Saturday, February 02, 2008

Snake infested, disenfranchised, and now stripped of citizenship

Disclosure: That Son of a Guambat was born on Guam and this year Guambat's first grandchild will be born on Guam. And by US law they are and will be American citizens by birthright.

But, of course, that does not come with any right to representation. Guamanians have no voice on the floor of Congress (House or Senate) and no right to vote for President. To that extent, they are disenfranchised American citizens.

Now along comes some carpet-bagging NY Yankee Congresswoman from Florida who proclaims that Guamanian Americans are NOT citizens of the USA. They are, in her words, "foreign citizens"! Perhaps she's on the "foreign staff" at the Washington Post.

It is so stupifyingly ignorant as to be beyond belief that a person of her standing could have such a misinformed understanding of America's history, geography and community.

Now, she will no doubt try to slough the remark off with her second serve of injustice to Guamanians by insisting that Guamanians don't pay any federal income tax. But that, again, shows the depth of her ignorance.

Guambat does not know how many times he must repeat this to thick-headed Statesiders. The US Federal Income Tax applies to Guam as a "mirror" code. This mirror code tax is imposed by the US Congress. It's Federal law, not a law dreamed up and by implemented by Guamanians; they have no say in such things. Guamanians look to the same tax codes as Statesiders, paying the same rates on the same things.

The only difference is that, in America, citizens are residents of States and on Guam, citizens are resident in Federal territory. Statesiders pay their tax to the Federal government in Washington. Guamanians pay their tax to the Federal unincorporated Territory of Guam.

Guam is not a self-governing entity. It is an instrumentality of the Federal government, subject to the oversight and administration, at its will, of the US Congress. It has no sovereignty, which States do to some extent (to the extent they have not reposed it in the Federal government under the Constitution's federated system).

Guam's government (Congress allowed Guam to elect its own local self-administration only about 40 years ago) is the extended hand of the Federal government, and it is into that hand that Guamanians pay tax.

Guamanians are taxed when and how the US Federal Government decides, without any representative power in that Government. It is the classic "taxation without representation", a situation so self-evidently bereft of natural justice that it led to the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution and the US Federal Government in which Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite imperiously sits.

It is entirely disingenuous to say that Guamanians don't pay Federal taxes. It is disingenuous, and for a US Congresswoman to complain about it, it is also rude, insulting and un-American. To have some jumped-up little Congresswoman tell Guamanians that they are "foreign citizens" is fighting words.

Come tell it to our faces, Ginny.

That said, Guambat hopes that Congresswoman Brown-Waite comes out to Guam to join us in this year's annual Liberation Day Parade (provided she doesn't decide to "repatriate" 'American' soldiers buried here, most of whom are Guamanian). She obviously needs a break and definitely could use a geography and history lesson along with a bit of civics.

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