Friday, October 27, 2017

A Letter from the "State"

"If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and is never likely to have, a single honest dollar in its treasury. If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized." -- Lysander Spooner
Have you ever truly had a piece of postal mail ruin a perfectly nice trip from your mailbox? 
Here is my story of just such a ruined journey.

Once upon a time (as all good stories should start), my wonderful Mother-In-Law recently gave my wife and I a car. Gifted. Doué. Free. Gratis.

So I dutifully checked the box on the title indicating that it was a gift from a family member and transferred the title, registered the vehicle and called it good.

Nope. Nada.

Here comes the mailbox part of the story.

I received a letter from the State of Michigan, henceforth to be referred to as the "State", requesting documentation to support my claim of being related to my Mother-In-Law in order to take advantage of the tax free status of being gifted a vehicle. A rather threatening dispatch from the State with deadlines stating when to respond, penalties that would be levied, interest charges that I would incur and other overt hazards I would face if I just ignored this letter. It seems that this was an important and urgent matter that the State required me to explore. In depth. With official supporting documents. All bold faced and italicized within the letter. 
Enter rage.

It truly ruined a perfectly nice trip to my mailbox.

As I had previously checked the box on the Application for Title regarding this, with the stated penalty for falsifying this stated clearly, and I quote: “Any alteration, erasure, false statement, forgery or fraud voids this title and is a crime”, I was left scratching my head for the duplicity this letter was requiring of me to do. I take seriously the process of placing my signature on documents. Especially after such threats worth repeating here like “Any alteration, erasure, false statement, forgery or fraud voids this title and is a crime” are part of the “contract” between me and the State. After all, I was only asking for the clearly stated particular tax exempt transfer benefit that I was entitled to.
But my signature was not enough this time. My honor was not to be believed or trusted. Especially if it meant that the State would be missing out on grabbing any of my hard-earned tax dollars that it felt that it might be owed.

In fact, on review of the “Letter of Inquiry Concerning Michigan Taxes,” it supports the fact that:
  • The State does not trust me.
  • The State has people, namely a Mr. “Brian,” whose sole purpose is working to extort possible additional tax dollars, working in a job funded by tax dollars, in a office building paid for by citizen's flesh and blood efforts, all of which seem to be being wasted on me in this instance.
  • The State wastes postage to mail out letters to honest law-abiding citizens such as myself to extort said tax dollars.
  • The State wastes resources in its effort to extort tax dollars in the form of purchasing envelopes, printing a letter, inserting it in that envelope and managing a database to question its citizen’s integrity and truthfulness.
  • The State requires me to further use my personal resources such as time to search and find required documentation, dollars to reproduce documentation, postage to return said documentation and the personal aggravation of the whole process. This required my Senior Citizen Parent-In-Laws to go to a safety deposit box, procure and copy their marriage license, and finally mail it to me so I could place it alongside my wife’s birth certificate and our marriage license (which required me to go out and get copies made) to confirm the connection.
This “Letter of Inquiry Concerning Michigan Taxes,” more of a “Letter of Demand” in my view, required me to ask my senior citizen Parent-In-Laws to drive to a safety deposit box, procure and copy their marriage license, place it back into the safety deposit box and mail it to me. I could then place this documentation alongside my wife’s birth certificate and our marriage license (which required me to go out and get copies made) to confirm the family connection. And finally, mail it, at my cost for postage, back to the State.

All of which I did, being a good rule-following, boot-licker that I can sometimes be. To my own shame I should add.

Yet, I somehow feel as if the State of Michigan ought to be invoiced from me for the wasted time and resources that it took for me and my loved ones to respond to this “time suck.”

And also, TAXATION IS THEFT.

Note: I will henceforth carefully consider requests by my government for increased funding through tax dollars. I will lodge my final decision on these matters in the voting booth.

Monday, October 2, 2017

The Cat in the Hat: The New, Shiny, Triggering Object

“No I do not like it, not one little bit.” – The fish from Dr. Seuss’s children book, The Cat in the Hat
Sometimes a cat in a hat is just a cat in a hat.

Yes, I understand that this might not fit into everyone’s little narrative statement, but it is true. I am troubled by the hypersensitivity that is causing people to over-analyze, over-react and even become anxious and depressed over perceived discriminatory objects. Or by being scared, worried or upset over what someone else might be going to do, like the children's red fish from the "The Cat in the Hat" story.

Are we capable of stopping ourselves from doing this? I believe we are. I always try to remind myself that I cannot control what other people say or do. That’s right, I don’t have that superpower. Nor do I want it, or want others to have it. That is one of the great tenets of the United States Constitution under the 1st Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech. You just can’t enforce laws that work at “prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech”.

This post would be an example. I guarantee that there are people out there that will read this, disagree with this, and get all butt-hurt by this post. That’s fine with me. If you want to give your power to be happy to me, the writer of this post, or to some other idiot waving a flag you don’t like, or your child reading a book you find offensive or watching someone else eating something not “produced” the way you believe to be proper, go for it.

But there might be another way to help so you don’t forfeit your mental health in your quest to make everyone agree with your opinion and viewpoint.

Try to limit your interactions with those things that make your heart race with excited agitation, your skin break out in an anxious sweat and your body start to tremble with disgust. Do what you do when you hear a song on the radio you might not like, a Milli Vanilli song for an example from my taste in music: turn the radio dial to the off position, choose another radio station or temporarily turn down the volume.

Now I want to assure you that this is in no way an effort to be naïve about critical social issues, it is just a way to build emotional and cognitive buffers so you do not suffer from the ignorance and insensitivity of some people. 

And then and only then, it might be easier to believe that a cat in a hat is just that.