Rich and famous black guy Terrence Howard says it is “immoral” for people like him to have to pay taxes. Maybe the moonbattery that prevails in Hollyweird has rendered him insane. Or maybe he just doesn’t like paying taxes. But sometimes even the oppressed have to cough them up anyway:

A federal judge in Philadelphia has ordered Academy Award-nominated actor Terrence Howard to pay nearly $1 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties after he allegedly threatened a Justice Department lawyer and maintained that it was “immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves.”

The Tinseltown One Percenter attempted to crybully a tax collector by voicemail:

“Four hundred years of forced labor and never receiving any compensation for it,” the actor said in the message. “Now you have the gall to try and prosecute and charge taxes to the descendants of a broken people that you are responsible for causing the breakage.”

Al Sharpton feels his pain. But last I knew, that zillionaire professional racist doesn’t have to pay taxes. He’s even more oppressed than Howard — by which I mean he has more powerful friends.

Howard’s demands go beyond not having to pay his fair share:

“In truth, the entire United States should, by default, become the property of the descendants of slaves,” he said.

Great idea for next time they update the Democratic Party platform.

On tips from Wiggins and Franco.

What Democrats want more of, like illegal aliens, they subsidize. They pay for the subsidies by taxing what they want less of — like people who go to work in the morning:

The climate isn’t going to notice the difference, but this really will reduce congestion — by giving businesses yet another reason to relocate outside of New York as the once-great city succumbs to the Democrat Death Spiral.

On a tip from R F.

Rich Ivy League professor Cornel West is running for president with the Green Party. It will never fly. Someone this hypocritical could only be a Democrat:

Socialist professor and presidential candidate Cornel West wants “massive investments” including “free college tuition” and “Medicare for All” as part of his presidential campaign.

And yet…

According to the Daily Beast, and confirmed by West, the Union Theological Seminary professor owes over half a million dollars in taxes.

Professor West explains himself:

He explained, when asked [last] Monday by commentator Charlamagne Tha God, that not paying taxes is part of his “gangster proclivities.”

Cornel West has been a political advisor to Al Sharpton. Maybe that’s where Reverend Al got the idea that well-to-do victims of racist oppression don’t have to pay taxes.

Meanwhile, West’s Marxist ideology would in effect impose a 100% tax rate on the rest of us.

On tips from Franco and R F.

The Battle of Waterloo took place 208 years ago this month, putting an end to French military dominance. Yet France still harbors ambitions of global domination — or at least President Emmanuel Macron does:

Macron has suggested the imposition of a global taxation system in order to subsidise the green agenda to mitigate climate change.

Imagine if a demented theocrat demanded a global tax to finance a golden staircase to heaven for Jesus to descend. Macron’s proposal for preventing the climate from fluctuating is the equivalent in the liberal religion.

Speaking at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris on Friday, Mr Macron argued that actions from individual governments would be insufficient to deal with the alleged armageddon set to descend upon the world and therefore a new international taxation framework should be established.

No individual government could be massive enough to satisfy the ambitions of globalists like Macron. In exploiting their imaginary climate crisis, they follow the example of Stone Age witch doctors who demanded sacrifices to propitiate weather gods.

“I’m in favour of an international taxation to finance efforts that we have to make to fight poverty and in terms of climate [action],” the French president said in comments reported by POLITICO.

The reference to fighting poverty indicates that at usual envirofascism will be served with a side order of international wealth transfer.

Macron suggested that the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) could be tapped for a negotiation process in the hopes of creating a global climate tax system for multinational corporations.

Fortunately for corporations, they don’t have to pay taxes; they pass this expense along to consumers.

Why not just put Macron personally in charge of what happens to the wealth we create? After all, he is former Rothschild banker. Surely he can handle our money better than we can.

Speaking of money, France is running out of it under Macron’s rule. He calls it the “end of abundance.” But there will be plenty of money again, at least for a little while, once he takes the looting spree global.

On tips from Steve T and Wiggins.

The economy has been stumbling under the burden of inflation, excessive taxation, massive wasteful spending, and suffocating regulation. But it could be worse — and probably will be soon:

Fresh from the looming trainwreck that is the deal to increase the debt limit, four Republican senators recently signed onto legislation that would require the Biden administration to study the feasibility of . . . a national tax on energy that would be collected at the gas pump and in electricity and heating bills.

The four Republicans — Senator Cramer (R-ND), Senator Cassidy (R-LA), Senator Graham (R-SC), and Senator Murkowski (R-AK) — joined five Democrats in asking Team Biden to determine the amount of energy used — and carbon dioxide emitted — by various countries in the production of essentially everything that makes modern life possible (aluminum, iron, steel, plastic, crude oil, batteries, etc.).

Eventually, the information would be used to impose tariffs on those countries who — in the view of the Biden crew — emitted too much carbon dioxide while creating those products.

That is, it would be a carbon tax, which would inevitably open the door to more carbon taxes.

Here’s why they are going at it furtively, first attacking imports:

[A] recent nationwide survey specifically found that voters by a wide margin (44 percentage points) oppose the federal government imposing a tax on carbon dioxide emissions collected at the gas pump and in heating and utility bills.

There is zero chance of more taxes improving the weather, not that there is anything wrong with the weather anyway. But since harmless carbon emissions are a byproduct of literally all human activity, inexorably greedy Democrats and their RINO collaborators cannot resist taxing them, regardless of the consequences for our economic well-being.

On a tip from R F.

Compliments of Chuck A.

When all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. All Democrats have is ever more government, which takes the form of ever higher taxes. Consequently, Gavin Newsom is addressing high gas prices by raising taxation on gas:

As noted at The Blaze,

The national average for a gallon of gas is about $3.89 according to the Automobile Association of America, while the average cost per gallon in California is $6.39, or 64% greater than the rest of the country.

Gas is more expensive in Governor Newsom’s California not because capitalists are greedy but due to higher taxes and more repressive regulations — i.e., because there is more government. The Democrat solution to too much government is more government.

By contrast, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a gas tax holiday that drove prices down lower in his state. A gallon of gas in Florida costs about $3.22, far lower than that in California.

Oil companies are not less greedy in Florida. But the people running the state government are.

On a tip from Mr. Freemarket.

Slavery had existed throughout the world since before recorded history before whites largely put an end to it in the 19th century. No one should be surprised that this repressive institution has staged a comeback.

In a modern society, slavery works differently. You are not owned by an individual. The power of the individual has been supplanted by Big Government. You are owned by a faceless collective of bureaucrats.

A kind master might show mercy. There will be no mercy from the bureaucratic Borg. So long as you live on their plantation, you will work harder and harder for less and less until the day you die.

As the Bureau of Labor Statistics admits, already the government takes more of the wealth we create than we spend on food, clothing, and healthcare combined:

During 2021, according to Table R-1 in the BLS’ Consumer Expenditure Survey, American “consumer units” spent an average of $15,495.28 on food, clothing and health care combined, while paying an average of $16,729.73 in total taxes to federal, state and local governments.

State and local governments at least provide important services in exchange for the taxes. However, the federal government takes much more:

These included $8,561.46 in federal income taxes; $5,565.45 in Social Security taxes; $2,564.14 in state and local income taxes; $2,475.18 in property taxes; $105.21 in other taxes—minus an average of $2,541.71 in stimulus payments received back from the government.

Note that this does not include the massive invisible federal tax that is inflation.

The main purpose of the federal government is to defend the border from foreign invasion. Not only does it refuse to perform this duty, it actually encourages Third World armies of the indigent to invade our country on a gargantuan scale to displace us — even recruiting them abroad.

The federal government does us more harm than good. The only reason to give it money is that it will send men with guns to hurt us if we refuse. It takes the money on the same basis as Mafia extortionists, with the added insult that it pretends it has a right to and we are greedy to object.

By confiscating our money, Big Government steals our labor. To the extent we work so that Joe Biden and his ilk can fritter away the wealth we create, we are slaves by any reasonable definition.

Hat tip: Not the Bee.

The already massive IRS that Biden is doubling in size does not exist to confiscate our wealth. That can be done directly through inflation, as with Biden’s half-$trillion student loan bailout. The current purpose of the IRS is to punish enemies of the Democrat Party. This became obvious when Obama used it to persecute Tea Party groups, and will become more obvious now that you are four times as likely to get audited.

That’s why Democrats love the IRS. You have to love what Democrats love — or else you’re a racist:

Even if we had a responsible government living within its means instead of financing itself through inflation like a collapsing socialist dictatorship in some Third World backwater, we could easily live without the IRS. As Ted Cruz has proposed, a flat tax would be more fair and so easy to implement that you could file your taxes on a postcard. But that would be racist, because it wouldn’t allow Democrats to overtax people they don’t like and provide cash handouts a.k.a. “tax credits” to people they do.

On a tip from Mr. Freemarket.