Horrible Things Can Happen When We Allow Private Companies to Collect Taxes: John Adams once said that, "Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men."
Since the founding of our nation, there have always been strong and clear distinctions between public space and private space, and between things that are done by the government and things that are done by businesses and the private sector.
These distinctions are at the very core of our democracy, and of capitalism in America. [...]
The power of tax collection should always be a power afforded to a government that's answerable to We The People.
It shouldn't be a power that's transferred to private corporations.
But as The Washington Post brilliantly points out, that's exactly what's happened right here in our nation's capital, in an experiment to privatize tax collection.
And not surprisingly, it's an experiment that's having disastrous effects.
Just ask Bennie Coleman, a 76 year-old veteran who, thanks to D.C.'s tax lien privatization program, had his $197,000 house foreclosed and taken away from him, all because of a $134 property tax bill that hadn't been paid.
