These were coming to me at a rate of one every three to four months, until last week. In this past week, I’ve been contacted by three different people aiming to renounce US citizenship. Sure, that might just be random cluster in the data, but it seems significant.

And then there’s this:

More Americans Give Up Citizenship As IRS Gets Aggressive Overseas

By Martin Vaughan, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

The number of American citizens and green-card holders severing their ties with the U.S. soared in the latter part of 2009, amid looming U.S. tax increases and a more aggressive posture by the Internal Revenue Service towards Americans living overseas.

According to public records, just over 500 people worldwide renounced U.S. citizenship or permanent residency in the fourth quarter of 2009, the most recent period for which data are available. That is more people than have cut ties with the U.S. during all of 2007, and more than double the total expatriations in 2008.

The author, Martin Vaughn, contacted me via Facebook, having found his way to my blog. Since he was looking specifically for people who had or who were considering expatriating for tax reasons, I couldn’t really help him, and the article came out a few days later.

There’s one factual error I spotted in the article:

In order to give up U.S. citizenship, a person must obtain or have citizenship in another country.

Ah, facts…

US citizenship, if the State Department’s recently-announced plan to raise consular services fees goes through.

From the Klasko, Rulon, Stock & Seltzer, LLP blog:

Documentation for Renunciation of Citizenship – The cost study found that documenting a U.S. citizen’s renunciation of citizenship is extremely costly, requiring American consular officers overseas to spend substantial amounts of time to accept, process, and adjudicate cases. A new fee of $450 will be established to help defray a small portion of the total cost to the government of documenting the renunciation of citizenship.

One can only hope...

The sound of adding machines chattering away in the Oval Office is the sound of empire in decline. The ship of the imperial state lacks fuel for its boiler and powder for its cannon … but its captain and crew dare not take it into port for maintenance. They’ve convinced themselves — and they may very well be right — that the barnacles infesting its hull are the only thing holding it together, and that it (and their jobs with it) will disintegrate if the fouling organisms are removed. And so they limp it along toward its next target, nursing as much mischief out of it as they can and hoping it holds together until they’re retired and it becomes someone else’s problem.

Read the whole thing over at c4ss.org.

The American Heritage Dictionary, among other definitions, suggests that a border is “The line or frontier area separating political divisions or geographic regions; a boundary.”

"Warning! State border!" -- sign at Devín, on the Slovak side of what was once the officially-impassible border between Republik Österreich and Československá socialistická republika

I’ve heard about these border things, but I’ve never actually seen one.

I got to thinking about this because the Motorhome Diaries crew (agorist comrades Jason Talley and Pete Eyre) just got stopped and searched and denied passage across one of these “border” things. From the reports, it sounds like the “border” in question was one dividing two political entities which call themselves “United States of America” and “Canada”.

Huh. These borders things sound a bit dangerous.

I offer a few alternate definitions for your consideration:

bor-der (bôr’dər) n.:

1. An imaginary line near which organized criminals in and out of uniform may stop, search, kidnap, cage, shoot, rob or otherwise harm peaceful people without consequence.
2. An imaginary line representing a place at which two or more tyrants agree to stop killing, raping, maiming and robbing each others’ slaves, the better to continue enslaving and stealing from their respective territorial thralls.
3. An imaginary line marking zones of exclusivity for legalized privilege in the forms of taxation, regulation, reporting duties, “law” enforcement, subsidy, etc.

Dangerous indeed. Stay away.

Anyone else have their own definition for “border”? Let’s hear ‘em in the comments!