April 2008

Pardon My Pique, But It’s OUR Money!!

By Robert Stephens

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Today’s headlines in the Springfield, MO daily newspaper provide a perfect example of why there needs to be an active and vibrant Libertarian party.

The first headline points out that Missouri Governor Matt Blunt’s office is demanding a fee of approximately $540,000 from Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon’s office for emails necessary to an investigation of whether the governor and his staff violated the state Sunshine Law by deleting old emails. This is the fee that a private citizen or organization would have to pay to cover the labor and materials for this information to be provided.

The second headline blares forth that the IRS, our favorite bureaucracy to hate, is spending almost $42 million to notify taxpayers that there is a special economic stimulus check coming this spring or summer. Now, given all the publicity in the media regarding the special rebates, one would have to have been stationed in Plato’s cave watching shadows on the wall not to know about the rebates.

Now, the real issue here is that, in both cases—whether it’s a half million or 42 million dollars, it’s really OUR money. The IRS is attempting, through this $42 million letter, to take some tarnish of it’s halo and try to convince taxpayers that it’s the good guy. In other words, it’s giving back some of the excess tax money that they confiscated from us earlier.

Governor Blunt’s office is using this bogus charge as a ploy to delay, as long as possible, the release of data that will probably prove the alleged violation. There is just too much smoke around this issue for there not to be at least a small flame somewhere.

In neither case is there anyone—not ANYONE—who is looking out for the taxpayer. Oh, sure, a few Democrats have grumbled about how the letter pats the IRS and the administration on the back and tries to take credit for the checks. But in actuality, no one—not a president nor a senator nor a representative is truly standing up to say “STOP—we’ll save the taxpayers this $42 million and add it to the rebate.”

If there was ever evidence to show that Neil Boortz and John Linder are on the right track with the Fair Tax proposal, it would be these two headlines. How nice it would be to have a system in place that would base government revenues—not on confiscatory theft of earnings, as the system now exists—but on a national sales tax.

I personally am more disturbed by the situation between the Governor and the Attorney General. Neither is considering the Missouri taxpayer because they are locked into a partisan fight. Governor Blunt has announced he will not run for re-election, but wishes to leave things where another Republican has a strong chance to take over. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, has been running for governor almost since the first day he won elective office.

So, we have one government office demanding $540,000 from another government office to provide what should have been public information all along. Given the major issues confronting our state, these funds can better be used elsewhere—such as a state rebate to taxpayers. If we can spend it on making copies, we can certainly give it back to the people who paid it in the first place. And we certainly don’t need to be paying for private attorneys. Since the rise of the neo-conservatives within the Republican Party, Libertarians are left as the only voice representing the individual taxpayer. Now, more than ever, do our political representatives need to hear from us that they should stop feathering their own nests and get back to actually representing us—you know, the job we’re paying them to do.

An election is coming up. Perhaps they need an old-fashioned reminder!