thedailybell.com / By Tibor Machan / January 7, 2013
As I reach old age I shield myself from unpleasant television as much as I can. Of course, in order to stay apprised of events I cannot afford to skip all of what is irritating but given all the repetition, I have managed to reduce exposure to much that’s bad for my nerves.
One show I used to watch regularly was CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes.” It was a kind of ritual. But no longer, other than accidentally. Which is why I managed to catch one of the “60 Minutes” follow-ups the other Sunday evening. In it Leslie Stahl commented on Grover Norquist’s fight against the spendthrifts in Washington. Never mind for now her typical support of more spending and higher taxes; it is to be expected from her, a veteran Washington insider. What was interesting is the length to which she went this time to bolster her support.
She seems to have decided that instead of using the term “taxes” for what Norquist opposes, she characterized it as revenues. And that is dirty pool.
Taxation isn’t revenue raising. It is confiscation of people’s resources. Revenue is what merchants or employees earn in voluntary trade. To classify taxes as revenues is an obvious distortion. It is akin to characterizing the loot from a bank robbery as earnings, profits or income. There is no way that Ms. Stahl doesn’t know this.* She is simply falling in line with President Obama‘s efforts to warp the English language for political purposes. Like when Obama decided that imposing additional taxes on what he calls the rich or wealthy amounts to “asking them for a little bit more.”
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