I’m on hold with the IRS.  I’ve been on hold now for over 45 minutes (after a 15 minute waste of life yesterday).

I have to do this - otherwise I can’t beg them to send confirmation that they received my form 2553 - an S Corp Election.

If I don’t have confirmation of this form, I can’t complete the documentation required to prove how much money I made.  They need verification of full compliance with their perpetual muggings, and without such proof they’ll seize my assets and eventually arrest and incarcerate me.

While I’m on hold I hear happy music and repetitive recordings -

“Our representatives are still helping other customers… please continue to hold.”

Going well beyond its proper scope as a protector of rights, government has instead grown to be the bastion of theft.  They force me by gunpoint to alter the way I live and work so that I can then adequately prove to them they they are confiscating (by force) the proper portion of my earnings and savings; which they’ll then use to promote ideas I abhor, comfort people I don’t know, and support individuals who represent the sum opposite of every premise I hold.

For them to refer to me as one of their “customers” is an evasion of immense proportions.  I can’t believe this is what America has come to.

After over and hour “Mrs. Hummond”  came on the line.  She was a clearly soft-spoken woman whose tone implied she wasn’t part of the problem.  Her initial greeting included her id number, 1715508, and some ending phrase that included the word “customer”.  My nearly suicidal mood mandated I mention that I certainly was not her “customer”.  She didn’t like my tone and told me to “clean it up”.  I maturely resisted the urge to unleash the fury I foster towards the entity she represents, but figured it would only land me right back in the call queue.  I explained to her the problem, faxed her confirmation of my compliance and she “escalated” my claim to be resolved in 15 business days.

This lady was polite, well-spoken and seemingly effective.  It’s easy to grant the appropriate disrespect to sloppy, rude or incompetent “customer service” representatives, and highlight their inadequacy can be very fulfilling at times.  Mrs. Hummond on the other hand was hard not to like.

She was professional, she was nice, she was assuring - but, she is part of the system.  She is a spoke in a gigantically evil machine of destruction.  Her participation sanctions the premise of their cause.  Worst case, she is an altruist-collectivist that agrees with compulsory taxation, income redistribution and the welfare-state.   Given the average intellectual savvy of our population, that’s very likely.  Or, she could be the type that’s evaded the underlying premises entirely - a hard-working individual who’s never given it much thought.

Does her philosophical alliance to the underlying premises of the cause matter?  Regardless… she is part of it.

I can think of one very compelling reason to show cordial respect to a gangster’s secretary.

Poor, poor John Edwards gets nailed for adultery.

“In an admission that rocked American politics, Mr Edwards, 55, said his egotistical belief that he was special drove him to have an affair with Rielle Hunter two years ago. ”

“In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became egocentric and narcissistic.” [emphasis mine]

His attempt to spin his actions as being rooted in self-interest relies on the commonly distorted concept of selfishness, which has hijacked the real meaning of the term and replaced it with a package-deal of non-sense. Altruism prescribes selflessness for the sake of others. People maintain this vague notion as the cornerstone of whatever hodgepodge morality they are brought up with. The result is the virtual destruction of the real meaning of the term - which is coincidentally a goal of such (a)moral codes. Here are Rand’s thoughts on the perversion of selfishness:

In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.

Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.

This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.

Unless Mr. Edwards views an adulterous and scandalous extra-marital affair (that likely spawned an illegitimate child) as being in his own self-interest, egoism isn’t to blame. A truly selfish person would see that dishonesty, betrayal, and hiding under a veil of secrecy are all attempt to evade reality - and can only lead to self destruction. Actually it’s precisely his lack of values, morality and character that led him to an affair.

Every stance, every position, every platitude uttered by this man implies a disdain for reality, rights and justice. This should surprise no one. On the one hand I consider the obvious embarrassment and pain this creep has caused his family, I am sympathetic to them.

I hope he, on the other hand, is miserable.

Facts:

• Objective law is such that punishes or objectively precludes violation of an individual’s right to life, liberty or property.
• The Earth has no value outside of facilitating man’s survival.
• Government’s sole and only legitimate purpose is to protect individual rights.

This sickening story (via Gus Van Horn) details a perverse mockery of all of the above.  This is evil in as pure and vile a form as you’ll ever see.  In some jail a man sits harnessed by this culmination of putrid statism.

Anyone who’s not repulsed is partially responsible.

I guess it’s because I retain just a sliver of hope (or naivety one) that my worst fears are just paranoia. Here are the juicy quotes, one of which could have been lifted verbatim from Atlas.

We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.

Wow. And exactly why would they be more qualified or competent than the legitimate leaders of these companies? Do they have some secret bureaucrat tactic for crude oil refinery that would increase supply? No. Of course not. But, they do have the illigitimate power to redistribute wealth. What they could do is offset a decrease in the price at the pump with revenue from their their favorite weapon - taxes.

They’ll raise taxes, which basically redistributes the cost of gas amongst their tax victims. Considering the typical levels of incompetency, negligence and economic inefficiency that are hallmarks of government run entities, we’ll then be paying more per capita for a gallon of gas than we were back in the days of privatization. Imagine a man with a widget factory who can make 100 widgets/year at a cost of $100. He then sells the widgets for $2 dollar each. Let’s say the man is overtaken by another man who then funds the widget production by stealing pennies from people. He can boldly proclaim that he sells widgets for 50¢. What he wouldn’t disclose is that he’s not the best businessman, therefore it took 200 stolen pennies to make each widget - twice the cost of the original owner. Sure, people are paying half as much for widgets, but their right to property was violated, plus the total cost for everyone is higher. That extra cost represents the economic waste and destruction of government meddling.

Even though the pump might say $2/gallon, the additional cost would come from taxation, which is much easier for them to sweep under the rug. For those oblivious to reality, Government will appear to have saved the day, but really they will have not only raised the cost of gas due to their inherent overhead, but trampled the rights of millions of individuals in the process. This is symptomatic of a crumbling nation, and is exactly what they would do with a nationalized system.

What we do has to be in the interest of the American people. Not major corporations.

What can I say? These collectivist thugs see an individual (the business owner) not as a sovereign being, but as a blank entity subject to whatever trampling that’s needed as a means to their ends. Keep in mind these are not flagrant Hollywood leftists, agenda driven pundits or silly activists talking, but powerful government officials whispering notions of socializing a major industry.

George Reisman obliterates the elected gang we call congress and their pandering petroleum witch hunt. These thugs are so consistently ignorant and evil, George simply re-posted his views from two years ago.

Our government’s policy of preventing the increase in the supply of oil, atomic power, coal, and natural gas, is what is responsible for the high prices of oil and gasoline that we must now pay. Let it just get out of the way, and the supply of all these forms of energy will dramatically increase and the price of oil and gasoline will fall, even more dramatically.
Every senator who votes to place obstacles in the way of U.S. energy production, who helps to harass U.S. energy producers, is voting to hamper OPEC’s most important competitors and to allow OPEC to go on obtaining high prices. Such senators are the ones who bear responsibility for the high price of oil and gasoline. They are senators serving OPEC not the American people. They are the ones who deserve to be interrogated, in order to learn how they could be so blind, so stupid, and so destructive.

A great read.