Category Archives: morality

Vote!

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Today’s the day. It’s not only your right, it’s your duty, to vote for your choices to represent you in Congress (and in 2016 for your choice for President, too) and for your choices in any other question on your particular ballot. Keep in mind, too, that if you don’t vote, you give increased weight to another’s vote—and he may not be voting for your interests.

As our Declaration of Independence says,

[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

And

…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This is your chance to do so.

Another Case for Tax Reform

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British Prime Minister had this to say Thursday (if that link doesn’t work, the Daily Mail has a good summary and paraphrase):

We know the economic case for cutting taxes: in a competitive world we cannot afford to carry on as a bloated, high-taxing, welfare-heavy nation.

We have to direct our resources to incentivising work through tax cuts and not incentivising welfare through extra benefit entitlements.

We have to fight the notion that you can endlessly suck more taxes out of businesses and bite the hand that feeds…. For me, the simplest way to help with living standards is this: allow people to take home more of their own money.

And

Every single pound of public money started as private earning. Every million in the Treasury represents a huge amount of hard work: early morning alarms, long commutes, hours spent on the factory floor, the office, the hospital ward, or the classroom.

The Wall Street Journal rightly offered kudos for this awakening, but they missed a key point.

[T]he case for tax cuts is as much about freedom as it is about spurring growth.

True enough. But freedom is what allows those spurs to exist. Freedom is what allows economic growth to occur. Freedom is what allows prosperity.

Democrats’ Myths

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The Wall Street Journal published a list of 10 Democratic Party myths that they’ve been pushing during recent campaign seasons. Here are a couple of their dog-whistle myths to keep in mind as you go to the polls tomorrow.

Raising the minimum wage helps the poor. The president wants to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 from $7.25, with the tagline “Let’s give America a raise.” The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the hike would cost 500,000 jobs, one blow to the low-wage earners it claims to help. Employment aside, only 18% of the earnings benefits of a $10.10 hike would flow to people living below the poverty line, according to analysis from University of California-Irvine economist David Neumark. Nearly 30% of the benefits would go to families three times above the poverty line or higher, in part because half of America’s poor families have no wage earners. Minimum-wage increases help some poor families—at the expense of other poor families.

And

Voter ID laws suppress minority turnout. More than 30 states have voter-ID laws, which the left decries as an attempt to disenfranchise minorities who don’t have identification and can’t pay for it. Yet of the 17 states with the strictest requirements, 16 offer free IDs. The Government Accountability Office this month released an analysis of 10 voter-ID studies: five showed the laws had no statistically significant effect on turnout, four suggested a decrease in turnout (generally among all ethnic groups, though percentages varied), and one found an increase in turnout with voter ID laws in place.

And again: go vote.

No Voter Fraud

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Voting machines that switch Republican votes to Democrats are being reported in Maryland. One voter reported

When I first selected my candidate on the electronic machine, it would not put the “x’ on the candidate I chose—a Republican—but it would put the “x” on the Democrat candidate above it.

This happened multiple times with multiple selections. Every time my choice flipped from Republican to Democrat. Sometimes it required four or five tries to get the “x” to stay on my real selection

And

Queen Anne County Sheriff Gary Hofmann said he encountered the problem, too, personally[.] … It occurred on two candidates on my machine. I am glad I checked. Many voters have reported this here as well[.]

And in Illinois, to Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan:

I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent. You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.

And in North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Utah. So far.

It’s never in the other direction, either. There’s never any accidental switch of a Democrat’s vote to the Republican candidate. This isn’t random error. It’ll be…instructive…to see who wins in the toss-up states and by what margin.

Review your votes, as you cast them and at the final review before you push the CAST or ENTER button that finalizes your choices, to be sure that it’s really your choices that are being registered.

But, there’s no voter fraud. Mm, mm.

A School District Apologizing

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…for expecting a child to show respect for our country and its symbols of patriotism.

A Southern California school district will apologize to an 11-year-old atheist who says his teacher questioned him because he didn’t stand during the Pledge of Allegiance.

[The student] says he kept his seat during the morning pledge at Monte Vista Middle School in San Jacinto earlier this month because the words “under God” in it violate his beliefs.

He could have stood with his hand over his heart and remained silent. He could have stood and recited the pledge, remaining silent while the phrase was being spoken by his fellows.

The binding nature of the pledge is questionable with children of this age; they’re unable to make decisions on their own, both legally and nearly always from a practical/maturation perspective. But that’s why they’re in school—to learn. Besides, the simple rehearsal of the pledge would have had its own value.

The Pledge of Allegiance, after all, is about much more than just a phrase about God, a phrase whose role in the Pledge merely is an acknowledgment of our national heritage. The Pledge is all about patriotism and fidelity to our country and the liberty for all which our country defends. A liberty which includes the freedom to worship, or not to worship, as each of us pleases.

Here was an opportunity to teach the child something about respect, something about our country, something about patriotism.

Instead, San Jacinto’s school district is going to teach a lesson of an entirely different sort.

This is shameful.