Conscious Choice: Taking Issue with the Tax Man

November 2004 | Choice Feedback

Taking Issue with the Tax Man

I couldn’t believe what I was reading when I opened the September issue of Conscious Choice. A real IRS agent is now actually complaining about being abused by his own government? IRS jobs being out-sourced? Can’t collect from so-called wealthy individuals and corporations? Where has Richard of Glen Ellyn (the IRS agent) been during his lifetime?

Historically, the whole federal income tax issue has been a fraud since it was illegally ratified just after the first decade of the twentieth century.

Since then, it has become the nightmare for just about anyone and anything connected to it. It’s a very sick joke! No one can figure out their real taxes anymore because of the ludicrous double-talk that consumes the tax codes. Even worse, the people in charge of collecting taxes (IRS) have abused their powers to legendary heights and now they are reaping their just rewards.

So, Richard, where have you been? Have you not heard of the thousands and thousands of testimonies by private citizens before Congress who have been unjustly harassed and hunted down by your IRS co-workers, their lives ruined and left financially destroyed? Where were you when Congress passed the Tax Payer Protection Act several years ago — a result of this abuse? Even your bosses admit they can’t figure out their own tax returns. This is not a President Bush directive you’re suffering from, it’s a reaction due to decades of IRS skullduggery and the failed system. Besides, you need to spare us about privacy ... having a social security number guarantees we don’t have any.

Then you say, “Now is the time to act.” Yes, indeed. Now is the time to replace the entire IRS and the ridiculous federal tax system with a simpler idea. Perhaps a national sales tax or flat tax. But, please, no more whining bureaucrats who have abused the public trust with a system that is beyond fixing.

Name withheld upon request, Valparaiso, Ind.

New Age Bullies & Just Say No to Computer Upgrades

I JUST WANT to let you know how much I appreciate your magazine; I don’t have Internet use right now. And especially I had to comment on, in your September issue, “New Age Bullies,” by Julia Ingram. This is really one of the most important articles I have ever read; it’s so true, and it’s about time a magazine such as yours printed something like this. It’s happening too much in our society right now. I got a hold of as many magazines of yours as I could and sent them out, distributed them to friends. I just love your magazine; it’s only gotten better since you’ve been the editor. Thank you very much.

Ann Terrazas, Schaumburg, Ill.

WHAT A REFRESHING perspective on the New Age phenomenon! Ms. Ingram is the first person I am aware of who articulated the insidious side of alternative treatments and philosophies. As a middle-age person who has experienced her share of ologies and isms, from paganism to rolfing since the 1970s, I felt alone in my current alienation and considered it an outcome of my own aging. Granted, back door forms of demeaning people have existed before the current New Age wave of advisors, however it is not as sexy to identify them as it is the more traditional forms of emotional abuse.

P.S. In the spirit of Ms. Donato’s editorial, (”Just Say No to Computer Upgrades”) I am deliberately leaving out my email address because I have become alienated by the Internet too! I would like to contribute in my small way to a culture that has more snail mail letters of discourse than those motivated by legal requirements.

Heidi Lasser, Forest Park, Ill.

THANK YOU for your great insights on the whirlwind we call communication technology.

I run my personal and professional life without undue technology or planned obsolescence. I don’t (won’t) operate a computer, have no e-mail (when asked I respond e-gods no), no microwave, no VCR-DVD etc., etc., etc. My only gadget is a $20.00 message recorder that I can actually turn off when I want to be alone and when I’m on the line. No call waiting interruptions that insult.

I treasure one-on-one conversation involving real energetic exchange, real salesmanship instead of being offered a Website address when I want a product or service, and I think (know) we risk mishap, misconnections, misunderstanding with our offhanded, second-handed electronic breezy interactions — I want elegance, eye contact, energy — not a remove from the personal.

Remember the great final scene in Network where (what’s that actor’s name?) opens the window and shouts “I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Shouting your wonderful common sense — I’m glad you’re at the helm.

Lily Gaines, Chicago

Vote for John Kerry

AS THE ELECTION approaches, we will hear a lot of talk about George W. Bush and John Kerry. Both men have served the public. Each has made decisions that affect hundreds of millions of people both here and around the world. Both will one day go to meet their Maker and have to look back on the impact of these decisions through God’s eyes. They will be judged not on what they have said in this and other campaigns, but what they did. Our vote should also be based on what they have done. President Bush has been the anti-Robin Hood. He steals from our children and grandchildren by borrowing almost $450 billion a year from them to finance wars and fill the pockets of his friends.

The President made the choice to go to war. But he did not offer up his daughters or the children of members of Congress or his rich friends to fight the war, instead he tapped into the military, the army reserves and the National Guard, young men and woman of the middle class and poor who have looked at military service as a way to get ahead.

When I talk to people who are dissatisfied with Bush, but are still loyal, because of being Pro-Life I can only agree. I too am Pro-Life, I am against the death penalty, and I am against sending our young men and woman to die in a war for oil.

There is hope for a better future with President Kerry than the yesterdays lived under President Bush.

Richard Schickel, Internet

Stop Horse Slaughter

EVERY YEAR thousands of horses are stolen with many ending up at an equine slaughter house. If we can ban slaughter many fewer horses will be stolen for slaughter as evidenced in CA when they banned slaughter in 1998 and theft of horses dropped 34 percent. Please help if you can.

My name is Tom and together with my wife, Julia, we own and operate The Laughing Horse Sanctuary a 501(c)3 non-profit equine rescue.

I am asking for your help in stopping our American horses from being slaughtered in three foreign-owned slaughter-houses in Illinois and Texas. There, meat is being shipped overseas as a delicacy for the Italians, French, and Japanese, etc.

This year over 60,000 healthy American horses will be slaughtered and they are not old, crippled or blind horses. It is against federal law to ship a blind or crippled horse. The horses being slaughtered range in age from six months to 13 years.

Currently there are bills in both the House and the Senate (HR 857 and S2352) that would ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption and the transport of horseflesh or live horses out of the country for slaughter.

Contact your congressman and senators and ask them to co-sponsor this important legislation.

If you can’t actively support this battle, please consider a 100 percent tax deductible contribution to:

The Laughing Horse Sanctuary, 8317 Grassland Drive, Sandy Level, VA 24161; 434-927-5298; Tom@LaughingHorse.org, www.LaughingHorse.org. All proceeds are used to rescue and care for equines.

Tom and Julia Durfee, Southern Va. state coordinators for the American Horse Defense Fund, ahdf.org/main.shtml.

We want to hear from you. Send your letters to: Choice Feedback, Conscious Choice, 920 N. Franklin, Suite 202, Chicago, IL 60610. [click to e-mail]. Letters should include the writer’s name, address, and phone number. Letters may be edited for clarity or space.

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