I've been in some discussions on social media as of late with regards to recent issues that have left me wondering about our education system. It isn't the misspellings or the terrible grammar that gets me. I mean, even mine isn't perfect. No, what gets me is that people don't even know how our country works!!!
Perfect example....
I was reading a rant today from a lady (a Trump supporter, mind you), who insisted that she was tired of her tax dollars going to undocumented immigrants, and that she was "filing paperwork to no longer have to pay taxes". Naturally, the comments in response were along the lines of "good luck with that" and "great, so that will mean that our tax dollars will now have to pay for you in prison". This woman goes on with her rant stating that it isn't even legal for the government to collect taxes...that it is in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. THIS was the moment I had to step in, and give the woman a little bit of a lesson on history and government.
I had to explain to her that the reason our country declared independence from British rule was because we were being unfairly taxed without representation. THIS is what our Constitution protects against! Before our declaration, Parliament was imposing taxes on the colonies, while the colonies had no representative in Parliament to speak on their behalf. Therefore, they had no voice when it came to the taxes being imposed on them, and thus this is considered taxation without represntation.
Today, at every level of government that can impose a tax on the people, we have elected officials. At the local/city level, we are broken up into precincts or districts and the people of those areas elect their representative to the City Council. The state is also divided up into districts, and as such, we elect senators and representatives to the state congressional body, as well as to the federal Congress. All of these people are supposed to represent the interests of the majority of the people in their designated area, and thus are our representation in terms of lawmaking, which includes taxes. If we don't like how our representative is voting on our behalf, we have the right to call or write that representative and state our case. We can also speak at the next election with our votes, but voting against that person in hopes that they will be voted out of office. Local, state, and federal taxes are very much legal, as we all have a voice of representation at every level.
Not to mention, the Sixteenth Amendment of our Constitution specifically allows for the collection on income tax: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from
whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States,
and without regard to any census or enumeration."
I would love to see what happens with this particular woman and her taxes. The article she was complaining about was the Governor of California signing a bill giving new students a free year of community college if they enroll full time, and she immediately went off assuming this was only for people of color, and that undocumented immigrants would benefit from it. Sounds to me like she needs to try to get that one year of college and go take a crap load of US history and US government courses!