Reinke Faces Life

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49917

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Minimum wages can have a more insidious effect. In research for my book "South Africa's War Against Capitalism" (1989), I found that during South Africa's apartheid era, racist unions, who'd never admit blacks, were the major supporters of higher minimum wages for blacks. Gert Beetge, secretary of South Africa's avowedly racist Building Worker's Union, in response to contractors hiring black workers, said, "There is no job reservation left in the building industry, and in the circumstances I support the rate-for-the-job [minimum wages] as the second best way of protecting our white artisans." Racists recognized the discriminatory effects of mandated minimum wages.
 
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Dear Professor Williams,

As usual, spot on!

My own observation is that a raise in the minimum wage is an automatic pay increase for unions, government workers, and politicians!

I never get a raise due to minimum wage laws.

And, when I was running my own business (twice) where do I get my “minimum wage” from? I know that many a week I worked my tush off for zero income. Did I miss the memo of which “gummamint agenze” to submit my claim to? Interesting that because I formed my own business, I wasn’t eligible for unemployment “insurance” (another misnomer). If I could have kept all those “contributions” (nothing voluntary there), then I could have paid myself my minimum wage!

Any way just thought I’d chime in.

Thanks,
“student” John

I've taken the liberty of reproducing Cloud's excellent advice. I have signed the Small Government pledge and I try never to miss a chance to toss an incumbent, defeat a school budget, nuke a proposition, or otherwise gum up the works.

http://www.centerforsmallgovernment.com/sgpledge.htm

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"Here's what the Small Government PledgeSM means:

I will vote for and support only those candidates who consistently vote for small government; who work to make government smaller than it is today. For candidates who have never served in office, I will vote only for those who campaign to make government smaller than it is today.

I will vote against and refuse to support every candidate who votes to sustain or enlarge today's Big Government – or campaigns for it.

I will vote in every federal, state, and local election. If necessary, I'll get an absentee ballot. I'll find out about the choices on my ballot – and make sure I always vote small government.

If there is no small government candidate on the ballot, I will either write in and vote for a small government candidate or leave the ballot blank for that office.

I will vote for every ballot initiative and referendum that shrinks the size, spending, taxes, scope, or power of today's Big Government.

I will vote against every ballot initiative, referendum, and bond that increases the size, spending, taxes, scope, or power of today's Big Government."

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AND here's the Cloud article that I thought was GREAT!

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IS VOTING UN-LIBERTARIAN? by Michael Cloud

A well-known libertarian scholar once told me:

“Voting is an act of force. Libertarians are opposed to force. Ergo, true libertarians don’t vote.”

His syllogism was, as H.L. Mencken wrote, “… simple, neat, and wrong.”

Why?

“War is simply the continuation of politics by other means,” wrote Carl von Clausewitz.

True, but libertarians recognize that the opposite is also true:

“Politics is war by other means.”

Voting is conflict by ballots, not bullets. Big Government is domination and looting by the victors. Voting is force.

But the argument misstates and misrepresents the libertarian principle.
Libertarians oppose the INITIATION of force. Libertarians recognize and endorse the right of self-defense.

For true libertarians, for champions of small government – voting is an act of self-defense.

I live by the Small Government Pledge:

“I vote small government. Every issue. Every time. No exceptions. No excuses.”

Every vote I cast is designed to dismantle, reduce, and remove Big Government programs and policies. At all levels of government: local, state, and federal.

Neither I, nor any other champion of small government votes to take our neighbors’ life, liberty, or property. We vote to reduce or stop Big Government aggression and plunder.

Voting to shrink government is an act of self-defense.

NON-voting is political pacifism.

And, for one who loves liberty, it is slow motion suicide.

But the political pacifists do not stop there. They insist that the rest of us surrender, too – stop voting in self-defense.

In 2002, Carla Howell and I put Question 1 on the Ballot in Massachusetts.
This Ballot Initiative would END our state income tax, put $9 Billion per year back in the hands of the men and women who earned it, and cut state government spending 39%.

Yet several ANTI-voting libertarians told us that Carla Howell and I are UN-libertarian, immoral, and evil for putting this to a vote. These paragons of libertarian principle told us that they refused to vote for it – because voting is force.

But the income tax is the initiation of force.

Voting to END the income tax is a vote to END the use of force. ENDING a tax is an act of self-defense.

We earned 881,738 votes to END the state income tax. 45.3% of the vote. In Massachusetts!

Would freedom have been better served if 881,738 voters had stayed home?

And wouldn’t that have made Ted Kennedy, Mitt Romney, and John Kerry giddy?

Anti-voting libertarians are the people who attack Richard Rider, tax cut activist, for opposing tax increases and tax bonds in San Diego.

Politics is war by other means. Demanding that libertarians cease voting is like urging Colonial Soldiers to desert George Washington’s Army in the winter of 1776.

In that hard winter, many American soldiers did desert. Tom Paine sought to rally and inspire those hard-pressed and discouraged soldiers who remained when he wrote in “The Crisis”:

“These are times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Aren’t you grateful that our colonial soldiers refused pacifism and desertion?

Because of their efforts over 230 years ago, you and we have the opportunity to move freedom forward.

[This is the first of several rebuttals of false libertarian arguments against and objections to voting. Moral and practical.]

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http://drjoewebb.blogspot.com/2006/04/all-kinds-of-stuff-and-rant-about-oil.html

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Industry profits still are exceeded by taxes paid from the processing level to the consumer price. There are 43 different direct and indirect taxes on gasoline, from pumping from the ground until the customer puts it in their tank. Maybe stopping the tax shell game would lower the prices, ya think? Tax collections are so strong, especially in states where sales tax as a percentage of the sale is collected, that there is no incentive to lower or remove the taxes; there is only an incentive to have meaningless press conferences with much flailing about. 

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I know why they tax everything in sight! Because they think we're too stupid to realize it. Taxes are bad enough. But taxes on something that every business and person depends upon? Let come to the realization that only "the folks" pay taxes. You and me and him and her. Real people, who can't include in the cost of producing a good for sale, are the ones who PAY taxes. Do you think that UPS doesn't price their services to INCLUDE the full cost of any taxes that they pay on gas? Do you think, that when you buy bread and milk at the grocery store, you are NOT paying for the gas that got them there? Do you think that any business doesn't just mark up their price to cover the gas? (If they can't sell their product for a profit, including the price of gas, guess what? They close their doors!)

So there you have it. The gummamint sticks it too us by taxing gasoline. It gets buried in the price of everything we buy. And we really really do NOT know how much we pay in taxes!

We'd be better off, to know the true cost of everything minus the hidden gas tax, if we paid more at the annual blood letting than allowing them to think that they have fooled us. The dead old white guys would have never stood for this nonsense. The american revolution was fought over a 1% tax! Best solution is not to pay any taxes at all.

But then I am a Libertarian. I want freedom. And for me to be free, I have to let you be as free as I want to be. So none of us should pay any taxes. PERIOD!

http://www.banthebulb.org/

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A £1 tax on every incandescent light bulb would help to increase the uptake of environmentally friendly technologies, and allow light bulb prices to include more of the environmental costs associated with wasting energy and burning fossil fuels.

Waiving this tax on energy-efficient lightbulbs would also encourage the uptake of existing technologies and drive further innovation.

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On the theory that any idea that increases taxes is a bad one, and on the theory that it's a global world of ideas (i.e., our thieves aka tax collectors will grasp any idea to increase their take), can some one explain to me how giving the government, any government, more of the our sweat of our collective brows will solve this problem.

If we assume that there is a problem as states (i.e., incandescent bulb waste energy and cause all sorts of mischief), then how do we nduce people to change their behavior? Now if we recognize taxes as theft, followed up by men with guns coming to kill us, perhaps we might try some simpler ideas.

Educate people. Work on the economics not by raising the cost of bulbs (i.e., increasing the cost of incandescent bulbs by taxes) but by decreasing the cost of the alternatives. By getting people to look at the total cost of ownership.

AND, by the way, I bet the government, of which the originator seeks to empower with more tax money, probably is the biggest energy waster and incandescent bulb user on the planet.

So much for that good intention paving the way to hell for us.

Fix the government like a cat. Spay and neuter your local politcians!