Argentine President Stops a Tax Resistance Campaign by Surrendering

Apparently the tax resistance threat by farmers in drought-ravaged areas of Argentina has had some effect (see ♇ 22 January). According to a report carried on AFP:

The Argentine government on Monday decreed an agricultural emergency in the areas stricken by a historical drought, which exempts those producers from a vast region of the Pampa Húmeda from paying taxes for a year, announced president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

That’s one way to stop a tax resistance campaign!

“These decrees represent an effort from all Argentinians, because there is no other sector that has these benefits,” remarked the president regarding the exemption from taxes that will reach the income tax, the personal property tax, and the presumptive income tax, that will extend until January 1^st 2010. “We are completely relying on great patriotism and effort because the government must receive taxes,” stressed the president in respect to the losses the measure means for the government’s coffers, at the beginning of a year that will include legislative elections.

Some bits and pieces:

• Colin Beavan, the No Impact Man, writes about his interesting project, and about the possibilities of ostentatious individual action as a form of activism.
• Metafilter shares some resources about the early-1970s rent strikes by residents of government-run council housing in England.
• Nine years ago, an Oakland police officer beat a suspect, breaking his ribs and puncturing his lungs. The man later died of his injuries, and the officer ordered his subordinates to lie about the beating. The officer was caught during an Internal Affairs investigation of the case. What was the result? The officer was suspended for two weeks and then promoted to be the head of the Internal Affairs division.