Your income tax dollars pay for global misery

Editor,

Hands — We enjoy using our hands to work, to garden, to play musical instruments, to prepare and eat meals, to pleasure our genitals, to make love with others … If we pay federal income tax, we pay to destroy other people’s hands in war.

Eyes — We enjoy seeing flowers, sunsets, trees, mountains, written words, loved ones, attractive bodies … If we pay federal income tax, we pay to blind people in war.

Skin — If we pay federal income tax, we pay to severely burn babies and to rip open the flesh of grandmas and grandpas.

Feet — We enjoy walking, running, dancing … If we pay federal income tax, we pay to tear apart the feet of children who will never run again.

Home — We enjoy having here our favorite clothes, treasured photos, special keepsakes, protection from the cold and storms, a place to feel safe with loved ones … If we pay federal income tax, we pay to bomb other people’s homes.

This is what Lockheed Martin, Kirtland Air Force Base, Sandia Weapons Labs, Los Alamos Weapons Labs and federal income tax are about — the maiming, mutilation and murder of multitudes of our sisters and brothers abroad.

The main purpose of the U.S. Empire is to make sure that most USA-ans, especially the large corporations and filthy rich elite, keep stealing and hogging the wealth of the world. The U.S. is less than 5 percent of the world’s people but consumes 25 percent of the world’s wealth.

The United States routinely supports bloody regimes that bow to Wall Street and the U.S. Pentagon — allowing U.S.-based corporations to rob their nations’ masses of their resources and labor.

The United States has deliberately supported brutal, rotten regimes in dozens of nations: Egypt, Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Zaire, Fiji, Ethiopia, Rhodesia, South Africa, Pakistan, Brunei, South Vietnam, Argentina, Liberia, Honduras, Paraguay, Panama, El Salvador, Indonesia, Taiwan, Greece, Brazil, Portugal, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Columbia, Peru, Philippines, Cuba, Haiti, Chile, Guatemala, South Korea, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Mexico … The U.S. Empire is the enemy of genuine democracy, justice, freedom and human rights.

The best way to refuse to pay federal income tax to rob, terrorize, paralyze, cripple, blind, torture, make homeless and murder our sisters and brothers — with no fines and no threats from this government — is to live simply, below the federal income taxable level. I lived well for all of 2012 on $4,641 — less than half the federal income taxable level of $9,750 for a single person under 65. I have paid no federal income tax for war for 34 years and I pledge never to do so the rest of my life.

I have no right to pay tax to do to other people what I do not want them to do to me. Why march for peace and pay for war?

Don Schrader
Daily Lobo reader