It seems you are attacking more the effects than the root causes, which in my opinion is the inability for any political voices outside the two major parties to have influence in setting policy or making laws. Instead of capturing the $60B and creating shifting the money to new places why not just eliminate the spending or better yet eliminate each of our individual contributions to this tyranny.

April 15th (actually the 17th this year) just passed and with it the stress some Americans felt while trying to fill out their tax forms in a complete and honest manner while at the same time limiting their tax liabilities. For the past 10 years I have used a legal (from a criminal liability standpoint according to Supreme Court rulings) way to circumvent my income-reporting requirement and therefore tax liabilities. I did this by making a minor change to the text just above the signature line of tax forms and asserting my 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination on a line-item basis. Before any readers repeat the litany about the necessity of every citizen paying his/her ‘fair share’ (whatever that means) to support governmental activities, jump to conclusions about me being simply a tax cheat and call for my arrest, let me make one thing clear: for me its not about the money, its about political fairness.

Although U.S politicians frequently cite our political system as some paragon of representative democracy, I am unaware of any country since the Civil War adopting our winner-take-all, gerrymandered district, model for election of legislators. Almost all opted for a parliamentary system with proportional representation. Americans and their media decry the corruption, lack of new ideas and lack of statesmen available for elected office but then only consider members of the two major political parties, and their limited ideologies, as possibilities.

I am an independent voter. The rallying cry of American Colonists was “No Taxation Without Representation”. Today, unless you are either Republican or Democrat you are effectively denied representation. Almost no independent candidates are ever elected to U.S. state, not alone federal office, even though in all other democracies many would surely have gotten members of their party seated. People under the voting age in their states that work and pay taxes have no representation. All residents of D.C. have no representative in Congress who can vote. Many convicted felons are denied the vote yet they are expected to pay taxes. Those who are elected by today’s majority are no more the representatives of these independent voters than the Colonial puppets appointed by King George III. If one accepts that the American Colonists were right to refuse to pay taxes to the British Crown until they received representation then why should today’s independent voters, D.C. residents, working minors and felons pay state and federal taxes?

The U.S. Supreme Court is now hearing arguments regarding the legality of redistricting methods. The drawing of district lines has been one of the most contentious political activities in American life since almost the beginning of the nation. But what seems to have been lost in this discussion is the very concept of how citizens elect representatives and the fairness of the process, especially to independent voters.

I promise to restart completely reporting my income when effective measures of proportional representation are implemented at my state and the federal level. Will any independent voters join me in telling Uncle Sam, “Taxation Without Representation is Tyranny”?

Rev. Jonathan Mayhew
131 Cambridge St
Boston, MA 02114

mayhew@safe-mail.net
Skype phone: jonathanmayhew

I also believe that properly applied, OSINT can help identify $550 billion a year in additional revenues, with four main contributors:

1) Corporations back up to 25% of the federal revenue from taxes (they are now at 6% from a high of 32%)

2) End wasteful subsidies and other frauds including excessive spending on complex military systems and prison systems

3) Attack illicit trade and make it unprofitable, while obtaining added revenues from confiscation of illicit profits

4) Identify tax fraud, such as the $50 billion a year in import-export pricing fraud, an advanced form of money laundering.

The next President needs to have an Open Source Agency as the basis for both wise policy, and engaged informed democracy.