Grey Matters

Ross Perot said it when he made his run for president in 1992: there isn’t “a nickel’s worth of difference” between the Republicans and Democrats. As I pointed some time ago, the two major parties are just two sides of the same authoritarian coin. There are differences though. Whether it amounts to “a nickels worth” depends on the scale. Does it run from $0.00 to $1.00? $0.25? Who knows. There are a lot of similarities; here are some of the differences.

Republicans view Democrats as good people, but misguided. Democrats view Republicans as evil.

Democrats love to use name-calling. Republicans, not so much. 

Democrats are quicker to use intimidation and physical violence than are Republicans.

Democrats tend to favor socialism. Republicans tend to favor capitalism (but dabble in socialism to show they care).

Democrats believe that life is zero sum, that poverty is caused by rich people hogging all the money. Republicans understand that wealth is something to be created, not stolen.

But Republicans and Democrats have much in common. Both believe that government is the answer. Both believe that government should be used to make people more like them. Both believe that they are right and the other wrong.

To someone like myself though, who prefers freedom to being herded and cared for like a sheep, Republicans and Democrats are pretty much alike — Republicrats.

Arizona is one of those places where you can still strap a pistol to your hip and walk around in public. It’s not real common though, so police like to check you out if you’re armed in public.

I was out taking my Glock for a walk the other day. I made a deposit at the bank, stopped at the supermarket and picked up some things. In the checkout line, a woman who got in line behind me quickly switched to another line. I think she thought I was going to rob my checker or something.

Outside the supermarket, I encountered a police officer. (I wonder if someone called him to check me out.) He, of course, asked me why I was wearing a gun. I said that I was wearing one for the same reason that he was wearing one.

“Well,” he said, “I’m a police officer. That’s why I wear one.” 

“But,” I asked, “why do police officers carry guns?”

“I have it,” he said, “in case I need it.”

“And that’s why I have mine too,” I said.  “I carry it in case I have to shoot someone.”

We then talked for a while about the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. I shared my insight that rights are like muscles; if you don’t exercise them, they atrophy and become useless. The only reason he stopped me was that not enough people exercise their right to bear arms. If it were commonplace, he’d never have given me a second look. 

Know your rights and exercise them regularly.

March 17, 1997

If the citizens of the United States were actually saddled with all the various taxes proposed by the Clinton administration (and there have been quite a few) the tax code could become all muddled and confusing. We wouldn’t want that. So, I am hereby proposing a Fat Tax to replace the mishmash of taxes that have been run up the flagpole lately only to find no one saluting. By taxing the fat content of foods my Fat Tax combines all the virtues of a V.A.T. and the BTU tax and has implications for National Health Care as well.

One of the problems with the V.A.T. is that people tend to call it the “VAT Tax” which is redundant. You see, V.A.T. stands for Value Added Tax. So saying “VAT Tax” is like saying “Value Added Tax Tax” which is silly (not unlike “ATM machine”). So right off the bat the Fat Tax is easier to talk about without sounding like a moron because it really is a tax on fat, not an acronym for something.

Like a BTU tax, a Fat Tax would be a tax on energy. A BTU (British Thermal Unit) is, after all, a unit of heat. And a single BTU is equal to 742 calories. So if you thought that the BTU tax would be a great revenue raiser, well, multiply that by 742. A Fat Tax could be a gold mine!

Like the V.A.T. the Fat Tax is a hidden or “stealth” tax. The V.A.T., if we had one, would be “built into” everything you could buy. Nothing on your receipt would reveal its existence. Everything would just mysteriously cost more. The Fat Tax too would be paid by other people – General Mills, General Foods and a colonel or two — and passed on in the cost of the goods to the store. Nothing would reveal its presence so people would not be likely to complain about it. And if they did complain, it would be about those “price-gouging, exploitive corporations,” not the government.

A Fat Tax would be pretty much recession proof too. After all, everybody has to eat. Compare that to the income tax. If the country falls on hard times, income tax revenues drop and Congressmen have to cut back on their junkets.

Lots of people dodge the income tax by not having enough income to tax. What happens when folks have a bad year or lose their jobs and have no income? They get out of paying income taxes, that’s what! Does that sound fair? No, Siree. But five will get you ten these tax dodgers are eating. Probably every day too. That means they’d be paying the Fat Tax.

But people still have to eat even if they lose their jobs. It doesn’t matter whether they choose to cash in their savings bonds or sponge off their better-off relatives, they will still be buying food and that means paying the Fat Tax. So government doesn’t have to reduce its level of mischief making just because you’ve had an off year. So the tax base is broadened considerably by employing the Fat Tax.

One of the stated virtues of the V.A.T. is that, since everything would cost more, people would be more careful in choosing what to spend their money on. (That’s right, higher taxes will make us spend our money more wisely.) With everything, including the essentials, costing more, we’d all have less “disposable” income. (Disposable income is the money left over after paying for the things you can’t do without. Like taxes.)

Now we come to the best part, a bit of serendipity. Since foods with more fat content will cost more under a Fat Tax, the really fatty, unhealthful foods will increase in price more than food that’s Good For You. If the Fat Tax rate is high enough, people will start buying healthier foods. Then with people eating right, health care costs will go down. This will free up government money which would be better used for the National Endowment for Goofy Professors and pork-barrel projects in powerful senators’ home states.

A few caveats are in order. Some food industry companies, unscrupulous meat packers, for instance, will try to reduce the taxes they pay by cutting off more of the fat before they package the meat for sale. This would negatively impact revenues. The Fat Tax implementing regulations will have to ensure that all the fat in a cow, for instance, is taxed whether it’s packaged and sold or not. All beef should be taxed as if the fat were homogeneously distributed throughout a cow. Lean ground beef should bear just as much of the tax burden as regular ground beef otherwise people would eat the lean stuff just to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Also, not only fat itself should be taxed but also potential or “imputed” fat. The human body is a miraculous thing that can turn pretty much anything into fat. This means pretty much all carbohydrates would have to be taxed as well. And sugar. Sugar is just fat waiting to happen.

In fact we probably ought to apply the Fat Tax to everything made with sugar substitutes too. Tax it at the rate it would have been taxed at if it actually had real sugar in it. After all, if history has taught us anything, it’s that if you leave a loophole in your tax code, people will find it.

Written February 11, 1997

Once again our government is about to apply a double-standard; one standard to which We the People must adhere and another for our keepers. That we don’t already have this particular double-standard is, I’m certain, merely an oversight. Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) has introduced H.R. 445 to correct this lack of a double-standard.

You see, last year as part of the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act of 1997 congress enacted a measure which would ban persons who had been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from ever owning or having within their control any firearm. The theory being, apparently, that someone who beats his wife shouldn’t be trusted with a gun. There are lots of flaws with this theory.*

This, however, marked the first time ever that significant “constitutional” rights were forfeit for misdemeanors; previously, only felony convictions resulted in loss of rights. Congress also made the measure retroactive. (Can you say “ex post facto” law?) Anyone who had ever been convicted of domestic violence — though it may have been years before — suddenly lost their Constitutionally protected Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Where does the double-standard come in? Well, guess which occupation has a very high rate of domestic violence against spouses? In fact, the highest domestic violence rate. Law enforcement. Cops. Men who are paid to carry guns. The fact that Law Enforcement Officers (LEO’s) were not exempted was surely an oversight. One that Bart Stupak (D-MI) wants to correct with H.R. 445.

H.R. 455 would exempt LEO’s from the domestic violence misdemeanor conviction gun ban. If passed, this bill would save the jobs of an estimated 60,000 LEO’s, according to the Fraternal Order of Police.

I have a real problem with this concept. Are we supposed to believe that it’s OK to beat your wife if you’re a LEO?

Let’s go back to the reason for this misguided legislation in the first place. This was to protect spouses (primarily women) from getting shot. Supposedly, someone given to domestic violence might just, if a gun were kept in the home, one day go beyond battering and shoot someone. Remove the gun from the scene, so the theory goes, and a shooting would not be possible.

Now let’s consider the situation with LEO’s. These folks are out among us every day with guns! Do you want a person with a nasty disposition and a proclivity for abuse walking around with a gun? The original legislation says: NO. Bart Stupak’s bill says: sure, OK.

If anything, police officers should answer to a higher, not lower standard than the rest of the American people.

The domestic violence misdemeanor conviction gun ban legislation was bad law to begin with and imposing yet another double-standard will only make it worse.

*Why was the Domestic Violence Gun Ban bad law? If an abusive husband is not allowed to have a gun in the home, then neither can his victimized wife. To have a gun in the home would be within his “control” as well as hers so the law would preclude the wife keeping a gun in the home — a gun she might one day need to defend against her abusive husband.

What is Domestic Violence? To qualify as domestic violence under this law a misdemeanor does not have to be called “domestic violence.” A heated shouting match could qualify. The wife throws a lamp — sounds like violence to me. In some jurisdictions simply threatening violence is as good as the real thing.

Inasmuch as we’re talking about misdemeanors here you’ve got to remember a few things. First off, lots of people charged with some misdemeanor which might fall under the “domestic violence” umbrella plead no contest either because of the cost of defending against the charge or just to put it behind them. Husband and wife kiss and make up, the one(s) charged plead no contest just to get on with their lives. Had they known the implications of a conviction, would they have done the same? Interesting note: an amendment was offered which would have required notifying a person charged with misdemeanor domestic violence of the consequences of conviction — loss of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Significantly, the amendment was defeated. Our Congress would prefer that we remain ignorant!

If congress were really concerned about domestic violence they’d make it harder for the more violent people to plea-bargain down to a misdemeanor. Make sure they’re tried for a felony.

All things considered, this portion of the crime bill was more about gun control than domestic violence. An exemption for LEO’s would certainly fit that agenda. The feds are always looking for new people who can be prohibited from owning firearms. It’s part of a continuous, incremental effort to eventually ban everyone from having firearms except the military and LEO’s, who will all be under the control of the federal government anyway.

Written February 10, 1997

Here they go again talking about the need for Campaign Finance Reform. Everybody is afraid that someone else has more influence with the politicians than they do. And they all have solutions:

• We need to limit how much anybody can contribute.
• We need to stop ‘in-kind’ contributions.
• It isn’t right that rich people can spend as much of their own money as they want when they run for office.
• Get rid of PAC’s.
• The problem is ‘soft’ money.
• Corporations shouldn’t be able to contribute.
• We have to get ‘Big Money’ out of politics.
• Candidates for Congress shouldn’t be able to accept money from outside their district or state.
• We need tougher reporting requirements.

And on, and on, and on…

The problem isn’t that everybody is trying to buy influence with politicians.

The problem is that politicians have so much power that you’d be crazy not to get one or more of them in your hip pocket!

Speaking strictly in terms of Return On Investment, buying a politician can bring tremendous returns. A few thousand dollars might get a small business hundreds of thousands in regulatory relief. Throw a hundred thousand around and you could get millions in tax subsidies or outright grants!

If you’re trying to eliminate corruption*, it will not come out of making tougher rules (on which we can never agree) or by keeping a really, really, close eye on politicians and contributors. We need to limit the influence not of contributors, but of politicians. 

Why not try limiting government to its Constitutionally-defined roles? Then crooked politicians wouldn’t be able to throw millions in taxpayers’ money to their friends and business associates. Novel idea, huh?

*Those advocating “reform” don’t really want to eliminate influence peddling. But they do want to control who can buy influence. That’s all this clamor for “reform” is all about. Everyone wants to eliminate the other guy’s influence.