If there’s one thing I hate worse than doing yard work, it’s paying taxes.  On the bright side of things, at least the taxes I currently pay go towards my elected representatives.  Whether or not I support the representative or policies they call for is another iss, but I at least have a small say in what the government does with my money.  It’s highway robbery to take 40 percent off a paycheck that goes to any number of programs I don’t support.

That 40 percent though might grow larger and start to subsidize a corrupt institution that is working against what I believe in and has propped up dictators, condemned holding terrorists in detention facilities yet hardly says a peep about Mugabe or Chavez overtaking farms in the name of progress and operates a blackmail system that enables the most corrupt in the world to ruthlessly continue to hold power.  No, I’m not talking about the Carter Foundation, the ACLU or any other number of groups that do all of the above and more.  If the United Nations has its way, citizens of many nations will start having to pay taxes to support the UN.

Cliff Kincaid, President of America’s Survival, Inc., has just published a devastating chronology of the U.N.’s sustained campaign for global taxes, noting the 2001 High Level Panel on Financing for Development as a turning-point in the debate. Not only did that meeting call for the establishment of an International Tax Organization, it blatantly outlined two major areas where globotaxation might easily be levied – a currency transactions tax and a carbon tax – both of which would disproportionately hit the U.S.

Since then, a succession of high-level meetings, summits and conferences have been busy gathering steam for this concept: the Millennium Development Goals, the 2005 World Economic and Social Survey, the World Summit on Sustainable Development,  the World Commission Report on the Social Dimension of Globalization and so on and so on; they all share this notion that globotaxation is the most ‘innovative’ solution to long-term funding for the U.N. They propose globotaxes on everything from air transportation to aviation fuel, from airline tickets to carbon emissions, from currency transactions to arms. The list is as ambitious as it is scary. The long arm of the U.N.’s IRS could be in your pocket soon.

One of the U.N.’s more fruitful attempts at global taxation is the formal plan to levy a tax on airline tickets. In November 2005, Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, and Spain issued a joint statement calling for a ‘nationally applied, internationally coordinated’ tax to be levied on air transport travels. The French government has been the first one to bite the bullet, and from July onward, passengers will pay between one and 40 euros on all flights taking off in France. With enthusiastic U.N. support and much back-slapping for President Chirac, Chile has undertaken plans to do the same, with Belgium and Germany currently hovering in the wings to do so. Luckily, both Great Britain and the U.S. have resisted Mr. Annan’s calls for others to follow suit. But make no mistake: the rot has started. Britain’s Liberal Democrats are openly advocating for taxation on aviation fuel as a way of reducing climate change, and with the current spin-over-substance streak running through the Conservative Party, anything is possible from our normally reliable British partners.

Does this mean we can pay taxes to fund the UN who largely looks the other way in Sudan, East Timor, Indonesia, Iran, did so in Iraq, etc. yet comes out in brute force when it comes to how a coalition of nations are proceding with the GWOT?  Absolutely, but the UN program would call for double taxation.

The problem with this entire proposed world-wide tax to fund the UN is that we all already pay for the United Nations.  Whether you are a citizen of England, Australia, Canada or the United States to name just four nations, you pay your taxes towards your respective government who in turn pays money to fund the UN.  Now the UN is considering using the money given to them from your government and putting a tax on your paychecks . . . for what exactly?

At least with our own elected representatives, and mind you that the UN is not an elected body by the will of the people, we can vote representatives out of power if we do not like what they do with our money.  With the UN, we can’t do a thing about booting the corrupt and incompetent Kofi Annan even though he sleeps on our dime, pound or peso.