Much has been written this week about the decision of the huge and hugely distinguished law firm King and Spalding backing out of its decision to represent the GOP members of the House of Representatives in defending the Defense of Marriage Act in the Federal Courts, after the Obama administration's decision to stop defending what they saw (rightly) as an inherently unconstitutional law.
Most of what I have read and heard among colleagues criticized the decision of King and Spalding to back out of their representation saying that they gave into political pressure and hung a client out to dry. Much also has been said of Paul Clement, the partner at King and Spalding who initially agreed to represent the GOP Representatives and who after King and Spalding's decision to drop the client, decided to resign the firm and continue to represent the GOP Republicans at a new firm.
Let me first say that I, too, applaud Mr. Clement's decision to resign based on his strong beliefs and continue his representation. There are few people who would have that kind of courage of their convictions. But, little has been said or written about all of those at King and Spalding, many of whom were not members of the firm, but associates or non-lawyers whose entire future in the legal profession depends on the good relationship with and approval of their superiors in their firm. It is about them, that I would like to write today.
According to a report by Jennifer Bendery and Amanda Terkel at Huffington Post, the decision by King and Spalding to take on the defense of DOMA through the Federal Appeals process sparked a mutiny at the law firm. According to the report, a source inside the firm stated that management was divided and many in the firm were threatening to quit. What is most remarkable is that at least one non-attorney, a litigation paralegal in the Atlanta office went on the record complaining to the leadership of the firm that their decision could harm the standing the firm had in the LGBT community in Atlanta and that many companies and clients could leave as a result of their decision. For someone who is not even an attorney, much less a member, of such an old-school law firm to stand up to management and tell them to their face, on the record, that they are wrong in making a decision about accepting a case is remarkable. The paralegal, Pam Rymin, must have known that she was placing her career, her salary (which is probably quite substantial) and her future not only with this firm but with many others on the line when she made her complaint.
Despite the criticism of the firm for bowing to external pressure in deciding to drop their representation of the House GOP members, it appears that most of the criticism was from within the firm.
King and Spalding does deserve a lot of criticism for how this was handled. These issues should have been vetted through the firm before the decision to accept the representation was made. However, I would posit that there was probably very little thought given to the fact that this decision might even be controversial. I would venture a guess that the older, more senior members of the firm, grew up in an era when gays and lesbians were known, but never heard and more often than not were relegated to their closets if they wanted to succeed. No one would be open about their sexuality, at least if they wanted to advance in their career, and if their sexual orientation was known, it was not something to be flaunted or talked about openly. Certainly no-one would dare consider getting married to a person of the same sex much less expect the State or Federal government to recognize such a thing.
When I was in law school at Wake Forest, not all that long ago, one of the issues that we dealt with within the school was the school's seemingly non-sensical refusal to honor the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday by canceling classes. Throughout my three years there, several of the students, mostly members of the fledgling National Lawyers' Guild chapter at the still very conservative Southern school and members of the Black Law Student Association ramped up our calls for the administration of the law school to take action. This culminated in a boycott of classes and a noon-time rally during my third year. At the rally, I spoke and asked my fellow students who attended the rally (many of whom boycotted classes that day, many of whom did not but still attended the rally) if they were willing to take the stand they were making that day and carry it into their professional careers. Would they have the courage to stand up to a colleague who made a racist joke, or to a partner in their firm who made decisions on employment or representation in a racially discriminatory way? It would not be easy, I warned. The pressure to conform in our profession is extreme and the risk to your career for standing up to someone who can easily destroy everything you ever worked for is great.
It is for that reason that I am proud of those in the King and Spalding firm who stood up to their superiors and took a stand against their representation of this case. The rights of lesbians, gays and transgendered people is the single most important civil rights issue of our time. The fact that so many inside one of the oldest and most powerful law firms in this nation decided to have the courage of their convictions and make a stand in this fashion is a powerful statement. The times, they are a'changin' and this story of these brave associates and paralegals shows that they are probably changing for the better.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Death and Taxes
Yesterday being tax day, I thought it was a good time to write about taxes (I'll leave death for another day). Tax issues are all the rage in Washington as each side of the political aisle tries to make it look as if they are doing something about our national deficit while not actually doing anything that would potentially cost them votes or actually hurt any of their perceived constituencies. In other words, a lot of talk with no real action. The money keeps being spent, the taxes keep being cut, the deficits keep growing and the nation keeps running headlong into oblivion. Nothing new.
I will be probably be the only person in the entire country that says the following: I pay too little in taxes. Last year, my effective tax rate (the percentage of my gross income that I actually ended up paying to the federal government) was somewhere between 7 and 8 percent. Partly that was because I had an exceedingly difficult year with lots of medical bills and I got the advantage of the tax benefit for putting a new water heater in (not because I wanted the tax break, but because my water heater broke). However, it made me think about our tax system and what needs to happen if we really want to get serious about tackling the budget.
I am by no means rich by any way of judging such things. I took a huge hit in the wallet when I decided to leave my position as partner in a private law firm and become a prosecutor. I knew that at the time and I'm still glad that I made the decision because for the most part the trade off of having a schedule that let's me spend more time with my family and the ability to help actively take care of my daughter is worth much more than money. My wife and I do all right, but like most families, every month we scrape by. But after the economic implosion that we saw in 2008 and the lingering effects of that implosion on working people, we are lucky to have what we have and are doing a whole lot better than most.
So, why, you are probably asking yourselves, do I think I should pay more in taxes? Well, I'll give it a whirl.
There is a lot of talk in Washington about "shared sacrifice." With this concept I agree. There should truly be shared sacrifice with all levels of the economic strata paying their fair share. However, nobody in Washington actually means there should be actual shared sacrifice.
The Republicans say the entire issue is about government spending -- well, at least government spending on things they don't like (arts, the poor, trains, healthcare for women, NPR, etc.). Their proposals call for cutting Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, funding for health care, social services, housing, education, etc. while at the same time giving additional tax cuts to the richest people in the country and further tax breaks to corporations. In fact there was even the proposal for a corporate tax holiday (I'm not sure what paying no taxes while getting a huge tax refund while posting billions of dollars in profit is, but apparently it's not a holiday).
The Democrats as usual a wishy washy about the cuts they propose (they want cuts to things like subsidies for heating oil because apparently it's ok if grandma is a little cold, she has blankets after all), but mostly want to raise taxes on the richest Americans by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for families making more than $250,000 a year, but still extending the tax cuts for the remaining Americans. Now, I'm all in favor of rolling back the Bush tax cuts, if for no other reason than that they have been an abject disaster for our economy, but the problem with the Dems approach is that it, too, fails to truly address the problems that we face with our deficits.
Both plans fall way short of actually putting a dent into our deficit. The cuts proposed by both parties target the absolute smallest part of the federal budget -- domestic discretionary spending. Plus both parties are being cowards when it comes to tax policy -- the Republicans not wanting to tax anybody and the Dems only wanting to tax those that they don't think will vote for them.
I heard David Stockman speaking this weekend on NPR (yes, that bastion of socialist propaganda). I hate to say that Stockman, the architect of Reaganomics in the 1980s, made more sense than anybody who I have heard speak on these subjects in a long time, but he did. He agreed that the Bush tax cuts had to be rolled back, but that they had to be rolled back for everyone. He also said that we couldn't get by just targeting this very small portion of the federal budget, but that we had to look at things like the defense budget and entitlement programs, which are the largest portion of the federal budget if we were going to really get serious about reducing the deficit.
Here are some things that I propose:
First, we have to raise taxes. I have never seen a financial crisis like the one we are currently facing addressed by a proposal of a tax cut. It won't work. It never has worked and it never will work. Taxes have to be raised probably across the board, at least to the point where they were under President Clinton. It's going to hurt. It should hurt. But shared sacrifice involves actual sacrifice, not just screwing everyone else. We should also look at going back to some kind of marginal tax bracket. Maybe not the 91% rate that we had under Eisenhower (although people were doing a lot better back then across the board), but as we continue to see what are obscene salaries going to the wealthiest Americans and the divide between rich and poor becomes cavernous, a marginal rate makes more and more sense.
Second, we need to eliminate many tax credits and simplify our tax code. In 1986, the Reagan administration passed a huge tax cut with bipartisan support, but did so by eliminating most of the corporate tax shelters and loopholes that allowed the richest among us to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Since then, taxes have remained low, but tax credits and loopholes have found their way back into the system. First, eliminate these insane laws that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes by having off shore addresses and giving them breaks for shipping jobs overseas. But, in addition to this, we have to look at giving up some of our sacred tax credit cows. The one that I think makes the most sense (and I argued adamantly against this for years) is the tax credit for mortgage interest. The reason that I have supported this tax credit is that it made it more affordable for more people to own homes and allowed the middle class to grow and for our economy and society to become more stable. However, with the rising foreclosure rate and the fact that the middle class has been essentially wiped out, the argument for keeping this tax credit is less convincing than it used to be, and I think it is time to toss this one away. There are many others that could be looked at, but this is after all my lunch hour and it is limited.
Third, we need to reform, but strengthen entitlements. People in Washington are freaking out about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We don't need panic. Entitlements don't need major surgery, they need a fitness plan. With Social Security, we may need to look at raising the retirement age. But, before we do, we need to address some other things about Social Security that just don't seem to make sense. First, we need to at least raise, if not eliminate, the cap on salaries subject to Social Security. Right now, only the first $107,000 of an individual's salary is subject to Social Security withholding. Raising this substantially, or eliminating it entirely would create a huge influx of funds into the Social Security Trust Fund. We also need to look at means testing for Social Security recipients. Social Security was intended as a program to prevent older Americans from becoming destitute and wards of the state in their final years. It has worked tremendously in that regard. However, I don't think that Jamie Dimon really needs to be receiving Social Security benefits when he turns 65. Some sort of means testing makes sense. Last with SS, we need to stop raiding the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for other shit not related to Social Security. If ever a trust needed to be a spendthrift trust it is one run by the government. Social Security would be fine, if Washington politicians were not allowed to spend its principal to pay for things not related to Social Security. As for Medicare and Medicaid, we pretty much need to leave them alone. There are areas in which reforms may be needed, especially in the areas of how funds and services are delivered, but they are both fairly efficient programs, despite the calls for their destruction coming from the right. The proposals of Rep. Ryan are far from "courageous" as they have been hailed, but are just more of the same -- balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the aged. Getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid will be a net loss for the public as we will see much higher costs of care for the poor and the aged fall on the rest of us in terms of higher insurance rates and health care costs, as their care will go more to ER's and be unable to be collected and therefore passed on.
Last, we need to look at cutting military spending. This doesn't mean that we need to pack up our soldiers and ship them home from Afghanistan and Iraq tomorrow (although that wouldn't be the craziest thing I've ever heard, either) and it doesn't mean that our soliders should go without necessaries like body armor or weapons (although we sent them to Iraq without them, but again I digress). However, the unnecessary spending in our military budget can easily be eliminated. Well, that is, except that it benefits the district of every Congressman. We still seem to be running a Cold War military in a post 9/11 world and that doesn't seem to me to make a lot of sense. We can't balance the budget without cutting waste in our military and that may mean we also need a shift in the way our military is used around the world.
None of this has the remotest possibility of getting passed, by the way. As long as Washington is more concerned about re-election and raising money, the chances for real reform will never have a chance. However, I strongly believe that if both sides were to sit down and have a serious conversation with the goal being to come up with policies that actually benefited our nation rather than looking good in opinion polls, I think there is a lot upon which we could all agree.
The debate as it is reminds me of the DirecTV commercial with the rich Russian guy sitting on his gold throne surrounded by busty blond babes and tiny giraffes with electrodes attached to his arms and chest running to a weightlifter lifting what looks like about 400 pounds. We want the huge muscles, we just want someone else to do the work. Here's the truth: you can only lose weight and gain muscle by eating healthily and working out. Here's the other truth: we can only balance the budget and address our economic crisis by taking measures that actually hurt financially. There's no easy fix.
I welcome any other ideas that people have. And you can all now see why I will never be able to run for public office.
I will be probably be the only person in the entire country that says the following: I pay too little in taxes. Last year, my effective tax rate (the percentage of my gross income that I actually ended up paying to the federal government) was somewhere between 7 and 8 percent. Partly that was because I had an exceedingly difficult year with lots of medical bills and I got the advantage of the tax benefit for putting a new water heater in (not because I wanted the tax break, but because my water heater broke). However, it made me think about our tax system and what needs to happen if we really want to get serious about tackling the budget.
I am by no means rich by any way of judging such things. I took a huge hit in the wallet when I decided to leave my position as partner in a private law firm and become a prosecutor. I knew that at the time and I'm still glad that I made the decision because for the most part the trade off of having a schedule that let's me spend more time with my family and the ability to help actively take care of my daughter is worth much more than money. My wife and I do all right, but like most families, every month we scrape by. But after the economic implosion that we saw in 2008 and the lingering effects of that implosion on working people, we are lucky to have what we have and are doing a whole lot better than most.
So, why, you are probably asking yourselves, do I think I should pay more in taxes? Well, I'll give it a whirl.
There is a lot of talk in Washington about "shared sacrifice." With this concept I agree. There should truly be shared sacrifice with all levels of the economic strata paying their fair share. However, nobody in Washington actually means there should be actual shared sacrifice.
The Republicans say the entire issue is about government spending -- well, at least government spending on things they don't like (arts, the poor, trains, healthcare for women, NPR, etc.). Their proposals call for cutting Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, funding for health care, social services, housing, education, etc. while at the same time giving additional tax cuts to the richest people in the country and further tax breaks to corporations. In fact there was even the proposal for a corporate tax holiday (I'm not sure what paying no taxes while getting a huge tax refund while posting billions of dollars in profit is, but apparently it's not a holiday).
The Democrats as usual a wishy washy about the cuts they propose (they want cuts to things like subsidies for heating oil because apparently it's ok if grandma is a little cold, she has blankets after all), but mostly want to raise taxes on the richest Americans by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for families making more than $250,000 a year, but still extending the tax cuts for the remaining Americans. Now, I'm all in favor of rolling back the Bush tax cuts, if for no other reason than that they have been an abject disaster for our economy, but the problem with the Dems approach is that it, too, fails to truly address the problems that we face with our deficits.
Both plans fall way short of actually putting a dent into our deficit. The cuts proposed by both parties target the absolute smallest part of the federal budget -- domestic discretionary spending. Plus both parties are being cowards when it comes to tax policy -- the Republicans not wanting to tax anybody and the Dems only wanting to tax those that they don't think will vote for them.
I heard David Stockman speaking this weekend on NPR (yes, that bastion of socialist propaganda). I hate to say that Stockman, the architect of Reaganomics in the 1980s, made more sense than anybody who I have heard speak on these subjects in a long time, but he did. He agreed that the Bush tax cuts had to be rolled back, but that they had to be rolled back for everyone. He also said that we couldn't get by just targeting this very small portion of the federal budget, but that we had to look at things like the defense budget and entitlement programs, which are the largest portion of the federal budget if we were going to really get serious about reducing the deficit.
Here are some things that I propose:
First, we have to raise taxes. I have never seen a financial crisis like the one we are currently facing addressed by a proposal of a tax cut. It won't work. It never has worked and it never will work. Taxes have to be raised probably across the board, at least to the point where they were under President Clinton. It's going to hurt. It should hurt. But shared sacrifice involves actual sacrifice, not just screwing everyone else. We should also look at going back to some kind of marginal tax bracket. Maybe not the 91% rate that we had under Eisenhower (although people were doing a lot better back then across the board), but as we continue to see what are obscene salaries going to the wealthiest Americans and the divide between rich and poor becomes cavernous, a marginal rate makes more and more sense.
Second, we need to eliminate many tax credits and simplify our tax code. In 1986, the Reagan administration passed a huge tax cut with bipartisan support, but did so by eliminating most of the corporate tax shelters and loopholes that allowed the richest among us to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Since then, taxes have remained low, but tax credits and loopholes have found their way back into the system. First, eliminate these insane laws that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes by having off shore addresses and giving them breaks for shipping jobs overseas. But, in addition to this, we have to look at giving up some of our sacred tax credit cows. The one that I think makes the most sense (and I argued adamantly against this for years) is the tax credit for mortgage interest. The reason that I have supported this tax credit is that it made it more affordable for more people to own homes and allowed the middle class to grow and for our economy and society to become more stable. However, with the rising foreclosure rate and the fact that the middle class has been essentially wiped out, the argument for keeping this tax credit is less convincing than it used to be, and I think it is time to toss this one away. There are many others that could be looked at, but this is after all my lunch hour and it is limited.
Third, we need to reform, but strengthen entitlements. People in Washington are freaking out about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We don't need panic. Entitlements don't need major surgery, they need a fitness plan. With Social Security, we may need to look at raising the retirement age. But, before we do, we need to address some other things about Social Security that just don't seem to make sense. First, we need to at least raise, if not eliminate, the cap on salaries subject to Social Security. Right now, only the first $107,000 of an individual's salary is subject to Social Security withholding. Raising this substantially, or eliminating it entirely would create a huge influx of funds into the Social Security Trust Fund. We also need to look at means testing for Social Security recipients. Social Security was intended as a program to prevent older Americans from becoming destitute and wards of the state in their final years. It has worked tremendously in that regard. However, I don't think that Jamie Dimon really needs to be receiving Social Security benefits when he turns 65. Some sort of means testing makes sense. Last with SS, we need to stop raiding the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for other shit not related to Social Security. If ever a trust needed to be a spendthrift trust it is one run by the government. Social Security would be fine, if Washington politicians were not allowed to spend its principal to pay for things not related to Social Security. As for Medicare and Medicaid, we pretty much need to leave them alone. There are areas in which reforms may be needed, especially in the areas of how funds and services are delivered, but they are both fairly efficient programs, despite the calls for their destruction coming from the right. The proposals of Rep. Ryan are far from "courageous" as they have been hailed, but are just more of the same -- balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the aged. Getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid will be a net loss for the public as we will see much higher costs of care for the poor and the aged fall on the rest of us in terms of higher insurance rates and health care costs, as their care will go more to ER's and be unable to be collected and therefore passed on.
Last, we need to look at cutting military spending. This doesn't mean that we need to pack up our soldiers and ship them home from Afghanistan and Iraq tomorrow (although that wouldn't be the craziest thing I've ever heard, either) and it doesn't mean that our soliders should go without necessaries like body armor or weapons (although we sent them to Iraq without them, but again I digress). However, the unnecessary spending in our military budget can easily be eliminated. Well, that is, except that it benefits the district of every Congressman. We still seem to be running a Cold War military in a post 9/11 world and that doesn't seem to me to make a lot of sense. We can't balance the budget without cutting waste in our military and that may mean we also need a shift in the way our military is used around the world.
None of this has the remotest possibility of getting passed, by the way. As long as Washington is more concerned about re-election and raising money, the chances for real reform will never have a chance. However, I strongly believe that if both sides were to sit down and have a serious conversation with the goal being to come up with policies that actually benefited our nation rather than looking good in opinion polls, I think there is a lot upon which we could all agree.
The debate as it is reminds me of the DirecTV commercial with the rich Russian guy sitting on his gold throne surrounded by busty blond babes and tiny giraffes with electrodes attached to his arms and chest running to a weightlifter lifting what looks like about 400 pounds. We want the huge muscles, we just want someone else to do the work. Here's the truth: you can only lose weight and gain muscle by eating healthily and working out. Here's the other truth: we can only balance the budget and address our economic crisis by taking measures that actually hurt financially. There's no easy fix.
I welcome any other ideas that people have. And you can all now see why I will never be able to run for public office.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Ruminations on the Nanny State
I have lately noticed a significant increase in the use of the term "nanny state" on the net, in reports on political issues, on comment pages and in conversation. Most notably in my own experience, the term has been employed against me for having the audacity to suggest that a proposed law allowing motorcyclists in North Carolina to ride their motorcycles sans helmet was both unnecessary and, well, dumb.
What I have always understood the term nanny state to mean is the overreaching of government into areas best left to personal choice. The best example of what I consider the proper use of the term would be the Chicago city council's decision to outlaw the serving of fois gras in restaurants within the city's borders. Why a governmental agency would even give an issue like that time on their agenda bewilders me and I think whether or not you believe that fois gras is cruelty on a plate or not, I would hope that we could agree that this is a perverse overstepping of both governmental action and common sense.
What bothers me is that lately it seems that the term is being used to refer to anything that government does to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens. Inherent in this argument is the Tea Party mantra that any governmental action somehow impedes our individual liberty. This is interesting seeing that most of the Tea Party folks that I saw attending those town hall meetings got their income from Social Security and their hoverround from Medicare, but I digress.
The fact is that in order to live in a civilized and orderly society, we need a government that sets forth laws and rules that regulate our behavior. Do these in some way inevitably impinge on our liberties? I guess they do. But to be a member of society, sometimes our individual liberty must give in a little to the common good. Most of these "infringements" we don't really think about. We have speed limits on our highways to ensure that the highways are safe for those who travel them; we have laws that make it illegal to take someone else's property and punish those who do; we have zoning ordinances to make sure that you don't put an industrial waste dump next to my house. Most people have no problem with these, although trust me there are plenty of people who do.
So, where do you draw the line between a government that is protecting the general welfare vs. one that is trying to regulate every infinitesimal intricacy of our every-day life? If I knew the answer to that, I would be running the country rather than writing a blog on my lunch hour. But, I would posit that the line is not where those throwing out the term "nanny state" are saying it is.
Let's take the example of the motorcycle helmet law. North Carolina like most sensible and civilized states (South Carolina, I'm looking at you) require motorcyclists to wear helmets when riding on public roads and highways. The reasons for this are many. It makes our highways safer, it reduces the number of serious head injuries and deaths due to motorcycle wrecks, it keeps all of our insurance rates low by making it cheaper for insurance companies to insure both motorcyclists and regular automobiles, etc. But, recently a bill was introduced into the NC House which would do away with this requirement. Many reasons were given, most involving claims of the current law impinging on the individual rights of motorcyclists (it's not, by the way, but that is a discussion for another time) and many of those calling for a repeal of the requirement described the current law as just another example of the nanny state. After all, an adult riding a motorcycle is only endangering themselves if they ride without a helmet, so why should the State tell them whether or not they have to? It should be an individual's choice.
I wonder if another government regulation were thrown out there, if the same people claiming nanny state would still see it as an infringement of an individuals choice. Let's look at regulation of illegal drugs. Isn't it just as much of an individual choice whether or not to snort cocaine or inject heroin? An argument can be made that if an individual wishes to use hardcore drugs that the only person that they are hurting is themselves and that the government shouldn't stand in their way. After all, it's their life and if they want to spend it using drugs then who is the government to tell them that they can't? Most of the problems related to drugs such as the violence that surrounds the manufacture and trade in narcotics and the crime that surrounds those who steal and rob to get money to buy drugs would be eliminated if we simply legalized it all, wouldn't it? We certainly would save money emptying our prisons of drug dealers and users who are currently clogging the system, wouldn't we?
Now, I know that there are some hardcore libertarians out there who would agree with the line of argument that I just set forth. That's why I love libertarians because they are absolutely consistent both in their logic and their beliefs, something I certainly can't say for myself. But outside the absolutist social Darwinists among us, I think most of us realize that the harm that comes from the use of narcotics affects society far beyond the affect it has on the individual user. Most of us believe that the U.S.'s regulation of and criminalization of narcotics is in the best interest of our society and serves the greater good. Any infringement on our liberty and individual choice is far outweighed by the benefit that these policies have on our society as a whole.
So, for those who like to throw around the term nanny state and bitch and moan about every last thing our government does, I say "get over it." But, I still think Chicagoans should be able to get some fois gras whenever the hell they want it.
What I have always understood the term nanny state to mean is the overreaching of government into areas best left to personal choice. The best example of what I consider the proper use of the term would be the Chicago city council's decision to outlaw the serving of fois gras in restaurants within the city's borders. Why a governmental agency would even give an issue like that time on their agenda bewilders me and I think whether or not you believe that fois gras is cruelty on a plate or not, I would hope that we could agree that this is a perverse overstepping of both governmental action and common sense.
What bothers me is that lately it seems that the term is being used to refer to anything that government does to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens. Inherent in this argument is the Tea Party mantra that any governmental action somehow impedes our individual liberty. This is interesting seeing that most of the Tea Party folks that I saw attending those town hall meetings got their income from Social Security and their hoverround from Medicare, but I digress.
The fact is that in order to live in a civilized and orderly society, we need a government that sets forth laws and rules that regulate our behavior. Do these in some way inevitably impinge on our liberties? I guess they do. But to be a member of society, sometimes our individual liberty must give in a little to the common good. Most of these "infringements" we don't really think about. We have speed limits on our highways to ensure that the highways are safe for those who travel them; we have laws that make it illegal to take someone else's property and punish those who do; we have zoning ordinances to make sure that you don't put an industrial waste dump next to my house. Most people have no problem with these, although trust me there are plenty of people who do.
So, where do you draw the line between a government that is protecting the general welfare vs. one that is trying to regulate every infinitesimal intricacy of our every-day life? If I knew the answer to that, I would be running the country rather than writing a blog on my lunch hour. But, I would posit that the line is not where those throwing out the term "nanny state" are saying it is.
Let's take the example of the motorcycle helmet law. North Carolina like most sensible and civilized states (South Carolina, I'm looking at you) require motorcyclists to wear helmets when riding on public roads and highways. The reasons for this are many. It makes our highways safer, it reduces the number of serious head injuries and deaths due to motorcycle wrecks, it keeps all of our insurance rates low by making it cheaper for insurance companies to insure both motorcyclists and regular automobiles, etc. But, recently a bill was introduced into the NC House which would do away with this requirement. Many reasons were given, most involving claims of the current law impinging on the individual rights of motorcyclists (it's not, by the way, but that is a discussion for another time) and many of those calling for a repeal of the requirement described the current law as just another example of the nanny state. After all, an adult riding a motorcycle is only endangering themselves if they ride without a helmet, so why should the State tell them whether or not they have to? It should be an individual's choice.
I wonder if another government regulation were thrown out there, if the same people claiming nanny state would still see it as an infringement of an individuals choice. Let's look at regulation of illegal drugs. Isn't it just as much of an individual choice whether or not to snort cocaine or inject heroin? An argument can be made that if an individual wishes to use hardcore drugs that the only person that they are hurting is themselves and that the government shouldn't stand in their way. After all, it's their life and if they want to spend it using drugs then who is the government to tell them that they can't? Most of the problems related to drugs such as the violence that surrounds the manufacture and trade in narcotics and the crime that surrounds those who steal and rob to get money to buy drugs would be eliminated if we simply legalized it all, wouldn't it? We certainly would save money emptying our prisons of drug dealers and users who are currently clogging the system, wouldn't we?
Now, I know that there are some hardcore libertarians out there who would agree with the line of argument that I just set forth. That's why I love libertarians because they are absolutely consistent both in their logic and their beliefs, something I certainly can't say for myself. But outside the absolutist social Darwinists among us, I think most of us realize that the harm that comes from the use of narcotics affects society far beyond the affect it has on the individual user. Most of us believe that the U.S.'s regulation of and criminalization of narcotics is in the best interest of our society and serves the greater good. Any infringement on our liberty and individual choice is far outweighed by the benefit that these policies have on our society as a whole.
So, for those who like to throw around the term nanny state and bitch and moan about every last thing our government does, I say "get over it." But, I still think Chicagoans should be able to get some fois gras whenever the hell they want it.
Welcome
Many of you who have commented on my Facebook posts, have encouraged me to start a blog. I'm happy to oblige, albeit reluctantly.
This blog will be irregular, sporadic, and above all irreverent. The subjects will be random -- politics, religion, sports, whatever happens to be on my mind at the time. And yes, you will probably at some point be offended, since if I'm not offending someone, I'm not really doing my job.
As for the name -- anyone who is familiar with my native and beloved Syracuse, New York, will understand that salt potatoes are a delicious delecacy known only to Central New Yorkers. Essentially, small new potatoes boiled in an absolutely ungodly amount of salt, served immediately with melted butter dripped over the potato's crystallized skin. Mmmmmmmmmm. So, essentially, the title is an homage to my upbringing and you can insert any double meaning you wish to it.
I don't know how long I will do the blog, or how often. You are welcome to follow it if you wish, or not. Feel free to comment on any of my entries that you wish. Who knows? It could be fun.
This blog will be irregular, sporadic, and above all irreverent. The subjects will be random -- politics, religion, sports, whatever happens to be on my mind at the time. And yes, you will probably at some point be offended, since if I'm not offending someone, I'm not really doing my job.
As for the name -- anyone who is familiar with my native and beloved Syracuse, New York, will understand that salt potatoes are a delicious delecacy known only to Central New Yorkers. Essentially, small new potatoes boiled in an absolutely ungodly amount of salt, served immediately with melted butter dripped over the potato's crystallized skin. Mmmmmmmmmm. So, essentially, the title is an homage to my upbringing and you can insert any double meaning you wish to it.
I don't know how long I will do the blog, or how often. You are welcome to follow it if you wish, or not. Feel free to comment on any of my entries that you wish. Who knows? It could be fun.
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