Philly assumes the role of King George

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut. . . .

So even if your blog collects a handful of hits a day, as long as there’s the potential for it to be lucrative — and, as Mandale points out, most hosting sites set aside space for bloggers to sell advertising — the city thinks you should cut it a check. According to Andrea Mannino of the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, in fact, simply choosing the option to make money from ads — regardless of how much or little money is actually generated — qualifies a blog as a business. The same rules apply to freelance writers. As former City Paper news editor Doron Taussig once lamented [Slant, "Taxed Out," April 28, 2005], the city considers freelancers — which both Bess and Barry are, in addition to their blog work — “businesses,” and requires them to pay for a license and pay taxes on their profits, on top of their state and federal taxes.

If I lived in Philadelphia right now, they’d try to force me to pay $300 a year to exercise my free speech rights on the internet.  What city will try this next?  I wouldn’t be surprised if it is San Francisco.

I don’t earn a dime on this website, and yet these idiotic bureaucrats  want to penalize my hard work by demanding a yearly handout.  What right do they have to decide that I should give them $300, or whatever sum of money they arbitrarily decide is appropriate?  What have they done to entitle themselves to such funds?  Not a damn thing.

But that’s the point.  If you’re a government entity, you can pull new policies right out of your rear and suddenly they’re legit.  If I demanded $300 from my neighbor and took it, I’d be arrested for theft.  But if a city does it, well that’s just a part of respecting the public order.

I wonder, at what point did America – from the federal government all the way down to its municipalities, decide that the people work for the government; not that the government works for the people?  It’s ass backwards.  Millions of hardworking Americans are pinching their wallets and instead of tax breaks and other policies to alleviate their already stressed coffers, the government is imposing new taxes, new penalties, and new “creative” ways to suck us dry.

Disgusting.  These people running Philly are so out of touch they must be living on Mars.  And what’s sad, they wont be the only ones that think this is a good idea . . . .