TaxProf Blog: Bartlett on Why the FairTax Won't Work
Topic: Politics and Law
10:52 am EST, Dec 31, 2007
Bartlett argues that the FairTax is deeply flawed and has been systematically misrepresented by its supporters. Quite apart from the fact that there is zero chance that Congress would ever enact it, it is clear, writes Bartlett, that the FairTax simply would not work at all if it were tried, which is why no country has ever attempted to collect all its revenue from a retail sales tax.
Every once in a while I find myself talking to a fair tax advocate. Always advocates. I never hear anyone who is considering whether or not they like the idea and wondering what others think. Only people who are absolutely positive that this is the answer and quickly emotional at the slightest criticism. The criticisms offered here are more than slight.
Survey reveals candidates' views on scope of executive power - The Boston Globe
Topic: Politics and Law
3:28 pm EST, Dec 24, 2007
A Globe survey of the presidential candidates about the limits of executive power. The study is the most comprehensive effort to date to get the candidates to declare in specific terms what checks and balances they would respect, and whether they would reverse the Bush administration's legacy of expanded presidential powers.
This is an important survey, in particular in terms of what it says about Democratic Party Candidate.
Motorists may be in for a surprise if they spot flashing red lights in their rearview mirrors in this Sacramento suburb [Rancho Cordova] during the holiday season.
Police are stopping law-abiding motorists and rewarding their good driving with $5 Starbucks gift cards.
This has been making the rounds for the past few days. The legal minds seem to agree that this isn't just a stupid idea, its unconstitutional.
Ron Paul Supporters Make History with $6 Million Online Haul -- Updated | Threat Level from Wired.com
Topic: Politics and Law
4:27 pm EST, Dec 17, 2007
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul made history Sunday by raising $6 million in online contributions in 24 hours, breaking the record for the most money raised by a national candidate in a single day, and potentially putting Paul on track to surpass the fourth quarter fund raising of all of his competitors in both parties.
The $6 million number beats the 2004 record set by Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry...
"What he has done is establish himself as a major candidate, and he's no longer a fringe voice," says Corrado.
"One of the most important things Ron Paul does, which I think is a service to all of us, is to bring back on the table a lot of ideas that the MSM and most candidates treat as off the table," says Zephyr Teachout, a visiting assistant law professor at Duke University who directed internet organizing for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.
This datapoint is simply further evidence that Ron Paul is this season's Howard Dean. As we get further into the primary season there will be a concerted effort by the establishment to shut this down. If he makes it into March he'll be in uncharted waters.
His candidacy, as Dean's before it, represents the power of grass roots media to make opinions, but in the early days of broadcast media in the 1930's an inexperienced culture created a cult of personality around politicians like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. I fear that this case is similar. His campaign's success is a combination of anti-immigration xenophobia and nationalistic fevor (painted with imagry of the founding fathers and the overuse of the word freedom without real meaning).
Mother Jones published an excellent ven diagram which illustrates the difference between Ron Paul's positions and Libertarian thought. Ironically they drew their diagram such that Ron Paul's name appears exactly where libertarians put Hilter in their own political diagrams.
Now, I'm not saying that Ron Paul is going to start overfunding the military and running death camps, but if you don't beleive in the doctrine of incorporation, you're sure as hell not a libertarian.
But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again.
Yes, that's right, the king of the neo-cons thinks the CIA is now part of a left wing conspiracy to get W. And this is Rudy's #1 foreign policy guy.
I don't know whether or not the CIA is interested in checking the administration. I think the sentences which follow the one quoted above ought to speak for themselves:
This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding.
It is hard for me to understand how a person could be smart enough to actually be Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy adviser and yet dumb enough to have written these words.
The present war with Iraq was not a last resort. The UN hadn't even completed their assessment. It was not undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iraq from getting WMD. There were many people who denied that Iraq had WMD at the time. Those people were ignored. Those people were also correct. Furthermore, no one has ever suggested that Iran is anywhere close to succeeding. Given the information that has been made public about the status of Iran's nuclear power program it is absolutely impossible under even the most pessimistic estimate that Iran could be "close to succeeding" during the remaining days of the Bush administration.
Any trust which this administration might have at some point had that they would only engage in warfare when there was absolutely no alternative was completely flushed down the toilet years ago. Furthermore, the very idea that military action should only be taken as a last resort is antithetical to the very philosophy of foreign relations to which this author adheres!
By completely ignoring the historical role of racism in American society, and the diminished but not insubstantial role racism by whites continues to play in our society, and focusing criticism only on advocates of "diversity," (even, apparently, when they advocate only voluntary, non-governmental action to achieve diversity), the Paul campaign is appealing to the Pat Buchanan (and beyond) wing of the "Old Right", while trying to preserve some plausible deniability on race to its more tolerant libertarian constituency.
That's not to say that personally Paul isn't really against racism; in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I assume that he is. Rather, the point is that his campaign seems to be taking the same unfortunate position that Goldwater did in 1964; condemning racism in general on principled libertarian grounds, but providing winks and nods that support from racists for racist reasons would be welcome.
Why is it in 2007 we have a serious presidential candidate using weasel words around the subject of racism, words that any "red blooded" member of the KKK or the neo-nazi movement would gladly stand behind? This isn't some offhand statement from 15 years ago. The essay on racism discussed here is featured prominently on his campaign website under "issues."
Is someone who can't manage to tell the KKK to go fuck themselves really presidential material? Is someone who can't manage to tell the KKK to go fuck themselves a defender of freedom?
Please do not give money to Ron Paul! He is an enemy of freedom!
Topic: Politics and Law
5:52 pm EST, Nov 30, 2007
Videos like the one linked here could not possibly be more dishonest. For a guy who claims to stand on principals one could not imagine a more deceitful campaign positioning. For a guy who claims to support freedom his actual legal positioning is more authoritarian than any candidate running! This is obviously an emotional appeal and you should not fall for it. Ron Paul does not stand for anything remotely resembling the freedom that you know. He is not a Libertarian!
In an essay the man called the incorporation doctrine "phony" and "dreamed up by activist judges to pervert the plain meaning of the Constitution." Now I know that most of you don't understand what the incorporation doctrine is. Ron Paul knows that you don't understand, and he likes it that way.
The incorporation doctrine is the notion that things like the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and the Fourth Amendment right to be secure from search and seizure are individual rights that you personally possess and that no government, local, state, or federal, can take them away from you. It is a product of the Civil War, and the 14th Amendment, prior to which the Bill of Rights merely constrained the federal government, NOT THE STATES, and it was legal to own slaves and states like South Carolina refused Catholics the right to hold public office!
When Ron Paul calls the incorporation doctrine phony he stands opposed to 150 years of American jurisprudence, he stands opposed to the clear intent of the legal changes made in the wake of the Civil War, and he stands opposed to MY individual RIGHT to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom from unreasonable searches, as well as all of the other freedoms that have come to define what America means. He is not a defender of freedom. He is a defender of absolute power for state and local governments to violate the most fundamental tenets of our society. He is clearly an enemy of freedom. And so he is an enemy of mine, for this, and many other reasons. And worse he and his supporters are LIARS because they do not actually advocate the things that they claim they advocate. Do not fall into this man's twisted spell.
It was not so much that they themselves believed in the ideology of bin Laden or his Afghan allies, but they saw this kind of Islamic politics as an effective way to contain Indian influence and to control an unruly neighbor to their west.
There is no point in talking if the people you are trying to reach don't really care about anything but their own personal interests.
More later... I'm mostly just blogging this for reference...
