quote
Those who don't learn from history...
"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1784
I guess we haven't hit our limit yet
"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation."
--John Marshall, McCullough v. Maryland, 1819
Legalized larceny
"The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful." --President Calvin Coolidge (1873-1933)
His conscience made him do it
Maybe I'm overly cynical, but trusting a politician's conscience seems a bit like trusting a prostitute's sense of propriety.
Under any mode or form of government
"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government." --Mercy Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, 1805
Huh?
John Farnam, "Huh?"
Who are these people?
The VCA who murdered four police officers in Oakland, CA last Saturday had been incarcerated since 2002, but had been recently released on parole.
The sentencing report in the 2002 case that put him in prison described this VCA as a "...cold-hearted individual, who has no regard for human life," and went on to insist that his permanently residing in prison was the "only way to rein-in this man's proclivity for violence."
Now there's a real recommendation for parole!
That report was surely available to the Parole Board who let him out.
Perhaps, between shrieking for the end to the private ownership of guns in America and the need for higher taxes, the media might find the time to ask why such remorseless, violent, unstable sociopaths are paroled in CA! ["VCA" = Violent Criminal Actor/Attacker. --R]
If only
"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." --Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, 6 July 1775
Unjust, oppressive and impolitic
"[C]ommercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic. ...[I]f industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out."
--James Madison, speech to Congress, 9 April 1789 It never fails to amaze me how prescient the Founders were.
All of us need to be reminded... (because how soon we forget)
"The economic ills we suffer ... will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. [...] "Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed. It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government." --Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, 1981 [Emphasis in second paragraph added. --R]
Calling it what it is
"What [Obama calls] tax reductions in this bill are really transfer payments, particularly redistribution of income from the rich to the poor. The economy did very well [after the Bush] tax cuts of 2003. Obama has blamed [the Bush tax cuts] for part of the current financial collapse. There's really no linkage between the tax cuts of 2003 and the financial and housing collapse we've seen in recent months. Abolishing the corporate income tax at the federal level I think would be very positive. It's a very poor form of taxation. I would make permanent the kinds of changes that were in the 2003 tax reform, including the marginal tax rate structure." --Harvard Economist Robert Barro on Obama's "terrible piece of legislation" [Emphasis added. --R]
Strange, isn't it?
SUPPORTERS OF ABORTION RIGHTS bristle at the term "partial-birth abortion," and sympathetic journalists often make a point of setting it off with scare quotes or injecting a phrase meant to dilute the term's grisly legitimacy -- for example, "a controversial procedure that critics call 'partial-birth abortion'" (as the Los Angeles Times has put it), or "a ban on so-called 'partial-birth' abortion" (to quote Reuters).
But what happens to such fastidiousness when it comes to terms coined by liberals? Terms like "Fairness Doctrine" -- an Orwellian label for government stifling of untrammeled political speech over the airwaves. Or like "Employee Free Choice Act," a benign title for legislation that would deny employees the right to a secret ballot in workplace elections. Strange, isn't it, how the concern with terminological exactitude kicks in at the appearance of a freighted expression from the right, yet fades into the mist when the language comes from the left?
This is the issue
"This is the issue: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves. ... Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment." --Ronald Reagan, 1980
If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." --Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book, 1774-1776
Now where might this be relevant today...?
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson
It has never been, and is not, about hunting
"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of the rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." --Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833
Questions for Obama's science guy
IN NOMINATING John Holdren to be director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy -- the position known informally as White House science adviser -- President-elect Barack Obama has enlisted an undisputed Big Name among academic environmentalists, one "with a resume longer than your arm," as Newsweek's Sharon Begley exulted when the announcement was made. Holdren is a physicist, a professor of environmental policy at Harvard, a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and the author or co-author of many papers and books.
He is also a doom-and-gloomer with a trail of erroneous apocalyptic forecasts dating back nearly 40 years -- and a decided lack of tolerance for environmental opinions that conflict with his.
The position of science adviser requires Senate confirmation. Holdren's nomination is likely to sail through, but conscientious senators might wish to ask him some questions. Here are eight:
Don't keep it in the closet
Glenn Beck, in the epilogue of The Christmas Sweater:
My mom gave me the sweater, but the greatest gift was given to all of us by a loving Father in Heaven. It is the only true gift ever given to all and yet opened or appreciated by so few. It is the gift of redemption and atonement, and it sits on the top shelf, largely untouched, in the closets of our soul.
At Christmas we celebrate the birth of the Christ child, but by doing so, sometimes we miss the real meaning of the season. It is what that infant, boy, and then perfect man did at the end of His ministry that makes the birth so special.
Without His death, the birth is meaningless.
Um, yeah
Expert Macintosh users who see "MacWorld" in an article know you don't know what you're talking about, just as most technology-literate readers would laugh at "MicroSoft," "QualComm," or "LexMark." Referring to a famous technology event without the correct name or spelling is a quick way to throw away your credibility. Saying "That's how I always thought it was spelled, and besides, everyone knew what I meant" is saying "I didn't bother to get the facts about my subject before I wrote my article." Don't be that writer.
The awkward kid
If any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Windows is that awkward kid that can't remember how the trick goes.
The future
"Praying about the future? Take heart! God is already there. He's standing at the end of our lives looking back on all our days."