http://www.nytimes.com/…

On these taxing days, when we become a defiantly bipartisan nation of whiners convinced that we are handing over to the Internal Revenue Service our blood and sweat and mother’s milk, our pound of flesh and firstborn young, maybe it’s time for a little perspective.

Legions before us have donated all these items and more to the public till, and not just metaphorically speaking, either. Benjamin Franklin was right to equate paying taxes with a deeply organic behavior like dying. It turns out that giving up a portion of one’s income for the sake of the tribe is such a ubiquitous feature of the human race that some researchers see it as crucial to our species’ success. Without ritualized taxation, there would be precious little hominid representation.

Moreover, plenty of nonhuman animals practice the tither’s art, too, demanding that individuals remit a portion of their food, labor, comfort or personal fecundity for the privilege of group membership. And just as the I.R.S. depends on threat of audit as much as it does on anybody’s sense of civic responsibility, so do other toll-collecting species ensure compliance by meting out swift punishment against tax cheats.
Read More…

http://www.ft.com/…

Helps give you a sense of how far this crisis goes.

http://westernstandard.blogs.com/…

The US Federal Reserve and other central banks have been in the headlines recently.  First there were the various expansions of power that allowed the Fed a greater role in the economy and then there was yesterday’s coordinated interest rate cut by 6 of the world’s central banks, including the Fed and the Bank of Canada. A month ago few Canadians knew who Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was, now they’ve seen him testifying before Congress clamoring for a bailout, but they still may be unsure exactly what he does. Here Australia’s answer to Jon Stewart, Shaun Micallef interviewing the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Tony Froth (remember then Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s July 2005 comment that “the apparent froth in the housing markets appears to have interacted with evolving practices in mortgage markets”) trying to get to the bottom of it:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/…

Paul Hogan is best known as Crocodile Dundee, but he is now getting publicity for his fight against the tax-hungry Australian Tax Office. The Australian reports on the case, and quotes Hogan’s justified complaints about the government’s rigged rules. Hopefully Hogan will prevail, much as he did the last time he was subject to a shakedown attempt:

A defiant Paul Hogan had a typically plain-spoken and blunt message for the Australian Taxation Office yesterday: “Come and get me, you miserable bastards.” As the ATO enlisted the help of the Internal Revenue Service in the US to pursue the actor for allegedly undisclosed tax liabilities, a bemused Hogan insisted he had paid more than enough tax – a figure he estimated to be in excess of $100million – in Australia. …”I’d like to make a deal with the tax office that I’ll give them every cent I made, both me and (partner John “Strop”) Cornell, if they give me every cent they made out of my movies. As a guy who brought millions into
Australia, they should build a statue at the tax office to me and send me a Christmas card. I lived in America and still paid tax in Australia for 4 1/2 years when I could have paid tax in America, and it would have been cheaper, because I thought we needed the money back home more than they needed it here.” …Hogan railed against Operation Wickenby, a taskforce headed by the Australian Taxation Office, working in conjunction with other agencies such as the Australian Crime Commission. “If you become a victim or a target for the ACC, the crime commission, you’re not allowed to say you are, you’re not allowed to say anything they said to you or that you’ve even been questioned, or you can go to jail,” Hogan said. “If the ACC interrogated me, then I couldn’t tell you what they asked me or I can’t even admit they did because I could go to jail, but the ACC has some dickhead who can leak information to the press and anyone else who’s interested.” Hogan said he was being targeted only because he was “high-profile and because I’ve got money”.

Awesome. If only Wesley Snipes had reacted like this.

I’m sure Hogan is going to screwed but at least he’s talking a good game and raising awareness.

Bosco sent this to me last night. Grab it here. Lyrics follow “bad spellings and all.”

We’ve got

Criminal action
by government factions
neolibs, neocons
Andrew Jackson

Hillary, Oboma
You know you gonna wanna
chime in on our defaltin’ dolla

thoughts on property
bile’s always stopping me
grab your dictionary
false dichotomy

Economics straight outta Australia
Rothbard’s kangaroos sure won’t fail ya

RFIDs and UUIDs
for isms I seem
to use as I please

Land of bile dot com
we’ve got your argument

Come see violence inherent in the system
Anthony Gregory was here but you missed him

bile’s pro hard sell
beetlbum jl
always tries to tell
when things won’t go well

posts grow size
when we realize
that we despise
the apparent lies

theres a war on
keeps the debates going
posts keep flowing
biles always showin’

interventionalist policy
police the world for you and me

ethics, liberty, economics
if you wanna get involved best come equipped
know your acronyms and you will see
that LVT still sways me

xyz comes in from the top rope
counter point to the marxism I wrote
she busts out a fable
I get unstable
slamming the keys as fast as I’m able

Land of bile dot com
we’ve got your argument

From the bowels of mind
bile’s not the kind
To let you get by
or let a comment slide

Got Mises behind him and Cato too
Stacks of books so what you gonna do
Expect lots of quotes and stuff to read
Some farmboy stuff, his dad sells feed

Expect me to chime in
Debate to begin
It’s hard to lose
when you don’t care to win

Alex Jones
Bohemian Grove
End of the world
Wade and Roe

Public schoolteacher taking abuse
For the statist career I choose

Changes in opinion
Make biles head spin
my fluid views
too hard to pin

Ron Paul, invisipunk
political bunk
Cops search your trunk
cause they think you’re buying junk

Police State one two three
media, videos is where they be
Statists always getting fat
Where’s the reynolds at
Make me don my tin foil hat

PEACE!

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/…

This somewhat cryptic blog post at Wired reflects the delight of Roger Clarke that the Australian national ID card has been dropped by the incoming government. Clarke wrote an article in 1994 that is probably fairly regarded as the foundation of identification theory. I expanded on his thinking in my book, Identity Crisis.

In related news, Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester put language prohibiting the expenditure of federal funds for development of a national ID card in the omnibus spending bill Congress passed last week. Because the Department of Homeland Security denies that REAL ID is a national ID, this language is probably hortatory during the current administration.

This is great news for the Australians… now if we can get REAL ID thrown out here in the USA. The deadline for implementing it has been pushed back to 2013 and this prohibition of federal funds from being used to develop a national ID card will help. I believe the states will continue to fight this and some would probably put this new law to the test. I fail to see how the REAL ID is not a national ID given that the federal government is dictating how the states are to implement these new IDs. It may be handled by the states but the national government is the one strong arming them to do it.

Lets remember that Ron Paul is strongly against the REAL ID and voted against it.