The Freedom Bulletin

…would be to raise the income tax. So, what do you know, I opened up the Globe this morning to find an editorial in support of just that.

This editorial, by state senators Sonia Chang-Diaz and Jamie Eldridge, has so many things wrong with it that it will be hard to list them all. But I am going to try.

First, they write that “there are no easy solutions” and that “cutting alone will not get us out of this budget crisis.” Actually, cutting is a fairly easy solution, and it will get us out of the budget crisis if we cut enough. There is $3 billion less in revenue then at this time last year, so cutting $3 billion will solve the budget problem. It will be unpopular and will be painful to some people, but it is the right thing to do.

Then, they write that “taxes are the way that we, as a society, pay for the things we value: education, police and firefighters, and public transportation. Each day we rely upon government services, public infrastructure, and state regulation, paid for by our taxes, in order to allow us to work and raise a family.” I think it’s more accurate to say that taxes are a way that other people force me to pay for the things that they value. In addition to education, police, firefighters, and transportation, taxes also pay for free food, housing, cars, medical services, contraceptives, and baby supplies for poor people. I don’t know about you, but I don’t value free stuff that I am not allowed to get because I have too much money, nor do I value free stuff that I would never use (like the last two). Plus, firefighters, and possibly also education and transportation, can and should be privatized so that they are not paid for with taxes. Yes, we do use public infrastructure, but this, along with police, the military, and the court system, are the only things that should be funded with taxes. Using the word “rely” is going a little too far; that makes it sound like people are getting something they don’t deserve just because roads and laws exist. Also, not everyone raises a family.

Next: “A fair tax system asks residents to contribute to the cost of government services based on their ability to pay – and few people would consider a tax system to be fair if the poorer you are, the greater proportion of your income you pay in taxes.” No, a fair tax system asks residents to contribute based on how many services they use or how good of a person they are, or asks each resident to contribute the same amount. I guess I am one of those “few people,” because I consider a lump sum tax to be the fairest tax.

“Of course, there is nothing more regressive than a budget cut, particularly to programs that help the most vulnerable among us.” Why does that make budget cuts bad? And what do you mean by vulnerable? Vulnerable to what? “Poor,” “sick,” or “badly-off” would be a better word. Programs that only help those whom the government have decided are vulnerable are discriminatory against those who aren’t vulnerable.

“We applaud the House on its tough vote to raise the sales tax, because any means of raising revenue right now is a better solution than drastic cuts to vital services.” Actually, it’s the exact opposite. Any cut is a better solution than an increase in revenue.

“Because the income tax is more progressive, it relies more heavily on those who can most afford to pay it.” Why is that good?

“There are also ways we could modify the income tax to make it even more progressive.” Great idea! Let’s take something that is unfair and make it even worse!

“We rank in the bottom half of all states in terms of the overall amount of taxes we pay as a share of personal income.” That’s a good thing. Wouldn’t you want to keep it that way or even improve? I guess not if you’re a Democrat.

In short, raising the income tax is the absolute worst thing Massachusetts could do to solve the budget crisis. Chang-Diaz and Eldridge should be ashamed of themselves for advocating something so immoral and unfair.

Note: Sometime in the next few days I will put up a list of things that I would cut from the state budget, to show that it is possible. The budget is so long that it’ll take a little while to go through it all, but I hope to have my budget up ASAP.

…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!!!!

Hell has frozen over! Massachusetts might actually cut its budget! Yesterday the state legislature proposed a budget for fiscal year 2010 that is $700 million lower than that of 2009. The House’s budget is $57 million lower than Governor Patrick’s proposal. Best of all, the budget contains no proposals to raise taxes!  The Boston Globe (which I really hope stays in business even though I disagree with its politics) might not be happy about this, but I sure am!

Ways and Means Chair Charles Murphy told the Boston Herald that “It’s not pretty, but that’s what we’ve got.” I beg to differ. I think that a smaller state government is beautiful! Although there is a lot more that the state could and should cut, I am amazed that the budget is finally going in the right direction. The Globe calls it “the greatest reduction in year-to-year spending in recent memory.” I certainly don’t see anything wrong with that!

Among other things, the House budget proposal cuts local aid by 25%, makes state employees pay for 30% of their health insurance, cuts funding for seniors’ home care and rental vouchers for low-income people, and eliminates Shannon grants, which are used for anti-gang advocacy, the Quinn Bill, which pays for police officers’ education, and the volunteer program Commonwealth Corps. It fully funds court-appointed lawyers at $192 million, which I think is a good use of state money because it protects people’s constitutional rights.

The House has until tomorrow to file amdendments, debate on the budget will start on April 27, and then the State Senate will get to propose its own budget. I really hope that the House budget is for real and ends up passing, and that the legislature doesn’t change its mind and decide to raise taxes. Maybe Speaker DeLeo and the rest of the House aren’t so bad after all. It seems like there might be hope for Massachusetts.

Recently, it seems like every law the Massachusetts State Legislature passes restricts our liberty. Here are some examples:

• In 2006, it became illegal to ride in a car without a seat belt. Officers now have the power to stop a car just because they see someone not wearing a seat belt, and issue a fine to the “offender.”
• Since 2006, all Massachusetts residents are required to have health insurance. This is a blatant violation of people’s rights to choose how they want to spend their own money. I guess it didn’t occur to the Legislature that in a capitalist country, the economy should be based on people choosing to buy the products and services that they want, not being forced to buy what the government thinks they should.
• In June of 2007, the Legislature killed a measure to allow the people to vote on whether or not to ban gay marriage. There goes the people’s right to democracy.
• On September 1, 2007, getting a license became a lot harder for teenage drivers. Thankfully, the legislature didn’t raise the driving age to 17 1/2, as some people wanted, but they increased training requirements from 6 to 12 hours behind the wheel at drivers’ education and from 12 to 40 hours driving with a parent or other adult.
• A law went into effect on July 10, 2008, that requires all children under age 8 to sit in booster seats or car seats while in the car. Personally, I started sitting in the front seat of the car without a child seat of any kind when I was 4 or 5, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Forcing a 7-year-old to sit in a booster seat is ridiculous. The government has no right to tell people how they have to sit in their own cars.
• On July 31, 2008, Governor Deval Patrick signed the repeal of the 1913 law that prevents out-of-state gay couples from marrying in Massachusetts. This spreads gay marriage to the entire country and violates the rights of citizens from other states to set their own marriage laws.
• According to ban kids under 14 from riding all-terrain vehicles, and require everyone who rides an ATV to wear a helmet. The House is in the process of discussing the bill.

Perhaps these laws have made the state safer, but collectively they have made Massachusetts a lot less free. The State Legislature seems to be slowly but surely shrinking the amount of things people are allowed to do, and that is not good. Governments simply do not have the right to ban things that aren’t immoral and don’t hurt other people.

Ronald Reagan once said, “I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.” I couldn’t agree with him more.

This is a sad day for the people’s right to vote in Massachusetts. The state legislature has just defeated a measure that would place a question on the ballot in the 2008 elections allowing people to vote on the definition of marriage. All the legislators who voted for the amendment: I congratulate you for your courage to defy peer pressure. Governor Patrick, Speaker DiMasi, and Senate President Murray, shame on you for browbeating your fellow legislators into changing their votes. The marriage amendment was victorious in the first round of voting earlier this year, but this time it fell short of the 50 votes it required to get on the ballot. Clearly, quite a few legislators changed their minds, and VoteOnMarriage.org vows to investigate these changes of opinion for corruption. I hope they find some!

Democracy lives! The Massachusetts legislature has finally decided to listen to the voice of the people and advance a ballot question on gay marriage. Now an opportunity to ban gay marriage has a chance of going before the people. See the full story at the Herald.