Crucify or tax

I'm holding my breath waiting to hear from my Italian friends.  The news is full of some EPA administrator urging his folks to do to the oil industry like the Romans, go into a Turkish village and crucify the first 5 guys you run into.  Of course the commentators are making hay about how lawless that is and not according to ethics of government regulators at all.  Fair enough.
     I'm choking on the history.  Rarely did Romans do such things.  They were famous for Roman Law, which is the basis for our own law down to the present day.  It was particularly well-defined, attempted to be fair and was considered a step up to what the Romans called 'civilization'--and conquered peoples often grudgingly admitted they at least loved Roman Law. 
     What the Romans did was tax.  They taxed the bejabbers out of their conquered territory--about 25%.  In the case of many lands, residents simply changed the names of their gods to some Roman diety with a wink and a nod, kept paying their 25% temple tax and made it a problem for the priests.  Life went on as before.  Universal Greek and official Latin replaced native tongues.  Everyone aspired to Roman citizenship.  Roman rule was fairly popular everywhere except for one place, Palestine.  Jews had a system of paying civil authorities and also paying three tithes to the priesthood.  Two were annual 10% tithes and one was triannual. So the religious tax was 23.3%.  Atop this came the Roman tax of 25%.  Living on a subsistence, the Jews couldn't pay and during the reign of Herod the Great, he took their lands in lieu of their tax payments.  By the time of his death, he owned half the land of Palestine and landless Jews such as Joseph, father of Jesus, had to abandon his family home at Bethlehem and work as a builder ('tekton', Greek) where he could find work.  The Jews couldn't take it and rebelled. And beginning in 66 AD the Romans had had enough and started a genocide campaign against the Jews that ended with the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.
     What Obama does is tax.  And Taxmaggedon is on the way January 2013 when he will have more "flexibility".  Tax is what will happen if we have a credit crisis.  Inflation is just another word for a hidden tax that robs people of the value of their life savings.  Tax is coming, unless we vote.  194 days.
    Oh, by the way, this EPA ding dong said the Romans went  into a Turkish village.  Turks were still in central Asia when Rome ruled.  Seljuk Turks didn't invade "Turkey" until 1000 years after Christ.  You think that EPA guy was educated in one of our government-run schools?