Be happy about taxes? How Ludicrous!!

It seems a Finnish group wants Finns to be happy about paying some of the highest income taxes in Europe, according to a Rueters report. The Happy Taxpayers' Association is telling Finns to focus on the services the government provides rather than dwelling on negative thoughts about income taxes.

How preposterous! That is akin to telling slaves that they should consider the goodness of the food and shelter they are getting rather than dwell on the fact that they are slaves.

And, like it or not, Finns are slaves of the government. In 2000, nearly 50 percent of the gross domestic product was paid in taxes to the government. That was the third highest in the world. Such confiscatory tax policies can only be defined as slavery.

Additionally, these high taxes have Finland's unemployment rate hovering around 9 percent, above the European Union average. Add that to its relatively inflexible labor market and high employer-paid social security taxes and you have a serious obstacle to employment growth.

So, as you can see, Finns have very little about which to be happy.

"I don't think there is another official association like ours in the world," group vice-president Anna Tommola said Monday.

Someone should tell Ms. Tommola that there is a reason for that.

COLUMN: Demystifying 'The Da Vinci Code'

If there is one thing I can’t stand, it is self-righteous and intolerant religious fanatics who argue against books or movies without actually reading or seeing them.

I am, of course, talking about Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code.”

Religious leaders are denouncing the book and movie as an attack on Christianity. Of course, many Christians fall in lockstep with these leaders and join in the chorus of denouncing the book and movie. Many of them have never read the book nor seen the movie. If they had, they would have realized there is nothing in the book that should frighten Christians or that contradicts Scripture.

Of the issues of concern to religious leaders, there are two items in the book that, as far as I can tell, bother them the most.



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Limiting government spending is a good thing

A likely item on November's ballot in Ohio is a constitutional amendment that puts in place Tax and Expenditure Limitations. TELs are rules that limit the ability of the government to tax and spend beyond the capacity of the citizens to pay.

Of course, tax-and-spend liberals, such as Lima Mayor David Berger, are opposed to anything that would limit their ability to spend our money on their pet projects. "It's a disaster for cities, townships, public schools, every taxpayer-supported entity in the state of Ohio," Berger said. It would severely restrict spending in ways that would be unfair to the various entities, he added.

About time. Something needs to be done to restrict spending because our politicians — local, state and national — have demonstrated they do not have the ability to regulate their poor and irresponsible spending habits. Just look at how ridiculously high the national debt is: $8,332,524,238,683.71 (that is $8.33 TRILLION). The National Debt has increased an average of $1.93 billion per day since Sept. 30!

Nor is this an Ohio idea. Some 23 states have TELs of some sort in place.

I for one am glad to see any action that limits government spending.

Another step in the militarization of America

President Bush tonight outlined a plan to send 6,000 National Guard troops to "secure" the border with Mexico.

What a wrongheaded approach to a nonproblem. While most of the rest of the civilized world is tearing down their borders and allowing peaceable people to travel unmolested by government thugs, the United States continues to increase security at its borders.

Mexico is our neighbor and sending troops to the border is not very neighborly.

Besides, this is an improper use of National Guard troops. Someone should tell Bush that the National Guard is supposed to be a contigency force used for immediate threats. The Mexican border is not an immediate security threat that requires the deployment of part-time troops.

Glad he's retiring this year ...

U.S. Rep. Michael G. Oxley, an Ohio Republican, spoke to the Lima Rotary Club today and demonstrated more of his trademark, "I'll support whatever the leadership tells me to support." This time his comments were so idiotic, they bear repeating here.

Oxley told the Rotarians that he was not at all concerned about the National Security Agency's collection of millions of telephone records to track calling patterns in the United States. Instead, like President Bush when faced with this program and his illegal domestic spying program, blamed the media.

Oxley, like Bush, argues that it is treason for the media to report about programs that spy on Americans because it let's terrorists know what the government is doing.

How frightening!

When the media discovers the government is violating the civil liberties of Americans, then it has an obligation to let us know. Terrorists can not possibly benefit from knowing about either program.

Additionally, Oxley insisted that individual phone calls are not being monitored by the NSA. How do we know? Should we just simply believe that because the government tells us so? After all, the government is monitoring individual phone calls without a warrant in its domestic spying program.

And both programs are a bigger threat to the security and liberty of Americans than any terrorist organization can hope to be. Looks like the terrorists have won after all.

From the stupid idea department ...

A politician in Ohio's General Assembly has proposed a law that would name Sept. 22 as Emancipation Day. State Rep. Sylvester Patton, a Democrat, wants to commemorate the day when President Lincoln engaged in a political stunt by leaking a proclamation that he was going to deliver three months later.

Sadly, my own representative, Republican John Willamowski, is a co-sponsor of this silly legislation. Unfortunately for us, Willamowski is about to become a judge on the 3rd Ohio District Court of Appeals. Hopefully he will exercise better judgment as a judge than he has as a congressman.

If you are going to honor the Emancipation Proclamation, why not honor the day it went into effect and not the day the president leaked the proclamation to the world?

More importantly, why commemorate it at all? The proclamation, as an engine of emancipation, did nothing. Not a single slave was freed by the proclamation. It was simply a political stunt by the president. I will concede it might have had some overall strategic use in the war, but it had nothing at all to do with slavery. President Lincoln did not care one way or the other on the freeing of slaves. He only cared about maintaining the union and winning the war.

Lastly, It appears that our representatives have way too much time on their hands and a proclivity for making laws just so it appears that they are earning their ridiculously high salaries. If this is the most important thing facing our state, perhaps it is time to limit the General Assembly to meeting only one month a year to pass the budget.

COLUMN: Big Brother expands reach

The government net continues to grow. Authorities are quietly setting up equipment that basically tracks our every move.

Police departments across the country are purchasing a camera system for use in police cruisers to scan thousands of license plates an hour. As the police officer passes the cars, the license plate is photographed and the computer scans a database checking for warrants or stolen vehicles. When the computer makes a match it notifies officers that a vehicle of interest is nearby.

Some cities, like Baltimore, are even planning on using stationary cameras to check license plates of every vehicle that passes certain intersections.

Other than scanning the database, no one is saying what will happen to the data collected.

Can you say Big Brother?


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Shaken but not stirred ...

I'm disappointed. Here in Lima, Ohio, yesterday (11 May 2006) we had a 2.8 magnitude earthquake along the Anna Seismic Zone at about 10 p.m. EDT. I did not even feel it, though I was in my car at the time.

It was the first quake this year along the Anna Seismic Zone, which is usually Ohio's most active fault area. Though its quakes are not usually very large, it has a history of producing damaging earthquakes and the potential to deliver a catastrophic earthquake. Earthquakes in 1875, 1930, 1931, and 1937 caused minor to moderate damage. Two earthquakes in 1937, on March 2 and March 9, caused significant damage in the Shelby County community of Anna. The damage included toppled chimneys, cracked plaster, broken windows, and structural damage to buildings. The community school, of brick construction, was razed because of structural damage. However, the zone has been quiet in recent years. Maybe this is a sign of renewed activity?

While Ohio might not be considered a hotbed of earthquake activity, the temblor last night was the state's eighth this year, with seven of them occuring in Northeast Ohio in the Lake Erie region (Lima is in Northwest Ohio).

Maybe I should buy earthquake insurance? Or, perhaps, move to California?

Letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President George W. Bush - Council on Foreign Relations

Letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President George W. Bush - Council on Foreign Relations

If you are interested in seeing the letter that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent to President Bush, the Council on Foreign Relations claims to have a copy. Click the above link and croll down to the bottom and click for the text (it's in Adobe Portable Document Format).

Cuba wins seat on controversial new U.N. Human Rights Council

Cuba wins seat on controversial new U.N. Human Rights Council

Cuba is now on the U.N. Human Rights Council. Talk about putting the fox in charge of the hen house. I am not sure anything else needs to be said about that.

The United Nations is a worthless body and the Human Rights Council is a joke. Like the League of Nations before it, the United Nations has long outlived its usefulness.

Colbert Roasts President Bush

Colbert Roasts President Bush - 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner

If you want to see C-SPAN's full 24 minute video of Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert's skewering of President Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents Association Dinner, it is available by clicking the above link. While there, you can als see the 11 minutes of the President Bush impersonation. The full 95 minutes of the dinner is also available there.

While Colbert's roast was probably in bad taste, the real issue I have with this annual dinner is that it gives the impression that the White House and those tasked with covering it are all in league together. Can we really trust that the coverage is fair, full and balanced if they are all chumming around together?

It is time to end these dinners and bring back the seriousness of purpose that the White House correspondents are suppose to have.

Big Brother arriving at a city near you ...

Scanners That Read A Thousand License Plates Per Hour

It seems police departments across the country are purchasing this system that uses cameras in police cruisers to scan thousands of license plates an hour. As the police officer passes the cars, the license plate is photographed and the computer scans a database checking for warrants or stolen vehicles. Some cities, like Baltimore, are even planning on using stationary cameras to check license plates.

Can you say Big Brother?

This is akin to police stopping every vehicle and verifying that laws are not being broken. How frightening. Do we really want the police and, by extension, the government tracking our every move?

CNN.com - Rep. Kennedy blames medication for crash near Capitol - May 5, 2006

CNN.com - Rep. Kennedy blames medication for crash near Capitol - May 5, 2006:

The acorn does not fall far from the tree ...

Can't buy an election

Jordan wins GOP nod for Congress:

The lesson we learned from Tuesday's primary election is that you can't buy an election, despite what campaign finance reformers such as U.S. Sen. John McCain like to claim.

Frank Guglielmi, an Ohio millionaire, spent some $1.4 million of his own personal fortune in the Republican primary election. Still state Sen. Jim Jordan won the race spending about $800,000, a little more than half of what Guglielmi spent. If there is stronger evidence against the foolish idea of limiting free speech by limiting campaign contributions, I have yet to see it.

While there are a few issues on which Jordan and I disagree, for the most part he has the proper values and ethics to be a great congressman. I congratulate him and wish him luck against Democrat Richard Siferd, a Lima, Ohio, attorney, in November's general election.

Election Day

Today is Election Day in three states, including here in Ohio. We are, of course, being bombarded by editorial writers, columnists, talking heads, bloggers and other commentators telling us to go out and vote. Then, come tomorrow, they all will be lamenting the poor voter turnout and blaming voter apathy for all that ails us.

I agree that voting is one of our most precious rights. However, along with the right to vote comes the right not to vote. It is far superior to have low voter turnout of informed voters than it is to have a large voter turnout of uninformed voters who corrupt the process by checking the box simply because they have heard the candidate's name before.

So, if you are even passingly familiar with current events (and you must be if you are reading this), then, by all means, go out and vote (unless, of course, you are protesting the poor state of our electoral system by not voting, then that is your perogative as well). However, if your knowledge of what is going on in the world is limited to reading year-old magazines while you wait to get a haircut or see the doctor, then please stay home watching The Oprah Winfrey Show and eating your Bon Bons.

All money is 'Special Interest' money

Am I the only one tired of hearing politicians brag about not accepting "special interest" money and accuse their opponents of doing so?

All money raised by a political campaign is "special interest" money. For example, if an 85-year-old grandmother donates $25 to a political campaign, it is because she hopes the candidate will legislate in a fashion beneficial to her. That is her special interest.

Even when a millionaire, such as Frank Guglielmi, who is running for the Congress from Ohio, spends $1 million of his own money (for a $165,000 a year job, I might add ... hmm I'm no economist but ...) it is still special interest money for he hopes to get to Congress to impress his buddies or whatever reason he has for dropping such a large amount of money for such a small annual salary.

All that being said, there still should be no restrictions on the amount of money a campaign can raise. Restrictions on campaign contributions amount to a restricting of political speech, the very type of speech the Framers wanted to protect the most. If I want to give a candidate $1 million of my money to help his or her campaign, that is my business. Of course, all donations should be publicly and immediately revealed to the world so the voters can see from where the money comes.