Year: 2013

President Obama Wins War on Terror

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , ,

President Obama chooses to give an important speech on peace the week before the day when Americans remember those who died to save their freedom-loving society, and to save many others (including me). President Obama declares in a recent speech that the war on terror, like all wars, must end. Then he ends it by declaring it ended. This happens about a month after two terrorists who happen to be Muslims blow up a bomb killing children at a public even in Boston. (The act was denounced by representatives of the Boston Muslim community.)

President Obama’s announcement also takes place one day after two men shouting something in Arabic comprising the word “Allah” assassinate a young man in full daylight in London. They use knives and ask passers-by to film the event. The speech happens also one or two days before a similar assassination attempt is carried out in Paris on a French soldier. (The attempt fails because French -grown terrorists are not a so competent.) London Muslim authorities condemn the first attack loudly and clearly. I am awaiting the French Muslim response as I write.

(In the same speech, President Obama also orders restrictions on the use of killer drones. I welcome some of the announced changes. The president is no always wrong, just most of the time.) Continue reading →

La mauvaise foi

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Liberty , , , ,

Le mensonge adulte me fascine depuis longtemps. Le mensonge collectif m’intrigue particulièrement. La mauvaise foi de tout un groupe, toute une caste ne cesse de m’étonner. Pourtant, Jean-Paul Sartre l’avait bien analysée (avant d’en donner lui-même des exemples inoubliables).

Je commente quelquefois sur ce blog l’indifférence aux faits que je rencontre souvent dans les medias français. (Voir: “Un Menteur bien français”) Un ami parisien, avocat et réalisateur talentueux de documentaires (avec beaucoup de coeur) m’écrit sa colère sur le même sujet. Mon ami se place à gauche (à mon avis, seulement, “l’option défaut” – une autre histoire) tandis que je suis un conservateur “anglo-saxon” classique (pas nationaliste, pas gaulliste, pas religieux). Voici, ci-dessous, son texte retouché seulement un petit peu pour protéger quelques susceptibilités particulières. L’écriture y est celle qu’on trouve dans un courriel (“maille” en Franglais) expédié rapidement a un ami. – JD

Parlant des journalistes français en général:

En attendant aussi, je pense que la journaliste (de la télévision), Madame X, comme 90% des journalistes (français en tout cas) sont bien trop fainéants pour faire leur travail. En l’occurrence vérifier l’information, ce qui est le B-A BA de leur métier.

..et en plus ( ceci allant souvent avec cela), ils sont d’une incroyable prétention (suffisance, arrogance, plein d’autres mots me viennent à l’esprit les concernant).

Sur plusieurs sujets, j’ai moi-même fait l’expérience de leur nullité.

Par exemple, sans doute as-tu suivi l’affaire Cahuzac, ce ministre du budget qui a planqué du fric ã l’étranger et qui a nié jusqu’au bout, quitte à mentir de la tribune de l’Assemblée Nationale.

Un seul journal, sur le web, Mediapart a sorti l’info. Son patron Edwy Plenel a été traîné dans la boue par tous les autres journalistes et, notamment, les stars de la télé. Pourtant Edwy Plenel n’avait qu’un mot à la bouche à leur adresse: “faites votre travail”.

Autre exemple beaucoup plus grave encore: l’affaire Al Dura, du nom de ce gamin qui se serait fait buter dans les bras de son père par l’armée israélienne, pris dans des tirs croisés à un carrefour de Gaza. Il se trouve que le seul mec, au départ, et qui se bat seul depuis plus de 10 ans, pour expliquer au monde que c’est une mise en scène, est l’ami d’un ami, Philippe Karsenty. Un jour je suis allé l’écouter, il faisait une conférence sur le sujet. Il a montré les rushes qu’il avait réussi à soutirer à France 2, la seule chaîne qui ait, à l’époque, diffusé ces images. Et là, on voyait comment les faits avaient été mis en scène par les Palestiniens et comment l’enfant bougeait à la fin des rushes; comment surtout, on le voyait prendre dans sa poche un bout de tissu rouge, le placer au niveau de sa poitrine et faire le mort. Je t’assure que ces images, que j’ai vu, sont incroyables.

Le journaliste de france 2 est une sommité, Charles Enderlin. Ce jour là, il n’était pas sur place. Il a fait fait confiance à l’un des cameramen avec lesquels il a l’habitude de travailler, un Palestinien. Et il s’est fait manipuler. France 2 a soutenu, soutient, son journaliste. À intenté toute une série de procès à mon pote… Qui les a tous gagnés. Pourtant impossible d’obtenir de mea culpa de la chaîne qui continue les procédures.

Et, impossible, pour moi, d’aider ce mec depuis toute ces années. Ma nana, de 2005 à 2010, était est grand reporter au Nouvel Obs (dont Jean Daniel a pris l’initiative de lancer une pétition de soutien à Charles Enderlin).  Je lui ai proposés plusieurs fois de rencontrer Karsenty. NIET. À la fin, je crois que le commencement de la fin,avec elle, date d’une engueulade à ce sujet: “Karsenty était un psychopathe à moitié facho, un abruti qui avait le malheur d’être très à droite, maire adjoint de Neuilly, proche de Sarkozy, et moi un imbécile qui ne méritait pas d’autre explication de son refus”. À un point, citant un de nos copains communs, grand Reporter à Telerama, elle s’est exclamée qu’il avait fait une super enquête qui prouvait ses dires que Karsenty était un taré.

Je me suis procuré l’article du copain dans Telerama… Pas
une fois la parole n’était donné à Karsenty. Alors, j’ai demandé a ce dernier… Et tu t’en doutes déjà, inutile de prolonger le suspense, jamais il n’a rencontré le grand reporter de Telerama qui l’a pourtant assassiné dans son article.

Pire encore sur ce même sujet. J’en ai parlé à mon amie Annick Cojean. Je l’adore et elle est sûrement une des journalistes françaises les plus respectée par ses pairs en France ( grand reporter au Monde, prix Albert Londres et présidente de ce prix), comme dans le monde ( elle est l’auteure de ce best seller mondial, “les proies” en français, sur le harem de khadafi et traduits en plusieurs langues). Elle m’a expliqué qu’une journaliste, également prix Albert Londres, Catherine Gentile, de TF1, avait expliqué au conseil d’administration du prix, qu’elle connaissait vraiment bien Enderlin, que c’était un très grand journaliste et qu’il ne pouvait pas avoir été manipulé et que le cas échéant, il aurait fait acte de contrition. Et, en plus, dixit, “elle avait tout checké, le gosse était bien mort dans les conditions que l’on sait. Elle avait fait l’enquête”.

Très bien. Ai-je dit.  Puis: “Avait-elle rencontré Karsenty”? Renseignements pris par Annick… Tu te doutes de la réponse, Non évidemment.

Annick voulait-elle le rencontrer… Tu te doutes de la réponse ( quoique quelque peu embarrassée).

Et pourquoi, je te raconte tout ça? Et bien, parce qu’enfin, Israël bouge et a décidé de publier les rapports sur l’enquête que l’emmerdeur de Karsenty l’a contrainte de mener et qui conclut que l’enfant n’est très certainement pas mort comme le montrent les images de France 2 et que Karsenty a très certainement raison.

Si tu veux, je t’envoie le lien de l’article. Ça me fait plaisir pour Karsenty…. qui a été traîné dans la boue depuis toute ces années. J’espère qu’on va, enfin, le prendre au sérieux et vérifier ce qu’il avance. Dommage qu’il ne soit pas journaliste… Il serait sûrement le prochain lauréat du prix… Albert Londres!

Commentaires?

The Obama Administration: RIP

Warren Gibson Current Events, Liberty, Politics

OK, that pronouncement is a bit premature. But if the Republicans hold the House next year as seems likely, it’s a done deal. Just keeping track of all the attacks on the administration has become quite a chore. And quite a few of those attacks are coming from Obama’s base of support.

  • The press is howling about the Justice Department’s heavy-handed subpoena of journalists’ phone records. “A fishing expedition for sources and an effort to fend off whistleblowers” is how the New York Times editorial board describes it. This issue isn’t going away any time soon.
  • Then there’s Guantanamo, the closing of which was to be Obama’s first priority upon taking office in 2009. Thus New York Times commentator Joe Nocera:  “The president could have jumped through the hoops Congress now requires and continued moving prisoners out of Guantánamo. But he didn’t. Instead, he froze all transfers, including 56 men from Yemen who had been ‘cleared’ for transfer by a national security commission that Obama himself established. The government, the commission essentially said, has no national security interest in holding these men. Yet Obama continued to let them rot in that Cuban hell. And you wonder why they are on a hunger strike?”
  • Some unions are mad at Obama as Brandon Christensen pointed out on this blog, where he quotes one union’s demand: “repeal or complete reform” of Obamacare.
  • The IRS scandal may have a shorter half-life. The Times correctly points out that Presidential use of the IRS to bludgeon political enemies goes back at least to Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. Still, it’s heartening to see the Tea Party rejuvenated, with street protests and blogs pointing out that thuggish behavior is a long-standing and probably irremediable attribute of the IRS.
  • Waiting in the wings is Dodd-Frank. This financial “reform” act is mostly not yet in effect because the agencies are trying to figure out how to write the rules that will actually put into practice the clear-as-mud intent of the law. It’s a near-certainty that this law has fixed nothing and that another financial crisis will hit, possibly before Obama leaves office.  Already we see signs of bubbles in the housing and stock markets.

“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer,” said Will Rogers. Three years of gridlock, if we’re fortunate enough to get it, should hide away the hammer, at least for a time, from both Congress and the President.

Reading Hayek in Beijing

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , ,

That’s the subject of a fascinating account of life in China through the eyes of a dissident in this last week’s Wall Street Journal. An excerpt:

Put another way, the conventional notion that the modern Chinese system combines political authoritarianism with economic liberalism is mistaken: A more accurate description of the recipe is dictatorship and cronyism, with the results showing up in rampant corruption, environmental degradation and wide inequalities between the politically well-connected and everyone else. “There are two major forms of hatred” in China today, Mr. Yang explains. “Hatred toward the rich; hatred toward the powerful, the officials.” As often as not they are one and the same.

There is more, too: Continue reading →

ObamaCare Snark

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Politics , ,

Oh, the delicious irony. From Yahoo! news:

Unions backed the health care legislation because they expected it to curb inflation in health coverage, reduce the number of uninsured Americans and level the playing field for companies that were already providing quality benefits. While unions knew there were lingering issues after the law passed, they believed those could be fixed through rulemaking.

But last month, the union representing roofers issued a statement calling for “repeal or complete reform” of the health care law. Kinsey Robinson, president of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers, complained that labor’s concerns over the health care law “have not been addressed, or in some instances, totally ignored.”

“In the rush to achieve its passage, many of the act’s provisions were not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences that are inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer-sponsored coverage could keep it,” Robinson said.

Well no shit Sherlock. There is more: Continue reading →

Duckshit and Bullshit in Santa Cruz, California.

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Today, interestingly right before Memorial Day, thousands of residents of Santa Cruz are hiding their faces like a bunch of old nuns who would have caught sight of a naked man by mistake. (I should stop saying this; it’s may not be fair to nuns.) The cause of their emotion: a front page article in the local newspaper about one of the most obvious beaches in town being grossly polluted. The newspaper is itself a grossly  biased greenie-liberal sheet that can’t spell. (It has its good days once in a while but I can’t figure out why.)

Something like this happens regularly with the most attractive beaches in the area pointed to by the severe index of pseudo-science, or of quasi-science. The last time I looked into it, it turned out that natural lagoons had been allowed to form on the offending beaches,  stopping the flow of small creeks. Ducks and seagulls had gathered in there, of course and done  for weeks on end what waterbirds will do in the water. The solution: Breach the sand dam that allows for the lagoon;  sea water downstream then tests clean within a day or so.

At the time, local surfers organizations and many greenie mouthpieces had darkly commented as if it were a known fact that the high bacteria count near those beaches was due to human fecal matter. It was not. It matters. I would not let my grandchild swim in duck shit but the fact is that it’s less likely to infect humans with human disease bacteria than do human feces. Got it? Continue reading →

Around the Web: Disappearances

muricaderp History, Links, Politics , , , , ,

1. Ron Unz, founder and editor of The American Conservative, skewers the mainstream American media for dropping the ball on all sorts of major scoops, including:

2. Richard Nixon’s abandonment of hundreds of surviving American prisoners of war after the end of hostilities, at a time when he had declared that all surviving POW’s had been repatriated; and

3. John McCain’s exceptionally weird and disturbing role in the decades-long stonewalling of investigations into the fate of these men and efforts to repatriate any survivors.

4. On a separate but similar topic, a discussion of some possible fates of Indian independence leader and Axis collaborator Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose, aka Netaji, officially died in a plane crash in Taiwan, but is widely believed to have died in the Soviet Gulag, to have disappeared into civilian life in asylum in the Soviet Union, and to have lived into his eighties as a “mysterious holy man” in Uttar Pradesh.

Optimism and Despair in a World of Injustice

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The infamous development economist William Easterly recently tweeted that writing about spontaneous order without citing Friedrich Hayek is now “mainstream cool,” while writing about spontaneous order and citing Hayek makes one an ideological extremist. This biting critique of intellectual discourse, a mere 140 characters long, does more than just expose the drastic ideological shortcomings of the modern Left. It highlights the endlessly interesting obstinate ignorance that collectivists of all stripes have historically displayed toward the basic theoretical and moral insights advanced by libertarians.

In a recent Freeman essay by anthropologist Mike Reid, a pattern similar to the one noticed by Easterly emerges in the actions of central planners aiming to preserve the cultural heritage of a number of ethnic groups that have been deprived of their property rights by the very governments now looking to preserve their cultures for them. Reid takes examples from India and Canada and finds that the logic of preserving a specific culture does not hold up to scrutiny.

On the policies of the government of India, Reid writes: Continue reading →

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links, Politics , , , , , , , , ,
  1. Are you a liberal imperialist? Stephen Walt asks the question and lists ten signs that you may be one.
  2. Will Obama attack Syria in the face of so many domestic scandals?
  3. Libertarians care about more than just themselves. Bryan Caplan explains why.
  4. Big Country Blues.
  5. Great post on civil society and its work exposing police corruption. Don’t forget that police departments are now heavily unionized…
  6. Human Rights and Democracy Statistics. A short, informative video by a Swedish epidemiologist and statistician.
  7. Ha. Ha.

Ham-Fisted Coercion and Incompetence versus the Invisible Hand of Self-Interest

henrymoore Books, Economics , , , , , , , ,

A Tale of Two Hands

I came across Gary Galles’ recent article in The Freeman about Leonard Read’s analogy of government coercion as a clenched fist, “The Clenched Fist and the General Welfare.” I see a symmetry between this analogy and Adam Smith’s about self-interest unintentionally channeled into market organization, one that is so familiar to free market proponents and detractors alike that it is a common metaphor: the invisible hand.

Government coercion and market organization. Two very important concepts for any libertarian to master. Which one better provides for the general welfare? Smith and Read would contend the latter. The reasons for this are contained in the analogies. As Read and Galles point out, not much good can come from a clenched fist. Only violence and incompetence. It can punch. It can pound. That’s about it. What better description of government? Likewise, as Smith notes, the usefulness of markets is that they do better than government many of the noble things government tries to do, thereby rendering it redundant, if not unnecessary, in those areas. The all-too obvious fist of government regulations and mandates is no match for a more efficient, less obvious hand: self-interest. Continue reading →

Markets Strengthen Moral Values

Fred Foldvary Current Events, Economics , , , , , , ,

[Cross-posted at the Progress Report]

Pure markets enhance people’s moral values. In a pure market economy, all activity is voluntary for everyone, and involuntary acts, those which coercively harm others, are outside the market as an invasion of rights. A pure market includes the governance that enforces natural moral law, thereby promoting acts that are good or neutral, while minimizing evil acts.

Critics of markets have claimed that when people search for the cheapest goods, this reduces moral concerns. But in a pure market, the products offered are produced by moral means, i.e. by a process that does not involve coercive harm. Therefore searching for the lowest-cost goods is not evil. Only when goods are produced by immoral means, such as with slave labor, is the product morally bad, but that could not occur within a pure market.

Unfortunately, some economists who conduct research on human behavior leap to incorrect conclusions because while they have been trained in experimental techniques and mathematics, their graduate-school training did not include market ethics. For example, Prof. Dr. Armin Falk at the University of Bonn and Prof. Dr. Nora Szech at the University of Bamberg conducted experiments in which persons were offered a choice between receiving ten euros versus letting a laboratory mouse get killed. If a subject decided to save a mouse, the experimenters bought the animal (“Morals and Markets”), allowing it to live a decent life. Continue reading →

What is the “Chinese Dream”?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

The short answer is that it is the new slogan that new Premier Xi Jinping (who hung out in Iowa as a youth) has come up with. The longer answer is that it is basically a knock-off of the “American Dream” used here in the States, but minus the folksiness and with the added predictability of being engineered from the top down to harness a buoyant nationalism in the post-socialist state.

From Lily Kuo, writing in Quartz:

 Xi used the word “dream” at least 23 times in his speech to accept the post of president. Xi spoke of the need to “build a strong, democratic, civilized, and harmonious modern socialist country and to attain the Chinese Dream of the great renaissance of the Chinese nation” […]

In Xi’s estimation, the Chinese Dream isn’t meant to be a collection of individuals’ hopes and aspirations. Instead, the dreams of Chinese citizens are to be shaped to fit the government’s vision, rather than the other way around. To that end, the Chinese government has tasked “educators” with uniting “the Chinese dream [with] the dreams of youth and students, to grow up and become useful members of society,” according to the People’s Daily […]

Elusive expressions like Jiang Zemin’s “three represents” (which refers to the three pillars of the party—military, culture and public interest) and Mao Zedong’s “destruction of the four olds” (which connotes the destruction of pre-communist Chinese values) catalogue important transitions in China and form part of each leader’s legacy […]

There is more, and it is very interesting indeed, including the “Seven Don’t Mentions”:

constitutionalism, democracy, civil society, neoliberalism and Western media bias.

Don’t ask me why there are only five! When you read it, do try to remember my short essay on the future of Chinese nationalism. I also think it is pertinent to note that even our scandal-wracked President has not, and does not, procure paternalistic slogans the way the Communist Party in China does. In fact, the American people haven’t dealt with these kinds of slogans since the fascistic Roosevelt administration and his “new deal.” This is not to say that I think Obama is anything more than a thug in a nice suit, but only that our liberal democratic foundations are stronger than we sometimes realize (thanks largely to the same free press that Obama has been trying to intimidate lately).

As an added bonus, here is a collection of our short notes about the fact that fascism and communism are just two strands of the same vile idea: paternalism.

See the Cat: The Heart of Economics in One Story

Fred Foldvary Economics , , , ,

A man was walking down a shopping street and came to a store window where there was a big drawing full of lines and squiggles. A sign by the drawing asked, “Can you see the picture?”

All the man could see was a chaos of lines going every which way. He stared at it and tried to make out some kind of design, but it was all a jumble. Then he saw that some of the lines formed ears, and whiskers, and a tail. Suddenly he realized that there was a cat in the picture. Once he saw the cat, it was unmistakable. When he looked away and then looked back at the drawing, the cat was quite evident now.

The man then realized that the economy is like the cat. It seems to be a jumble of workers, consumers, enterprises, taxes, regulations, imports and exports, profits and losses – a chaos of all kinds of activities. Here are fine houses and shops full of goods, but yonder is poverty and slums. It doesn’t make any sense unless we understand the basic principles of economics. Once we have this understanding, the economy becomes clear – we see the cat instead of a jumble. We then know the cause of poverty and its remedy. But since most folks don’t see the cat, social policy just treats the symptoms without applying the remedies that would eliminate the problem.

What is this economics cat? It starts with the three factors or resource inputs of production: land, labor, and capital goods. Land includes all natural resources and opportunities. Labor is all human exertion in the production of wealth. Capital goods are tools (such as machines and buildings) used to produce wealth. The owners of land get rent, workers get wages, and the owners of capital goods get a capital return.

Picture an unpopulated island where we’re going to produce one good, corn, and there are eleven grades of land. Continue reading →

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , , , , ,
  1. Danny Huizinga riffs off of Dr Gibson’s article on mathematical models in economics
  2. Longtime reader –Rick shares some eye candy of another kind
  3. Shang Jun and Wu Xia, advocates for free trade in China, take EU protectionists to task
  4. French philosopher and economist Guy Sorman asks What is the West?
  5. Economist Scott Sumner on Swedish liberaltarianism

The IRS Crimes: a Gift from Providence to Libertarians

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

Anyone who has libertarian sentiments, in the Libertarian Party or outside of it, in the Republican Party, or elsewhere; anyone who sees himself as supporting the non-existent, imaginary “Tea Party,” is familiar with the difficulty of explaining even basic libertarian principles. There are three problems:

First, most people are lazy, especially when it comes to re-examining the creeds they absorbed in childhood or youth.

Second, libertarianism is paradoxically too familiar to draw interest. It’s more or less what you learned in high school about the work of the Founding Fathers. (Digression: It’s more interesting for immigrants like me than for the US-born precisely, because we had no superficial exposure to it at the time we had acute testosterone poisoning.)

Third, libertarianism is not sexy. It does not enjoy the emotional ease of access that big words procure: “Revolution,” “Justice,” “Fairness,” “the Future.” In other words, it’s not a cartoon; it ‘s not a reality show; it’s not a vampire movie. It’s an intellectual stance for adults only. Tough call!

Sometimes, though Providence throws us a lifeline. Now is such a time. A libertarian Hollywood scriptwriter, if there were one, could hardly come up with a better script than the current controversy regarding the IRS role in singling out conservative organizations, in persecuting them, in forcing them illegally and immorally to disgorge private information about opponents to the Obama administration. Or about imagined opponents.

The IRS storm happens at the same time as other Obama administration discrediting events:

It is trying to convince America that it did not deny protection to the assassinated Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and that it did not subsequently lie about what happened;

It is imposing on all American universities restrictions on free speech unheard for centuries in the Anglo-American legal tradition. (See Greg Lukianoff in the Wall Street Journal of 5/17/13);

It is attempting to justify spying on journalists on the basis of an unknown national security risk. (It might be justified. There are tried ways to convince the nation that the spying was justified. President Obama shows no intention of using them as I write.)

As far as the IRS persecution of Obama opponents, in my mind, it’s not a question of who is getting fired or of “who is going to jail.” Punishment of the more or less guilty would be low on my agenda. There is a more fundamental problem that is being pushed aside in televised congressional testimonies and in most of the printed press (I think. I welcome corrections.)

Given that the IRS exists as a very powerful, autonomous, large government organization of ordinary but overpaid people, with a proven capacity to hurt large numbers of citizens, it was bound to happen.

That the IRS is a government organization matters a great deal because , in practice, such organizations enjoy immunity from lawsuits. They exist beyond the reach of the arm of the law. But the rule of law is what largely defines civilized societies, of course. Such organizations as the IRS thus tend to pull us back toward a lesser state of civilization. That’s true irrespective of who is president and, to an extent, independent of which party is in power. If you have a famished and crazy dog chained in the backyard, you should not reassure yourself that everything is under control because it’s your house, not that irresponsible, other guy’s house.

It’s true that the IRS crimes now being discussed were somewhat more likely to take place under a Democrat administration. First, the Fascist current runs deep in the middle of the Democratic Party river. It’s the party of Roosevelt, who classically, used war to place as much of the American production apparatus under federal government control as he could reach (even artists). Second, the Democratic Party was the Party of Birmingham’s Bull Connor, of his attack dogs and of his water hoses aimed at peaceful black demonstrators. The Democratic Party is also most closely associated with labor unions, some of which (not all) have a history of thuggery extending a century or more.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, is not sinless but it carries in its veins an instinctive mistrust of government power which serves as some protection though as minimal protection. The rank-and-file Republican is much less likely than his Democrat counterpart to assume that anything is correct just because the government is doing it. Nevertheless, frankly, is there anyone who would assert with a straight face that the currently revealed IRS misdeeds would never happen under a Republican administration?

The truth now staring us in the face is that a free society simply cannot have in its midst a monster such as the IRS (described above). It should not be allowed to arise. If its exists, it should not be allowed to grow (as with the Obama administration giving it big additional responsibilities within Obamacare). Such a government bureaucracy should be given practically no discretion, no power to pass judgment without at least close judiciary monitoring.

How about collecting taxes for freeways, some will say? Supposing it has to be the federal government’s task to build freeways (just supposing) and to perform other necessary functions, it should be done with a simple flat tax allowing no deductions. It should be a low tax of 15% of gross income or less. (I live within my means; so can the government learn to do.) Federal tax collection would look like this.

You would receive a short postcard saying:

“1. Your income last year was___.

2. Send 15% (or less ) of that amount.

Thank you.”

Tax cheaters would have to deal with the local sheriff who would be paid a flat fee for each recovery.

Unrealistic? How about our existing system, is it realistic?