Negative Space: reigning in bad laws
- ACLU Encourages Police State
- By arguing against a right of effective self-defense, and by encouraging people to rely on the police for their protection, the ACLU ensures that voters will clamor for a police state.
- Bipartisanship in the defense of big government
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We’ve got to protect our phony-baloney jobs. Despite their complaints about Trump’s overreach, Democrats have introduced legislation to make it harder for them to block his administration’s regulations.
- The curse of modern legislation
- What would happen if our representatives actually read bills before voting on them?
- A customer service model of federal spending
- “If we can put a moon on the man, why cannot we devise a system whereby every state is billed by DC annually, and let the states compete for citizens to pay the taxes?” Moving from a system where the federal government taxes individuals to one where the federal government taxes state governments makes all of our lives a lot simpler and solves a lot of thorny civil rights issues as well.
- Don’t mess with the deck chairs, fix the boat!
- Advice for the incoming House. Make them deny it! And don’t try to fool us by changing the deck chairs.
- Driving laws too complicated for DMV
- It appears that California’s driving laws are so complicated that even the DMV and the California Highway Patrol get confused.
- Everyone Votes!
- The best way to ensure that bad laws get fixed is to ensure that the victims of bad laws retain the right to vote.
- Five Million Times Easier!
- I’ve got a way to make the IRS’ job five million times easier. And your tax forms half as difficult.
- A free market in union representation
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Every monopoly is said to be special, that this monopoly is necessary. And yet every time, getting rid of the monopoly improves service, quality, and price. There is no reason for unions to be any different.
- Has welfare failed us?
- Has welfare failed us, or have we overwhelmed the welfare system through other policies that encourage dependance and discourage economic development?
- Health care for prisoners
- Our criminal justice system must account for the possibility that it is wrong. Decent health care is one of the most obvious ways it should do this.
- Justice conjured is justice denied
- Blunting criticism of bad laws by exempting nice people.
- The Last Defense against Donald Trump?
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When you’ve dismantled every other defense, what’s left except the whining? The fact is, Democrats can easily defend against Trump over-using the power of the presidency. They don’t want to, because they want that power intact when they get someone in.
- Maintaining Educational Diversity
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A state-run education is ever a danger to a liberal, free country. At any time, demagogues can take control over the education of nearly every child in the country.
- Misplaced compassion: more deaths, less dignity
- I fear that a successful “death with dignity” movement will only exacerbate the bad laws and choices that result in excessive pain, and will result in a slippery slope towards more and more assisted suicides.
- Necessary to the Security of a Free State
- We cannot have a free state when citizens are not encouraged to be responsible for their own defense.
- A one-hundred-percent rule for traffic laws
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Laws should be set at the point at which we are willing and able to jail 100% of offenders. We should not make laws we are unwilling to enforce, nor where we encourage lawbreaking.
- Please take pity on this health care orphan
- Yeah, because of a massive regulatory bill that kills job creation, young adults don’t have jobs, and because they don’t have jobs, they don’t have health insurance.
- Proposition 75 and the California prison system
- Public-employee unions today are a money-laundering service for the state government and for perpetuating government programs.
- The pseudo-scientific state and other evils
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In 1922, following the first world war, G.K. Chesterton discovered to his dismay that the evils of the scientifically-managed state had not been killed by its application in Prussia. Unfortunately, it was also not killed by its applications in Nazi Germany.
- Speeding and budgets: Conflict of Interest
- Obviously, the money generated by speed laws creates a conflict of interest for state lawmakers, who will need more “lawbreakers” in order to meet budget numbers. But the conflict of interest doesn’t always stop there.
- The Sunset of the Vice President
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Rather than automatically sunsetting all laws (which I still support), perhaps the choice of which laws have not fulfilled their purpose should go to an elected official who otherwise has little in the way of official duties.
- Term limits
- Term limit proposals avoid real problems. They’re a superficial solution at best. Efforts directed towards enacting term limits waste time and money that could be spent solving the underlying problems: a lack of new ideas and an ability to hide legislative bribery.
- The Trial of Bill Clinton
- Bill Clinton deserves a fair trial: or at least, as fair as any of us would get under similar circumstances.
- Turning crime into a profit center
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Asset forfeiture and traffic laws have one dangerous thing in common: they turn danger into a profit center for government.
- Wachovia fines encourage drug trafficking
- Some people are wondering why no one at Wachovia went to jail for money laundering. The authorities received 160 million dollars in forfeiture and fines. Why would they want to discourage future banks from acting as Wachovia did?
- We’re all Scooter Libby now
- The justice system is out of control for everyone, not just for highly-placed politicians. Fixing it involves more than a presidential pardon.
