Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas.
We all know the system is rigged, right? Especially when money and power are involved.
Reading a recent deep-dive by ProPublica, “How Harlan Crow Slashed his Tax Bill by Taking Clarence Thomas on Superyacht Cruises”, shows us this particular kind of sausage-making and all the nasty bits involved.
America, who had a revolution based on unfair taxation, seems to have developed a whole upper class devoted to unfair taxation. Or rather, how to achieve unfair taxation for themselves, in the positive sense of the term. The ultra-rich pay less than most of us. And most likely pay nothing depending on how good their tax people are.
Money buys good attorneys. Good accountants. Good people skilled in duping the US Treasury out of funding that is supposed to benefit the country.
And what do our lawmakers do to rectify this unfair system? Nothing. Because most of them benefit themselves from the status quo. Or they benefit from others who benefit from the status quo.
The GOP in particular seems to want to kill the IRS. Without a strong IRS all the guardrails that attempt to keep the system fair fall by the wayside. Starve the beast and it will die.
But the poorest among us will still get audited, still pay our taxes, while the rich bob and weave and corrupt the system.
They eat cake. We do not.
Combine the rich and powerful with the Supreme Court and you get what we are seeing today. Slow creeping corruption. And an underbelly that is rarely exposed, by design.
Where are the lawmakers who are supposed to make fair laws for ALL the people?
Good question.
