wonderingwanderer

That’s not what authority is.

And don’t pretend the inane drivel that comes out of steven miller’s mouth constitutes valid legal rationale.

I agree, and I even explained that in a different comment somewhere. I just find it highly doubtful that enough people will do it for it to make a difference.

I know you meant it to be humorous. If I thought you were seriously trying to claim that he has the authority, my response would have been much sharper and likely gotten me banned.

That being said, I disagree that I took it too seriously. I take it very seriously. It’s a serious matter. I believe we must be firm and clear about that.

And I understand that so far he seems to be getting away with flagrantly violating the constitution at every turn. That pisses me off to no end. But it doesn’t change the fact that he is subject to the restraints imposed by the constitution. He has no legal basis for disregarding it, and I won’t mince words about that. Nor will I joke about it.

It’s already bad enough that he’s getting away with it. Let’s not pretend that means he’s actually allowed to do anything he wants.

Wrong. By unilaterally withholding congressionally-allocated tax funds (which is unconstitutional), he’s using executive power to bypass Congress.

In other words, the representational branch of the US government is being boxed out of their constitutional duty to allocate federal funds. The people’s elected representatives are not having the final say on how that tax money is being distributed, as the constitution prescribes.

The people are still paying taxes. Their elected representatives are being bypassed (unconstitutionally) by the executive, who is unilaterally withholding congressionally-allocated tax funds. That is not what it means to have representation.

What authority he has is spelled out in the constitution, and the authority to do what he’s doing is given to Congress. Doing it without congressional approval is unconstitutional.

Congress and the judiciary being spineless or complicit doesn’t confer authority. It might give him the leeway to overstep his authority, but that doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t have the authority.

Let’s not muddy the waters. He would love for you to believe he does have the authority.

We’ve already seen enough examples of “doing things at the individual level” to know that not even close to “everyone” will be on board.

By all means, do it. But don’t expect the level of solidarity required to make the federal treasury even notice.

Things like this require collective action, and since the average american is union-phobic, the only organizations we can look to are the state governments. But since they don’t handle federal taxes, there’s not much they can do short of seceding from the union. Which would be a bit too extreme as long as there’s even an inkling of hope in a free and fair election followed by a peaceful transfer of power saving us.

In short, we’re fucked.

The executive doesn’t have that unilateral authority. What he’s doing is illegal; unconstitutional, even.

“No taxation without representation” ring any bells?

What are they gonna do, build a wall?

You are correct. Unfortunately, state governments don’t have a hand in federal taxation. Employers typically withhold the estimated amount from employee’s paychecks, and at the beginning of each year everyone submits a tax form. If they paid over their obligation, they get a refund; if they underpaid, they owe money.

Even if someone opts out of tax withholdings, they’re responsible for sending their taxes to the federal government each year; typically through a third-party for-profit business (especially now that Republicans trashed the recent IRS pilot which allowed people to file their taxes directly to the federal government for free).

The only solution would be for every resident of that state to individually opt out of federal tax withholdings from their employer, but then they’d be individually liable for submitting their taxes each year. While the IRS doesn’t currently have the staffing to handle that if everyone does it, that would require a level of collective trust-in-ones-fellows that simply doesn’t exist in this era.

It would be much better if states could offer their protection, but apparently states can’t even keep ICE out so the IRS would be no different…

For real, if California and New York alone stopped paying federal taxes, the federal government would go bankrupt immediately.

Why pay into a system that won’t pay anything back out to you? Those funds are just going to the likes of Thiel and Musk, who already don’t pay enough taxes. Fuck em.

“Govern this by strength, fascist!” 👊

That’s the point Steven Miller was trying to make. Don’t give it validity. The international community must insist on following the law, as it’s written on paper.

He’s giving some serious Hitler vibes. Also, Thrasymachus.

He’s also basically saying that if anyone is capable of violently overthrowing the US, then they have a right to do so.

Also, dismissing international treaties as “niceties” comes very close to treason, as he’s basically saying to disregard the laws as they were written by constitutional authority.

If legal documents no longer count for anything, then neither does the constitution. That would mean the US government has no legal authority.

It’s a dangerously slippery slope, but I think he’s lusting for the chaos that would result.

He seems to think the entire democratic base is composed of ML tankies.

If only he knew what MLs thought of democrats…

Even worse than that, with just $100 million in a risk-free CD making 3% APY, one receives $3 million per year from interest alone.

Nevermind how to spend a billion dollars in one lifetime, how do you spend three million dollars in one year?

Any wealth above $100 million should be taxed at the end of each fiscal year. Nobody could reasonably need more than that. Of course, it would be complicated by carving out exceptions for real assets. Anyone with that much money would just buy a new yacht every September to avoid it, but that should still be taxed as capital gains.

it enables them to singlehandedly influence politics to their personal liking by buying politicians and media institutions.

Most conservative americans seem to believe “freedom” includes permitting the wealthy to rig the game in their own favor. They don’t seem to consider the ways in which that infringes on everyone else’s freedom.

That’s why “anarcho-captialism” and even “libertarian-capitalism” are both farces. There’s no room for liberty under plutocracy. Only the financial oligarchs have any degree of freedom in those systems, which is no better or different than an aristocracy, just without the overt nepotism (the nepotism becomes covert instead, by mislabelling generational wealth as a “meritocracy”).

Meanwhile had that billion dollars been distributed to the worker class through fair wages or even to the consumers through fair prices it would have contributed to the economy and the well-being of everyone.

I agree, but too many people only measure the success of an economy by top-down metrics such as GDP, gross revenue, stock market growth, etc. They ignore factors such as cost of living, wage stagnation, median income, RIFs, and the job market in general, social mobility, cost of healthcare and education, etc., leading to such buffoonery as claiming “unemployment is good for the economy” and “deflation is bad for the economy.”

And then they come back with stupid arguments like “econ 101, bro.” Classical economic theories are a soft science at best, arguably even a pseudoscience, and yet finance bros treat it like it’s a hard science. They cite them like scripture, or like laws of physics, but they’re not nearly so immutable or infallible. Especially when they focus solely on supply-side and neoliberal economics, which were clearly developed with an agenda.

Even Adam Smith gets quoted out of context, while ignoring the fact that he was opposed to many of the ideas his work is often used to rationalize.