Looking for another czar to deep six and came upon this quote from Cass Sunstein ,the Regulatory commie-czar in an essay he wrote in 1999 entitled Why We Should Celebrate Paying Taxes
Why we Should Celebrate Paying Taxes (http://home.uchicago.edu/~csunstei/celebrate.html)



"It's our money, and we want to keep it!"

"Why should the IRS take our money, when the government wastes it and we want to spend it on ourselves!"

These are piercing sentiments, especially on April 15. But are they defensible? In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully "ours"? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without support from bank regulators? Could we spend it (say, on the installment plan) if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?
Do not get up tomorrow and drape your house in black! For tax day is not a day of national mourning. Without taxes there would be no liberty.

Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending.

Indeed, property owners are more deeply "dependent" on government than food-stamp recipients. The man who purchases several news organizations owes more to legislative, adjudicative and administrative action than the woman who sleeps under one newspaper at a time.

The Americans who most genuinely "shift for themselves" are not the grumbling taxpayers, but those among the homeless who shun shelters and soup kitchens in favor of garbage cans, subway grates and spare change. To say that such individuals shift for themselves is to say that they have little access to the taxpayer-funded legal machinery which could protect them from undeserved institutionalization or from assault by teenagers with baseball bats and gasoline cans.

Homeowners, by contrast, do not depend only on fire and police departments and competent management of the registry of titles and deeds.

As the deportees from Kosovo have just bitterly learned, they also depend on taxpayer-funded armies, manned largely by low-income citizens, to protect their homes from drunken and ruthless marauders. And government does not "merely" protect property; it also defines and assigns property, setting forth the maintenance and repair obligations of landlords, for instance, and deciding whether the employer or the employee "owns" the inventions of the employee. To imagine property owners without government is therefore like imagining chess players without the rules of chess.

This is all a truism, in a way. But it has yet to become a commonplace. Its implications are seldom thought through. Most importantly, the dependency of individual freedoms on collective contributions has not sufficiently penetrated the American debate over our basic rights and the proper limits of the state.

It may be reasonable, in some cases, to cut tax rates. What is unreasonable and, in fact, preposterous is the all-too-familiar conservative rhetoric that flatly opposes individual liberty to the government power to tax and spend. You cannot be for rights and against government because rights are meaningless unless enforced by government.

If government could not intervene effectively, none of the individual rights to which Americans have become accustomed could be reliably protected.

Unlike fees, levied on those who directly enjoy a service, taxes are levied on the community as a whole, regardless of who enjoys the benefits of the public services funded thereby. Most rights are funded by taxes, not by fees. This is why the overused distinction between "negative" and "positive" rights makes little sense. Rights to private property, freedom of speech, immunity from police abuse, contractual liberty, free exercise of religion--just as much as rights to Social Security, Medicare and food stamps--are taxpayer-funded and government-managed social services designed to improve collective and individual well-being.

This raises some important questions, to be sure. Who decides, in the United States, how to allocate our scarce public resources for the protection of which rights for whom? What principles are commonly invoked to guide these allocations? And can those principles be defended? These questions deserve more discussion than they usually receive, unclouded by the dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public fisc.

In any case, to recognize the dependency of property rights on the contributions of the whole community, managed by the government, is to repel the rhetorical attack on welfare rights as somehow deeply un-American, and totally alien or different in kind from classical or "real" rights. No right can be exercised independently, for every rights-holder has a claim on public resources--on money that has been extracted from citizens at large.

For all rights--call them negative, call them positive--have that effect. There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great Supreme Court justice, liked to say, taxes are "the price we pay for civilization."


In Cass' warped view ,government is the pre-condition for liberty.
Did we earn our own money ? Yes.Did we earn it by our own efforts ? Yes.
Could we have inherited it without probate courts ? Yes.
Could we save it without bank regulators ? Yes ;in fact ,we don't even needs banks to do it . Could we spend it without public officials ? Yes

Is that Orwellian or not ? Does the existence of government guarantee liberty ?If that were so then it would be correct to argue that more government would guarantee greater liberty . But that is not the case ;the Bill of Rights places restrictions on the government as a means to help preserve liberty.

I am reminded that the President once lamented the Constitution(“it is an imperfect document.” ) was loaded with "negative "rights . Cass expressed similar views in his book The second bill of rights: FDR's unfinished revolution and why we need it
“For better or worse, the Constitution's framers gave no thought to including social and economic guarantees in the bill of rights.”
These new rights he would say we are entitled to include guarantees for every American to “a useful and remunerative job, a good home, a good education, adequate medical care and the opportunity to enjoy good health, a right to earn enough to provide adequate recreation” etc.
Hey ,with all these new entitlements why not just take our whole pay check ? We should be happy to surrender it since there is no liberty without dependency. I should be pleased that my tax dollars goes to purchase a private airport for Jack Murtha . It's for the collective good after-all .

Currently in Australia there is a fierce debate over the adoption of a Bill of Rights. Some scholars are concerned that it would give too much power to the judicial branch .
Australian Bill of Rights (http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/bill.html)
NSW Chief Justice Jim Spigelman warned that judges could be tempted to ignore the wishes of parliament if they were given wider powers on human rights. The danger, according to the Chief Justice, is that judges could interpret legislation contrary to the intention of the elected politicians who had passed the laws. (sound familiar ?) But the real problem is that the intent of the proponents is to introduce what our President calls "positive rights "... or more accurately described as nanny state entitlements... Things that would promote this idea of dependency on the government

By Sunstein's argument, if 35% taxes are a good thing, then 95% taxes would be even better... because then government could be even bigger and do more "for us" than it already does.

There would be more property rights regulations, more inheritance laws, more probate court officials, more bank regulators, more of everything that the government provides.

And less wealth.

What good are property rights if you don't own any property? What good are banks if you have no money to save? What good are probate laws if you have nothing to inherit and nothing to leave to your children?

It's a silly argument by a big-government, tax & spend lib bureaucrat looking to get his piece of the government pie.

What he really means is that without big government HE would be unable to earn money autonomously, HE would be unable to save any money and HE would be unable to either inherit or leave anything for his kids.

What he really means is that HE is dependent on government to do for him what he is too incompetent to do for himself.

But what applies to his incompetent a$$ doesn't apply to most of the rest of us. Most of the rest of us are quite competent to do for ourselves without government interference.

Elliot

I thought liberty and dependency were opposites?

Does Mr Sunstein want the citizens so dependent on the government that they have to pay taxes so that some government bureaucrat will wipe their... after they toilet?


G&P

I thought liberty and dependency were opposites?

Does Mr Sunstein want the citizens so dependent on the government that they have to pay taxes so that some government bureaucrat will wipe their ....... after they toilet?


G&P

Perhaps not... but he has no problem with the government telling people what kind of toilets and toilet paper they can use.

Wait, are we all "interdependent" on each other or "dependent" on government? The left just can't seem to make up their minds about how the world works.

Just to update . The Senate voted cloture yesterday on the debate about the Cass Sunstein nomination. Since he needs a Senate confirmation he cannot be called technically a commie-czar even though he has been trumpetted as the Regulatory Czar .

More of the wacky garbage the future Regulatory czar promotes...
In a book he wrote last year “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Sunstein argued that the main reason that more people do not donate their organs is because they are required to choose donation. You know ;they are just too lazy to be bothered to check the box on their driver's license. Or maybe it's just too much an inconvenience.

Anyway ;
Cass thinks that they really meant to check that box so why not assume they intended to do so and then act on that premise unless they specifically indicated that they didn't want their organs donated for transplant ?
It's called “presumed consent.”

You see ;you have to nudge people to do the right thing. Or in some more Orwellianism the government mandates the choice.
With mandated choice, renewal of your driver's license would be accompanied by a requirement that you check a box stating your organ donation preferences,. Your application would not be accepted unless you had checked one of the boxes.


In her review of “Nudge," the New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert stated that Sunstein and Thaler seem to hold "the belief that, faced with certain options, people will consistently make the wrong choice. Therefore, they argue, people should be offered options that work with, rather than against, their unreasoning tendencies. These foolish-proof choices they label 'nudges.'"
The Sunstein Also Rises - Political Punch (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/the-sunstein-also-rises.html)

In her review of “Nudge," the New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert stated that Sunstein and Thaler seem to hold "the belief that, faced with certain options, people will consistently make the wrong choice. Therefore, they argue, people should be offered options that work with, rather than against, their unreasoning tendencies. These foolish-proof choices they label 'nudges.'"

We already knew the left didn't think we were competent enough to make our own choices. And yet they still can't see how detached they've become from ordinary Americans.

Currently in Australia there is a fierce debate over the adoption of a Bill of Rights. Some scholars are concerned that it would give too much power to the judicial branch .
Australian Bill of Rights (http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/bill.html)
NSW Chief Justice Jim Spigelman warned that judges could be tempted to ignore the wishes of parliament if they were given wider powers on human rights. The danger, according to the Chief Justice, is that judges could interpret legislation contrary to the intention of the elected politicians who had passed the laws. (sound familiar ?) But the real problem is that the intent of the proponents is to introduce what our President calls "positive rights " ....or more accurately described as nanny state entitlements...... Things that would promote this idea of dependency on the government

Would not suggest the debate over a Bill of Rights is feirce but the subject is introduced from time to time, as is the question of a Republic, usually when the government of the day would like a distraction from the heat of other debate. A Labor (read liberal) government is more disposed towards a Bill of Rights than the more conservative opposition but every person in Australia has the basic rights existing in common law and handed down from Magna Carta, so a Bill of Rights may not change much, just give the judiciary greater power. There have not emerged conditions that would make a shift in the balance between legislature and executive and judiciary necessary. There has been no rebellion, summary execution, political incarceration, disenfranchisement, that would make it necessary, rather it is the darling of those minorities who have failed to have their cherished agendas adopted.

but every person in Australia has the basic rights existing in common law and handed down from Magna Carta, so a Bill of Rights may not change much, just give the judiciary greater power.

You got that right... the way I read it ,the issue in Australia is what Sunstein and Obama call "positive rights" or more accurately called entitlements.

John Kennedy famously told the Americans to not ask "what the country could do for you". But now the Democrats want what the government must do for you cemented into the constitution . Our bill of rights are what Obama calls "negative "rights... what the government cannot do .

James Madison argued in Federalist Papers #84 a case similar to what you say ;that there really was no need for the Bill of Rights .

they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing,and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations.

But the people very much aware of the abuses of the British crown and the Parliament that supposedly represented them wanted the guarantees.

Madison answered that concern with a case closed argument .



I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power.

Did this guy really say that if you kill a rat in your house the rat should have the right to sue?

It is becoming increasingly clear what kind of people Obama wants running things. The names are almost a who's who of hot pink and Marxist radicals.

Isn't this the man who boasted he would unite the country? And yet, his attitude has plainly been "my way or the highway". Comments, proposals, and appointments are completely partisan.

It is clear to me that he means to rule, not lead.

It has been often said that those of us on the right have a problem with a black man in the White House.

I do indeed have a problem with his color.

Not black, but RED.

But the people very much aware of the abuses of the British crown and the Parliment that supposedly represented them wanted the guarantees.

.

We had no rebellion therefore any abuses were minimal and confined to the abuses common of local, heavy handed, law enforcement. Because you had a rebellion you had to make a statement of how things were going to be as you had created a vacuum. In doing so, you developed a less than perfect system because you didn't rely on precedent but opinion. Your system works to limit what government can do, so it is premised in the assumption that those in power will abuse it, our system is premised in the assumption that those in power will act responsibly and within the law. Our system ultimately resulted in our becoming a separate nation without the need for rebellion

Did this guy really say that if you kill a rat in your house the rat should have the right to sue?

Not sure the rat could sue . But the rat's slip and fall lawyer hired by PETA could. Rodents working together .