A little government and a little luck are necessary in life,
but only a fool trusts either of them.
P.J. O'Rourke
The Taxman Cometh...
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
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| Via the Libertarian Republic |
Image of the Day
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| Via Independent Institute |
Via Inquisitr: Little Rylie (3 yo) is battling kidney cancer while the older Rheann (6 yo) has brain cancer. The third girl (4 yo) Ainsley has leukemia (blood cancer).
My thoughts and prayers for your cure and a long, happy life, sweeties.
Facebook Corner
(IPI) We submitted a proposal to City Hall earlier this week that will solve Chicago's pension crisis without raising taxes.
IPI has made a promising first step to authentic reform by suggesting a private-sector defined benefit alternative to chronically underfunded public pension plans; life insurance companies have offered annuity plans for decades--plans that are far more secure than Illinois' poorly rated debt, balance sheet, and vast unfunded liabilities: would anyone with a modicum of common sense ever trust the spendthrifts in Springfield with their financial future?
I am, however, am sick and tired of those sanctimonious self-serving "progressives" whom want to steal/tax other people's money--other people not responsible for corrupt, unsustainable bargains--under the lipstick-on-a-pig phrase "their fair share". Is there no shame among among the morally corrupt purveyors of the Politics of Envy? There aren't enough rich people/companies to pay off the unconscionable political whores whom have attempted to dump the bulk of program expenses on future taxpayers, whom have their own bills to pay for. To any taxpayer sympathetic to "tax the other guy" rhetoric, even all of Bill Gates' $76B wouldn't make a good down payment on the federal deficit... Unless you get chronic overspending under control, you'll run out of rich people's assets very fast, and guess who the Statist tax monster comes after next? There is no easy solution to this problem; it built up over decades of chronic underfunding. Everybody, including public sector retirees, will have to make sacrifices.
we shall see what happens to pensioners in detroit. they had constitutional protection also.
Alexander Volokh had an interesting commentary on Reason. The bottom line is that bankruptcy is all about impairing contractual rights and the pension clause does not establish a "more equal" contract, bankruptcy is not a law but a process, and the supremacy clause trumps state courts once bankruptcy has started. He thinks the other side had a better argument on challenging the governor's authority to file but it became a moot point once the case was filed. http://reason.org/.../show/volokh-detroit-pension-protection.
I believe that going back to the Eisenhower tax rates on the rich would bring this country and this state out of the mess that it is in now. The rich then are still rich or richer.
The FDR/Eisenhower era upper-end tax rates (90% or more) were laughably absurd--almost nobody paid them. There is a reason JFK and LBJ chopped off rough 20 points off the top bracket. Why? Because they were worried about a stagnant economy, and they wanted to give the high income class the incentive of keeping more of their own money. When you increase tax rates, you shrink the tax base. What we have seen is after every major tax cut--Harding/Coolidge, JFK/LBJ, Reagan, etc.--is that aggregate revenues have actually increased. When the wealthy are focused more on theft/taxation-avoidance than wealth creation, the economy's response is suboptimal. The Politics of Envy--a vice--is pathetic, immoral and counterproductive.
The wealthy and corporations should pay their fair share, and stop attacking public workers.
The idea that government retirees should trump funding for essential services is immoral and unacceptable. Let's face it; you bought into a bankrupt Ponzi scheme, decades after most businesses, aware of the Baby Boomer retirement tsunami, shifted to a more sustainable defined contribution program. What were you thinking when politicians started extending funding windows or passing contribution holidays or adopted unrealistic pension fund returns (twice of that in the private sector), which allowed for smaller state contributions? What made you think if politicians couldn't or wouldn't pay their fair share on an ongoing basis, that future legislatures would not only have to find the money to pay their own fair share but make up for decades of chronic underfunding by the same corrupt politicians whom bought your support with knowingly unsustainable promises? It was YOUR responsibility to ensure your cronies didn't fritter away your program contributions with other funding priorities. "Attacks on public workers"? That is laughable: a special interest is demanding a public bailout by having the state steal from people not responsible for the unrealistic promises--and people whom can relocate if those taxes are unduly burdensome. Ultimately, because there aren't enough rich people to fund unrealistic promises, this burden falls on the middle class.
It was what was agreed to, you want to take away what was negotiated and promised to them?
No, the state never funded the pension on an ongoing basis in good faith. The unions helped elect corrupt, deal-making politicians making unsustainable commitments behind the taxpayer's back. You are only entitled to your prorated share of actual funding/pension assets. Taxpayers should not bailout special interest groups and make up for underfunding on an ongoing basis.
(IPI). Unfortunately, the political culture of Illinois has long favored cronyism over the competition that arises when markets are free — so instead of the taxicab industry demanding that lower regulations be imposed on their cut of the Chicago market, they took to the halls of the Statehouse in Springfield and pushed lawmakers to impose unnecessary burdens on their competition.
I though you guys were FOR cronyism. At least that's the impression I got last week when you supported the Supreme Court further legalizing bribery of politicians in McCutcheon v. FEC as a "victory for free speech." Our f***ed campaign finance laws are the reason our politicians have cronies in the first place. So which is it, IPL? You can't have it both ways here
Idiotic "progressive" troll: you are like a dog chasing its tail. What most of us pro-liberty believe is in much smaller government and streamlined regulations, a low, universally applicable tax scheme. There is no "conspiracy" by moneyed interests as per populist paranoia: what kind of moneyed interest came up with a budget where over 60% of the budget goes to fund individual benefits? We oppose all sorts of anti-competitive laws and regulations, including occupational licensing cartels. We have a totally consistent approach to government--by limiting its power and budget, we limit the incentive for corruption.
If you were serious about government reform, instead of tramping on the right of political expression, you would look at structural reforms, e.g., term limits, single-term Presidency, etc
(Independent Institute). "Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." —John Maynard Keynes
In the 1920s Lenin favored adoption of a market system (which was overturned by Stalin). Too inflation is not necessarily bad. An economy with very little or no inflation will stagnate and develope sickness. Too much or too little is bad. A fair rate of inflation may be required to reprioritize and rebalance the economy, to promote creative destruction.
Absolutely false. When we had a convertible dollar, we had a remarkably stable currency and among the highest economic growth trends.
(Ron Paul). Should we eliminate all campaign finance regulations? Ron's opinion: http://bit.ly/1hqFHpj
Let's stop believing in all this urban legend nonsense of corporations buying elections. Corporations are just groups of people whom have had their voices arbitrarily and unconstitutionally restricted. In the era of economic fascism, the government essentially controls things because of its legal monopoly of force and private ownership is simply nominal. If you are truly committed to eliminating political corruption, you limit the resources, mission, authority and size of government, you limit political tenure, etc.
(LFC). "After a disabled special education child tried to record how bullies were tormenting him at school, the police in Pennsylvania responded by slapping him with the charge of felony wiretapping...he decided to use his school-issued iPad to record the bullying: 'I was really having things like books slammed upside my head.'" With government, there's either a shortage or oversupply of everything, including privacy.
The utter absurdity of charging the victim of harassment or abuse of wiretapping.with a felony. The idea that the victim is invading the "privacy" of the bully is frankly absurd; there was no reasonable expectation of privacy (contrary to the police) in a classroom where the teacher and other class members witnessed the incident. (There is a right to privacy, e.g., going to the restroom, a confessional, a conversation with your lawyer or doctor, your home, etc., but not to protect abusers.) And yet the bullies got away without so much as a slap on the wrist. His own parents seemed to be skeptical of his allegations of bullying; how is he supposed to prove it?
I have an experience which was in some respects similar to the boy's dilemma. In my last year of college teaching I was a visiting professor at a central Illinois university. The chairman of the department did something in the fall semester which I considered a brazen violation of my academic freedom. I felt strongly about the matter, but I was mostly preoccupied with securing a follow-up appointment elsewhere and the last thing I needed was a hostile reference at my current school. I never said or implied to anyone that I intended to appeal the wrongdoing. Early in the spring semester, the chairman made an unsolicited, unexpected visit to my office--the first time all school year. I didn't know what this was about, until he abruptly said that if I so much as filed a complaint against him over what happened in the fall, he would immediately strip me of my classroom responsibilities. Talk about unexpected; long story short, his attempt to intimidate me backfired. Although I was mostly vindicated, I took exception of the committee's conclusion that I had not met the burden of proof that the chairman had threatened me. Come on: why did they think I didn't file after it happened in the fall? Why did I go to the administration when I did? How do they explain the fact the chairman went apeshit when the administration said it would audit any adverse decision against me? What was I supposed to do--have secretly taperecorded a conversation with the chair in the hope he might say something incriminating? I'm certain if I had done so, the college might have made me a target for violating the rights of the unethical chairman....
Political Humor
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Nate Beeler and Townhall |
Michael Martin Murphy, "What's Forever For?"
