Greetings faithful readers and seekers of truth! My apologies for not posting more, but there is a family situation that has taken up most of my time since my last posting. I have a backlog of a few good reports stuck in my head, which will start to make their way out of my head and onto this website right now.

    The item I would like to address today is what I refer to as "Robin Hood Syndrome". Up until this morning I thought that I may have been the first person to actively champion the cause of attempting to stamp out this disorder, but as I was discussing this report with relatives, they told me that they had indeed heard the term before. Oh well, I am still going to bring you my take on it, and why it is a bad thing.

    For those of you who didn't get children stories growing up, Robin Hood- or Robin of Locksley- was a character in medieval England around the time of Prince John and and King Richard the Lionhearted. As the story goes, while King Richard was fighting in the crusades, Prince John taxed the people into oblivion and made the poor poor-er, and made himself richer (sound like a familiar government?). Robin, when he came back from the crusades, took it upon himself to take the taxes back from Prince John and restore them to the people, hence the age-old mantra of "Rob from the rich and give to the poor". Now that you have a background, on to my rant.

    The unfortunate backlash of this story is that, to most children, it wasn't/isn't explained properly. The rich in England at that time were almost exclusively royalty, and royalty was government, so the government was taking the peoples money. Therefore, when Robin robbed from the rich, he was for all extents and purposes, "stealing" money from a government that had wrongly taken it from their citizens. Unfortunately the way that this is normally explained to most children and adults is just that he was robbing from the rich to help the poor, therefore it is alright.

    The government taking money from you at any point and time is what I would like to call thievery. The Income tax is thievery, state and national. The "Death Tax" is thievery. Normally we associate thieves with the moral label of "wrong" or even "sin", but for some reason, when our government steals from us, we find it acceptable, and even encourage it, because trying to change the method by which the government is funded is just to much work. However, when rich individual citizens and companies are, well, rich; They immediately become labeled as evil. These are companies whose CEO's and Boards, have, for the most part, come by their immense riches legally and relatively morally. That is what a capitalist society is good for. People who were poor can make their way to the top, or people who are on top, can go to the bottom with bad choices. Anyway, back to what I was talking about.

    The government in its almighty wisdom, wants to help even out the wealth. They often refer to it as wealth re-distribution. They want to tax those with more money more, and those with less money less. They wish to "rob" from the rich and "give" to the poor. Needless to say, when they talk about big oil companies having billions of dollars in profits, it sounds good to your average joe. After all, the evil oil company took his money, go ahead and tax 'em to death. What joe doesn't care about, nor think about, is how this is wrong. The government should never resort to thievery to advance its own agenda and bring more power and money into itself. Of course, the government views your money as theirs anyway. After all, how else could they redistribute wealth unless they own all the wealth already?

    The government also talks about the rich paying their fair share of taxes. Under the current tax code, they are already paying much more than their fair share, while those in "poverty" pay much less than their fair share. So the government is already playing Robin Hood with your wealth by taking more money from the rich than should be taken fairly, and taking not as much from the poor as they should be paying! Assuming you want everything to be fair of course.

    The point of my rant is this. We live in a semi-free market capitalist society. The money you earn, is your own. If you earn enough to be rich, fine. If you earn little and are poor, fine. The point is, you own what you earn. Robin Hood did not steal from individuals. Robin Hood "stole" from an unfair government and returned the money to those who needed it. Any government who starts to see the money that you earn as their property is in the beginning stages of socialism, and it needs to be stopped in its tracks. Elect people who don't want to tax the rich more and poor less. Elect those who truly wish for everyone to be equal, and tax everyone truly fairly, at the same percentage. The only way to change the way our government looks at the money that you earn as yours is to change the people in office. One does not have to vote for the same person each time. You don't have to be like the majority of my home county and automatically vote all democrat in an election. You need to learn where your candidates stand on issues that are important to you, and vote for those that you feel will do the job best. As a general rule, if a candidate thinks your money is his to re-distribute as he pleases, you probably shouldn't vote for him.