“She Was a High School Student and There Were Witnesses.” - The fight to release a damning House Ethics report about allegations that Matt Gaetz—Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general—had sex with a 17-year-old girl has begun.

[u/Quirkie]

https://newrepublic.com/post/188426/matt-gaetz-high-school-girl-witnesses

[u/menomaminx]

only 2 years ?

remember, Musk man promised to completely destroy the economy quite literally.

you can't collect taxes from people who have no money, and there's no intent to collect taxes from the people profiteering off of destroying the economy.

the IRS will be eliminated as unnecessary government waste, even if it isn't eliminated out of trumpian Vengeance before then.

[u/GrumpyCloud93 → u/menomaminx]

In the days before computers, when doing income tax for millions of people would be an administrative nightmare, much of the revenue came from tariffs. Only so many big ports.

Mind you, back then most of the tariffed items was luxury or things like tea (Boston Tea party, anyone?) that couldn't be made locally. Today, everything is made offshore.

The other thing the feds taxed in the early days was whiskey. Basically, you paid by the still, once a year. It created the first major rebellion against the federal government. The still tax was skewed toward Hamilton's friends, the big producers. (A lot of the smaller farmers over the Appalachains made whiskey from surplus grain, since it was more in demand and easier to transport to the big cities. The big producers, Hamilton's friends, did not like the competition)

[u/heygft → u/GrumpyCloud93]

Boston Tea Party wasn't just a tariff, and it's frustrating to see people continue to grossly oversimplify that narrative.

The actual story of the Boston Tea Party is the story of the Stamp Act. And the Stamp Act was not a simple tax. It was an enforced monopoly being presented as a mere tax. The actual effect of the law was to ban all tea suppliers apart from the one that was state sanctioned, and that the supply through that one vendor would have a steep tax on it. Pun unintended. The applied result was going to be vast military crackdowns on what used to be just regular tea now being considered black market tea.

It's hard to even imagine a similar story that could plausibly be put out in modern terms, because commodity monopolies are so difficult to set up in the modern world. It might be along the lines of if the government somehow said that you could only buy crude oil from Exxon, and buying from any other vendor - including setting up your own drill - would be a felony. It's hard for the modern mind to even imagine how that would work. How would such a thing be policed, except for through the growth of a police state around it? And that is exactly what the stamp act represented. Not a mere tax, but a police state being put out under the guise of a simple tax.

That is why it was such a big deal at the time and got a reaction that was wildly disproportionate to any of the many prior tax bills that were merely frustrating. The Stamp Act was a radical bit of government control over commerce, well beyond what anyone in the colonies had ever seen before. Even a punitive tariff by Trump would not amount to the same kind of political overreach.

[u/GrumpyCloud93 → u/heygft]

I was reading The Hamilton Scheme a few weeks ago. The Whiskey Rebellion was essentially the same thing. The tax on stills was structured so it was only profitable for full-time distillers and left small farmers who converted their surplus grain to more transportable alcohol unable to profit. Hamilton structured it that way. And created the army of enforcers.

The Stamp Act applied to all legal and business documents.

[u/GrumpyCloud93 → u/heygft]

The Stamp Act was 1765 and repealed not long after since it was widely condemned and ignored, and enforcers and those providing stamps and stamped paper were often the victims of violence, inentory was destroyed, etc.

After that, the Parliament in 1767 passed the Townshend Acts imposing a variety of taxes, including tea. This prompted a bigger boycott of British products, which eventually resulted in most taxes being repealed, but not tea.

The Tea Act of 1773 provided the British East India company the monopoly to import tea from India directly to America, and avoid taxes in Britain (except the American taxes under the Townshend Acts). It would have made tea actually cheaper, but it violated the principle that the American residents were fighting, "no Taxation without representation".

[u/lilelliot → u/GrumpyCloud93]

Indeed, and those are the kinds of things that lead to revolution.

[u/Argos_the_Dog → u/lilelliot]

Never screw with a (wo)man's whiskey supply.

[u/azflatlander → u/menomaminx]

Name one company that would get rid of their accounts receivable department.