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The central government in Washington, D.C. should be, for the moment, considered to be a legitimate government. Although it has come to consider itself as the sovereign, thereby displacing the individual citizen, it still requires certain legitimate access to the financial resources necessary to run its basic services and activities.
After reviewing the Constitution of the United States of America, it was found that there were very few activities reserved and/or required of the central government. The missions and duties of the central government were clear and understandable.
The first, and perhaps greatest, was the requirement to provide for the common defence of all the members of the new federation of sovereign States. This would require the establishment of an army, and even more especially, a strong navy, and a strong coast guard.
Next, and critical to the binding of a Nation, as opposed to an assembly of neighbours, was the establishment of an effective system of post. The orderly sending of messages and valuables great distances at reasonable cost and reasonable assumption of arrival from one end of the nation to the other came under the purvue of the Constitution's to-do list for the central government.
Then, there were the implied activities. If there were to be a judicial, a legislative, and an executive branch of the central government, such an assembly of unproductive people would have to have their stewards, butlers, snuff-box fillers and cleaners, spittoon emptiers, scribes, slave arbiters, coachmen, livery tenders, gardeners and room tenders, cooks, etc.
Within the executive, one must consider the establishment and defence of Embassies and counsels, couriers and secret briefcases with hidden compartments, and the cost of seductive hostesses for the visits from French and Russian diplomats. That is the Department of State. Then there is the Treasury and then the Secretary of Justice.
To fund all of this? Tariffs at the ports. Liquor and certain other excise taxes. This was Alexander Hamilton's first recourse when he saw the futility of trying to deal with an insurrection by some disgruntled veterans from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with the deployment of disparate State militias. That was in 1783....and when time came for the Constitution to be drawn, the Hamiltonian faction was careful to make certain that some form of independent income be provided for the Central Government.
In those times, it was assumed that public projects would not only be deigned by the governments of yon, but that those same-said governments would provide for the necessary financing. Once a matter could be removed to the most affected jurisdiction, it would correctly fall to the People of that Locale to pay for it. Made sense.
Now, El Gringo Viejo is just as happy as he can be when California and New York and other States decide that they want to meddle in the purses, wallets, and check-book scribbles of their subjects. But he prefers Texas, obviously, because Texas has no income tax. Our motto as a member State in the American Union might be, "One psychotic, totalitarian income taxing madhouse is enough".
So, the solution we present is simply to establish a 12.5% national sales tax which is imposed at the point of terminal use. Hotel room, auto, lawnmower, everything save for food, medicine, and medical service.
This would accompany a law ordering an immediate initiation of an orderly disestablishment of the Departments (Secretariats) of Health and Human Refuse, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, Housing and Urban Destruction, Homeland Security, Education. most of the Department of the Interior, Veterans' Affairs, and various Bureaus, Commissions, and Agencies.
We have always been quick to point out that the Department of Veterans' Affairs would be broken up and the issues pertaining each veteran would be assigned to his branch of service. Brothers looking after brothers.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs would be abolished. The Coast Guard would be immediately sent back into free standing service...possibly attached to the Department of the Treasury. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives would be cancelled. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Hazard Agency would be cancelled immediately.
All of the above bureaucracies to be cancelled "do" absolutely nothing. If the OROG had had the opportunity to have accompanied me during my walks through what was then called "Main Labour" the OROG would been stunned: a huge, useless building in the Middle of Morass, D. C. where office after office was peopled by young...local somewhat human looking types...let us say....literally laying on the desks, eating pizza, playing office basketball with wadded paper and trash-cans, cackling and giggling, involved with anything but anything pertinent to issues affecting the labouring man. And I am not referring to late Friday afternoon light-craziness waiting on the clock to run out. And this was in 1973!!! With certainty, it is worse now. And think....a nationally applicable labour law and labour standard....really? The minimum wage works so well, that is why the socialists return and return to accuse the Republicans...in left-think, "Ain't nobody c'ain't live nohow on no mimimim wage..." . This while the white liberal, who glowers at the dumboe Republican who is working and minding his own business, and says "How could you let this happen!? How can you live with yourself!?"
A 12.5% national sales tax would cripple the central government's ability to control the lives of the actual sovereigns. The reduction and/or elimination of much of the discretionary and arbitrary regulation would unbridle the Republic in terms of solid, unrestrainable economic and spiritual uplift.
El Gringo Viejo
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