Due to work, travel, and other issues, TPOL missed National Tax Day. But we can’t totally ignore the horrible status of tolerating evils like taxation.
This meme was very recently posted. We think it is a legitimate question. Dear readers, do you agree?
Is this not criminal? Morally if not legally? Even worse is the distribution:
As someone pointed out with this chart, we don’t have a tax fairness problem (at least not from the point of view of Populists and those who claim to be the vanguard of the poor people). We have a spending problem. You can see this in the State tax burdens.
Now consider this recently published map:
We point out that this does not include any direct federal taxes: income (individual or corporate) or excise (on booze, fuel, lubricants, tires, etc.). Just what State and local governments rip off people who live, travel through, shop, or work in their jurisdiction.
We admit to being surprised that New Mexico is the third worst (after Hawai’i and New York State). Which, admittedly, is probably skewed by New York City. For us at TPOL, we are pleased to see that South Dakota is tied for fourth best (together with New Hampshire) and just after Alaska, Tennessee and Delaware. (And are proud for a friend/correspondent who helped, years ago, to eliminate the income tax in Tennessee and also overall lower taxes.)
It is interesting to see that except for a few outliers in the East (and of course, Alaska), the bite of State and local taxes is quite a bit less in the northern part of “flyover country” – but we will tell you that taxes are still way too high, and the waste of money is just as high in those States that are under 8%.
And remember:
Now, since Uncle Milty is not a modern guy, we’ll also quote someone else:
We will look at more tax issues from a libertarian and christian point of view in future commentaries.
The Price of Liberty 
Just say no?
Today, especially in the Mountain States and some of the Great Plains, there is massive alarm being broadcast by a wide range of people. One of the fears is that of mining: controversial for more than half a century: gold, rare earths, coal, even sand and gravel.
The other is much newer: a fear of data centers. Data centers are demanded, we are told, by the explosive growth of so-called AI. By the massive expansion of the internet.
Mining, we are told, destroys the land. It consumes massive amounts of water. millions of gallons of Diesel fuel are burned in the equipment. It destroys wildlife habitat, pollutes the waters of the US, drives away tourists, and more.
Data centers are equally bad. They consume gigawatts of electrical power, their demand driving up prices for electricity and even denying people adequate power for their homes. To produce that power requires mining and burning of coal, or drilling for and burning natural gas, all producing air pollution. They also consume millions of gallons of water for cooling. They occupy square miles of land.
There are many other evils associated with these operations. Thousands of postings, tens of thousands of words, are being written weekly in opposition to these things.
All of them, we are told, are the result of greedy corporations, lusting after the almighty (or not) dollar: they are the Robber Barons of the 19th Century, reborn and just as conniving, despicable, and corrupting. Virtually all of the postings also demand that government, and voters, do something to get rid of them: to prevent new ones and even close existing ones.
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