The built in hypocrisy
When Tzvika, an Israeli fellow blogger, came to visit in NY he had one request - that I’ll take him to the FDR Library. I still wonder if he enjoyed the library as much as he enjoyed seeing me suffering and ranting about how evil FDR, and his like, was. This link is dedicated to Tzvika, who went as far as buying memorabilia in the “New Deal gift shop”:
For instance, Roosevelt repeatedly urged Congress to end the tax-free treatment of interest on state and municipal bonds. The special treatment accorded to those financial instruments, he told Congress in April 1938, “has created a vast reservoir of tax-exempt securities in the hands of the very persons who equitably should not be relieved of taxes on their income.” Congress should act to end the injustice, he declared.
Yet just a month before, FDR had filed a tax return indicating that he owned some $17,000 in tax-free bonds. Defenders of the president might insist that he was doing nothing wrong; after all, the tax-free status of those bonds was a deliberate and long-standing element of the tax law. But Roosevelt himself dismissed those legalistic arguments:
Methods of escape or intended escape from tax liability are many. Some are instances of avoidance which appear to have the color of legality; others are on the borderline of legality; others are plainly contrary even to the letter of the law.
All are alike in that they are definitely contrary to the spirit of the law. All are alike in that they represent a determined effort on the part of those who use them to dodge the payment of taxes which Congress based on ability to pay. All are alike in that failure to pay results in shifting the tax load to the shoulders of others less able to pay, and in mulcting the Treasury of the Government’s just due.
[...]
FDR repeatedly claimed that he was exempt from the high tax rates on personal income that Congress had enacted — and Roosevelt had approved — in the revenue acts of 1934 and 1935.
In a series of letters to internal revenue officials, Roosevelt insisted that he could not be taxed at the heavy rates imposed on rich taxpayers during the mid-1930s. Article II, section 1 of the Constitution forbids any reduction in the president’s compensation during his term in office, Roosevelt pointed out. Since the new rates enacted in 1934 and 1935 effectively reduced that compensation, they could not be applied to the president’s salary.
But we already know that All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others…
Tags: FDR, Libertarianism, TaxesRelated posts
Rogel @ April 21, 2008