Monthly Archives: January 2015

Trust

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First we have the NSA collecting personal telephone call data. Now we find out about this shadowy program, which was uncovered only because DEA had to give up its existence pursuant to a criminal case involving a man accused of planning the export of technology to Iran:

The Drug Enforcement Administration has formally acknowledged that it maintained a sweeping database of phone calls made from the United States to multiple foreign countries.

And

…the program relied on administrative subpoenas to collect records of calls….

Not even a secret, but at least Article III, judge granting (or, rarely, refusing) warrants to search. Now we have, also, the same sort of warrant issued administratively (but just as sub rosa if not outright secretly).

What other secret databases is the Federal government keeping on its employers, us citizens?

These two programs, shrouded as they’ve been, are illustrations of why government cannot be trusted with such collections absent open, publicly sought and issued or refused 4th Amendment warrants. These two programs demonstrate instead that, without such public requests and issuances/denials, the Constitution will be ignored at convenience.

An aside: DoJ says this DEA collection program has been discontinued. There’s no evidence, though, that the database has been destroyed. DoJ is only willing to claim that the contents have been deleted. We know, of course, from IRS deletions that deleting doesn’t necessarily mean deletion.

Wrong People Punished?

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A Southern California high school basketball coach has been suspended and faces accusations of mercilessly running up the score after his team won a game 161-2, one of the most lopsided scores in state history.

Based on what misbehavior, exactly?

The coach, Michael Anderson of Arroyo Valley High School’s girls’ basketball team had some comments.

I didn’t play any starters in the second half. I didn’t expect them to be that bad.

And on any do-over, perhaps

I wouldn’t play the game at all.

But what would that teach his girls? What would such an insult teach the opposing team’s girls?

The losing coach, Dale Chung of Bloomington High, also had some remarks.

He’s a great X’s and O’s coach. Ethically? Not so much. He knows what he did was wrong.

What about you, Ace? Where are your ethics in your lack of preparation of your team? You set them up for this loss. Where are your ethics with your “They’re victims” nonsense instead of your teaching them to play the game, or even (gasp!) to compete?

I have some questions.

Why must the girls on the winning team’s bench, who are trying to earn a starting position on their team, be held back from doing their best during their chance on the floor?

What about the opposing team’s girls, who offended the game with their apparent lack of effort on the court?

What about the opposing team’s girls’ parents, who didn’t bother to teach their children how to compete?

What is California trying to do to the children in its schools’ care?

Never Met a Tax Increase

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…he didn’t like, this Progressive. President Barack Obama wants $320 billion in tax increases over the next 10 years in order to give tax credits to his version of “the middle class.”

This is rank, stinking wealth transfer. Nothing else. He doesn’t even intend to use the revenue to pay down the national debt he’s exploded over the last six years. The worst part of this is that Obama and his Democratic Party accomplices actually think this is right. The rich should “pay their fair share,” and government needs to spend the money. Never mind that “the rich” already pay 70% of the US’ income tax bill, while the bottom half(!) pay 3%-4%. Conveniently, these…Democrats…never get around to specifying what a “fair” share might be. Meanwhile, the debt keeps growing.

And

Obama also wants to close what the administration is calling the “Trust Fund Loophole,” a change that would require estates to pay capital gains taxes on securities at the time they’re inherited.

Here’s a thought. Work with me on this, it’s a hard concept for some to get: lower all income taxes to a single flat rate with no deductions, subsidies, credits, what-have-yous, and with no special treatments for this or that source of the income. Lose the death tax altogether; government should quit trying to profit from a citizen’s tragedy.

Stop using the tax code for social engineering. Have all Americans pay the flat rate, and leave in the hands of the heirs their loved one’s accumulations.

Now there’s no need for tax credits for some, which necessarily comes at the expense of others. The money inherited isn’t the government’s money, either; the government has no legitimate claim on it, and pecuniarily, it has no need of it.

Removing the tax code from the social engineering business eliminates the influence of a lot of special interests and lobbyists, too. ‘Course, that’s a problem for all politicians….

A Tax Cut

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The Wall Street Journal had a thought on one. Our gas tax should go away. Completely.

The gas tax began in 1956 as a 3¢/gal tax that was intended to fund, via the Highway Trust Fund, building…highways and bridges. Today, that tax stands at 18.4¢/gal (and 24.4¢/gal on diesel). The gas tax has roughly matched inflation over those 58 years.

However, HTF spending has not, nor has it been kept to building highways and bridges. Today, that money also gets spent on

mass transit in merely six metro areas and sundry other programs for street cars, ferries, sidewalks, bike lanes, hiking trails, urban planning and even landscaping nationwide.

None of whose riders or users pay a single red cent to the HTF.

WSJ‘s alternative?

Simply using the taxes that are supposed to pay for highways to, well, pay for highways makes the HTF 98% solvent for the next decade, no tax increase necessary.

More than that, with more than 70% of highway spending already done by the states and not the Federal government, the States can allocate their own funds (a related example: who’s paying for California’s “high speed” train boondoggle? Not just Californians), make their own decisions regarding spending priorities, without freeloading off their neighboring states’ citizens’ tax money. The Federal gas (and diesel) tax can be done away with once the HTF’s spending is refocused.

Where are the Republicans on this? The WSJ had a thought on that, too, in the same article.

An Intolerance from Anti-Discrimination

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Atlanta Fire Department Chief Kelvin Cochran has been fired from the Department altogether by Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. Cochran’s reprehensible crime? He wrote a book, Who Told You That You Were Naked?, about morality from the Bible’s perspective. He also wrote about his views of homosexuality as informed by the Bible.

Reed suspended Cochran for a month over that book, and then on the day Cochran was to return to duty, Reed fired him. Reed said he did it because

I profoundly disagree with and am deeply disturbed by the sentiments expressed in the paperback regarding the LGBT community. I will not tolerate discrimination of any kind within my administration.

And yet, Reed is committing exactly that bit of miscreancy. He’s discriminating against a Christian man for his Christian beliefs. Reed’s willingness to be tolerant, and his claim to be anti-discrimination, are to be extended only to those who agree with him. To those who don’t think like he does, he gives the back of his hand, and he tells them to hit the bricks.

This is a textbook example of what the Bible is describing when it talks about hypocrisy.