Posted on 12/12/2010 11:50:05 AM PST by neverdem
America is choking on laws of our own making.
Once a law is in place in the United States, it's almost impossible to dislodge. Our political class assumes that, after a law is forged in the crucible of democracy, it should be honored as if it's one of the Ten Commandments - except it's more like one of 10 million...
--snip--
Sunset laws have been proposed from time to time, and they were a domestic priority for President Jimmy Carter. "Too many Federal programs have been allowed to continue indefinitely," he wrote to Congress in 1979, "without examining whether they are accomplishing what they were meant to do."...
--snip--
Americans know that the government is broken. According to a recent Clarus Research Group poll, 80 percent agree with that conclusion. By the same overwhelming majority, Americans also agree that the government "needs a basic overhaul" and should undertake "an annual 'spring cleaning' to eliminate unnecessary regulations and red tape."
Our founders never intended democracy to be a one-way ratchet, making laws but almost never unmaking them. Thomas Jefferson famously advocated small revolutions from time to time, believing that they are "as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. . . . It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." This is the medicine that America very much needs today.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against... We’re after power and we mean it... There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”The answer to this is widespread non-compliance and armed resistance.
--Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Philip K. Howard, a lawyer,
That’s the only reason WaPo let him in the door.
For little people. If you ran your company into the ground and need a bailout, if you committed fraud, but with good intentions, if you need to violate accounting rules, if you need to make sure the right candidate wins, then laws are an inconvenience. Laws are there to determine who is in the club. If you have to obey the laws, you are not in the club.
Well, it is certainly a timely reminder that we need to reform and simplify our laws.
The tax code is the one most often talked about. Eliminate a few thousand pages of exceptions, to start with, and balance them with equivalent across-the-board tax cuts so that taxes don’t go up as a result.
The EPA is another obvious place to look. And the financial regulations, which seem mainly designed to crush competition while helping the big boys to cheat.
Affirmative action is another obvious place to start. All men (women, and children) are created EQUAL.
But I suspect we also need to finally put the screws to the tort lawyers. Some sort of lid needs to be put on liability lawsuits, if we are ever to get back to a simpler, more open kind of life.
Then it would be nice if we could throw out all the crooked, activist judges.
Utopia, anyone? Well, at least let’s make a start.
You beat me to it.
US Citizens and Resident Legal Aliens
Gross Income * 0.08% = Total Federal Tax Burden
No Deductions, no loopholes, nothing. Flat 8 percent.
US Owned and Operated Businesses and Corporations.
No Taxes.
The we need to get something done syndrome. No, they need to get a lot Undone.
jury nullification
After Friday's dueling Narcissist presser I really am fearful of where our country's headed.
I have said for sometime that the problem with us is that “we don’t have the rule of law, we have the rule of lawyers.”
The government is broken and it must be sterilized.
.08% = a total tax of $80 on an income of $100k. While that’s a lovely idea, it won’t pay for our military, much less anything else.
Jurors are carefully selected to have no knowledge of this and many other topics. The only desirable skill of a juror is to listen to the "professionals," and judges are very much in support of this arrangement. There are plenty of people who can't find the USA on the map, and those become jurors who decide who is guilty and who is not. That's how Jammie Thomas verdict came to be.
how about another “house” of congress devoted to repealing laws?
My solution...In order to pass one law you must REPEAL 100 until we get back to the original 10. Even that would take millenia.
It’s obvious he meant 8%, he actually stated that in his next sentence.
If you multiply a number by 0.08, you get 8% (8 parts of one hundred).
Pedantry is unbecoming.
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