Some bits and pieces from around the great big web:
- One way to avoid paying taxes to whatever jurisdiction is lording it over you would be to move to another jurisdiction. The problem is figuring out how to take your assets with you before the folks in the revenue office figure out what you’re up to. Kathleen Macaulay has written up her advice for people considering what she calls the “ultimate estate plan” — taxpatriatism — in the wake of new laws that changed the rules for U.S. taxpatriates .
- Matthew Yglesias notes that the news media allowed themselves to be used as a propaganda arm of the military-industrial complex, shamelessly and without remorse. To which IOZ responds — allowed themselves? hell — they’re an essential part of the military-industrial complex. Who do you think owns NBC?
- Trying to convince folks that their tax dollars might be better spent by anyone but the Pentagon? You could do worse than pointing to them to a new report from the Center for Defense Information about Pentagon waste and budgetary shenanigans.
- Bureaucrash, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s attempt to make capitalist ideology hip and exciting to the Internet generation, is sponsoring a “crasher challenge” — “a monthly drive to inspire activism on a specific issue. We’ll help provide the initial resources to help you and other crashers get your creative juices flowing and we encourage you to share those resources that you create. At the end of the month, the best submission (i.e. video, documented crash, writing, etc.) will be rewarded with Contraband t-shirts and props on Bureaucrash Social.” This month’s challenge is called Stop Wars and it would be ideal for a project that ties taxation to warfare.
- Fans of alternatives to government monopoly currency may want to keep an eye on OurNexChange, an Ashland, Oregon based “time dollar”-like currency that looks as though it will be mashed up with a LETS-style database. Beware, though, they don’t seem to have any interest in making this a challenge to the IRS, and are already building in mechanisms to report your barter and alternative currency earnings to the government.
