Remember That Taxation Without Representation Thing? Its Happening AgainBy Nick Bernabe In particular, the proverbial straw that broke the camels back was a small tax on tea imports on the colonies, who did not have representation in the British parliament; this led to the infamous Boston Tea Party. Seems pretty minuscule compared to todays 74,608-page tax code, right? Fortunately for modern-day Americans, the founding fathers fixed that problem after they kicked the crown to the curb except they didnt. Oops. What Im telling you is that taxation without representation persists today, and that its even worse now than when it sparked a revolution. So lets start with this meme I stumbled upon while surfing the interwebz yesterday: I didnt want to believe it, but its true. As the Independent Voter Network explains: The practice of subsidizing major parties primary elections was cemented into place when the Supreme Court ruled in Bullock v. Carter, also in 1972, that parties requiring candidates to pay excessive fees to appear on a primary ballot imposed an unconstitutional burden on the candidates Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection. This ruling normalized the practice of having the public, not candidates or parties, pay for primary elections. This hybrid system leaves independents in states with closed primaries dissatisfied, since they are, in some cases, forced to pay for the elections of private organizations in which they cannot, as independents, participate. As I covered in-depth in a recent article, this election cycle has exposed major flaws in the U.S. voting system that have led roughly half of Americans to believe the voting system is rigged against certain candidates. The two mainstream political parties Republican and Democrat are pretty much private clubs. They make their own rules, and some of those rules include closed primaries, where independent voters (now the single largest voting block in the U.S.) have the privilege of paying for the elections but not participating in them. This is where we start getting a little hint of what taxation without representation means. Its where you pay taxes that are used for something you have no say over or representation in. Its happening right here in 2016 America. But this is just the tip of the taxation without representation iceberg. Independent voters paying for the Republicans and Democrats to have arguably rigged elections is childs play when it comes to understanding Americas oligarchy. The rabbit hole is deep, but Ill keep it simple for attention spans sake and to spare you of many of the boring details. According to the Oxford Dictionary, an oligarchy is defined as A small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution. And for added (accurate) commentary, Urban Dictionary describes it as The actual type of government that most countries have. Run by the few. According to a highly-cited 2014 study of thousands ofU.S. policy decisions conducted by Princeton University, America now falls under the oligarchy category. [W]e believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then Americas claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened, Princeton researchers summarized. Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all. However, there are a handful of citizens who do have their opinions implemented by the U.S. government: the extremely wealthy. As the researchers noted, rich Americans have a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy. Special interest groups also have a large, positive, highly significant impact To break it down into simple terms: people and organizations that are rich and well-connected call the shots in U.S. politics, and your votes are basically thrown into the abyss once election season is over. This may explain Congress +- 9 percent approval rating. And, unfortunately, all of this oligarchy stuff is getting exponentially worse as I write this. Its legal for unlimited amounts of money to enter the election system through super PACs and influence the outcome. The 2016 presidential election alone will wind up costing (political) investors more than $4 billion and that investment is one of the most profitable around. For those few billion dollars spent on political campaigns, trillions are made in returns after the elections are over. Though because of these realities many Americans refuse to vote, when it comes down to taxation, we all pay into the system. We pay Congress salary, we pay the presidents salary, we pay for their lifetime pensions, their healthcare, and their Secret Service protection. Kids pay taxes when they buy candy at the convenience store, people who work under the table for cash still pay sales taxes on everything they buy, anyone who lives with a roof over their head pays some sort of property taxes either directly or indirectly, and the poor pay a higher percentage of their income to taxes than any other income group. Nobody escapes the wrath of Uncle Sam. There are 537 elected federal politicians who are supposed to be in Washington representing the 320,000,000 person-strong public interest. However, they choose to represent 500 or so billionaires instead of everyday taxpayers. We outnumber these oligarchs 300,000 to 1; maybe its time we started acting like it. This article (Remember That Taxation Without Representation Thing? Its Happening Again) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Nick Bernabe and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Alex Guerrero. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org. Matter is thus not created, in the vulgar sense of the word, but evolved ; and, in the process of cosmic flux and reflux, it is destined to be again involved and transmuted into essence. Hence it follows that the higher principles of the microcosm, itself the offspring and resumption of the macrocosm, represent and repro duce the higher principles of its parent, even to the inclusion of Divinity, as the supreme source of the world and ultimate of Man. Emanating as macrocosm from God, the universe culminates as microcosm in God. God is the Alpha and Omega of the whole Now holy Writing addresses itself, not to the lower, but to the higher nature of man. The word of God is spoken to the intellectual and spiritual nature in man as distinguished from the inferior grades of his complex being. Evidently, then, the subjects of Biblical exposition cannot be the things of sense and of matter, but the things of the intelligible and formative world. The Bible is written for the Soul in man, not for his elemental and creaturely natures which, as we have seen, pertain to his lower perishable states, and are not included in the Covenant. Wherefore, surely, it is absurd and irrational to read the History of Creation, given in Genesis, as though it treated of the mere outward and objective universe, which, in comparison with the inner and subjective, is phantasmal and unreal. Correspondentially, of course, it does so include the outer and objective, because every plane of Nature reflects and repeats the plane immediately above it. Taxes started in 1914 after the 1913 give away of the unfederal b.s bank of the USofA by the treasonous Wilson. 