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1) Policy Focus of the Week: Higher Taxes are good for you?
2) The David Strom Show (Win a free book!)
3) Sign up for one of our Action eLists and get a free pocket US Constitution!
4) If Al Franken is a Victim, So are the Rest of Us
5) An Evening with P.J. O'Rourke-- April 29th at Northrop Auditorium.
1) Policy Focus of the Week: Higher Taxes are good for you?
If there is one thing that liberals do worse than make policy it is making metaphors. In commentaries on the online news source MinnPost.com and at sctimes.com (St. Cloud), Marcia Avner of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits; Brian Rusche of the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition; Dane Smith, president, Growth & Justice; and Ray Waldron, president, AFL-CIO, depict Minnesota as "suffering from a vitamin deficiency."
We grow weaker and unhealthy, they say. Still, we resist a balanced diet. If only we would "think of taxes as spinach, broccoli and peas."
If taxes were spinach, broccoli and peas, the most dangerous place in Minnesota would be between Dane Smith & friends and a salad bar.
Our four rapacious vegetarians and their organizations have joined forces to form the "Invest in Minnesota Campaign," yet another group arguing for higher overall taxation in the guise of tax "fairness," a moral, not an economic position.
At the Minnesota Free Market Institute, we, too, see a need to "invest in Minnesota," and the best way to do that is to disinvest in government. Let's invest in individual Minnesotans by letting them keep more of their own money and take more responsibility for their spending decisions on things like education and health care. Let's disinvest in government by limiting spending to its constitutional obligations. Spinach, broccoli and peas are side dishes, never meant to be the main course.
(Watch our website, for more.)
2) The David Strom Show (Win a Free Book!)
The David Strom Show sponsored by the Minnesota Free Market Institute is broadcast weekly on AM 1280 The Patriot Saturdays 9-11 A.M. Podcasts of the show are available at Townhall.com and also directly via iTunes. (See our radio show page for details). The show is now downloaded over 11,000 times a month!
Last Saturday's show was guest hosted by Craig Westover and featured State Representative Chris DeLaForest talking about property tax proposals before the state legislature and in the second hour Robert P. Murphy, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism.
This week only! Sign up for one of our Action eLists and enter a drawing for The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, autographed by the author. Go to www.minnesotafreemarkets.organd click on the Join tab and go directly to our action eList sign up. On Friday May 2, we will have a drawing of all the signups we get this week and we'll announce the lucky winner on Saturday's show. (If you check the box that says "Radio" you'll also get a weekly email telling you in advance who will be on the show.)
Audio clips of both hours are available here.
3) Sign up for one of our Action eLists and get a free pocket US Constitution!
Visit http://www.minnesotafreemarkets.org/ and click Join! on the toolbar to sign up for one of our elists. Everyone with a mailing address in our database by May 31 will get a free copy of the Cato Pocket Constitution mailed to that address.
[Note: If you have never signed up on our site before and have received this email directly (not fowarded from a friend) leave the fields blank when the site asks you to "verify" your name. If you are already receiving this email directly you are subscribed by your email address to our updates list but we may not have your mailing address on file. Click the "join" tab to register.]
4) If Al Franken is a Victim So are the Rest of Us
An amazing thing about the liberal mind-set is its capacity to compartmentalize - to isolate issues as if they existed in a vacuum. Case in point is the meme circulating among the supporters of Al Franken that his lapses in paying his obligations to government are not a character flaw; Franken is a victim, who can't be expected to know all the minutia of the tax system.
Okay, let's take liberals at their word and see where that leads us. If Franken is a victim of tax system complexities, then the victimizer is a government tax system that is so complex, only "those stalwarts who do it for a living, filing tax forms and keeping up with regulations is minutia" can keep up with it. And Franken is not the only victim. What about the rest of us poor schmucks trying to earn a living and better ourselves?
God bless H & R Block, but every dime American taxpayers pay H & Block is an unproductive expense that sucks money from the economy and creates no new wealth. Individuals can save money by saving on taxes; society loses in aggregate when individuals must "waste" money only to calculate exactly how much tax is actually owed to government.
Taxes are necessary; a complex tax system is not. Coincidently, the major cause of the complexity of the tax system is the result of "fairness" policies Franken promotes. The system we have today piles exception on exception in a vain attempt to make sure everyone "pays their fair shares." It is difficult to understand, and the tax system is used to reward and punish individuals and industries that please or tick off the powers that be. What actually makes a tax system "fair" is that it is uniform, easy to understand, and not subject to change at the whim of government.
Franken is foisted on his own petard - he's victim of a system liberal-thinking created. He's got the means and the people to deal with it. The rest of us don't, and people like Franken either don't care or haven't given us a second thought. Almost makes a guy want to whine, "It's not fair."
5) An Evening with P.J. O'Rourke-- April 29th at Northrop Auditorium.
On Tuesday April 29th, at 7:00 P.M., Best Selling Author and America's leading Political Satirist P.J. O'Rourke will be appearing at The University of Minnesota's Northrop Auditorium. The Event will be Free and open to the public. The Minnesota Free Market Institute is co-sponsoring the event with CFact (Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow) and a host of other organizations. For more information visit http://www.cfact-umn.blogspot.com/.
The Minnesota Free Market Institute conducts research and advocates for policy that limits government involvement in individual affairs and promotes competition and consumer choice. By analyzing the actions of the past and applying the enduring lessons of the free market, the Minnesota Free Market Institute creates policy options for the future. The Minnesota Free Market Institute accepts PayPal! To donate click here.
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