Death And Taxes - The Tale Of A Renegade Woman Who Tried To Cheat Both

Deborah Fine had always been a good progressive - the black man, the environment, gender tolerance, and peace - but she drew the line on taxes.  It was one thing provide for a strong military and transportation infrastructure, but another thing altogether to finance a range of senseless, idealistic, feel-good projects.  

Government had gotten too big, too influential, too intrusive, and taxes had gone up proportionately.  Deborah was now paying federal tax, DC income tax, property tax, sales tax, and a bevy of tax add-ons to defray 'rising costs'.  There was seemingly no way out.  

Deborah was in a fortunate position.  An estate lawyer, the daughter or a Wall Street accountant and a real estate player, she had learned how to advise clients how to pay the fewest taxes while staying within the law. 

'Within' was a debatable term.  There were some who felt that those who avoided taxes altogether, concocting financial instruments as tricky as Jeffrey Skilling and Enron, bundling investments, trusts, mortgages, interest, wills, and charitable donations into indecipherable packages, might be within the law but were on its moral edge.  Given the state of the world, one had an obligation to provide the resources to make it better. 

 

Although the string of tax liabilities in Deborah's bracket were significant, taxpayers in the wealthy but still progressive wards of the city felt they were doing the right thing by going straight down the line, taking legitimate deductions, doing the needful to protect against probate court, but in general taking no extreme measures to shelter their wealth. 

This riled Deborah who thought it was imbecilic to avoid the breaks available to the savvy taxpayer. Outrunning the revenuers was not just for Bonnie and Clyde.  It was for the average American who felt the government's hands in their pockets and nothing to show for it. 

 

The Founding Fathers felt that the federal government's only Constitutional duty was in the defense of the Republic.  It was never meant to be a caretaker, an arbiter of social values, or a monitor.  If anything it was to be a cheerleader, patriot-in-chief with eyes to the future prosperity of the nation.  Jefferson sponsored Lewis and Clark, successive governments platted land bought from Napoleon in the Louisiana Purchase and offered it to American pioneers for little more than a promissory note. 

Municipal governments followed suit, mapping, platting, and providing the legal, fiduciary basis for land purchase, mortgaging, and eventual profit.  

Public and private sector were well in tune in the early days of the new nation.  Each knew its place, its responsibilities, and its risks. 

If one were to look carefully at today's Washington, DC, Deborah's home, they would see a sinkhole of government misuse, corruption, reverse racism, predatory, punitive taxation, and a socialist agenda to redistribute the wealth, taking it from the most productive sectors of the city and giving it to the least productive while taking a big bite along the way. 

Deborah, one of the residents who did indeed look into municipal affairs and came up with nothing but a handful of feeble excuses for governance, a budget outlay that produced nothing in return, and a Democrat Socialist mayor bound and determined to turn the city over to 'black folk'. 

So, hammered on one end by the insanity of federal spending and the venal, minority insider corruption of the municipality on the other, Deborah decided the best and most obvious choice was to stretch both the legal and moral perimeters of tax law. She would be the honest Jeffrey Skilling, someone as financially astute as he, ingenious in creating sub-prime mortgage bundles, credit swaps, and fictious holding companies, but would skate close to the edges of propriety and never go beyond. 

Or so she thought. However when she and her claque of high-powered, financially brilliant, and fiscally savvy men assembled to make her tax free dream come true, saw every public-minded exemption as an opportunity to print money, they drifted beyond the pale and entered Enron country. 

There is nothing wrong with taxation, Deborah said, as long as there is a commensurate, visible return.  If there is not, and particularly if lawmakers know the financial chicanery of their decisions but make them anyway, then edging past or avoiding the laws they enact is both moral and patriotic. 

The new, conservative, democratic, post-Communist government planners in Poland knew they had a big problem to overcome.  Cheating, lying, stealing from the Communists during their penitential regime was moral, for it would lead to its ultimate rot and self-destruction.  

In other words sometimes wrong can make a right, and Deborah was convinced of her own deeply moral insurrectionism. 

So, she proved wrong one part of the old adage - 'There are only two certain things in this world, death and taxes'.  In her world, there were no more taxes.

Which left death, the most undeniable eventuality of every living creature.  Yet Deborah, perhaps because of her brilliant success in avoiding/evading taxes and keeping the revenuers on the run far longer than Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, or Al Capone ever did, thought she could outsmart death. 

 

Not in any mythical, knights in shining armor, medieval way - i.e. actually do it - but simply hold it off longer than anyone could imagine.  The number 122, the number of birthdays which cannot be exceeded, is simply a product of today's limited science.  Recombinant DNA, genetic engineering, and the coming post-human generation promise if not eternity, then something close. 

While these remarkable innovations matured in the laboratory, there was something one could do to prepare for the future. Deborah became a pre-survivor.  She explored every alternative medicine, from shadow theory to gum Arabic infusions.  She was one for faith healing, spiritual renewal, colon cleansing, the Paleolithic diet, sex on the hour of every sixth day, candomblé, Haitian voodoo, and ayurveda.  

Between this all-in for health and keeping an eye on her 'magnificent accounts', she was a busy woman, and as fulfilled as any daughter of Eve could ever be.  

Of course she was labeled a compulsive-obsessive, a woman no fun to be around, wealthy to be sure, but on a rocky road, someone to stay clear of.  The irony of it all was that Deborah became evangelical on both fronts - government overreaching corruption and human longevity - and indeed became a wild-eyed, wild-haired Cassandra or one of Macbeth's Wicked Sisters.  Her prime accountants were worried that she was going to spill the beans and send them all to jail, so around the bend was she on her health hejira, but she kept the two separate and the secret safe. 

 

She offered to be in Elon Musk's first panzer division as it made its way down Independence Avenue to take town the federal bureaucracy, she volunteered for Nick Shirley in his campaign to expose government waste, fraud, and corruption, and she went on stage to promote the wildest and most unearthly health cures imaginable; but both sides of her persona were kept separate. 

As of this writing, she has never been caught by the feds and is as strong as an ox despite her advancing age, so perhaps she is one of a kind and an honorary pre-citizen of the coming post-human generation.   

Lust In My Heart - It Should Never Stay There, But For Wives And Politics

Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States admitted in a Playboy interview that he 'looked on a lot of women with lust' and had 'adultery in his heart', but he had remained faithful to his wife of many years, Rosalynn. 

 

It was not surprising that Carter had lust in his heart - all men have it till their dying day - but that he never acted upon it.  Every President in American history has had lovers, not just the Lothario of the Oval Office, JFK.  The Secret Service pimped for LBJ who was legendary and insatiable.  He was not only eclectic in his taste for women, he was indifferent. Whomever he found in his bed at night provided by his security detail, he simply said 'roll over'. 

Even the dour, jowly, unpleasant, and unloved Richard Nixon was reported to have a lover - a tarty woman secreted into Camp David when he was up their without Pat.  FDR had a longtime lover who was a fixture at Campobello. 

Every single one of them going back to Jefferson and Washington had lovers.  Sexual dalliance was a perk of office, an entitlement of power.  Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor to Nixon and his Secretary of State said that 'Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac' and he, a fattish, ugly, Jewish man had a sex life not even imaginable for men far more physically desirable. 

Martin Luther King was such a pussy hound that the FBI couldn't keep up with him.  A declassified memo from Herbert Hoover whose particular obsession was MLK, betrayed a strange and peculiar admiration for a man who 'could fuck through a hole in the wall'.  Hoover was a closeted gay man who secretly dreamed of San Francisco bath houses where that was exactly what one did, and so the nation's G-man conflated the two and found King enviable. 

Foreign presidents from Putin to Kim Jong Un, throughout Europe and Asia have had lovers.  Stalin had a harem of women from all corners of the Soviet Union.  He is said to have preferred Asiatic women from the eastern reaches of the empire, but his many lovers from the West attested to his catholic tastes. 

Every Japanese shogun had his geisha, and every Chinese dynastic ruler enjoyed women taken in territorial conquest.  The harem of Suleiman the Great, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was world famous for the beauty and seductive allure of its women.  The shahs of Persia courted the empire's mostdesirable women in the gardens of Persepolis. 

Former French President Sarkozy kept his mistress at the Elysees Palace, the French White House; and at former President Mitterrand's funeral, his wife, his mistress, and their illegitimate daughter all were present at graveside. 

When President Bill Clinton was caught in flagrante delicto with intern Monica Lewinsky, he at his lawyerly best parsed, 'It all depends on what it is', denied 'having sex with that woman', implying that fellatio was not in the canon, and was impeached. 

Every African man on the continent howled with laughter as the Washington melodrama unfolded.  What was all the fuss about, they asked over beers in the quartier? It was part of manhood to have sex every day with whomever came along, and it was the privilege of their Presidents-for-Life to have the very best.  Alfonse Ngoma of Cameroon was their hero, a man whose retinue included the most beautiful Fulani and Tuareg girls, Angolan mestizas, and Egyptian princesses. 

So when news of Bill Clinton's Oval Office episode - the dress stain, the cigar - reached African ears, men were at first surprised - why hadn't he fucked her outright? - and then flabbergasted.  What was the most powerful man in the world doing with an overweight intern under the Lincoln desk?  Kennedy had Marilyn Monroe!

 

So it was with some surprise that Carter was perhaps the only faithful president ever, at least until Joe Biden.  Biden might have caroused in his younger days but as President was too demented to tie his shoes let alone chase women. When that mental vacancy was added to the censorious MeToo feminist hysteria of the times, there was no chance that he wandered off the rails. 

Donald Trump has squired beautiful women throughout his career in New York and Hollywood, has made no secret of it, has proudly sponsored beauty contests where the nation's most gorgeous women assembled and were treated by him to luxury, jewels, and his seductive attention. 

So it was either that after such a full, rich, and satisfying sexual life he turned his attention to the more heady matters of state; or that because of his reputation he continued to have lovers and no one paid attention.  In any case, Africans love Donald Trump. 

Perhaps after so many years of sexual censoriousness, the deification of women, the punitive hands off No Means No attitude, and the universal calumny against predatory, ignorant men, the tide is turning. Perhaps sexual dalliance is not the issue it used to be.  In an era of virtual reality, AI, and fake news, what is truth, honesty, and objectivity anyway?

Pregnancy is no longer an issue unless you pick the wrong woman.  There's always that Fatal Attraction, Match Point movie moment when the man says, 'I'll help you sort it out', the woman says she wants to keep it, and murder follows.  But such is the stuff of melodrama and pregnancy is not the threat it was. 

Women have broken through the glass ceiling.  There are more female lawyers than the legal bin can hold, and female doctors galore.  All of these women are self-sufficient, determined, and in control, so they are just as likely to wander as their male colleagues, thus further removing the sting of infidelity. 

So why is infidelity still such a big thing, and why do women hold men to such impossible standards? When American women heard of Bill Clinton's dalliances, they said that one size fits all - a philanderer cannot be trusted with the nation's welfare - and they would no longer vote for him. 

It is something hardwired in the female brain, or more deeply in her DNA? Keeping a man around in cave man days made ultimate sense.  Men were needed to hunt, fight aggressive tribes, and protect women during pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing when they were physically compromised. 

That paradigm persisted well into the Twentieth Century when women were still beholden to their husbands who were unfortunate necessities. Now, however, all that has changed, so why have we not moved to a more sexually forgiving world?

There are signs.  Single motherhood approaches fifty percent of all births in many countries; and baby mommas - perhaps the most telling expression of Wild West American sexuality - may be the new normal. 

Joe Biden, it was widely reported, wanted to replace Bill Clinton as the first real white black president; but Biden's interest went further than civil rights and empathy.  He secretly envied black men for their uninhibited sexual lives, their serial lovers, and their hundreds of children - all without opprobrium or suspicion.  No Means No has no place in the ghetto. 

American liberals have raised inner city, ghetto culture to new heights. It is the best example of true, dynamic multiculturalism, a blend of African tribalism, early American Southern tradition, black pride and defiance, and a vital entrepreneurial culture.  True, the drug trade is illegal, but still one must applaud the very enterprising, canny, and brilliant ways black men are experience the American dream. 

So, within that context, there is nothing wrong with serial sex, baby mommas, and a sexual profligacy unmatched anywhere in the world except Africa. 

Yet, the sexual revolution still has a way to go.  Men have to wait a bit longer before they can be on their own.  Women, frying pan in hand, ready to brain their wayward husbands, still greet their 'working late at the office' husbands with, 'Where on earth have you been?'

Politicians still have to project an image of marital fidelity, nose-to-the-grindstone singularity of purpose, honesty, and transparency.  If a politician is even accused of infidelity, his political future is all but ended. 

Neither class of men - husbands and politicians - pay too much attention to this accusatory opprobrium. They go about their sexual business under wraps. After all it is the thrill of the chase and the challenge of keeping it quiet which fuels affairs. 

All of America's top politicians, especially those with presidential ambitions make every effort to show off their families - happy families with beaming wives and smiling children.  In other words, the hypocrisy continues.  Each and every man Jack among them has lust in his heart, and if history is true to form, they will act on it. 

It takes time to remove all the sludge from clogged pipes, so American society still has a ways to go before the water runs freely; but it soon will, and men will regain their footing as unconcerned, unrepentant lovers. Multiculturalism will help that along, given progressives' unquestioned support of the black man and his open-field sexuality. 

Riots In France - The Journeys Of An Islamic Terrorist And A Partisan Of The French Left, A Chronicle Of Two Lives

Abdul al-Rahman grew up in a village near Mopti, a town halfway between Bamako to Timbuktu in Mali. His family were goatherders and had led a simple, pious life. They were little affected or interested in the radical changes that were happening in the country, let well enough alone when ISIS and Tuareg militants asked for water and food. Hospitality was part of their African Muslim culture - one did not refuse guests no matter who they were.  It was part of the brotherhood of likeminded, God-fearing people and was seen as a tribute to Allah. 

The young Abdul was fascinated by these guests.  He wanted to hear their stories of courage and valor, ride their camels, and even shoot their guns.  The guests were very kindly to the boy who clearly thought they were the medieval knights of Muhammed's army, and spent hours around the fire talking to him about Islam, the desert, and the holy war against the infidel. 

They left as abruptly as they came - government troops and French legionnaires had been sighted to the north and east - but their visits profoundly influenced the young boy who wanted to be like them, to leave his uninteresting, hard life and join them in their holy crusade. 

 

He never got his wish, for French soldiers had pushed ISIS militants far in the desert and close to Algeria, the government in Mali had fallen and a new more aggressive one had taken its place. Abdul returned to his goats, the scrub brush of the northern Sahel, and herding his troupe on the long, hot journey to the Mopti market. 

At about this time, the emigrations to Europe had begun, and the countries of the EU governed by welcoming regimes who felt it was their moral duty to admit needy refugees, did not only open their borders, but assisted the refugees who had come in small unseaworthy boats, many of which floundered during the crossing. 

Abdul's father said that the family's future was in France, and if the boy could make his way there, he would soon be able to bring everyone over.  With a hundred euros, a small bag of provisions, and Allah's blessing, Abdul made his way to the Mediterranean with a salt caravan, found passage across the water into Spain where he was welcomed by border security, and after weeks of travel by foot, freight cars, and cattle trucks finally arrived in France. 

The northern suburbs of Paris have become notorious after the insurrection of a decade before when thousands of Africans descended on the center of Paris and rioted from the Rue de Rivoli to the Eiffel Tower. It took the government weeks to finally bring the disturbances under control, but the angry spirit of revolution remained.  On the surface the northern suburbs were quiet, but behind closed doors, radical Islamic leaders planned for an eventual new and more complete assault on white infidel France. 

By the time Abdul arrived in Paris and got settled with his distant cousins from Timbuktu who took him in, the restiveness of the community had reached its limits.  It was no or never to take to the streets, demand attention, reparations, and restitution, and consolidate the growing Muslim minority in the city and throughout France. 

Young men like Abdul were recruited into the movement, treated royally as new soldiers of Allah, indoctrinated and educated in the way of civil disorder, and prepared to defend themselves against the police. 

Abdul, a simple, uneducated, credulous boy took this enthusiastic welcome as a sign of the coming prosperity and good fortune which would enable him to bring his family to France; but he never lost sight of the job at hand - bringing white, Christian Paris to its knees. 

It was a heady, exciting time for the young boy.  He was a soldier in the army of Allah, a trusted comrade of men and boys from Africa, and a crusader in the fight for a Muslim caliphate which would extend from east to west and from there to all parts of the world. 

The white, wealthy, Christian French were the enemy, the infidel, to be eliminated by Allah's righteous sword. The battle against them was no less than jihad, one of many fights to establish an Islamic regime. 

During his time in the norther suburbs he came to hate white people and saw them as the oppressors, the former colonialist overseers and enemy of the black man.  If they died at his hand, he would be rewarded by Allah. 

And so it was that he took to the streets in October 2026 to lay waste to the privileged enclaves of Paris.  Thousands of black and brown Muslim immigrants like him joined in protest, raided, looted, and destroyed shops owned by the oppressor, defied the police and won each and every battle they fought. 

Martine Fontenay had always been a proud advocate for the socialist governments that had ruled France with so much dignity, compassion, and consideration for the French worker.  Although the grand socialist experiment in the Soviet Union had failed to fulfill its promises, this was not because of the idea - Marx, Engels, and Lenin were brilliant thinkers who brought hope and moral justice to the people - it was due to the overreaching of Stalin who lost his way.  

Socialism in Western Europe was still and would always be the only political philosophy which offered justice, equality, and social harmony.  

Martine supported the open borders which allowed thousands of needy sub-Saharan Africans and Maghrebians to come to Europe to flee the harsh autocratic regimes and enforced poverty of their countries.  France would welcome them, shelter them, and give them every benefit due to a native Frenchman. 

Martine was a small business owner with a florist shop on the Rue de Rivoli - a family establishment since before the war, and well-known for the quality of its offerings, the art and grace of its arrangements, and the generosity of the staff.  

All was good with Martine.  She balanced private enterprise with a firm belief in statism, socialism, and progressivism.  She was proud to be French, a country which for centuries had led Europe in statesmanship, arts, letters, and philosophy. 

She resisted the nationalism of those who reminded Frenchmen that their country was The Eldest Daughter of the Church for having repulsed Muslim invaders at Roncesvalles.  It was that xenophobia which lay behind Islamophobia, and she knew and firmly believed that Islam was a religion of peace.  Muslims were always welcome in France for their piety and religious devotion added to the similar Christian devotion of the native-born. 

Even though the higher taxes authorized by successive socialist governments took a significant bite out of her profits, she never once protested.  Such tax revenues were necessary to assure that the poor, the marginalized, and the disadvantaged got their due. 

She shook her head in dismay at the reported misery in the northern suburbs.  The African immigrants who lived there deserved better, and even the most liberal governments were not doing enough.  It was time for a further opening of the national treasury to help these honorable, worthy citizens. 

Then came the October riots.  Her shop windows were smashed, gasoline was poured over every display, every table, every appointment, every flower, and set alight.  She could only stand and watch on the sidewalk as her beloved shop went up in flames. 

 'I am one of you', she pleaded, but for all her support of the black man, the Muslim, the immigrant, and the foreigner, she was just another white Christian who needed to be terrorized and destroyed. 

Abdul was one of those who torched Les Fleurs de Paris and who danced around the flames, cheering loudly as the building incinerated and was turned to smoking rubble. 

'How could you?', she said, grabbing Abdul by the shoulders; but he just shoved her to the sidewalk, spat on her, and joined his comrades as they broke into the more lucrative shop next door, and ran out with thousands of dollar of merchandise. 

Abdul was never arrested and made his way back to the suburbs delirious with the joy of victory, embraced by his comrades and shouting 'Allah be praised!'. 

Martine broke down with uncontrollable sobs as she looked at the smoldering embers which were her store.  She was beaten, morally confused, and bitterly angry.  She had nothing now - no longer a faith in The Other, no business, no history, alone, and irreconcilably lost. 

'Be careful what you wish for' is the first thing that comes to mind, but that demeans the tragedy of Martine Fontenay.  She meant well, she thought she was doing good, but lost her common sense, logic, and objectivity along the way.  She ended up a disillusioned, credulous, frustrated and angry woman but still had no understanding of what had happened.  

Such is the fragility of idealism, a philosophy which is rarely put to the test.  Martine Fontenay did not choose to question her beliefs, the Africans did it for her.