Posted on 03/30/2010 11:54:31 AM PDT by American Dream 246
How are the people to react to the erosion of liberty that is the Obama health care regime? To be sure, lawyers will challenge it in the courts, and November is right around the corner, giving opportunity to punish those traitorous politicians who acquiesced to the debasement of our Constitution.
This is all to the good. But we cannot count on lawyers and politicians. God help us if we do. We the people in our righteous anger must take matters into our own hands: It is time for a strike.
The only peaceable protest that could possibly have any effect on the implementation of ObamaCare would be to withhold the tax revenue required to fund it. Unfortunately, Franklin Roosevelt long ago imposed the odious practice of "withholding," whereby the government takes what it considers its share before it even gets to you.
First used for a limited duration during the Civil War, withholding became a permanent feature of our taxation system with the Social Security tax during the Great Depression, and then with income tax starting in World War II. As the U.S. Treasury Department's website helpfully notes, the institution of permanent withholding "eased the collection of the tax for both the taxpayer and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. However, it also greatly reduced the taxpayer's awareness of the amount of tax being collected, i.e. it reduced the transparency of the tax, which made it easier to raise taxes in the future."
Indeed it did, and it left the people little recourse to refuse to pay an unjust tax for use toward an unjust end (too bad for the British that they had no such system in the 1700s; there may never have been a Revolution). Well, then, since we have to work for them to be able to take our money -- and it is our money -- we have but to sit out of work. A strike. For just one day, at first, and that day should, of course, be April 15.
This voluntary removal from the labor force would need to be en masse to be even remotely effective, and even then it would be largely symbolic -- at first. But it would be an unmistakable salvo to the government: What can be done once can be done again, and for longer, if need be.
If the beast of government must gorge on the people's blood to thrive, then we must deny our blood by denying our sweat.
(This would be different from the self- removal from society by innovators and geniuses detailed in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. These people in Obama's America need not bother going on strike -- they have effectively been given the pink slip and told their services will no longer be needed. Their talents, after all, are precisely what leads to the inequality of outcomes so hated by Obama and all statists.)
There is evidence that a mass strike of the people can work. In the early fifth century B.C., not long after Rome had driven out its kings and established the world's first republic, the common people, or plebs, conducted just such a strike to protest the injustices perpetrated on them by Rome's aristocratic patrician class. The plebs seceded from the Eternal City and removed themselves to the Mons Sacra, or Sacred Mountain, just beyond the city walls. There they formed their own government, the concilium plebis, and threatened to form their own country if they were not granted more power in the new Roman government.
It worked. Soon the patricians, suddenly without commoners to cook and serve their food, tend their horses, mend their clothes, and staff their army, agreed to a series of concessions, including the creation of a new office to be elected from among the plebs, the Tribune, who would have the power to veto legislation proposed by the Senate and whose body would be sacrosanct. The plebs would also later win consent to adoption of the Twelve Tables, a legal code which granted them constitutional protections from the abuses of the senatorial class.
We would be wise to study this example, for something very like it may be our only recourse should elections and lawsuits fail us. A mass strike saved and strengthened our great ancestor, the Roman Republic.
It may yet save and strengthen our own.
You better free you mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right
I have been chastised by some on FR for proposing such a move. Maybe it was my methods that they were deriding. I’m not sure.
You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright
Alright Alright
You say you got a real solution
Well you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know
We’re doing what we can
But when you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright
Alright Alright
You say you’ll change the constitution
Well you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know know it’s gonna be alright
Alright Alright
If we don’t put so many people into that city that it shuts everything down on the 15th, consider us toast anyway. The more they can bully us without recrimination the more they will take. And you just can’t tell me that 2-3 million of us are not able to make the “sacrifice” of a few hours of our LIFETIME to make a noise such has never been heard. Shame on us if we don’t. We will get what we deserve.
Scabs. Hispanic scabs, Arab scabs, muslim scabs, democrat scabs. See the problem??
Just claim married with 99 exemptions for a quarter. That ought to do it.
Starve the beast.
Stop spending. No more consumer tax.
Do things in one trip. Less gas taxes.
Smoke? Now you have a good reason to quit. No tobacco taxes.
There's no need to work overtime. You don't need to buy all that junk anyway.
Always pay for goods and services in cash. What happens to that money after it leaves your hand is not your concern.
Every American will be affected by this, and they'll blame.......BIG GOVERNMENT.
We can survive without their money, but they can't survive without ours.
Scabs. Hispanic scabs, Arab scabs, muslim scabs, democrat scabs. See the problem??
they can’t tax illegals...
There once was a time in this country when this was true, the government needed our tax money to do the things they wanted. Now, I'm not so sure. Look at the unfunded liabilities already on the books (social security, medicare, medicaid). Add to it what Obama and the 'Rats are spending. They are spending money not only that they don't have, but don't have a realistic chance of ever having. It hasn't stopped them from spending.
Why? Because they raise the debt ceiling, fire up the printing presses and issue more debt, more T-bills that they sell to whoever is stupid enough to buy them. The Federal Reserve has already committed to monetizing the debt. Obama and the 'Rats believe that as long as they can print soon-to-be-worthless IOUs, they don't need our tax dollars. The Beast will only starve when people stop buying our debt, which I think is closer than anyone wants to admit.
The left has given a lot of people expensive promises in exchange for their vote. What if the tax slaves chose not to contribute? What if there was no funding for the government cheese? Who will be blamed?
They've already run out of other peoples money, and they're struggling to survive. They're dieing. The American voters are already up in arms. The Socialists won't get away with it much longer. We can help end it sooner if we take away what little they think they have left.
The American left won't blame us little people when their cheese doesn't show up in the mail box. They'll blame Oboma, Pelosi, Reed, and everyone in Washington who supported them - the Socialists.
Agreed
What if there was no funding for the government cheese? Who will be blamed?”
My point exactly...they can’t tax illegals...the votes go away with them, as they power up through the next redistricting fiasco...
and the fact that 90% of the people that would take that day off would take sick or vacation time. gov’t would still get its money for that day.
So just miss a day. Don't use a sick or vacation day.
Those who aren't salary will take the hourly hit, but the sacrifice is worth it.
I’m salaried, but I can take an unpaid day if I want to.
There are levels of opposition:
Rhetorical
Political
Legal
Civil (Disobedience)
Economic (Go Galt)
Military (Revolution)
I’m definitely going to exercise the first five. Whether I execute the last one depends on the success of the first five. I’ll give it a few years, then pack up.
It would take at least one month of an economic strike of at least 50% of this nations working base to get the result anticipated. At least 50%..more is better.
This should collapse the socialist system in place.
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