TaxProf Blog: Gas Taxes Exceed Oil Companies' Profits

TaxProf Blog: Gas Taxes Exceed Oil Companies' Profits

Minimum Wage, Taxes and Poverty

The following is a response to this comment in a discussion of raising minimum wage.

Costco has a good business model. No dispute there. But that doesn't mean every company will or should operate that way. Costco's business model is based around a very specific market need (high volume non-retail distribution). Not very many other businesses enjoy the perks that come along with that market. For instance, it takes much less energy to operate one gigantic freezer than a hundred little ones...And so on. Business decisions are MUCH more complicated than wages and prices.

Questions about sweat shops and child labor are absurd, of course I don't support those things... people should open their minds enough to realize that there are perfectly viable options BETWEEN slave labor and a $22 minimum wage. Thinking in black and white "there's my way or the wrong way" will never accomplish anything. A well balanced combination of regulation and freedom is in everybody's best interest...When the scale tips too far to one side or the other, everybody gets screwed.

No, I don't believe corporations should pay taxes...Here's why: They don't anyway...Yet they waste billions upon billions of dollars every year just trying to comply with tax codes...Business decisions are based on how to minimize taxes, operations are moved overseas because it's cheaper to do business there because of oppressive tax compliance costs almost as much as the taxes themselves, which aren't coming out of a company's profits, they're coming from the consumer anyway. Corporations are nothing more than a conduit through which tax money flows and gets wasted in the mean time.

/that's the end of my response in that thread....

Going on, Karena is quite wrong in saying I see minimum wage as a tax. It isn't...It's a governmentally imposed lower limit on what an employee can be paid. The other major difference is, taxes are not voluntary. Minimum wage is. Any employer can refuse to hire someone, and thus not have to pay them anything. With a higher minimum wage, more employers will do this to keep their costs down, increasing the workload on the employed, and reducing the number of available jobs. The idea that "if the federal minimum wage were raised, nothing else would change" is atrociously ignorant, naive, or both.

More interesting commentary

This should be self-evident, but it's really not for a lot of people, especially liberals. There is a difference between fact and opinion. A fact is that there are many poor people in the United States. An opinion is that raising minimum wage is the best way to help them. A fact is that raising minimum wage has problems of it's own, some of null effect, some of great long term effect. What I can't understand is people who believe that their solution to any given problem is correct because they feel good about it. What happened to analyzing any given situation and solution based on the individual pros and cons of the presented solutions, and working to combine or learn from various solutions to come up with a better solution? Yet all we hear are the same recycled arguments from both sides that their idea is best and the other idea will ruin the world, frighten children and bruise fruit.

Spelling and habit

I know how to spell the words, argument, realization, and government. Yet almost without fail every time I type them without thinking, it's arguement, realisation, and governmnet. Why is that? it's not just an error, it's a consistent error. What is it about typing or maybe quick thinking, or...I'm not sure. But there's gotta be some psychological reason or explanation, perhaps muscle memory?

Lesson 1: Don't lie

The power of distributed intelligence is a new force to be reckoned with compared to the MSM...News cycles have been reduced from 24 hours to mere minutes...I long for the day when politicians won't even bother to lie anymore because there will be people like this guy to figure it out

Black unemployment and Government waste

This post got me thinking about unemployment while I was reading the comments. While I'm all for helping people in need, I really don't think the government ought to be doing it. No honest person can say the U.S. government is especially good at managing domestic affairs. It seems that every time they create another department and cabinet position to respond to every little need, all it ends up doing is wasting the taxpayers' (my) money and giving little if anything in return.

Case in point: Transportation Security Administration -- Last time I flew, I arrived at the checkpoint with half a dozen or so other passengers, walked right up to the belt, started unpacking my laptop and noticed that there were no fewer than thirty TSA shirts walking around doing...mostly nothing. Is this the government's idea of creating jobs? I suppose in a literal sense, yes, these people have jobs...but what are they really accomplishing? I daresay that randomly strip searching every tenth person to walk through their gate has yielded few bombs out of how many million shoes they've inspected? It's a joke, really...

I say issue every passenger a .22 cal pistol with one round upon boarding the plane, collect it when they leave, and simply do away with the TSA entirely. This would solve two problems: One, all that talented labor will be freed up to contribute to society in more productive ways, and second, NOBODY is gonna try and hijack a an airline when every passenger is armed.

The only way a plane could be commandeered then, is if every passenger were in on the hijacking. In which case at least one of them would probably have their name red-flagged when they bought their e-ticket (but seriously, is a terrorist gonna use their own name when buying a ticket?), causing an automatic full background check of every passenger. This procedure would cost practically nothing compared to the real expenses of the TSA (a one time investment of several hundred thousand pistols and maybe a couple bucks a month per airport for ammo), and would completely elliminate the terrorist threat to our skys. Sure, there are some details that would need to be figured out, like how to keep a stupid person from firing that first shot...even though he'd be quickly removed from the gene pool by the REST of the passengers, that first individual victim is still...well, not enjoying the fruits of picking a fight over the little bag of salted peanuts.

Getting back to homelessnes though, with hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens streaming into our country every year, all of them by definition homeless when they get here, how do so many of them manage to find jobs? Surely there has to be something more to homelessness than societal smearing...how many intelligent, coherent, get up and go type people do you see sleeping in the streets on a daily basis? Those who are resourceful and willing to take care of themselves will always make ends meet. Those who want everything handed to them...will keep complaining about the government as if anyone's listening. The problem is, people are, and all you hear is, "but what is the government doing for the homeless?" as they fly overhead in their $800,000 private jets with their personal makeup artist.

The problem I see with a lot of liberal arguments for government hand out programs is they're all based on compassion. Compassion in and of itself is a wonderful virtue, but it must be understood that in Washington by and large, the compassion of the voters is used and manipulated into vote buying programs to keep the politicians in power. Whenever someone objects, proponents of the spending scream "You don't care about the poor" or the homeless or whoever the target of the program is. The problem is, it's rarely true. Ironicly most of these programs backfire so badly they hurt those they are designed to "help". Another problem is, the "you don't care" argument has nothing to do with the objection, especially when the motive behind the opposition IS compassion...and a disagreement about how best to execute that compassion and gain the maximum effect.

Compassion without brains is not only useless, it gets people killed. Combine compassion with creativity and long term planning, and you can have a real winner. Also absent in the "you don't care about X" argument is the realization that there can be more than one solution to any given problem. Just because a solution has been proposed, does not mean it is the best, or even effective.

Iraqis show their thanks

Most things people do to or for someone else are returned in kind. In the case of Iraq, here's a glowing example of how a newly liberated people responds with generosity towards those suffering.
Iraqi Soldiers Donate to Katrina Victims - DefendAmerica News Article

FEMA not required

The World According to ME!: Amusing...

Up here in the Northern Plains we just recovered from a Historic event --- may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --- with a historic blizzard of up to 24" inches of snow and winds to 50 MPH that broke trees in half, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed all roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.
George Bush did not come.... FEMA staged nothing.... No one howled for the government... No one even uttered an expletive on TV... Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards..... No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.... No news anchors moved in.
We just melted snow for water, sent out caravans to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars, fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Aladdin lamps and put on an extra layer of clothes.
Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early... we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves. Everybody is fine.

Interesting notes about Jim Crow

Thomas Sowell has the details

OT: Nigerian scam baiting

When you click on this link it'll say the site's certificate has been revoked....ignore it and proceed...read everything, and I guarantee you'll fall off your chair laughing.

Tau Beta Pi Forums - View topic - your share of the $21.5 million Nigerian lost funds

"I gave them a sword"

The bringing down of the Harriet Miers nomination will be a black mark on the republican punditry for a long time to come. They have abandoned what we fought for during the earlier judicial nominations: An up or down vote on the floor of the senate for all nominees. Despicable. Hypocrites.

When we love our children

It cannot be stressed enough that the world will never be free of violence as long as there are people who hate their enemies more than they love their children. The girl here is a direct victim of senseless violence that seeks only to destroy, not in self defense, but raw murder. A civilized man will never do anything to endanger his family, and will do everything to protect them.

Iran Calls For Destruction of Israel, Palestinians Try to Oblige.

Iraq Democracy Stronger Than Ever

In a historic moment, the people of Iraq spoke 78% in favor of the new constitution. Morale for the terrorists has never been lower. They see their power and ability to frighten and terrorize slipping away replaced by fear for their lives as Iraq's security forces grow ever more powerful by the day, while those of the terrorists are slowly whittled down to nothing. There is cause for all Americans to celebrate, for we have won the war.

Austin Bay via Real Clear Politics tells us a story of the democratic revolution as it takes hold in Iraq and wins the hearts and minds of the people there.

There will always be setbacks to progress. Nothing good has ever come without a price. But make no mistake, Iraq is a victory in every sense of the word. A war executed and soundly won in near record time (six day war excepted, Go Israel!), a brutal and murderous dictator replaced by a functioning democracy with higher voter turnout than most U.S. States, and a growing standard of living unparalleled in the region. It is a proud day to be an American, standing side by side with our new friends, the people of democratic Iraq.

Conspiracies and coincidence

I got to thinking about all the various conspiracy theories out there, specifically ones that take every tenth word out of a letter someone wrote to find a hidden meaning, for instance. The architects of the English language (and probably others, but I only speak English), most noteably God probably have an interesting sense of humor. After all, He made me... But back to language, it's actually kind of fun to find the little things such as anagrams of Princess Diana = End is a car spin, or Year Two Thousand = A Year to shut down.

Yet when you think about each of those, Princess Diana has 13 letters. That's why she was unlucky, right? Mathematically, you could rearrange those letters 13! ways (ignoring spaces and assuming duplicate letters like "s" to be distinct), which multiplies out to 6,227,020,800 possible combinations. The chances are good that many of those will make some kind of sense in just about any language, and of those, probably a few will have something in common with the original subject.

Following similar analysis, something like a speech, news article, or other written text, often has hundreds, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of words. With every added word, letter, phrase or sentence, the mathematical complexity of such a construct would grow very quickly to being unimaginably complicated. In the world of computer encryption, using a key composed of 1's and 0's (that's two possible characters) that is 128 bits long, has a complexity of 2^128. This is considered unbreakable. If someone were to encode a secret message using only letters of the english language, the same 128 character key would be more than fifty orders of magnitude more complex. (an order of magnitude is basically adding a zero on the end, essentially multiplying by 10). Compound that with say... a 14,000 word English dictionary... With all those innumerable possibilites, I'm sure someone could find a code that translates this very post you're reading into a section of the communist manifesto, or a recipie for making mosquito bread.

In short, it's laughably easy to conceal information, and it's even easier to find things that aren't there.

Some thoughts on New Orleans

Nicole Gelinas has a great article about some of the real problems facing New Orleans, as well as some of the successes. For all those two cry racism was the cause of poverty, Nicole notes, "New Orleans has a 28 percent poverty rate, and yes, New Orleans is 67 percent black. But nearly two-thirds of New Orleans’s blacks aren’t poor." Just as important a contributor to that city's social status is the horrible murder rate. 59 murders per 100,000 people, compared to New York City's seven. That's eight times the national average for those of you keeping track. And if that's not bad enough, durring Katrina rescue efforts, "The coroner’s early report implies that the murder rate among those stranded in Katrina’s aftermath was at least five times New Orleans’s normal murder rate. This real, not imagined, violence prevented New Orleans from getting the level of volunteer and professional help it needed after Katrina."

The whole article is long, but a wonderful read. Definitely take the time to read it in it's entirety.

UPDATE: Another section that's a must read in case you don't read the whole thing:

Before Katrina, the New Orleans Police Department took much of the blame for the rising murder rate. The force is not up to professional standards of interrogating witnesses and suspects and of collecting evidence for prosecution. Worse, just a week before Katrina hit, one cop was arrested for alleged rape and kidnapping; ten others have been arrested on criminal charges over the past two years, “ranging from shoplifting to conspiracy to rob a bank,” the Times-Picayune reports.

But federal officials and outside observers say that in fact the department, before Katrina, was a vastly improved force compared with the pre-Pennington era. Moreover, a dysfunctional prosecutor’s office and a dysfunctional state judicial system, in which only one in four murder arrests ends in a conviction, undermine the force. Only 32 percent of felony drug distributors go to jail after conviction, compared with 66 percent nationwide. Some judges mysteriously and repeatedly release violent-crime suspects on bail. From improper collection of evidence to poor prosecution to lenient and inconsistent sentencing, New Orleans cannot keep its drug dealers and violent criminals behind bars. “The perception is that the state judicial system has failed,” says James Bernazzani, the FBI’s special agent in charge of New Orleans.

Clearly the system has failed here. My question is, where did so much corruption and systematic breakdown begin? That's an open ended question, I really don't know. It seems like it would take quite a lot for an entire police force to lose the will to enforce the law. I have some guesses, some involving political correctness and other liberal accidental suicide plots. Or maybe it's just good old fashioned corruption. Either way, something's not working.

Townhall.com :: Columns :: Mr. Smith Has Returned to Washington and His Name is Tom Coburn by Mark Tapscott

Townhall.com :: Columns :: Mr. Smith Has Returned to Washington and His Name is Tom Coburn by Mark Tapscott

Support Parental Notification

California has a proposition on the ballot this November that would make it mandatory for a doctor performing an abortion to give parental notification 48 hours in advance of the procedure. Great idea.

Matt makes a good point in this post when he comments,

I mean, how can it be that a student could be suspended or expelled from high school for bringing aspirin to school, but that same student is allowed to placed under anesthesia and have surgery without supervision?

Froggy Ruminations: How to Know What Ballot Initiative to Vote For in California

Get this man into the white house

Potential '08 contender Romney takes N.C. swing - Boston.com

Transparent Aluminum Oxynitride - The future of glass

In yet another example of how military innovation creates the best of the best, the Air Force is testing new transparent armor.

This is too cool. vastly more scratch resistant than glass, and much stronger, this stuff has potential to make much better automotive windshields, industrial armor (trying to observe a machine through a piece of old, scratched and cracked safety glass is no picnic)...the possibilities are great. Sure the stuff's expensive now, but it will be further refined and developed. After all, when the laser was new, nobody had any idea of what to do with it.

Now THIS is Racism

From Mike Adams' column, Dr. Kamau Kambon said the following on Oct 14th at Howard University:

And then finally I want to say that we need one idea, and we're not thinking about a solution to the problem. We're thinking about all these other things, but we're not dealing with a solution to the problem. And we have to start to think about a solution to the problem so that these young brothers and sisters who are here now, who are 15, 16 or 17, are not here 25 years later talking about these same problems.

Now how do I know that the white people know that we are going to come up with a solution to the problem? I know it because they have retina scans, they have what they call racial profiling, DNA banks, and they’re monitoring our people to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea. And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem. Now I don’t care whether you clap or not, but I’m saying to you that we need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us. And I will leave on that. So we just have to just set up our own system and stop playing and get very serious and not be diverted from coming up with a solution to the problem and the problem on the planet is white people. (Emphasis added)

Townhall.com :: Columns :: Exterminating Whitey by Mike S. Adams

Anyone who agrees with what Dr Kambon said or even thinks he has a shred of honesty is a racist. Pure and simple.

I really like Tom DeLay

This guy's a master, really. Who thinks to dress up in a suit for a mugshot? Either he has a really twisted sense of humor, or he's just really smart. Way to go!!!

boortz.com: Nealz Nuze Today's Nuze

RealClearPolitics - Commentary - Myths About Gun Control By John Stossel

RealClearPolitics - Commentary - Myths About Gun Control By John Stossel

Townhall.com :: Columns :: Colleges to avoid, Part I by Mike S. Adams

Townhall.com :: Columns :: Colleges to avoid, Part I by Mike S. Adams

Alligator vs. Python

See what happens when a 13' python tries to eat a 6' alligator

"The Hysterics of Political Correctness" by Gary Waltrip

"The Hysterics of Political Correctness" by Gary Waltrip

Masculinity and the Twisted Feminist mind

While browsing blogs today, I came across an interesting blurb responding to some teacher that resigned over punishing two male students by making them hold hands and calling them gay...well, good riddance for that teacher... but that's not the point...What I was more interested in was this blogger's reaction and explanation of the punishment itself. And I find entrenched a twisted, sexist world view that says that men who are offended by being called women are so because they hate women. Here is my reply:

Your conclusion from your linked previous post is wrong about why being called gay or girly is offensive to a man. It is not that said men hate women, it is because such an insult attempts to strip a man of the very thing that makes him who he is, his masculinity. Gender is such a fundamental aspect of a person's identity that the real threat is not that they abhor the idea of being a woman, it's that they can't stand being stripped of their identiy as a man. I know the feminist movement for some time now has prided itself on becoming more masculine, so the concept that a person's identity as either a man or a woman is absolute, and as much if not more so a part of who they are as anything else, is a foreign idea to most feminists and related thinkers. In their quest to demonize men without attempting to understand them, they find false cause and try to convince themselves that a given behavior stems from a hatred of women, instead of a profound respect and love for them.

Put another way, the insult/embarassment comes not from the man's hatred of women, but from the attempted nullification of his LOVE for women.

UPDATE: The response:

I like anyone, male or female, who is honest, compassionate, and not ignorant by choice. In my own life, that would include a number of men.

By saying that the feminist movement has become "more masculine," you have given yourself away, I'm afraid.

And I stand by my original statement: Really homophobic men have such intense feelings because they have a projected fear of becoming, in a sexual sense--the worst thing they can think of--a woman. Not because woman is the "other" and these men would cease to retain their natural masculine identity, as you say, but because they perceive women as passive receptacles whose role is to submit.

And my response:

Given myself away to what? It's a statement of fact that the feminist movement is interested in removing all societal distinctions between men and women, and they're doing it by forcing or perhaps coercing women into more masculine roles and activities. I'm by no means saying that everybody has to do what is "traditional," I recognize that individual circumstances necessitate adaptation... Just one example, women a hundred and fifty years ago were expected not to use crude language. They as a group decided that they wanted to swear and be gross just like the men.

There was once a time when men would be horribly ashamed to belch in the presence of a lady because women were regarded as too good for that kind of behavior.

All around we see left wing womens' advocacy groups saying, "we want to do everything men do" (even the horrible stuff) Once upon a time it was taboo for women to be sluts. Now it seems to be praised. Women, through the feminist movenemt have lowered themselves from the elite, respected class to participating in all the social garbage that has generally been restricted to men.

Two things that I believe are genuine positive developments of the feminist movement are a woman's right to vote and to own property. Maybe there are a couple more things I can't think of right now, but by and large, the Women's advocacy movement has been more and more concerned with replacing men in society with women. Whereas there is no corresponding movement by any men (none that are taken seriously by anybody outside of their own bubble, that is) to replace women as bearers and nurturers of children and as supremely important in keeping men's less refined tendancies from destroying the world.

Real men and sensible women know and understand that we need each other, and that each is a wonderful and essential part of any sort of meaningful life.

I do agree with you about liking people who are honest, compassionate and not willfully ignorant. I think that's a good point.

But what you have is an unwillingness to consider that you may be wrong about men, particularly when addressing someone who loves everything about women, holds them in extremely high regard, fights for thier honor, and will kill anyone who tries to castrate him.

Surprise for Supreme Court

So Bush has nominated Harriet Miers, his White House Counsel. I haven't completely made up my mind yet, but I'm going to incline more towards Hugh Hewitt's optimistic outlook on the situation. Sadly most conservatives are blasting the nomination pretty hard, although it's interesting because most of the criticism and outright dismissal comes from a lack of information, as opposed to any significant reason to oppose her nomination. I think it's significant that President Bush has promised to nominate strict constructionists (people who think the constitution means what it says) to the supreme court, and at the moment there is no reason to believe this is not what he has done. There is nothing in the constitution that says a supreme court nominee must be a judge, it's simply the norm.

There are two possibilities I see here, one that the President has made a mistake in nominating a "crony" to the court...although personally I think that's extremely unlikely because George W. Bush is no idiot. After all, he did win two elections and two wars. I don't think he would nominate a "crony" just for that reason, because he must know that if that were the overriding reason, there's virtually no chance that person would be confirmed, with the Democrats scraming at the top of their lungs that he's playing favorites and putting his friends into power, and Republicans screaming that they want a proven conservative (both of which are happening, by the way). No, there must be something else at work here, and I'm willing to reserve judgement until we at least have more information.

The second possibility is that The President is playing a new game entirely. We all saw what happened with the Roberts nomination, going through practically uncontested (sure there was a lot of rhetoric and outright hatred of him, but when it mattered, he was confirmed easily by a super majority vote). This may be another absolute coup by the Bush Administration against the status quo, by the manipulation of the very nature of it's politically correct nature, ie, nomination of a woman, and also someone against whom nobody is prepared to fight.

This nomination reminds me of John Bolton's nomination to the U.N. In a way, what Bush is doing is nominating someone to the top level of an organization, who is previously outside the organization, and not already entrenched in the inherent problems of that organization. Also, as some have suggested, Miers would bring to the Supreme Court a unique perspective that could serve as an equalizing force within The Court and bring knowledge of what really goes on and why certain decisions are made.

Additionally, the fact that Miers is a good friend of Bush may not be a bad thing. Those that scream "Cronyism!" should step back and think for a bit what that means. It means that The President knows her very well, in a way that the other three hundred million of us do not. It is likely that they have had many, MANY conversations about the Court's decisions and judicial policy, since after all, she is among his closest advisors. Those who support our President, step back for a minute and give him the benefit of the doubt, less you become supporters in name only, and when the going gets rough or uncertain, you turn tail and run or jump on the disapointment bandwagon without going through all the possibilities. Yes Michelle, Lawrence, David, that means you.
I'm so sick of self-righeous extremists on both the left AND the right that believe that they, and they alone know what is right for the country, and anything that doesn't exactly match their view of how things should be is a "betrayal" as if anyone owes THEM anything. People like that disgust me to no end.

For the Christian / Conservative perspective, check out this series of posts over at World Mag Blog:

Pro 1
Pro 2
Pro 3
Pro 4
Pro 5
Con 1
Her Pastor's Opinion

Mr. Completely: Very Cool Machine Gun Video

Mr. Completely: Very Cool Machine Gun Video

Internet sales tax project gets underway

I love the last line..."Revenue starved governments"...and the $50,000,000 federally funded "gay and lesbian ethnic minority" museum has nothing to do with the budget problems? What passes for thought in some people's minds is truely astounding. Some days it's really hard to have faith in humanity.

Internet sales tax project gets underway

At least they're creative

But that's where the acknowledgement ends and the mocking begins. Why? Well, there's this group called the Brady Coalition going around at Florida's airports handing out fliers warning visitors about a new law in Florida that gives property owners additional self defense rights. The insanity and intellectual dishonesty of these people is absolute. It's not difficult to infer that they believe all gun owners are psychotic killers who just want to shoot people for any reason. From the Miami Herald talking specifically about the fliers:

The new law ''may lead to the reckless use of guns on the streets of Florida cities,'' the one-page flier reads. The ads will warn that after Oct. 1, visitors ''face a greater risk of bodily harm in Florida,'' said Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Washington-based advocacy group.

The fliers urge tourists to take precautions, such as: ''Do not argue unnecessarily with local people,'' and ''keep your hands in plain sight'' if you are involved in a traffic accident or a near-miss.

Then Hamm totally reveals either his ignorance, naivete, or dishonesty by saying, "We are not trying to scare people, the Florida Legislature scared people."

Jumping slightly off topic for a second here, I wonder if this is the group that was behind the so-called "assault weapons ban" aka the Brady Bill. Same name. Same group? If anyone knows, post a comment.

The whole effort of this coallition is a waste of breath. The bill was passed 94-20 in the Florida House and unanimously in the state Senate, so it's not likely any of them are going to repeal it. Besides, the only change that I'm aware of to the existing law is it removes the absurd requirement that you have to retreat from your own house if someone's breaking in. Do these people actually think would-be rapists, murderers, burglers and other illegal intruders should have the right of way and be PROTECTED BY LAW when comitting their crimes? I'm glad these people are, for the time being, a small minority.

Read the original article here

Update 12:07: Michelle Malkin has a letter from a reader correcting and clarifying the factual description of the law, and also the history behind it. Worth reading, definitely. The essence of the correction is that the law allows the use of deadly force in response to an attack threatening death or severe bodily harm anywhere the victim has a right to be, and not limited to his own property. What the law does NOT do is make it leagal for someone to shoot an attacker in the back after a minor offense like purse snatching, for instance.

Liberal Fact Lists usually aren't

I was browsing blogs today, and found someone who was celebrating the indictment of Tom DeLay and one of the comments on the post links to this page listing "facts" about DeLay's...shall we say less than stellar actions. Read it if you must, but the following is my direct response to it, or rather, to the commenter, Helen who is apparently incapable of distinguising between facts (ie. evidence, details, numbers, law citations) and editorial statements when trying to make a point.

#1-3 I'm not going to bother with because I don't have time to sort it all out. If we assume all three opinions so stated are true (which isn't likely to be a good assumption when the facts (notice, no quote marks) are investigated more completely)...the rest of the article is nothing but an editorial hack job...and here's why:

#4 The closest thing that might be considered "fact" is the bit about the travel expenses for the korean trip. While it's true that "everybody does it" is no justification for wrongdoing...everybody does it. I defy you to find one senator who's never taken a free trip or slipped money around from various organizations. In the whole boat of the Senate, this is a laughable, if not insignificant charge. Even at that, there's a difference between criminal law and senate rules. If you're going to go on a witch hunt, let's get that murder charge up there for Teddy Kennedy, eh?

#5. Okay, so he raised some money. Hillary raises money for Democratic action comittees every week...What's the point? The "evidence" provided doesn't contain any details about what happened to "disenfranchise" voters (undefined term in this case), what (if any) charges were made, whether or not DeLay was involved with decision making or ordering actions that were illegal.

Oh, and #6 is a good one, too...DEMOCRATS were getting in the way of Texas state senate proceedings and you're getting worked up over DeLay tracking a plane down. And you know what? If a bunch of Republicans were being whiney cry-babies and walking out on senate sessions just to get in the way, I'd want them slapped back into their jobs that I, a taxpayer have comissioned them to do. But not to get too far off topic here...What was probably a 5 minute phone call, while under a strict interpretation of "federal resources" it fits, but the political purposes needs further clarification, because as stated, from the site itself "Democratic members of the Texas State Legislature, who had taken a plane out of the capital city of Austin as a way to prevent a quorum in the House". It seems more like the Texas legislature was trying to get some work done, and the Dems walked out. Partisan? Maybe. But a drop in the ocean nonetheless.

#7 is a matter of pure political disagreement, nothing more.

#8. Who really cares? Small business owners have a right to say "no thanks" if they want to. That's why America's such a great place.

#9. Then that lobbiest should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The fact that the lobbiest screwed people and probably broke the law does not mean that by giving DeLay money, it caused him to break the law (unless there's a law against accepting contributions from bad people). It's stupid, sure...but not illegal. Although I'm unfamiliar with the details...perhaps you could direct me to the text of the law that handles such things?

And #10. Smoking in a public place? well, sure that's illegal...punishable by a fine...And your point is...?
There's nothing illegal about having a bad attitude. You may not like it, but if attitude were a criminal offense, most of dailykos and democraticunderground readers would be writing their comments from prison.

Power Line: Busted!

Power Line: Busted!