John T. Reed’s news blog
I now have 8 blogs. Please check the ones you are interested in regularly instead of just this one.
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I now have 8 blogs. Please click on John’s Blogs at the nav bar at the top of each page of my new web site. For example, today, I posted a new item about your needing to go to Australia to open a bank account there now in the hyperinflation blog.
Choose Congress from the phone book
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October 14th, 2010 by John T. Reed William F. Buckley, Jr. famously said, I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University. I think he’s right. Although I would put it this way, We would be better off with a Congress composed of citizens chosen randomly for single terms the way grand juries are chosen than the current professional-politician Congress. Buckley was being a smart ass. I’m dead serious. Congress chosen randomly from each district and state for six-month terms Grand...
God bless referendums. We need them at the national level
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June 22nd, 2011 by John T. Reed Copyright 2011 by John T. Reed In California, we have the ability to pass laws and amendments to the state constitution by referendum. Prop 13 In 1978, we famously passed Proposition 13 which lowered our property taxes from about 3% of the value of your property to 1% of your original purchase price. I now pause while I and all Californians reading this genuflect at the mention of Prop 13. (Massachusetts imitated California, but their “Proposition 2 1/2” actually lowered their property taxes down to roughly our BEFORE-Prop-13 level. Pikers!) Our property taxes...
Leftists do not understand the meaning of the word ‘if’
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Copyright by John T. Reed Obama, Pelosi, Reid and all the other anti-business, anti-rich nut jobs will, if allowed, enact a ton of IF laws. They all have this format: If you do X, you must do it the way we say. or If you do X, you must pay this tax. For example, if you sell health insurance, you must not turn away persons with pre-existing conditions. Or If you make more than $250,000, you must pay a 2.38% tax on “unearned income.” Obama and his ilk, being ignoramuses about incentives and business, think businesses and rich people are...
Theft by commission costs us far more than ordinary robbery
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Copyright 2010 by John T. Reed When a mugger points a gun at you and demands the $174.83 in your pocket, he gets $174.83 and you are out $174.83. When burglar steals $3,600 worth of stuff from your house, you are out $3,600 and he gets that amount less his fence’s margin. But when theft is committed by getting an illicit commission, the cost to you is far, far greater. Why has no one ever written about this? Take the so-called savings and loan debacle of the 1980s and 1990s. It cost U.S. taxpayers around $160 billion. Did the criminals...