Facts About Those ‘Fat Cats’

Business, Economy, Human Accomplishment, Socialism, Taxation

In case you didn’t know:

“The top 1 percent of Americans pay about 38 percent of all our federal personal taxes (according to the National Taxpayers Union)?”

“Or that the top 5 percent pay just under 60 percent?”

“Or that the top 10 percent pay about 70 percent of all the personal income taxes collected in this great land of ours?”

“These ‘fat cats’ are the ones who do the heavy lifting in this country. They’re the ones whose federal tax dollars pick up a big chunk of the tab for all sorts of noble things, such as food for folks who don’t have enough to eat … medicine and doctors for people with little money … financial aid to help other people’s kids go to college … milk and diapers for poor babies whose 15-year-old mothers and deadbeat fathers are too irresponsible to take care of their own kids … a safety net for old folks who are retired on fixed incomes … and on and on. …”

“By the way, the bottom 50 percent of wage earners pay a paltry 2.7 percent of our federal income taxes. How many poor people do you think their tax dollars are taking care of? If you ask me, they’re the ones not paying their fair share. Every time they pass a ‘rich’ person on the street, they ought to say, ‘Thank you for everything you do me and for this country.'”

Police State America Erects More Trade Barriers

Free Markets, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Private Property, Taxation

Did you know that Uncle Sam has imposed a Security Surcharge on incoming packages to the United States? So says a friend who paid an additional $9 over and above the standard fare to mail a small, “secured” item from Australia to the US.

Trade is always invited, consensual and, hence, mutually beneficial to the private property holders that are party to the transactions. When government restricts trade, it violates—not protects—the rights of private property owners to exchange goods and to enjoy freedom of association.

Conversely, free immigration, as the libertarian economist and political philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe has explained, “does not mean immigration by invitation of individual households and firms, but unwanted invasion or forced integration.” When government restricts immigration, it is actually protecting private households and firms from these perils.

As Dr. Hoppe noted, “Someone can migrate from one place to another without anyone else wanting him to do so,” but “goods and services cannot be shipped from place to place unless both sender and receiver agree.”

Hoppe’s distinction seems almost mischievous, but it goes to the core of the complementary relationship between free trade and restricted immigration. (Contrary to what you’ve heard from John Stossel, open borders are not the libertarian default position—and they are certainly not the patriotic position. Those of us who live in real communities, removed from the Beltway and the TV Talkers, understand the burdens that state-engineered immigration has imposed on ordinary Americans living in the “Provinces.”)

In the US there are almost no barriers to the free-flow of uninvited people across American borders. Unfettered trade is a different matter; it is taxed and penalized.

UPDATED: Assange is us

Free Speech, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Military, Republicans, Technology, The State

This is from my new, WND.COM column, “Assange is us”:

” … What is top-secret to some, however, is open-source for others. First-Amendment jurisprudence is … clear-cut with respect to the great guerrilla journalism of WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks operators have committed no crime in publishing what is undeniably true, newsworthy information. Antsy America has no jurisdiction over a foreign entity (WikiLeaks) and its proprietor (Julian Assange). The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog confirmed that U.S. law looks upon WikiLeaks as ‘a passive recipient of the material.’ ‘Most First Amendment lawyers would say that preventing the publication of material is justified only where absolutely necessary to prevent almost immediate and imminent disaster. It’s an extremely high standard,’ Jack Balkin, a First Amendment expert at Yale Law, told the WSJ. …

… Why has this individual become the enemy? Should Americans not have an inkling, by now, of what it’s like to live at the mercy of the federal government’s imperially imposed edicts? Aren’t we all being treated as potential terrorists at the nation’s federally controlled airports, by the TSA, an arm of the government now stalking Assange?”

The complete column is “Assange is us.”

The Second Edition of Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society (the print edition may be purchased here) is now also available on Kindle.

UPDATE (Dec. 10): The reader below (see Comments Section) says Assange provided the identities of “pro-freedom, pro-democracy activists in places like Afghanistan, Iran, Venezu.” First, provide proof of such online Wikileaks.

Second: Let me get this. The minions in the military may freely ad-lib about the subjects they’ve “liberated” (and sicced upon one another) in far-flung places. Conversely, the publisher of this stuff—which was forsaken for every military tom, dick and harry to read—must be extra careful in its publication. The statist will always apply a different standard to his cherished government. Frederick Bastiat the statist is not.

But then the reader conflates, 1) democracy and freedom. 2) The wrecking ball we applied to Afghanistan and Iraq with freedom. When you hold 1 & 2 to be true, your premises are shaky from the start.

UPDATED: Glenn, Gays ('Transitioners'), WiKiLeaks, Whatever

Gender, Glenn Beck, Homosexuality, Military, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Sex, The Zeitgeist

* SPOOKY GIFTS. Looking for a present with which to spook out your loved ones? Glenn Beck’s e-newsletter suggests that you “Put Glenn Beck Under Your Tree.” If you are unable to buy tickets to see Beck’s performance art, he’d like you to buy his products. (Actually, I have a better suggestion; buy “Broad Sides.”) I know you aren’t, but I’m still lamenting the loss of a potential force for liberty. Beck is circling the drain, caught in an echo-chamber out of which not even his indecipherable charts can lead him.

* FAIRY TALES. My husband, a fairly old-fashioned (if not old) man who works closely with the similar types, tells me that men seldom discuss their spouses at work. It should not be too difficult for the heterosexual soldiers in the military to agree to keep quiet about their families in exchange for some silence from the homosexual contingent. Aha, but you see, as “‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ For Hets and Homos” argued, the underlying impetus in this battle is to make the military as much like the culture at large: a big whore house. I do not think the activists even think in such terms. It is just that it is second-nature for the North American Personality to demand complete merger of the private and professional.

Tell me that Osama’s ascetic army will not skedaddle at the site of a brigade that looks like this:

* WIKIWONDER. Look at the WikiLeaks Mirrors page: “In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove WikiLeaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of WikiLeaks website and CableGate pages.” An amazing operation.

Have at it. This is an Open Forum (with limitations, naturally). Please post whatever is on your mind (including, if you’d like, brief questions to your host on this or the other issue).

UPDATE (Dec. 10): The gentle-wo/man, in the image above (second from the right), is “transitioning,” me thinks. The spouse tells me that he came upon a transitioning person in the hallways at work. This poor person was not only sexually ambivalent but obese too, so it wore a muumuu. Right there they formed a bond. I’m joking. As you can imagine, your ordinary guy, the square type especially, doesn’t know what to do with this stuff. An outward display of your inner-most conflicts will make a co-worker run in the opposite direction.

I have plenty of sympathy for authentic pain, however pampered the sufferer. There is a lot of pain wrapped up in sexual ambivalence. Not so much these days, where what you get is emotionally pampered individuals publicly displaying “pain” they imagine they have; and have been instructed to feel.

Middle-aged folks like myself well remember the agony endured by a sexually ambivalent persons only two decades or so back. Everyone knows someone who is gay or even people who feel they were born the wrong sex. As if life were not hard enough. How horrible is it to be confused about a core characteristic as is gender.

Here’s the point I’ve tried to make not always successfully. A decent society is a private society. I am not opposed to gays serving in the military; I’m against the idea that sexual proclivities and peccadilloes are a public affair.