Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness

Good Petition to sign

by Reena Kapoor

A good one ScrapTheCode to sign and send to all your friends - no matter which side of the aisle they're sympatheic to - who do not love taxes...

Patriotic???????

by Reena Kapoor

Watch this video from Reason TV for some interesting numbers.  If you have high blood pressure don't watch this.  Dumbest definition of patriotism but the country's all lapping it up! enough to make your head explode indeed!  How come no one EVER asks - including my many rich friends - whose money is it anyway?  The government, the majority and the nation do NOT have a claim on my money, nor rich people's money.  Amazing how we go round and round and round and never question this basic premise!  And worse is no one questions the so called, ever expanding "rights" that we all seem to acquire (free education, free healthcare, free this, free that...) that now need to be funded. Amazingly most of the rich are such complete loser, sell-outs to SOCIALISM -- and in bed with politicians themselves -- that I wonder why we bother to fight their fight..... yes yes I know it's the principle of it and if we don't soon they will be coming for the rest of us suckers too!

A Lynch Mob! ... and the disengagement of private enterprise

by Rakinder Grover

A good article by David R. Kotok in The Big Picture compares the recent action in the House of Representatives with that of a lynch mob.  Besides the issues of the violation of the rule of law, the abrogation of contracts and property rights, that have been raised by some over the last few days, he also highlights the real and immediate risk of businesses becoming extremely cautious.  Careful, lest their profit seeking activity attract the ire of a populist lynch mob, private enterprise is likely to try and stay as far as it can from government. With the expanding scope of government, that is becoming increasingly harder to do, so the risk translates to a retrenchment of private enterprise unsure of the rules, risks and rewards.  This does not portend well for economic recovery, innovation and freedom in general.

California's "Weird Utopian Mindset"

by Anurag Wadehra

In this article, Victor Davis Hanson of Hoover Institute lists the woes of the Golden State quite succinctly:

• So far under Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's tenure, state spending grew 34.9 percent, well beyond inflation and population that increased only 21.5 percent.

• Prison costs increased about 50 percent in less than a decade, and now claim almost 10 percent of state.

• Some estimates put illegal alien state residents at 3 million, a population that may cost the state's taxpayers more than $13 billion per year for services.

• California has the worst credit rating in the nation. It has the fourth highest unemployment rate and the second highest home foreclosure rate, thanks to enormously inflated prices due in part to complicated building regulations, high labor costs, and often Byzantine land-use restrictions.

However, he accounts for California's economic suicide by:

A weird sort of utopian mindset. Perhaps because have-it-all Californians live in such a rich natural landscape and inherited so much from their ancestors, they have convinced themselves that perpetual bounty is now their birthright -- not something that can be lost in a generation of complacency.

When will we shrug?

by Reena Kapoor

Here is a picture, sent by a friend, from a recent Denver tax revolt...we need more of these, and everywhere. Say "NO" to porculus!

National Debt and the Coming Third Fiscal Turning

by Anurag Wadehra

Not just consumers, but the nation is buried under debt. In fact, the national debt of $10 trillion and change is so crippling that, within our life time, we shall be forced to alter the fundamental arrangement between the citizenry and the state to address the problem. Such is the argument laid out by these two pieces below.

Snoopy speaks for me

by Reena Kapoor

No additional words are necessary, especially now that The Great Obama is going to be extracting a bigger share.

The Europeanization of America?

By Anisha Kahai

Insightful piece in the WSJ on what's ahead if (or should I say when?) Obama becomes president. Pete Du Pont predicts that "...Mr. Obama will most likely be our most liberal public policy president since Franklin D. Roosevelt." Here is an excerpt from his article:

Tax Cuts Explained

by Rakinder Grover

I came across this very interesting explanation of tax cuts.  This has been attributed to several people but the author seems to be unknown.

----

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

Say NO to Universal Preschool

by Reena Kapoor

Here is a letter I fired off to editors of the San Francisco Chronicle today in response to recent spat in their papers over this issue. Shikha Dalmia & Lisa Snell from Reason have been fighting this issue with cogent arguments and hard evidence. Yet they're being attacked viciously from the left (who else?) on this one.  Here is a response they recently issued (Universal Preschool hasn't delivered results) and my letter to the editors is pasted below.  I urge you to do the same.