Look at this smiling ponim–if it doesn’t make you sick it should. This is the face of a cheat who got off easy. (Phil Sandlin/AP)

Wesley Snipes Cleared of Serious Tax Charges

No felony conviction. A maximum of three years in prison when he faced sixteen. He repays what he owes plus interest and penalties. The federal jury gave him a pretty sweet deal.

I probably haven’t seen any of his movies in ten years or so. But anyone who goes to see this guy’s future movies is aiding and abetting a tax cheat. We average Joes of the world earn our living and pay our taxes. We’re not happy about it but we do it because it’s the right thing to do. We don’t earn $100-million over ten years time. Maybe if we did we’d be as disgustingly greedy as Wesley Snipes. But I’d like to think not. We’d probably just get good accountants and pay what we owed. Not Wesley. He don’t owe nutin’ to nobody. Instead of hiring a good accountant he hires a fraud who tells him he doesn’t owe anything. When the feds finally catch up to him, he does hire the best tax attorney his $100-million can buy to get him off. And he does.

His lawyer says “he will make full amends and pay everything.” How about making amends for the thousands of Americans who will now flock to the tax defiance movement and refuse to pay their taxes and dare the government to come after them? Will he make amends for the impression he’s created among them that they too can get away with murder (or at least cheating)?

If I were the judge I would dictate that Snipes pay his entire $17 million tax bill in pennies and that he be forced to physically carry every single one of them in wheelbarrows to the IRS office. This guy has it too easy. He thinks the world and the government owes him something because of his fame or his wealth or whatever. Well, I’ve got news for him. No one owes him anything.

And if Wesley doesn’t owe anything to us, the rest of his fellow citizen tax payers who have to shoulder the extra burden he imposes on us, what do we owe to him, the Hollywood star?? As far as I’m concerned, let his career go to hell in a handbasket. Don’t go to Wesley Snipes movies.