Couldn't help but add some "color" to your great thread, and I hope "Taxi" will add some local color. &;-)
"The collection of taxes... has been as yet only by duties on consumption. As these fall principally on the rich, it is a general desire to make them contribute the whole money we want, if possible. And we have a hope that they will furnish enough for the expenses of government and the interest of our whole public debt, foreign and domestic."
--Thomas Jefferson to Comte de Moustier, 1790. ME 8:110
Probably explains why Democrats want big taxes even more than big spending.
Couldn't help but add some "color" to your great thread, and I hope "Taxi" will add some local color. &;-)
The auditor must have been a democRat
Reprinted from political ad in the Western Australian Sunday Times, December 3, 1995
In 1944, Democratic U.S. Congressman Samuel Pettengill warned America that socialists would endeavor to have the U.S. spend itself into bankruptcy, with a view to making citizens totally dependent on a centralized government.
Pettengill detailed TEN POINTS of the socialist manifesto that would destroy free government. Almost 50 years later, down under in Australia, it is disturbing to reflect on Pettengill's 10 points.
1) People must be made to feel their utter helplessness and their inability to solve their own problems. While in this state of mind, there is held up before them a benign and all-wise leader to whom they MUST look to the cure for all their ills.
2) The principle of local self-government must be WIPED OUT, so that this leader or group in control can have all the political power readily at hand.
3) Constitutional guarantees must be swept aside. This accomplished in part by RIDICULING them as outmoded and an obstruction to progress.
4) Public faith in the legal profession and respect for the courts must be undermined. The law making body must be intimidated and from time to time rebuked, so as to prevent the development of public confidence in it.
5) Economically, the people must be ground down by high taxes, which under one pretext or another they are called upon to pay. Thus they are brought to a common level and all income above a meager living is taken from them. In this manner, economic independence is kept to a minimum.
6) A great public debt must be built so the citizens can never escape its burden, making government the virtual receiver for the entire nation.
7) A general distrust of private business and industry must be kept alive so the public may not begin to rely on its own resources.
8) Government bureaus are set up to control practically every phase of the citizen's lives.
9) The education of the youth of the nation is taken under CONTROL so that all may be indoctrinated at an early age with a spirit of submission to the system.
10) To supplement and fortify all the foregoing, there is kept up a steady stream of GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA designed to extol all who bow the knee and to vilify those who dare raise a voice of dissent.
Samuel Barret Pettengill U. S. Congressman 1886-1974 Reprinted from an article in Ken Hamblin 'Talks with America' News letter Feb. 19. 1996 P.O.. Box 562 Castle Rock, CO 80104
PETTENGILL, Samuel Barrett, (nephew of William Horace Clagett), a Representative from Indiana; born in Portland, Oreg., January 19, 1886; in 1892 moved to Vermont with his father, who settled on a farm in Grafton, Windham County; attended the common schools; was graduated from Vermont Academy at Saxtons River in 1904, from Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt., in 1908, and from the law department of Yale University in 1911; was admitted to the bar in 1912 and commenced practice in South Bend, Ind.; member of the board of education of South Bend, 1926-1928; elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-second and to the three succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1931-January 3, 1939); was not a candidate for renomination in 1938 to the Seventy-sixth Congress; resumed the practice of law; newspaper columist 1939-1948; vice president and general counsel of the Transportation Association of America, 1943-1945; national radio commentator, 1946-1948; attorney for the Pure Oil Co., Chicago, Ill., 1949-1956; consultant, the Coe Foundation, 1956-1965; resided at his boyhood farm near Grafton, Vt.; died in Springfield, Vt., March 20, 1974; interment in Grafton Village Cemetery, Grafton, Vt.