Taxation Without Representation
An Open Letter to Louisiana’s Congressional and State Representatives
“Taxation Without Representation.”
One of America’s first trending memes, this pithy phrase captured in three words the animating spirit of the American Revolution.
Levies imposed by distant authorities and paid by local people without their consent, input or possibility of relief is the essential definition of colonization.
And this continues today in Louisiana, abetted and accelerated by our ostensible representatives in Congress and the state legislature, who have allowed both the cutting of billions in publicly funded Federal assistance and the raising of trillions in new sales taxes (tariffs) without lifting a finger or uttering a word of objection.
In short: taxation without representation.
While the colonists of our own nation’s history rose up, severed ties and ultimately won a war of independence from our colonizers, long-occupied Louisiana never seemed comfortable with its new status as a free state.
A sleepy province of several distant nations, Louisiana has repeatedly and consistently sought new Great Powers under which to subjugate itself.
Thomas Jefferson purchased us (as part of the first commercial “bundle”) for the prorated price of a couple hundred thousand bucks. We have never been anything but a bargain.
After the Civil War ended Louisiana’s occupation by a slave-powered agricultural economy, we struck oil in Evangeline and immediately sold ourself to a new industry, which eventually spawned a host of predatory, oil-adjacent industrial colonizers.
Which brings us to the present day—literally to today’s local news—in which three-quarters of a billion dollars in publicly funded storm aid to Louisiana citizens was cut out of FEMA, and four billion dollars (plus tax exemptions) simultaneously invested in a single chemical plant in Ascension Parish.
When will it become clearer to Louisiana citizens that our nominal representatives have once again allied themselves with the Great Powers and against their own people?
How high will we let them raise tariffs on our food and tools and building materials and machine parts and transportation—virtually everything we buy—without even acknowledging their responsibility to represent our interests?
And what will we do then?