4 ms·

I hadn't heard about a travel ban on those who owe back taxes. The articles I read after looking this up aren't as bad as it appears. The idea was to ban peop

I hadn't heard about a travel ban on those who owe back taxes. The articles I read after looking this up aren't as bad as it appears. The idea was to ban people who owe more than $50,000 in back taxes from traveling overseas. But that's how it works, right? One small step at a time. Pick a number that most people can shrug off because they don't owe this much and then tighten the screws. My answer to your last question is slowly marching toward feudalism. It's distressing to see how things have gotten worse over the last 30 years. I remember in the 90s that protest leaders were arrested preemptively before an international meeting in Washington D. C. No one had committed a crime but the powers that be could not suffer the complaints of the people. In the last decade protest leaders were preemptively on faux terrorism charges. When being slowly boiled it is hard to recognize when the point of no return had occurred.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Yep, as you point out these violations of principle always seem to happen with things that are emotionally outraging to folks and always at some extreme numbers. Once the new principle has been established, however, then the system can slowly clamp down until more and more people are involved -- all without any political input at all. So that's how we end up in a security state and there really isn't anybody accountable for how we got here. Lots of little changes around the edges. We've ended up in a spot where, if you ask a constitutional scholar, they can explain to you how it all works and makes sense. But if you ask the average guy on the street, he'll tell you the system is spinning out of control. There's a serious structural problem when the system has become so byzantine that it requires 6 years of study to understand it all. And most of those guys don't believe that it is fair or correct. We seem to have been overwhelmed by edge cases.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

Yep, as you point out these violations of principle always seem to happen with things that are emotionally outraging to folks and always at some extreme numbers. Once the new principle has been established, however, then the system can slowly clamp down until more and more people are involved -- all without any political input at all. So that's how we end up in a security state and there really isn't anybody accountable for how we got here. Lots of little changes around the edges. We've ended up in a spot where, if you ask a constitutional scholar, they can explain to you how it all works and makes sense. But if you ask the average guy on the street, he'll tell you the system is spinning out of control. There's a serious structural problem when the system has become so byzantine that it requires 6 years of study to understand it all. And most of those guys don't believe that it is fair or correct. We seem to have been overwhelmed by edge cases.