In an unprecedented move Republican Governor Riley is asking for a $1.2 billion per year tax increase. Riley is also asking for Alabama's Constitution to be rewritten. Is Riley presenting a smoke screen or threat. Could Riley be saying, "Either reform the Alabama Constitution to my liking or face higher taxes?"

Will Governor Riley eventually offer a trade, away from higher taxes in favor of Constitutional Reform? A $1.2 billion per year tax increase will buy many votes, but constitutional reform will buy the hearts and minds of men - a far far greater prize for totalitarian government.

Gov. Bob Riley will ask the current session of the Legislature to make major changes in the state constitution. Some of those changes include shifting some power from the Legislature to the governor and to county commissions. Riley received the official recommendations from his Citizens' Constitution Commission on March 27, 2003 and he said the next stop is the Legislature. Riley told the commission. "I know this does not do everything all of us eventually want to do, but I look at it as a major first step The commission's recommendations reflect many of the things Riley talked about in his campaign last year.

The Trend Toward Totalitarian Government
by Richard Salsman, CFA (September 26, 2002)

This is how governments become totalitarian. They begin with a few controls and some taxation of income. But those controls and burdens cause enormous problems and poverty, which (allegedly) necessitate still further controls. Eventually, there are total controls. That’s what “totalitarian” means – and that’s where international tax policy seems headed, with the overt endorsement of the U.S.

There are a few voices of reason on these issues, but they’re usually those of tax-payers, not tax-assessors. Lewis Teffeau, Chairman of CC3, based in Pennsylvania, has written that:

The oil industry pays more in taxes than it makes in profits. That applies to a broad spectrum of industries, maybe to almost every industry. The largest profit-maker on a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of liquor and a gallon of gasoline is the taxing authorities. Not only does the government take the largest single portion of profit, in cash, from our business, but it is also paid in advance. And if we don’t pay enough, it assesses penalties and interest on what, in effect, we don’t even owe yet. But what’s most reprehensible is that for this “profit” government takes no risk, provides no capital, no expertise. . . . It is unconscionable that the single largest beneficiary of economic activity is the government, not hard-working people. Remember, the easiest way to subjugate a people is to confiscate their assets. When you have to erect the equivalent of the Berlin Wall to keep your corporations and individuals from fleeing oppressive taxation, something’s wrong.

He’s right that new Berlin Walls are being proposed and built – walls of taxation, including proposals to tax capital flight. Instead of video footage of escapees running amid a hail of bullets, people will only see the results of what is, in effect, a similar policy, toward capitalists: a stagnation or gradual decline in entrepreneurial activity, in wealth-creation, in living standards and in the general vibrancy of cultures.