Burnett shows he is not fit to represent Montanans - Sara Williams writes a letter to the editor

Sara Williams' letter to the editor is reproduced below, with my commentary interspersed in bold.

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As a voter, I read Tom Burnett’s website. His reasoning requires response. 

Burnett blames hungry, disabled, ill, old and young people for the costs of government. Here is a link to Burnett's website, which has no mention of the charges our interlocutor brings against him. There is much more on Burnett's blog, however. I spent a bit of time looking through it and found nothing about him blaming "...hungry, disabled, ill, old and young people for the costs of government." If Burnett did say such a thing, I find myself in agreement, because it is an objective fact the largest part of government expenditures on are these very people. But, it is quite another thing to assert that any such observation is prejudicial against the hungry, disabled, etc., as characterized by the use of the word "blamed." It doesn't necessarily follow that he was blaming anyone. Many government programs channel tax dollars to corporations. 

The Dept. of Agriculture’s food stamp program benefits corporate farms. In a stream-of-consciousness style, she tosses out a series of disconnected thoughts without context or explanation. Does she favor this corporate welfare? Is she mentioning it to show that this flow of dollars is benefiting corporations, so Burnett should be happy about it? Or is she bemoaning the fact that corporations are getting fat off the taxpayer dime at the expense of the needy? Well, we just don't know. Health care programs decrease the number of days employees miss from work. All levels of workers in medical fields pay income tax because they have income. She goes on with her arbitrary string of unrelated sentences. Of course health care programs decrease missed work. That's what health care does. Did Burnett suggest otherwise? Or is Ms. Williams simply attempting to justify government intervention into healthcare? Again, we just don't know. She then follows with another non sequitur, stating an obvious point. Yes, indeed, people with jobs pay taxes. 

Ok, let's try to put 2 and 2 together. It seems she is suggesting that programs like government healthcare are good because they create taxpayers. This is a superficial and misleading statement. People who work in government would otherwise work in the private sector absent the availability of a government job. The government job is funded with taxpayer money, so in actual fact, the taxpayer is paying for the government employee's job and his taxes. Money that comes from the taxpayers ends up in government coffers, of which a percentage is returned to government via the government worker's tax. This in and of itself hardly sounds like a benefit to the taxpayer.   

Education prepares children to enter the work force in order to become tax payers. It does? The purpose of schools is to create taxpayers? This might come as surprise to parents and others who thought that education is designed to impart knowledge so that the student might be able to live a successful and productive life. Who knew that schools were actually cranking out worker bees for the state? Schools and their administration provide work for building, transportation, kitchen, janitorial, clerical and support staff in addition to teachers and management, all who then pay income tax because they have income. All of this is true, but none of it is has anything to do with beneficent government. Each of these things would still occur if education was an entirely private enterprise. The Social Security system is pre-paid by employees during their working lives. This is the major first howler of Ms. Williams' letter. The Social Security system is a tax levied against today's workers to fund the retirement of yesterday's workers. SS is simply shifting the cost of post-work life to present day workers. "Pre-paid" suggests that a worker's SS taxes are accumulating on their behalf. This is nonsense, of course. There is no savings/retirement account set up for individual workers. There is no wealth accumulating on behalf of them. There is no interest gained or appreciation of any kind. SS is a tax, with a promise of a future benefit. 

Upon receipt into the SS trust fund, SS funds are immediately transferred to the treasury, which issues special non marketable bonds to the SS trust fund. These are IOUs which the treasury must pay back. Therefore, the SS system has no cash assets at all, simply a handful of paper promises. 

To paraphrase Lincoln, it’s the duty of government to provide for the people what they cannot individually provide for themselves. Sourced here: "'Fragment on Government' in 1854: 'The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do for themselves in their separate capacities.'" This is not the same as Ms. Williams represents it. Governments are formed to accomplish tasks that the people delegate to it. In our case, the Constitution enumerates those powers of government, in order that it accomplish what the people themselves cannot do as individuals. Nowhere does the Constitution give power to government to provide things to people who cannot provide for themselves. To suggest otherwise it to twist Lincoln's words and the Constitution to suit pop culture, left-wing utopian fantasies. Representatives must show they value people above corporations by sustaining the circularity of supporting those who do, or will, or have worked. Whoa. I thought it was good that corporations were receiving a flow of taxpayer money. When did she change her mind? But more to the point. Where is it written in our founding documents that representatives are charged with any such duty as this? Indeed, why is this a binary equation (people vs. corporations)?  In word and deed Burnett shows he is not fit to represent us. Still waiting for her to make her argument about this supposed unfitness. Haven't seen one yet. Vote for Franke Wilmer to represent 100 percent of HD 63. The whole letter is about Burnett, except for the last sentence. Ms. Williams doesn't bother to tell us why we should vote for Wilmer. I guess she imagines that Wilmer will support funneling taxpayer dollars though corporations to help the hungry and disabled. Or maybe Wilmer will bolster SS. Oh, wait. that issue has nothing to do with the state office Burnett and Wilmer are seeking. 

I don't know if I managed to cut through the confusion evident in this letter, but at least we know that for some, selecting a candidate doesn't appear to be a rational decision.

Storm’s cost may hit $50B; rebuilding to ease economic blow - Analysis

This article was written by Christopher Rugaber and Martin Crutsinger, who supposedly know something about economics, since they are described as "AP Economics Writers." Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Superstorm Sandy will end up causing about $20 billion in property damages and $10 billion to $30 billion more in lost business, according to IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm.

In the long run, the devastation the storm inflicted on New York City and other parts of the Northeast will barely nick the U.S. economy. That’s the view of economists who say a slightly slower economy in coming weeks will likely be matched by reconstruction and repairs that will contribute to growth over time.

The short-term blow to the economy, though, could subtract about 0.6 percentage point from U.S. economic growth in the October-December quarter, IHS says. Retailers, airlines and home construction firms will likely lose some business. The storm cut power to more than 8 million homes, shut down 70 percent of East Coast oil refineries and inflicted worse-than-expected damage in the New York metro area. That area produces about 10 percent of U.S. economic output.

New York City was all but closed off by car, train and air. The superstorm overflowed the city’s waterfront, flooded the financial district and subway tunnels and cut power to hundreds of thousands. Power is expected to be fully restored in Manhattan and Brooklyn within four days.

The New York Stock Exchange will reopen for regular trading Wednesday after being shut down for two days. There’s no evidence that the shutdown had any effect on the financial system or the economy. But Jim Paulsen, chief strategist at Wells Capital Management, said further delays might have rattled consumers and dampened their spending.

“It’s about confidence,” Paulsen said. “We’re watching these horrific images of the storm, and people are thinking whether they should ahead with that big purchase ....It doesn’t do any good to have another day with headlines saying the U.S can’t figure out how to open its stock exchange.”

Most homeowners who suffered losses from flooding won’t be able to benefit from their insurance policies. Standard homeowner policies don’t cover flood damage, and few homeowners have flood insurance.

But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said they will offer help to borrowers whose homes were damaged or destroyed, who live in designated disaster areas and whose loans the mortgage giants own or guarantee. Among other steps, mortgage servicers will be allowed to reduce the monthly payments of affected homeowners or require no payments from them temporarily.

Across U.S. industries, disruptions will slow the economy temporarily. Some restaurants and stores will draw fewer customers. Factories may shut down or shorten shifts because of a drop in customer demand.

Some of those losses won’t be easily made up. Restaurants that lose two or three days of business, for example, won’t necessarily experience a rebound later. And money spent to repair a home may lead to less spending elsewhere.

With some roads in the Northeast impassable after the storm, drivers won’t be filling up as much. That will slow demand for gasoline. Pump prices, which had been declining before the storm, will likely keep slipping. The national average for a gallon of regular fell by about a penny Tuesday, to $3.53 — more than 11 cents lower than a week ago.

From the article: "...a slightly slower economy in coming weeks will likely be matched by reconstruction and repairs that will contribute to growth over time." This is nonsense, nothing more than a glaring example of the Broken Window Fallacy. Economist Walter E. Williams ably explains this fallacy. I will say that when an event happens that causes destruction of property, the resources to repair that property do not appear out of thin air. They must be diverted from another place in order to pay for the repairs, which means that wherever that money may have gone to is no longer going to receive it. 

This same analysis applies to government redistributive programs like welfare and stimulus. The money must be sourced from one person's pocket in order to be distributed to another person's pocket. No wealth has been created, no prosperity is increased, no net gain has been made.

The article goes on to say, "Most homeowners who suffered losses from flooding won’t be able to benefit from their insurance policies. Standard homeowner policies don’t cover flood damage, and few homeowners have flood insurance. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said they will offer help to borrowers whose homes were damaged or destroyed, who live in designated disaster areas and whose loans the mortgage giants own or guarantee." Think about this. You are a homeowner living in a disaster area, and because you are cheap, irresponsible, or careless, you do not buy flood insurance. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to bail you out of your stupidity! 

Those people who did the right thing and protected their property with flood insurance, well, they must be thinking that they've been taken for a ride. Of course few homeowners have flood insurance. Why would they, if they will get bailed out anyway? This is a repeat of the mortgage bailout, where people who were behind on their mortgages became eligible for lower interest rates and forgiveness of some of their back owed amounts, while responsible homeowners who pay their bills on time and scratch and scrimp to make sure their obligations are honored receive no benefits. Government rewards foolishness and irresponsibility and penalizes good behavior.

But the whole point of the article, that the storm will not hurt the economy very much, is nothing more than a puff piece designed to cover for a continuing weak economy. It is preposterous to assert that a disaster that will cost an estimated $50 billion in combined property damages and economic losses will not have "...any effect on the financial system or the economy."

The virtue of compromise - FB conversation

I posted this on FB:

There is no virtue in compromise when compromise involves what you believe deep down.

B.R.:  For example...

Me: Name any of your deeply held beliefs. Imagine compromising. Possible? For example, would you compromise in any way on sending help to the victims of Sandy? Would you say that 20% of those who should receive help will not because of your willingness to compromise?

B.R.: I see a big difference between compromise and sacrifice. The Sandy scenario is wide open, so it's hard to say what I would or wouldn't do. But I can say that the more I care about something, the more I want progress for it. For example, I'd be willing to compromise on gay marriage in the short term, if it meant progress in the long term. I'd be willing to compromise on some policies I favor, if it meant big steps forward for others. Some people would prefer no steps forward for their own causes, as long as it means no steps forward for their opposition's causes. I feel the opposite: I'd rather see halfway gains for me and halfway gains for my opposition. Of course, this is all case-by-case specific - there ARE some deals I'd turn down.

Me: Incrementalism (that is, forgoing some of what you want now is order to get it later) is not compromise. I note that your framework for response is political in nature, but I am not necessarily referring to political compromise.

Compromise always involves giving up a piece of something you want in order for your opponent to agree to the deal. If what you give up is a core principle of what you believe, you have given something that cannot be regained, and by definition you are unprincipled.

B.R.: Hmm. Interesting thoughts. Is there an actual compromise you're referring to, with Sandy?

Me: Sandy was just an example. My thoughts actually were spurred by the way the Catholic church has compromised on some of its teachings in order to get along with modernists (no, I'm not Catholic). It seems to me there are some things that cannot be compromised, and truth is one.

B.R.: That strikes me more as evolution than compromise. Of course, many Catholics don't believe in evolution as a concept, but...I don't know, Christianity has evolved over time as well, they don't enforce or practice the same things as they did long ago. Would you expect the Catholic church to retain the same standards throughout time?

Me: Whether it is evolution or devolution is a matter of perspective and world view, don't you think? If the Catholic church believes what it believes is true, how can one compromise truth? Or, as Scripture puts it, "What fellowship does light have with darkness?"

Of course you are correct. No one does what they used to do. People change. Sometimes they change for the worse, sometimes for the better. But an institution, a foundation, a basic premise for understanding, those things cannot change. One cannot change the foundation of a house without the house being profoundly affected.

It would be like you deciding to become conservative Christian. Everything in your life would change. Not a single thing would be unaffected. No one changes a core principle of their understanding unless there is something way beyond the ordinary reasons.

Me: I, of course am presumptuous. I didn't mean to suggest your religious faith, if any, is lacking somehow.

Hollande - Taxing Google for using French content

This little nugget in today's paper:


Hollande eyes ‘Google Tax’ for websites

French President Francois Hollande is considering a pushing for a new tax that would see search engines such as Google have to pay each time they use content from French media.

Hollande discussed the topic with Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, during a meeting in Paris on Monday.

Hollande says the rapid expansion of the digital economy means that tax laws need to be updated to reward French media content.

Google has opposed the plan and threatened to bar French websites from its search results if the tax is imposed.

Germany is considering a similar law, and Italian editors have also indicated they would favor such a plan.


It's a little unclear what's being proposed here, but it seems that if I do a Google search and click on a French website, Google would be taxed by the French government. Or maybe if Google republishes French content they would get taxed. It's a little vague what would be taxed and how it would be collected.

What democratic socialists like Hollande never seem to figure out is that taxing something creates a disincentive for whomever pays the tax. These folks don't seem to understand that people will ordinarily not just simply stand still and let the government take shots at them. Peoples' behavior will change, the marketplace will change, and the tax will never accomplish what its advocates say it will.

Hollande is proposing the tax to "...reward French media content." This is perplexing. How will imposing this tax reward French websites? If Google will pay a tax when it uses French content, it seems to me that French websites will experience lower traffic. Will they get some of the tax proceeds? as their reward? What exactly is being proposed here?

But beyond that, what is the purpose of the tax? Is there some compelling interest the French government has in the selection of French websites? The article states that "...expansion of the digital economy means that tax laws need to be updated..." Why? Does the existence of something mean that it must be taxed? If someone expends their creative energy on some new technology or innovation, the government must move in and tax it simply because it isn't presently being taxed?

Once upon a time it was gangsters who shook down local shop keepers demanding a piece of the action. Gangsters made no contribution to the process that created the wealth they laid claim to, they simply walked in and coerced the money out of the shop keeper. Now government is the gangster, having contributed nothing to the process of creating wealth, but demanding a piece of the action simply because there it is there.

I think it was Ronald Reagan who said, "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." He was right.

The Nation Magazine - nuanced thinking in the form of lapel buttons

The Nation sent me this email hawking its products. I've already dealt with the "CEO" mug here.

Let's take a look at the sayings on the buttons. The Nation provides this characterization: "These 6 buttons... elegantly portray both sides of the political debate, with a refreshing dose of honesty." Um, yeah. Elegant? No, they are base, vulgar, and anti-intellectual. Both sides? No, as is typical of the Left, they are either unable or unwilling to understand the positions of their ideological opponents, preferring instead to create caricatures and strawmen. Honesty? Again, no. Stereotyping people and misrepresenting their views has nothing at all to do with honesty. It's rhetorical vandalism.

So, let's address these glib, vacuous statements. I do want to add a caveat, however. I'm not specifically defending Republicans. My main thrust is to point out these vapid representations of what they think people believe.

Hate government? Let big business run your life. Vote Republican. For all the noise the Left makes about being nuanced in their positions while their ideological opponents see everything in black and white, there sure is a lot of black and white here. But you know, it isn't even really about the binary choice they present (as if there were no other possibilities), it's the triple whammy of a three-for-one strawman. a) Republicans don't hate government, they want limited government. b) Republicans do not advocate big business running your life. c) The choice is not between big government and big business, it is between oppressive, coercive government and liberty.

Reward selfishness. Vote Republican. The Left loves to tell us how we can't legislate morality, but then they turn around and demonize greed and selfishness. So how do they intend to eliminate greed? What laws are going to do that? If we vote for their candidates, will selfishness be magically eliminated? And you'll note that somehow only Republicans are selfish. Apparently, it isn't selfish to pass judgment on how much money a person should be allowed to have, and then take "undeserved" money from people via the power of coercive government. But it is selfish to earn money, and want to keep it.

We're all in this together. Why don't the Republicans get it? This is typical leftist rhetoric, where a *so clever* bumper-sticker slogan is imputed with an intellectual weight that isn't really there. A thinking perso would read the button and immediately ask, "We are all in what together?" "What is 'this?'" "Who is 'we?'" "What don't the Republicans 'get?'"

Let's start with "we." "We" means the people who get it, who are smart, who care. "We" are the in crowd, in contrast to those who don't get it. Republicans. Them. But we understand that we share a mutual something. What that something is, we don't know. But we do know that it isn't about "me." That's selfish, you see. Like Republicans are.

So what we have here is an artificial communalism presented as a template for "getting it." But there is no amorphous "we." There is no such thing as a communal identity. It's a myth, just as "women's issues" and "world opinion" are myths. This attitude manifests from marxist ideology which insists on grouping people into classes that are struggling against the power structure.

So that makes the statement that "we are all in this together" into sort of a universal, common, shared understanding we all supposedly agree on. Which means if you don't agree, you are not part of "we." Therefore, you (Republicans) are working against the greater good of what "we" want. You don't get it, so you are stupid. It's self evident what this greater good is, so "we" can meaningfully ask why they don't "get it." Every sensible person should be able to "get it."

Rage is not a political position. Another typical leftist rhetorical technique. First, mischaracterize your ideological opponent's motivation. In this case, disagreeing with a Leftist is "rage," which is something, of course, they could not know. Second, create a false correlation. Here, rage is connected to a political position, as if someone somewhere has asserted such. Third, imply that the "rage" comes only from one side, which means that their ideological opponents are all irrational and are clouded by blinding emotion. However, they themselves are rational, thoughtful, and right thinking. So once you are characterized as driven by animal instincts, you can be summarily dismissed without so much as a rejoinder to the argument you presented.

Tax cuts for the rich is wasteful spending. This statement is premised on the idea that failing to tax "the rich" at a sufficient level (the amount of taxation deemed adequate and proper is never stated) denies the Federal Treasury of funds. In other words, allowing the rich to keep too much of their money is the same thing as profligate government spending! The only way one can arrive at such a conclusion is if one assumes that government is entitled to your money. Therefore, it is government's money. Government allows you to have a portion of your money if you are deemed eligible, but any money it gives to you is money that could have been spent more wisely had it been left in the government's coffers.

Such a concept ought to offend every thinking person.

God loves the rich. Vote Republican. Another glib, vacuous statement. This is so over-the-top idiotic, I don't even know where to start.

You know, I'm just going to leave it there. Such monumental stupidity is not worth my time to refute.

This is a poignant story, which puts a human face on abortion. Posted here for fair use and discussion purposes.

Woman says she was conceived through rape; supports Mourdock's comments

Teresa Mackin

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - An Indiana woman says she supports Senate candidate Richard Mourdock’s controversial comment on abortion and rape.

Monica Kelsey of Woodburn, Indiana, says she was conceived through rape in 1972.

Kelsey always knew she was adopted, and says she met her birth mother Sandy about 20 years ago.

It was only two years ago, her birth mother told her something else.

“My mother was raped at 17. She went to a back alley abortion clinic in 1972,” said Kelsey. “She was so young, she was 17 years old. Her life had been changed, and all she wanted was her life back.”

But that day, Kelsey says her birth mother changed her mind.

“I owe my life to pro-life advocates, for saying my life was worth saving,” said Kelsey. “I don’t deserve to die for the act of my father.”

“20 years ago, I was pro-life with exceptions. I never really looked at the child's point of view, I only looked at the mother.”

Kelsey heard Mourdock's comments, and then the public outcry for him to apologize.

“I stand behind Richard Mourdock 100 percent because if you're going to be pro-life, there cannot be exceptions, because we're not thinking about the child, if there are exceptions,” Kelsey added.

Many people, including victims of rape and their families, have spoken out in opposition of Mourdock’s comments, saying they’ve been victimized again.

Kelsey maintains her pro-life, without exceptions, stance. She has now devoted her life to sharing her experience as a pro-life speaker.

“I’m not a mistake; I am here for a reason. I want everybody to know my life is special, just like anybody's life is special,” Kelsey said.

I dealt with the intent to dehumanize the fetus here, so I won't repeat that. I do want to say, though, that for the pro-choicers, there is only one point of view, and anyone who disagrees is a misogynist waging war on women. So that is why they are coming down on Mr. Mourdock so severely. He wandered into a buzzsaw by suggesting that something good could come out of evil. The pro-choicers can't have that, because it suggests a greater good at work, where what was intended to destroy actually brings for greater blessings.

All that remains is for someone to shout at this young lady, "You should be dead! It would be better for everyone!" 

Government involvement in business - FB conversation

I posted this quote on FB:

"The major defense contractors spend at least ten times, and probably closer to twenty times what is actually needed on every project and contract. This is done with the full knowledge and at the command of the federal government. The massive overspending is on man-hours. Major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumann, General Dynamics and Raytheon, in addition to supplying and developing technology for the military, are also massive middle-class shadow welfare projects....

"Defense is not the only area in the economy where these massive shadow welfare paradigms exist... almost all of the so-called "compliance" positions in the financial services and banking sectors are completely unnecessary and counter-productive...

"97% of the accounting industry is also a .gov shadow welfare project revolving around nothing but the payment of federal income taxes, which shouldn't even exist in the first place. And finally, we should all understand that most of the health insurance industry is nothing but a .gov shadow welfare matrix."

R.W.:  I don't buy that. My wife is a CPA and works for a non profit. Though she does not spend most of her time dealing with the government, nor do most of her friends in the accounting industry. Payroll, budgets, grants and reports to the board are a much bigger part of her day. My best friend at Lockhead Martin works his ass off. He is not paid to sit around. And when there is surplus labor, people are laid off.

Me: Payroll, as in withholding SS, medicare, work comp, sending in quarterly taxes, etc? Government grants? Ok, so I agree that it isn't 100% of accountants and gov't contractors. But the fact is, there is large sections of the economy dedicated to feeding the beast of govt. The author does not assert that there are unoccupied workers sitting around getting paid. So, if the shoe fits, fine, but if it doesn't, also fine.

R.W.:  Yes, I think if you say CPA's most of them exist to prepare peoples taxes. But tax season is only 4 months. And though there are tax elements in payroll etc. It does not constitute 97%. Some grants are governmental but most are not. We both agree, that the government needs feeding, the question is how much. And though the numbers may be smaller, the amount of work will pretty much stay the same.

Me: Plus I wonder how much corporate accounting is done because of govt reporting requirements, government-imposed procedures, government-required financial practices, etc. And of course, we know that legislation like obamacare, which is supposedly about health care, will have a huge effect on the way businesses choose to operate, and not only regarding the health benefits they supply. There is a huge backstory of indirect effects that cause business to change their course.

R.W.: Of course. But I WANT businesses to report to government. We just had a vaccine get dispensed to people which killed them. Some government oversight is necessary. And I want them to make sure banks are honest, and insurance salesmen are honest, and real estate people etc. Clearly in many cases there has been too much, and in other places not enough.

Me:  I think we probably generally agree, but let me say it this way. A proper role of government is to punish lawbreakers. If someone in a business embezzles, or cooks the books to make the company look more attractive shareholders, those are illegal acts. However, it is not the proper role of government to audit every company to ensure proper accounting standards, etc. It is not the proper role to ensure real estate people are honest by making them all submit to government investigators.

Me: Government has no business assuming people are dishonest and therefore taking over the oversight duties from private entities. I would make a similar argument regarding vehicle license plates, for example. Every car has to display them. Why? Well, besides the financial incentive of a tax revenue source, license plates make it easy to identify you WHEN YOU BREAK THE LAW! In other words, everyone conforms so that the occasional lawbreaker can be identified.

R.W.: But corporations have stockholders, who want to know that proper accounting standards are being followed. Even if a company pays 3% tax, they would still have to submit a proper accounting of their profits. My wife's company is audited by a third party, PRIVATE company, but the results of that audit are then made public. The only way to know a company is breaking the law is by someone checking on them. I feel it is appropriate for that someone to be the government. It should be cursory, and if nothing is found, then they should move on, but Madoff got away with his crime a lot longer and hurt a lot MORE people because the government was negligent. And there is no restitution for those victims. The money is just gone.

Me: The stockholders are the ones who protect their private interests, not government. You noted the safeguard, a private third party, which is precisely what I mean. You see, Madoff had government oversight, which failed. Government did not protect anyone. People who have something to lose are the ones charged with protecting their own interests. They are the ones who stand to lose, so they must perform due diligence.

Yes, the audit is made public, so that people can look at it and make a decision. Third parties, like consumer protection entities, can look at it and charge people for their services. Whatever. In any case, government, which fails more often than not, is the unwanted party in the transaction. Especially, constitutiionally speaking.

Me: Regarding business taxation. A corporate tax return is complicated, long, and indecipherable. Government is the cause of the problem. Government decided to tax businesses. Government created the tax code which prescribes the method of calculating corporate tax obligations. Government involved itself, and of course, created a monster. But we both know that there is no such thing as corporate taxation anyway, since this is a part of the cost of doing business that is passed down to the end consumer. Therefore, there is no compelling reason to involve government in the financials of a business except in the case of criminality.

R.W.: How does one determine criminality? How many people have to lose everything. People go to jail but victims never recoup their losses. the problem is If I watch you and you watch ME, then we can agree to to find anything. An unbiased third party is required. Yes, business pass on their taxes to us. But SOMEONE has to pay taxes and that means oversight is necessary.

Me: The government already is quite active in that arena. Despite its many failures, it is still the entity that is responsible to catch and prosecute criminals. What you are describing, where peopel loses everything and victims never are made whole, that is the PRESENT system. That is what we have with government auditing financials and overseeing business practices. In other words, you have now what you are advocating.

Me: The private individual pays all taxes, whether directly or indirectly, and of course, every person who earns money files a return. Government peers into the finances of every person who files a return. Do you like that idea, that your most private information is in the hands of a government that borrows 40% of everything it spends?

I happen to believe that any sort of taxation that makes government privvy to the private, legal transactions of citizens is wrong.

R.W.: So replace all taxes with one huge sales tax?

Me: As a matter of raw philosophy, only the taxes authorized in the Constitution.  As a matter of the best I could hope for, I would support a sales tax in the form of a constitutional amendment that repeals all taxes, fees and tariffs, as well as the repeal of the 16th amendment. A sales tax is a tax on activity, which makes sense to me. It would only be huge if we accept the premise that the change would be revenue neutral. Of course, I don't accept that premise. About 60% of what government does is unconstitutional, and needs to be ended. Pipe dream, I know.

R.W.: you've always been a visionary

R.K.: A sales tax is a regressive tax that has more impact on fixed income and the poor. Not a good idea.

Me: A flat percent to everyone is not regressive. Poor people spend a lot less than rich people. Most sales tax proposals I see exclude food.

R.K.: Wrong, poor people spend proportionally more of their income on necessities. Rich people do spend more and thus pay more gross taxes BUT it has much less impact on them. If I make 30 million vs you making $14,000 you can't tell me you that a 5% sales tax wouldn't hurt you more than my taxes would hurt me. That's what a regressive tax does, it's the Impact. Not the gross amount.

Me: Necessities like food are generally excluded.

R.K.: A flat income tax would be much better. Say 1% of all income above a specified minimum income.

Me: Then the government still gets to pick through your financial details. No way. But consider the position you're taking regarding the flat sales tax. Do you think that either income or the cost of goods would be impacted by the elimination of all other taxes and fees levied by the government?

Ebay penalizes sellers who get good ratings

I made a purchase on ebay, and the seller was very interested in making sure that I contacted them before leaving my feedback. Apparently, anything but the highest ratings will count against a seller. Here's what the seller wrote:

Please make sure you leave a rating of "5" on all detailed sellers ratings (DSRs) when you are leaving feedback. Ebay recently made changes to their feedback system where sellers can suffer SEVERE penalties if anything besides a "5" is left and you may be hurting your favorite sellers without knowing it.

*Any rating below 4.9: Seller pays an additional 5% in fees to sell on ebay
*Any rating below 4.8: Seller pays an additional 10% in fees to sell on ebay, and seller's listings are demoted in ebay's search - making them harder to find
*Any rating below 4.6: Seller pays an additional 20% in fees to sell on ebay and loses powerseller status. Listings are further demoted in ebay's search
*Any rating below 4.3: Penalty -Seller's listings are moved the the last pages of search results
*Any rating below 4.1: Penalty - Seller is no longer allowed to list on ebay.

eBay tells you as the buyer that a "4" rating means the item was accurately described, that you were satisfied with the seller's communication, the item was shipped quickly, and the shipping charges were reasonable - which a normal person would say is a good thing. However, ebay treats a "4" as a request to terminate the seller's ebay account, charge the seller more, and make it difficult for bidders to find that seller's items.

If you feel that the service you received does not deserve a "FULL 5 STAR" rating, PLEASE contact us so we can resolve any issues for you. We are reasonable people and are more than willing to work with you to resolve anything that may have gone wrong with your order.

Republican party fulfilling agenda of fossil fuel industry - Jay Moor's letter - analysis

I posted this Bozeman Chronicle letter to the editor for a couple of reasons. First, notice how he focuses in on how Republicans do all this stuff, as if there isn't another political party in D.C.. Second, his prose is stream of consciousness nonsense, with no cohesive thought, logical progression of ideas, or even paragraphs. Third, he does what leftists typically do: Identify and isolate a bogeyman, blame everything on it, and reduce complex issues down to a nonsensical sound bite.

Lastly, notice the use of terminology in the last sentence. We have supposedly moved from democracy (which we never had), to corporatocracy (which is, if true, a direct result of the leftist desire to have big government and the attendant big money in politics), to fascist oligarchy (fascism, as a political philosophy, means the direct governmental control of business, which is something the Left has wanted. Oligarchy is "government by the few, especially despotic power exercised by a small and privileged group for corrupt or selfish purposes," which is also the direct result of leftist initiatives).

I would take this sentence by sentence, but cutting through the a priori assumptions, strawmen, unsupported assertions, baseless charges, and obtuse rhetoric is just too much bother. It would be a mistake to attempt to apply a systematic critique of something that itself is unsystematic. He has written what is nothing more than the rhetorical equivalent of throwing feces.

Look at the array of things that Republicans are against and it’s like a Sunday word puzzle: what do regional governance, healthy cities, railroads, environmental regulations, truth and empathy have in common? Answer: the future price of coal, oil and gas. The negativity of any one Republican position by itself can be baffling. Who alive on this planet could be against making life better for everyone? Take a bunch of these cockeyed positions together and the pattern favors greater profits for the fossil energy industry. Try it. Filter every crazy lie and status quo preserving position through this lens. The Republican Party has abandoned our people-based electoral process, taken its golden eggs and is now playing on a different field, tilted almost vertically toward fossil energy interests without regard to the danger to all species, including the human one. There have been no debate questions about climate change, have there? And there won’t be unless some off-script citizen raises it in a town hall venue. Giving the fat cats a free hand in our elections, we’ve now concentrated political power in one industry, the fossil fuel industry. This takes us from a democracy to a corporatocracy to a fascist oligarchy.

Jay Moor

Letters to the editor - Religion and the Founders

Here's a dialogue of letters to the editor from several years ago.
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Mary Santomauro wrote: Regarding the display of the Ten Commandments, this country was founded upon a belief in a creator from whom we were claiming certain inalienable rights.

The Founding Fathers not only recognized the existence of this creator, but sought his help in the foundation of this country and in formulating our country’s laws and even injected the Bible containing this same creator’s laws, the Ten Commandments, into use in our judicial system, by making it mandatory for every person testifying in court to first swear an oath on this same Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Not only is the display constitutionally legal, but the fact that the Ten Commandments is not allowed in any court, since these same Commandments are depicted on the Supreme Court building, speaks volumes about the lack of wisdom, the ignorance and utter arrogant disregard for the truth, evidenced by some of the decisions of some judges and their presumptions of assuming the congressional duties by making laws instead of correctly interpreting those contained in the U.S. Constitution.

As for religion belonging in our churches and homes, too many people evidently don’t understand what religion is.

Besides being a constitutionally protected right for Americans, religion is man’s acknowledgement of a supernatural creator involved in the lives of all humanity and man’s acceptance of the laws set forth by this same creator as a guide to be followed in the fullness of man’s life, not just in church or in the home.

If this were not the case, we would, among other things, prosecute people who commit murder only for those murders committed in churches or in homes.

Does that make sense? I think not!

------------------

D.K. Eggleston responds: First of all, the Pilgrims’ search for a place freely to practice their religion had nothing to do with founding this country. The Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth 156 years before the American Revolution. The revolution occurred because the colonists opposed paying taxes to the King of England without having any say in what laws and regulations would apply to the new colonies. Thus the battle cry, “No Taxation Without Representation.”

Secondly, this country was not founded upon Christianity. There is no mention of Christ or the Judaic Ten Commandments in any of our founding documents. If the laws of this nation were based on the Ten Commandments, then adultery, lying, swearing and disrespecting your parents would be crimes, and much of our population would be in prison. The basic precepts of not killing or stealing are common to virtually every civilized society or religion.

Finally, without the benefit of modern scientific research, our founders and most other people at that time assumed that some higher being created life on earth. It’s important to note that in our Constitution, they chose the ambiguous term “Creator” rather than the word “God.” They purposely made no judgment as to who or what was responsible for our creation. In addition, the use of “In God We Trust” on our currency, as well as God in “The Pledge of Allegiance” came more than a century after the writing of the Constitution.

There are many voices out there these days claiming that our county was founded on Christianity. In fact, the most likely reason that religion holds such a prominent place in our Bill of Rights is simply because the Church of England was embedded in the politics of England at that time. The prevailing sentiment of the colonists was that the affairs of Church and State should be separate.

---------

And I wrote this: How sad that D.K. Eggleston is so ignorant of our nation’s history while at the same time desiring to give us a “history lesson.”

He tells us that the ambiguous term “Creator” is found in the Constitution. Actually, it is in the Declaration of Independence. So much for the history lesson. If I could prevail upon Eggleston to read a bit more of the Declaration, he would also find this phrase: “… the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them …” Does Eggleston think that this phrase is ambiguous regarding God?

Another phrase from the Declaration: “… with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence…” suggests that the writers believed that God intervenes in the affairs of men. I think we can be reasonably assured that this was not the god of Islam to which they referred. It probably isn’t Buddha, either. Nor did the Founding Fathers adhere to Hinduism, Taoism or Confucianism.

Yes, it was Christianity. And this is confirmed in the private and public writings and speeches of Washington, Madison, and 150 or so other Founding Fathers.

The Founders were deeply religious; they could be termed “right-wing religious extremists” in today’s parlance. And in their enduring genius they crafted a Constitution from a Christian worldview. Many religions have flourished here because of it. Could that be because Christians are tolerant, respectful and kind people?

Global warming deniers should not be given equal time - FB conversation

FB friend S.B. posted this:

could be interesting for science buffs......




Preview "Climate of Doubt" - PBS 10/23

M.B.: Not really. Media should be reporting on climate change, not on the controversy. The made up controversy by the deniers is OLD NEWS!

S.B.: good point. But the controversy persists, as a public policy hurdle if not a scientific issue. I trust Frontline to realize that "fair and balanced" doesn't mean presenting two sides of the controversy as equally plausible, when in reality they are not.

Me: Skeptics are a desirable voice and ought to be celebrated as a needed check on the power and money hungry scientodists. Science has a deservedly bad rep because of people like these.

M.B.: "Money hungry scientists"??? Haahahahaha!

Me: Um, money-hungy scientodists. Sucking at the teat of government, and expecting quid pro quo.

M.B.: Quid pro quo? Expecting government to suck back on their teats? Hmm, interesting idea. I mean, government funded scientists do in fact give back to the public, but it's not necessarily government that is sucking on their teats. It's progress and industry and business and education.

Me: In an ideal world, sure. But scientists are human, so they are in turn weak, insightful, foolish, and brilliant. The quid pro quo I refer to is influence and agenda implementation. The problem is not science, it is that too many scientists expect their prescriptions to be installed in government. Scientists by and large make spectacularly bad politicians. That may be a complement.

Selective outrage over Sudan - FB conversation

F.B. friend J.L. posted this:

I can't get over this today. Nor can I tell you who torques my tuna fish more... The worthless animal who stole this young girls future or the progressive blow hards who will be undoubtedly be advocating for this maggots rights. LIFE is not priceless. INNOCENT LIFE is... Note to all the anti DP minions... Jessica Ridgeway and her family are the VICTIMS...


Cops Find Body in Jessica Ridgeway Search

S.F.: If you don't don a powdered wig and robes for All Hallows Eve it would be a crying shame. Admit it. You value some innocent lives more than others. I never hear any spittle-flying outrage over the little kids we blow to bits "over there."  A very sad state of affairs. Very sad for everyone. I grieve.

J.L.: Your assumptions are ugly S.L.. Make zero mistake, red, yellow black or white... If you are a innocent victim of senseless violence my advocacy will always be spent on your behalf. And yes, even gay people. And the DP is more than appropriate for anyone who robs someone of their life in the most heinous ways... What has turned you so hateful btw...

S.F.:  That was not assumptions. That was based on the data I've received. The portrait-I just came across it by accident. It made me very sad. I was agreeing with you-just with a less obvious victim is all. Hateful? Me? Jeez....you really have no idea about me, do you? You ATTACK so hard, then call me hateful? I am merely trying to expose you to other points of view. You get so threatened so easily. Mellow out dude. Take a fuckin tranq. If I'm wrong, and you have, in fact, spoken out with equal vehemence about the kids killed via "collateral damage" I will gladly stand corrected. Very, very gladly.

J.L.: I have never posted about children in the Sudan or any other war torn country or province where innocent lives are taken in such brutal fashion. Now, how does this revelation subtract from, or lessen the condemnation I have so eloquently ( smile it's funny) expressed for this little girl? I am having a tough time correlating why my presumed ignorance of the socioeconomic landscape in war torn Iraq, and or my failure to pontificate on these atrocities results in the last hours of this young girls life being any less horrific??? Or why my outcry for justice somewhere else in the world would further validate my desire for swift justice in this case in your eyes?? My "ATTACK" was one of indignation. And geared in the direction of anyone who could perpetrate such violence on another human being... But even more so (in my view) on a child. I hold anyone who would like to or has raped a woman in the same regard. These two crimes (for reasons unknown to me) I have always found personally despicable. It is my hope that given my strong feelings about this child, it could go without saying that I condemn ANY acts of violence and or abuse against ALL children. Evidently not...
And your attempt to "expose me to other points of view"? Honestly, does that not sound the least bit condescending to you? I assure you, with all due respect, I am as well read and socially/worldly conscious as you are...
I am neither angry or mad. As we debate one another we express our OPINIONS to one another.There is nothing to be right or wrong about...

Me: J.L., you apparently have a friend that thinks it's her unsolicited job to expose you to other points of view, I guess because you're so narrowminded. How do you feel about that?

J.L.: She is actually a very old friend of mine and I love her to pieces. I think she holds the distinct position of being the only liberal I can say that about.

S.F.: If I thought J.L. was narrow- minded or worse-stupid, I wouldn't even bother. I love him to pieces and he is the only neoconservative I can say that about.

J.L.: Rich, you can't fault my friend. She lives in the SF Bay area. Last time I heard there was actually up to 20 conservatives living there now! We're gaining!

Me: J.L., my friend, I'm only here to expose you and her to my point of view. I wasn't finding fault, I'm sure she's a wonderful person. But rage is an ugly thing. Exposure to my point of view is now concluded.

J.L.: Rich, the last thing I would ask you to do is censor yourself. Your commentary is as welcome as anybody's. Especially because its so closely mirrors mine!

S.F.: Nice dodge with the sad fact of the Sudanese civil war. Terrible thing. It's not a religious war, it's actually about oil deposits...so we are indirectly involved. But they are not (so far as I'm aware) in our pay. So, I ask again...why is it okay when we blow up some kids because...oops, wrong wedding party? Why is there no outrage from y'all about that? You know, just because someone's ideas do not mirror your own, that does not mean they are any more full of rage than you are. I seem to remember something about "liberal maggots" in a past post, so maybe you ought to look in yourself for that rage you are seeking in me. My point is that I am a bit more upset about state sanctioned and funded atrocities because, well, there seems to be some kind of actual controversy over it's acceptability. No one is going to say-hey if this guy rapes and murders little kids-that's okay, man. It's WORTH it. This confuses the hell out of me. Now, if someone dropped a bomb on your neighborhood because someone's second cousin may have once traded a goat with someone who may have had dinner with a religious extremest I don't think any of you would hesitate for a split second to condemn the action (and pull out your shotguns). We are into our 11th year now, so I gotta ask the question-when will we have had our pound of flesh for the atrocities of 9/11 ? Is it even about that anymore? Was it ever? How many hundreds of thousands of little kids, grandmas, and just regular folks trying to eke out an existence are we entitled to murder before it's enough already? It's not making us "safer," in fact, every time we kill a civilian family with a shrug and a oopsie we earn more enemies. We might as well just give Al Taliban direct funding. That doesn't seem to matter. How many of our own soldiers need to be killed or maimed before it's enough? The fact that those people will NEVER give up fighting our occupation-never,ever,ever (would you?) that doesn't seem to matter either. So I'm just wondering, from the loving, absolutely rage-free contingent-what in the hell DOES matter? And I am no one's minion, buddy-I think you know that damn well. I simply sit around reading books and utilizing my public library-and the inescapable conclusion is-this is a disaster. Our blood and gold wasted while our citizens suffer. You people have no concept-the things I see. The conclusion is that DNA evidence has exonerated hundreds of people on death row. It's not even a question of whether we are killing people innocent of the crime they have been accused of-that is an obvious fact-it's a question of how many? How many more? It doesn't matter that it is more expensive than life without possibility of parole (in my mind a far worse sentence, but then I actually know people who have done hard time), it doesn't matter that it doesn't deter violent crimes. Nothing that makes any practical sense seems to matter anymore. It's just all a bunch of bullshit peppered with "hot button words" like "freedom" and "justice." It's an upside down world, that's a fact. Love you Jeff, and Peace Out Suckah. Keep rockin it, but I'll never say that any of this is okay with me.

Me: Yeah, Jeff, answer the question. Why don't you have a proper amount of outrage over (insert S.L.'s preferred issue here)? Don't you know that when you mention something you're outraged about, that if you didn't mention (insert S.L.'s preferred issue here), you are uncaring. And while you're at it, take some more time to answer her irrelevant tangents that she brings up for no apparent reason.

Learn about women’s rights before voting - Diane Ehernberger - my analysis

If you've been reading my blog at all, you will instantly know why I chose to comment on this letter to the editor. My response is in bold below. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.
--------------------------------

I am a member of AAUW (American Association of University Women) here in Bozeman. AAUW works to promote equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy, and research. This year, through voter registration and education events, our branch has been encouraging young women to learn about the issues important to them and find out how their candidates stand on those issues.

Many hard-won women’s rights have recently come under attack. Earlier this year, HERvotes published an online article describing the “Top Twelve Historic Advances for Women Now at Risk” (available at http://hervotes.org/top-12-advances-at-risk/). I encourage all voters interested in women’s equality to read this article and then ask candidates about their positions on these issues. The people we elect in 2012 — at all levels — will be the policy makers who determine the course of women’s rights for many years to come. Voting has always been important; this year it’s absolutely vital. Learn about the issues and the risks to women’s rights. Make your vote count!

Diane Ehernberger AAUW-Montana Finance Director Bozeman

------------------------------------

There is no such attack on womens' rights. This is simply a leftist meme designed to ramp up outrage prior to the election. In fact, there is no such thing as womens' rights. When we look at the issue of rights, we need to understand that there are two categories of rights: legal rights and unalienable rights. Legal rights are created by laws. For example, contract law creates conditions where parties can enter into binding agreements that spell out benefits, costs, and remedies between the parties. Or, for example, Social Security, which creates a legal right to receive benefits under certain conditions as spelled out by the relevant laws. Any time a law is passed, it creates classes of people for which it applies, and the circumstances under which it applies.

The author of the letter swerves into the truth: "The people we elect in 2012 — at all levels — will be the policy makers who determine the course of women’s rights for many years to come." So sad. Since laws can be modified, expanded, or repealed, legal rights are nothing more than privileges granted by law. They are subject to the whims of the legal and social environment of the time. As such, it is the government that determines your fate, a truly unenviable place to be. But this is the sort of thing this kind of thinking fosters: a dependency on government for favors, sustenance, and the tools to live.

The second type of right is unalienable rights. Unalienable rights are intrinsic to existence. "Unalienable" means cannot be separated. They are not granted, created, or repealed. Government and law does not cause them. Government can only secure them or violate them. Unalienable rights costs no other party anything. If someone is forced to fund the activity, by definition it is not a right.

So, there is no right to equal pay, abortion, access, retirement benefits, or medical leave. We can debate the desirability of any of these concepts, but not in the context of rights. Especially to the degree that the exercise of these things requires someone else to fund them.

Here is the list of the top 12 "rights" supposedly at risk. Needless to say, not a single one of these has anything to do with rights. The list is a leftist wet dream for societal manipulation and cultural shift, carefully couched in terms like "fairness," "equality," and "opportunity."

1. Jobs and Pay Equity – The Equal Pay Act (1963), Title VII (1964), Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (2010)

2. The Affordable Care Act (2010)

3. Women’s Right to Vote (1920)

4. Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) Supreme Court Decisions

5. Title X, The National Family Planning Program (1970)

6. Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision (1973)

7. Social Security Act (1935)

8. Medicare (1965)

9. Medicaid (1965)

10. The Violence Against Women Act (1994)

11. Title IX of the Education Amendments (1972)

12. Family and Medical Leave (1993)

Schools to pay $70K over banned grad speech BUTTE (AP)

This article quintessentially shows how totally out of kilter things have gotten regarding the First Amendment. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments are interspersed in bold.
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The First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Just thought it might be useful to post the contents of the very portion of the Constitution the Butte School District is applying to this situation.


The Butte School District is paying $70,000 in attorney fees for a former Butte High valedictorian who filed a lawsuit after she was banned from speaking at her 2008 graduation because she refused to remove references to religion from her speech. (School policy at the time specified what things this young lady could and could not say. First observation: The school is a government entity, therefore it was engaging in censorship)

The school board was informed during its meeting Monday that the district’s insurer would pay for Renee Griffith’s attorney fees, The Montana Standard reported. Griffith’s lawsuit did not seek monetary damages.

Griffith’s planned speech included the sentence: “I don’t let fear keep me from sharing Christ and His joy with those around me.” (Second observation: The speech that was censored was religious. If we take the position of religious speech haters for a moment, we know that they extend the "Congress shall make no law..." concept into every branch of government at every level, whether regulations, rules, or laws. So that is why a government entity, the school, is placed in this position of deciding what can be said in what context. Even though it is not Congress making a law, the school is a government entity, they say. So if "Congress" now means "government entity, local, state, or national, then we must say that "Butte School District shall make no rule... prohibiting the free exercise thereof," mustn't we? Butte School District must stay out of it! But actually, the First Amendment is a prohibition on Congress, not the School District, so the School District is not obligated to restrict anyone's speech)

Superintendent Charles Uggetti told Griffith she had to remove the references to “God” and “Christ” because religious references were not allowed in graduation speeches. He pointed to a school policy that said “the district may not prefer the beliefs of some students over the beliefs of others, coerce dissenters or nonbelievers or communicate any endorsement of religion.” (Well, how about that. They have a policy. A policy that is patently egregious, that selects certain concepts and ideas for disapproval. Notice how this plays out. The District cannot prefer the beliefs of anyone. But obviously they do not prefer the beliefs of the valedictorian, in fact, they pointedly singled them out for suppression. This only goes to show that the standard of neutrality and tolerance they ostensibly embrace is in itself a built in preference system. If they truly did not want to prefer anyone's speech, they would simply stay out of it and let people speak about what they want.)

Griffith filed a complaint with the Montana Human Rights Bureau, which ruled in the school district’s favor. A District Court judge also sided with the schools, but the Montana Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in November 2010 that Griffith’s free speech rights were violated. (The Montana Human Rights Bureau is heavily tilted toward the Left. No surprise on their ruling. Contrasting that with the ruling of the Montana Supreme Court is instructive. If the Montana Human Rights Bureau had any self-awareness at all, they ought to be deeply involved in some soul-searching right about now.)

The justices found that what Griffith planned to say did not fall into any recognized situation where it would be permissible to impose a viewpoint-based limitation on free speech. (This is incredibly sensible. The speech the valedictorian was going to engage in did not rise to the level of interest and regulation the District sought to put on it.)

Justice William Leaphart dissented, arguing the intent of Griffith’s speech was seeking to induce others to join her in her religious faith and was, thus, proselytizing. (Not knowing the entirety of Leaphart's remarks, we can only judge based on what's provided here. First point: The Justice is attempting to discern the intent of the speaker. One, this isn't possible. Two, it isn't relevant. Three, it isn't the business of government. Second point: What the speaker might have been inducing does not come to bear on free speech, unless the inducement was to violence. Third point: Proselytizing is not illegal, immoral, or harmful to anyone. None of these activities, or their intent, are any business of the Justice.)

The court ruled Griffith could collect attorney’s fees.

“This is the last part of the Griffith v. School District case,” current Superintendent Judy Jonart said Monday.

(Thankfully the Montana Supreme Court made the right call. But these issues come up time after time, and in other venues the outcome is not so happy. The hostility of government towards religious expression, in the name of neutrality, has gotten to the point where religious expression might be outlawed completely. Doubtless there are advocacy groups that intend just that. However, if there is no freedom of religious expression, there can be no freedom at all. The Founders were very clear on this. Conscience, informed by religion, was the basis of their assumption that a free people could govern themselves. One might rightly wonder if this noble experiment in self-government has failed.)

We are complete, nothing needed - FB conversation

FB friend B.R. posted this:

Since I am already complete in every way, what are my intentions for today?

Me: Apparently you are incomplete regarding intentions.

C.R.: OR, the 180 "Be really smug about your complete life". Either one could work, really.

B.R.: It's not being smug if everyone's got it,  C.R..

B.R.: My intentions are completely inconsequential to my completeness, Rich.

C.R.: So many paradoxes. Well played, well played. ; )

T.W.: You think everyone's complete in every way?

B.R.: I don't think anyone needs anything externally to improve themselves internally. We are whole. There's plenty of personal merit to taking on goals and responsibilities, if that's how one chooses to spend their time, but there's simply nothing we can do, attain, or change that will improve who we are.

O.F.: See, I partially disagree, Ben. I think that our bodies and minds contain all the messages we need to tell us how we can still grow and develop into better, stronger, more loving beings, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. We are our own blueprint, and in that sense the blueprint is complete and just wants deciphering. But we are not islands, and I can't grow in love all by myself... I need something/someone whom I can love in order to do that. What do you think>

T.W.: A bit of a tautology, my friend. What everyone needs is the philosophy you just espoused, but that's much easier said than done. Also, studies show that up to a certain material point, more money/security does improve sense of well-being. That threshold is lower than we think, but it still exists. I guess I think of it this way, as an educated white person with enough free time to pursue my passions and enough money to not worry day to day, I think I should be careful not to espouse a philosophy of "We've all got what we need. Chill out, everybody!" Fair?

O.F.: Word. Part of the "blueprint" mentioned above is a very basic safety mechanism that says "I'M FUCKING HUNGRY!!!" when one is... fucking hungry, for example. Many saints and sages have done with very little food, but I don't know of any that finally kicked the habit...

B.R.: Sure, yes, I agree with your logic that there are basic human needs and benefits to seeking knowledge and experience. However, in my life I have a nagging feeling, sometimes conscious and sometimes unconscious, that I am not enough, that I am insufficient in some way, that I need to do or be something more. When I achieve something I want, this feeling is temporarily quieted, but it invariably returns. I have a good feeling that most of humanity shares this affliction. This fear, this feeling of incompleteness, is an illusion. I need more reminders in my life that it is an illusion, rather than more excuses that feed the ego's insecurity. I hope that helps you understand what I mean.

B.R.: urgently Googling "tautology"

O.F.: A logical loop.

O.F.: Do you think that ALL of the drives we experience towards attaining accomplishments are egoic? If so, I disagree.

E.B.: I think material pursuits are socio-economically taught and that we are conditioned to try and meet social norms. Personal satisfaction is subjective and relies on acquired gender,social,and sexual roles.

It's what u make of it.

T.W.: E.B., as weird as it sounds, it's also a material luxury to believe that material needs are a luxury, if that makes sense. But I do agree that there's a happy medium, and it's very very far from where most of us (including me, God knows) are.

B.R.: No, I don't think that. But the impression of what the ego is responsible for depends heavily on one's definition of ego. I don't just mean "A person's sense of self-esteem or self-importance". In this instance, what I mean by "ego" is interchangeable with "the mind". It is the mental construct of myself, which sees me as the limit of who I am, which depends on time and space to define and control this reality, which is the source of much joy and positivity, but which also feels threatened at virtually all times, and therefore attempts to hold me in a state of perpetual seeking. I believe the ego is capable of amazing things, in fact it's responsible for most of the things I see around me. It is also the source of countless illusory thought patterns that keep us from experiencing the vast peace that lives deep within us. I don't think the ego is evil, or wrong, or needs to be destroyed. I think it's an amazing and wonderful tool, which has many incredible uses and benefits. It's also responsible for a great number of atrocities, small and large, past and present. It's a tool that mostly uses us, instead of the other way around. It's the reason that stopping my thoughts is so difficult.

Me: We as people are clearly not complete. We are broken, fallible, prone to destruction, and warlike. That is essential human nature, and no amount of social manipulation will change that.

O.F.: Rich: I agree that social manipulation cannot change our fallibility. It's a matter of responsibility for every individual to contribute to a more loving, less ego-driven world. No one can MAKE us more loving, and attempts to do so only create more repression, more hate. @B.R.: I think we are using a similar working definition of ego (though mind to me is something that includes but is not entirely delimited by ego). My point is simply that some accomplishments, spiritual, athletic, creative, political, are attained in a manner that is actually quite selfless. Becoming better, greater at something, actually REQUIRES the breaking down of false ideas of what we are. Accomplishment can be in the service of a more loving world, of making us more loving beings. Would you agree? We might not be arguing...

Letter to the editor, First Amendment, By Travis Caidin

I don't know this fellow, but his letter to the editor nails it:

In her Oct. 10 letter (titled, presumably by the Chronicle, “Stolen political signs an attack on free speech”), Susan MacGrath complained about political signs being taken from her property. She is correct that the removal of her signs involves the crimes of theft and trespassing, and she is justified in being disturbed over such behavior, especially when it suppresses her expression of political opinions. Defacing bumper stickers on someone else’s car is similarly unacceptable.

But MacGrath also said that the removal was “an infringement on our First Amendment rights.” This is incorrect. The First Amendment is solely a restriction on government, a point that seems to be widely misunderstood. For example, if you’re saying something with political content (or, really, anything) and I tell you to “shut up,” I may be a behaving boorishly, but I, as a private citizen, haven’t violated your First Amendment rights.

Travis Caidin

Mr. Caidin makes an important distinction between engaging in criminal behavior (which is what lawbreakers do), and violating someone's rights (which is what government does). In a quick survey of my memories of accounts in the media of a private party "violating someone's rights," I could not recall a single instance where the actual offense wasn't a matter of the violation of law. In other words, a murderer is not depriving you of your right to life, he is committing murder. A thief is not violating your property rights, he is stealing.

Conversely, when government executes a criminal, the criminal is being deprived of his right to life. However, according to the powers we have delegated to government via the Constitution, government has been allowed the power to do so under certain circumstances. The same with incarceration, which is a deprival of the right to liberty. Once again, government has been granted the authority to engage in the deprival of rights according to the powers granted to it.

Because our rights descend from the Creator, government cannot grant them or take them away. Government can either secure them (make them safe) or violate them.

One Nation, Subsidized - Time Magazine - By Michael Grunwald

Reproduced here in its entirety for fair use and discussion purposes. My responses interlaced in bold.

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One Nation on Welfare. Living your life on the dole - By Michael Grunwald

The sun is shining in Miami Beach, and I wake up in subsidized housing. l throw on a T shirt made of subsidized cotton, brush my teeth with subsidized water and eat cereal made of subsidized grain.

Soon the chaos begins, two hours of pillow forts, dance parties and other craziness with two hyper kids and two hyper Boston terriers, until our subsidized nanny arrives to watch our 2-year-old. My wife Cristina then drives to her subsidized job while listening to the subsidized news on public radio. I bike our 4-year-old to school on public roads, play tennis on a public court and head home for a subsidized shower. Then I turn on my computer with subsidized electricity and start work in my subsidized home office.

It's just another manic Monday; brought to us by the deep pockets of Big Government. The sunshine is a natural perk, and while our kids are tax deductible, the fun we have with them is not: The dogs are on our dime too. Otherwise, taxpayers help support just about every aspect of our lives. (If all of us are supporting each other, why not have all of us just keep what we have and not circulate it through government? And by the way, is the "help" voluntary? Did anyone get asked if they want to help?)

Of course, we're taxpayers too, and we don't exactly fit the stereotype of entitled welfare queens. Cristina is an attorney and until recently was a small-business owner. I'm a journalist, an economic red flag these days, but I work for the company behind the Harry Potter and Batman movies, so at press time I was still getting paid. My family's subsidies are not the handouts to the poor that help fuel America's political culture wars but the kind of government goodies that make the comfortable even more comfortable.

Our federally subsidized housing, for example, is a two story Art Deco home in the overpriced heart of South Beach. But our mortgage interest is a personal deduction, my home office is a business deduction, and federal subsidies keep our flood insurance cheap. Even our property taxes are deductible. So thanks for your help. (Deductions are not subsidies.)

The 2012 election is shaping up as a debate over Big Government, but it is only loosely tethered to the reality of Big Government. The vast majority of federal spending goes to defense, health care, and Social Security, plus interest payments on the debt we've run up paying for defense, (This is a common liberal meme, that the military is funded by debt. However, one can only arrive at this conclusion by deeming one's preferred government programs as funded, thereby allowing one to categorize disdained programs like the military as being funded by debt.)

health care and Social Security. Nondefense discretionary spending - Washingtonese for "everything else," from the FBI to the TSA to the center for grape genetics---amounts to only 12% of the budget. (This little acknowledgment is allowed to pass, but it ought to scare everyone. Social Security in particular is the elephant in the room, gobbling up gargantuan amounts of money, and that's increasing daily. Soon SS will eat 100% of the budget.)

Still, it's a big government. The U.S. did not spend even $1 billion in 1912; it will spend $3.8 trillion in 2012 on everything from Missing Alzheimer's Disease Patient Assistance ($593,843) to Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting ($9,409,400), from mortgage insurance for manufactured homes ($64,724,187) to iron worker training on Indian reservations. These will be an additional $1.3 trillion in tax expenditures, federal benefits (like the deductions for my 401(k) (It is interesting how he phrases this. Deductions are termed “federal benefits,” like a welfare payment or a bailout. The fact is, it is his money first. He earned it. It is his. The fact the government chose not to take it from him is not a benefit. Him keeping his own money ought to be his right.) 

and my nanny's salary) that are basically identical to those normal spending programs except that they happen to be provided through the tax code.

The rise of the Tea Party and the weakness of the Obama economy have fueled a Republican narrative about Big Government as a threat to liberty, redistributing wealth from honorable Americans to undeserving moochers, from taxpaying "makers" to freeloading "takers.” (Big government is a threat to liberty. Indisputable. But beyond that, there is no such narrative that wealth is being redistributed from “honorable Americans” to “undeserving moochers.” The narrative is that government is creating a class of people who is deems as more worthy of your money than you are. 

There are many who are hurting and are struggling financially. They are not moochers. They are in need. However, it is for compassionate people, giving because they are moved in their heart to do so, that will help these people. Government should not, and in fact, has proven it can not, improve the lives of the poor.)

In fact, most Americans are makers and takers - proud of our making, blind to our taking. Republicans often point out that only half the country pays income taxes, but just about all Americans pay taxes: payroll taxes, state and local taxes, gas taxes and much more. (Diversionary tactic. The original point that nearly half of Americans pay no income tax, and therefore have no stake in the scaling back of Big Government, remains true. The fact that the poor pay numerous other taxes is irrelevant. 

Also, this is a problem that manifests from Big Government. Big Government creates burdens on the poor, not just financially, but in terms of culture and society. Witness the devastation of the poor in the inner city. These problems belong squarely at the feet of government.) 

The problem is that we pay in $2.5 trillion and pay out $3.8 trillion. And these trillions of dollars don't all go to undeserving moochers, (Well of course not. No one has said they do. And, "we," as in government, spends more than it takes in because it cannot control spending. It's a spending problem.) 

except insofar as we're all undeserving moochers. (The federal government is mandated by the Constitution to provide certain enumerated duties. All the rest is left to the states, or the people. The people delegate certain agreed duties to state and local governments. None of this makes us moochers, except to the degree that the government forces us to accept its beneficence.)

The Right routinely portrays government as a giant mess of Solyndra failures, lavish agency conferences in Vegas and pork for society's leeches. But my taxpayer-supported morning didn't feel like mooching at the time.

For example, my family pays for that water I use to brush my teeth, about $100 a month. But that's a small fraction of the true cost of delivering clean water to our home and treating the sewage that leaves our home. (And who pays the rest? Government has no money of its own. It must first help itself to the contents of someone else’s pocket in order to pay for that clean water you drink. Why should the author, rich enough to afford a nanny, have his water subsidized?) 

And it certainly doesn't reflect the $15 billion federal project to protect and restore the ravaged Everglades, which sit on top of the aquifers that provide our drinking water. Most Americans think of the water that comes out of our faucets as an entitlement, not a handout, but it's a government service, and it's often subsidized. (This does not make the case that it should be subsidized, however. As far as what “most Americans” believe, that is another issue. But beyond that, most clean water is provided by local and county governments, not the feds. What people might support has a lot to do with how much the federal government has involved itself in local affairs, funded by local people to local governments.)

Similarly, my family pays more than $200 a month for the electricity that powers our toaster at breakfast. But that number would be much higher if the feds didn't subsidize the construction, liability insurance and just about every other cost associated with my utility's nuclear power plant (Can we ask why it costs so much to build a nuclear plant? Would it have anything to do with onerous government regulation and permitting, as well as court awards that drive up the cost of that liability insurance? And can we also ask how many nuclear plants have been built in the last 20 years? Is the answer, like, zero?) 

while also providing generous tax advantages ("depletion allowances,” "intangible drilling costs" and so forth) for natural gas and other fossil fuels. The $487 we're paying this year for federal flood insurance is also outrageously low, considering that our low-lying street floods all the time, that a major hurricane could wipe out Miami Beach and that the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America estimates that premiums in high-risk areas would be three times as high without government aid. (Would the author care to explain why he thinks he should not pay for him to live in a risky area? Why should someone in Montana or New York subsidize his lavish lifestyle?)

Some federal largess - tax breaks for NASCAR racetracks ($40 million) and subsidies for rum distilleries ($172 million and rural airports ($200 million - is just silly. There's no reason my poker buddies should be able to deduct the gambling losses I inflict on them once a month (just kidding, guys!). (The author has yet to justify any of his "subsidies.)

The silliest handouts that brighten my morning are the boondoggles that funnel billions to America's cotton and grain farmers and maybe knock a few cents off the price of my T shirts and my kids' breakfast waffles. (Ahh, here we have a swerve into the truth: He may deem himself a moocher on the government dole, but many of the things he chronicles amounts to pennies of subsidies. He would hardly miss the small amount of increase in some products when they are no longer subsidized. 

But even if such a circumstance happened, we might not even experience any fallout from government abandoning its interventionist policies. Once the government has released its stranglehold on the economy, it will equalize and adjust. Quite likely, the cost of goods will go down once business is freed to offer products people actually want to buy in the form they want to buy them.)

Uncle Sam sends at least $15 billion every year to farmers and agribusinesses in the form of grants, loans, crop insurance and other goodies. The farm lobby is so omnipotent in Washington that when the World Trade Organization ruled that U.S. handouts give our cotton farmers an unfair advantage over Brazil, the U.S. cut a deal to shovel $147 million a year to Brazilian cotton farmers rather than kick our own farmers off the dole. Our food and clothing may seem cheap, but, oh, we pay for them.

Reasonable people can disagree about most government aid. I enjoy NPR, even though I don't really see why it needs about $3 million a year of our tax dollars to produce good journalism; public radio stations receive only about 15% of their revenue from the government anyway. (What, they don’t get all these other subsidies and benefits you have been chronicling in your article? They don’t get subsidized water or highways? 

But this tells only part of the equation, anyway. There are a variety of funding tentacles that connect Public Radio and Public television to the taxpayer. And it is on principle that conservatives object to government funding of the news, as well as the obvious fact that Big Bird makes more money than Romney does. He doesn't need taxpayer funding. Constitutionally speaking, he shouldn't have it.) 

On the other hand, I thank my $500 Florida tax rebate for the energy efficient water heater that warms my shower made great sense, promoting economic, environmental and national security by reducing fossil fuel use. (Has fossil fuel use actually reduced? No. Is it a constitutional activity of government to modify our behaviors as to what products we buy? No. Should we accept that government knows better than us what is good for us? No!)

Unless you're a hardcore libertarian, it probably doesn't bother you that the city of Miami Beach spends $500 million a year building roads, fixing potholes, picking up trash, putting out fires and creating bike lanes that make my cycling somewhat less life-threatening. (It doesn't take a”hardcore libertarian” to know that there is a large difference between the voter-approved activities of local and state governments, and the unconstitutional activities of the federal government.) 

The city also owns my local tennis courts, which are receiving a somewhat controversial $5 million upgrade, as well as the playground my 2 year old visits frequently and the track where Cristina and I work out much less frequently My mayor, Matti Herrera Bower, told me tennis players are the city's most aggressive and obnoxious special interest. We're the farmers of Miami Beach. (Indeed, it's this entitlement mentality, which the government is all to happy to play into in order to get power and pay off valuable constituents for their votes, that has brought us to the brink of financial ruin.)

When I spoke to Bower, a former dental assistant and PTA mom who got into politics after years of community activism, the FBI had just busted a bunch of city code inspectors for shaking down a nightclub owner, (Which brings up the obvious question, who protects us from the abuses of a too big and oppressive government when it goes out of control?) 

and the city manager had just quit. “MIAMI BEACH SINKING IN A VAST SWAMP OF DISHONESTY,” a Miami Herald column declared. Citizens notice the bad news, Bower said with a sigh, but they don't appreciate that government keeps them safe and cleans their streets (Notice how the subject is changed. Government officials involved in illegal activities is magically transformed into the innocuous street cleaning). 

They're not too interested in learning more, either; Bower holds regular Mayor on the Move forums to bring City Hall to Miami Beach's neighborhoods but only two residents showed up to the last one. "There's this perception that government is all dirty, and perception is 99% of what matters," Bower says. "People are busy living their lives. They don't understand where their taxes go and what they get." (In other words, people are so stupid. They don’t understand stuff. They just don’t get how government takes such good care of them. 

But in actual fact, she is right that people want to live their lives. A law-abiding citizen, pursuing their private interests, should not have to pay attention to what government is doing. Government should not have that level of power. Government forces us to think about it every day. We are forced to save receipts for our taxes, to check if we’re in the city limits before we use our cell phones, we are forced to check with government before filling a puddle with dirt. 

Government inserts itself into our lives in so many little ways, and people just don’t want to deal with it. They want to be left alone, and they want to make their own lives and not be told what their doing is offensive, bigoted, fattening, or harmful to the snail darter.)

One thing my family gets from government is Cristina's paycheck from an advocacy group called Americans for Immigrant justice, which is nearly 30% funded by the feds. Cristina is paid less than she would make at a private law firm, though more than most Americans, to represent undocumented minors in detention centers - in other words, kids in jail some as young as 6, many victims of gang rape, gang terror or horrific family abuse. Cristina helps save the time of judges and immigration officials by advising these kids about their rights, and she probably saves taxpayers money overall by advising her clients when they have no legal case for staying. (In other words, because of the huge bureaucracy and plethora of government activities, it is so wasteful and bloated that the author can justify his wife’s government job because it alleviates what government itself has created.) 

That said, it's unlikely that her job would exist without Uncle Sam's help.

This is true for huge numbers of Americans. Government is still America's largest job sector, directly employing about 22 million workers at the federal, state and local levels - which means teachers, cops, prison guards, park rangers, coroners, prosecutors, you name it. It is impossible to estimate how many jobs the federal government creates indirectly (Government does not create jobs. It creates employment by obtaining its funding from the private sector. The private sector then does not have money to hire as many people, or to make a capital purchase, or to invest in a new factory. The government is a parasite and creates nothing.) 

through contracts for everything from fighter jets to the guys who manage my tennis courts. Other industries depend on government, like health care, lobbying and Washington real estate. (This is simply wealth redirected. Of course government money attracts other entities. But this is not new wealth, for government does not create wealth. This is simply a variation of the Broken Window Fallacy.)

And the entire nonprofit world depends on the charitable tax deduction which costs the Treasury about $40 billion a year. (No, no, no! Money that the taxpayer gets to keep costs the government nothing! It is not entitled to the money. The only party that gets stuck with any cost is the taxpayer.)

Obama proposed to limit it for rich donors, but charities went berserk, and with anti tax Republicans running the House, Congress isn't eliminating tax breaks these days.

That's especially true of the tax breaks that deprive the Treasury (No, no, no! The Treasury is not entitled to our money. It is our money, and the Treasury takes it from us. When it does not take it, it is because it belongs to taxpayers.) 

of the most revenue because they tend to go to taxpayers with the most income. Take that mortgage - interest deduction, the third ­costliest tax expenditure at $94 billion a year. It's available only to homeowners, who tend to be better off than renters. And since it's a deduction from your income, it's worth more to taxpayers who earn more. That's because the higher your income, the higher your tax bracket, and if you are in the top brackets, you can deduct a bigger portion of your mortgage interest from your taxes Politicians love providing benefits through the tax code because it makes them look like tax cutters rather than spenders, And a politician who tried to get rid of the mortgage deduction would probably become an ex-politician (The lack of courage from politicians is nothing new. Neither is their spendthrift habits. This must change if the republic is to survive, however.)

I usually spend most of the afternoon in my office, with occasional soccer breaks when 2 year old Lina bangs on my door and shouts, "Kick ball me!" I often grab lunch with a friend – maybe Xavier, a private-equity guy, or Damian, a developer, or Alan, an environmental activist. I do physical therapy twice a week for a bum shoulder, Except for my escape with Lina, who'd be a more convincing athlete if she didn't carry a doll onto the field, this is all subsidized too.

The physical therapy is helping my aching shoulder, but it's also helping drive the U.S. toward insolvency. We're not Greece or anything like Greece, but we do have a long-term debt problem, and it's almost entirely a result of rising health care costs (No it’s due almost entirely to the fact that government spends $.49 of every health care dollar. It is the 600 pound gorilla in the room, it controls the agenda, it is the powerbroker. Its involvement in the healthcare market has caused nearly all of the problems it now purports to solve.)

On graphs of long-term government ­spending projections, health care looks like a ski slope, and everything else looks like a sidewalk. Most of the problem is Medicare and Medicaid, which spend about $800 billion and rising a year to cover the elderly and the poor. But the tax advantages for health care are the country's costliest tax expenditure, draining the Treasury of $84 billion a year. (Or maybe I can utilize the author’s technique and deem the government healthcare expenditure as debt spending, since I consider other programs to be funded by revenues, thus leaving these programs as the cause of the debt crisis.)

Health benefits provided by employers are tax exempt, which encourages Time Inc. to give me better benefits than it otherwise might have. That may have encouraged me to get my shoulder checked out earlier than I otherwise would have, which might save me from costly surgery. Then again, my orthopedist might not have done an MRI in addition to an X ray if I didn't have such comprehensive insurance; when the tax code rewards a behavior, like consuming health care, people do more of that behavior. (And here we have illustrated for us the quintessential problem of massive government intervention into the economy and peoples’ lives. There is no possible way for government to control all the behaviors and outcomes of its private sector interventions. 

On one hand, maybe costs are lowered or a benefit is provided. On the other hand, another industry is affected, or behavior is changed, or a hand is shoved out for a gimmee. Because it isn't possible for government to control the ripple effects of its policies,, the government pretends these effects don’t exist. 

Therefore, a $200 billion tax hike is expected to produce $200 in revenue, but doesn’t because people change their behavior to avoid the tax. A ban on soft drinks doesn’t reduce obesity, it increases the number of smaller drinks sold. A tax on cigarettes doesn’t generate more revenue or reduce smoking. It simply drives people to make their purchases where the taxes are lower.)

I also benefit from another huge loophole in the tax code: the exemption for 401(k)s and other savings plans, which costs the Treasury $138 billion a year (Another example of the false idea that government is entitle to our money and only lets us keep it because it is beneficent.) 

Every $500 I save for retirement depletes the Treasury (Here he goes again…) 

of about $135 it would otherwise take from me in taxes. Yes, there is a legitimate policy interest in promoting saving, (There is?) 

but this is another example of the tax code incentivizing people with money to do things they would have done anyway, like own a home, buy health insurance or hire a nanny. (If these are things people will do anyway, how are they incentives?) 

Investors and financiers also enjoy huge tax advantages like Wall Street's $1 billion to $2 billion carried interest loophole, which keeps hedge­fund managers' taxes at janitor level. (Typical of many on the left, top marginal rates get confused with total taxes paid. Janitors on the whole pay a lower tax rate than the rich, as well as an infinitesimally small raw dollar amount compared to the rich.)

But my sweetest tax advantage does not come from being a homeowner, a patient or a saver, it comes from being a kinda-sorta businessman. If you make decent money and you're not deducting business expenses, get an accountant - which, incidentally, is also tax-deductible. On my tax forms, I’m not just a dude at a magazine, I'm also an "author, lecturer," which lets me slice some personal business expenses off the top of my income. I'm conservative about deductions - nothing to see here, IRS! (This is part of the conservative case for limited government. Even the author gives in to fear about what the government can do to him if they perceive him to make a misstep. Government that has the power to do this is a government ripe for stripping of that power.)

- ­but my accountant says those business-­ish lunches with my work related pals are partly deductible. So are most books I buy, 17% of my utility bills – my home office is 17% of our home - and some of my travel. I don't know how much I'll deduct from my trip to San Francisco for my brother's wedding, but it won't be nothing because I did some book interviews while I was there.

The business community frequently complains about taxes, but the tax code turns out to be cluttered with pro business incentives (As well it should be, since business is the engine of prosperity. More important, business taxes get passed to the final consumer as a part of the product’s pricing. So businesses do not pay any tax at all. The individual bears the burden of all taxes.) 

In fact, as we discovered when Cristina opened a retail store just as the recession hit, the only thing that's more advantageous for tax purposes than opening a business is opening a failing business. When the store lost money during the Great Recession, the losses helped reduce our tax liability by more than half. We learned an expensive lesson in entrepreneurial risk taking, but Uncle Sam made it much less expensive. (For you, yes. But for someone else, well, they paid for yours.)

The workday ends. Cristina drives home, past a $49 million federally funded rail tunnel, and gets cash from our bank, which was bailed out to the tune of $45 billion by the U.S. government. Our nanny takes a public bus home. Then it's another hour of gymnastics, charades and other unsubsidized fun before we deposit the kids in front of the T.V. - riot to watch mindless crap, because we would never tranquilize them that way, but to watch worthy programs like Dinosaur Train and Sid the Science Kid that tend to be supported by federal grants. It's a much better way to tranquilize them.

My life on the dole is hardly unique. The website cfda.gov lists 2238 federal assistance programs, from the $7.5 million Incentive Gran to Prohibit Racial Profiling to the $4 million Wild Horse and Burro Resource Management. Redundancies jump off the screen. The $24 billion-a-year agriculture Department is essentially running a bonus government for rural America with its own education, housing, transportation, energy, health, business promotion and environmental regulation programs. The $2.5 billion a year Bureau of Indian Affairs supports a duplicate government for Native Americans. I suggested to one Administration official that the $662 billion the Pentagon spends on service members, their families and veterans is yet another U.S. government. "No, the Pentagon runs a Swedish government," he corrected me. "It's a socialist paradise!"

Government investment affects our lives in all kinds of subtler ways, from the Pentagon research that led to the development of the internet (This is false. Private enterprise laid the groundwork for the internet.) 

to the one-sided deal that subsidized a $213 million arena for the basketball team I root for obsessively. Americans Tell pollsters they don't like government, much less the taxes they pay to fund government, but they tend to support Medicare, the military, (A constitutionally mandated activity.)

and most other services government provides. This is why politicians tend to spend a lot of time talking about shrinking government than actually shrinking government. President Obama talks a lot about trimming the fat, and Republican leaders talk about almost nothing but trimming the fat. But the status quo has largely prevailed (This is a political problem, not a failure of small government advocates. If people were educated in economics rather than kept ignorant by the public schools and writers such as the author, perhaps they would realize that their votes are being bought by these programs, and every single one of them is paid for by someone else, whose money was forcibly extracted from them to fund the societal objectives of government.)

The explosion of Big Government under Obama is mostly a myth; the public workforce has actually shrunk by half a million workers during his presidency. (Another popular myth among the Left. Government debt has increased over $6 trillion in the last four years. That means government has been too big for the revenue it has taken in. Maybe its absolute size has not increased, but clearly it has spent a huge amount more than it has taken in, which conclusively means it is too big.) 

That said, Obama hasn't been much of a fat trimmer, either. His halfhearted efforts to rein in excessive spending got off to a laughable staxt in April 2009, when he publicly ordered his Cabinet to find $100 million–with–an-m worth of waste to cut; a rounding error in a $3.6 trillion–with–a-t budget. He later killed a $143 million fighter jet the Pentagon didn't want as well as a $190 million maritime navigation system rendered obsolete by GPS, then agreed to more than 2 trillion in long-range cuts after Republicans threatened to force the Treasury into default in 2011. (More left wing spin. If two sides cannot come together in agreement, it always seems to be the Republicans are the ones blamed. But this is a two party system, and had the Democrats gave in, there would have been no crisis.)

But those cuts are still mostly theoretical, depending on what happens in the fall election. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has rallied around House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan's long term blueprint for deep and specified deficit-expanding tax cuts (Another left-wing spin. Tax cuts do not expand the debt.) 

paired with deep (but mostly unspecified) cuts in nondefense spending. GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney embraced the Ryan plan during the primaries and then put Ryan on his ticket, but he has been even cagier about what he intends to cut beyond small-dollar Republican targets like Amtrak and NPR. (Contrast that with Obama's plan, which is really not a plan, which has worsened our situation and plunged us toward the brink of bankruptcy.)

Independent analysts have suggested that if the U. S. actually followed the Ryan outline, by 2050 there would be no room in the budget for anything but defense, Social Security and health care. (Which will also happen in 2025 if we leave it as is.)

But even if Republicans take back Washington, cutting isn't a foregone conclusion; government spending exploded when they controlled the nation's capital in the Bush era. (Which is why the TEA party came to be. Conservatives have been very critical of the big spenders during the Bush administration. That is why the TEA party is so effective. It is no a force that can actually hold politicians’ feet to the fire.) 

Every line item has lobbyists watching its back, (Exactly. With so much money at stake, lobbyists can hardly be blamed to attempt to pry money out of government.)

and when you can get a reputation as a fiscally responsible budget cutter without doing the politically difficult budget cutting, why bother?

My family’s asleep. I’m reading the mail, courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service, which is hemorrhaging cash in the e-mail era. The USPS is a classic example of a problem Washington can't fix. It clearly needs to cut costs and raise revenues. But the obvious cost reducers, like ending Saturday snail ­mail delivery and closing rural post offices, and the obvious revenue enhancer, increasing stamp prices, are DOA on Capitol Hill.

Liberals are correct that we rely on government much more than we realize. Conservatives are correct that government tries to do too many things. Republicans have seized on the Obama campaign's Life of Julia online tool, showing how one woman might benefit from Head Start, tuition aid, Medicare and other federal programs during her life, to accuse Democrats of viewing Americans as cradle-to-­grave wards of the state. Democrats have portrayed Republicans as anti-government absolutists in thrall to the Tea Party, eager to deprive Americans of benefits we like and expect. There's some truth in those critiques too.

But those of us who think government has an important role to play in American life ought to support reining in the excesses that give government a bad name. (This is a false choice. Conservatives are not anarchists.) 

When I asked analysts at the anti-government (A false characterization. The Cato Institute is a libertarian organization dedicated to constitutionally-limited government. It is not anti-government.) 

Cato Institute and the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities what was the most wasteful government spending, they all gave the same answer: farm subsidies. A coalition of taxpayer activists and green groups recently proposed axing $700 billion worth of environmentally destructive federal largess from fossil fuel subsidies to sprawl roads to pork barrel water projects that drain wetlands. There is broad agreement among eggheads that tax perks for yachts, corporate jets and mortgage interest on mansions ought to go as well.

But it's hard to see the finger-in-the-­wind political world following the wonk world's lead. The costliest spending programs affect the military and the elderly. And the costliest tax expenditures affect families like mine. We're the kind of moochers who vote.