The Fight Against Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is the technique of manipulating the boundaries of a voting district in order to achieve a pre-ordained elections outcome.  Those in political power use this technique to maintain their power while still giving the illusion that those governed are choosing them in fair elections. 

Opponents of gerrymandering are fighting it on several fronts.

Maryland--  U.S. House District 6 was found to be gerrymandered in U.S. District Court.  Maryland has been ordered to re-draw its districts in a more appropriate manner.

Colorado--  Voters passed Measure Y.  It creates a commission which must contain representatives of the Democratic, Republican parties, plus must include members who are not affiliated with either party.  The commission will be responsible for drawing voting districts.

Michigan--  Voters passed Measure 18-2, which is similar to the Colorado measure.

Missouri-- Voters passed Amendment One.  It proposes that a demographer make boundaries that are fair to both major parties.

Utah--  It appears that Utah narrowly passed Proposition 4.  It appears that Proposition 4 will create an independent redistricting commission to make recommendations for fair districts.  However, the districts will still be created by the state legislature and governor.

It is amazing that in this area of modern technology measures this complicated must be designed to prevent gerrymandering.  A simple computer program could be written to make all districts of equal population without regards to ethnicity or party affiliation.  I guess that would mean certain groups could not game the system to gain power.  That is why there is resistance to such a movement.   

New York Fed President Williams Worries That Interest Rates and Inflation Are Too Low

John Williams, President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, stated that he believes that both interest rates and inflation are too low.  It appears that the problem is that if interest rates and inflation are low, the Fed cannot use it's usual trick of lowering interest rates if the economy goes into a downturn.

I don't believe that either are too low.  The Fed target of 2% for inflation is designed to help banks and other corporations with large amounts of capital.  In an inflationary environment, those who receive money first benefit.  In a world with 2% inflation, a person who puts away $10,000 in their 20s has the buying power of less than 1/2 that when they reach retirement.  In as deflationary environment, those who receive money last, like consumers and workers, benefit.  At 2% deflation, a person who puts away $10,000 in their 20s has more than $20,000 of buying power when they retire.  In a perfect world, there would be no inflation.  Deflation is actually normal in a world of industrial or technological innovation.  As less time and resources are needed to create useful items, the price of those items should drop.  Power, not a perfect world is the goal of the Federal Reserve.

It is difficult to tell whether interest rates are too low or too high.  There is no market mechanism to determine interest rates.  They are for the most part artificially determine by the Fed. Williams are worried that they are too low because they do not give him and his colleagues enough room to tinker with the economy.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson--

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency,first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks... will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

It appears that Jefferson foresaw the homeless problem 200 years ago.  The US government created the Federal Reserve anyway and it has been asserting power over our lives ever since.

George Will Writes Good Opinion Piece About Civil Forfeiture

One of the ways the government has attacked private property rights is with a method of law enforcement known as civil forfeiture.  Civil forfeiture is generally a process by which government confiscates property which is involved in the commission of a crime.  It started with drugs and money confiscated in a drug bust, but has spread to vehicles, houses and other forms of property.  The corner turned when states and the federal government started to give proceeds from disposal of the seized property to the law enforcement agencies doing the seizure.  That turned civil forfeiture from a law enforcement tool to a profit making activity.  A conviction is unnecessary to keep property in some states.  Property can be seized merely because an officer claimed probable cause.  Laws are written to make the expense and hassle to have property returned to people later found innocent that they usually do not bother. 

States have in general made out of court settlements with people who protest this process.  That has kept a reasonable precedent from being established.  Now, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case out of Indiana.  Hopefully, as George Will writes in this Washington Post column Civil Forfeiture Makes Law Enforcement Lawless... ,  the Supreme Court will soon rule to change that.

Conscious Conservative Health Care

Before health insurance was linked to employment, there was another insurance model. People like Dr. Ron Paul have called it “health insurance like car insurance” to make it easier to understand. These policies were usually called “major medical” or “hospitalization” policies. Some of them were specific, like “cancer” policies, although those were often inferior products.

Health insurance should go away in it s current form. Health insurance currently shifts the cost of healthcare from consumers to employers and the government. That creates an image of a never ending deep pocket that increases the prices charged incredibly. If people had to pay for their own services, the prices of those services who go to what regular people, not a mega-corporation or government agency, can afford.

With a major medical policy, people pay for their own regular visits to the doctor an tests. This sounds horrible because of the inflated pricing, but it wasn’t. Going to a doctor used to cost about $10 ($60-$70 in today’s money) and tests were only a couple of dollars ($10-$15 in today’s money). We were starting to have a comeback of that in our area with $35 medical clinics, until the ACA shut all of them down. What the major medical paid was emergencies that cost more than a preset amount and hospital stays. Another thing with major medical is that they didn’t care about pre-existing conditions, unless it was so far advanced that a person would end up in the hospital soon. There was not an extra cost to insure people with pre-existing conditions, because the insurance company was not on the hook for every doctor’s visit, test, etc.

A couple of government reforms may help facilitate this. One is making medical services and insurance tax deductible for individuals. It is for employers and that is one of the things that supports the employer based health care system. The other is requiring upfront pricing for health care services. Health care is the only service of which I am aware that sends you a bill for thousands of dollars a year after you have agreed upon the price and received the service.  This could simply be abolished by a law rendering these bills void. 

Funding Government Without An Income Tax

A question that often comes up is,  Without the Income Tax, how will we ever fund government?"  I remind people that the Income Tax was not the major source of funding in the United States for about the first 170 years of the country's history.  Here is how the Founders did that.

From the US Constitution:

—Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.—

This lays out several ways to raise revenue without direct taxes. Four of the more popular.

Fees—- If government provides a service, they collect a fee for that service.

Duties— Tariffs or dues paid to conduct international commerce.

Imposts— Indirect taxes that are used to fund a related purpose. A car registration fee to drive on government roads or a tax on gasoline to support road construction are examples.

Excises— Fees to sell or transport goods or services. The problem since the Whiskey Tax in the United States is that these taxes are not usually levied equally to raise income but to control or encourage certain behaviors.

What makes these taxes different from taxes like the Income Tax, which is basically organized armed robbery?  Properly levied, a reasonable person can avoid them completely. Unlike the Income Tax or FICA, a person can choose to buy private services, not conduct international commerce, not drive on government roads or not make their living buying and selling goods. Some of this may seem hard to imagine in the current world because government has often backed up taxation with laws prohibiting private alternatives.

It is past time for the United States and the individual states to go back to their heritage.  Taxation should be based on a person taking a voluntary action which they can avoid if they wish.  Taxation should not be based on a person solely living, breathing or making an honest living.

Rigging Elections New Mexico Style

In polls conducted in July and August of this year, independent US Senate candidate Gary Johnson was predicted to be a contender in New Mexico.   Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, came up with a something to stop that.  Rig the ballots. 

The tool Oliver is using to rig the ballots is called a straight-ticket voting.  In straight ticket voting, voters only check one box, pull one lever or touch one button and vote for every member of a certain party.  This greatly favors the party with the most candidates on the ballot.  In New Mexico, that is Oliver's party, the Democratic Party.  Oliver herself is up for re-election this year and would benefit from a straight ticket vote.  It puts New Mexico Republican candidates at a disadvantage, but it kills any chances for independent candidates.  Since there is not more than one independent candidate, they do not get a box to check, lever to pull or button to push.  Often smaller parties are also not allowed to have a single party designation for their candidates either.  It is human nature.  Given the choice of checking one box or reading through an entire ballot, most people will check one box.

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in September that Secretary of State Oliver does not have the authority to make the straight ticket decision unilaterally.  It had been reported initially that Oliver would ignore the court order because sample ballots had already been printed.  However,  it appears that New Mexico has made arrangements to re-print the ballots.

This is an example of why there should not be partisan elections officials.  In this case, the partisan elections official was attempting to rig the ballot to not only favor her party but to give herself a greater chance to win re-election.  Ballot rigging, gerrymandering and other scams are assured whenever the election's referees work for one of the teams involved.  Elections officials should be independent civil servants or there should be a multi-partisan committee.

The IRS Serves Up Another Dose of Mass Confusion

This week the IRS released regulations on the new tax break for small businesses.  Qualified Business Income Deduction  The idea was that middle income business owners could deduct 20% of their income on their income tax returns.  Middle income was defined as small businesses which sold goods that had incomes of less than $157,500 ($315,000 for a married couple) or $207,500 ($415,000 for a married couple) for those that provided services.  There were strategies which people were getting ready to employ to take advantage of the new deduction.  One was to break up businesses into smaller entities, so that these entities would be beneath the $157,500 or $207,000 limit.  Another was for key employees to re-organize as private contractors.  In that way, an attorney who is a private contractor making $150,000 per year would qualify for the credit.  The IRS is alleging that these two activities are taking advantage of loopholes and wrote its new regulations to discourage these activities.  This brings up two issues.

The first is that Congress is favoring one group of citizens over another.  It is inexcusable that a person who calls themselves a business gets a 20% deduction but an employee does not.  It is one more example of the absurdity and inherent unfairness of the Income Tax.

The second is that when people attempt to comply with the law, the IRS designates that legal behavior as a loophole.  That shows the contempt which the IRS has for the people of the United States.  The IRS believes that all income belongs to them.

The United States grew to a world power over a period of about 170 years without using an income tax as a primary means of revenue.  It is time to go back to an income tax free United States.