Saturday, November 20, 2004
James Dobson Defines Our Rights
Check this out. Apparently it's a special supplement in the Washington Post published Friday (found via AmericaBlog). It's basically a 16-page insert bashing homosexuality and gay rights. It's really quite astounding. Granted there's obviously a large segment of the country that believes homosexuality is purely a choice and believes that they aren't entitled to certain civil rights and legal protections, but then again there's a large segment of the country that believes that blacks are inferior to whites and we'd be better off not giving them certain civil rights and legal protections, and you don't see supplements in major newspapers touting their views.
Anyway, that's bad enough alone, but there's a certain paragraph in a Q&A article with James Dobson that kills me. James Dobson has seemed to me to be a fairly big jerk-off already, and I'll get to another one of his choice quotes in a minute, but this one needs to be addressed:
Now, granted, it doesn't always work out quite this well in reality. But certainly the Federal Marriage Amendment isn't designed to give us the right of marriage, it's designed to "define it", a more politically-correct way of saying "we want to spell out who exactly we can take rights away from." I like his quote saying that it's discriminatory "in the same way that the Constitution says seventeen-year-olds cannot vote." Yeah, so it's good discrimination, like the way that the Constitution said slaves equal three-fifths of a normal person. We need more of that in there - the founding fathers weren't picky enough!
Lest anyone doubt what's at stake here, Dobson spells it out for us:
Anyway, that's bad enough alone, but there's a certain paragraph in a Q&A article with James Dobson that kills me. James Dobson has seemed to me to be a fairly big jerk-off already, and I'll get to another one of his choice quotes in a minute, but this one needs to be addressed:
Q. If we change the Constitution to say homosexuals cannot marry, isn't this discrimination?Now I'm not a political science major (though I am married to one), but help me out here. I was under the impression that it wasn't the government that granted us rights. I was under the impression that we had, how shall I put it, certain unalienable rights endowed to us by our creator. My right to freedom of speech isn't bestowed upon me by the grace of this administration and Congress, it's something I have at birth - an inherent right. The Bill of Rights isn't some document listing out all the rights our government sees fit to give us, it simply lists rights which the government is explictly forbidden from taking away from us (for the most part). And for people too dense to figure this out, like Mr. Dobson here, the 9th and 10th Amendments spell this out.
A. Generally, the amendments to the Constitution define people's rights - the right to religious freedom, the right to bear arms, the right to vote at age eighteen, etc. The marriage amendment would simply define another right: the right to marry. It is discriminatory in the same way that the Constitution says seventeen-year-olds cannot vote.
Now, granted, it doesn't always work out quite this well in reality. But certainly the Federal Marriage Amendment isn't designed to give us the right of marriage, it's designed to "define it", a more politically-correct way of saying "we want to spell out who exactly we can take rights away from." I like his quote saying that it's discriminatory "in the same way that the Constitution says seventeen-year-olds cannot vote." Yeah, so it's good discrimination, like the way that the Constitution said slaves equal three-fifths of a normal person. We need more of that in there - the founding fathers weren't picky enough!
Lest anyone doubt what's at stake here, Dobson spells it out for us:
"Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage," Dobson said.I don't get it... so if we don't ban gay marriage, it's going to destroy my marriage? I'm not exactly getting how a couple of gay dudes getting a marriage certificate from the state is going to suddenly cause my marriage to implode... perhaps he could have elaborated a bit. Maybe the "destroy the Earth" thing is the key... if the Earth is destroyed, then the human race is destroyed, and thus the institution of marriage is destroyed as well, as there are no humans left to marry each other. Unless the two guys on the Space Station survive and marry each other. But even in that case I guess that's just a short-term solution. I'm still working on how exactly this would cause the destruction of the Earth, as Massachusetts appears to be doing just fine with gay marriage, but I'm sure I'm just missing something. Perhaps we need an amendment defining the right of the Earth not to explode. Though I guess Bush's opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty probably shows he would oppose such an amendment.
"It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth."
Monday, November 15, 2004
The Flat Tax
I've been enjoying the past couple of weeks where I haven't been worrying about the latest dumb thing Bush said on the campaign trail or the most recent attack ad against Kerry. After making a few posts post-election where I tried to be Mr. Amateur Pundit I decided I'd take some time off the blog and just read what other people are saying and do some stuff having as little to do with politics as possible. I've been enjoying some of the stuff over at andrewsullivan.com, if for no other reason than to get away from a lot of the hysterics on the left of "what do we do now?" Not that I don't think that's a valid question, but I'm pretty sick of all the politics after everything that's gone on over the past year, so I'd like to put off the planning for 2006 and 2008 just a bit. Anyway, one of the things Andrew's been talking about has been a flat tax, and I wanted to take a second to address some thoughts on it that have been rumbling around in my head for the past week - I'm beginning to like the idea, and let me tell you why.
First off, a flat tax in and of itself is biased neither towards the rich or towards the poor. Now, of course, I have no confidence in the Bush administration coming out with a tax plan that doesn't either explode the deficit or screw the poor, but in theory, a flat tax is whatever you make it. You could set a 20% rate that starts at the first dollar you earn and exempts all interest and investment profit - that would screw the working poor pretty nicely. Or you could set a 35% rate that only starts after you earn $100,000 a year - that would obviously be a flat tax that works very well for the lower and middle classes.
I think there's probably a middle ground that would end up giving you effectively the amount of progressiveness that our current rates have, making it so that a family making $50,000 a year ends up paying 10% of their income in taxes while a family making $75,000 a year ends up paying 20%... the kind of system liberals generally favor. I won't do the math here, but if you think about it, it's possible, you just set a minimum amount that is exempt from the tax so that people can make enough to get by without the government getting its hands in it. The greater benefit of a flat tax (constructed intelligently), and the benefit Andrew's been pointing out, is that it eliminates a lot of the loopholes and bloat in the tax code. Now this sort of tax simplification doesn't require a flat tax necessarily, but doing it in the implementation of a flat tax could give it the momentum required to break a lot of the special interests that will want to defeat such a plan.
I'm sure there are tax breaks that help the poor and other liberal pet projects that would get eliminated in such a move. But think about it, who benefits most from the complicated tax code? It's not the family of four scraping by making $40,000 a year, it's the executive making $400,000 a year, hiring an accountant to figure out how he can deduct the cost of his new Hummer. Having a 33% or 37% tax bracket at the top is meaningless if the rich can use tax shelters or other manuevering to avoid paying it. I'll gladly pay 30% on all money I make over X dollars knowing that everyone else is too. And it seems like the most fair thing to do to tax everyone at the same rate, particularly when the current progressive tax brackets really don't do that much now anyway. Plus, the ultimate goal would be to do the same sort of simplification for corporate taxes; cutting out the loopholes there would be a HUGE plus. Let's see how much the next Enron inflates their earnings if they actually have to pay real taxes on their fake profits.
Now, do I have any confidence that the Republicans in charge of both Congress and the White House will be able to cut out all these loopholes? No. Do I think that they'll craft a plan that doesn't put a heavier tax burden on the lower and middle classes? No. But it seems like it can be done, and like it would be a good, and most importantly, an achievable goal for Democrats to work towards. On the one side you've got Democrats co-opting a traditionally Republican idea of tax fairness and the flat tax, and promising less IRS mumbo-jumbo in their lives while they pay largely the same tax they did before. On the other, you've got a Republican Congress fighting to keep their special tax breaks for companies importing ceiling fans from China and obscure Cayman Islands tax sheltering loopholes. Kind of shows you who's the party of "big government" now, and who's looking out for who, hmm?
First off, a flat tax in and of itself is biased neither towards the rich or towards the poor. Now, of course, I have no confidence in the Bush administration coming out with a tax plan that doesn't either explode the deficit or screw the poor, but in theory, a flat tax is whatever you make it. You could set a 20% rate that starts at the first dollar you earn and exempts all interest and investment profit - that would screw the working poor pretty nicely. Or you could set a 35% rate that only starts after you earn $100,000 a year - that would obviously be a flat tax that works very well for the lower and middle classes.
I think there's probably a middle ground that would end up giving you effectively the amount of progressiveness that our current rates have, making it so that a family making $50,000 a year ends up paying 10% of their income in taxes while a family making $75,000 a year ends up paying 20%... the kind of system liberals generally favor. I won't do the math here, but if you think about it, it's possible, you just set a minimum amount that is exempt from the tax so that people can make enough to get by without the government getting its hands in it. The greater benefit of a flat tax (constructed intelligently), and the benefit Andrew's been pointing out, is that it eliminates a lot of the loopholes and bloat in the tax code. Now this sort of tax simplification doesn't require a flat tax necessarily, but doing it in the implementation of a flat tax could give it the momentum required to break a lot of the special interests that will want to defeat such a plan.
I'm sure there are tax breaks that help the poor and other liberal pet projects that would get eliminated in such a move. But think about it, who benefits most from the complicated tax code? It's not the family of four scraping by making $40,000 a year, it's the executive making $400,000 a year, hiring an accountant to figure out how he can deduct the cost of his new Hummer. Having a 33% or 37% tax bracket at the top is meaningless if the rich can use tax shelters or other manuevering to avoid paying it. I'll gladly pay 30% on all money I make over X dollars knowing that everyone else is too. And it seems like the most fair thing to do to tax everyone at the same rate, particularly when the current progressive tax brackets really don't do that much now anyway. Plus, the ultimate goal would be to do the same sort of simplification for corporate taxes; cutting out the loopholes there would be a HUGE plus. Let's see how much the next Enron inflates their earnings if they actually have to pay real taxes on their fake profits.
Now, do I have any confidence that the Republicans in charge of both Congress and the White House will be able to cut out all these loopholes? No. Do I think that they'll craft a plan that doesn't put a heavier tax burden on the lower and middle classes? No. But it seems like it can be done, and like it would be a good, and most importantly, an achievable goal for Democrats to work towards. On the one side you've got Democrats co-opting a traditionally Republican idea of tax fairness and the flat tax, and promising less IRS mumbo-jumbo in their lives while they pay largely the same tax they did before. On the other, you've got a Republican Congress fighting to keep their special tax breaks for companies importing ceiling fans from China and obscure Cayman Islands tax sheltering loopholes. Kind of shows you who's the party of "big government" now, and who's looking out for who, hmm?
