I Agree with Lauryn Hill:

Taxation is Slavery









 I never heard of Lauryn Hill. The fact that she’s a Grammy award-winning singer did not register with me since I don’t follow music award shows. She’s in the news now because she’s about to go to jail and pay a fine for not paying income tax:

What Most Americans Don’t Know About Taxes

I read USA Today because it gives me a quick rundown on popular news. Every so often I find a story that surprises me. Rarely do I agree with its Founder, Al Neuharth. But in his Plain Talk article of February 1, 2013, his article on “How income tax has changed in 100 years” caught my attention:

“If you’re getting ready to file your income tax return, you should be interested to know that what you’re doing started 100 years ago. But what a difference that century has made! Examples:

“When Congress passed the income tax law in 1913, a couple making over $4,000 in taxable income after all deductions was subject to a 1% tax rate.
“With inflation that $4,000 then is equal to about $93,700 now. But the tax rate now is 25% or more for those in the $100,000-plus salary range.”

So far so good, but Neuharth doesn’t stop here. He goes on to argue that “taxing income may be one of the fairest ways for the government to raise money to pay its bills.” This begs the question. How do we determine what bills the government should have to pay? Where is the constitutional authority, for example, for a Department of Education that confiscates billions of dollars from tax payers and then returns it to some tax payers after paying a bureaucracy to implement the redistribution process? Why not let people keep their own money and make their own educational decisions with it.

Then there’s the history of the continued increase in the amount of tax being taken from us and the call for even more taxes. In 1913, the top tax rate was 7% on incomes above $500,000 ($10 million in 2007 dollars) and a total of $28.3 million was collected. Less than 1% of the population paid federal income tax at the time. The people who voted for the income tax believed that only the “rich” would be paying taxes. Like today, the people who voted for the income tax voted that way because they believed other people would be paying it. Not them.

It’s no wonder that liberals are called Progressives. They are willing to settle on very small gains in legislation at the beginning so over time they can increase its effect. This has happened with every legislative act in our nation’s history. Social Security started as a two-percent tax on income up to $3000 for a total of $60 per year (employee and employer “contribution”). Now it’s more than 12 percent on more than $105,000.


We’ve seen the growth of every government program. The Sixteenth Amendment is made up of only 30 words, but as Neuharth points out, today’s tax code is a massive 73,954 pages and counting.

Will Rogers (1879–1935), humorist and social commentator, with more than a century of congressional foibles to evaluate, said, “The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”

Liberals contend that taxation is all about social justice. A group of philosopher kings are needed to determine what’s just and take our money to make it certain. It didn’t work for ancient Greece and it won’t work today since those in charge don’t have a fixed moral standard to determine what’s just or unjust. In fact, they are so unjust that they pass laws to take money from productive members of society so they can buy votes from the unproductive.

Walter E. Williams says it best: “Let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you, and why?”

 by Gary DeMar
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How and When Al Gore Sold His Soul

Who said the following? “I am a Christian, I am a Protestant, I am a Baptist . . . [and] my own personal religious faith . . . has developed out of my own personal experience in life as well. . . . [T]he tradition of which I’m a part recognizes the importance of personal communication with the deity, along with the lessons that come from Scripture.” From Kennth Woodward, “Finding God,” Newsweek (Feb. 6, 2000).))

Al Gore . . . the man who sold out pre-born children to the abortion butchers and his country to a Muslim broadcasting company.

In the movie The Devil and Daniel Webster, the main character sells his soul to the Devil for seven years of unrivaled prosperity. As the time for his soul’s collection approaches, the farmer has second thoughts. He enlists the legal expertise of Daniel Webster to plead his case before a jury of long-dead scoundrels. This wonderful Faustian drama is filled with timeless personal and political lessons.

Al Gore used to be what we might call a cultural conservative. In fact, Al and his wife Tipper took on the music industry with its raunchy lyrics, its casual attitude and promotion of alcohol, drugs, and even suicide. All the talk about how video games might be a catalyst for violence, Tipper Gore dealt with that as well. For her efforts, she was excoriated.

Frank Zappa, the self-appointed “anti-censorship” advocate, called her a “cultural terrorist.” The “highly personal and insulting” questions Gore was asked cannot be repeated here. This helps to explain the cautionary warning on the front cover of her 1987 book Raising PG Kids In An X-Rated Society: “EXPLICIT MATERIAL—PARENTAL ADVISORY.”


Her book is filled with indictments of unbelievably raunchy and violence-laden lyrics, including “lyrics dedicated to satanism,” which she describes as “the ultimate form of rebellion. It rejects Judeo-Christian religion, turns good and evil upside down, and rebels against life itself.” These are strangely prophetic words, for it seems that the Gores have taken the path which has turned good and evil upside down that have turned them into “rebels against life itself.”
In 1988, Al Gore decided to run for president. He painted himself as a cultural conservative. Here’s how one observer saw it.

The political experts agree that Mrs. Gore’s book promotion will have an imprint on her husband’s race, giving it a more moralistic tone, but they are divided over whether this will help or hurt Senator Gore. Some argue that it will help by charming the right wing of the Democratic Party, where the Senator is not particularly strong because of his youth, his moderate stands and his father’s liberal legacy as a member of Congress from Tennessee for more than three decades. But others disagree, privately singing a tune called “Tipper Don’t Preach,” a takeoff on the hit song ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ by Madonna, one of the artists Mrs. Gore has criticized. Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster, said Mrs. Gore could alienate many young professionals who should be her husband’s natural constituency.

As time went on, Tipper would change her tune for obvious political and fund raising reasons. In an October 1987 meeting between the Gores and entertainment luminaries, she claimed the 1985 Senate hearings on X-rated music lyrics, on which her husband served, were a “mistake.” Al Gore claimed he “was not in favor of the hearings.” Of course, this was a lie. The transcripts show Gore as a willing participant. He thanked the Chairman and commended him for calling the hearing. Soon Tipper was holding behind-closed-door meetings with big names in the entertainment business in order to “mend fences.”
Why the change? Needing additional money to run a campaign, Gore turned to the usual liberal suspects: the entertainment industry. He got the cold shoulder because his wife “was viewed as a dangerous advocate of censorship by many in Hollywood.” By 1992, Tipper had “backed off” from her work with the Parents Music Resource Center, “a group that successfully pressured the record industry to place labels on albums and tapes to warn purchasers of sexually explicit or violent lyrics.” But she was still viewed as a “threat.” In fact, when Bill Clinton picked Gore as his running mate, some leftist rockers were shocked. Joey Ramone of the punk band “The Ramones,” who penned Censtorsh** , planned to vote for Clinton in the 1992 election, “but when he brought Gore in, I felt betrayed and alienated. He goes for the MTV generation which is fueled by music, then he turns his back on the music populace.”
In the 2000 election, the Gores did not make the mistake of antagonizing the left wing of the Democrat Party. Crusading against explicit music lyrics was no longer high on Tipper’s list as fund-raising with former members of the Grateful Dead was.
The transformation does not stop with catering to the liberal entertainment industry. Al Gore repudiated his once pro-life record. In fact, he went so far as to deny that he ever supported pro-life initiatives. In fact, he and Bill Bradley out abortioned one another. Bradley, once a professing Christian who spoke for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, said that he was proud of the fact that he supported abortion on demand, even calling for taxpayers to fund the grizzly procedure.
In several letters to constituents, early in his political career, Gore made it clear that he opposed abortion. He stated in a September 15, 1983, letter, “It is my deep personal conviction that abortion is wrong.” He went on to write, “Let me assure you that I share your belief that innocent human life must be protected and I have an open mind on how to further this goal.”
In a letter dated August 22, 1984, Gore stated, “I have strongly opposed federal funding of abortion.” He even supported the Hyde Amendment, which denied federal funds for abortions except to save the life of the mother. “As late as 1987, as a U.S. Senator, Gore wrote, ‘During my 11 years in Congress, I have consistently opposed federal funding of abortions. In my opinion, it is wrong to spend federal funds for what is arguably the taking of a human life.’“ Gore went so far as to vote in 1984 to amend the federal civil rights law to re-define the term “person” to “include unborn children from the moment of conception.”
What came out during the 2000 presidential campaign? Al Gore “has always supported a woman’s right to choose” regarding abortion.

Based on his written and voting record, this is a lie. Al Gore’s transformation from a pro-life advocate to a pro-abortion point man began in 1987, the same year he announced his candidacy for president. In fact, immediately after his narrow win over the very pro-abortionist Bradley in the New Hampshire primary, Gore headed back to Washington for an abortion rights vote. As his spokesman was quick to point out, “Al Gore has time and again stood up for a woman’s right to choose and this is another example of it.”

What happened to this Christian, Protestant, Bible-believing Baptist couple? Did they strike a deal with the devil? They sold their souls. “For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matt. 16:26).

by Gary DeMar

Andrew Cuomo Should be Excommunicated

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he’s a practicing Catholic. He attends church with his live-in girlfriend, supports abortion on demand, and pushed for the legalization of homosexual marriage.

Gov. Cuomo’s latest directive is to make abortion on demand even easier to obtain in the Empire State by enacting the Reproductive Health Act that he says will “protect a woman’s freedom of choice. . . . Because it’s her body, it’s her choice.”

The governor and his legislative lemmings just passed a draconian gun control bill designed to protect the children of New York. Almost in the same breath, the same governor, wants to enact legislation that will kill more children every day in the state of New York than were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Where is the priest of his parish? Where is the Bishop of his diocese? This man should be excommunicated from the church. The Church is complicit in the guilt of this man and other Church members who will vote with him on this bloody law.

And yet, he remains a member in good standing in the Church. He attends the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, in Albany. I doubt know where he is a member, but he must be a member somewhere.

All we’re getting from the Catholic hierarchy is “disappointment” in the governor:

“Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York expressed ‘great disappointment’ in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s announcement to move forward with the state’s proposed Reproductive Health Act. . . . ‘I am hard-pressed to think of a piece of legislation that is less needed or more harmful than this one,’ Cardinal Dolan wrote in a Jan. 9 letter to Gov. Cuomo, who is Catholic.”

That’s it? “Great disappointment,” “less needed,” “harmful”? This new bill, if passed, will give women the right to kill their pre-born baby right up until the time of delivery. No wonder today’s church is viewed as irrelevant and impotent.

Is the church afraid of losing membership because there are millions of Catholics who agree with the governor’s political positions on abortion and homosexual marriage? If this is true, then it’s time to clean house beyond the governor’s mansion.

What about “separation of church and state”? Should the church get mixed up in politics? This is not a political issue. It’s a moral issue. The apostle Paul had to deal with someone in the church of Corinth who had “has his father’s wife” (1 Cor. 5:1). Paul tells the Corinthians about their toleration of such gross immorality:

“You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. . . . REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES” (vv. 2–5, 13).

Excommunication does not remove the governor from office; it removes him from the church and its sacraments. I know this doesn’t mean much to many people today, but it means a great deal to God and the long-term health of the church

by Gary DeMar

Government Pays $60,000 per Poor Family to Keep them Voting for Liberals

How is it possible that $60,000 is spent on each welfare family and yet Liberals are crying for even more money? The total payments amount to $1 trillion. There’s a layer of bureaucracy that exists between the $1 trillion dollars and the welfare recipients:

“According to the Census’s American Community Survey, the number of households with incomes below the poverty line in 2011 was 16,807,795. . . . If you divide total federal and state spending by the number of households with incomes below the poverty line, the average spending per household in poverty was $61,194 in 2011.”

“This dollar figure is almost three times the amount the average household on poverty lives on per year. ‘If the spending on these programs were converted into cash, and distributed exclusively to the nation’s households below the poverty line, this cash amount would be over 2.5 times the federal poverty threshold for a family of four, which in 2011 was $22,350. . . .”

The amount spent keeps increasing, and we keep getting more poverty-stricken families. You get more of what you subsidize. This is exactly the results Liberals were planning on – an increased dependent class of voters that will keep them in office.

The goal has never been to decrease the number of poor families.

Once a welfare program is made law, there are always people who take advantage of it. Consider what’s happening with disability claims.

The number of American workers collecting federal disability insurance benefits hit yet another record high in October, according to the Social Security Administration.


This month 8,803,335 disabled workers are collecting benefits, up from the previous record of 8,786,049 set in September.

This is an increase of 1,334,095 since Obama took office. That works out to a net increase of about 29,646 per month (1,334,095 divided by 45 months), or an average increase of about 975 per day (1,334,095 divided by 1,369 days).

The continued increase of disability claims isn’t only an Obama phenomenon. There has been a steady increase in claims ever sense the program was instituted. People are taking advantage of the system because they can.

Why would any appreciable percentage of these people ever vote for a political candidate that wants to cut the budget and shrink the welfare state? Once their self-interest kicks in, they will vote for the guy or gal who promises to keep the checks coming.

The way to decrease disability claims and welfare is to free-up the economy. Can you imagine what would happen if the $1 trillion dollars spent on welfare were left in the pockets of tax payers? They would spend more, save more, and invest more. The economy would boom. The truly needy could be taken care by voluntary organizations.

The goal should be to wean the impoverished off the teat of the welfare state.


by Gary DeMar Filed Under Economy, Politics, Poverty, Welfare

Why the Sudden Swing in the Polls to Romney?

by Gary DeMar

A lot of voters have not been following the presidential election. As the election nears, more people are beginning to pay attention. Those of you who read articles on this site know all the issues. A majority of American voters don’t. Now that they’re paying attention, they need a way to make their decision.
The so-called undecided voters are shifting to Romney because they see other people shifting to Romney. They now believe it’s OK to vote against President Obama and not be thought of as a racist. They feel comfortable following the pack.

A similar thing is happening in Hollywood. First only a few brave conservatives stepped out of the political closet. These were big-name actors who had standing in Hollywood and were box office favorites, that is, their movies made money. Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer, and Gary Sinise are three recognizable names. They’re making it easier for younger conservatives to step forward. Stacey Dash is one recent example.

There’s a report that Jews are moving to Romney.

Despite losing some ground to Obama in the TIPP/IBD’s Daily tracking poll of Oct. 11, the poll of likely voters shows a dramatic, unprecedented shift among likely Jewish voters, with Romney overtaking the lead from President Obama for the first time. According to the 5 day polling sample, taken after the Denver debate, Mitt Romney garners support from 44 percent to Obama’s 40 percent.

Another report concludes that while “Romney may not beat Reagan’s share of the Jewish vote in the actual election, but right now he’s polling ahead of him. And often ahead of every Republican in the last 100 years.”

There’s ideological and political safety in numbers.

For the longest time we were being told by the media that there was a gender gap. Not anymore. Women are shifting to the Romney camp.


The Democrats have pushed the war on women theme too hard and too long. This works for the base that the Dems already have, but most American women aren’t the least bit interested in free birth control.

Then there are those women who believe that birth control is fine as long as the person wanting it pays for it. I’ve heard something like the following from several women.

“If you want to use birth control, then you pay for it. Don’t bring the government in and force me to pay for your birth control. If you want to open your legs to any man who puts the moves on you, then pay for your own contraception. If you get pregnant, I shouldn’t be forced to pay for your abortion. Abortion is the taking of a human life. You’ll have to stand before God on that one. Don’t make me complicit in your violation of the Sixth Commandment.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a liberal masquerading as a Republican, accused people who don’t want their tax dollars to pay for someone else’s birth control and abortions as waging a war on women. “It makes no sense to make this attack on women,” she said on a Public Radio station. “If you don’t feel this is an attack, you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters.”

I spoke with my wife, and she said abortion is a war on pre-born girls and boys, about 1.5 million each year. She also wanted to know why she was being taxed to pay for someone else’s birth control. It’s that simple.

Obama said Romney “feels more comfortable having politicians in Washington decide the healthcare choices that women are making.” I’ve never heard Romney say anything like this. In point of fact, it’s Washington that’s making our healthcare choices. The so-called Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is government inspired, government written, and government ruled on. It’s a healthcare mandate with a compulsory tax to pay for it.

People are tired listening to Obama’s blame shifting on the economy and his lame attempts to fix the economy by throwing their money at companies that only squander it. They’re fed up with the notion that if they disagree with an Obama policy, they are by definition a racist. They don’t like being lied to. Everybody knows that a never-seen film was NOT the reason our embassies were attacked and four Americans died.