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Tyranny knows no bounds. Let’s say that the FDA orders Stouffer’s to no longer put 970 mg of sodium in their roasted turkey dinner; they mandate a maximum of 400 mg. Suppose Stouffer’s customers, assuming they continue buying the product, add more salt — what will the FDA do? The answer is easy. They will copy the successful anti-tobacco zealot template. They might start out with warning labels on salt. Congress will levy confiscatory taxes on salt. Maybe lawsuits will be brought against salt companies. State and local agencies might deny child adoption rights to couples found using too much salt. Before a couple can adopt a baby, they would have to take a blood test to determine their dietary habits. Teachers might ask schoolchildren to report their parents for adding salt to their meals. You might say, “Williams, they’d never go that far in the name of health.” In 1960, you might have said the same thing about tobacco zealots but yet they’ve done the same and more.
The inhumanity of human beings toward other human beings is not a new story, much less a local story. There is no need to hide it, because there are lessons we can learn from it. But there is also no need to distort it, so that sins of the whole human species around the world are presented as special defects of “our society” or the sins of a particular race.
via Misusing History – Thomas Sowell – National Review Online.
Dr. Sowell proves, once again, that common sense is post-racial.
The political speedball would combine the quick rush of income tax increases with the euphoria induced by a value-added tax on consumption. Tax increases typically produce a revenue spurt that quickly cools off as people find creative ways to evade them, while the VAT keeps taxing consumption at every stage from production to purchase of a product. European VATs typically create substantial revenue streams, but stifle entrepreneurial energy and job creation. That’s why all of Europe’s welfare states are slow-growth economies. As Greece’s need of a bailout to avoid bankruptcy demonstrates, political speedballs eventually produce the economic equivalent of the lethal heroin overdose that is so common among speedballing drug addicts.
via VAT is a fix for spending addicts | Washington Examiner.
White House advisor Paul Volcker made news this week by calling a value-added tax VAT “not as toxic an idea” as it’s been in the past for tackling the nation’s deficit problem. Today, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf confirmed he’s been getting “a lot of questions” about the VAT tax from Congress.
via The Weekly Standard | A Weekly Conservative Magazine and Blog of News and Opinion..
I believe we are nearing a point where there are enough irreconcilable differences between those Americans who want to control other Americans and those Americans who want to be left alone that separation is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. The Democrat-controlled Washington is simply an escalation of a process that has been in full stride for at least two decades. There is no evidence that Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have any intention of mending their ways.
The road to every major Supreme Court decision on a divisive social issue is littered with hundreds of hours of strategy sessions by lawyers, politicians and activists probing pending legislation to see if it has the potential to become a court challenge.
The Nebraska bill — which seeks to make abortions illegal after the 20th week of pregnancy — is no different. The bright-line rule is necessary because of some medical evidence that a fetus can feel pain at that stage of gestation, sponsors of the legislation say.
The legislation has drawn national attention from groups such as the Center for Reproductive Rights, which sees it as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that legalized abortion. If the legislation passes, Nebraska will be the first state to ban abortions based on the controversial notion that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks. State law now has a post-viability ban on abortion but defines viability on a case-by-case basis.
via Nebraska Abortion Bill Could be the Next Supreme Court Battle – ABC News.
Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, was in Canada last week. She criticized Ottawa for not inviting aboriginal groups to a meeting on the Arctic, and for not including the facilitation of abortion in the Canadian government’s “maternal health” initiative to developing countries. These might seem curious priorities for the global superpower at a time of war, but, with such a full plate over at the State Department, it’s no wonder that peripheral matters like Iranian nuclear deadlines seem to fall by the wayside.
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The Obama administration came into office promising to press the “reset” button with the rest of the world after eight years of the so-called arrogant, swaggering Texan cowboy blundering his way around the planet offending peoples from many lands. Instead, Obama pressed the ejector-seat button: Brits, Czechs, Israelis, Indians found themselves given the brush.
via Parochially Post-American – Mark Steyn – National Review Online.
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