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Web Nuggets: Official: Plane crash pilot left anti-IRS Web note
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- CommentAuthorVerissimus
- CommentTimeFeb 20th 2010
Oh come on, how are all politicans and everybody in the justice system evil? They're normal people. It's not like they answered an add saying, "wanted: some evil motherfuckers." Except for a few mad tyrants, most of them are just people trying to do a difficult job, some of them have some succes, while others are just staggeringly bad at doing their job. Incompetence however doesn't equal evil. And there's a few of them who are actually really good, like Havel, or Mandela. -
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CommentAuthorJeff Owens
- CommentTimeFeb 20th 2010
It's kind of like how I'm not a fan of the police. Even if you're a "good" police officer, you're still choosing to put yourself in a position of authority that assumes you know better than everyone else. Even if their intentions are, initially, noble, I'm still going to have a problem with anyone who thinks they know what's best for me, or what's best for anyone but themselves. -
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- CommentAuthorVerissimus
- CommentTimeFeb 20th 2010 edited
But these things are necessary: necessary evil, perhaps. But I'm pretty sure we'd be worse off if there were no IRS, no politicians, no lawyers and no police. We'd be in Somalia.
Alternatively, you could see "the authorities" as people who can help you, who provide a service, rather than someone who tells you what to do and how to think. The best politicians try to reach a consensus rather than just relying on their power to suppress dissent. The police are there to help you, so you can demand that they do. They're agents of order, but order isn't necessarily a bad thing, every community needs a measure of order in order to thrive.
That is something that people like Joe Stack just can't bring themselves to see; that some people are actually capable of helping him, or that some people can be worked with - for a good cause - rather than against. -
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CommentAuthorJeff Owens
- CommentTimeFeb 20th 2010
Let's assume these things ARE necessary (which is debatable). The fact that they are necessary does, in no way, mean someone is crazy for having a strong opposition to them. -
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- CommentAuthorVerissimus
- CommentTimeFeb 20th 2010
Sorry for editing my last post so late. I added the point that the authorities can be worked with rather than against. They're put in power by the people to provide a service to the people, rather than suppress them. You can remind them of their duty to do so, without using violence.The fact that they are necessary does, in no way, mean someone is crazy for having a strong opposition to them.
Maybe, but it's not very helpful to hate the whole lot of them. I wouldn't say that qualifies a person as crazy, but it doesn't help anyone to take such a dim view of the wider world. And I do think that if you look at the facts, it's demonstrably wrong. Not all politicians are evil. Their acts are in general not the acts of evil people. Wrong however is not crazy. -
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CommentAuthorJeff Owens
- CommentTimeFeb 20th 2010
I guess I'm just biased because I have lived in Arizona most of my life. -
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CommentAuthorWilliam George
- CommentTimeFeb 20th 2010
The mere fact that quite a few of us on here understand why he was so outraged should say something about the validity of his points
Isn't it possible your own worldview could be just as ridiculously extreme as his? -
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CommentAuthorBrianMowrey
- CommentTimeFeb 20th 2010
Whereas in the States I think it's seen as an adversarial relationship, with the tax authorities trying to get as much as possible, and people privately hire their own advistors to try to minimize what they pay.
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It is not the job of the government (unfortunately) as it is a persons responsibility to pay the taxes they owe correctly. Again, unfortunately, the tax codes are incredibly complex. However, that's why accountants exist. There people whose job it is to do that.
No, the American tax code is pointlessly complex so that accountants can have every opportunity to siphon money from what should be a much more basic transaction. See here for TurboTax derailing a California state bill that would have taken the radical step of providing tax payers with the information the state already knew to make filing returns more simple: democracy at work!
Side note, I felt a bit embarassed for mentioning my own tax return (not tax payment) delinquency in my previous post without elaborating that unlike Stack, I don't resent the IRS for being the beast that it is, and in my case I'm indifferent to the idea of being in trouble for not filling out paperwork; I've paid more than my prescribed percentage for 7 years and when I get fined 10000 for not filing -- well let's just say I have an easy come easy go attitude with money. Just so long as the money stays out of HRBs hands, I don't care what happens to it. I'm not planning on buying any planes.
But I do feel passionately that on a larger scale, our tax codes like every othe bit of business-related legislation that Washington has produced in the last 30 years are an instrument of class warfare, designed to illegalize freedom-from-corporate-provenance, and subsidize corporations at the expense of the lower class and the dismantling of the middle class.
Also: the idea that Stack's (selfish, probably-mentally-disturbed) manifesto cannot be discussed because he murdered two people, is not an idea. -
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- CommentAuthoratavistian
- CommentTimeFeb 20th 2010
Also: the idea that Stack's (selfish, probably-mentally-disturbed) manifesto cannot be discussed because he murdered two people, is not an idea.
Aaaaaaaaaand with that wonderfully willful misinterpretation, I'm out. -
it's not that it cannot be discussed. I happen to agree with Stsparky and others. Stack, like many crazy assholes, had some ideas with which I can sympathize, but he was still a crazy asshole because of what he did at the end. and he was an idiot not to realize that harming others would automatically undermine the perceived validity of his argument (case in point, all the people who are sticking up for the IRS as a result of his action). I've taken all of the opposing viewpoints into consideration and weighed them; my assessment of the man is still crazy asshole idiot.
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Look, there are folks who will help you for free. They just won't cheat the government for you. If you want to protest taxes - leave the country or enjoy federal prison - don't give in to futile violence. Nelson Mandela wasn't on Stack's radar - was he?
I recommend to everyone to have a copy of Publication 17.He was pissed at politicians of all stripes and outraged at the IRS, which he believed unfairly gave tax loopholes to big corporations and the Catholic Church, but not regular Americans.
He said he tried to exploit the same loopholes but it backfired. That "little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0," he wrote.
And selfish dickery that results in the deaths of innocent workers does equal a paucity of ideas. That the moron couldn't make having a plane be a money maker means his rambling nonsense remains in the dust bin forever as far as I am concerned. -
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CommentAuthorJeff Owens
- CommentTimeFeb 21st 2010
At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. It's just another blip on a radar screen full of deaths, senseless or otherwise. We're all still alive, and we may as well just agree to not kill anyone. -
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Incidentally, you *can* be fined for messing up your tax return here in the UK. Not a massive fine admittedly, but still a fine.
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American tax code is pointlessly complex so that accountants can have every opportunity to siphon money from what should be a much more basic transaction
I've heard that other special interests too affect the tax laws; to invent an example, a tax might apply to everyone except to those who bought a sugar plantation between 1983 and 1985, and sold it again last year: an exemption like that would be written to please some lobbyist or other in particular.
The out-of-control tax code says that there are over 60,000 pages of tax law. -
As to tax code and the individual - stick to Pub 17.
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- CommentAuthorVerissimus
- CommentTimeFeb 21st 2010
the idea that Stack's (selfish, probably-mentally-disturbed) manifesto cannot be discussed because he murdered two people, is not an idea.
By all means, discuss it. But what is really in there? I don't see anything of any substance other than the wining of a rich American who doesn't want to pay taxes because he needs money to buy more stuff.
He assumes that everybody is hostile to him: the people who arranged the tax reform are out to get him, they STOLE HIS MONEY! Yet he also complains about the government closing airforce bases in Southern California, something which is unavoidable exacty because the government doesn't have the tax dollars to continue to fund those bases. He sympathizes with the plight of the old lady who had to eat cat food to survive yet he doesn't want to pay his taxes, which the goverment could use to give her a decent retirement.
Read what's really in there, by all means. Bottom line: the guy had an airplane, and he calls himself poor. So discuss his pathetic manifesto if you think it's really worth it. -
- CommentAuthorKosmopolit
- CommentTimeFeb 22nd 2010
"Let's assume these things ARE necessary (which is debatable). The fact that they are necessary does, in no way, mean someone is crazy for having a strong opposition to them."
As a general rule, I think it's safe to conclude that most people who engage in murder/suicide sprees are crazy. -
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CommentAuthorJeff Owens
- CommentTimeFeb 22nd 2010
@Kosmopolit - I'm pretty sure I was talking about the people who feel the way he did who don't end up killing people, such as myself. I'm not quite sure though, as this discussion has gotten a bit convoluted (which I've surely contributed my fair share to). I could go back and read, but I was probably vague, anyway. -
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Daughter calls crazy asshole idiot father a 'hero', and others are apparently following suit, according to this somewhat vaguely-worded article. anyone running into other examples of this kind of apologia?
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- CommentAuthorVerissimus
- CommentTimeFeb 22nd 2010 edited
Oh yeah sure, I saw some of that madness on a Dutch website. "He is doing what others dare only dream of," "this is what they (the big banks/government/the new world order) have driven us to do" etc etc.
He's quickly grown into somewhat of a role model for some people. Probably not many, though.