Taxation Without Representation

According to www.investopedia.com*, ‘Taxation Without Representation” is defined as, “A situation in which a government imposes taxes on a particular group of its citizens, despite the citizens not consenting or having an actual representative deliver their views when the taxation decision was made. This situation was one of the triggering events that spurred the original thirteen American colonies to revolt against the British Empire.”

So what is it called when we’re supposed to have representation, but we actually don’t?

Because I have to say, I’m not being represented, neither by those elected in my state or in Washington DC.  I don’t like our tax dollars being spent in so many other countries when ours is in such lousy shape.  I don’t like our taxes being raised so that big corporations don’t have to pay much, if anything at all.  I don’t like…  Well you get the picture.  Who, exactly, is representing me?  Or you?

Okay...

So what is misappropriation of funds?

Wikipedia** defines this as, “the intentional, illegal use of the property or funds of another person for one's own use or other unauthorized purpose, particularly by a public official, a trustee of a trust, an executor or administrator of a dead person's estate or by any person with a responsibility to care for and protect another's assets (a fiduciary duty). It is a felony, a crime punishable by a prison sentence.

Oh well hey!  This sounds spot on, in my opinion.

Every elected official has thumbed their nose at responsibility to represent us.  They are not protecting our assets.  They are out of control with their spending of the money American’s work hard for. They overspend in one area, then have to take money from other areas (like Social Security), they use our tax dollars to bail out big corporations so those executives can pay out huge bonuses to the very people that helped drive them to the point of bankruptcy. 

If you or I spent someone else’s money on things they absolutely didn’t want it spent on, according to the definition of ‘misappropriation of funds,’ we’d be vacationing in prison.

So why are politicians allowed to get away with this, year after year after year after year? 

Because we, the people, have let them do whatever they want.  By not demanding their removal from office when it becomes obvious that they’re not representing us, we are saying, in a sense, “Well, we might not like what you’re doing, but it’s not worth the effort to do anything about it.”

Our government, all parties, are stealing our money, stealing the American dream, allowing American businesses to be shipped overseas in order for the owners to avoid paying fair wages and income tax, without charging them inflated import taxes to discourage the practice, and basically just running this country into the ground.

Per the IRS website*** for 2010, the IRS collected $1,163,687,589.00 in individual income tax alone.  In total, if I’m reading the chart right, they collected a grand total of $2,345,055,978.00 from all sources.

They expect us to live within our budgets, after paying them a nice chunk of our income.  Why is it that they, and not just this administration, but every administration for decades, can’t live within their 2+ billion dollar budget?

Are the countless wars they send our military to fight responsible for the obscene national debt?  Why are we tax payers footing the bill?  A number of these wars are fought in oil rich countries.  Why aren’t they forced to pay for the freedom our soldiers risk their lives to give them?

People, we need to put a stop to this before it’s too late to do anything about it.

We need another revolution. Unfortunately what we’re probably going to get is another Civil War.  Everyone has a side, but a bad politician is a bad politician, and most of them are.  Democrat and Republican alike.  Instead of accepting facts, too many people dig in their heels to support their party, regardless of what their representatives do or don’t do. 

We need to stop choosing sides and get on the same team.  The team that wants to save America by forcing politicians to do the jobs they were hired to do.  Until we realize this and start working together, nothing is going to change for the better in the USA.

*http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tax_without_representation.asp

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misappropriation

***http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=172265,00.html