The Daily Kos finds a huge loophole in the Harry Reid health bill:
(2) SPECIAL RULES.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law—
‘‘(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES.— In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure.
‘‘(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.—The Secretary shall not—
‘‘(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section, or
‘‘(ii) levy on any such property with respect to such failure.
Funny how none of the MSM outlets have found this – a blog has to break it. They will probably take this out, though.
#38 News flash, buddy: people use particular situations to express philosophies that apply to larger situations. That’s what makes a writer great. Now you, you’re looking for justification for your viewpoint (as we all are) and you don’t like the implications of what he wrote applied to a greater sphere, so you assume he meant nothing more than what applies to the immediate situation. While I assume he was speaking in a larger sense. See how it works, disagreeing opinions?
#40 Dang, you’re resorting to technicalities. All those vaunted libertarian principles, out the window.
So local taxes ripped brutally from your wallet without your permission are OK, but federal taxes ripped brutally from your wallet are not OK? What kind of libertarian are you? Don’t you believe in freedom???
#41, I don’t think I see it that way. Seriously. In other letters, he was quite sure that public welfare was “bad.”
Farther down the letter he specifically talks about the amendments he would support, as they had learned quite a bit in the 40 years he’d been a politician:
1. General Suffrage.
2. Equal representation in the legislature.
3. An executive chosen by the people.
4. Judges elective or amovable.
5. Justices, jurors, and sheriffs elective.
6. Ward divisions. And
7. Periodical amendments of the constitution.
#42, You don’t know anything about libertarianism if you think we don’t support our local communities.
http://lp.org
has a good definition of what we do an don’t support.
Ah, I’m giving you a hard time, LL. I feel bad when I debate someone about their religious beliefs. I don’t want to shake your faith in your libertarian religion, if that’s what keeps you going. Sorry about that.
#45, It’s not a religion. And I don’t feel shaken at all. Quite the contrary, I feel invigorated whenever I can point any misunderstandings.
Now that you know we aren’t debating religion, do you wish to continue or are you going to devolve into personal attacks some more?
#43 #41, I don’t think I see it that way.
Yes, I understand. You have a different opinion than I do. So why are you so arrogant about your opinion, as if you have some knowledge that everyone else doesn’t have? We’ve all read the same writings of the founding fathers, and we have lots of different opinions about what they meant. Yours is just one of many.
#44 Community is community. At what size does it stop being good and start being evil? 100? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000?
Why is 100 people organizing to help fight fires in one town good, but 100,000,000 people organizing to clean up the air and water in an entire nation bad?
Sorry LL, but libertarianism has much in common with religious beliefs. It’s not a religion per se, there’s so many pat answers that have little to do with reality (hey, let’s all sue big polluters to stop them from polluting, meanwhile the waters run orange and green and purple until we succeed) that it’s hard to take it seriously.
#48, Because if you had read what he actually wrote, over the whole letter, and not just a couple of sentences, you would come to the same conclusion. That is called “comprehension.”
For example, if you read the sentence, “I never said she stole my money,” you really don’t know what it means because you don’t know the context.
However, if you highlight the different words, the whole meaning changes.
* “I never said she stole my money” – Someone else said it, but I didn’t.
* “I never said she stole my money” – I simply didn’t ever say it.
* “I never said she stole my money” – I might have implied it in some way, but I never explicitly said it.
* “I never said she stole my money” – I said someone took it; I didn’t say it was she.
* “I never said she stole my money” – I just said she probably borrowed it.
* “I never said she stole my money” – I said she stole someone else’s money.
* “I never said she stole my money” – I said she stole something of mine, but not my money.
That is why you can’t pick and choose a single passage from a 5 page letter and expect to understand what the whole letter was about.
(example stolen from wiki).
Why is 100 people organizing to help fight fires in one town good, but 100,000,000 people organizing to clean up the air and water in an entire nation bad?
Because the town charter says they can and the U.S. Constitution doesn’t give them the power to do so.
#49, I would say that Democrat and Republican have more in common with religion. You listen with blind faith to your leaders.
Libertarianism promotes self-awareness and rejects heard mentality.
#51 sigh — herd not heard.
#50 Sigh… great writers have written about specific circumstances while expressing larger principles, throughout the ages. Just because you choose to believe he meant nothing more than what he wrote, doesn’t mean that he wasn’t trying to make a larger point. We don’t know, so we each have our own opinion.
Because the town charter says they can and the U.S. Constitution doesn’t give them the power to do so.
Even heavier sigh… thus do the libertarians make a fetish of the original Constitution, whose writers knew nothing about industrial air and water pollution on a global scale. Taking action on a national scale to face a national problem is not in the original Constitution, but suing for redress is, ergo, individuals are reduced to suing mega-billion dollar corporations in libertarian world.
Thanks for the discussion, LL. And for illustrating why libertarianism will always be a fringe movement. I have nothing more to say.
#53, Oh, he was talking about larger principles. And he spelled out those principles in detail as shown in #43. I am not arguing that. I am arguing that he didn’t mean it to include state-sponsored welfare. That is certainly his stance from his earlier and later letters.
Unless I am mistaken, I believe you are trying to use that quote to justify a stance he actually stood against? If you are, you are most certainly wrong. And that isn’t opinion, it is fact.
Taking action on a national scale to face a national problem is not in the original Constitution, but suing for redress is, ergo, individuals are reduced to suing mega-billion dollar corporations in libertarian world.
That is the purpose of the federal government. If someone violates someone else’s property rights, they are in the wrong. If someone commits fraud, they are in the wrong.
I have nothing more to say.
Typical. Why do you always run away when confronted by superior logic?
Hmmmm, libs are saying health care is supposed to be non-profit. If that’s so, why would anyone go into health care when they could make more money and a better life for themselves in a different field? Becoming a doctor is *hard*. There needs to be a payoff. America has the best doctors overall for a reason. Our fine Congressional Clownfest is removing that reason. 10-20 years from now (or sooner) we will all suffer for it.
“Even heavier sigh… thus do the libertarians make a fetish of the original Constitution, whose writers knew nothing about industrial air and water pollution on a global scale. Taking action on a national scale to face a national problem is not in the original Constitution, but suing for redress is, ergo, individuals are reduced to suing mega-billion dollar corporations in libertarian world.
Thanks for the discussion, LL. And for illustrating why libertarianism will always be a fringe movement. I have nothing more to say.”
Actually, you had a lot less to say than you thought.
I want to address this point you keep raising because you seem to think that it supports your world view when in fact, it doesn’t. The reason people didn’t sue polluters wasn’t because they couldn’t afford to, it was because they weren’t allowed to.
Under the common law, if someone was making your laundry filthy and your butter black by putting a lot of soot in the air you certainly had standing to pursue some remedy or compensation probably before a jury of your neighbors.
But when “regulation” enters the picture, the polluter is protected from your complaint if he is complying with the regs. If you don’t like it, you can move.
Nobody is going to set up a factory if the locals can tie them up in court indefinitely and there is really no hope of just grinding them down when a whole neighborhood is involved. If you are in business to make a profit, your best bet is to move on.
Also, a significant difference between law and regulation is that with law, your representative has to vote one way or another and possibly be held accountable for the vote. With regulation, once the public is hoodwinked into accepting it, the actual formulation of the regulation is handled by people you don’t vote for. Those same people are usually looking forward to retirement after which they will receive a job and an enormous paycheck from one of the companies they formerly regulated.
All they have to do to get that job is to maintain a congenial relationship with the regulated industry.
So, from a purely Capitalistic viewpoint regulation is probably the cheapest and most effective route for getting what the robber-barons want.
I know that you will always champion regulation as the “dictatorship of the proletariat” but in fact, in practice, it is a Capitalist tool.
The libertarian objection to regulation is that it is rule by faceless bureaucrats at best or by the mob at worst and in any case tends to grow like a tumor long after it has proven to be counter-productive.
But you are right, we are pretty rigid in our thinking: if it’s not freedom or justice, it’s crap.