They Stole from the Rest of Us

Those are hard words, but I believe they are true.

An interesting problem has arisen in connection with compensation for those who have lost money as a result of the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Some of them can't document their losses.

Because they did their business in cash.

Specifically, they can't even produce income tax returns showing how much they made.

Think about that for a moment. They can't produce tax returns because they didn't pay taxes on their income.

As it turns out, there seem to be a significant number of businessmen - fishermen, oystermen, shrimpers, some of those who buy their catch. some others - who conducted all or major portions of their business in cash, didn't keep records of their cash transactions, didn't report their incomes to the Internal Revenue Service or the Lousiana or Alabama Departments of Revenue or the Mississippi State Tax Commission, and didn't pay taxes on their incomes. Not just federal taxes, but state taxes, too.

So, those folks - those who didn't pay their taxes - have been getting all the benefits of all the things those taxes pay for - transportation systems, national defense, justice systems, police, fire, and emergency protection. and responses to emergencies - but they haven't been paying for them.

To be clear, those of us who have paid our taxes paid for all those things and those who haven't been paying their taxes didn't pay for them, even though they got the benefits of them. Even more importantly, those of us who have paid our taxes had to pay more than we would have had to pay for those services and infrastructure if everyone else had been paying their share.

So, that fisherman in the Gulf who didn't pay his taxes took money out of my pocket to pay for services he needed and used, but he didn't want to pay for himself. But, honestly, I'm well off. Not rich, but well off. So, I'm not hurt that much. But, he also reached into the pockets and purses of the single moms working at a fast food restaurant trying to support thier kids, the worker at the manufacturing plant that made his boat, the trucker who carried his fish, and many, many other honest folk who paid more taxes than they should have because that fisherman wanted to skip out on his obligations.

He stole from them.

Now, before all the tax protesters out there get up on their soap boxes and start raging against paying taxes in general, that fisherman, or oysterman, or whoever, wasn't a tax protester. He was a cheater. More specifically, he was a thief. He stole money from honest people and put it in his pocket. Just like any thief does.

Now, he wants us to feel sorry for him because he can't document his income so he can be compensated by British Petroleum. The reason he can't document his income is because he was hiding his income so he could steal from the rest of us.

I am outraged at British Petroleum and all the other oil companies and all the other types of companies who are willing to and are allowed to put all of us at risk, and put our world at risk, so they can make more money. I am pretty damned pissed off at all the legislators who have opposed regulations that would have protected the rest of us from those companies' greedy recklessness. I am very upset at the government regulators who did not take seriously their obligation to enforce what paltry regulations we managed to get in place.

And I am terribly, terribly concerned for the honest folk, who have worked hard, played by the rules, and tried to build honest, decent lives for themselves who now will lose what they have worked so hard for, because British Petroleum didn't care as much about them as it cared about making as much money as possible on an oil well.

But, I am not one bit sorry for those cheats and thieves - criminals - who can't document their income now because they've been hiding their income in the past so they could steal from me and from millions of other honest folk.

Not one bit sorry.