The Freedom Bulletin

…is more taxes. But guess what the state legislature just did? Voted to raise the sales tax!

This is absolutely ridiculous. Legislators passed the tax increase to avoid the horror of having to pass a budget that was slightly smaller than last year’s and makes small cuts in programs that shouldn’t even exist in the first place. How terrible that would have been. NOT!

I have never heard of a tax being lowered in Massachusetts. All that happens is taxes keep going up and up and up, and so does the state budget. Now that we have a 6.25% sales tax, unless a revolution occurs, you can bet the sales tax is never going back down to 5%. Voting no on Question 1 was an incredibly dumb decision. Foes of the question argued that there would be huge sales tax increases if the income tax was repealed. Well, the income tax sure wasn’t repealed, and there is now a huge sales tax increase anyway!

The state government needs to do what is morally right: stop stealing people’s money and redistributing it to other people who don’t deserve it. This Globe editorial bemoans the fact that the budget would have cut $4 million from food banks, $21 in home care for the elderly, $2.4 million for homeless mentally ill people, $15 million in emergency rental assistance, $4 million for students who are flunking the MCAS exam, and $22 million for drug and alcohol recovery programs. But what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with people having to (gasp!) pay for their own food, their own home care, mental health, and addiction services, and their own housing, or to study for the MCAS themselves using books or the Internet? Liberals might respond that people simply cannot pay for these things. Well, if you don’t pay for something, you shouldn’t get it. If private charities want to operate food banks, fine. But it is simply wrong for people to have their money forcibly taken from them and given to those who have less.

The Globe makes one interesting point. “Those who think they don’t need government services should thank their stars, and dig a little deeper,” the editorial reads. First of all, it is probably not true, as the Globe suggests, that success or failure in life is entirely due to luck. But perhaps it is to some extent – for example, maybe people get jobs because of their looks, the employer’s bias, or random chance, instead of their merit. That would mean that society is sometimes unjust in distributing wealth, and that some of the poor deserve to be rich and vice versa. But this is where liberals and libertarians disagree. As a libertarian, I believe that the way to solve this problem is to change the rules for how society distributes wealth, to ensure that wealth is being distributed justly. Liberals, on the other hand, have no problem with the unjust rules, but then once the wealth is distributed they want to take money from people simply because they have a lot and give services to people merely because they don’t have much. This is never the right thing to do, since it does not take into account whether the wealthy people justly earned their money, or whether the poor people actually deserve more than they are getting. Disparities in wealth are not a bad thing. What is bad is for people to get what they don’t deserve, and taxes and social programs don’t do anything to fix that.

Hopefully that long rant gave you an idea of why I philosophically oppose government-funded social programs. It’s also worth adding that in addition to being morally wrong, tax increases are bad for the economy. We need people to buy more stuff to get us out of the recession, and raising the sales tax is certain to cause the exact opposite to happen.

Thanks, Speaker DeLeo! Your budget proposal almost gave me hope for Massachusetts, but now you took that hope away. It’ll just be another year of exorbitant taxes, socialist redistribution of wealth, intrusive and oppressive government, and a ballooning budget. Hooray!

NOT!!!!

Until the other day, I never knew much about the League of Women Voters. I just assumed they were a nonpartisan organization that supported the Nineteenth Amendment (giving women the right to vote) and now are kind of obsolete and support non-controversial things like making sure everyone gets the opportunity to vote. Well, was I ever wrong! I had no idea, until I visited their website, that the LWV of Massachusetts is the most left-wing organization I have ever heard of.

The first thing I saw was the following notice:

“Thank you to all who helped defeat Ballot Question 1!”

Okay, so they have no concept of private ownership of property. Great. But the horror got worse. They have no concept of the Constitution either. Under “Where We Stand,” they list all the things they support. For “Handgun control,” they write:

“Elimination of the private possession of handguns and assault weapons.”

Noooooooooooo!!!!! I have never heard of any organization that has ever publicly held such an anti-gun position. It horrifies me that an American organization would directly oppose the Second Amendment. But IT GETS WORSE. Under “Citizen rights,” the LWV writes:

“Protection of basic constitutional rights.”

WHAT ON EARTH???? I don’t think I even need to point out that these two statements directly contradict each other. Thomas Jefferson must be rolling in his grave. Apparently no members of the LWV are aware that the Second Amendment is a part of the Constitution. The LWV gives the rape advocate on BostonHerald.com from my earlier post a run for her money as the biggest hypocrite on Earth.

So, in short, to say that the LWV is left-wing is the biggest understatement ever. They make MoveOn.org look right-wing and make Obama look like a Republican. I am disgusted and horrified by their hypocritical, anti-freedom views.

Left-wing socialists across the country have been opining that Republicans did so badly in the election because conservatism is a dying, obsolete philosophy that Americans are beginning to abandon. Well, they are wrong. I know the real reason why conservatives did so badly on November 4th – because liberals bought the election.

Take Barack Obama, for example. He spent $573 million, while John McCain, who accepted public financing, spent only $293 million. It is simply not right that one candidate can have a half-hour long infomercial on all the major networks and the other candidate cannot.

Another great example of liberals buying the election is Question 1 – the initiative to repeal the Massachusetts income tax. It sickens my heart that Question 1 was defeated 70% to 30%. There would have been no drawbacks to eliminating the state income tax and a huge benefit, namely people getting to keep their money! However, because opponents of Question 1 raised $4.5 million and supporters raised only $431,000, the government theives were able to run deceptive TV ads to brainwash the people of Massachusetts into making the irrational, immoral choice.

It is sad that people are so easily influenced by propaganda instead of thinking for themselves. The amount of money a candidate or group has should not affect their chances of winning an election. I believe that campaign spending limits need to be implemented. I don’t believe in public financing because the government shouldn’t spend money on anything but the military, the justice system, and roads, but I also don’t think campaigns should be able to spend as much as they want. Financial arms races are a waste of money, time, and energy and are collectively self-defeating. To ensure fair elections in which people have a chance to make their own decisions instead of being brainwashed, the government needs to limit the amount of money campaigns are allowed to spend.

Sources for stats:
Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org)
SouthCoastToday.com

The 2008 election was the worst election in American history. Voters as a whole made the wrong choice on almost every race and ballot initiative in the entire country.

We’ll have a socialist-leaning president who will continue to decrease people’s liberty and property rights. Massachusetts voters had an opportunity to halt the expansion of government theft and oppression, but, brainwashed by the media and the multi-million dollar ad campaign from government moochers, they let the chance slip by. The magnificent, fun sport of greyhound racing is no more. Kerry and Kennedy are still the Massachusetts senators, depriving all Republicans in this state of representation. New Hampshire, which was supposed to be the only state in New England with a remnant of sense left, elected Jeanne Shaheen the taxing machine to the Senate.

Needless to say, I am extraordinarily disappointed in the people of the United States. All true Americans need to remember that although times are bad now, we must keep fighting and never give up. This will be a terrible four years, but hopefully the majority will realize the mistake they made and will vote differently next time. Every socialist nation so far has deteriorated because there is no incentive for people to work. America is clearly headed in this direction, with Obama as president and a Democratic Congress that will eagerly agree to do anything he asks. Don’t lose hope. Eventually America will realize that socialism is not the way to go.