Lions and taxes and bears…Oh my!

No taxation without representation.

That was a buggy sticker our founding father’s quoted in rejecting the King’s taxing demands on the colonist’s labors and profits. It’s also the same quote Frank Gaffney Jr. uses in rejecting any kind of global tax regardless of their intended use (Hidden Agenda, Washington Times 7-11-06). Gaffney’s primary fear is that the leaders at the upcoming G-8 will have “the imposition of global taxes” on their “agenda”. Lions and taxes and bears…Oh my!

I will ignore Gaffney’s profound hypocrisy in failing to advocate for DC statehood on exactly the same ‘representationless’ taxed grounds, but I can’t ignore his profound carelessness in failing to differentiate between the King of England’s punishing taxes on American colonists 230 years ago and the extraordinary US national security benefits of a global tax on a micro-minority of hyper-wealthy Americans today.

His fetish with “national sovereignty’ in an era of hyper-globalization where national borders are irrelevant to terrorists, pandemics, climate change, illegal drugs and economic instability, would be humorous if it weren’t so lethal.

Making matters even worse, our short sightedness Congress is spending the vast majority of federal tax revenues at home and less than 2% beyond our shores where smart investments in prevention could dramatically reduce or eliminate some of the most lethal forces threatening our freedoms, security and prosperity today.

If you think failing to prepare for the inevitable hurricane hitting New Orleans was stupid and/or criminal (costing Americans lives and far more tax dollars than just building the damn levies that everyone knew was needed) just wait till the Bird Flu hits. Failing to make no-brainer global investments in prevention and preparation for inevitable pandemics (man made or natural) will be horrendously more expensive in both lives and dollars. A real crime against humanity…and the American people.

But raise taxes? Hell no. Not even on the one in ten thousand Americans who buy and sell foreign currencies in a global gambling scheme where over $1.8 TRILLION dollars a DAY crossing international borders WITHOUT any restriction or representation. This is about 20 times the daily volume of goods and services traded across borders each day). People like George Soros who made his billions in currency trading also sees the value in such a micro tax on currency trades for humanitarian reasons. Even if the microtax’s original purpose was to reduce the risk of global economic insatiability… yet another serious threat to US national security.

You don’t believe unregulated global currency trading is a risk to our national security? Read the Hart Rudmann Commission’s first report (officially known as the Bi-Partisan Presidential Commission on National Security in the 21st century). You know, the same one that only 6 months prior to 9-11 warned Americans that we should prepare to die in large numbers on American soil as a result of terrorism.

No one listened then. Let’s hope some of the leaders at the G-8 Summit are listening now. Infectious diseases remain the single greatest killer of people today. Most of these deaths are children under the age of 5 in impoverished conditions…the same conditions that incubate pathogens, genocide, environmental decline and terrorists that have no respect for the concept of national sovereignty. Too bad Gaffney still has that at the top of his agenda.