The Nanny State Has Arrived!

Yes, we all already know Massachusetts is a bleeding liberal state. Some of you may already refer to it as the People's Republic of Massachusetts. Others, like me, just call it "Mass" because it's damn hard to pronounce.

This news article about mandatory health care, however, has me quivering with fear. Why? The Massachusetts legislature has overwhelmingly passed a bill that makes it mandatory to have health insurance. Mandatory. Yep, that's right, MANDATORY.

Hey, but health insurance is a good idea, right? I've got it. Chances are, you do too. Why would this be a bad thing? The law even provides for free insurance for the poor, with a sliding scale as people become more affluent. What could be more progressive than that?

How about protecting our freedoms, for a start? How can people be free, if they aren't free to make mistakes?

What's more, have you considered the wealthy? Bill Gates moves to Massachusetts, and he has to buy health insurance. Does anyone really believe Bill Gates can't afford his annual physical? No problem, says the law. Good ol' Bill won't rot in jail for refusing to buy health insurance. Individuals deemed able but unwilling to purchase health care could face fines of more than $1,000 a year by the state if they don't get insurance. Say what? You're going to pay either way, but you get to decide if the money goes to a giant corporation, or the government. But I repeat myself.

There are two things that really bother me. The first is that the Senate passed this bill unanimously, and the House had only two dissenting votes. The second is that Massachusetts wants me to pay for it. The cost of this law, estimated at a billion dollars a year, is expected to be paid for primarily through federal funding....

Labels: health care, nanny state, state's rights

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Death and Taxes, and We're Working on Death

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. -- Benjamin Franklin

Ask any American history professor for the causes of the American Revolution, and high taxes is near the top of the list. But today, our taxes are several times higher than those paid by the colonists. Not just in real dollar terms, but in terms of the percentage of your labor that goes into government. What's wrong here?

Firstly, the government wastes money on non-essential functions. Unless you believe the fallacy that our government is more efficient than private industry, you must realize that every dollar spent by the government includes a "friction" charge of government inefficiency. Transfer non-essential services to private industry, and watch productivity go up -- and taxes go down.

Of course, certain functions remain central to the federal government, like national defense. Fortunately for us, there's a good guide already drafted that tells us which functions are essential and which are not. It's called the Constitution, and it lays it all out in black and white. If it ain't in there, don't try to spend federal dollars on it.

The second step to reducing the tax burden is fixing the tax code itself. Beyond the millions of dollars spent to keep the IRS running, how many billions are spent by companies and individuals trying to comply with the law? How many poor business decisions are made because a loophole will allow a tax-writeoff in excess of the loss itself? I can file my 1040 by myself each spring, but there's no man alive that can claim to understand the entire US Tax Code, pictured to the right. This is insane.

Debbie (from In the Bullpen) blogged about a Chicago Sun Times article on this subject, which caught my attention. You should all know I stand for minimization of federal spending outside that enumerated within the Constitution, but the way we collect that tax is important as well. Every engineer will tell you that each added complexity to a system will only add friction and losses. Our entire tax system is nothing but a collection of complex additions!

Rep John Linder is pushing for a solution. The FairTax bill calls for a repeal of all current corporate and individual income taxes, payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes and gift taxes. It replaces them with a single personal consumption tax (sales tax). Business-to-business transactions are exempt, as are sales of used items (already taxed). To remain progressive, individuals can obtain refunds on taxes paid on consumption up to the poverty level.

This is exceptionally simple, and easy to enforce. It eliminates the arbitrary double- and triple-taxation the current system entails. It's fair, and it will improve efficiency. We need folks like John Linder to help us break out of the "income tax is here to stay" mentality, think outside the box, and think of solutions for our country.

President Bush has formed a tax panel that is recommending simplifying the system. Get in touch with your congressmen and tell them it's not enough to remove a few deductions. It's not just personal income tax that's fatally flawed, it's income tax itself. Don't use the government to discourage income.

Want to learn more? Visit Americans for Fair Tax, and see what you can do to help.

Labels: state's rights, taxes

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Nervous Rodent's Manifesto

Last updated: 29 September 2005

I figure everyone has the right to know where a blogger is coming from, so I'm posting a manifesto of sorts. This isn't all-encompassing, but it should serve to give everyone an idea of where I'm coming from politically.

1. The government that governs best, governs least. -- Thomas Jefferson
2. Every service provided by the government is paid for out of the coffers of American wealth, e.g., taxes. To endorse spending is to postulate that the government can get more productivity from the wealth than private citizens, corporations, or organizations.
   
3. It is not a crime that hurts none. All laws should exist to protect innocents; any law that does not is superfluous.
4. The economy knows best. Only in the most extreme cases should the government interfere with the free working of the economy. Having said that, many problems are caused by government interference, and may require additional action to correct.
   
5. All people have equal rights, and should be treated equally under the law. Giving privledges to one group over another to correct perceived "disadvantages" is insulting and degrading.
   
6. It is better to fight for your country on foreign soil than at home. Like all rational people, I oppose war on principle. But I would rather fight in Iraq and Afghanistan than Maryland and Virginia.
   
7. There is nothing wrong with religion. Except that no government should ever invoke it, for any reason. Government, by definition, has power over people, and the combination is dangerous in the extreme.
8. All citizens have the right to argue and petition for change. Our Constitution has an amendment procedure for a reason. Violent action against a government is only justified against governments that do not, and it is especially justified in that situation.
   
9. Debate and discourse of individuals is preferable to news and editorials dictated by major corporations.
   
10. Opinions change, including mine. This manifesto may change with time. That's because I will, too.
    

The images at the bottom give a bit of a clue. They are courtesy of the OkCupid politics test. Feel free to take the test, and post your results as a comment so I can see what my readership is like. I'm 71% socially liberal, and 83% economically permissive. The first graph tells me I'm a Libertarian, the second tells me I'm similar to Jefferson, and the third tells me that people who scored similar results to me were split between Bush and Kerry in the last election.








Thanks to Dave's Not Here for pointing me to this test.

Labels: afghanistan, church, iraq, nanny state, personal freedoms, privacy, racism, state's rights, taxes

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Big Brother or Nanny?

Only one day before Tom DeLay announced that eleven years of GOP domination of the house has finally won the war on wasteful government spending, the FBI has opened a new account, and fitted it with blank checks.

After nearly two decades of fighting child pornography online, with only moderate success, the FBI has decided to expand the War on Pornography to include activities between consenting adults. Yes, consenting adults. We're not talking about child pornography or rape, we're talking about things normal people do in their own homes (and then gasp if they hear them mentioned in public). Get ready to gasp -- I'm going to say them here.

In a Washington Post article last Tuesday, announcing the creation of a new task force to seek out obscene material, an FBI memo was quoted as saying the best odds of conviction come with pornography that "includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior."

Note to college kids: Your hardcore porn is OK, as long as it isn't too rough.

This is crazy. The Miller Test, used since 1973 to define obscenity, is already hopelessly outdated. It has three tests which a work must pass in order to be considered obscene:

• Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
  
  Community standards? In the past, this meant the Supreme Court had ruled that material legal in San Francisco might be illegal in Utah, under the same Federal law. Now, lacking a good definition of community, Internet users form communities online. Maybe a little S&M posted in alt.childrens.books will offend, but within the S&M community it won't.
  
  
• Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
  
  Yes,a Federal law defines material as illegal under Federal law only if the state agrees. Another useless piece of legislation in the Internet age.
  
  
• Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
  
  Do you really think that Federal judges, the likes of John Ashcroft, are the best judges of what is art and what is not? The FBI memo said that S&M could be prosecuted, just fifteen years after Robert Mapplethorpe received National Endowment for the Arts funding for homosexual S&M works, including the famous picture of himself inserting a bullwhip into his own ass, and a crucifix in a jar of urine.
  
  

Possession of obscene material is not a crime -- only the production or distribution of obscene material is illegal under current law. Rob Zicari, owner of a porn company, successfully argued in the District Court in Pittsburgh that citizens had a Constitutional right to view obscene material, and by prohibiting the production and distribution of such material, the government is infringing on that right. The case is currently under appeal -- assuming he wins again, this task force is investigating "crimes" that break no laws.

This is insane, and a waste of money. And you can thank Congress for it. Congress began funding the obscenity initiative in fiscal 2005 and specified that the FBI must devote 10 agents to adult pornography. "All other field offices may investigate obscenity cases pursuant to this initiative if resources are available," the directive from headquarters said.

An unnamed FBI worker said it best:

"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."

Labels: free speech, personal freedoms, privacy, state's rights

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