Vic Smith, Robert Green, Kurt Ullman wrote

stuff snipped

You must mean "freeze them" until you get your day in Tax Court.

Sorry, but the word "force" has serious legal meaning, particularly when
it's coupled with the phrase "taken by." I doubt anyone here has been
accosted by an armed IRS agent and forced to cough up money which is then
given to illegal aliens. Sounds ludicrous when it's put in that context,
doesn't it? That's because it IS ludicrous. You, or your parents, or
your
grandparents voted for and approved the means by which taxes are
collected
in the US. Using such inflammatory and inaccurate statements are part of
the great and growing inability to have meaningful discussions about
anything in this country.

It's one thing to say "As a taxpayer, I am concerned about the fraud and
abuse in the system and want to see it changed." It's quite another to
accuse the government of armed banditry in the style of Robin Hood. Yes,
abuses occur, but they occur all over the system, from Exxon down to Juan
Valdez. Inflammatory sloganeering hardly ever solves any serious
problems.

If, as some insist, the solution to fraud and abuse is dismantling
government, then business must also be dismantled because it's chock full
of
fraud and abuse, too. Neither solution makes sense, but people sure seem
to
clamor for the first one without, apparently, understanding that the
Federal
government protects the rich and poor alike.

People who don't like income taxes should also not like wars, because
they
are the reason that income taxes came about in the first place. Oddly,
they
don't seem to. They want the magic war fairy to pay for wars. More
precisely they want the Feds to pay for only what functions they believe
to
be funded, everyone else be damned.

But to allege that the money's taken by force is nonsensical. There are
plenty of other countries where that statement is true, but not in
America.
That's one reason we're at the top of the heap of countries that people
around the world want to invest in. We're stable and we operate under a
system of laws that protects people rather than abuses them. Want to
have
your money taken by force and redistributed? Try Russia. Their history
of
nationalizing private property is indeed tantamount to taking money by
force. Their history of assassination of businessmen and newsmen that
they
don't like is an equally chilling display of "taking by force" - in this
case, taking everything people might have or ever will have - their very
lives.

Well thought and expressed.
But it won't fit on a bumper sticker.

Thanks. No one ever accused me of being terse. (-: I cut my teeth working
at a county newspaper that paid the princely sum of 1/2 cent per word. Old
habits die hard.

I've also been robbed at knifepoint and have several friends robbed at
gunpoint. No matter how much fear the IRS strikes in me (and it's
considerable) I never once felt my life was on the line. That's a feeling
that only comes from being robbed by force and threat of serious harm.

--
Bobby G.