Twight, Charlotte Augusta 1944–

PERSONAL:

Born March 7, 1944, in New York, NY; daughter of Jack Russell and Helen Forster Lewis; married Richard Blackledge Twight, June 13, 1964. Education: California State University, Fresno, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1965; University of Washington, J.D., 1973; M.A., 1980, Ph.D., 1983. Hobbies and other interests: Running, backpacking, skiing, mountain climbing.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Economics, College of Business and Economics, 1910 University Dr., Boise State University, Boise, ID 83725. E-mail—ctwight@boisestate.edu.

CAREER:

Economist, educator. Naval Command Systems Support Activity, programmer-analyst, 1966-70; admitted to the Bar of the State of Washington, 1973; University of Washington, Seattle, lecturer in law, 1975-78, teaching associate in economics, 1981-83, visiting assistant professor of business economics, beginning 1983; Boise State University, Boise, ID, professor of economics.

MEMBER:

American Economics Association, Phi Kappa Phi.

WRITINGS:

America's Emerging Fascist Economy, Arlington House Publishers (New Rochelle, NY), 1975.

Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control over the Lives of Ordinary Americans, Palgrage/St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor of articles to professional journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Charlotte Augusta Twight is a professor of economics and the author of Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control over the Lives of Ordinary Americans. A reviewer for the National Review Book Service online noted that Twight ‘reveals the tactics that politicians from both parties have used for decades to subvert the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution—and to give the feds unrestricted power over an ever-increasing range of business and individual matters…. Most disquieting is what she reveals about how the rule of law has been eviscerated by the very officials who have sworn to uphold it—and the dire consequences for our future if this trend isn't reversed."

Twight writes that ‘the shift from autonomy to dependence on government is perhaps the defining characteristic of modern American politics.’ She demonstrates how the basic elements of American life have come under government control, including the right to privacy. Twight notes that we are a nation functioning under so many laws that regulate every conceivable activity that it has become impossible to know them all, and even more impossible to comply with them.

Library Journal contributor William D. Pederson wrote that ‘like most Libertarians, [Twight] espouses unrealistic ideals and ideas unrelated to pragmatic solutions to social and political issues.’ Walter Williams wrote for Capitalism (magazine) online that ‘with ample references, Twight demonstrates how Americans became a nation of sheep,’ how ‘specifications of the rule of law have been emasculated,’ how ‘the Supreme Court, whose function is to protect the Constitution, has become a part of the mob to destroy it,’ how ‘real or purported crises often provide carte blanche for the expansion of government authority,’ and how ‘government control of education has created ‘despotism over the mind.’"

Twight's term for the process by which the government creates new programs that never end is ‘political transaction-cost manipulation (PT-CM).’ She notes that there are two costs associated with PT-CM. Information cost includes such activities as shaping people's ideas of the cost and benefit of a government action. An example of action cost would be the disregard of the legal process for amending the Constitution. Twight notes how self-serving laws are passed by officials who bundle them together with positive legislation, so that they are passed as part of a package rather than on their individual merit, and often without the public being aware of their existence. And she emphasizes that although politicians and others continually say that citizens must get involved, accessing information and providing input are so time-consuming and difficult that it is all but impossible for the average person to do so.

Twight studies our system of taxation and reveals the growing collection of monies through indirect taxation. She discusses the legality of the income tax and cases of citizens who have undergone IRS scrutiny and prosecution for not filing to the letter of their laws. She studies Social Security, public education, child-care, and medicine in the United States, and the federal government's role in each. Jennifer Chew, writing in the Washington Times, covered Twight's address to the Cato Institute and commented on her book. Chew wrote that ‘Twight demonstrates how Social Security guarantees dependence of the elderly, how income tax withholding functions as the infrastructure of dependence, how public education is imprinting the next generation with political transaction-cost manipulation, and how health care controls are exploiting human vulnerability."

For example, Twight points out that when the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, taxpayers were told that it was an ‘insurance’ plan, and the Treasury Department went so far as to get this information to the people through a Disney-created cartoon which was shown in movie theaters after the feature film. But none of this was true. As Peggy Whitcomb noted in her Oregon review, ‘There is, in fact, nothing in the Act legally obligating Washington to make payments to workers on retirement. That is left entirely to the whim of Congress.’ Employees were told that they and their employers would be making ‘contributions,’ when in fact they were being taxed. Separate accounts were never set up, and most of the monies were added to the general pot of taxes that funded, and continues to fund, the federal government.

Citizens willingly paid the Victory Tax during World War II, the first time taxes were withheld from paychecks. Up to this point, taxpayers had paid their income taxes at the end of the year, allowing them to accrue interest on their own money. When the present tax system was employed in 1943, employers became tax collectors for the government. Twight quotes Elisha Friedman, a former Treasury official who consulted to Congress during this transition. Friedman felt that in order to avoid taxpayer opposition, the system had to be changed slowly, comparing taxation to drinking, saying that if you wished to cure a man's habit, you wouldn't cut off his liquor all at once. Twight wrote, ‘Note that in this ex-Treasury official's view, wanting to retain one's own income was a kind of pathology, or at least a bad habit, badly in need of a ‘cure’ by the wise men of government."

On the privacy issue, Twight lists five ways the government is collecting data on Americans, and how much they know. She also attacks the excuses government has given for expanding surveillance. Twight states that the federal government claims to have the right to regulate any activity, no matter what the applicable provision of the Constitution. She concludes by proposing measures by which Americans can take back their freedoms and prevent future loss of liberty. She says that in pursuing this result, we must, like the signers of the Declaration of Independence, commit ‘our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

A Publishers Weekly contributor felt that ‘Twight's thesis is straightforward: government insiders actively promote their own public policy initiatives. In her view, this promotion often takes the form of outright misrepresentation of costs and benefits to the individual citizen."

Whitcomb began her article by quoting Thomas Sowell, who wrote, ‘No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce. On the contrary, the growth of a large parasitic class marked the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the collapse of Spain from the heights of its golden age."

Whitcomb ended her article by saying, ‘American citizens are losing not only confidence in their ability to make their own way, but also the certain knowledge that such autonomy is desirable and to be treasured. Instead, citizens vie with each other for victim status, which translates into parasite status, as Thomas Sowell has noted. But who are the chief parasites draining our country of prosperity and freedom? According to Dr. Twight, that distinction belongs to Washington."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, January, 2002, William D. Pederson, review of Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control over the Lives of Ordinary Americans, p. 128.

Publishers Weekly, December 3, 2001, review of Dependent on D.C., p. 50.

Washington Times, July 13, 2002, Jennifer Chew, ‘Manipulation Makes Us Dependent on Government."

ONLINE

Capitalism,http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/ (February 5, 2002), Walter Williams, ‘A Nation of Sheep: Dependent on D.C."

National Review Book Service, http://www.nrbookservice.com/ (August 27, 2002), review of Dependent on D.C.

Oregon,http://oregonmag.com/ (August 28, 2002), Peggy Whitcomb, review of Dependent on D.C.