Colorado HB 1193: stop this Internet sales tax

Contact your Colorado state senator about opposing this bill.  From Vincent Carroll in the Denver Post:

HB 1193 requires out-of-state online retailers to collect sales tax from Colorado customers if those businesses have a relationship with a local “affiliate.” …

Democratic lawmakers are sleepwalking toward approval of a bill that could have the state dunning tens of thousands of Coloradans for unpaid sales tax on Internet purchases with retailers such as Amazon. Now won’t that be a popular election-year gift to voters?

…  For any on the fence, let me offer a short list of the bill’s deficiencies.

* It is almost certain to put Coloradans out of work.

* It won’t produce nearly the promised $4.7 million in tax revenue for the next fiscal year.

* It could result in the state harassing citizens for often paltry sums that most didn’t even know they officially owed – and which almost no one actually pays.

Carroll writes that “[f]our House Democrats did break ranks to oppose House Bill 1193, which survived by just a single vote in its journey to the Senate.”  Read the whole article: Amazon buyers, beware: State has it in for you.

Also see this post from ReveNews: Overstock Threatens to Terminate Colorado Affiliates Over Pending Legislation.

And don’t forget to contact your Colorado state senator!

Obama icon: the power & danger

From Pajamas Media TV:

“Barack Obama ran an unprecedented Presidential campaign – utilizing the power of design to help secure the seat of the President of the United States of America. However, his iconic emblem, the ever present “O”, holds more power than even Obama knows. Bill Whittle points out the dangers of branding an ideology with an icon and how, perhaps, the powerful symbol will be used against the very man it built up.”

(via Reason.tv)

Colorado Election 2009

The People’s Press Collective has good resources for Colorado Elections 2009.  Ross Kaminsky has additional comments for the Boulder election 2009 and the Jefferson County election.

Obama: your parent, guidance counselor, principal, etc., etc.

Gene Healy of the Cato Institute says it quite well:

The president isn’t a benevolent father-protector, charged with the welfare of all creatures great and small — and educators do kids a great disservice if they help promote such a childish notion. Still less was he supposed to be the educator in chief, presiding over a centralized education bureaucracy, handing out Title X grants (with strings attached) and falsely promising that no child will be left behind. The framers thought of the president as a mere constitutional officer, whose main job is taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. Students — and presidents — could stand to learn a lot more about how far we’ve drifted from that ideal.

Read his whole op-ed, Hey, Mr. President, Leave Those Kids Alone, and check out more criticism side-by-side with Obama’s speech to kids in school.

Colorado town hall meetings

I am maintaining a list of upcoming Colorado town hall meetings where people can discuss health care policy. If you know of others or if any I list are wrong, please e-mail me.

Come “together,” right now, it’s the law

As published in today’s Daily Camera:

Do you want politicians to put you “in it together” with others, or would you prefer to reserve that choice for yourself?

Last Tuesday guest editor Clay Evans wrote that one of President-elect Obama’s “great challenges” will be to “bring us together.” While defending Social Security, Obama himself has written that we “need to reclaim the idea that in this country, we’re all in it together. That is America’s very promise…”

When a charismatic speaker says this, it can make you feel hope, that you’re part of a community, or inspire you to voluntarily cooperate with others to achieve great things. Or such talk could make you suspicious and skeptical, as you might react to a snake-oil salesman or an aspiring cult leader. In either case, you can choose either to participate or walk away.

But you cannot walk away from an elected politicians who claim “we’re all in it together.” Politicians “bring people together” with legislation. If you peacefully refuse to cooperate with such legislated “togetherness,” you’re a criminal and can end up in prison. For example, if you think Social Security <a title="nice political cartoon” href=”http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/medicare-explained/”>resembles investing with Bernie Madoff, try opting out. When politicians legislate how “we’re all in it together,” law enforcement can punish us for not cooperating with their wishes.

Instead, politicians should promote policies that respect individual rights. That is, our right to associate with, or be “together” with, others on a peaceful and voluntary basis. Respect for individual rights: this should be America’s promise.

[pdf as published in print edition]

AP: News or pro-Obama bias?

The Associated Press reports that president-elect Obama’s proposed economic policies caused the stock market to close higher on Monday.  But do the authors,  Joel Bel Bruno and Tim Paradis, give any evidence for this causal relationship, or do they just assert it?  Here’s how the article starts:

A stock market gaining in confidence shot higher for a second straight session Monday as investors bet that President-elect Barack Obama’s plans to increase infrastructure spending will help lift the economy back to health. The major market indexes jumped more than 3 percent, and the Dow Jones industrials’ nearly 300 point advance gave the blue chips their highest close in a month.

Obama’s plan calls for the largest U.S. public works spending program since the creation of the interstate highway system a half-century ago. That could bolster the economy by putting thousands of people to work building schools and other construction projects.

His weekend announcement gave a lift to a range of companies, from machinery makers to materials producers. Alcoa Inc., the world’s third-largest aluminum producer, surged 18 percent on the news; while heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. jumped 11 percent.

From what I can tell, the only support for the claim is a quote by someone in the financial sector:

I think people recognize that the government is going to throw everything that they can at this market, everything they can at the economy to make it work,” said James Cox, managing partner at Harris Financial Group.

This says nothing.  Where’s the evidence that Obama’s “weekend announcement gave a lift to a range of companies”?  I am not saying that it did not, but where’s the evidence?  Did they do a survey of people who bought stock today?  Did they collect any information?

Worse, the AP story says Obama’s policies “could bolster the economy.”  But what about mentioning the possible negative results of Obama’s policies, as the New York Times mentions?  (For more on this, see here.)

Even when a survey of journalists shows that they do lean left relative to the rest of the country, this is no excuse for not substantiating claims.

On a lighter note, check out this screenshot from Yahoo!, which shows an image of pork next to the article about Obama’s proposal economic policies.

How the GOP Lost My Vote

Paul Hsieh has an excellent essay on this in the Denver Post:

After a resounding electoral defeat, in which voters in this once-red state rejected Republicans McCain, Schaffer, and Musgrave, the Colorado Republican Party will undoubtedly be asking themselves, “Why did we lose?”

I want to let them know that they lost the vote of many former supporters (including myself) because they have chosen to embrace the Religious Right.

I voted Republican in 1996, 2000, and 2004. I believe in limited government, individual rights, free market capitalism, a strong national defense, and the right to keep and bear arms – positions that one normally associates with Republicans.

But I didn’t vote for a single Republican in 2008. I’ve become increasingly alienated by the Republicans” embrace of the religious “social conservative” agenda, including attempts to ban abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and gay marriage.

The Founding Fathers correctly recognized that the proper function of government is to protect individual rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. But freedom of religion also implies freedom *from* religion. As Thomas Jefferson famously put it, there should be a “wall of separation” between church and state. Public policy should not be based on religious doctrines.

Read the rest here.

Support tax-funded schools? Then donate your own money.

The Rocky Mountain News published my letter to the editor last week:

Amendment 59 backers should send refunds to schools

Let the “begathon” begin! That’s what educators would need to raise school funding because Amendment 59 failed, said Colorado Association of School Boards director Jane Urschel (“Despite defeat, Ritter aims for budget fix,” Nov. 6).

But fundraising should be easy – if 59′s supporters simply put their money where their vote is. Since 59 failed, taxpayers will receive a refund when the state collects excess taxes. Why not donate it to schools?

Amendment 59 would have sent about $50 million in annual tax surpluses to government schools. Since almost a million Coloradans voted for it, that’s a $50 donation each. As a tax-deductible donation, it’s even less. Just forgo dinner and a movie one weekend.

Surely voters who want government to spend their own tax refund – and everyone else’s – on government schools would donate voluntarily, right? Or would they prefer to support a school of their choice, a scholarship fund, or other causes they deem worthwhile?

In a previous essay I addressed a common argument against the above point of view:

Another common argument in support of [taxing people to pay for schools] is that “we all benefit from it.”… In any case, just because you benefit from something does not mean you must pay for it.  We benefit if others have food, shelter, clothing, and good hygiene, but this doesn’t mean government should force us to buy food, shelter, clothing, and soap for others.

(What does this have to do with Barbara Streisand?  She supports tax-funded schools. (Photo credit.))

The Road to Serfdom: Like Catching Wild Pigs

This parable is does an excellent job explaining how the incrimental growth of seemingly benevolent government programs can result in taking away our freedom.

[A student asks a professor...], ‘Do you know how to catch wild pigs?’ The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. ‘You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again.

You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat; you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught.

Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms — just a little at a time.

Paul Hsieh linked to this parable when discussing Obama’s health care plan.  More on The Road to Serfdom here.