Criminal Tax Laws

The Salon.com article goes on at length to berate corporations for not paying taxes. It does not accuse them of violating any laws, mind you. They are, it seems, heinous criminals for obeying tax laws written by Congress.

Look, when a murder is committed for hire, do we go after the guy who hired the hit and let the murderer go free? We do not. We punish them equally, usually, but for certain, the guy who used the gun, the guy who pulled the trigger and actually committed the evil act goes to prison.

Today we have a grievance, to me one of questionable priority, but a legitimate grievance regarding how much wealth the major corporations and richest individuals have amassed. The tax laws are to blame, we say, which I think is nonsensical, but let’s go with it nonetheless. Up in arms we go and the guilty must be punished.

But wait, who do we want punished? Do we want to punish both the persons who passed those tax laws as well as those who benefited from them? We do not. The legislators who took bribes to pass the laws apparently were hapless and helpless victims of the system, who took those bribes of necessity because they could not otherwise get reelected to stay in office and continue passing laws. We want, in fact, for those legislators to remain in office because in addition to passing those tax laws they are passing laws to bring federal money into our home states.

No we want to punish the guys who asked to have the laws passed, not the ones who did the deed. We want to punish the one who paid for the murder, and let that actual killer remain free to continue killing because he buys his guns and bullets from us.

This is America. We have our priorities.