Barack Obama’s disturbing proposal for ”universal voluntary public service” (as Michael Kinsley pointed out, it can either be universal or voluntary, but not both) just got a lot more traction with the selection of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. J.D. Tuccille observes that Emanuel is a long-time proponent of compulsory national service. Emanuel is co-author of the 2006 book The Plan, which includes the following:
It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service. …
Here’s how it would work. Young people will know that between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service. They’ll be asked to report for three months of basic civil defense training in their state or community, where they will learn what to do in the event of biochemical, nuclear or conventional attack; how to assist others in an evacuation; how to respond when a levee breaks or we’re hit by a natural disaster. These young people will be available to address their communities’ most pressing needs.
Tuccille also notes that Emanuel dismisses the whiners who “will squeal about individual freedom.” (That would be us.) It sounds universal all right, but not exactly voluntary.
1. Pass the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) Act, which would lower the cost of health insurance by providing tax credits, market pooling, ratings reforms and administrative cost savings.
2. Pass health information technology legislation to streamline record-keeping, reduce errors and create efficiencies in the healthcare system that cut costs.
3. Make the current marginal rate tax cuts permanent, keeping individual and sub-S tax rates low.
4. Make small-business expensing permanent at a level of $250,000 per year, while ensuring that expensing and bonus depreciation provisions don’t penalize small-business owners who are unable to place new equipment in service in the same year the purchase is made.
5. Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax.
6. Enact permanent federal estate tax relief with a $5 million per person exemption and a tax rate no higher than the top marginal rate.
7. Create a small-business net operating loss carry-back extension that allows small business owners to offset taxes paid in previous years with this year’s losses.
8. Defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as card-check legislation, which would significantly raise the cost of wages and benefits for newly unionized small businesses.
9. Defeat any attempts to expand the Family Medical Leave Act to smaller businesses, which can’t afford to pay for the required leave.
10. Defeat any attempt to require small businesses to offer paid sick leave to employees.
Yesterday Mayor Bloomberg announced the immediate cancellation of the city’s annual $400 property tax rebate checks. I always thought the rebate checks were a sham — they should have simply reduced property tax rate — but the canceling the program amounts to a de facto property tax hike. Mike is also proposing a 15% increase in the city’s income tax and a 3% hike in the city’s portion of the sales tax. And he says he’ll likely be asking for more tax increases in January.
Wow, good thing the city extended term limits so we could benefit from this guy’s financial wizardry. I’m sure Weiner, Thompson or any of the other mayoral wannabes could never have thought of raising taxes themselves.
In New York State, it is illegal to promote a candidate within 100 feet of a voting booth. Yet here is our junior senator electioneering for the Democrats inside the polling station, about 5 feet from the nearest booth:
Given that the odds of a New Yorker casting the deciding vote for president are 1.9 billion to 1, I tend not to take voting too seriously. Even if Bob Barr somehow triples the results of the last Libertarian presidential candidate, that would only give him about 1% of the electorate, so I’m even that convinced that voting sends an important message.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a passionate Libertarian activist, and I think it’s very important to run principled Libertarian candidates who can communicate an uncompromising freedom message when people are most likely to listen. It’s just that I think their job is done by election day. I still vote, but it’s for the same high-minded reason that I moon Mike Bloomberg’s townhouse whenever I’ve had too much to drink on the upper east side. And I expect it to be just as effective.
I always vote only for Libertarian candidates. This year there were two Libertarians on my ballot — Bob Barr for president and Isaiah Matos for U.S. Congress, 14th District — and I proudly pulled the lever for each of them. (Actually, the vote for Barr was really a vote for myself and others, since I’m a candidate for presidential elector.)
There were a lot of other offices on the ballot where no Libertarian candidate was listed. In those races, I always write in a candidate. I refuse to be pressured into giving even a symbolic affirmation to some statist idiot just because I’m only given a choice of statist idiots. And although some states require write-in candidates to be registered, in New York you can write in whoever you want, and their name will be tabulated in the official results.
(Many New Yorkers don’t know how to cast a write in vote. On the far left side of the city’s antiquated voting machines, there is a column of little metal sliding windows. There’s a button at the top of the column. Hold down the button, and you will be able to slide open the metal windows, revealing paper fields where you write in your candidate’s name. There’s usually a little pencil affixed to the left wall of the voting booth for write-in purposes.)
So, without further ado, the rest of my votes were as follows:
Justices of the Supreme Court (select any 4): Alana Lesczynski, Sara Lesczynski, Benjamin Lesczynski, Dawn Fox (These are my three kids and my wife, respectively. I brought my daughters into the voting booth with me, and they were very excited to see me write in their names. My 4-year-old Sara asked me what she would do as judge. I told her she probably wouldn’t get enough votes and should work on her concession speech.)
Surrogate: Mark Axinn (vice chairman of the LPNY; secretary/treasurer of the Manhattan Libertarian Party)
Judge of the Civil Court – County: Ron Moore (chairman of the Manhattan Libertarian Party)
State Senate, District 25: Joseph Dobrian (longtime MLP activist; likely Libertarian candidate for mayor in 2009)
Assembly, District 64: Jak Karako (perennial MLP candidate and hardcore activist, now living in New Jersey)
After I left the voting booth I realized that I forgot to vote on the proposal to amend the state constitution to give additional civil service credit for service in the armed forces. It’s just as well. Who frigging cares if one part of the government gives credit for service to another part?
“You’re voting for who?” I’ve been asked by friends and relatives who wonder why I’d waste my vote on Libertarian party candidate Bob Barr. “You might as well stay home” some advised. “What a dopey thing to do!” one threw in.
This coming from people who complain about the mafia-style duopoly our government and political process have become. People who’d rather vote for the lesser of two evils, rather than what they truly believe. And who can blame them? It’s not easy taking third, fourth and fifth party candidates seriously when the Democrats and Republicans make it next to impossible for any viable options. The GOP for example, has succeeded in keeping Bob Barr from the presidential debates, and was nearly as successful in keeping him off the ballots in certain states.
It’s still a financially Herculean task to compete against the two major parties’ multi-million dollar campaigns to get their candidate into a job that pays only $400,000 per year. And one which they must resign from after 8 years anyway. Simple math doesn’t justify such an insanely expensive job campaign. But it makes sense when one adds up what the interest groups behind those campaign dollars have to gain.
Which is why listening to Obama talk about his plan to improve our public schooling system by hiring “an army of teachers” as opposed to more results oriented voucher programs, I hear the teachers’ unions talking. Listening to McCain speaking about victory in Iraq even if it takes 100 years, I hear weapons contractors strategizing. Listening to them both talk about “tackling” the global warming hype now touted as climate change, which is inevitable, I hear a number of energy industry lobbyists and environmental groups who stand to gain from a $78 billion dollar a year cap and trade agreement.
Yet when I’ve listened to Bob Barr speaking about the dire need to cut government spending and entitlement programs, I not only hear a sound, responsible economic principle, but I hear the average hardworking American who’s fed up with their tax dollars being insufferably wasted by inept governmental agencies that have become unionized bureaucracies. I hear people who understand that real needed change doesn’t need to be a trillion dollar yearly deficit. I hear those who realize voting for policies that actually work, let alone they believe in, is far less “dopey” than staying at home and letting an all too powerful two-party system shut you up, and shut you down altogether on yet another election day.
Chances are if you are reading this your state is pretty much decided. Yahoo lists only 4 battleground states with a total of 24 electoral votes. After a long swing toward the Republicans, the pendulum has started swinging back towards the Democrats and it now appears it will get burried on the left in this one. The Democrats’socilaism failed so badly in the 60’s and 70’s the voter’s punished them with a sustained shift to the right. Now the Republican’s have outdone themselves with complete and abject failure and the voters appear to be ready to try the Democrat form of failure again.
It’s true each cycle of failure wasn’t the work of one party alone. The Democrats and Republicans are both corrupt and incompetent. They both promote only war and mercantilism and the economic slavery that brings.
But we can make another choice – a better choice.Are you willing to live in a world where the game is so rigged that you are forced to choose between fascist failure and socialist failure? If we truly care about the future of the planet why not create better range of choices.
A vote for McCain or Obama makes no difference at this point. For that matter in all the votes you might cast for Congress or Senate, for State Assemblies or for local races, a vote for a Democrat or Republican only rewards and encourages failure and corruption. In New York the people voted twice for term limits but King Michael snaps his fingers and his jesters in City Council trample the will of the people. Congress votes for bailouts against the overwhelming sentiment of the voters. The Supreme Court says no to medical marijuana states and yes to taking little old ladies’ houses for the benefit of mercantilists in city hall and the corporate boardroom. Legislators don’t even read the bills that create laws they force on us.
Are you willing to sit there and take it?
The news on Wednesday morning could be the press will be extolling the Obama mandate.His lopsided victory will be seen as the people’s instructions for more bailouts, higher taxes, more government intervention in our lives and consequently less freedom to live our lives as we see fit.
Or it could be the surprisingly high vote for third parties that denied Obama a mandate.Or it could even be that one or two Libertarians or Ron Paul Republicans might even get elected.It could be the message that the American people have woken up and we aren’t going to be used anymore as beasts of burden to fetch and carry for the ruling mercantilist class.
A vote for McCain or Obama is a vote for continued submission.Any vote for a Democrat or Republican, with the exception of the Ron Paul Republicans is wasted.
