The Post-Partisan Emporium

  ‘Democracy’ Means Never Having to Hear ‘You’re Fired!’ On fortifying managed democracy from ‘political interference’ N.S. LYONS I try not to let myself get dragged into writing quick reaction pieces on breaking news or stuff other people write. It’s a bad habit of the internet age. But what can I say, sometimes I just can’t help it. Sometimes something is just too juicy to resist. Sometimes something is just too pertinent an example of what I’ve been trying to  talk about here . Sometimes something causes me to eye-roll so hard I briefly pass out and come to with a burning desire to tweet something – except I don’t have Xitter, only Substack, so… I just came across an article fresh from the online pages of  Government Executive  (“From Swamp Parasites, For Swamp Parasites” is the magazine’s tagline, I assume). It’s mundanely titled “ OPM issues its final rule for Schedule F protections ,” and while that may not mean much to you it’s worth us taking a closer look at...

  The American Tax Racket Involuntary extortion on a grand scale DONALD JEFFRIES This country fought a war for independence over taxation without representation. The Founders really, really didn’t like taxes. They dressed up as Indians at the Boston Tea Party. Over a pretty small tax on tea. They became incensed over a similarly modest tax on stamps. Our forebears called these things the Intolerable Acts. Since the early 1770s, our increasingly tyrannical government has implemented a lot of Intolerable Acts. Many people don’t realize that, until 1913, there was no income tax in the United States. You may well ask, how did they fund the government for well over a century without one? We had a growing military force, which Thomas Jefferson and the other wisest Founders would have opposed, a post office, roads and bridges. The odious withholding tax, which the beloved Franklin D. Roosevelt assured us would be but a temporary measure, dates from the 1930s. But as with so many unconstit...