brandon

The problem is that federal income taxes are generally paid directly by employers to the federal government. It’s not clear by what mechanism states and/or cities might withhold them.

It’s true that the State of New York, and NYC are both large employers, so hypothetically I guess they could refuse to collect income taxes from their employees on behalf of the federal government, but certainly the IRS would still hold the individual taxpayers responsible for those taxes at the end of the year.

The cruelty is the point.

If Jesus was real and did come back we’d probably never know because he would get deported and die in a Salvadorian torture prison.

You know, I don’t recall Medicaid being mentioned once in the bible.

I do seem to remember something about giving all of your possessions to the poor though. But maybe I am imagining that.

I heard a saying once (I cannot remember the provenance) that could be paraphrased like: “The liberal is someone who is for all movements except the current movement; against all wars except the current war.”

There are two important points:

1. Every major movement in history has incorporated elements of violence;
2. Which movements we retroactively consider as violent is determined by sociological consensus.

For example, the American civil rights movement is today considered by people to have been largely non-violent. However at the time the movement’s opponents definitely thought of, and portrayed it as a violent enterprise.

Opponents of a movement will always portray that movement as violent. The status-quo consensus perspective on historical protests is written by the victors. Therefore, the hypothesis that “non-violent” protests are more likely to succeed than “violent” ones is self-fulfilling. When protest movements succeed we are less likely to consider them “violent”.

I was chastised by a random person at my local protest for joining in a chant of “Fuck Donald Trump”.

Many of these people are still so attached to the idea of civility politics that they don’t even want anyone to curse.

In the John version of the story, he “drives” them out of the temple with a whip. It’s difficult to reconcile that with a total pacifism.

Pacifist

Did I misread the part when he kicks the shit out of the money changers?

Typically this position is referred to as ‘Lieutenant Governor’, and every state I know of has one.

Careful how you phrase this. The right wing anti-woke crusaders will retort “oh, so you’re saying this level of CO2 is natural after all?”

They are referring to some fringe “tax protester” conspiracy theories which dispute that the 16th amendment was properly ratified. You can read about them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_Sixteenth_Amendment_arguments#Sixteenth_Amendment_ratification

Suffice it to say, these ‘theories’ have been largely rejected, including by the states themselves, and by the SCOTUS.