Love, grace, and mercy are absolute. Law is the opposite. And not because law is hateful, clumsy, and unkind—all of the time. Human laws are the reverse of the laws of the infinite because our laws are arbitrary. They need to be. For example, sooner or later we need to declare people to be legally dead. It would be interesting if we could see the soul depart, perhaps on gossamer wings looking a bit like the Rock in his tutu in the movie Tooth Fairy (or, in different garb, plunging down the sewer grate in smoke and flames). But we have only human knowledge so we must rely on things like heartbeat or brain waves or whether the dead guy’s kids have finished divvying up his truck, Tampa time-share, and Ski-Doo. And when does life begin, legally? Right-to-life activists claim they know. But what if the soul is in the egg and we have to arrest every ovulating woman who failed to get laid? What if it’s in the sperm, and every adolescent boy has to be tried on a hundred million counts of manslaughter? In regard to this question the U.S. Congress says, to put it in parliamentary terms, “Dunno.” But law courts need to decide. Somebody—whether he’s the size of a pinhead or has been in a coma since Spiro Agnew resigned—owns that truck, Tampa time-share, and Ski-Doo. It’s the law.
The problem with human lawmaking is that we fail to remember we’re only human (and some of our lawmakers can barely claim that). We—sometimes—make laws that are moral to the best of our knowledge, but we—always—forget that the best of our knowledge is worth squat.
Easy examples of this hubris abound. For my sins I’ll take a hard one: human embryo stem cell research. People who know more about medicine than I do, which is everyone who knows anything about it, say that such research is valuable. I’ll stipulate its value. People who know more about my religion than I do, such as the pope, oppose it. I’m not going to argue Catholicism with Benedict XVI. I’m given to understand that the frozen human embryos upon whom the research will be conducted are “leftovers,” but as a male of sixty-three the same can be said about me. The embryos will not develop into adults capable of being doctors and popes. Neither will I. But I’ve had chicken pox, measles, scarlet fever, and cancer. I’m alive because of medical research, much of which seemed morally dubious when it was begun. My own deep philosophical thinking about frozen human embryo stem cell research goes no further than that the whole idea of frozen human embryos, let alone what’s done to them with tweezers, creeps me out. I’m happy—this is one of the consolations of advancing age—that I don’t have to make the decision.
Still I was furious when the president of the United States made the decision for me. On March 9, 2009, the president signed an executive order rescinding the previous president’s executive order that banned federal funding for human embryo stem cell research. Whether such research is wrong is something I will leave to the judgment of those who have better morals than I have. My morals are sufficient, however, for determining that President Obama was damn wrong.
The White House Office of the Press Secretary released a statement titled “Remarks of President Barack Obama—As Prepared for Delivery. Signing of Stem Cell Executive Order and Scientific Integrity Presidential Memorandum.” Herein was a perfect display of political immorality.
The president said, “The full promise of stem cell research remains unknown, and it should not be overstated.” He then overstated it. “To regenerate a severed spinal cord and lift someone from a wheelchair. To spur insulin production and spare a child from a lifetime of needles. To treat Parkinson’s, cancer, heart disease and others that afflict millions of Americans and the people who love them.” (And note the politically astute touch of modern morality at the end: My dad’s sick. My kid’s hurting. But let’s not make it all about them. I’m worried and hassled too.)
“Medical miracles do not happen simply by accident,” the president went on to say. “They result from painstaking and costly research—from years of lonely trial and error, much of which never bears fruit—and from a government willing to support that work.”
Thus it was that without King George’s courtiers winding kite string for Ben Franklin and splitting firewood and flipping eye charts to advance his painstaking and costly research into lightning, stoves, and bifocals, Ben’s years of lonely trial and error never did bear fruit. Today we think that the bright flash in a summer sky is God with static cling on his socks. We heat our homes by burning piles of pithy, plagiarized sayings from Poor Richard’s Almanac in the middle of the floor. And we stare at our knitting through the bottom of old Coke bottles. We’d probably have telephones and lightbulbs by now if President Rutherford B. Hayes (a Republican) had been willing to support the work of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. As President Obama said, “When governments fail to make these investments, opportunities are missed.” (Although the lightbulbs would have to be replaced by dim, flickering fluorescent devices, anyway, to combat global climate change.)
At no point did the president acknowledge that these government “investments” are made with our money. Or that that money can be taken from us and given to people doing research on human embryos only because the government has the legal monopoly on deadly force. (Pay your taxes or get fined. Pay the fine or go to jail. Stay in jail or get shot trying to escape and join the Tea Party movement.) We have a legislative mechanism by which the monopoly is supposed to be controlled; it’s called legislation. If the people of our country absolutely insist on paying the bill for frozen human embryos to be pulled apart with tweezers, Congress can pass a law. Where, exactly, in the Constitution is this moral power over our money handed off to an executive order? (No doubt the same criticism could be made of George W. Bush’s executive order forbidding our money to be spent on human embryo stem cell research. But, speaking for myself, I don’t get as constitutionally riled at presidents who leave my billfold alone.)
Instead of addressing any of these moral concerns, President Obama said, “Many thoughtful and decent people are conflicted about, or strongly oppose, this research.” Then he called himself a liar. “The majority of Americans—from across the political spectrum, and of all backgrounds and beliefs—have come to a consensus that we should pursue this research.” (Italics added by someone from a Republican, pro-life, Catholic background.)
But the most morally offensive thing the president said in his signing remarks was that “in recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values.”
A false choice is no choice at all—Tweedledee/Tweedledum, Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid, Joe Biden/Joe Biden. Science is, per Webster’s Third International Dictionary, definition 1, “possession of knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding.” Let us look at the various things science has “known” in the past three thousand years.
Thunder is the fart of Thor.
The periodic table consists of Earth, Wind, and Fire and a recording of “Got to Get You Into My Life.”
The world is flat with signs near the edges saying, “Here Be Democrats.”
You can turn lead into gold without a federal bailout.
We are the center of the universe and the sun revolves around us (and shines out of Uranus, Mr. President, if I may be allowed a moment of utter sophomoricism).
But, lest anyone think that this teasing of science lacks moral gravitas, let us consult—and be appalled by—the following passages from the 1910–11 eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, that great compendium of all the knowledge science possessed, carefully distinguished from ignorance and misunderstanding, as of a hundred years ago.
... the negro would appear to stand on a lower evolutionary plane than the white man, and to be more closely related to the highest anthropoids.
Mentally the negro is inferior to the white.
... after puberty sexual matters take the first place in the negro’s life and thought.
The above are quoted—not out of context—from the article titled “Negro,” wr
itten by Dr. Walter Francis Willcox, professor of social science and statistics at Cornell and chief statistician of the U.S. Census Bureau. A politician!
Politicians shouldn’t be allowed to make any moral decisions. They shouldn’t be allowed to decide whether to shit or go blind, a decision that might be morally painful for a politician if he isn’t polling well with the shits.
8
Taxes
Taxes are a good thing. “Every tax,” said Adam Smith, “is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty. It denotes that he is subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.”28
We’re tempted to answer Smith with the “We don’t need no stinking badges” quote from the movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but the sage of economic freedom has a point. We cannot be expected to surrender rights in our property—that is, pay taxes—unless we are understood to have property rights, and chief among property rights is our right to the property of ourselves. We’re free. Even when taxes are levied by force, first they have to catch us.
Also, taxes caused democracy. When England’s Charles I had to go, crown in hand, to beg Parliament for tax revenues, an elected body was able to claim sovereignty and dispatch with the divine right of kings (and King Charles’s head).
Our own Revolutionary War was precipitated by taxes. “No taxation without representation” was a slogan among the American patriots, a crowd of whom would protest such taxes at the Boston Tea Party in 1773. (And the original Tea Partiers, like their later-day namesakes, were regarded with contempt by well-placed know-it-alls. Peter Oliver, chief justice of Massachusetts, said of Samuel Adams, “He never failed of employing his Abilities to the vilest Purposes.”29)
The French revolution, too, was a result of taxes. Louis XVI needed to raise them and, looking to do so, convened the states-general, a group of delegates from the nobility, the clergy, and the commoners. A cutthroat bunch they proved to be.
We owe a lot to our taxes. But we owe a lot on our taxes too. That is why the most surprisingly good thing about taxes is that they are a good deal.
The American government will spend $4 trillion this year. There are an estimated 308.6 million Americans. We each get $12,956. Sure we mostly get it in the form of Sacramento light rail projects that don’t go anywhere except Sacramento, sugar beet price supports, contributions to the charity known as GM, Afghanistan troop surges, and interest payments on Chinese-owned T bills. We’d rather have cash. But, still, $12,956 isn’t bad.
Let’s say you’re a family of five: a dad, a mom, and three lovely kids. You’re the kind of family we conservatives endorse. You’re getting $64,781 from the government. Even Republicans are on the dole. Dad (conservative women are proud to be stay-at-home moms) will have to make a pile of money to pay $65K in taxes.
Although it is unclear just how big a pile dad will have to make to ensure that he’s feeding, sheltering, and grooming the America of the future rather than sucking her teat.
Democrats in Congress may lower taxes, for fear that more Republicans will be elected. Or Democrats in Congress may raise taxes for fear more Republicans will be elected before Democrats have a chance to enact a tax hike. The president may make all Wall Street profits greater than the 2009 Madoff-investor average return subject to punitive capitation. Or the president may give another squillion-jillion dollars in bailout funds to all Wall Street firms. The tax code is so confusing that every time a federal appointment is made the appointee has to go before a congressional committee to explain how he got so confused that he didn’t pay his taxes. And taxes—and loans to government that will have to be repaid with taxes—come in a variety of types and kinds. Personal income tax receipts fund less than a quarter of federal outlays. Corporate taxes provide a whopping 3.8 percent. Borrowed money accounts for nearly half of what Washington will spend this year. The deficit gap will be closed by revenue from that $9 pack of cigarettes you just bought because thinking about taxes stresses you out.
Natasha Altamirano of the National Taxpayers Union did some complicated mathematics and said, “By my reckoning, somewhere between 85 and 95 million households out of 115 million total have a smaller tax liability than the per capita spending burden.” This means that the breadwinners for between one-fifth and one-quarter of American households are shoveling coal in the engine rooms of the ship of state while everybody else is a stowaway, necking with Kate Winslet like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.
Ms. Altamirano went on to note that those breadwinners doing all the work are also less likely to be receiving any kind of government monetary assistance and are more likely to have their Social Security benefits taxed.
“If we were to compensate for this,” she said, “I imagine that more like 100 million households have a smaller liability than the per capita spending burden.” One hundred out of 115 is 87 percent. Our nation is 87 percent mooch, 87 percent leach, 87 percent “Spare (hope and) change, man?”
It may be worse than that or, depending on how greedily liberal you are, better. Let’s abandon the complicated mathematics of taxation. We don’t understand complicated mathematics. We were liberal arts majors. If we understood complicated mathematics we’d be wealthy hedge fund managers in prison. Let’s go to arithmetic. The U.S. gross domestic product for 2009 has been calculated by the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis as $14.2 trillion. The Federal Budget, being $4 trillion is (divide 4 by 14.2, move the decimal point two places to the right, add the thingy over the numeral 5 on your keyboard) 28.2 percent of the gross domestic product. Let’s round down and call it one-fourth. This is our real rate of national taxation. The government makes off with one-fourth of our goods and services. Then the government gives those goods and services back to us. (In a slightly altered form, the way a horse gives the hay we feed it back to us in a slightly altered form.) We each get our $12,956, which is our per-person share of one-fourth of the gross domestic product. But, since the real tax rate on that GDP is 25 percent, each of us has to make $51,824 a year—our per person share of the GDP—to be entitled to call ourselves a taxpayer, not a tax vampire. And we have to make $259,120 a year if we’re supporting a family of five.
Slightly confused by this? Democrats always have been.
How many American households make a quarter of a million bucks? The president’s does, and with only two kids. The president is taxing himself. Good. But the rest of the U.S. government’s operating expenses are being funded by paycheck withholding on Conan O’Brien’s NBC settlement. Plus there’s all the money the government has borrowed by taking out a second mortgage on North America, which will soon have the Treasury Department calling the toll-free number for the “debt restructuring services” advertised on late night TV.
The gross unfairness of America’s tax system won’t lead to class war. Or, if it does, the war will be brief. There are 300 million of us SpongeBobs and hardly any of the sucker fish we’re soaking. On the other hand, young people—with no dependents except their Twitter pals—have to earn only double their age to be ladling gravy to Uncle Sam. They could turn on the government if they started thinking about this (or anything).
The rest of us? We’re in the clover. True, we have to “give” 25 percent of our workweek to the IRS. That’s ten hours—all of Wednesday and half of Thursday morning. But it’s still a good deal and doesn’t really leave us overburdened on the job. Nothing gets done on Monday and Friday anyway. Tuesday we had to go pick up our kid from school because a peanut was discovered in the food dish belonging to the fifth grade’s gerbil and the whole building had to be hypoallergized. On Thursday, after an early lunch, we left a full cup of coffee in our cubicle and draped our suit jacket over the back of our chair, so it would look like we were around the office someplace, and caught a Nationals game. We don’t have to worry that out-of-control federal spending or an insane tax structure will wreck our lives. We’ve got government jobs.
9
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More Taxes
I take it back. Taxes aren’t a good thing. This is because (as I mentioned before but forgot this time) you’re very rich. You’re surprised to learn that you’re very rich, especially when, like me, you’re really broke. But, if you think about it, you know you’re rich because only a rich person can afford to pay double for everything.
And you do. The financial bailout, for example. You paid for it once when you discovered that your retirement savings consisted of nothing but half a chocolate bunny from last Easter, three paper clips, and a dried-up Sharpie. Then you paid for it again with your tax dollars and with the permanent damage done to the American economy when the government pawned everything in the nation because your tax dollars weren’t enough to pay for the bailout.
Likewise with the economic stimulus. You write checks to cover your mortgage payment, utilities, insurance premiums, car loan, basic cable, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express bills, and you hand fistfuls of cash to your children and turn them loose in the Abercrombie & Fitch store. Think you’re done stimulating the economy? Think again. The president of the United States is also on an economically stimulating spending spree, and he’s paying for it with a lien on all the future job and business opportunities that your children will have. This means they won’t have them. I hope that your kids, once they’ve gotten their MBAs, enjoy stocking shelves at the Dollar Store.
What about the new car you paid for with taxpayer funds given to GM and Chrysler? How come it isn’t in the driveway? You gave all that money to the car companies and they didn’t even send a thank-you note on a scratch-and-sniff card with that new car smell. No, if you want a new car you have to—you guessed it—pay double.