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California Now Wants to Tax People Who Live in Other States, Too

The arbitrariness and unfairness of retroactive rule changes is obvious.

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California’s government has become infamous for abusing its citizens, from steep taxation to burdensome regulations to arbitrary covid impositions. But less noticed is how it is also trying to abuse other Americans as well.

As reported in a December 28 Los Angeles Times editorial, the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA), which oversees sales and use tax collections, is trying to retroactively impose sales taxes on out-of-state retailers as far back as 2012.

Prior to 2018’s South Dakota v. Wayfair Supreme Court ruling, states had the power to mandate that companies with a physical presence in their borders collect and remit taxes on sales in the state, even if the products involved came from outside the state. But they could not force companies with no physical presence in the state to do so. Then South Dakota v. Wayfair gave states the power to mandate that companies with no physical presence in their state also pay taxes on sales within their borders if they have a sufficient economic nexus (volume of business, essentially) to the state. California passed such a law in 2019. Since those sellers were only confronted with the law then, in fairness those taxes should only apply afterward. 

But the CDTFA has been asserting that out-of-state retailers who sold and shipped through Amazon Fulfillment Services (AFS) now owe back sales taxes from the first date their products were stored in a California Amazon warehouse, even back to 2012, when Amazon was first required to pay California state taxes on its direct sales from out-of-state locations into the state.

The Menace of Retroactive Taxation

In a letter to Governor Gavin Newsome over a year and a half ago, Fiona Ma, California state treasurer, laid out the CDTFA’s actions as “unlawful, unconstitutional and impractical” and asked him to stop both the retroactive and prospective taxation on sales that small, out-of-state businesses are “not legally responsible for under California law.” But such action has still not been taken, which forced the Online Merchants Guild to issue a legal challenge in October.

While those so inclined can pursue the legal arguments and precedents in more depth, I wish to emphasize that retroactive, or ex post facto, taxation is not only blatantly unfair, but violates the constitutional ban on both state and federal adoption of ex post facto laws. 

The arbitrariness and unfairness of retroactive rule changes is obvious.

How fair or entertaining would any sport be if referees could change the rules after the fact (e.g., arbitrarily adding time to the clock late in a football game or negating any goal scored in hockey by a team that has pulled its goaltender)? Who would go to Las Vegas if the payoffs were subject to arbitrary changes after the roulette wheel has stopped? How well would the labor market work if employers could retroactively lower the wages you earned last year?

Such retroactive changes would also have been abhorrent to America’s founders.

In article 1 of the Constitution, section 9 banned federal ex post facto laws and section 10 banned them in states (though the Supreme Court long ago decided not to apply this ban to taxes). The Commerce Clause also means, as Justice Kennedy noted in his majority opinion in South Dakota v. Wayfair, that states, “may not impose undue burdens on interstate commerce.”

In Federalist no. 44, James Madison describes ex post facto laws as “contrary to the first principles of the social compact and to every principle of sound legislation,” with the consequence that “All of them are prohibited by the spirit and scope of these fundamental charters.”

Madison used similar reasoning in support of the prohibition against states issuing their own money in Article 1, Section 8: “Retrospective alterations in its value might be made, and thus the citizens of other states be injured.” That same argument also underlies the Constitution’s imposition of a uniform national bankruptcy code.

When applied to ex post facto taxation, California’s “sales tax grab” also runs afoul of Madison’s Federalist no. 10:

The apportionment of taxes…seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is perhaps no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given…to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden [one group with] is a shilling saved to their own pockets.

It is unfortunate that California is not only trying to abuse out-of-state sellers, but trying to do it retroactively. That goes beyond even the abuse it imposes on its own citizens, in defiance of fairness and clear constitutional principles. And when the state treasurer publicly makes that case to the governor without effect, it says a lot about how concerned California’s government is with people’s “general welfare” in contrast with its own interests. 

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New York facing streets without cops because of COVID vaccine mandate

“Today’s ruling sets the city up for a real crisis …”

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A New York judge has rejected a union request to suspended the city’s announced COVID-19 vaccination mandate for police officers, meaning within just days there could be crimes to which officers simply cannot respond.

CBS reported the judge rejected the request from the Police Benevolent Association, representing some 24,000 police officers, to hold off on the requirement.

The union had wanted the temporary restraining order because the city has not made clear potential exceptions for medical or religious exemptions, and is refusing to give unvaccinated officers time to apply.

The vaccination rate among officers is about 73% so far, and the union has stated its position that getting the shots of the experimental COVID treatments is a personal medical decision.

“Today’s ruling sets the city up for a real crisis. The haphazard rollout of this mandate has created chaos in the NYPD,” PBA President Patrick J. Lynch said in a statement to CBS. “City hall has given no reason that a vaccine mandate with a weekly testing option is no longer enough to protect police officers and the public, especially while the number of COVID-19 cases continues to fall.”

It was the first such legal action launched against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to control city employee medical decisions, and an immediate appeal was being submitted.

The city’s demand had been that police officers, firefighters and others get at least their first does by Friday – or be left without pay.

The New York Daily News estimated that the deadline could leave a quarter of the city’s police officers at home without pay.

The publication noted widespread opposition to the mayor’s controlling dictate led to a huge protest in lower Manhattan earlier this week.

De Blasio said he believes in vaccine mandates – and suggests every mayor or governor should require workers to get the shots.

Despite whatever protection the shots provide, they also have been blamed for thousands of fatal side effects.

The New York Post noted that the issue was threatening not only police units, and that the New York Fire Department was preparing to shut down as many as 20% of its fire companies, “and take an equal portion of its ambulances off the streets.”

“The Department must manage the unfortunate fact that a portion of our workforce has refused to comply with a vaccine mandate for all city employees,” Commissioner Daniel Nigro charged.

“We will use all means at our disposal, including mandatory overtime, mutual aid from other EMS providers and significant changes to the schedules of our members. We will ensure the continuity of operations and safety of all those we have sworn oaths to serve.”

Reuters noted the chief of the firefighters’ union told his members to report for duty regardless of de Blasio’s order to get the COVID-19 shots.

Andrew Ansbro, of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, said his members were “insulted” by de Blasio.

“I have told my members that if they choose to remain unvaccinated, they must still report for duty,” Ansbro said. “If they are told they cannot work, it will be the department and city of New York that sends them home. And it will be the department and the city of New York that has failed to protect the citizens of New York.”

De Blasio’s mandate affects some 50,000 workers in New York, who have a deadline late Friday to prove they are vaccinated.

AP said the judge was Lizette Colon, and her ruling said the mandate can take effect as scheduled. But she also ordered city officials to be in court Nov. 12 to defend their demands.

Estimates are that about three quarters of the affected police department employees have taken the shots, while the figure is about 68% for fire department workers.

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The Establishment Is Hiding Mass Resistance To Vaccine Mandates With The “Striketober” Farce

The establishment is well aware that these actions are destabilizing the labor market …

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It is perhaps a sign of the waning influence of the mainstream media that even though they have been incessantly pumping the concept of “Striketober” for the past month, the majority of Americans rarely mention it. What we do deal with on a regular basis, though, are the constant labor shortages across multiple sectors of the economy as well as the growing supply chain disruptions and stagflationary retail price hikes. The media notion of “labor regaining its power” is a background narrative that they are still struggling to plant in the public subconscious while the majority of people try to adapt to more serious concerns.

That said, the establishment doesn’t really care if the propaganda takes hold, only that they have a useful cover for the very real collapse of the US economy. It’s a kind of vicious perversion of the “fake it until you make it” strategy.

Striketober, like BLM, Antifa, and numerous other Marxist or Cultural Marxist movements has been created from thin air by a combination of news hype and globalist foundation funding. It’s important to first recognize that none of these leftist organizations would have ever been formed had it not been for the ample support of institutions like the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. BLM, for example, was founded by openly Marxist leaders and got its start using millions of dollars in funding from the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundation.

Many of the “workers unions” involved in various elements of Striktober also enjoy direct or indirect funding from globalist foundations. The Food Chain Workers Alliance, for example, receives funding from the Ford Foundation, and the National Domestic Workers Foundation gets ample money from the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation.

As I have said many times in the past, all the evil people are on the side of the political left. All the billionaire elites and corporations they claim to hate are feeding them endless cash. Leftist labor strikes only exist because globalists want them to exist.

Of course, leftist strikes are actually a minimal problem. In fact, I suspect they are a deliberately fabricated theater meant to obscure the very REAL labor strikes among conservatives over the covid vaccine mandates. Let me explain…

We are all familiar with sensationalist worker walkouts like the Netflix protest over Dave Chappelle’s special “The Closer” which dares to make jokes about trans activists, a highly protected minority of people at the top of the leftist oppression totem pole. Most people have also heard about the workers strike among McDonalds employees over #metoo claims even though there is little to no evidence to support the accusations.

What we don’t hear much about is that the Netflix walkout was actually only a handful of real employees mixed with a mob of career activists that were bused in from elsewhere. We also don’t hear about the fact that the #metoo claims made against McDonalds are actually from back in 2018, and they are now being conveniently dredged up again as the country faces a labor shortage crisis.

These high profile strikes and walkouts are starting to eclipse media coverage of the true culprits behind the labor crisis – Namely the Biden Administration and blue state governments enacting global mandates, vaccine controls and covid stimulus.

The source of worker shortages, supply chain bottlenecks and a lot of our stagflationary issues can be traced directly back to the government’s covid restrictions and the covid welfare programs. Get rid of the restrictions, the mandates and the covid checks and over time the crisis will disappear. It really is that simple. However, the establishment does not want you to see it that way.

Marxist/Socialist groups are working feverishly to make hay with the covid protests and employee strikes in an attempt to attribute them to “worker discontent” over low wages and “mistreatment” rather than the covid mandates. This is nonsense.

First and foremost, wages have been rising exponentially in the past year for what I would call “zero skill workers” in the retail and service industries. When a potential employee with no valuable skills can walk into almost any chain restaurant or retail outlet and get $15 or more an hour on top of a signing bonus of hundreds of dollars just for showing up on the first day, there is no unfair disparity for the working class.

When the average minimum wage across the states is around $9 and most service workers are making nearly double that, there is no legitimate problem for Marxists to complain about. So, they have to make things up. To be sure, $15 an hour is not enough to buy a home or start a family on a single income, but people aren’t automatically entitled to home ownership and no intelligent person expects to launch a career in food service or retail. That’s why decades ago these jobs were filled by teenagers, not people in their 20s or older. Doubling the minimum wage only accomplished one thing int he long run: Much higher prices for everyone.

Workers might feel like they are being abused, but it’s not their paychecks under attack or their managers making sexual advances. These are petty concerns compared to the bigger issue at hand – Their individual civil liberties.

As noted, there are two major factors in worker shortages: The Biden vaccine mandates and state and federal covid stimulus programs which pay people more to stay at home than they would make on the job. THESE are the reasons for worker shortages and anyone that claims otherwise is ignorant or has an agenda.

Federal covid checks are not done yet. Contrary to popular belief the cash is still flowing through various programs including child credit programs. Also, most states continue to pump out covid financial aid on top of existing unemployment benefits. This is essentially Universal Basic Income and it’s not over by a long shot. Businesses cannot find enough labor because the government has bribed millions of workers to stay home. The socialists don’t like to address this problem because it conflicts with their Striketober fantasy, so they deny it exists.

The establishment is well aware that these actions are destabilizing the labor market and I believe the goal is to destroy the small business sector specifically. Small businesses cannot compete with corporations backed by trillions in central bank stimulus. They don’t have the resources to double wage rates for zero-skill workers or to offer large signing bonuses. They also don’t have the resources to police their own employees and customers to ensure these people are complying with vaccine passports and booster shots. Within a year the solid small business foundation of the US will be a hollow shell.

With the death of small businesses, all that will remain are international conglomerates that WILL enforce the mandates and threaten people with poverty and starvation if they refuse the vax. All other legal alternatives will be removed and that is exactly what the elites want. Without defiant small businesses there’s nowhere left for you to work or shop without the vax passport. Corporate monopolies are the tool governments are using to circumvent constitutional protections for individuals.

But as this process plays out the resistance grows. And, as they say, the resistance will not be televised.

The entire premise of Striketober and the rise of the “oppressed proletariat” is a farce, but there is a different kind of revolution brewing. The latest narrative does at least represent something new in the agenda to derail the US economy. For the most part we have been dealing with astroturf protests from Cultural Marxists in the form of crazed social justice warriors funded by globalist foundations. The focus is usually on exploiting cultural taboos or non-existent racism or sexism. The Striketober development is a much more classic rendition of old school Marxist sabotage, and it appears that it was slapped together haphazardly by establishment elites in order to diminish the VERY REAL conservative worker walkouts.

That is to say, from now on expect that if you walk out of a job or get fired from a job for non-compliance on the experimental covid vax you might be lumped in with a fake leftist movement and no one will mention the real reasons for your sacrifice. But what is the point of this psy-op? Don’t the globalists want to identify and demonize the millions of conservatives refusing the vax?

I am reminded of a story I read when I was a child about a conversation between an ancient Roman General and a Roman Senator. The senator tells the general that something needed to be done about separating and delineating the slave class from the free Roman citizens because often they all looked alike and were sometimes dressed alike. The senator suggested that the slaves be forced to wear black arm bands so they could be easily identified. The general disagreed, pointing out that if the slaves were given the arm bands they would finally see how many of them there were, and realizing the sheer size of their population the slaves might then be encouraged to revolt against the empire.

Now, I don’t know if this tale is historically accurate but I treat it as a parable. In the case of the vaccine mandates and the massive worker strikes among airlines, hospitals, police and emergency services, etc., the more the establishment tries to squeeze the US population with forced vaccination efforts the more liberty minded people slip through their fingers and fight back. If mass walkouts and strikes are attributed to conservatives and patriots standing against the mandates, then all the other “slaves” might realize they are actually legion. This would be bad for the globalists and their Reset agenda.

So, they are attempting to co-opt the vaccine walkouts and rewrite history in real time by creating a fake workers movement through Striketober. And no, it will not end in October, the media will be promoting this idea from now on. That way the resistance becomes convoluted and confused and the mainstream media can say the great number of striking workers are actually on the side of the political left battling the “capitalist machine”, not conservatives and patriots on the side of truth and freedom.

We are not supposed to know our numbers. By instituting a two tier society through vax mandates the establishment has made an error. They obviously assumed there would be far less rebellion against the passports. They obviously assumed that there would be a vast majority of support and the 10% or less of the population refusing to comply would be overwhelmed and surrounded by the covid cult. They figured we would be compelled by peer pressure and the fear of standing out, and that we would naturally fall in line. Instead, 30% to 50% of the population depending on the state or city or industry is in revolt and we are starting to see how many of us there really are across the country.

There are three things the covid authoritarians are predominantly afraid of – Liberty groups recognizing their true numbers. Those same groups organizing at the local and state level across the country. And, losing the mainstream narrative that they are the “good guys” and that we are the “evil insurrectionists”.

Striketober is just another desperate attempt by the power elites to manage optics in the face of unexpected opposition. Their efforts to terrorize people that refuse to become guinea pigs for a barely tested mRNA cocktail is backfiring. Eventually, worker strikes due to forced vaccination will culminate in greater acts of rebellion against the system. And, with each escalation of resistance the establishment will strain their weak think-tank brains trying to create new narratives to obscure what is really happening.

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NYC Firefighters Union Head Warns Vaccine Mandate Will “Get Residents KILLED”

“When this city goes into utter chaos on Nov. 1, be ready to pick up the pieces that the mayor causes.”

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The head of the firefighter’s union in New York City has warned that Mayor Bill De Blasio’s vaccine mandate, which comes into effect next week is going to lead to “utter chaos,” with massive numbers of unvaccinated first responders prevented from doing their jobs and residents losing their lives. as a result.

In an appearance on Fox News Radio, FDNY Firefighter Association President Andrew Ansbro urged that “The response times are going to go through the roof. We’re just not going to be able to get to the emergencies in time.”

“Fires are going to burn longer. Heart attack victims are going to be laying on the floor longer,” Ansbro declared, adding “People in stuck elevators are going to be stuck there for hours if not days.”

Ansbro made the prediction that 30 to 40 percent of firehouses in New York City will be closed down if the mandate remains, with up to 45 percent of the workforce remaining unvaccinated.

“On Friday, when they’re tallying the numbers of who complied and who didn’t, they’re going to be faced with a stark reality that they’re going to have to close firehouses down,” Ansbro explained.

“The mayor is going to be faced with either sending us home or sticking to his guns,” Ansbro continued, adding “And his guns are going to get New York City residents killed.”

“When this city goes into utter chaos on Nov. 1, be ready to pick up the pieces that the mayor causes,” the fire chief further warned.

Watch:

During a press conference Wednesday, Ansbro also said “I have told my members that if they choose to remain unvaccinated, they must still report for duty.”

https://twitter.com/Kees71234/status/1453123882337161217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1453123882337161217%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.infowars.com%2F

He also stated that firefighters in the city feel “insulted” by the mandate and the probability that they will be prevented from working.

“If they are told they cannot work, it will be the department and city of New York that sends them home. And it will be the department and the city of New York that has failed to protect the citizens of New York,” Ansbro said.

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