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should have bought whole leaf tobacco

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SmokesAhoy

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Never steal from the government and all that.

I've been eyeing those 50lb bags on WLT, you know they want to tax whole leaf next.
 

deluxestogie

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You do have to wonder what the salaries come to for a special task force consisting of participants from all those agencies. If you figure a half-dozen agents, at $50K per year each, it's got to come close to the amount of estimated tax loss.

Bob
 

bonehead

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tax loss doesn't matter when you can make money off an inmate. 50or more K a year private business and $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ sighns. i hope they had a sole so than they can profit now and loose for eturnity.
 

Chicken

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perhaps one day all the states will wake up and realize the tax benifits that colorodo gets from the legal sales on marijuana.

if bacca wasnt taxed so high there wouldnt be a black market.

and if the states underbid the corner drug dealer then he also would be out of business.

our forefathers threw tea in a harbour because of high taxes.... one day we as a nation will wake up and rebel against this out of control government we have..

and when it isnt a income source for there to be inmates in custody.. you'll see our prisons start to empty. why does a state want to let you out when they are making so much money by keeping you in,

im glad i come off the grid of buying bacca at 5+ bucks a pack.

now if i can only figure out how to make this car run off water,:rolleyes:
 

webmost

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The history of the Whiskey rebellion is instructive. In rapid succession:

1) people rebelled against George of Hanover's crippling taxes
2) George sent redcoats to enforce his taxes
3) George Washington whipped George Hanover's redcoats
4) a grateful people elected George president
5) congress enacted a sin tax to pay George's troops
6) people rebelled against George Washington's crippling taxes
7) George sent bluecoats to enforce his taxes

All in the space of fifteen years. Blue coats instead of red; whiskey instead of tea; but, otherwise:

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

It always starts with a sin tax enacted for your own good. It always ends with strict enforcement. Whether the numbers make sense is beside the point. The ruling principle is: Thou shalt not deprive government of its extortion. Period.

The sad fate of our fellow citizens during the Whiskey Rebellion is exactly why Congress passed the Insurrection Act (fore-runner to the more famous Posse Comitatus) limiting the power of government to call out the troops against its own citizens. A salutary concept; but one which has since been systematically diluted, step by step, until, under the present regime, we watch rapidly multiplying armed domestic agencies stockpile a billion hollow point bullets.

O'er the la-and of the regulated
And the home of the circumspect

Play Ball!
 

rustycase

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Webmost has presented the facts pretty well, afaik... Yet there is an underlying factoid...
Across the pond, the Scottish Highlanders were quite far from any marketplace for their grain crops. An option had to be found to the difficult, and expensive transport of heavy bulk products.
A solution was found when they distilled it down to a much smaller, and as such, a more easily transportable product which would command higher value.
Transport has always been a significant factor in attempts at prosperity. (Flourishing society along river, and oceanic routes, Roman roads. etc.)
Historically, gubment has always grown to be the worst enemy of their own people.
Control, is what they are all about.
rc
 

deluxestogie

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Webmost has presented the facts pretty well, afaik
The Boston Tea Party / Whiskey Rebellion analogy does read well, when facts are not presented.

At the time of the Boston Tea Party, legally imported British tea (including its new tax) cost colonists less than the alternative of smuggled, Dutch tea. "Sons of Liberty," sponsors of the Boston Tea Party protest, were protesting "taxation without representation," rather than the quite reasonable tax itself.

At the time of the Whiskey Rebellion, the western Pennsylvanian producers were griping about the tax itself, rather than the lack of a representative government. When the protesters tarred and feathered the authorized representative of the Federal Government, Alexander Hamilton (definitely not President Washington, despite the assertion of the National Geographic website) led the army against them. Of the two individuals convicted of treason, the President pardoned both. Washington did not send troops to collect tax, but as the nation's first demonstration that the Federal Government (i.e. Federal law, as enacted by Congress) trumped local opinion.

Bob
 

Chicken

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I wonder just what would change if our government was put in the hands of a true libertarian??
 

webmost

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The Boston Tea Party / Whiskey Rebellion analogy does read well, when facts are not presented.

At the time of the Boston Tea Party, legally imported British tea (including its new tax) cost colonists less than the alternative of smuggled, Dutch tea. "Sons of Liberty," sponsors of the Boston Tea Party protest, were protesting "taxation without representation," rather than the quite reasonable tax itself.

At the time of the Whiskey Rebellion, the western Pennsylvanian producers were griping about the tax itself, rather than the lack of a representative government. When the protesters tarred and feathered the authorized representative of the Federal Government, Alexander Hamilton (definitely not President Washington, despite the assertion of the National Geographic website) led the army against them. Of the two individuals convicted of treason, the President pardoned both. Washington did not send troops to collect tax, but as the nation's first demonstration that the Federal Government (i.e. Federal law, as enacted by Congress) trumped local opinion.

Bob

You miss the point, Bob. It's not about the price of tea. It's not about who personally led troops into Pennsyltucky. It's about the innate rapacity of government. Even in a country founded by dauntless people who sailed to the ends of the earth because they just wanted to be left alone, and rebelled, their first new government instantly turned to extortion and regulation. This is the leopard; these are its spots. There is no hope and change; only hype and chains. It's not the lapsang souchong; it's the kowtow.

And so, in the present case (I am so tempted to remark not that kind of case... but I won't [despite how I love to pull your leg], because that might dampen our discussion) in Connecticut, government is so excruciating jealous of its exclusive prerogative to plunder that it refuses to reckon the cost of enforcing each and every petty extortion it enacts. It has to spend ten times what it might collect in order to preserve its right to collect. Has to. Not for money; but for the principle of the thing. It's not about the money. It's about the "you can't get away from us!"

Well, not unless you buy a senator -- that's a different story, for another time.
 

juan carlos

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thanks for the edumacation on 'merican politics. my other forums don't allow such...and i know very little of it, other than what the Komrads here in Kanada allow across our airwaves.
The one thing i know is right wing wants to keep things they way they were (taxes and laws imposed by warlords), left wing wants wants to change things by taxation into submission, rightwing wants to rebel against this overtaxation with war parties forming to regain their "freedom" to tax/make laws/punish as they see fit, so left wing bands together to tax the populace into utopian submission.
Yes, without question...the more things change, the more they stay the same. or as JFK (i have been told anyway) put it, without peaceful evolution, violent revolution is sure to follow.
personally i lean towards anarchist/egalitarianism...maybe minarchist at best (infrastructure)! thats my utoian dream...leave me alone and i'll happily do the same...but i do like a nice road to drive on!
 

deluxestogie

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The Founding Entrepreneurs complained about taxation without representation. That implies that they ascribed at least some validity to taxation with representation.

When we look to the past for inspiration or for clarification of today's challenges, each of us sees a different past--even from the same time frame, same location and same events. Accurate history seldom offers us a clear morality play. The more accurate the history, the fuzzier the issues become.

http://www.amazon.com/Uses-Past-Profiles-Former-Societies/dp/0195000323/

Bob
 

webmost

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"Well, not unless you buy a senator"

They appear to be easy to buy nowdays.

Remember Iran/Contra middleman Adnan Khashoggi? After acquittal, Adnan remarked along the lines of: "Of course I bribed Congress. That's how business gets done." And then he added this very illuminating tidbit: "The remarkable thing is not that you can buy a U.S. senator. The remarkable thing is how they can be bought so cheaply." Of course, cheap is relative. The guy spent like a mil a day between his parties and planes and yachts and palaces. His pleasure palace in Spain was named Barak, BTW, and the parties there were said to be way past lavish. Married a seventeen year old model and retired to Monaco. So he must know something. Has a hand in most everything. Keeps popping up throughout modern U.S. history.

Maybe we should take up a subscription. The Tobacco Senator. Senator Lawrence Butcher from the great state of Kentucky. Has a nice ring to it.
 

webmost

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The Founding Entrepreneurs complained about taxation without representation. That implies that they ascribed at least some validity to taxation with representation.

When we look to the past for inspiration or for clarification of today's challenges, each of us sees a different past--even from the same time frame, same location and same events. Accurate history seldom offers us a clear morality play. The more accurate the history, the fuzzier the issues become.

http://www.amazon.com/Uses-Past-Profiles-Former-Societies/dp/0195000323/

Bob

Turns out to be a great book. Deeply apothegmatic, scholarly without excessive footnotes, and the kind where you frequently set it down to research an allusion or dive back two pages to re-read a sentence. Goes well with a good sipping rum and a cigar. Thanks, Bob.
 

Knucklehead

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Turns out to be a great book. Deeply apothegmatic, scholarly without excessive footnotes, and the kind where you frequently set it down to research an allusion or dive back two pages to re-read a sentence. Goes well with a good sipping rum and a cigar. Thanks, Bob.

That's good to know. I've had it in my wish list waiting on my next order. Thanks for the review.
 

deluxestogie

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To all who imbibe, you are welcome.

In Toynbee's A Study of History, which is a massive, stuffy, 12 volume magnum opus, he discusses how nation-states, as well as social, political and religious movements, attempt to use their vision of the past, in order to legitimize themselves and their actions.

A shallow, modern example is the classical-like Greek architecture of Washington DC, and of bank buildings.

Bob
 

webmost

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None of which cases my damp, Bob, that

... government is so excruciating jealous of its exclusive prerogative to plunder that it refuses to reckon the cost of enforcing each and every petty extortion it enacts. It has to spend ten times what it might collect in order to preserve its right to collect. Has to. Not for money; but for the principle of the thing. It's not about the money. It's about the "you can't get away from us!"

... unless you buy a senator...

... which explains why Connecticut must gladly spend more to enforce a tax than it would reasonably derive from it, as aptly as it explains why pot is a sin unless taxed, why you and I running numbers would be organized crime while the PA lottery is a noble endeavor to rescue seniors from penury -- all the way to why a "compound" of children in Waco get incinerated because their parents did not pay for gun permits. The two saber teeth of the awful carnivore we call Government are Extort and Enforce.


But I like the book. It is neither exegesis nor eisegesis -- it is passion play. There's a lesson in it.


 

Bex

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Taxation is an interesting, often double edged sword. I live in Europe, which has higher taxes than in the US. Those taxes often go to assist the local population. Other Americans who have moved over here decry the high taxes, until they realize that they are now recipients of social programs like a children's allowance, guaranteed medical care, inhome care for the elderly, low education costs, 'non-contributory' state pensions, etc. The delight of American capitalism and free enterprise has allowed the devastation of the middle class and the unbalanced redistribution of wealth toward an upper 1%. I also question the assertion that the federal government - regardless of their handling of Waco - was responsible for the incineration of those children. If you are that protective of your children, and in a society where there is legal recourse, you come out with your hands up and deal with the consequences through the courts and media. Sorry, but the fate of those children lay solely with their parents IMHO.
 
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