  Will the intelligence community be given the permission to protect us?  Or is the President willing to downgrade our safety and security, along with our economic future, in order to appease our enemies?

Obviously we have to strike a balance between civil liberties and government control.  But I’m not convinced that civil liberties even enter into the President’s thinking.

Obama’s golden rule:  never fail to turn a crisis into an opportunity.  What’s he got in mind now, 10-day waiting periods to buy pressure cookers?

California remains a fantastic place if you have a 180 IQ and an entrepreneurial spirit. You move to Silicon Valley, live and work in a closet and devour Coke and pizza until you make your first $1 billion. Then move into a mansion and drive a Bentley. California’s notoriously high taxes? That’s for accountants to figure out how you don’t have to pay them.

For those of us with IQs < 180, it’s time to move to Iowa. That’s where Facebook is building its new server firm, which will generate thousands of construction jobs; and when it’s finished thousands of jobs for maintenance, programming, engineering, etc. for those not able to join the Silicon Valley empyrean.

Wrote Vice President of Infrastructure Engineering Jay Parikh in a blog on the Facebook site on Apr. 22:

“Today we’re thrilled to announce that Altoona, Iowa, will be the home for Facebook’s newest data center.

“For most people, Facebook is something pretty simple. It’s a service you visit every day to connect with the people and things you care about. But behind the scenes, Facebook is a global service of immense scale and complexity — over 1 billion people use Facebook every month, and every day there are more than 2.7 billion Likes and over 2.4 billion content items shared with friends.

“In the coming years, as our service continues to grow and people share and connect in more ways, we need to make sure that our technical infrastructure also continues to scale. Our goal is not just to deliver you a fast, reliable experience on Facebook every day — we also want to help make connectivity a universal opportunity. Our data centers are essential for making that happen.

“Altoona will be our fourth owned and operated data center, and our third in the United States. (The others are in Prineville, Oregon; Forest City, North Carolina; and Luleå, Sweden.)”

Note that none of the four data centers is in California. This will not get tallied as a “business that leaves California.” Rather, it’s one that never came here — and never would come here.

That data center was planned months ago. But Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad was trolling for more California jobs in his trip here two months ago. He said, “The state’s in a financial mess. Taxes are going up. There’s a lot of uncertainty.” After talking to California businesses, he said, “They’re saying the California business climate is bad, and getting worse.”

It takes a lot to drag somebody away from the beach and the sun to the corn fields and frozen tundra. But the Hawkeye state welcomes businesses and jobs instead of repelling them.

(John Seiler is the managing editor for Calwatchdog.)

April 19 is Patriots’ Day, marking the Revolutionary War’s opening shots at Lexington and Concord. An excellent way to commemorate it is by remembering Samuel Adams, who Murray Rothbard called “the premier leader of the revolutionary movement,” as illustrated by John Adams’ 1778 visit to Paris, which disappointed Parisians because he was not “the famous Adams.”

Photo courtesy Fabi Fliervoet, flickr

Samuel Adams helped organize the Committees of Correspondence, which mustered support for the patriot cause.  He was the author of “The Rights of Colonists,” distributed by the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence.  He was the founder of The Sons of Liberty and the principle organizer of the Boston Tea Party, and as a result, he was a target of the British government for treason a year before the Declaration of Independence (Paul Revere’s famous ride was to warn Adams).  He was the source of the battle cry “no taxation without representation.”  He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a member of the First and Second Continental Congress, before turning his attention back to his beloved Massachusetts as Lieutenant Governor and Governor.

Samuel Adams’ most important contribution to America’s cause, however, was that, in cousin John Adams’ words, he had ”the most thorough understanding of liberty,” which was the central spark in America’s creation.  Given the threats liberty faces today, it is worth recalling some of his words that inspired our founding.

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.

Men’s rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation…

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.

Thou shall do no injury to thy neighbor, is the voice of nature and reason…every man has an equal right by honest means to acquire property, and to enjoy it; in general to pursue his own happiness, and none can consistently control or interrupt him in the pursuit…the unalienable rights of nature are held sacred…the doctrine of liberty and equality is an article in the political creed of the United States…without liberty and equality [under the law], there cannot exist that tranquility of mind, which results from the assurance of this to every citizen, that his own personal safety and rights are secure…it is the end and design of all free and lawful Governments.

The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift…

[I]t is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential rights, or the means of preserving those rights.

All might be free if they valued freedom, and valued it as they should.

Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.

Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.

The most glorious legacy we can bequeath to posterity is Liberty…the only true security is Liberty!

Our unalterable resolution would be to be free.

A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy…While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

[W]hile a people retain a just sense of Liberty…the insolence of power will forever be despised…

No people will tamely surrender their liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved.  On the contrary, when people are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight…

Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.

There is a degree of watchfulness over all men possessed of power or influence upon which the liberties of mankind must depend.  It is necessary to guard against the infirmities of the best as well as the wickedness of the worst of men.  Such is the weakness of human nature that tyranny has oftener sprung from that than any other source.  It is this that unravels the mystery of millions being enslaved by a few.

It is a tremendously important and never-ending problem for the self-governing American people to be not only adequately informed but ever alert and vigorously active in forestalling whenever possible, and combating wherever necessary, any and all threats to Individual Liberty and to its supporting system of constitutionally limited government.

If I have a wish…it is that these American States may never cease to be free and independent!

Perhaps the best summary of Samuel Adams’ thought may be from a 1771 essay he wrote for the Boston Gazette under the pseudonym,  Candidus:

If the liberties of America are ever completely ruined, of which in my opinion there is now the utmost danger, it will in all probability be the consequence of a mistaken notion of prudence, which leads men to acquiesce in measures of the most destructive tendency for the sake of present ease.  When designs are formed to raze the very foundation of a free government, those few who are to erect their grandeur and fortunes on the general ruin, will employ every art to soothe the devoted people into a sense of indolence, inattention, and security, which is forever the forerunner of slavery…They are alarmed at nothing so much as attempts to awaken the people to jealousy and watchfulness…

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks…It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation…if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, of be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men…Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former for the sake of the latter…Let us remember that “if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.”  It is a very serious consideration that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

The tragedy of American freedom, it is to be feared, is nearly complete.  A tyranny seems to be at the very door.  It is to little purpose, then, to go about coolly to rehearse the gradual steps that have been taken, the means that have been used, and the instruments employed to encompass the ruin of the public liberty.  We know them and we detest them.  But what will this avail, if we have not the courage and resolution to prevent the completion of their system?

That Boston Gazette essay makes clear the reason for Samuel Adams’ most famous quote:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace…May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Samuel Adams wanted to “renovate the age, by…instructing [men] in the art of self-government,” so that Americans would be capable of “assuming that freedom of thought and dignity of self-direction which [God] bestowed…”  In an era of sharply constricting limits on how much we are allowed to govern ourselves, we need to rekindle that same devotion to liberty created America.

(Gary Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University in Malibu.)

Democratic State Senator Lou Correa has authored yet another highly unconstitutional election related bill, SB 26, which would enact the unusual requirement that campaign disclosures on some but not all election mail be printed as many as four times more than currently required on the pieces, and in type faces 25% bigger than current law.

California doesn’t need more disclaimers on election mail; rather, we need the mailers to say something rational about fixing our state!  Correa doesn’t mind appropriating the speech and property rights on somebody else’s campaign message, it seems.  He doesn’t seem to get that the Fair Political Practices Commission already has a statute it can and is enforcing to solve his beef, which is with a politically like-minded slate mailer that may not have complied with existing law and that is already under an FPPC review.

Due process of law means that guy should have his day in court with the FPPC, and the rest of society should not be punished with more laws that infringe free speech rights when they are at their zenith in election campaigns, with more arrogantly unconstitutional laws out of the State Senate and Assembly.

Probably for the first time since it became a state in 1850, California now suffers the nation’s worst unemployment rate, at 9.8 percent in January. It’s tied with Rhode Island for that number, although R.I. has been improving faster. So next month California could win the booby prize all by itself.

The 9.8 percent rate is the same as the previous month, December 2012. And 9.8 percent itself is a high number. Even Silicon Valley’s unemployment rate was 8.2 percent, up from 7.8 percent in December.

Unemployment has been at 9.8 percent or higher since Feb. 2009 — three years of joblessness and stagnation.

Nevada’s unemployment, which had been higher than California’s, dropped to 9.7 percent in January.

U.S. unemployment wasn’t that great, either, at 7.9 percent in January 2013. It improved to 7.7 percent in February. (State data are not available yet for February.)

What we’re seeing is the effect of the massive California tax increases digging in. Rich people, hit with the new 13.3 percent top state income tax rate, have less money to invest in business and jobs creation. In campaigning for theProposition 30 tax increase, Gov. Jerry Brown demanded that rich people “pay their fair share.” What he didn’t say was that rich people are the economy’s major investors. Taking more of their money would mean less investment in California businesses and jobs.

And the Prop. 30 sales tax increase also grabbed another $1 billion from the productive economy. That led to reduced sales, meaning fewer jobs in retail.

Look at the following graph, where the Nevada unemployment rate (red line) shoots up fast in the late 2000s, rising well above California’s (blue line). Nevada was hit harder even than California by the real estate crash. But then notice Nevada’s unemployment rate begins decreasing faster.

It’s especially outrageous that Brown has said almost nothing about jobs creation in his more than two years back in the governor’s chair. His priorities are funneling more money to his “troops,” as he calls government-union members; funding such boondoggles as the California High-Speed Rail Authority; and imposing AB 32 and other draconian, jobs-killing environmental edicts. If you criticize him, he brands you a “declinist.”

Meanwhile, productive people, including the wealthy to avoid that 13.3 percent top rate, continue fleeing the state.

(John Seiler is the managing editor for CalWatchdog.)