 |
TAX DAY: Why Some Refuse to Pay |
|
National Peace Fund Group Lobby Day, 5/14/2003 Continuing Campaigns & Things to do RIGHT NOW! |
A
Letter to the IRS from Two Members of our Local Group
President Eisenhower was indeed right on January l7, l96l to warn us of the encroaching power of “the military industrial complex.” Even without the cost of the war in Iraq, increases in the Pentagon budget have for two successive years been larger than any other item. This is bad news for the neediest people in our society; it turns a deaf ear to Eisenhower’s warning. Tax rebates voted by the congress have created fiscal chaos in state governments across the nation and produced grim slashes in Medicaid, education, homeless shelters, legal aid, daycare, food subsidies, and every other program designed to help those most deprived. Forty-three million Americans have no medical insurance. But for those in higher income brackets, those least needy, happy days are here again. The tax break for President Bush will amount to $44,500. That is “more …than the total income, before taxes, of a substantial majority of American families.” (New Yorker, l/20/03, p. 30). Vice-president Cheney’s cut will be $327,000, more than the before tax income of 98% of our total population. Only unconcerned and uninformed voters could acquiesce in such inequity, or pay their taxes without pangs of guilt.
Although congress voted a down payment of $75 billion for the Iraq war, the full cost is not yet revealed. Many of us did not vote for Mr. Bush and would have voted against this war if given the opportunity. The so called “coalition” that “successfully waged the war" against a minor and ill-equipped adversary, is another example of U.S. expansionism and unilateralism. In a Courier-Journal article (4/ll/03), E. J. Dionne informs us that “[t]he U.S. is preparing to pay the salaries of more than one million Iraqi civil servants.” Why can’t Washington, by sharing revenue, prevent layoffs of civil servants in California, Kentucky, and other states? Republican Kevin Phillips (C-J 8/4/02) has pointed out why Wealth and Democracy don’t mix. Perhaps when the President and Congress finish building democracy in Iraq, they will try it here at home. But the way our county government has treated Living Wage legislation provides no ground for optimism. Taxpayers should revolt over the sexual criminality manifested at the Air Force Academy (C-J 4/6/03; 3/28/03) twelve years after a similarly repulsive expose involving the Navy Tailhook Association. The various academies are no small part of the benevolence of the military-industrial-congressional complex. These cadets face none of the higher and higher educational costs that exist in nonmilitary colleges and universities. The cost for each four-year graduate is about $225,000, straight from taxpayers’ pockets. At last count, fifty-six women have come forward to testify at Denver, one of them affirming that if you don’t get raped, “you’re one of the rare ones.” The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has begun collecting evidence that “Rape, other attacks [are] more common than previously thought” even among male veterans. Should taxpayers cooperate with this? Perhaps the acme of malfeasance in the use of tax dollars is the unqualified support of Israel, the largest single recipient of U.S. aid money. The amount is approximately $3 billion per year plus as much as $l0 billion in loan “guarantees” (i.e., if Israel defaults, we pay.) “Acme” is the correct word to use here since Israel has been cited by the UN Security Council forty-six times for violation of Council resolutions. These resolutions (242 and 338) refer mainly to Israel’s refusal to end the occupation of Palestinian territories and rights of Palestinian refugees to return. Nothing is so destructive to the building of peace in the Middle East as the spiral of violence arising from Israel’s disregard of Palestinian rights, in addition to meeting each suicidal reaction of the Palestinians with massively superior military force, financed by U.S. tax dollars. It is total irony that in l98l when Israel made a preemptive strike against a nuclear reactor in Iraq engineered by the French, the U.S. joined in a condemnation of the strike by the UN Security Council. Yet we have now adopted the policy of preemption. Israel’s use of violence to subdue the Palestinians has created an inferno. Time will tell whether American might applied in Iraq will not see the same outcome. For all of these reasons, and many more, my wife and I are refusing to pay the military portion (approximately 50%) of our income tax liability. Believing as we do that God alone is lord of the conscience, we are bound by conscience to resist. We continue to encourage our congressional representatives to sponsor the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund legislation (HR 1186) whereby conscientious objectors to war would pay the military portion of their federal tax into a separate account earmarked for nonmilitary purposes. If the Peace Tax Fund were passed into law, it would be a huge step toward educating people about our overblown military budget. And it would provide freedom of conscience for those who cannot participate financially in war.
(signed)
|