Tax me, Please.

When should citizens beg to be taxed? When their politicians allow a foreign country to tax them.. OPEC's price hikes to 20-year highs are de facto export taxes. NBC Nightly News reported (2000-02-16) that Saudi Arabia now has an extra $130 million a day over last year. Overall, OPEC is daily taxing consumers a quarter of a billion dollars ... almost $100 billion a year. We foolishly and unnecessarily export our taxes to foreign powers. Ignorance is bliss  ... until the ignored problem becomes too big to ignore.

We know the billfold impact. Consider the economic ramifications.

1.It doesn't take Alan Greenspan to say inflation. We all know that.

2.It doesn't take a doomsayer to say recession. We all fear that.

3.Nor does it take Bill Clinton to say, "It's the economy, stupid." We, of course, don't know what the semantic slippage master means.

Economically, because our politicians allow OPEC to tax us, OPEC consumers, not us, will receive better schools, hospitals and retirement. Militarily, more Adul Bin Ladins will pop up with these oil tax dollars. Our military will have fewer dollars to fight OPEC-originating terrorism ... our tax dollars! Shades of Milo Minderbinder.

Clinton proposed draining the strategic reserves. When they are gone, the ignored problem will be bigger. Compounding higher prices will be the desperation of no fuel reserves for military options.

Why have we ignored the oil price question that now wrongly taxes America? Are we not back at our starting point of taxation without representation? Yes, in two ways. OPEC taxes us without our having redress to represent how taxes are set or used, and, our habitual politicians allow this taxation because they don't represent America's interest.

Habitual politicians re-present their own re-election interest that privatize public laws to provide campaign welfare for big dollar contributors. Shades of ABSCAM, Congressmen readily accepting supposed OPEC dollars for private favors. The only thing worse than a hereditary king is a habitual politician, for the former does not impugn democracy.

What can we do? Go to war like our founding fathers? No, we can't bomb OPEC countries. Nor can we send stealth fighters to bomb oil companies. (Now's the time to buy oil stock, for oil companies use the OPEC ruse to raise pennies for record income.)

Can the US Government tell OPEC to roll back prices? No. Can the US Government tell them to not raise prices further? If our government could tell them not to raise prices today, it could have said so yesterday ... and we would not be worried about oil prices tomorrow.

What can we do? Take a lesson from Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The simple, peaceful way to bring about economic justice is to tax yourself when someone overtaxes you.

When India suffered from British taxes on salt, Gandhi organized the sufferers to serve themselves. Indians taxed themselves by taking the time to make salt. Taxes in currency are the time you currently worked to earn dollars paid for taxes. When Birmingham bus drivers told Black Americans had to accept less for the same price, Martin Luther King organized Americans, black and white, to tax themselves by not using buses. It took more time to get to work or bother friends. Like inflation, one can be overtaxed by

• higher prices for the same goods and services or
• the same price for lower goods or lesser services.

Justice triumphed when people taxed themselves rather than suffer unfair and insulting taxation without representation. Mahatma and Martin showed how to directly tax one's time to avoid the political ignorance that indirectly over-taxes you.

What we can do .. is what we should have done in 1973. Swap income taxes for oil taxes. Let's tax ourselves rather than let foreign governments and terrorists tax us. Let's raise domestic oil taxes while lowering income taxes. Let's keep our taxes in our country. If an oil tax generates 100 billion dollars (OPEC 's take this year), let's cut income taxes.

In the end, Americans will pay no more taxes. In the end, America's taxes will stay in America to continue the longest economic expansion in history. Unstopped, overseas overtaxation over oil will comatose our robust economy. Ignorance is not bliss when you ignore a wound bleeding you to death.

Since America cannot tell OPEC to stop raising the prices, when will the price rises stop? When Americans buy less oil because of rising prices. OPEC won't pay your income taxes as they raise their export tax. A swap tax will. An Energy Swap Tax will keep our taxes in America as we conserve oil without an overall tax increase. Otherwise, OPEC is going to create OPEC's heaven on earth as our economy flounders with a  hellish rise in unemployment, inflation, crime and stress.

If, in 1973, we had initiated a tax swap of income for oil, our overall tax costs would be the same or less. And, we would have better schools, hospitals, roads and retirements. Trillions of tax dollars left our shores since OPEC's first tax hike in 1973. How many people today have longer work weeks and work lives because we didn't swap one tax for another to keep American tax dollars in America for Americans!!! In 20 years, do we want to look back over a period of higher taxes and lower economic growth because we let foreign countries tax us?

Why won't we do this? Term limits. In 1776, Americans inacted term limits for hereditary kings. Are we not suffering from something worse than monarchs? Multi-generational habitual politcians. They use their fathers political IOU's to get selected rather than elected. Our reward: No new solutions to our old ignored problems. Ominously, a presidential contender is a 3^rd generation habitual politician from a oil state beholden to oil interests of his own and his father. Habitual politicians bushwack and gore humanity.

If we are to be taxed, let's tax ourselves to get something back. Please, tax me. Let my taxes help our education, medicine, transportation and military. With OPEC taxation, my overall taxes increase. With an oil/income tax swap, my overall taxation does not change. Please, tax me. The main thing is, if we are to be taxed, let's keep the taxes at home. Let's wake up to our ignorance so our ignored problems stop taxing us unfairly from abroad. Please, tax me.