If it was us

It took about three minutes to find what I was looking for — all I needed was to Google "sentenced income tax evasion."

Here's what I found ... all but one of the names have been removed to protect the guilty. And I barely went halfway down the first page of links. The first page had "Results 1-10 of about 94,300 for 'sentenced income tax evasion."

XXX was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 36 months, supervised release term of 3 years and ordered to pay restitution of $717,899 to the IRS. In August 2000, a federal grand jury charged XXX with three counts of income tax evasion for the years 1993 through 1995. According to the indictment, XXX attempted to evade paying a total of about $180,000 in taxes.

YYY was sentenced to a year in prison to be followed by one year of supervised release. YYY was also ordered to pay costs of $1,227 and an assessment of $200 ... YYY admitted evading over $183,000 in federal income taxes for tax years 1997, 1998, and 1999.

ZZZ has been found guilty in federal court on four counts of income tax evasion ... He will be sentenced Jan. 21. He faces a maximum five-year sentence and $250,000 fine for each count, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

On October 18, 1931, Capone was convicted after trial, and on November 24, was sentenced to eleven years in Federal prison, fined $50,000 and charged $7,692 for court costs, in addition to $215,000 plus interest due on back taxes.

If it was us, and not Tom Daschle or Timothy Geithner, we'd be going to prison. For the rulers of the U.S. of A., all it takes is an "I'm sorry" and a check. You may not get to be health & human services secretary, but you get to go home tonight — and you may even get to be treasury secretary and give the IRS its marching orders.

"Hope and change," my muscular buttocks. The U.S. government is still run by thugs and criminals. People are angry. Angry enough to change things? We'll have to see.

A dose of Chodorov

We would be told, most emphatically, that by not voting we would be turning the reins of government over to "rascals." Probably so; but do we not regularly vote "rascals" out? And, after we have ousted one set, are we not called upon to oust another crew at the next election? It seems that rascality is endemic to government.

Our balloting system has been defined as a battle of opposing forces, each armed with proposals for the public good, for a grant of power. As far as it goes, this definition is correct. But when the successful contestant acquires the grant of power, toward what end does he use it – not theoretically but practically?

Does he not, with an eye to the next election, go in for purchasing support, with the taxpayers' money, so that he might enjoy another period of power? The over-the-barrel method of seizing and maintaining political power is standard practice, and such is the nature of the "rascality."

This is not, however, an indictment of our election system. It is rather a rejection of the institution of the State; our election system is merely one way of adjusting ourselves to that institution.

The State is a product of conquest. As far back as we have any knowledge of the beginnings of this institution, it originated when a band of freebooting nomads swooped down on some peaceful group of agriculturists and picked up a number of slaves; slavery is the first form of economic exploitation.

Repeated visititations of this sort left the victims breathless, if not lifeless and propertyless to boot. So, as people do when they have no other choice, they made a compromise with necessity; the peaceful communities hired one set of marauders to protect them from other thieving bands, for a price. In time, this tribute was regularized and called taxation.

- Frank Chodorov, from Out of Step

The Numbers Game

It really would be ironic if a fat government check one day ended my days of toiling at slave wages while cursing the big fat government. A couple of times a week, I plunk down some cash and play the 1-in-146,000,000 odds of the lottery.

It could be worse. When I plunked the cash down the other day and said, "I just came in to throw away some money," the clerk laughed and said, "It could be worse. There's a couple who come in here and spend $100 or more at a time." Now that is quiet desperation, my friend.

We play the same numbers, so we're trapped. A few years ago there was a news story about some poor shlep, in Wales or somewhere, who played the same numbers for years but they never came up until he gave up, and a couple of weeks later the numbers came up, so he blew his brains out. I'd like to think I wouldn't be that despairing, that I'd figure, well if I was supposed to have that money they'd have come up when I was playing 'em, and a lot of people deserve or need the money more than I do anyway. But just in case it would drive me insane, we play the numbers anyway.

I remember cop shows and crime movies about guys being arrested for running a numbers racket, and I wondered what that was. Now the government runs a numbers racket and nobody gets arrested. Funny world.

The government-run numbers racket uses the profits to provide property tax relief, so that's a good thing. Property tax relief is a funny thing. It's a tax they assess you on something so they don't assess a higher tax on "your" land. Why I say it's a funny thing is: You're paying two taxes, but they tell you they're doing you a favor with one tax because otherwise the other tax would be higher. Wouldn't you rather pay one really big tax than two slightly not-as-big taxes? It's a numbers racket of a different color.

Before I started writing this morning, I checked today's numbers. Sure enough, I wasted my money yesterday. Think of it as life insurance: I didn't want to risk ending up like the guy in Wales. And I'll get some property tax relief in return. Such a deal.

Sex and your tax dollars at work

I suppose this is a better use of tax dollars than buying bombs or giving tax credits to folks who already have millions in their bank accounts. But you do gotta wonder about a federally funded study of why people have sex.

The study from Professor Cindy Meston (pictured) and the Sexual Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of Texas has been written up this week as discovering that the No. 1 reason men and women have sex is the same for both sexes: "I was attracted to the person." Also in the top 10 on both lists: "I wanted to experience the physical pleasure," "It feels good" and "I wanted to express my love for the person."

Not detailed in the story ("Researchers at the University of Texas spent five years and their own money ....") but available when you click "About Us" on the lab's Web site is where they got "their own money" for a study that showed what anyone with a libido already knows. No surprise here: "Her research is currently being funded by the National Institutes of Health."

The cliche is that men give love to get sex, while women give sex to get love, but Meston says her study shows we're more alike than that. Was that insight worth the investment? Hard to say. But it's another example of how the fruits of your labor belong to a government that will spend it on just about anything, despite a solemn document that limits its powers and priorities.