Crazy Path to Re-Liberation?
WARNING: This is a slanted rant which may contain several flaws and is not nearly as objective as I’d like. It is partially for my own reference, partially venting and provided with hope that someone smarter than me will get a better idea based on one or more of the concepts contained herein. Do not read this unless you’re prepared to endure blind assertions and hints of ideology.
I propose that all new laws which restrict personal freedoms or impose taxation have an auto-expiration policy with a maximum of 10 years enforcement. At expiration time a vote can once again be taken on the topic, possibly amending the original or simply resetting the expiration date to another [up to] 10 years. Or, having the law removed if a vote fails or no action is taken at all.
Why should we consider and addition to the law making process which causes taxation or rights-restricting laws to auto-expire? There are simple examples of old laws which are terribly senseless today yet still exist on the books and are being used against us when it seems convenient for those in power. Example here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050524/od_nm/life_laws_dc
We must consider the personal agendas of our elected officials and the natural inclination of government to gather power unto itself. If we are to keep these forces in check we must have a natural cleansing cycle.
It’s important to identify that many laws are passed on the basis of “point in time” emotions. We must also recognize the power of a few large organizations to disseminate “information”; We are provided information from a few sources while being shielded from other important aspects such as relevant context or extreme upsides which could overshadow the reported downsides. Our decisions are based on what we “know” but when we find that what we “knew” was incorrect, it could be too late to reverse the law making process.\
We’ve seen an incremental removal of our personal rights from local, state and federal legislatures as well as measures taken by the constituency based on “known” current events. The simplest types to dissect are new tax laws. The general permanence of these types of laws or impositions is the source of my notion for expiration. Once an entity or group of entities feels the rush of new funding it becomes more powerful than heroin. Overturning such a law becomes extremely difficult and costly. It is usually possible but regaining power from the elite few is an uphill battle all the way — Isn’t that just the reverse of how it should be? I think so too.
If we force the money grabbers to once again make their case to the people who pay their salaries, we [the people] have a slightly smaller disadvantage but we’re still in a better position, like switching from Craps to Blackjack. Yeah, that’s it! The powerful few are the “casinos” and the people are the unwitting customers with a hope.
But we’ve got to close the loopholes! For example, every year we’re bombarded with measures for school funding or other civil initiatives. They can’t unilaterally impose higher property taxes so they attempt to pass “bond measures” which generally impose a 30 year lien on homeowners. But it seems so incremental. It’s just an additional $25 per year on your property tax. And “it’s for the kids!”. What they’ve pulled off is pure evil genius, I must give them credit for that. They get all of their money “right now” and have 30 years to break promises, most of which we’ll never know about. You can’t change your mind later because the money has been promised, sold, whatever. It’s actually better than the old method because taxes could be voted down by a new legislature while there’s no undoing of a bond measure once it has been passed. More on the Bond issue…
Recently the criteria for passing bonds was reduced to just a 55% threshold. Hey, the people passed this so we reap what we’ve sown. To be fair, those who *want* the money are generally much more financially ready to fight the battle than the few conscientious voters who see the truth. Lowering the percentage needed to pass a bond measure was sold under the guise of accountability and not on the primary purpose which was to make it easier to impose taxes. Undoing this law will be an extremely difficult path given the financial firepower of those who would control the future inbound tax dollars.
Natural Duping Through Guilt Yields $$$: Why are there so many high profile, wealthy tax advocates? There are a lot of reasons I suppose. One simple deduction can be made which is, when you’re sitting on several million dollars it is easier to see the virtue in “sharing” a percentage of your money with those less fortunate or to improve our school system, hire firemen (fire persons?), etc. It is much easier to write a check than it is to take meaningful action, like holding officials accountable or spending needed time rectifying problems. An example of this can be found at “www’one.org”. From their TV commercial, “We’re not asking for your money, we’re asking for your voice”. But they *are* asking for your money, in a roundabout sorta way and for a seemingly legitimate reason. They want to allocate an *ADDITIONAL* 1% of the U.S. budget for their particular cause. Why can they not just be up front with what they want to impose? Again, their goal is extremely noble in nature but the methodology is more than suspect. It assumes that I agree with where/how that money is spent. It assumes that I have the same goals or no alternative charitable contribution that *I* find more important. Why are so many movie stars, TV personalities, musicians, etc., backing this project? They’ve got a lot more money and associated guilt. Not enough guilt to consider what they’d like to impose on me. Wow! I totally digress. What I was getting at initially was that there is a lot of money behind initiatives which remove our rights or money or both.
Being a common man with a modest income (and a limited grasp of grammatical rules:)), my ability to push back is much tougher. But I push, with whatever strength I have left. Remember, most of us don’t have weeks or months to spare “between movies” for advocacy because we grind all day, struggling to put food on the table and pay for the impositions of the few. Okay, “whoa is me” — I get it.
To summarize a bit, it has traditionally been very difficult to undo laws that restrict our personal freedoms or impose additional taxation. We should be very careful with every new law or tax approval. And limiting the life of such laws seems to provide a method where the powerful must at least remake their case for such impositions so we can reevaluate based on the [then] current landscape.
I would be remiss and likely disingenuous if I didn’t point out some of the downsides of my proposal. The most glaring deficiency would be seen over a long period of time. When laws are passed and must be continually reevaluated we could end up in a state where nothing new can be considered because all time is consumed by voting yet again on laws already passed. Perhaps if something is renewed 3 times in a row it would be exempt from this process. The point is, we’d need to be careful not to bog down the political machine with reevaluations. And unless we express the initial expiration law flawlessly there will be loopholes which make the entire exercise worse than ineffective. There are surely other downsides but as you can imagine, this is simply a seed meant to be nurtured by those much smarter than I.
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