Category: general freedom

Categories
general freedom insider corruption national politics & policies

No 75 percent Tax Hike

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit blogger, is often sensible, always indispensable.

But his idea for slowing “the revolving door between government and business” would encourage government to do more of the bad things freedom lovers loathe.

Glenn says: “Political appointees in the executive branch should pay an extra income tax when they leave for high-​paying jobs.” He wants a surtax of 50 to 75 percent, for five years, on all income greater than what the victims of the surtax had earned as government officials.

Even if lobbying were the biggest cause of outsized government — dubious — expanding government’s ability to impose strangling taxation ain’t the answer.

The tax would, first of all, be unjust in itself, among other things treating persons unequally under the law. It would massively penalize select taxpayers simply for having worked at a certain level in a certain branch of government. Penalize them not only for unapproved-​but-​legal conduct (lobbying), but for unapproved-​but-​legal conduct in which they might engage.

The tax would also be a horrific precedent. For one thing, why apply it only to executive appointees and not also lawmakers, judges, the president?

Indeed, such a tax would foster the notion that it’s okay to confiscatorily target the income of members of any group, not just former government officials, in hopes of preventing other disapproved-​but-​legal conduct. After all, lawmakers wouldn’t be calling up Instapundit to get approval of the next proposed application of his idea.

Back to the drawing board, Glenn.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom

Backwoods Growers Still Outlawed?

One way marijuana legalization was pushed, politically, in Colorado and Washington, was with the “let’s tax this weed!” agenda. Indeed, the “tax and regulate” approach proved a convenient way for marijuana users to get non-​marijuana users “on board” the legalization bandwagon, basically buying off those who were most sympathetic to the prohibitionist status quo.

And it’s the dominant way of thinking, today.

This frustrates many who wanted to return marijuana growth, distribution and usage to its pre-​1937 legality, for they saw the prohibitionist program as inherently illiberal, nasty, inhumane. To these legalizers, “taxing and regulating” appears as just a ramped-​down version of today’s policy.

Think Genghis Khan, who wanted to kill all Manchurians and turn northern China into a vast grazing land for horses. He was convinced not to do so for reasons of the “Laffer Curve”: he’d get more revenue by taxing Manchurians than killing them.

While taxing and regulating Manchurians was certainly better than genocide, it was still a tyrant’s prerogative.

Apply the same logic to cannabis.

Marijuana has been grown and used for eons. Trying to control or eradicate it as a noxious weed rather than tolerate it as a plant with many uses, seems unjust, not merely inadvisable. The whole “tax and regulate” notion rubs up against the home growing of the plant. Marijuana is easy to grow, but many folks want to prohibit people from growing it out-​of-​doors — the better to keep it out of the hands of thieving youngsters.

Call me old-​fashioned, but it seems to me that thieving youngsters should be nabbed and dealt with in Andy Griffith-​style justice.

But then, I missed the marijuana episode of the Andy Griffith Show.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom local leaders

Home to Gnomes

Oakland, California, serves as home to over a third of a million human inhabitants, but the city has made room for a very different denizen, the gnome.

The gnomes began appearing to observant pedestrians as painted figures on pieces of wood screwed onto utility poles. At ground level.

The gnomes were charming, and appeared in a wide variety of garb, juxtaposed with similarly styled (and painted) colorful mushrooms and other accoutrements and furniture of gnomedom.

The anonymous artist who painted the gnomes did it for fun, as a gift for his neighbors. Only a few people noticed at first. It was Oakland’s best-​kept secret:

About 2,300 gnomes with pointy hats and white beards now live in Oakland. One resembles Santa Claus in a monk’s robe. Others wave or appear to be doing a little disco dance.

Yet until late last month, they had pretty much managed to keep their presence on the down low. Even Pacific Gas & Electric, whose poles are gnome homes, was unaware of their existence.

But when the officials found out, they promised to remove the gnomes. Their very existence, you see, might encourage others to likewise affix near-​permanent painted figures, and soon gnomes would not only proliferate, but be joined by djinn, leprechauns, imps … and perversities.

When the charmed folk of Oakland found out, though, they rallied. They liked the gnomes. The artist came out of the closet, so to speak, but not to make a name for himself — he didn’t provide his name (though it’s an open secret) — for he didn’t want the gnomes to be about him, but about themselves.

And the people won. Public pressure moved PG&E, and the gnomes are safe. For the time being, anyway.

A charming story, reminding us that the character of a place can arise up in humble ways, and without an Arts Council grant, much less a Bureau of Gnomes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Protect Us, Big Brother

Have Sixties-​era flower children, those free spirits who once believed in peace and “doing your own thing,” been so conquered by fear that they now embrace a zero-​tolerance, Big Brother-​ish national security state?

Sixties generation folks largely run the show these days.

Is it blinding fear of terrorism that convinced them to allow unconstitutional violations of civil liberties? Or to permit the peace-​prize-​winning president to launch assassination drone strikes from prepared “kill lists,” with admittedly no legal framework to check this new life-​and-​death power?

Now, after the Newtown school shooting, we again see fear driving the agenda, threatening further erosion of liberty and giving new powers to government.

As the White House announces its agenda to tackle so-​called “gun violence,” expect President Obama to follow a 13-​point legislative and executive action program* just released by a key progressive think tank, The Center for American Progress (CAP). CAP calls for super-​sizing the National Instant Criminal Background Check database, by tying federal funds to states turning over more information on those deemed “mentally ill,” and by pushing all federal agencies to share data on known drug use, etc.

Yes, the new progressive solution to mass shootings is a federal database containing information on every American who has ever seen a shrink or is believed to have smoked weed.

Congress is also urged to pass legislation denying those “suspected” of terrorism their Second Amendment rights. No need for trials anymore.

Still feeling groovy?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Not to be confused with the 13-​Point Program to Destroy America, an album by the punkish band Nation of Ulysses, album cover pictured above.

Categories
Accountability general freedom individual achievement initiative, referendum, and recall responsibility

It’s a New Democracy!

Another New Year.

Should I have used an exclamation point? Shouted out the calendrical truth?

When each new year brings the same old nonsense, an exclamation point seems a bit like overkill. British novelist E.M. Forster famously said that democracy was worth “two cheers, not three.” Does a new year deserve at best half an exclamation?

After all, there will be many repetitions in 2013 of what we saw in 2012.

Incumbent politicians will just “happen” to throw up hurdles, making initiative measures harder to put on the ballot as well as more difficult to pass. They will also continue to support “campaign finance” regulations that will “just happen” to make incumbents more likely to get re-elected.

And of course they will continue to heap scorn on, and oppose any way they can, term limits.

Further, their tendency to avoid properly dealing with unsustainable government worker pension programs set to unravel in too many states and localities, will still continue, up until (and past?) the last possible moment for reform.

Similarly, the national debt will grow. Politicians will still get away with calling slight reductions in expected spending increases “spending cuts,” even when spending continues to soar.

But hey: at some point the politic avoidance of responsibility will evaporate when the economy these fools are driving hits the proverbial wall.

Before that happens, it sure would be to our advantage to take over our own government, wresting power away from politicians and creating real measures of accountability. We’ll need democratic tools like initiative and referendum.

Three cheers for citizens who take the initiative … and a few unashamed exclamation points!!

This is Common Sense! I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense general freedom

Precious Gifts

There’s a quiet on Christmas morning … after Santa has come and gone … and the kids are still sound asleep … sugar plum fairies dancing to their gentle snoring.

A moment to stop and think.

I hope they’ll like their presents; they always do. There’s so much love my wife and I want to share, to give to them.

Of course, the biggest gifts are never under the tree. The most important being a staple home, with love, and the freedom for children to grow into themselves.

My parents gave me that … along with the bicycles and baseball gloves and some really good books. I’ve tried to be the same kind of parent.

Another incredible endowment I’ve enjoyed is to be born in a country “conceived in liberty.” A place where individual citizens are the sovereigns, creating government to be a servant and not a master. Land of the free.

What a gift!

But Tom Paine told us that, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly, ’tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

Freedom is under siege. And, therefore, we who love freedom, grateful for our historic luck, must come together to protect our “expensive” gift.

Some may get discouraged after setbacks, but none of us got involved in politics because we like “the game” and figured we’d pile up a shelf of trophies. We’re engaged because we must be and we seek victories because, as Churchill once put it, “without victory, there is no survival.”

In 1776, on this very day, General George Washington and his soldiers of the American Revolution crossed the Delaware River to score a surprise military victory against the British at Trenton, New Jersey.

Thank goodness, for these brave patriots and their muskets. Three Americans gave their lives in the battle. To secure our liberty.

Today, the Gift has been handed to us. Not to play with on Christmas morning and forget about, not to let get broken without our fixing it, but to protect and defend and cherish.

My commentary strives to illuminate, to amuse and to motivate toward action, bringing citizens together. Citizens in Charge protects the initiative process — the best weapon citizens have to cut taxes, term-​limit politicians, stop the drug war, protect property rights, and place limits on government. The Liberty Initiative Fund partners with leaders across the nation putting measures  on the ballot to protect freedom and hold government accountable.

Thanks for your gifts to these efforts and to the many other important ones. We aim to protect the precious gift of freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!