I ventured down into North Richland Hills over the weekend and noticed a number of signs up in support of a tax freeze for seniors and the disabled.  The tagline at the bottom of the sign said that this would “help control runaway spending.”  If it were only that simple.  I don’t see how the tax sucking beast will be so easily starved.  What will actually happen is that the tax rate will increase to the point where the revenue generated is the same as before the freeze.  Since seniors won’t see an increase in their bills, regardless of the tax rate, this would mean that everyone else will pay more.  It is a very rare occurrance for a political entity to actually decrease spending.  And they won’t sit idly by and let their revenues decrease, at least not without a huge voter outcry, which I just don’t see happening at this time.

Actually, as a single, childless taxpayer, I have great sympathy for the people behind the freeze.  The majority of my taxes go to the local school district, which I get nothing out of (unless you count traffic jams).  Here’s what the taxes were on my house from last year:

Tax District	Tax Amount
City of Keller	499.76
Tarrant County	324.55
Tarrant County Hospital Dist	280.36
Tarrant County College Dist	166.00
Keller ISD	1744.92
Total:	$3015.59

I’d like to see the people who actually use the service fund the majority of it.  People without children in the schools should pay a significantly reduced school tax rate.  Of course, I’m a heartless, selfish libertarian type, so what do I know?

Not content with their current level of power, the apparatchiks of the various transit authorities want to solidify their power over the entire area by creating a regional transit authority.

On Friday, dozens of area leaders are expected to endorse creating a regional rail authority that would fill the gaps in cities that don’t already have bus and train service. If it works, dozens of cities would be connected by trains in the next decade or two—from Fort Worth to Cleburne, Arlington to Grapevine.

Of course, there are various factions that are fighting each other over power, among other things:

Denton County was eliminated from the regional rail authority after officials from the 2-year-old Denton County Transportation Authority insisted that they already have a long-term plan in place. The agency has jurisdiction over all of the county even though only three cities are paying a half-cent sales tax for transportation services.

Denton County officials say it would be unfair to take away their countywide authority, which was approved by voters in 2002.

Of course, none of these “good works” can be done without money, right?

Officials in the other counties—Tarrant, Johnson, Dallas, Ellis and Collin—want to be able to adopt a half-cent sales tax increase in areas currently not served by a transportation authority. Even if the Legislature agreed, voter approval would be required in each county.

But finally, one of them slips and reveals their true agenda:

“It’s unfair, but we’ve got to look at it regionally,” Miller said. “We need to put aside our personal feelings. The whole point is improving our air quality and getting people off the road.”

I think this speaks volumes to the arrogance of these people.  They seem genetically incapable of understanding that getting people off the road is not ever going to work.  And as long as they pursue that goal, they’re going to be barking up the wrong tree.  It flies against everything Texans stand for and are used to.  Personal freedom is not going to be tossed aside easily in favor of some centrally controlled and managed “people mover” crap.  Besides, if public transportation was such a damn good idea, we’d see private companies trying to provide it.  Instead, it’s a boondoggle that has to be tax supported to stay afloat. 

The biggest contributors to pollution are a) old, ill-maintained vehicles, and b) gridlock.  It seems like we’re constantly rebuilding roads around here, but the planning didn’t take into account the growth patterns and the new roads are full as soon as they open.  What’s worse is that the planners seem to know this, but won’t actually do anything about it.  Instead of throwing away money at these public transportation schemes, we should be doing everything possible to keep traffic moving.

And it’s not me just making this crap up.  The volume of vehicles on North Texas roads is a graphic indicator that the market has spoken.  Texans want their independence and that means cars and trucks.  Yes, it takes time to build new roads, but it takes just as long to build rail lines.

Rail makes sense in some highly congested areas with extremely high population densities.  If I had to go into downtown Dallas on a daily basis, I might consider it.  But it’s just not the solution that these poor deluded fools think it is.

If I thought it would do any good (and I didn’t have to work), I’d go give them a piece of my mind.  Their meeting is open to the public:

Transit meeting

What: Regional Transit Initiative. Metroplex leaders are expected to approve a set of principles to present to the state Legislature in 2005, including a request for a sales tax increase to expand commuter rail service.

When: 2 to 4 p.m. Friday

Where: Omni Mandalay hotel, 221 E. Las Colinas Blvd., Irving

Admission: Free and open to the public

This article finally cemented something in my mind that had been percolating back there for a while.  One of the common themes I see among anti-gun people is the idea that putting weapons in a person’s hands will stifle their self-control and turn them into homicidal maniacs.  I’ve often thought that this was a projection of their own innermost thoughts onto gun owners.  Taking what I’ve been hearing from Kerry and combining it with what people who served with him have been saying, Kerry strikes me as the just the type who would turn into a maniac when given the opportunity.

As I mentioned previously, Kerry never had a chance with me, given that he stands against just about everything I believe.  But the more I learn about him, the slimier he seems.  All things considered, the idea of John “Boston Strangler” Kerry in the White House makes me extremely nervous.

Link via Vodkapundit.

I was Galluped this week.  They called me up and asked a few questions about the state of the country, the economy, and the elections.  What I found is that their questions don’t make any allowances for anything beyond yes/no or Democrat/Republican responses.  I think what this does is cause their numbers to be skewed.  When the mainstream press gets the results of the poll, they report them like they were gospel.  When the actual results don’t match the polls, they are then left casting about for answers as to why (usually they seem to blame it on voters “throwing a tantrum” or something like that when their liberal favorites don’t get elected or get thrown out).

If you were to ask if I approved of the job that Bush is doing on a strictly ‘yes/no’ basis, my answer would be ‘no.’  And in fact, that’s just what Gallup did.  I am also a participant in Zogby’s online poll.  I get a questionaire from them about once a month.  They break things down a little more, but my answers still tend to be negative on a variety of issues.  I don’t like the profligate spending on his watch (billions more for Medicare anyone?).  I don’t like the pandering to illegal aliens.  I don’t like his position on the Assault Weapons Ban (not only was it wrong, it was cowardly, since he thought it was pretty safe that he wouldn’t actually have to worry about it being passed).  I don’t like his support for the FMA.  So when it came to rating my overall opinion of George W. Bush, I rated him as “unfavorable.”  Of course, I gave Kerry, Edwards, and Nader ratings of “highly unfavorable.”

I don’t fit in any political party anymore.  I can’t stand the Democrat party.  The morality police wing of the Republican party pisses me off so much that the tent really isn’t big enough for them and me at the same time.  I fell out with the Libertarian party after 9/11, when they adopted a blame America approach. 

Anyhow, all these negative factors show up in my polling results, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into information that can be relied on for anything.  When it comes time to make a decision for the presidential election, my only choices are Bush or nobody.  There isn’t a snowball’s chance that I would vote for Kerry.  But for now, when they ask me who I’ll vote for, I simply say I’m undecided.

I think come November that the news media is going to get thwacked about the head by people like me.  Despite our high disapproval for George W. Bush, or being undecided at the moment, I suspect there will be a lot nose holding at the voter booths.  Until then, the polls will show lots of undecideds and low approval ratings for Bush, which will be pounced on by the media and shouted from the rooftops in the hopes of influencing the vote.

Glenn Reynolds comments on the federal mandate that blackmailed the states into changing the drinking age to 21.  This was one of the first things that really drove home to me the arbitrary nature of government by majority, since it happened when I was about 16.  It left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I haven’t forgotten it.  I’d done everything right and followed all the rules and then they went and changed the damn rules on me.  I felt I was being punished for something I didn’t do.

It was also the beginning of the erosion of my respect for the authority of government, since I habitually ignored their silly law from the time I was 18 until I was 21.  Over time, little by little, law by law, the government itself is creating libertarians out of more and more people.

I think someone has finally captured the essense of Al Gore:

… a purulent hemorrhoid about to burst into a million bitter droplets of anger and fiery indignation.

I don’t normally talk about abortion.  It’s one of those nasty topics that can only get you enemies.  Otherwise rational people go stark raving spitting mad when it’s brought up.  That having been said, though, since today’s Bleat takes up the topic I thought, “What the heck?”

I once heard a libertarian (I think it was Dr. Mary Ruwart) propose a technological solution to abortion with the idea of transplanting the fetus to a willing recipient.  On first impression, that seems like an interesting idea, and one that could potentially end the whole debate over abortion.  The presenter of the idea thought that anti-abortion advocates would be better off putting their resources into researching and perfecting such a procedure.  And when considered strictly from a “market forces” approach, that may be true.  As we’ve seen, a simple ban on abortion will not end the practice.  Given that there will always be women who want to end a pregnancy, anti-abortionists can either provide an alternative or be ignored while abortions continue to be practiced (legally or not).

Since my falling out with the Libertarian party line after 9/11, though, I’ve started to question these things a bit more.  Also, since my cynicism knows few bounds, I suspect that such a simple solution would not actually solve the problem, or it least it would open up new problems.  But for the sake of argument, let’s accept the idea of a safe and effective medical procedure that would allow for the transplantation of a fetus from one woman to another.  As it turns out, such a procedure would open up a whole other set of questions.

Would such a procedure be accepted by the various religious authorities that currently condemn abortion?  Given the intransigence over birth-control in the Catholic Church, I could also see some sort of Papal edict banning the practice over some obscure bit of dogma.  Not being a religious person (I’m agnostic), I’m not really well versed on what issues might be raised.  I just sense that there could be some sort of resistance from this quarter.  Perhaps we’d see some ‘goalpost moving’ where the concept of life extends to the original mother or something.

Most of the anti-abortionists at some level want to see all abortion banned and made illegal.  Given that the law is not likely to make abortion illegal any time soon, would they be satisfied with this procedure as an alterative? 

But what about the pro-choicers?  Would they see this as an attack on their right to choose?  They’re pretty defensive about anything that gets in the way of choice.  They might interpret such a procedure as the camel’s nose of abortion prohibition under the tent (yes, this is counter to my assertion above that the legality of abortion is not likely to change, but I’m talking about the pro-choicers interpretation of events and their reactions to them). 

What would such a procedure cost?  I could see a situation where the transplant becomes more like adoption with the ‘donor’ vetting the prospective recipient and choosing based on homelife, income, etc.  The costs would then be borne by the recipient family.  But if the costs were too high, would there be enough propective recipients to take all of the unwanted fetuses?  Even if the costs are low, are there enough women who want children and can carry them to term but otherwise can’t conceive to take all of these fetuses?  According to the CDC, there were 857,475 abortions in the US in 2000.  At that rate, there’d have to be a veritable army of women volunteering each year to receive fetus transplants.

On the flip side of the ‘adoption’ scenario, would there be blind transplants where the ‘donor’ just wants to get rid of the fetus and doesn’t care who it goes to?  The adoption scenario presupposes that the woman cares enough about the fetus to go through the process.  If there is too much process or ceremony associated with giving up a fetus for transplant, it could continue to encourage some women to get an abortion.

What happens to the legal rights of the original mother after the transplant?  Does she implicitly give up all future rights and responsibilities or can she expect to have a knock on her door in 18 years?

What about the father’s rights and responsibilities?  If the father isn’t involved in the transplant can he suddenly show up and demand custody from the recipient?  Can he be sued for child support in the future?  Will the state come after him for support if the new mother ever applies for some kind of assistance?

I’m sure there a lot more issues that would arise.  These are just what I came up with after spending a few minutes thinking about it.  It still sounds like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in this situation.

I keep seeing this obnoxious commercial from AARP (I think).  It starts out well enough with a recap of the tons of money we’ve wasted on the War On Drugs.  But then it goes into their message about “affordable and safe” imports and working for “affordable” drugs in this country.  They use war terms concerning getting prices down.

It gets me to yelling at the TV at that point, because if these people succeed in their socialist war on drug makers, they’ll be killing the goose that lays their golden pills.  It costs a lot of money to bring a new drug to market these days, and America pays the bulk of these costs.  If they succeed in getting the same kind of government fiat pricing that Canada has, the drug companies will never be able to recoup their costs, and no new drugs will be developed.  It gets really frustrating that they can’t see something as simple as this.

What’s worse is that the drug companies are starting to have to spend money on public relations ads to fight back.  That’s just one more cost that they’ll have to pass on to the rest of us.

Spoons noted a few days ago that Amazon.com was taking campaign contributions for the 2004 presidential race.  I took a look at the page and saw a lot of candidates I’d never heard of.  But in terms of angry looking, forget Howard Dean.  This guy wins the award for angriest looking candidate.  He looks like the guy who’s always yelling at people for being on his lawn.

You’d think that our august ‘leaders’ in Washington would have better things to do than waste everyone’s time with this nonsense:

A bill before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee could outlaw the shipping of cigars through the U.S. mail. The Senate has already passed its version of the legislation, and major cigar retailers and the Cigar Association of America are lobbying to keep it from being passed. “

The nature of the cigar business doesn’t lend itself to the level of retail penetration that cigarettes get, which makes mail order and internet sales very important.

I’m getting sick and tired of these damn government busybodies sticking their noses into the tiniest thing that is pleasurable.  If these bastards get their way I’m going to have to drive all over the damn place to get my occasional stogie. 

You know, it’s the little things that slowly push you over the edge…