Written by Thomas Magstadt   

Summary: Big business is ripping taxpayers off to the tune of billions of dollars every year. If you want to know how, read on...

We need a full-scale middle tax-revolt to take back our country from the corrupt politicians -- the puppets in this tale -- and Wall Street robber barons -- the plutocrats. Pigs come in both guises. A common characteristic is a willingness to wallow in the worst foul-smelling muck to get to the trough.

It will take nothing short of a mass movement on the scale of the 1960s civil rights protests and anti-war street demonstrations. Is it possible? Sure, everything is possible, but here in the United States in 2015 it seems like nothing good or necessary is ever possible if it has anything to do with Washington.

It wasn't always so. There have been times in our history when popular revolts, reform movements, and political remedies were possible. Why does it seems impossible now? In a word, partisanship. In three words: politically engineered gridlock.

Who gains from the dysfunction to which the mass media and the commentariate routinely attribute a deadlocked federal government, a trio of institutions singularly incapable of fixing problems or finding policy solutions? Certainly not the middle class. You can find a good part of the answer here: http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/05/19/a-middle-class-tax-revolt-you-bet/ or Google "Middle Class Tax Revolt? You Bet!!!".

Here's the other part: members of Congress on both sides of the partisan divide benefit hugely from a) permanent gridlock and b) the illusion of irreconcilable differences. This appalling state of affairs enables each and every one of them to justify doing nothing and to blame the other side for everything, exactly what they need to do to gain re-election the easy way.

Check out the rate of incumbency in both the House and Senate. Go ahead, look it up. Google "Re-election Rates Over the Years" and see for yourself.

One of the seminal events that helped to trigger the American Revolution, of course, was the Boston Tea Party; in other words, a tax revolt. Until taxpayers in this country start to see the folly in buying into the Washington's manufactured game of gridlock, until we stop pointing fingers at each other and start pointing them at the people we elect to serve us, until we mount credible threats to throw the rascals out in every voting district across the length and breadth of the land, nothing will change.

And we will continue to foot the bill for follies past and present while tax-dodging billionaires laugh all the way to the bank.