Quick Roundup 419

Here today, gone tomorrow!

A few people who stop by here from time to time were surprised an seeing me recently to learn that I'm still in Houston. "I can't tell from your blog where you are," one of them said.

Well, with all my bouncing back and forth, sometimes I can't tell, either -- from my life! With that, I'll toss out a few interesting link and run a bunch of errands that being at work until eleven caused me to postpone.

And then catch a flight.

A Mortgage on Every Back

At America's founding, politicians promised to leave us alone. Later, they began to promise "a chicken in every pot."

Today, we have a politician who keeps telling us how much he will expect out of us.

In fact, while he was on the campaign trail, his wife chimed in that, "Barack Obama will require you to work." If Michael J. Boskin's number-crunching is correct, you might as well append, "to pay off an unwanted mortgage" to the end of that sentence.

We can get a rough idea of who is likely to pay [these future tax hikes] by distributing this $6.5 trillion of future taxes according to the most recent distribution of income-tax burdens. We know the top 1% or 5% of income-taxpayers pay vastly disproportionate shares of taxes, and much larger shares than their shares of income. But it also turns out that Mr. Obama's massive additional debt implies a tax hike, if paid today, of well over $100,000 for people with incomes of $150,000, far below Mr. Obama's tax-hike cut-off of $250,000. (With interest, the tax hike would rise to more than $162,000 in 10 years, and over $20,000 a year if paid annually the following 10 years). In other words, a middle-aged two-career couple in New York or California could get a future tax bill as big as their mortgage.

He forgot to mention that this "mortgage" comes without a house or a tax deduction.

Obama's Model Dependent Citizen

The following report from The Orlando Sentinel may have been dated April 1, but I have no trouble believing it:

A 911 dispatcher had to tell a caller how to unlock her car on Sunday.

A woman called Kissimmee, Fla., police to say she was locked inside her car at a suburban drug store.

"My car will not start. I’m locked inside my car," the unidentified woman said.

"Nothing electrical works. And it’s getting very hot in here, and I'm not feeling well."

The dispatcher asked the woman if she was able to manually pull the lock up on the door.

The woman said she would try, and then, she said, "Yes, I got the door open."

She went straight to the government rather than form a single conscious thought!

Alternate title: "Why Democrats Run Buses on Election Day."

The Forgotten Bloc of the Welfare State

Brian Phillips, commenting on legacy-obsessed statist politicians and their pet constituencies says of the largest one:

I believe that most individuals want to be left alone by government. They do not want to be told what kind of car to drive, or what kind of beverages to consume, or how many Big Macs they can eat, or how much insulation to put in their attic. Most individuals simply want to be free to pursue their values. Yet they often find themselves sucked into some political cause that seems to be motivated by benevolence and good intentions, and in the process, advocating policies that limit individual freedom. If a politician truly wished to establish a legacy, it should be as an advocate of individual rights, including property rights.

Amen, brother!

I look forward to reading his article, "Houston, We Have a (Zoning) Problem," which appears in the latest Objective Standard. Mine arrived in the mail yesterday.

Heh!

Quoth the Sidereal Messenger: "The irony is delicious: Robber goes through life refusing to use his head, and now a lowly GM product has relieved him of it."

Too Much Nostalgia

Feeling nostalgic lately, I've been listening to Message in a Box from The Police lately during my commute. And now, this song is racing through my head.

Tootles.

-- CAV