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.

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”.

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?

I don’t know how they could implement this across the private sector, but the State of California has a quarter million employees for which they could probably stop sending tax withholdings to the feds.

According to this random site I found Googling, it’s around $230M every month.

I am saying that:

1. the vast majority of violence perpetrated at these demonstrations is done by law enforcement
2. if cops wanted people to stop throwing water bottles at them they would stop trampling people with horses and shooting reporters with rubber bullets
3. framing these demonstrations as “violent” only serves the narrative of the right

It’s textbook manufacturing of consent

They will say that regardless of how much violence protesters actually do. Purity testing demonstrations only makes the situation worse by allowing the right the ability to dictate the narrative.

As an additional point to add to yours, every single political protest movement in history has included violent elements. It’s unavoidable. When these political “moderates” start pearl clutching about some windows being broken or whatever it is an attempt to de-legitimize the entire movement, and draw the focus away from the actual source of the majority of violence, the cops (including ICE).

Protestors should start bringing packs of Crayola to lure them across the line.

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.