Love is a fire.
But whether it is going to warm your hearth or
burn down your house,
you can never tell.
Joan Crawford
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
Rant of the Day
From Jim Baxter on a Cato Institute FB thread on progressive income taxes:
The KEY here is to 'deprogram' society's indoctrination by the left: that all citizens must 'look to government' for answers and solutions. Marxist liberal progressives have been very successful at creating and cultivating the 'dependent mindset' ...they captivate the minds of our culture to be fully attentive to look ONLY to government as society's 'institution of benevolence' ...it needs to be pointed out again and again that 'big government' has failed our workers and jobs, failed our economy, failed our poor, failed our needy, failed our educational intuitions, failed our healthcare institutions (by absurd and egregious regulations and now infinitely worse: Obamacare) ...the more money we send to government the more they steal and waste...the more power we give them the more convoluted and restricting, production choking regulations they persecute us with....so, taxes? The government doesn't need to collect more than the close to $3 Trillion it currently squanders....the answer isn't government or tax collecting at all! The left wants to get society bogged down in a tax debate when the answer is: federal government, tear down this wall! The IRS is the 'wall of lies' separating the citizen from prosperity made via his/ her own liberty...while eliminating the 'middle man' government tax thief...Facebook Corner
(Cato Institute). "The income tax has greatly contributed to Americans’ steady and serious loss of liberty."
Loss of the liberty to extravagantly exploit the social power of shows of wealth without paying back the general society that generated it.Nonsense. Individuals create wealth by creating a variety of competitively-priced, efficient, satisfying goods and services that meet consumer demand, not by force but volition. Government is a self-serving parasitic monopoly of force that plunders the productive to pay for its own ever-spreading inefficient bureaucracy and its oversubscribed corrupt populist and special-interest bargains; it gets in the way of creating the wealth of a nation.
The Reagan assault on the progressive income tax is tied to our growing nature as an oligarchy
Nonsense. The progressive income tax punishes economic success by stealing even more to the point the earner is working more for the government than himself. Simple primal law of economics: you raise the cost of income, you get less of it, i.e., contract the tax base. If government is restricted to a low mandate of common services, we can cover those expenditures with a low flat rate of taxation which would minimize economic distortions and leave more resources for growing a robust economy.
Sales taxes always shift the tax burden to the poor.
Try the Fair Tax, then. Look it up.
The commenter was correct that the Fair Tax specifically addresses regressive aspects of consumption taxes. But all types of necessary expenditures have regressive aspects, and it's an incontrovertible economic law that arbitrarily low prices for goods and services increases related demand. The commenter is correct in the sense that higher earning people typically spend more given higher discretionary spending and hence will pick up more of the tax burden; let's not forget that prior to the economically perverse income tax, the country mostly funded its limited mandate of common expenditures through related tariffs.
The Fair Tax gives a prebate to cover sales tax on the necessities of life so that no one is taxed on basic needs.
Why is it, if government allegedly provides worthy goods and services, do the lower-level earners get them for free? Are those less worthy than food, clothing or other expenditures? What's their incentive to hold down costs if they have no skin in the game? What does the law of supply and demand mean to government expenditures if the price of relevant goods and services approximates near zero?
(Citizens Against Government Waste). TIME Magazine points out that President Obama’s foreign policy failures are proving his critics right. More than that, however, is they are hurting America’s global reputation. SHARE if the US should have stronger leadership. http://ti.me/1rxQRvn
I'm a little confused as to CAGW's motivation for a thread on foreign affairs and what is meant by 'strong' leadership. Is the point to discuss the questionable use of taxpayer money to influence leaders in our alliances, the horrendous spending used in military interventions and nation building, the prosecution of illegal wars in Libya, Yemen and elsewhere? Certainly CAGW must question how we spend more than the next 10 military powers combined, given our distance from the rest of the world by large oceans and benign neighbors in Canada and Mexico.
There are reasons why the Founding Fathers pondered the wisdom of a standing military, the meddling in Europe's incessant squabbling, why Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex.
Does that mean I support the convoluted foreign policy of the current administration? No. His record hasn't met his pre-Presidency rhetoric. We don't see any recognition of the fact we don't have the resources to be the world's policeman. What I want to see is less lecturing, bluster, and diplomacy by soundbite, and more emphasis on trade liberalization. Obama has done little on the latter beyond what Bush negotiated nearly a decade ago.
(IPI). Illinois is one of only 14 states that doesn’t have some form of gubernatorial term-limits.
A new proposal would give Illinois voters an opportunity to change that this coming November by enacting eight-year term limits on executive branch officers.
Incumbency and seniority rules are two corrupting influences in politics. It's almost impossible to pass fiscally responsible legislation and regulatory reform given the fact that incumbents fear populist opposition for their next election. My salient comment to this proposal is that I would prefer Virginia's rule of single-term governors, or at least require the 2 term limit be noncontiguous.
(IPI). Legislators are elected to represent the people of their district; with that responsibility come essential rights that constituents deserve, such as truth, responsibility and dedication to improving the state. In Illinois, citizens do not believe they are getting what they deserve.
The reason why The One wants taxpayers to foot the bill for his own library, vs. his predecessors whom did their fundraising from the private sector, is because even he can't sell the snake oil merits of his abysmal record in public office. It's bad enough productive workers have been tapped out by this President-in-name-only's spendthrift, class-warfare politics, but partisan legislators want them forced at the point of a gun to "donate" to his monument. One question: wasn't there even one Republican whom had the testicular fortitude to object to this boondoggle in committee? Where did the 9-0 votes come from? (I know where most of them came from, given the supermajority..)
Legislators need to wake up and stop wasting tax payers money, like $750,000.00 doors at the capital!!!! Also, there should be a law that No TAX dollar be spent on anyone in this state illegally!!!! I am NOT against Mexicans, I am against breaking the law!!!!
Stop blaming immigrants for the political whores you elect in Illinois.
Legislators work for those who pay them: rich people and big corporations.
Tell me: which rich people and big corporations elected the corrupt, dysfunctional supermajority in Springfield? Did they get their money's worth?
(Reason). The Supreme Court case POM Wonderful v. Coca-Cola could ultimately result in the FDA creating additional arcane, rigid, and unnecessary FDA standards of identity for foods.
Using the government to attack your competition is pure cronyism. Companies compare products all the time without resorting to Big Government. Whether Coke markets its product as "made with pomegranate and blueberry", "flavored with pomegranate and blueberry", etc. really doesn't matter, so long as they don't make false statements about their product. If POM wants to make an ad showing how many glasses of Minute Maid to get the same pomegranate you get in one glass of POM, fine. If it wants to show the ingredient label differences between its product and Coke's, fine. But to be honest, I think it's a bad business move; as a sector leader, I would benefit from Coke's promotion of pomegranate products, and certainly Coke has the resources, the marketing expertise, and distribution channels to buy out or build its own rival pomegranate juice operation. I'm less likely to purchase POM products because its shameful, unnecessary reliance on government force.
(More trollstomping via an IPI thread)
Corporate welfare is way bigger than social welfare...
Are you NUTS? Over two-thirds of the federal budget is spent on individual entitlements....
Entertainment Potpourri
A couple of American Idol notes:
- "In My Dreams". Season 5 runnerup Katharine McPhee plays Natalie, who has inherited her late mother's struggling restaurant and hasn't met the right guy; Nick, an ambitious young architect, has just come off a brutal breakup. At the same time, they pitched coins into a fountain with a legend that those who toss will meet their prospective lifetime mates over 7 nights of dreams, and if it's meant to be, they will then meet for real. Nick and Natalie meet in their dreams and instantly fall for each other but the maddening thing is each time they try to touch each other, kiss or whatever, the dream comes to an abrupt end. There are, of course, other romanic interests over the week that follows, and they have a number of just misses in real life, including an unknowing visit by Nick to Natalie's restaurant (although they seem to be aware of each other on some level). How could a libertarian-conservative not fall for the love story of two entrepreneurs? I thought McPhee was quite fetching in that role and leaves me longing to cast a coin in my own fountain... Of course, I wanted to scuba dive off Cape Cod after Splash!....
- I cast my first AI competition votes for rocker Caleb Johnson. I was confused by his choice of a Carrie Underwood song for his second performance; I would have probably would have picked some country-rock material, e.g., Presley, Campbell, Denver, the Eagles or Alabama, maybe some Ray Charles. Is it my imagination or have most of the performances I've heard focus on material I haven't heard before? Some of the duets I've heard this have been phenomenal, including this one a few weeks back from Caleb and Jessica.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of the original artist via IPI |
Madonna, "This Used To Be My Playground"
