Colorado HB 1193: stop this Internet sales tax

February 4th, 2010 by Brian

Contact your Colorado state senator about opposing this bill.  From Vincent Carroll in the Denver Post:

HB 1193 requires out-of-state online retailers to collect sales tax from Colorado customers if those businesses have a relationship with a local “affiliate.” …

Democratic lawmakers are sleepwalking toward approval of a bill that could have the state dunning tens of thousands of Coloradans for unpaid sales tax on Internet purchases with retailers such as Amazon. Now won’t that be a popular election-year gift to voters?

…  For any on the fence, let me offer a short list of the bill’s deficiencies.

* It is almost certain to put Coloradans out of work.

* It won’t produce nearly the promised $4.7 million in tax revenue for the next fiscal year.

* It could result in the state harassing citizens for often paltry sums that most didn’t even know they officially owed – and which almost no one actually pays.

Carroll writes that “[f]our House Democrats did break ranks to oppose House Bill 1193, which survived by just a single vote in its journey to the Senate.”  Read the whole article: Amazon buyers, beware: State has it in for you.

Also see this post from ReveNews: Overstock Threatens to Terminate Colorado Affiliates Over Pending Legislation.

And don’t forget to contact your Colorado state senator!

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“You’re too stupid for free speech”

February 3rd, 2010 by Brian

Linn  and Ari Armstrong make some great points about the recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. FEC in a recent article in the Grand Junction Free Press:

Regarding this case, the left is perfectly consistent with its Marxist roots. Marx wrote, “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”

In simpler terms, you are just too stupid to independently evaluate a film or ad funded by a corporation. You need the benevolent nannies of the left to help you think straight.

… However, trying to save people from their own stupidity only entrenches stupidity. People cannot choose wisely if they lack the capacity to choose badly. In terms of free speech, people must be free to say and believe stupid things, if we wish to preserve the right and ability to say and believe profundities.

Read the whole article.  See also:

Dispelling the Top Five Citizens United Decision Myths – Institute for Justice

When Individuals Form Corporations, They Don’t Lose Their Rights, Ilya Shapiro, Cato-at-Liberty. Great arguments, and links to others.

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Why we’re “crazy” about health care choice

February 3rd, 2010 by Brian

Originally published in the Aurora Daily Sentinel, January 29th, 2010.  This version has links to references.

Why we’re “crazy” about health care choice

By Brian T. Schwartz and Linda Gorman

Sentinel Editor Dave Perry dismisses the Colorado Right to Health Care Choice Initiative as “crazy” and says its supporters “clearly have lost” their minds (Opinion, January 21).

The Initiative would prohibit Colorado government from requiring you to purchase health insurance.

Mr. Perry thinks that mandatory insurance is justified because “those without health insurance are driving up the cost of health care for every American.” But these added costs are trivial compared to the amount that mandatory insurance would increase premiums and taxes.

Read the rest of the article at PatientPowerNow.org:  Why we’re “crazy” about health care choice.

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The State of the Union’s Fatal Conceit

January 31st, 2010 by Brian

A “speech from the throne.” That’s how Thomas Jefferson viewed public delivery of the annual speech. Starting with Jefferson’s presidency, and ending in 1913, a clerk read the president’s message to Congress.

How times have changed. Now the president reads the address, but others write it. Nor is the address to Congress. It’s an infomercial for the president and his party targeting the electorate. President Barack Obama said “we can’t wage a perpetual campaign.” Yet he just had to mention that he reads letters from children “each night.”

Mentioning “the children” has become typical of presidential addresses, as have other themes. As Ted DeHaven’s blog post titled “Bush’s Third Term” shows, Obama’s statements on jobs, energy, housing, and other topics sound so similar to Bush’s, you might think they have the same speechwriters.

Typical of modern State of the Union addresses, Obama’s made grand promises including special-interest tax breaks, tax “credits” for those who pay no income taxes, new government programs, and more government fixes to problems made worse by previous fixes.

To deliver the change he promised, the president should have shown Congress a rap video: “Fear the Boom and Bust” by EconStories.tv. With insight, wit, and rhyme, Friedrich Hayek explains how Keynesian fiscal policy fuels economic booms and busts. “It’s legit, it’s really good rapping,” Ke$ha told NPR.

Congressmen would see in themselves what Nobel Laureate Hayek calls the “fatal conceit.” Says Hayek: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

The Daily Camera (Boulder) published this article on January 30, 2010.

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Daily Camera article: Health insurers’ “sins” don’t justify “reform”

January 24th, 2010 by Brian

The Daily Camera (Boulder) published a shorter version of my Pajamas Media article from a earlier this month:

With so-called health care “reform” in limbo after the Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts, it’s worth examining a popular sentiment behind it: animosity toward insurance companies. Namely, insurers` profits, denial of claims, and rescission of policies. These do not justify the Democrats` goal of increasing political control of health insurance. Rather, they call attention to lax law enforcement and existing legislation that favors insurers at the expense of patients.

Read the whole article, or the longer version with citations at Pajamas Media.

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A case for privatizing airline security

January 20th, 2010 by Brian

Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz have a very good article on the subject at USA Today.  It begins:

After the underwear bomber’s attempted mass murder, Americans are losing patience with the airline security system. It is bad enough that our screening process makes innocent people work far too hard to prove that they are not terrorists. It also manages to make it too easy for actual terrorists to be treated as innocent.

President Obama said the security system failed “in a potentially disastrous way.” He’s right. So how can we improve it?

The security process needs several things it is lacking. It needs continuous adaptation, with a strong focus on satisfying customers and improving results. It needs to find new and better methods of meeting the demands of customers who value safety as well as speed and efficiency. It needs to function in a dynamic environment, disciplined by rigorous competitive pressure.

In short, it needs the market.

Kiling and Schulz make great points, anticipate the opposition, and point out that

While most passengers don’t realize this, the TSA itself permits a handful of airports, such as Kansas City and Rochester, to use private security contractors under its Screening Partnership Program.

Read the whole article:

Airline security: Let’s go private: A market-based apparatus might lead to better service and — most important — safer air travel.

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Proposed Boulder plastic bag ban: authoritarian environmentalism that suffocates freedom & creativity

January 17th, 2010 by Brian

Background from Daily Camera:

Shopping in Boulder could get greener if some local students have their way. Inspired in part by a ban that passed in San Francisco in 2007, New Vista High and University of Colorado students are drafting an ordinance that would prohibit businesses — such as grocery stores — from using petroleum-based plastic bags. What do you think of the students’ idea?

My response, published in the January 16 edition:

If plastic bags are banned, would stores provide paper bags instead? This wouldn’t be “green.”  The Washington Post reports that compared to plastic bags, paper bags require “more than four times as much energy to manufacture,” generate “70 percent more air and 50 times more water pollutants,” and require 85 times more energy per pound to recycle.  In landfills, “plastic bags … take up so much less volume than paper bags,” says archeologist and landfill excavator William Rathje.

Or how about reusable canvas bags?  I use one from Vitamin Cottage, but should I?  Canada’s National Post reported that “two independent laboratories found unacceptably high levels of bacterial, yeast, mold and coliform counts in the reusable bags.” A nice “environment” for groceries. In addition to food poisoning, “significant risks include skin infections such as bacterial boils.”  Don’t forget, washing these bags consumes energy and resources.

And what about poor people?  No more free trash bags. Their grocery bills will go up, as stores will raise prices to cover costs of buying pricey paper bags. Those who use fabric bags would also spend more on laundry to keep them sanitary.

Most fundamentally, banning plastic bags is an intolerant strain of authoritarian environmentalism. It violates the rights of consumers and business owners to live as they please.

The students should promote creative voluntary ways to reuse plastic bags.  For example, as a college freshman in 2001, Tom Szaky founded TerraCycle, Inc. Its slogan: “Send us your trash! We’ll make it into cool products!”

* * *

Not included in the article:

TerraCycle’s totebag made from Target shopping bags.

Should we be forced to fund the “bag police” to stake out grocery stores to make sure they are not (gasp) giving away plastic bags? It would OK to sell them, though.

Other resources:

Read the rest of this entry »

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Value freedom? Watch The Singing Revolution

January 10th, 2010 by Brian

The documentary’s trailer:

Interview with one of the directors giving background and summary:

For a couple more videos and background, see Reason.tv’s page on Estonia and the Singing Revolution and the documentary’s website.

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Fornication in public parks

January 1st, 2010 by Brian

Earlier this week I finished reading Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty, a senior editor at Reason magazine.  It’s a great read for anyone interested in the history of the free-market activism in the United States.  Here’s one of my favorite parts.  Nothing deep, but worth noting, from page 585:

Libertarians do enjoy their badboy reputation, especially among conservative ranks, for taking the personal liberty thing as far as it can go. As an old movement joke goes, “You libertarians are the types that would allow fornication in public parks!” What do you mean, public parks?”

And in case you’re wondering, a Google search for “privately owned parks” does return some hits.  The top hit is an article in an economics journal that says

Privately owned parks continue to proliferate worldwide. Their rapid expansion represents an important yet little understood private sector incursion into an activity long dominated by governments.

Photo of private park sign: from an on-line ad for Cookeville Tennesee vacation cabin rentals.

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Paul Krugman: “crazy,” “lunatic,” “irrational extremist”

December 28th, 2009 by Brian

I’m not calling Paul Krugman any names.  I am just quoting what Dr. Krugman  says about people who disagree with him on Congress’s requiring guaranteed issue medical insurance:

So why are so many people complaining? There are three main groups of critics.First, there’s the crazy right, the tea-party and death-panel people — a lunatic fringe that has moved into the heart of the Republican Party. In the past, there was a general understanding that major parties would at least pretend to distance themselves from irrational extremists. But those rules are no longer operative. No, Virginia, at this point, there is no sanity clause.

A second strand of opposition comes …

“Crazy, “lunatic fringe,” and “irrational extremists,” an implication of insanity.   Dr. Krugman does not bother to articulate opposing views, let alone refute them.  He prefers to impugns their character and psychological well-being.

Remember, Paul Krugman is Nobel Prize winner, a Professor at Princeton University, and New York Times columnist.  These are top credentials, as if you need the reminder.  Yet, I would expect to find his type of argument, or lack of argument, in a school playground or posted anonymously on an on-line discussion group.  What is more disappointing is that the New York Times editors consider such rhetoric “fit to print.”

Paul Krugman has avoided addressing arguments for years, as economist Arnold Kling noted in “An Open Letter to Paul Krugman” back in 2003. It begins:

Dear Paul,

You might remember me from graduate school at MIT. I would like to ask you a question about what constitutes a reasonable argument.

For example, suppose I were to say, “We should abolish the minimum wage. That would increase employment and enable more people to climb out of poverty.”

There are two types of arguments you might make in response. I call these Type C and Type M.

A hypothetical example of a Type C argument would be, “Well, Arnold, studies actually show that the minimum wage does not cost jobs. If you read the work of Krueger and Card, you would see that the minimum wage probably reduces poverty.”

A hypothetical example of a Type M argument would be, “People who want to get rid of the minimum wage are just trying to help the corporate plutocrats.”

Paul, my question for you is this: Do you see any differences between those two types of arguments?

I highly recommend reading the whole letter for examples of Paul Krugman uses “Type M” arguments.

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