Thanks for correcting the country. You are right the country I meant was Somalia. The post has been corrected.

Re; California Secretary of State : You couldn’t be more wrong. Debra Bowen the current SoS has been all over the Diebold mess. Debra is one of those rare politicians who views their job as being a public servant. Take a look at this page with the decisions she has made.. If Debra was taking “bribes” from Diebold, then please explain why Debra Bowen DECERTIFIED Diebold machines?

Re: analogy to casinos. This is a false comparison on the audit ability. The problem with voting machines is that they need to preserve anonymous voting. ATMs and casinos as you pointed out know the people and go through a great deal of effort to connect the “paper” trail. Voting machines have to explicitly break the paper trail back to an identifiable voter.

Re: California’s tax structure. You are forgetting that the high California taxes created a (now gutted) high quality education system. This education system created the high-quality talent that has fueled the Silicon Valley. This SJ Biz Journal article says that businesses are leaving California not because of taxes but because of dropping worker quality:

[Education cuts] doesn’t bode well for the business community, either.

“These cuts will really affect our ability to provide the kind of workers Silicon Valley needs,” said Pat Lopes Harris, director of media relations for San Jose State University.

California somehow managed to have “high” taxes and still become the 7th largest economy in the world. This is the clearest indication that: Taxes are. not. the. problem.

Peters:

when Bernie Madoff took 50bn and you were so angry that nobody would get the money they paid in back from the ponzi scheme

Actually, I wasn’t. I was outraged that the regulators and the Bush the lesser White House let this happen. I was outraged that Sen. Phil Graham (R-Tx) screwed Americans so bad.

Peters:

Why do you feel no similar sense of rage when you see that you will never get the 40% of your income through retirement that social security was supposed to offer?

Why? For the same reason that I am not unhappy when I don’t collect on my fire insurance, disability, or my car insurance! Social Security was never intend to be a pension – it is an INSURANCE policy to keep people out of absolute poverty in their old age. If I don’t have to collect on an insurance policy, any insurance policy that means something bad did not happen!

Peters:

Once upon a time people in this country were …

in a galaxy far, far away…

Yes and we also had lots of kids because kids were expected to support their parents in their old age. We also had children working in the fields (still do) and in factories. A High School diploma was rare and a College education was a luxury.

News flash: The Veterans Administration (created 1929) and the Medicare/Medicaid system (created 1965) have existed for quite sometime. Federal workers have been insured by the federal government as well. So I assume you are talking to some time before 1930. Seems a lot has changed since then.

Peters:

people should look at the constitution and when it doesn’t agree with their taxation philosophies

Actually, you should do the looking. The Founding Fathers (in the Declaration of Independence) not constitution were not against taxation but only against taxation without representation.

Article I Section 8:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

No mention of “…and keep them “low”

Amendment 16:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Still looking for that “and keep the taxes low”

I have a question though, when Bernie Madoff took 50bn and you were so angry that nobody would get the money they paid in back from the ponzi scheme…Why do you feel no similar sense of rage when you see that you will never get the 40% of your income through retirement that social security was supposed to offer. Why don’t you get angry when you realize that the only way for social security or medicare to really work is to either have an ever expanding population to tax, or to slowly ratchet the taxes up on the remaining contributors.

Once upon a time people in this country were taught that you work hard and live on as little of your income as possible, because you would always have to save for those days that would bring hardship.

A further note…the time in which the highest percentage of americans were insured was the period before the government started getting involved and trying to create ‘competing public options.’

The truth is that people should look at the constitution and when it doesn’t agree with their taxation philosophies, they should be the ones who move to a nation with a social contract that fits their philosophical beliefs.

Thanks for stopping by and correcting my impression.

And Amazon may be right about the constitutionality of the tax. However, anytime a business whines about a tax I get a little bent. Businesses always claim some new tax is a “job destroyer” — which rarely turns out to be the case.

As someone who is running his own business, my first concern is getting the right people so the business is profitable and I get the privilege of paying taxes! Moving to some low-cost/low-tax location would be self-defeating. My biggest expense is health care. If there was a nationalize health care system (and taxes to support it), instantly I would be able to hire 2 more people. But health care requires taxes.

I do think our tax code is a disaster that penalizes and rewards the wrong activities. I hate sales tax because it is regressive and hits the poor the hardest — making it harder for the poor to better themselves. I love the estate tax. An estate taxes transferred wealth. Wealth made possible by the society. An estate tax of 50% on a $5million estate still means the heir gets $2.5 million that they didn’t earn.

Thanks again for the complement and the visit.